Did you know PHANTOMS originally started as a fictionalized memoir? Yep. I was referencing my deployment journal and spinning the accounts through the fabrication machine to convey powerful themes and fictionalize my real-life experiences simultaneously.
It didn't stick, it didn't feel genuine, and it read like a schlockfest. So, I went with my heart and wrote poems about our time in Iraq. That felt a lot better, and I'm glad I went in that direction.
Regardless, I still left some tales on the cutting room floor. I have been posting them on this blog over the last couple of years and hope you find them interesting, especially through realizing that these are more or less discarded remnants of what Phantoms would come to be.
Parris Island in July. The confidence course loomed around us with its ropes, walls, towers, and murky pools. I looked down at my hands. They shook, and both palms contained dime-sized, open sores that oozed pinkish-clear liquid. The Drill Instructor saw I was in pain. More than that, I was self-loathing. And it distracted me from our assigned task. Running in place between obstacles.
“Keep running!” he barked at me.
Like an attack dog that smelled blood, he sprang closer.
“It’s gonna be our lucky day, Forti-yay. We might have a reason to drop you, yet,” he hissed.
He was within inches of my left ear as he graciously hung Damocles’ sword above me. This was a GO/NO GO event. We had to navigate a minimum number of obstacles to continue training successfully.
Until that time, I had blended into the pack rather well. Our drill instructors were diligent, though. Our Heavy (the most experienced drill instructor below the Senior instructor) knew my name within a few weeks. Up to that point, I was glad his attention was more focused on other struggling recruits. I knew where we were, though, and it was only a matter of time before I’d get singled out.
The wounds on my hands were from several attempts to scale a tall wall with an attached rope for assistance. Each failure to scale the wall drew more attention my way. With each fall, my hands became more damaged as I stubbornly maintained a grip on the rope. The morning humidity of the South Carolina summer exacerbated my exhaustion.
“You’re fucking weak, Fortier,” the drill instructor whispered into my ear as we were all forced to perform push-ups. “You’re not going to make this. You’re done.”
While the confidence course was not kind to me that day, I managed to pass the phase as a whole. Despite feeling the shame carried during an underwhelming performance, this also proved to be a powerful moment of camaraderie I only experienced in the Marine Corps. During our downtime, a fellow recruit approached me with a small brown bottle with a white cap.
“Check this stuff out,” he said with a swagger, ushering me into the quiet area of the head with rows of sinks and mirrors.
“It’s called ‘Nu-Skin.’ I got it in a care package the other day. My brother went to boot camp a few years ago, so I got all the tricks of the trade. This is going to hurt a bit.”
I held my hands out, and he cautiously applied the ointment to the lesions. The stinging was comparable to the punishment we suffered earlier during the confidence course: push-ups on a bed of hot mulch. Typically, this would be a mere nuisance. But, it was excruciating on the day of the confidence course trial. That moment had come and gone. What remained was a bruised, battered spirit, kindly aided by an empathetic teenager who was also withstanding the prolonged punishment of the Recruit Training Depot.
Those few days were a turning point for me during that training evolution. The confidence course was something I had thoroughly dreaded, having experienced one in Quonset, RI, used by the Army Special Forces units that were stationed there. I was still a teenager in High School. The program that brought us to Quonset was the Civil Air Patrol. It was a week-long, military-style leadership course with a stupid acronym: RICLA.
Much like at Parris Island, a queue would form at an obstacle, and the participants would safely traverse it. While in line, I donned a pair of work gloves.
“What are you doing?” the instructor sharply asked.
He was a former Army Ranger who bragged about his combat in Panama.
“I don’t want to wreck my hands,” I replied coyly.
“Do you fucking see anyone else doing that? Take them off.”
I did as I was told and experienced the confidence course in all its harsh, blistering glory. The sores became badges, but at Parris Island, they were a sign of weakness—an inability to adapt. I was not good at climbing ropes, but doing it with chewed-up hands in the South Carolina heat didn’t make for ideal conditions.
They never had to drop me. That moment was one of a handful that occurred during basic training, where I felt that I was being forced to push through to the other side through agony, self-doubt, and duress. Those experiences are tales for another time.
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