EXTRA DUTY

While serving in the Marine Corps back in “the day” 1988-1994 at Camp Pendleton, California as part of weapons company 2nd battalion 9th Marines I had the honor of getting arrested in Tijuana, Mexico on the last day of a four-day pass with two of my battle buddies. For reasons not worth mentioning all three of us sat in a 10 by 10 ft. cell with concrete bunks and a hole in the ground for a toilet, knowing that this was the beginning of the end for us because we had to be back on base in the morning.

When Tuesday morning rolled around, we heard a voice from down the hall asking if there were any Americans inside and immediately all three of our I.D. cards were in our outstretched hands for whoever might be asking. A Navy shore patrol officer came down and took down our info and walked away without a word. A few hours later a guard opened the cell and had us follow him into an office and there stood our platoon leader lieutenant I forget his name. and after paying our $35.00 off we went in his car. $35.00! We easily had a couple hundred between us and could have bailed ourselves out, but I guess that wasn’t an option. To make things worse he didn’t say a word except get in the car and we had to listen to classical music for the hour drive back to base.

Immediately after getting back to Pendleton, we were told to get into our class-A uniforms and report to the company commander where we were charged with absent without leave and being in Tijuana after curfew hours which landed us 14 days extra duty and 14 days’ pay.  Could have been worse.

So, every day for the next 14 days we would report to our first sergeant, and he would give us our extra duty which went until 2100 each day after duty hours. Day one he handed us two 5-gallon buckets of yellow paint and a 2-inch paint brush and had us go out to a guard rail that ran the length of the battalion area. The guard rail was at least the length of two football fields, he looked at us and said “Paint” and walked away. He was a Marine of few words and so were we at that point.

Eventually on day 3 we reported to the first sergeant all high and mighty thinking we had accomplished the impossible with a 2-inch paint brush. Walking the length of the guard rail from end to end he stopped where we had started and said, “Looks good”. All three of us let out a sigh of relief even though we still had 11 more days to go then he stepped over the guard rail and looked at us and said, “What about the backside?”. As he started walking away all we heard him say was “Paint”

To this day almost 25 years later no matter what I paint or stain I still completely cover whatever it is and still hear his voice saying

“PAINT”