Interview With with a Grunt Sergeant

I sat down with a former Grunt Sergeant, Jake Stone, on a calm, sunny, Saturday November morning, to ask about his experience in the Marine Corps. Mr. Stone is a rather frail looking man in a wheelchair that you can tell used to be a powerful man despite his age which is approaching late seventies. I learned a lot from him. For example, Mr. Stone was a training officer during the Vietnam War. He was stationed in California teaching hand to hand combat, bayonets, pistols, rifles, hand grenades, flamethrowers, just a wide assortment of deadly weapons. He led ninety men in a strike team that was prepared to be deployed at any time. They were to be ready to pack up and leave in an hour.

Just because he wasn’t deployed, that’s not to say he didn’t see his share of the action, he just didn’t get to see enemy fire, he saw plenty of horrors that would terrify many people.

He also had access to quite a bit of classified information that has since been declassified. One of them being a strike team tactic that seems quite dangerous.

A jet designed originally designed to drop bombs was outfitted with four marines instead. A few jets would fly real low altitude, and just before the targets, the pilots cut the engines so their flying would be nearly scant, opening the bay doors, the pilots drop the payload of marines, instead of bombs, who’d parachute down onto the enemy from above. This was a strategy designed to confuse and overwhelm the enemy. This idea was scrapped after too many people broke their legs and dislocated ankles in training,

I also learned about a training accident that killed twenty one people. His men were practicing a beach style invasion, everyone was fully equipped and had landing vehicles, boarding craft, b...

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...e of his accidents and the nature of the officers above him.

I may have even asked for more details about his involvement in security detail, I got lots of various detail but no finite description. I don’t know the details which is what I largely base my writing on. I take details and make the reader see it clearly, I did not receive the visual detail I would have enjoyed writing about.

I would have asked him more of what his day to day life was like and what he felt at any given time. I expect anxiety but that’s not something I can just assume. I will be looking in the archives for other people with similar stories.

Perhaps I would ask about his involvement with the Commandant, four star general in the Marine Corps. I would ask what it felt like to be near the most powerful man in the marines, and to be in a position of securing and protecting him from harm.