In the early

months of 1970, I was struggling to become a U. S. Marine at Parris Island,

S.C. The war in Vietnam would drag on for five more years and I had enlisted

rather than wait for the draft.

It was really

the first time I had ever been away from home for any length of time.

Oh, when I was in high school, there were a couple of overnight trips

with the football team and, when I was a senior, I traveled with some

friends from East Tennessee (yes, people from east Tennessee capitalize

the "East") to Nashville to watch Kingsport Dobyns-Bennett play

in the state basketball championships. I also traveled to Silver Springs,

Md. that year to compete in the Eastern Regional Karate Tournament, but,

as far as being away from home, that was about it.

Now, at age

19, I was a million miles away from our house on the hill where I spent

nearly all my life. By the time Easter Sunday arrived, I was about halfway

through with boot camp. In fact, Easter Sunday was the first time in some

six weeks that I had a moment to sit and reflect. I should explain that

Marine drill instructors keep recruits extremely busy and highly active.

Every day we

were rudely awakened at 5 a.m. and by 5:02 a.m. we were doing the first

of the daily thousands of push-ups, bends and thrusts, and sit-ups. We

trained, studied, ran, and sweated all day long with nary a break until

8:30 p.m. At 8:30, we had a half hour of "free time," which

meant that we had 30 minutes to spit-shine boots, shine brass, shave,

shower, read and write letters, prepare our uniforms for the next day,

clean our rifles, and ... well, you get the idea. We were in bed at 9

p.m. and fell into an exhausted sleep immediately. We didn't get homesick

because there was simply no time to get homesick.

But on Easter

Sunday, along with the rest of my platoon, I was assigned to mess duty.

We reported for duty at about 3 a.m. and by 5:30 a.m. we had fed hundreds

of recruits and had cleaned the kitchen. The day would end at 8:30 p.m.

and we would march wearily