Steaming ahead with eyes wide open
USMC News
Story by Cpl. John P. Hoellwarth
Story Identification Number: 2003210174821
(Feb. 6, 2003) -- The American flag flies in very few places where you can't order a pizza. The USS Boxer, under way in the Pacific Ocean, is one of them.
Its hull is its body. Its spaces are its organs and its passageways are the veins through which thousands of blue and green blood cells animate its parts.
This is the closed fist our beloved country thrusts in the face of those who mean to do her harm.
Welcome to the Boxer, 1st Marines, and the embodiment of our president's commitment to the security of our country.
It is the distinguished honor of every Marine and sailor aboard this ship to have picked up the phone when our nation called.
I must admit, traveling at 14 knots toward the call of duty was never my idea of war. I suppose it lacks the intense feeling of gravity I always figured would accompany a deployment of this magnitude. That is to say, I'm not as nervous about going to the Middle East as a certain dictator should be about having me there.
So how, I ask myself, do I convey what it feels like to be here?
As I type this, the ship rumbles beneath me and the ocean rolls pens back and forth across my desk. You get used to that after a while.
It's almost poetically just. The constant reminder that there is no solid ground beneath you makes you wonder if you have any in your life at all.
Aboard the Boxer, we are all slaves to the whims of both the ocean and the call of duty. At present, neither one is calm enough for me to look it in the face and scream, "I'm in control!"
The fact is that each of us has exchanged control of our lives for healthy amounts of faith in our country and our president. You know, the funny thing about control is that when you have it, exercising it consumes every facet of your life. But, when you realize you never really had it in the first place, you're free. Free, like the first time you release your grip on the rail and lift your hands to heaven as the roller coaster takes a dip.
I find myself aboard the USS Boxer on my way to the Middle East with Marines whose eyes scan the room during chow. They wonder which faces, if any, won't be there on the return trip.
Ours is a feeling reserved only for those who would stare death in the face, give him the finger and say, "Catch me if you can."
Ours is the feeling of riding the roller coaster with both hands in the air.
I have never been so close to the possibility of fighting a war in a foreign land. I have never been so close to the prospect of killing or being killed. And because I know I can't control duty's call any more than I can control the ocean, I can release my grip on the rail. And I've never felt so alive.
It's indescribably exhilarating, and I never saw this coming when I was all but paralyzed with fear and uncertainty. I never knew this was the reward for those who push through their apprehension.
I am sure now that only those who let go of the rail could ever truly understand the esoteric motivation inherent in Dan Daley's words when he inspired his Marines in the midst of combat by asking them if they wanted to live forever.
He wasn't asking them a question at all. Instead, he was bringing them to the realization that no matter what their answer to the question was, they weren't in control of making it so.
" Let go of the rail," he was telling them, "and know what it means to be alive, if only for a while."
He was giving his Marines the same opportunity to drink deeply from the cup of life that the president has given to every Marine and sailor aboard this ship, each of whom must ask themselves the following question:
If this roller coaster derails, will I have wanted to ride it with my eyes shut, clutching the rail? Or with my hands in the air, screaming aloud how grand it's been to be so young and so alive?
Hoellwarth is a combat correspondent with 1st Marine Division.
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