-Michael Peterson
When I was eighteen years old, I enrolled in the United States Marine Corps. When I got off the bus at the front perimeter of Paris Island, a drill instructor recruiter ran over to me and yelled really loud, “Why do you want to be a marine?”
I answered that on my dad side of the family, there has been a Marine in every generation going back to the first ten men enlisted into the Marines and tons tavern. One of those ten men was William Jewell Peterson, enlisted as a captain and in charge of arranging special training for what is today called force recon, the best of the best.
It started with the class of one hundred and fifty men, and after twenty weeks of training only twenty were left. They have the most unique unit to this day. When the United States Navy sent an under-briefed seal team to the Northwestern shore of Granada, they were pinned down by army, regulars and mortar fire from special ops troops further inland.
I was called up in a two-fold objective to suppress those enemy combatants and provide cover for the seal teams XL, and to provide cover and point for the MEU landing on the south end two miles from our objective: American citizens being held against their will and a run-down school house/office. I was ejected from a C130 at thirty-three thousand feet altitude and a special rig known as HALO apparatus. It is a self-contained Kevlar egg that is equipped with shaped charges that are hardwired to be an ultimate meter.
At three thousand feet, they blow the egg to the sides and I drop about two hundred feet with my gear dangling off a strap between my feet. My side arm is in a plastic bag in my PDU and my key bar is hanging upside down in a Black Ops holster. Between my legs are scuba fins, a first aid kit, satellite bone, Barrett light, sniper rifle, scope and waterproof case and five extra clips.
My apparatus blew at three thousand feet, and because there were cumulonimbus clouds, I made the judgment call to drop another thousand feet in freefall before deploying my canopy. I drifted to the surface of the ocean five miles from shore. After placing the fins on my feet and stowing my boots in my Diddy bag, I double-timed my swimming to arrive at my Info location just in time to assemble my rifle and confirm location and operation of scope with the nearest AWACS.
After receiving confirmation from Marine command, I proceeded to lock down my first target before the day was over. Bottom line, we didn’t lose a single American. We carried the US colors out of the theater and into the Enville craft, and all enemy paid with their lives or learned how to rig a surrender flag real quick.
I still suffer from extreme PTSD as a result of my service from ‘83 to ’87, but I refuse to accept a government handout. I received a brown star and a silver star, which citations read “For meritorious acts above and beyond the call of duty with total disregard for one’s own life,“ a fact that was never mentioned during my trial in 2012.
Till this day, I am not receiving competent mental health to help deal with my PTSD and the hidden anger that comes from deep-seated childhood trauma, but that’s another story. To all Marines: Semper Fi and thank you for your service.