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‘Trust’ no one

The tragic, inadvertent death of Lance Cpl. Patrick Malone this past March should be a wake-up call for every Marine who calls himself a leader.

Malone was sitting on his rack at a combat outpost in Iraq when, according to investigators, Cpl. Mathew Nelson pointed his 9mm pistol at him and said some form of the words, “Do you trust me?”

A moment later, Malone had a bullet hole in his forehead.

Nelson, the Corps alleges, shot Malone while perpetuating a common, dangerous diversion — a game Marines call “Trust,” in which one points a gun at the other and asks, “Do you trust me?”

Fellow members of their platoon, part of 2nd Tank Battalion, told investigators they played the game repeatedly to build camaraderie between noncommissioned officers and junior Marines. In combat, the thinking went, trust is everything.

After Malone died, Maj. Gen. Richard Tryon, the Marine commander in Iraq, ordered his officers to watch for others playing similar games and to remind Marines about weapons safety. He also laid plans for a comprehensive all-hands training presentation.

A good response, but incomplete: This was not an isolated incident.

A decade ago, a Marine plunged to his death from a third-floor barracks room when a similar game went awry. In 2006, a soldier died playing Trust following a deployment to Iraq. And less than four months after Malone died in the war zone, a Camp Lejeune Marine shot and killed a civilian when he, too, pointed a weapon at a friend and squeezed, apparently unaware a round had been chambered.

One Marine, commenting on the incidents, said there’s really nothing the Corps can do to stop the stupidity.

He’s wrong.

Starting in boot camp and officer candidate school — and repeated ad nauseam as part of regular safety briefs and all predeployment training — every Marine must be taught the only logical response to the deadly question, “Do you trust me?”

“No,” they must learn to say. “I don’t trust anyone who points a gun at me.”

It’s simple and easy to remember.

The Corps can stop the game of Trust. But only with an automatic, trained and uniform response.