Marine recruits are in it together

[thedrifter]

IN IT TOGETHER: PART 1 <br />
Marine recruits are in it together <br />
Three good friends prepare for the same boot camp platoon as part of the buddy program. They are eager, but their parents are torn. <br />
By...

[thedrifter]

IN IT TOGETHER: PART 2
About to learn the drill at Marine boot camp
Three best friends headed off as Daniel, Daryl and Steven. Now they'll all answer to 'Recruit!'
By David Zucchino
Times Staff Writer

September 5, 2007

It was nearly 3 a.m. on a Monday when three weary teenagers arrived at the Marine Corps recruiting station in the Santa Clarita Valley. There to meet them was the station's chief recruiter, Staff Sgt. Juan Diazdumeng, an energetic and enthusiastic presence, even in the middle of the night.

Daniel Motamedi, 17 years old and just 10 days past his high school graduation, rubbed his head and yawned. It was one of the most important days of his young life, and he seemed half-awake.

Daniel's best friends, Daryl Crookston and Steven Dellinger, both 18, were yawning, too. The three had spent the previous week squeezing in the last pleasures of civilian life before shipping out to boot camp that morning. Going to bed on time was not among them.

Now, in the darkened shopping center where the recruiting station occupied a cramped corner, they filed in with parents and a dozen other recruits to hear Diazdumeng describe the next 13 weeks of their lives.

While still in high school, the friends had enlisted under the Marines' buddy program, which guaranteed they would train in the same platoon throughout boot camp. In July, a Times article recounted the friends' decisions to enlist and the trauma that had ensued in their homes. Now, their eager anticipation was about to run into reality.

Diazdumeng rattled off a compendium of boot camp horrors: Black Friday, four days hence, when the recruits are assigned drill sergeants and platoons. Hell Week, the third week, crammed with debilitating tests of stamina. The Crucible, the eighth week, a punishing three-day sojourn in the mountains of Camp Pendleton.

His voice softened as he offered final advice: "Listen to the drill instructors. Do everything they tell you. Do not ask questions. They are telling you to do certain things for a reason, OK? And have a great time. Boot camp is so much fun."

It would be one of the last times over the next three months that a Marine in authority would speak to the three recruits in a calm, nurturing, reassuring tone. In just a few hours, they would be confronted by hyper-aggressive drill sergeants whose piercing screams would begin a process of stripping suburban teenagers of their civilian psyches, their blasé attitudes, their very identities.

"Questions? Moms? Dads?" Diazdumeng asked.

The friends' parents initially opposed their sons' enlistments in a time of war, but now supported their decisions to serve. Daniel's mother, Yasmin Motamedi, a Los Angeles police detective, asked: "How long do they give them to learn how to make their beds?"

Diazdumeng smiled. "Oh, they'll learn quick. Everything they do, they will get a class. Everything is speed and intensity down there."

The three teens shrugged; they fully expected to be pressured and hectored. They were willing to endure the worst deprivations of boot camp for the end reward: wearing the Marine Corps uniform.

They were more than a little afraid, they admitted, but they felt prepared. Daniel hugged his parents goodbye as his mother choked back tears. Steven embraced his father, Jim Dellinger. Daryl had already said an emotional goodbye to his parents at home.

"At least my mom didn't go waterworks on me," Daniel said. She didn't burst into tears until he had left.

Diazdumeng drove a van full of recruits from Santa Clarita to the Military Entrance Processing Station on Rodeo Road in Los Angeles. There, just after dawn, the sergeant walked them to the receiving area. An entry sign read: "Where the Stars Shine."

Diazdumeng hugged each one and whispered encouragement. "Hey, you'll do great," he said. As the recruits reached the door, he yelled out: "I love you guys!"

The intake officer, a thin, intense woman carrying a clipboard, sang out in a saccharine tone: "Oh, isn't that sweet! He loves you!"

Then her voice hardened: "Take everything out of your pockets! Now! Take off your belts!" They would be searched for drugs and other contraband.

The friends fumbled through their pockets and clawed at their belts. A Marine shouted out names. One of the teens answered: "Here!"

The Marine shouted back: "Here, what?"

"Here, sir!"

The processing center -- the largest of 65 such stations in the country -- was like a vast bus station filled with confused, sleepy teenagers. Recruits wandered from room to room, following color-coded footprints painted on the floors.

Future soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors were being processed, tested, quizzed and shipped out. Most looked frightened and forlorn. A few adopted tough, stoic poses that fooled no one.

The three friends were given medical exams and blood tests. They filled out reams of paperwork. Daniel was so sleepy that he wrote "high school" in the space for the type of military job he preferred. Sheepishly, he asked for another form.

Daryl underwent a tattoo check for a small symbol he had recently burned onto his shoulder. He passed; the Marines do not permit tattoos that feature profanity, gang affiliations, racial slurs or pornography.

Marine recruits must be high school graduates with no criminal records, with certain waivers for home schooling, GEDs or misdemeanor convictions. Ninety-eight percent of Marines graduated from high school, according to the Corps.

The three boys easily met all conditions. They passed their drug screens, too. While they waited in a hallway, a Marine sergeant gave an impromptu lesson. He taught them how to stand at attention: feet at a 45-degree angle, thumbs and forefingers pressed together against trouser seams, head up, eyes straight ahead. They learned how to salute: palms flat and at a sharp angle to their brows.

The sergeant explained that drill instructors are highly sensitive to rank and position: They are to be called "sir" at all times. "Address them in a very loud tone," the sergeant said. "It's a sign of self-confidence."

They would all be addressed as "Recruit," he said, and they should get used to it.

The sergeant had the recruits practice making requests of a drill instructor.

Daryl tried: "Does this recruit have permission to go to the restroom?"

The sergeant shook his head. The restroom is "the head," he said.

"And what else did he do wrong?" he asked the recruits. "He was wobbly. He wasn't at the position of attention."

Daryl stiffened and tried again: "Recruit Crookston requests permission to make a head call, sir."

The sergeant beamed. "There you go," he said. If permission were granted, he told Daryl, he should run full speed to the head -- and back.

The friends were taken to a conference room for a formal swearing in. An Army recruit remarked that the U.S. Army logo on the wall looked much cooler than the Marine logo.

"I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you there," Daryl told the boy, staring at him over his shoulder.

The boy stared back and challenged Daryl to a fight: "You want to go disappear with me after this?"

"Yeah," Daryl replied.

There was no chance of any fight, but Daniel and Steven liked the way Daryl defended the Marines, and slapped his back afterward.

The center's commander, a Marine major, gave a long motivational talk, stressing educational opportunities and pay -- $1,500 a month for most recruits -- that with increases in rank would accumulate to $100,000 over four years in the unlikely event they saved every penny.

The major explained what Semper Fidelis meant (always faithful), as if the three teens didn't know. He said they did not have to recite "so help me God" at the end of the oath. Everyone recited the phrase anyway.

Over the next few hours, the three friends from Santa Clarita did what members of the military have done for generations: They hurried up and waited.

At last, a bus arrived at midafternoon to take 41 Marine recruits to San Diego. The driver, a retired Army veteran, offered advice and played a movie, "Jarhead," with its wrenching scenes of recruit abuse and degradation. The recruits argued later over how much of the film, if any of it, reflected reality.

The driver warned the recruits, just before reaching the Marine depot at dusk, that a drill instructor would soon rush aboard and "go crazy."

"Look straight ahead. Do not be looking out the window," he said. "Don't give him an excuse to [mess] with you."

Despite the warning, the recruits were startled when a drill instructor abruptly leaped aboard and screamed. He was a tall, angular sergeant. Spittle sprayed from his lips. The recruits froze.

"Sit up straight!" the sergeant screamed. "Get your eyeballs on me! You are now a recruit at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. Starting out, the only words that come out of your mouth are "yes, sir," "no, sir," and "aye, aye, sir." Do you understand that?"

The recruits bolted upright. "Yes, sir!" they hollered.

"You are going to grab everything you brought with you and you are going to get off my bus! Do you understand that?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Get off my bus!"

Lurching and stumbling, the recruits stampeded into the aisles and out the narrow front door. They followed orders to stand in yellow footprints painted on the concrete -- "my deck," the drill instructor called it.

The footprints forced the recruits to stand so closely together that they appeared to form a single mass of flesh, not a collection of frightened teenagers. Even now, seconds into boot camp, the Corps was instilling its primal message: Marines are not individuals, but a brotherhood.

The process was designed to break them down as civilians and build them up as warriors. It was disorienting, and deliberately so; they would be kept up all that night and the following day.

The next few hours were a blur: Learning how to stand at attention, how to take orders, how to scream so loud their throats burned. They were warned not to even think about sneaking in drugs, alcohol, pornography or any reading material other than religious works. They were told they would be jailed if they tried to flee the depot.

A series of drill sergeants, in what amounted to an assembly line of depersonalization, shouted out orders that at times seemed unintelligible. They berated anyone who didn't understand or was slow to respond.

"Your days of moving slowly are over!" a drill instructor hollered.

Another screamed: "I am in control! Do you understand that?"

Daniel remembered something Staff Sgt. Diazdumeng had told him: "Don't laugh too much down there, Motamedi, OK?" Daniel was prone to jokes and wisecracks. He focused on keeping a straight face, and saying nothing except "yes, sir" and "aye, aye sir," very loudly.

The three boys had heeded advice to bring only the few items that were permitted: driver's license, Social Security card, address book, petty cash, Bible.

The drill sergeants pawed roughly through piles of banned possessions recruits had been forced to dump into red wooden cubicles. Pens, paperbacks, chewing gum, notes from home and even Marine recruiting brochures were tossed on the floor with contempt.

Several recruits were singled out for wearing sleeveless white undershirts.

"Take off the wife beaters -- now!" a sergeant ordered.

Daniel, Daryl and Steven avoided being screamed at directly, a small triumph. They kept their expressions blank, their mouths set in hard lines, their eyes straight ahead. Steven tried to make himself seem invisible, and fought a peculiar urge to laugh out loud.

All night long and well past dawn, they followed orders. Recruits were selected at random and ordered to scream the same instructions at each of the 458 recruits processed that night.

Before being issued uniforms, each recruit was ordered to scream out his waist size, weight and height. Those who hesitated were asked, loudly, how they could fail to know such basic personal information. It was suggested that their mothers always bought their clothes.

The recruits were marched into a barbershop for the ritual boot camp haircut. The two barbers competed in speed cutting. In most cases, they sheared a head in 28 seconds or less.

Daniel, Daryl and Steven already had cut their hair short for boot camp, but that did not spare them. Afterward, they looked like circus freaks, with their pale skulls creased by pink welts from the rough path of the clippers and dotted with tufts of hair the barbers had missed.

There were hours more of processing -- hours standing in line, staring at walls, no talking, no moving. The friends did not know what to expect next, only that it would be shocking and new.

Still, they had no regrets: They yearned for their eagle, globe and anchor -- the Corps symbol pinned to the chest of each newly minted Marine. And as corny as it sounded to some of their friends, they wanted to serve their country.

Iraq and Afghanistan, where thousands of Marines are fighting and some dying, seemed part of a distant, parallel world. So, too, did the outside caldron of news and politics, where the war in Iraq was endlessly debated, and the casualties and roadside bombs were sad emblems of daily existence.

They were in a newly circumscribed world, away from home for the first time, and their lives had shrunk. They were too weary to comprehend it all. They had not slept in more than two days.

Shortly after dusk on their second night of boot camp, after being assigned bunks and instructed how to make their beds just so and how to assemble their gear and clothing in perfect military order, they slept.

--

david.zucchino@latimes.com

--

About this report

With the U.S. at war, three buddies from the Santa Clarita Valley were eager to see combat. This series of occasional articles chronicles their experiences in boot camp and beyond.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

IN IT TOGETHER: PART 3
From boys to Marines
Thirteen weeks of boot camp put Daryl, Daniel and Steven through grueling challenges. They learn how to focus, how to kill a man, how to ignore pain.
By David Zucchino
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 4, 2007

One in a series of articles about three teenagers and their wartime enlistment in the Marines.

CAMP PENDLETON - A Marine recruit stumbled from the ranks and collapsed on a dirt trail. A corpsman, her medical bag bouncing in the dust, hustled over to the fallen man. The recruit was bathed in sweat, his face clammy and sickly green.

As the troop column marched on, the drill instructor cried out, "Here comes the silver bullet!"

The recruit was about to receive the ultimate indignity -- a shiny rectal thermometer to check his body temperature. It happened on the trail for all to see: Pants down. Buttocks bared.

The column kept moving.

It was the final day of the Crucible, a three-day ordeal in the harsh, scrubby foothills of Camp Pendleton. If a recruit survives the Crucible, the midpoint of the 13-week boot camp, he will likely survive to graduation.

Seven weeks earlier, three friends from Santa Clarita, just 110 miles north but a world away, arrived as eager recruits. Teenagers Daniel Motamedi, Daryl Crookston and Steven Dellinger signed up for the buddy program, which put them in the same boot camp platoon.

Now, the three friends -- their faces streaked with camouflage paint and grime -- were on the Crucible's biggest physical challenge, a 10-mile hike called the Reaper. Recruits prefer to call it the "hump" or the "death march."

Their uniforms gave off the sour stench of stale sweat. They had slept only a few hours over the previous two days, crammed into two-man tents. They had been allowed just three military Meals Ready to Eat.

Their thighs burned. Their spines ached under their 65-pound packs. Their M-16 rifles clanked against their sides. They gulped water from canteens as they struggled to stay in step. They screamed out on cue: "One shot, one kill! Ready to die, but never will!"

The three recruits, and 80 others in their platoon, had by now been hammered into obedience by omnipresent drill instructors. The friends had each been punished countless times for violations such as marching out of step or inattention to detail. They were forced to do dozens of push-ups, pull-ups or sit-ups. Drill instructors call it "incentive training." Recruits call it "getting slayed."

The friends had anticipated all that. They hadn't anticipated getting sick.

Steven, 18, developed an ear infection and pneumonia. Daryl, 18, contracted flu and pinkeye. Daniel, 17, had pneumonia, followed by oral surgery to remove impacted wisdom teeth, then a nagging thigh bone injury. All three contracted upper respiratory infections, coughing and hacking along with others in their tight barracks warren.

"Recruit crud," said their senior drill instructor, Staff Sgt. Nicholas Hibbs, with a shrug. "Everybody gets a little bit sick."

The three resisted sick call. Too much sick time could get a recruit dropped.

The platoon's BDR -- basic daily routine -- was unrelenting: Reveille and out of bed at 5 a.m. Ten minutes to stretch, wash up, fill canteens.

Every minute was prescribed: classes, exercises, drills, physical fitness. The recruits tore through each day, from day T-1 (introductory physical training) to day T-18 (confidence course). They endured day T-37, a gas chamber ordeal in which they inhaled tear gas.

They fired live ammo, fought with pugil sticks and bayonets, and learned Corps history, first aid, how to land blows and how to counter them. They rotated into fire watch. Every night, the recruits sang a verse of the Marines' Hymn. For five minutes, they prayed. At 9 p.m., it was taps and lights out.

All this for $1,458 a month.

Most recruits in Platoon 2103, Echo Company, were away from home for the first time. They were stripped of TV, Internet, newspapers, books, magazines, radios, iPods, video games, cellphones, text messages, fast food and late-night refrigerator raids. Except for letters and a few brief phone calls, they had no contact with family or friends.

The platoon's four drill instructors were a forbidding, inscrutable presence. The instructors told them how to eat, walk, shower, wash their clothes, hold their food trays and tie their boots. They never left the recruits alone. The instructors became outsized symbols of authority, knowledge, intimidation and fear.

Daniel, Daryl and Steven seemed to grasp, intuitively, the hard intentions of the drill instructors, and the rationale for their uncompromising demands.

"It sounds weird but, yeah, we have a lot of respect for our drill instructors," Daniel said. "Once you realize everything has a purpose, it's like, oh, OK, that actually makes sense."

Hibbs found the three teens more mature than most.

"They know why they came, and they know what they've got to do," he said.

Sgt. Lucas Tuning, 25, pounds practical instruction into recruits -- what the Corps calls "knowledge."

Tuning took note of Daniel, but only because of his unusual surname, Motamedi. Tuning pronounced it "Multimedia." The name stuck.

"He seems like he always has a lost look on his face," Tuning said. "Maybe it's just the way he processes information."

Tuning said Steven too often has his mouth open. "I usually have to tell him to shut his lips. He smiled a couple times. That's my pet peeve. If they're smiling, they're having too good a time."

Daryl was harder to read because he was so quiet, Tuning said. "He picks up knowledge pretty good," he said.

As the summer wore on, the recruits absorbed a peculiar vocabulary. The floor was the deck. The door was a hatch. The bed was a rack. A hat was a cover. The toilet was the head. Running shoes were go-fasters. A canteen was a water bowl.

They learned to snap to attention when drill instructors screamed "eyes!" (look at me) or "ears!" (listen up). They learned to refer to themselves in the third person, as in "this recruit." It was one more way for the Corps to beat the individuality out of recruits in its pursuit of a selfless brotherhood.

The recruits heard about Iraq from the drill instructors, but only in a tactical sense -- fire teams, patrols, escorts. There was virtually no discussion of the merits of the war.

They found out that they could "request mast" -- report alleged abuse by drill instructors. But they also learned that they risked being branded an "allegator," a recruit who makes repeated allegations. The three friends did not file any complaints.

Hibbs was asked whether he used behavior modification -- punishment for mistakes, rewards for accomplishments. "I wouldn't say there's too much reward," he said.

A few minutes at ease

At the end of the fourth week, Daniel, Daryl and Steven were allowed to be interviewed. Inside the office of Capt. David Denial, the regiment operations officer, Daniel mentioned that he missed his family, which surprised him.

"I feel like I've gotten closer to my parents," he said. "I know when I get back I really want to spend some time with them."

His mother had written that she sometimes wished he were still a baby so that he'd be home. "Really embarrassing stuff," he said.

Daryl said he realized now that he acted unfairly when he cut himself off from his parents because he believed they had tried to block his enlistment. His parents said they had merely wanted to ensure he knew what he was getting into.

"I'm sorry I took my family for granted," Daryl said. "I was a problem child. I didn't realize at the time that they were there for me." Daryl's mother, Kymmer Crookston, said her son had apologized.

As the friends spoke, they referred to one another as kids, or by their first names, rather than the required "recruit." One of them called his rifle "a gun," an unforgivable lapse. They neglected to address the journalists as "sir."

Afterward, Denial blistered the recruits with a high-octane chewing out. They were a disgrace, he screamed. The dressing-down could be heard across the parade field, where recruits were drilling.

The three friends stood stiffly at attention, the captain's florid face inches from theirs. He ordered them back to their squad bay, double time.

Denial explained later that it wasn't what the recruits said. It was the fact that they lost all military bearing. That was inexcusable, he said.

The three bolted from the office to face their drill instructor.

Warrior spirit

The recruits were indoctrinated into the very ethos of what it meant to be a Marine. By implication, other military services, and certainly civilians, did not measure up to the Marine mystique. Recruits were required to live and breathe Honor, Courage, Commitment -- the values so ingrained that they seemed to exist only in capital letters.

At the same time, their weapons instruction began the process of molding trained, disciplined killers from cowed teenagers. Each recruit was taught ways to kill a man with his hands, his bayonet, his M-16.

One afternoon, during the fifth week, a Navy chaplain, Lt. Wayne Tomasek, addressed the platoon during a session called Values Training.

"You joined the Marine Corps because you wanted something bigger and greater than yourself!" Tomasek screamed at the recruits. "If you wanted to be average, you would have joined something else. You joined the elite organization of the United States Marine Corps!"

"Yes, sir!" the recruits responded.

The chaplain described what he called warrior spirit.

"When you go to combat, you may have some fears, and that's OK," he said. "But overcoming your fears, facing your fears, that's what makes the warrior. You can no longer be a little boy. You have to act like a man."

That same week, Hibbs gathered Platoon 2103 for a "foot locker" chat. "I'll take the platoon away from the drill instructors just to get them relaxed and out of that atmosphere of somebody yelling at them," Hibbs said.

The topic this day turned to the rules of war. Hibbs, who has served in Iraq, told the platoon that insurgents don't comply with the rules that govern Marines' behavior.

"If you're a POW held by America, you're not going to get tortured," Hibbs said. "You're going to get fed, get mail, all that stuff. You're going to have rights."

He did not mention detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the recruits did not ask. Hibbs did advise them to do everything possible to avoid capture in Iraq.

"Say I run out of rounds. What am I going to do?" Hibbs asked.

The recruits, sitting in a circle around him on the squad bay floor, shouted: "Continue to fight, sir!"

Hibbs said, "Right! Slap my bayonet on! We're going bayonet! I'm not letting you take me."

A recruit asked why the media seemed to focus on bad news in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I think you mostly hear bad things on the news because nobody really wants us over there," he told them. "It's necessary that we're there."

Hibbs concluded by reminding the recruits to live and breathe honor, courage, commitment.

"You've got to feel it right here," he said, pounding his chest. "That's why they put that eagle, globe and anchor over your left breast pocket. It's a feeling."

'This is all about heart'

At the Crucible two weeks later, Daniel was ordered to lead a medical evacuation drill in which three wounded men would be carried to a medevac helicopter landing zone.

He was given five minutes to assign duties. Within seconds, he made his first mistake. He did not issue direct orders. Worse, recruits offered suggestions.

"Why is someone else running your mission?" asked the drill instructor, Sgt. David Garza, 25."No excuse, sir," Daniel replied.

Garza singled out the platoon's three heaviest recruits. "Bang, you're dead," he said. They were Daniel's casualties.

Daniel tried to figure out how to lift the big recruits -- made bulkier by their flak jackets -- onto heavy boards used as stretchers. He hesitated as the recruits debated how to carry ammunition boxes that were part of the drill.

Garza, his voice dripping with sarcasm, told Daniel: "No rush. The casualties are just bleeding to death."

Recruits hauled the three casualties a few yards, stumbled, then roughly dropped them. One casualty rolled off the stretcher and started to crawl back on.

Garza sputtered: "He's a . . . casualty! He can't move! Lift him back up on the . . . board!"

As the recruits bent to lift the casualty, their rifles were pointed at his head. Garza was apoplectic.

"Point your . . . muzzle AWAY from the casualty!" he screamed.

One recruit rested an ammo can on a casualty's belly, prompting an anguished cry from Garza: "You just put an ammo can on a . . . wound!"

Finally, Daniel's team lurched to the imaginary helicopter landing zone and delivered the wounded men.

Garza critiqued the mission, pointing out Daniel's many mistakes but praising him for completing the mission and remembering to provide security.

"That was horrible," Daniel said later.

Garza was charitable. "He did OK," he said. Some tests are designed for failure, he said. "It's to see how they deal with it -- to see if it wrecks their confidence or promotes creative decisions."

The Crucible, Garza said, was "like forging metal with fire. You put them under pressure. They are either going to crack or they're going to shine."

The next day brought the Reaper, the hike up a mountainside in full combat gear. The recruits were given contradictory instructions: They were to leave no man behind, but they were not to assist a struggling recruit.

Daniel, Daryl and Steven grimly trudged uphill, their faces expressionless. They huffed and grunted, trailed by Garza's screams: "Finish it! Finish it!"

Halfway up, a friend of Daniel's faltered. Daniel told him to hang on to his pack, and he dragged his friend along. Both made it to the top, as did Steven and Daryl.

Like most platoons, 2103 was burdened with at least one weak, uninspired recruit. He was a slender, baby-faced boy who seemed resigned to his own limitations. He responded to the drill instructors' screams with a barely perceptible mewing that enraged them.

Marching up the Reaper, the recruit stopped several times and bent over in pain. Finally, other recruits pushed, shoved and half-carried him to the top.

There, Garza gave a pep talk, citing the sacrifices of Marines who had earned the Medal of Honor. Each drill area on the Crucible is named after a medal winner and marked with a plaque honoring the Marine.

"Do you think he was tired? Do you think he was scared?" Garza asked after reading a citation for a Marine who earned a medal for heroism in Vietnam. The recruits replied wearily: "Yes, sir!"

"Just imagine how tired you are now," Garza said. "But now you have to get to a firefight. You can't stop just because of the pain. If that was the case, we would not win a lot of wars. . . .

"You've heard of mind over matter? You don't mind, it don't matter."

Garza mentioned the laggard recruit, who sat staring at the dirt.

"I told you at the beginning this is all about heart," he said. "And you had the heart to take him in. You carried his weight. That's the only reason he's here."

The recruit was later dropped from boot camp for FTA -- failure to adapt.

Now the platoon headed down the mountain for the final five miles. Two recruits injured their ankles and had to be loaded onto a medical truck. A third collapsed from the heat and received the rectal thermometer. He, too, was loaded onto the truck.

When recruits faltered, Garza berated them, calling them "babies" and "quitters." Daniel, Steven and Daryl slogged to the end and collapsed in soggy heaps in a base parking lot with the rest of the platoon.

As a reward, the platoon was allowed to shower for the first time in three days. In fresh uniforms, they were set loose at the mess hall for a "warriors' breakfast." They were allowed to eat all they wanted: eggs, steak, bacon, pancakes, waffles.

Predictably, several vomited afterward. "Sort of a tradition," Garza said.

After breakfast, Daniel, Daryl and Steven were permitted to sit for interviews, their first since their disastrous experience weeks before, when they lost military bearing.

Now, as they answered questions, their manners were formal. They said "yes, sir" and "no, sir." Each referred to himself as "this recruit."

Daryl, a devout Mormon, said his religious faith had deepened under the rigors of camp. "This recruit feels the Lord really pulled him through," he said. "This recruit was not really making good decisions before coming to boot camp. And boot camp was kind of the kick in the head that this recruit needed."

Daniel spoke of a psychological journey from civilian to warrior. "I never showed it to anyone, but this recruit always questioned himself, you know? 'Will I be able to pull through?' " he said. "So the Crucible gave this recruit a whole bunch of confidence. I don't think I'll ever doubt myself again."

Steven considered boot camp a transforming experience. "This recruit believes he's a little more disciplined and more respectful," he said. "At first, this recruit was always talking and laughing, and got in trouble for it. This recruit finally realized that this recruit needs to settle down and actually do what the recruit is told, and not mess around."

Back with their parents

On graduation day, hundreds of families squinted into the bright morning sun, trying to pick out their recruits. They all looked alike -- rigid, composed, trim and fit.

Mothers and fathers shouted out their sons' names. A few family members wore T-shirts printed with messages: "My Marine Has Your Back" and "Some People Just Need Killing -- That's Why We Have Marines." Daniel's sister, Setareh, 11, wore a cap with the message: "Proud sister of a U.S. Marine."

A band pounded out the Marines' Hymn, the 588 graduates from seven platoons marched in flawless step, and the Stars and Stripes rippled in the sea breeze.

Then came the climax of boot camp: the awarding of eagle, globe and anchor pins, a ceremony that christened the recruits as U.S. Marines.

"Wear it on your heart," an officer told them as the Marine emblem was pinned to their uniforms. "Let it guide all your actions and intentions."

Many of the mothers broke down in tears, and some of the fathers dabbed their eyes. A sergeant's voice sounded: "Liberty will now commence! Dismissed!"

The formations collapsed. The recruits whooped and hollered. The families rushed out of the viewing stands. The three friends were swarmed by parents, siblings, grandparents and friends.

The mothers of Daniel, Daryl and Steven greeted their sons with the same words: "You look so handsome."

The ceremony -- and the evolution of the three teenagers from high school kids to Marine men -- had a transforming effect on parents who had wanted their sons to attend college rather than enlist.

Ali and Yasmin Motamedi said they were proud of Daniel's dedication to his country, and to the Corps. They were overwhelmed by the polite, focused, slimmed-down figure who stood before them.

"It's like he's a different person," Yasmin said.

Daryl's mother, Kymmer Crookston, had joined the Blue Star Mothers of America, a group of women with children in the military. The family car bore a new bumper sticker: "Proud Parents of a United States Marine."

Kim Crookston smiled at his son and said, "We have a different son. What a drill instructor has done in three months -- I can say we're grateful for the DI. Everything we've tried to do with Daryl is finally coming around."

Steven's mother, Cathy Carlson, also saw a more poised young man.

"He looks awesome -- very grown up," she said. "I'm still very scared -- scared, but also extremely proud."

The three friends will likely be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan at some point after joining an active-duty unit. First, they must complete two months of specialized infantry training at Camp Pendleton.

Steven's father, Jim Dellinger, hoped his son would be sent to Afghanistan, but he knew Steven wanted to prove himself in Iraq. "It's a scary thought," he said, "but I know it's what he wants to do."

The three families were so caught up in the emotion of their reunions that they forgot about the Corps' invitation to chat with the drill instructors in a receiving line that Marines call "the petting zoo."

Hibbs was there. Platoon 2103 was his seventh. Daniel, Daryl and Steven typified the platoon, he said: bright and competent, not all-stars, but not problem children, either. Hibbs did notice one characteristic that set the three apart.

"I could tell right off they were good citizens, good people, good guys with good strong families, strong work ethics," he said. "Honor, courage, commitment -- they already had it. It just has a new meaning to them now."

david.zucchino@latimes.com

Ellie

[thedrifter]

When it comes time to kill
They've learned to take lives. Now the friends will risk their own.
By David Zucchino
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 27, 2008

TWENTYNINE PALMS — One in a series of articles about three teenagers and their wartime enlistment in the Marines.

In the nine months after he graduated from high school, Lance Cpl. Daryl Crookston was trained to close and kill. The proper pursuit of the enemy was pounded into him during boot camp and combat drills.

Last month, as his unit prepared to ship out to Afghanistan, some Marines in Crookston's platoon didn't think he was capable of killing a man. He's deeply religious. He had chosen to stop cursing and drinking -- and that, in the Marines' testosterone-stoked world, suggested weakness.

Crookston, 19, and away from home for the first time, is certain he could kill if called upon, particularly if his quarry were one of the religious zealots of the Taliban. If Talibs can kill for their ideals, he said, he could kill for his.

"I'm defending my homeland -- my family -- my country," he said, weary and filthy after a long day of training in the Mojave Desert. "And I'm willing to kill for my country."

Combat and killing were remote concepts in June, when Crookston and two friends graduated from high school in Santa Clarita after joining the Marine Corps. They enlisted in the buddy program, which guaranteed they would go through boot camp together.

Crookston, Daniel Motamedi and Steven Dellinger hoped they would be assigned to the same unit. But after 13 weeks of boot camp and eight weeks of infantry training, they were sent to different battalions. All were in California, but training demands kept them apart.

Crookston was the first to deploy to war -- to Kandahar from the Marine base at Twentynine Palms the first week of April. Lance Cpl. Motamedi's battalion is scheduled to leave Camp Pendleton soon on a "float," a ship to the Middle East, where the unit could be sent to Afghanistan or Iraq by summer. Lance Cpl. Dellinger, 19, will remain at Twentynine Palms until his unit, inevitably, is deployed into combat.

For the friends, the lure of combat motivated them to enlist. They considered war a noble calling, a sure path to manhood and glory. All three chose infantry, a position virtually assured of combat. Asked whether they had second thoughts about enlisting in a time of war, all gave the same brisk answer: "No regrets."

The friends trained together at the School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton last fall. There, the boot camp graduates were drilled on grunt work -- the dirty, demanding business of laboring in small groups to find and kill the enemy over rough terrain, sometimes in the dark. They spent days either assaulting or defending a mock Middle Eastern village erected on a bald hillside, firing blanks. During one exercise, the Marines fired wildly when attacked by a sniper, played by an instructor.

"You dumped rounds with no idea what you're firing at!" the instructor screamed afterward. "That volley of fire probably went into civilian homes. That's how you kill innocent people!"

Later, another instructor, Sgt. Louis Serafin, said aggressiveness was preferable to timidity. "I'd rather have them trigger-happy now, in training, than be hesitant" in combat, he said.

Serafin, an Iraq veteran, assured the Marines that it was normal to be disoriented. "Combat is controlled chaos," he said.

The instructors stressed death and danger. The focus was on killing the enemy before the enemy could kill them. "Get yourself ready physically and mentally," an instructor advised. "It ain't going to be no Hollywood movie. Marines are going to die over there. Get used to it."

Crookston and Motamedi, 18, moved on this spring to weeks of specialized desert training to prepare them for combat overseas -- Crookston at Twentynine Palms and Motamedi at Ft. Irwin, 85 miles away. At both bases, elaborate Afghan villages were stocked with wily insurgents, complacent Afghan police, inscrutable villagers and reclusive women with their faces covered -- all played by Afghan Americans.

For Crookston, boot camp and combat training were the most trying experiences of his young life. "It's definitely not as glamorous as everyone depicted it," he said. "It's exhausting."

The Marines also faced stultifying boredom, the endless rote, the mind-numbing sameness of the pale desert landscape -- all staples of overseas deployment. They slept in the dirt and cold, wolfed down packaged MREs, stank of stale sweat and unwashed feet, just like troops in Afghanistan.



Channeling the aggression

The desert training was blunt and practical. Marines learned to rub their hands together when examining a buddy for wounds in the dark; blood is sticky. They were told to carry markers for scrawling on the foreheads of the wounded: "T" after applying a tourniquet, and "M" after giving morphine.

After one live-fire exercise known as Mojave Viper, at Twentynine Palms, Capt. George Gordy critiqued Crookston's platoon. They had not been sufficiently lethal.

"The best way to suppress someone is to freakin' kill 'em," Gordy said.

He told the platoon to remember the acronym SAM-K -- suppress, assess, move and kill. The Marines nodded absently. It seemed likely that even if they forgot the first three letters, they would always remember the last. After briefing sessions, the Marines typically shout "Kill!" as a sign-off. When they are particularly motivated, they scream "Kill 'em all!"

At Ft. Irwin one morning, Motamedi's platoon was sent to search a village for insurgents and weapons, and to detain an HVT -- a high-value target, or insurgent leader. The platoon was accosted by the police chief and mayor, who screamed at them and tried to block their way. The Marines manhandled the police chief.

That drew a rebuke from an observer-controller known as a coyote, an Army officer acting as a sort of referee. No touching the role-players, the coyote warned.

It got worse when a villager refused a Marine's order to move out of a doorway guarded by Motamedi. The Marine pointed his automatic rifle -- loaded with blanks -- between the villager's eyes.

The coyote cursed and slapped the rifle barrel aside. "That's the kind of . . . that gets civilians killed!" he screamed.

The exercise baffled some Marines. They had trained to be decisive and aggressive, but they were dressed down when they took harsh action. That was the point, the trainers said -- to learn to distinguish between insurgents and civilians, and to channel their aggression toward insurgents. They should treat civilians with respect, they were told, but within limits. "Don't show compassion," a gunnery sergeant said. "Compassion gets Marines killed."

Two Marines were "killed" by insurgents and ordered to drop dead. Four more were designated as killed or badly wounded by a fake bomb that exploded with a harmless pop and hissing gray smoke. After the platoon had captured its target and loaded "casualties" for evacuation, some Marines pronounced the exercise "fake," "bogus" and other, unprintable, adjectives.

Motamedi tried to be charitable. "It was weird, but I guess it was kind of realistic," he said. "There are a lot of distractions. You have to multi-task and really focus."



Just like real life

Motamedi got a good taste of reality when he and his platoon mates were rushed onto a truck headed for a live-fire exercise at Ft. Irwin one afternoon. They sat in the truck for three hours, hot and miserable. They could only listen as helicopters fired missiles, mortars rained down and other platoons assaulted targets with live ammunition. Just as in real combat, the delay was never explained.

The same week, Crookston's platoon was sent charging into an assault on a mock Afghan village at Twentynine Palms. But except for firing a few blanks at fake insurgents high in the hills, Crookston pulled security for two uneventful hours, manning his post atop a gun truck.

Worse, instead of fighting back when the insurgents launched a counterattack, the platoon commander decided to withdraw. Crookston and his mates had to watch Taliban fighters taunt them from a ridge line.

Later, after another exercise,coyotes showed Crookston's platoon the roadside bombs they had failed to notice on patrol.

"The scary thing was how well-concealed the IEDs were," he said later. "One was hidden in some garbage. It makes you think about what the real thing would do to us."

At Ft. Irwin, a civilian contractor named Jay screened a disturbing video made by insurgents. It showed a U.S. convoy in Afghanistan from the viewpoint of a mountain hide-out, where insurgents waited to detonate a roadside bomb.

On the screen, an insurgent cries out "Allahu akbar!" -- God is great. A Humvee is engulfed by a red fireball. The soldiers in the Humvee had turned off their Duke, a device that jams the radio signals that detonate three-quarters of IEDs in Afghanistan, Jay said. The device interferes with music on soldiers' iPods.

A second insurgent-made video showed a Duke-equipped convoy passing by as an insurgent screams, "Hit them!" A confederate tries, but repeatedly fails, to trigger the IED.

Jay paused for effect, then told the Marines that not a single U.S. soldier had died in Afghanistan from a radio-controlled IED while riding in a vehicle equipped with a Duke.

"So the moral is: Keep the Duke on. It'll save your life," Jay said.

The focus on roadside bombs, and the drills on treating wounded buddies and avoiding civilian casualties, brought the reality of Afghanistan closer. Crookston grew more sober-minded and introspective.

He tried to convince himself that, in a way, it was better that his two friends were not going to war with him. "I don't have to worry because I know they're safe back at main side," on U.S. soil, he said.

Some Marines, Crookston said, suggested telling family members that they weren't likely to survive Afghanistan, if only to guarantee a pleasant surprise when they returned home safely.

"I don't look at it that way," he said. "Every time I go on a patrol, I want to think, 'Hey, you know what, I'm coming back.' "



Shipping out

Crookston set about saying his goodbyes. He and Motamedi had drifted apart after infantry school. They had not talked in weeks, but they exchanged text messages saying farewell.

Crookston said goodbye in person to Dellinger, who arrived at the end of a family dinner in Valencia the night before Crookston shipped out. Crookston's parents, Kim and Kymmer Crookston, had strung red, white and blue crepe paper above the dinner table, which bore a centerpiece with a small American flag. There were red, white and blue plates and a pie decorated with the Stars and Stripes. A handmade banner read: "Return With Honor."

On the table was a photo of Crookston in uniform, looking resolute, and a small inscription: "Our American Hero."

Crookston looked trim and fit. His dark hair had been shaved to the scalp, a pre-deployment ritual for first-timers. He had put off changing from T-shirt and jeans to desert camouflage fatigues, but now the time had come. He pulled on the uniform.

Late that night, Kim and Kymmer drove their son to Twentynine Palms, where buses were waiting to take his company to the flight line. They stayed up all night, waiting in the cold desert air. At 3:30 a.m., the Crookstons were among the few family members still there, waving and taking photographs, as the bus prepared to pull away. Their son worked his way to a seat. The parents reached up and pressed their hands against the glass, where their son's narrow face was framed by the window.

Crookston had prepared himself for this emotional goodbye, and for the fear and uncertainty ahead. He was trusting now in his religious faith, and his family's support, to help him persevere.

"We're going over; we will be receiving contact," he said not long before he left. "Someone is definitely not coming back. One way or another, there's going to be death. . . . It's just the way things are."



david.zucchino@latimes.com

Ellie