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Cactus Jack
 

Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center; Twentynine Palms, CA (aka 29 stumps); Live fire range CAX (Combined Arms Exercise) April 1993

Africa hot? Fuck me Jesus this is Africa hot's HOT! Welcome to 29 stumps boys and girls, the Marine Corps desert playground for everything from live fire grenade ranges to full-on multi-unit live fire & maneuver exercises with mortars, arty, close-air support- you name it! More people get shot out at 29 Palms than at any training facility in the United States (or so we were told), so this really gets us boots excited (umm, not really). I had been in the Fleet for all of about 3 weeks at this point and already I was carted off to the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere for at least 30-45 days for this pre-deployment workup known as CAX. It all sounded cool- live fire and maneuver, mortars, call for fire missions, close in air support... the works. Here's a snippet of how 1 day of training at the stumps went WAY wrong.

0700 and I was already cursing God, the sun, sand and anything that would pay my panting breath heed as I humped my M-249 SAW (5.56mm Squad Automatic Weapon) and all my combat gear the 3 miles to the live fire range we'd be training at that day. I love the Marine Corps! We get there and strip off our packs and slam the paltry tasting slush called water out of our canteens as we got yet another briefing on the dangers of live fire ranges (We spent the entire first day getting the once over already). After this, we separated into our squads and went over a plan of assault for the range, how to engage targets, fire team rushes and so on. We were going to assault the range in a classic on-line fashion as such:

1st fire team 2d fire team 3d fire team

Pretty basic and effective for the kind of range we were on. The terrain for the range was pretty intense: rolling berms, cacti, palm fronds, rocks and sand everywhere. The distance we had to cover was about 500 yards and we'd work to get there, believe me.

As you are taught in basic combat skills, you never want to just barrel ass towards the objective- this gives the enemy a clear shot at your ass and well, it's kind of hard to get some if your ass tangles with some 7.62mm coming from the other direction. So, to offset becoming a ToO (Target of Opportunity) we use a “tactic” which is simply called "I'm up, he see's me, I'm down". During a fire team rush, you haul ass for about 5 yards and drop like a sack of god damned potatoes. if this sounds pretty simple, it is; but then factor in that I am carrying a 15lb machinegun, 40 additional pounds of battle gear, grenades, extra ammo, water, spare barrel and so on. When you hit the deck at full speed, it fucking hurts. In the case of this story, it REALLY fucking hurts.

We began our fire team rushes, with the squad leader in the center giving direction and the individual fire team leaders repeating the commands. We'd rush for 5-6 yards, drop and lay down fire on the objectives/targets.

Side note: After running your ass off, in the heat, with all that gear, slamming the deck and then blowing off 30-40 rounds out of a machine gun... the blood pulsating through your ears, coupled with about 12 other weapons going off around you, makes hearing anything, next to shit.

So as we are going through, to my left I hear a blood curdling scream the likes of which I have never heard, followed by multiple and resounding "Cease fire" commands. I looked over to see Lance Corporal Ogden stand up, his face flush red and streaming with tears, drop his M-16A2 service rifle and clamor and tremble right where he stood. "Jesus Christ, had he been shot???" I thought. Our squad leader Corporal Gilliam screamed aloud "Ogden what in the holy fuck are you doing dropping that weapon- fucking follow it!!!" Now what the squad leader refers to hear by saying "follow it" means that any Marine that drops his weapon, he follows it to the deck and begins a vigorous session of pushups until the Marine has atoned for his sin. Ogden began to scream and writhe in apparent pain, the squad leaders' rants obviously not hitting their mark. "What the fuck was going on???!!!"

Corporal Gilliam ran over to Ogden, as it was becoming clear that he had somehow been injured, possibly gunshot. The corpsman ran to his aid as well as we all sat in bewilderment. Jesus. We'd merely been here 2 days and already a casualty. Needless to say, we were all concerned. We watched the scene unfold and Ogden was carted away by Corporal Gilliam and the corpsman to the awaiting Humvee the corpsman used as an ambulance. In typical Marine Corps infantry style, the training continued, as we were told Ogden was fine, he wasn't shot and to carry on. We all finished the range and enroute back to the range ready area, the scuttlebutt was alive with what had happened. Well, the truth of the matter is this:

Ogden was making his rushes with his squad, 2d squad, which rushed up the middle. During one of his rushes, on the "I'm down" phase of rushing, he happened to drop down onto one of 29 Palms indigenous life forms, a cactus, right on his crotch. Apparently the corpsmen on scene spent several hours removing hundreds- yes, that's right, HUNDREDS of spines from his penis and testicles. The word was that the amount of blood expelled was horrific. We were all totally floored, but hey- fuck it, we’re Marines. So, what did we do? On our way back to the camp where we were "living" the Humvee carrying Ogden in the back began to slowly pass through our column formation as one of the Marines began to call the following cadence: "Whoa whoa Cactus Jack, landed on a cactus in his sack" Man that's fucking low, yeah? Our first casualty and we make fun of the poor helpless bastard. In the end, he went to the mainside hospital where he told us they removed somewhere on the scale of a thousand spines and several were never removed, as they were too deeply embedded in the skin and would eventually grow out.