...It was early summer in 1986. I was eighteen years old and halfway
through one of the hardest military courses in the world. I was
thinner than I thought I could ever get, sleep deprived and sore
from head to toe when I found myself on the edge of a swamp in
the middle of the night, being briefed as to how visibility would
be zero percent within. This was RIP. Our leader would be an instructor
wearing night vision goggles while the rest of us were told to
hold on to the rucksack (large backpack) of the guy in front of
us. We headed off into the inky black in a line about eighty men
long. Maybe longer... I was smack in the middle of the line holding
onto Mark, a buddy who I had known through boot camp, AIT and
Airborne school. For the first hour, I hit a "dammit stump"
every few minutes, it seemed. (A "dammit stump" is the
stump of a tree completely submerged underwater and when your
shins smack into it, you invariable end up muttering "Dammit!"
though clenched teeth) When the water wasn't very deep, I found
I would smack my head on overhanging branches or get my gear snagged
on thorn bushes that could flatten a Jeep tire.
About seventeen Dammit's into the swamp, I hit a stump in about
four feet of water. I tripped up good and went into the water
head over heals. They made us all tie our M16's to our gear with
about four feet of cording to keep us from dropping one in the
swamp (and losing it forever). The idea made perfect sense to
me till I found myself underwater with my cord so wrapped around
the branches of a stump that I couldn't get up. I could stick
my hand out of the water and feel the night air, but couldn't
get my head high enough to breathe. I had recently bought a Gerber
Mark II knife and had it tucked into my right boot. Quickly using
it to cut myself and my M16 free, I came up for air only to discover
that Mark wasn't standing in front of me anymore. The guy behind
me was still there, though.
"Dude, you alright?", he asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Where the hell is Mark?"
"He's not there?", he asked me. "Holy shit. I've
got half the class behind me and they all think we just stopped
for a minute. What do we do?".
"Let's catch up", I said. This was a critical night
and I didn't want to fail. Especially because of a dammit stump.
We agreed to keep going and took our first unguided steps into
a swamp so black we couldn't see our own hands. I was sure the
class had gone straight, so I tried that.
Whack! My head hit another branch. Splash! I fell into a deep
spot without a clue. Then the thorns dug in. Within a matter of
minutes, I had turned, fallen, and felt my way around so many
obstacles I had no idea where "straight" was anymore.
Determined to win my private war with the swamp, I drove on. Whack!
Trip! Dammit!... Whack! Trip! Dammit! ... And I wasn't the only
one. Behind me I could hear men whisper curses every few minutes.
Stuck in the middle of a Georgia swamp with a line of men behind
me... This sucks, I thought.
After an hour or so, though, I noticed something. I was feeling
my way along, hands outstretched when I ducked under a branch.
What the...? Had to be a trick of the mind. But when I reached
up, the branch was really there. Ok, a random coincidence then.
So I kept going. And twisted to miss a thorn bush a few feet later.
It was still pitch black, but somehow I didn't need to see my
surroundings to move through them anymore. It was the strangest
feeling. "This shit isn't supposed to happen", I told
myself. But, over the next hour or so I kept on going, twisting,
ducking and turning every time I needed to. Getting tripped and
whacked had become a thing of the past.
And then, while crossing a shallow depression, I ducked around
a small tree and smacked into something. After sensing every obstacle
in my path for the last hour or more, I couldn't believe I had
hit something. What could it be? Reaching out my hand, I felt
something smooth... I knew that texture... ripstop nylon. No way...
"Hank... that you?" It was Marks voice. In the middle
of the night, deep in a Georgia swamp, I had bumped into the back
of Mark's ruck. All of two feet wide...
Nobody
but the guy behind me, Mark and myself ever knew about the drama
that unfolded that night. All three of us went on to graduate
and quickly lost touch with each other.
But
I would swear... That night, over twenty years ago, The Force
had been with me.
