Machine Learning (Captain Allen and DPD SWAT POV)

Heaven's Gates

"Here's health to you and to our Corps
Which we are proud to serve;
In many a strife we've fought for life
And never lost our nerve;
If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven's scenes;
They will find the streets are guarded...
By United States Marines."

When you first sign up, and you step out of that bus on Parris Island, you're told that once you walk through those doors – you won't leave them again as a civilian. You will only leave them as a Marine.

I stepped through Heaven's Gates...and when I left, I was sent straight into the Hellmouth.

I was 18 years old the first time my boots hit the ground in Afghanistan. With a few breaks between, I'd spent two years in this nightmarish desert. And after the US handed Camp Leatherneck over to the Afghan forces; after our national anthem played, succeeding theirs...I was sent home, to Camp Lejeune, to enjoy the life of on-base housing and a nice Drill Instructing job.

Living so close the largest east coast USMC base, you'd think the civilians would at least know a thing or two about common courtesies. You'd be wrong.

They asked "why'd you do it" like I was a criminal who confessed to murder. When they did, it was as irritating as when someone asked if the tattoos "meant anything."

I wanted to tell them that it was none of their business. I wanted to tell them they had no right to question me, as I didn't question why they chose to sit behind a desk in an air-conditioned building from 9-5 except on weekends. I wanted to tell them that I wasn't cut out for mundane, and when I got my girlfriend knocked up when she was 17, I needed money. I didn't have time for school. I got my GED and picked up a gun.

But they were the taxpayers... so I told them what they wanted to hear. I told them I "did it" for the love of my country, and the love of protecting it from the front lines of another. For the love of my family, and the love of making the world safer for them.

Maybe there was some truth to that.

"Once a Marine, always a Marine."

I just never admitted that, after all I'd seen... I'd lost touch with what it meant to not to be a Marine when I didn't have to be. And when I got the call to return to Camp Leatherhead, I had to stop being a father. A son. A husband. What came before didn't matter.

After that, I was only Staff Sergeant David Allen, someone who'd seen a lot more than the people under my supervision. I answered with a simple, "I'll do it." It's not like I had a choice – not really. Even if I did, I'd ask them why they didn't call sooner.

So, I packed what I needed to, got on a plane...and I went back to the place where it all started.

...

You don't know heat until you're out in 130 degrees with 80 pounds of gear weighing you down.

Your uniform starts sticking to areas of your body you didn't know existed. Being "hot" becomes relative – you forget what it feels like to exist when you're not being cooked alive. Each breath you take is at least as warm as the air leaving your body. Sand blows across the desert in transparent waves, getting just as lodged in your mouth and other places as if you were swimming in the ocean.

With gallons of sweat seeping into the padding of my vest and whatever other contraptions my MOS required I had strapped to my body at the time, swimming wasn't actually that far off.

I walked alongside a small convoy, parked and stationary, the EODs and Vallons leading the way. Corporal Pierson and her dog were along the side of the dirt road, planting red flags – speaking to the Afghan military personnel in their own tongue. I couldn't make out a lot of it, but mahyn, "mine," and naatas, "don't be frightened," stuck out the most.