Iwo Jima

He'd promised Jack Borger's widow he'd "stop by some day" to pay his respects. At the time, he never could have foreseen that a flight of steps would make that a physical impossibility.  

Gordon Zane looked across Clarendon Avenue at worn concrete and brick steps leading to the front porch of a two-story, clapboard-sided house in Canton, Ohio. It was painted dull gray with flaking white trim around the windows and eaves. An old Ford sedan was parked in the driveway.  

The promise Gordon made was jotted down quickly at the end of a letter he'd written fifteen years before when he was a U.S. Marine Corps officer in Vietnam. Jack was his platoon sergeant, and Jack's death was his first war casualty.

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"Hey Jack," Gordon yelled toward a corner of the USS Iwo Jima's vast and crowded hangar deck. "Front an' center, an' get your ass in gear." Jack Borger and most of his platoon were behind a parked Sikorsky H-34 "Jolly Green Giant" helicopter. Other Marines were hustling around inside the cavernous assault force flag ship on station in the South China Sea. 

"Lieutenant Gordy, my man, how the hell are you?" Jack, a trim, muscular former high school halfback, was sitting on the steel deck. His M-14 rifle was in front of him in pieces: barrel, trigger housing, wood stock, operating rod and bolt. Gordon leaned back against a gray bulkhead as Jack picked up the barrel and started cleaning it. 

"A little more respect, Sergeant Jack." Gordon smiled with an un-lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Jack looked up at Gordon and whipped out his middle finger in a quick salute. 

"That's all you officer-types deserve, especially the smart-ass, gung-ho ones." Jack laughed. "How's that for respect ... sir?" There was a glint in his blue eyes as he spit out the word "sir." 

"Is that the best you sorry-ass piece of white trash can come up with?" Gordon slapped the top of Jack's head.  

Despite the playful antics and bantering, Jack and Gordon had come to respect each other. They had to. The two were a team their platoon depended on to bring all of them home alive.

Gordon learned teamwork at the Naval Academy and during Marine officer training at Quantico, Virginia. Jack learned about it on the football fields of northeastern Ohio. He was a high school all-star recruited to play at Ohio State. A broken ankle and strained Achilles tendon sustained during a game against Purdue in his sophomore year sent him home. He had wanted to play professionally, but he knew the severe injuries had ended his football career. He married and joined the Corps less than a year later.  

Gordon had spent his first two years with the Corps at the Pentagon as a general's aide. When the general was assigned to take over the Fifth Marines heading to Vietnam in the summer of 1966, Gordon came along. The general quickly assigned him to Kilo Company in the Fifth's Third Battalion. Gordon was promoted to First Lieutenant the day he reported to Camp Pendleton in southern California. The general had told him he'd be company commander in "no time at all," once he spent some time "getting shot at over there in that god-damn Viet-nam." Gordon wanted to finish his four-year stint with the Corps and go to law school to become a well-paid corporate attorney. Combat experience with the Marines, his corporate executive father had told him, would look quite impressive on a resume.

Gordon slid down the bulkhead and sat on the deck next to Jack. "We gotta cut this shit out, man," Gordon said. "Otherwise, they'll keep us from jumping into the middle of the Delta looking for Victor Charlie." He pulled out a Zippo from his trouser pocket and lit his cigarette. 

"Yeah, right," Jack said. "Hey, you got another one there lieutenant-man?" He'd begun reassembling the M-14. Gordon didn't hear Jack's request for a cigarette. He was distracted, looking around the deck at Marines readying their gear for the helicopter assault. "Hey, you still here, man?"