A ‘bloody’ day in the field

By Christian Lowe / Times staff writer

It was not a pretty day for 4th Platoon. In fact, it was a bloodbath.

One by one, the candidates went down. A blow to the head took one out; a ramming thrust to the chest dropped another.

And after the dust had cleared, only a few of the officers-to-be were left alive.

“We didn’t do so good today,” said John Hafeman, 24, of Santa Monica, Calif., his head hung low. “I’m scared of what the gunnery sergeant’s going to do to us when we get back to the barracks. We’re probably going to be drilling all night.”

Not exactly. But the 4th Platoon’s failure to defeat their opponents in the “wooded engagement” would be seared in their memories long after.

Armed with pugil sticks — short wooden poles with padded ends designed to simulate the bayonet and butt ends of a rifle — and clad in layers of padding and a football helmet, the men and women of Class 186 launched into a series of platoon-on-platoon battles that would have made even Genghis Khan proud had he been watching from the sidelines that dreary July day.

As the candidates stormed up the muddy hill in groups of three, grappling and prodding for a “death blow,” their platoon mates hooted and cheered with encouragement.

But things did not look good for 4th Platoon. Joshua Piper, a prior Marine staff sergeant, led the first team up the hill and into the pit. Dodging and weaving, the stocky 27-year-old from Longview, Wash., quickly saw his plan of out-thinking the enemy go out the window. It was mano a mano — there would be the quick, and there would be the dead.

And he was one of the dead.

Dejected, Piper slumped back down the hill past his platoon as the others waited for their turn in the meat grinder. The aggressiveness of 3rd Platoon grew with each death blow heaped on Piper’s platoon. They smelled blood in the water.

One by one, the 4th Platoon warriors went down. Arguing with the judges whether something was truly a death blow was futile. It wasn’t until the larger candidates from each platoon squared off — the teams are matched loosely according to body weight — that 4th Platoon salvaged some of what was left of its shredded pride.

Like everything at OCS, the pugil battles serve a larger purpose. Instructors use the events to emphasize teamwork and accountability. Gunnery Sgt. Ruben Velez, 4th Platoon’s top enlisted man, told his candidates to look out for their buddies battling beside them.

“I told them you gotta think of the guy next to you and help keep him alive,” Velez explained as he watched his candidates fall one after another to 3rd Platoon’s lethal blows.

The platoon did indeed pay for their failures. But not the way Hafeman thought they would.

Hafeman envisioned a night spent marching in parade formation, but their commander, Capt. Khari Wright, had a different idea.

Why not take Gunny Velez’s words and make them a little bit more real?

As a Marine officer, the welfare of your troops is your responsibility — and so is the task of breaking the news to loved ones when one of them is killed or injured.

So as a lesson to the candidates that complacency and inattention can get their men killed, Wright had each of them write a mock letter to his bunkmate’s parents, informing them of the death of their son.

“It opened up a lot of [our] eyes to the reality of what this job is and what it means,” Piper said later.

“It kind of hit home. I thought to myself ‘Someday I’m going to have to do this, and you better take this serious and realize what you’re getting into.’ ”