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It is July of 1967 and Meeko is sent along with other Marine recruits to a receiving station at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. Within a few months he has adjusted to the physical fitness programs, circuit courses, drills, weapons training, water survival and hand to hand combat. He meets Sergeant Tibbs who is determined to weed out those he thinks are not fit to be in the Marines. One morning Sergeant Tibbs stops Meeko on the pretense of checking for dress code. Finding nothing wrong he sadistically brushes a lit cigarette across Meeko's shirt, calls him a dirty Indian, and demands that he do fifty push-ups. Meeko stands his ground with Sergeant Tibbs. The sergeant doesn't stop, and continues to pressure and insult Meeko with ugly remarks. Meeko almost loses control with the constant barrage of macho arrogance, and bigoted racial remarks. After a particularly cruel encounter with the sergeant, Meeko makes up his mind to become the best Marine in the Corps. He finishes in the top ten of his platoon. With twenty days of leave, Meeko boards a bus to San Francisco. Here he becomes involved with a group of hippies and slides into the world of sex and drugs. Disgusted with himself he walks into a police station and turns himself in. Three days later he is shackled and on his way back to Camp Pendleton and detox. Meeko's division receives orders in the middle of the night, and by sunrise they are on route to Vietnam. It is apparent that most of his division uses drugs. He is introduced to the dispensary, and from then on feigns any sickness to get free drugs to support his habit. Meeko begins his new duty guarding a local bridge, and discovers that a nearby village is akin to Indians in their care of the land. He discovers that their language is similar to his, and within a month is speaking Vietnamese fluently. Later the village is set on fire, and many of the villagers are killed by his division. Soon time and order mean little to Meeko and he stays in the bush until his drugs run low, then stops at the dispensary to replenish his supply. Later he is detained after there is concern that he is endangering others due to his drug use. Again he returns to drug rehabilitation. Afterwards he is faced with prison or volunteering for a new Special Forces program, as it is well known that he has knowledge of the people and language. It is in the Special Forces that he meets other Indians who are drunks and druggies like himself. Together they face suicide missions with ongoing humidity, hunger, and fatigue, as well as becoming enmeshed in the jungle's dying vegetation. On one such mission Meeko is wounded. He is hit with heavy shrapnel in the right side of his body, and stays in an overseas hospital six months before they ship him home. When he is honorably discharged, he has served three years and eleven months in the Marine Corps. |
© 2000 The Red Pathway Learning Center & Foundation, Inc.
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Wind Wolf Woman |