Why Gunny Mike Matters
In his important* book What It Is Like to Go To War, Vietnam War veteran Karl Marlantes takes a moment to describe an old NCO (non-commissioned officer), ‘Gunny Mike’.
The year is 1969. I've either taken directly from, or paraphrased Marlantes below -
Gunny Mike was close to retirement and had previously been First Sergeant Michaels before being busted down to Gunnery Sergeant for using Marine Corps equipment to build a secret swimming hole for the kids in his company back in the camp behind Camp Pendleton. He was soon sent to Vandegrift Combat Base north of Ca Lu in Quang Tri Province, Marlantes goes on to describe Gunny Mike: He drank too much; he ate too much; his heart was bad; we could hear him gasping and wheezing during PT. If we asked him if he was all right, he’d snap back, “I’ll-get-in-shape-now-leave-me-the-fuck-alone.”
Gunny Mike was there at Vandegrift as the staging guy, there to receive new recruits with waxed ears and high-and-tights and receive Marines back from the bush. He’d walk the new kids out to the LZ when they were too scared to walk there themselves and later sit them down with cold beers and let them talk off the most recent horror when they came back. He’d help them write letters home. When we would come off an operation there would be ice cream. We’d burn out machine-gun barrels, and there to replace them would be barrels stolen at great risk from Army helicopters. One time he had two hours of porn and popcorn waiting for us. Gunny Mike was no saint. And we never asked questions he’d have to lie about.
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For the boys of Vietnam, Gunny Mike played an important role. Because the chaplains had not seen what they had seen...or experienced what they had experienced…the young Marines would often seek out Gunny Mike as he was the person who could not only understand…but offer insight and meaning to their experiences. Which may seem disorienting to some that this came not through Scripture or meditation but through beer, popcorn, poker, and guns.
My own version of Gunny Mike was Gunnery Sergeant Thomas, an enormous NCO who - during our officer’s version of bootcamp - would always be yelling Hardesty! Unscrew yourself! (because of the story, my wife still says this to me today.) But I knew I had passed muster in that abbreviated camp because they made me a platoon leader and then I’d be doing push-ups whenever my men or I screwed things up. Which was often. But behind the Semper Fi and Oorah! I could see the slightest twinkle in his eye that this was a game to be played and that we’d made it. I am thankful for Gunny Thomas and the other NCOs who looked after this young Ensign (I was Navy not Marine Corps) in the first Gulf War and made sure that my screw-ups were within reason. If I had any modicum of wisdom as an officer then, it was that the one thing I knew…was that I knew nothing.
We need these people. They are there, but not always how we might picture them. We need them particularly for those on the front lines - military, law enforcement, fire, EMS, SAR - to help guide them into and out of what Marlantes calls The Temple of Mars (remember Mars as the Roman God of War). But it should not be limited to front-liners: each of us will experience birth, love, sickness, tragedy, and death. And maybe transcendence. Look for these people. After all, who knew that a shepherd of Bethlehem could be a gruff, tattooed, overweight (for a Marine, anyway) Gunnery Sergeant. They may not *look* like how we picture the God of War or the Goddess of Compassion, but they are there.
All this is to say, Beware of the Archetype. Compassion and Leadership take many forms.
