Always Faithful

By

David Charles

I stepped into the recruiting office at 5 p.m.

“What’cha got?” greeted me, belched out by the Master Gunnery Sergeant in charge of the station.

“Not much success yet. I’m working on it though,” I replied, trying to stay positive. I disrespectfully thought of him as “the old sergeant” or “the boss salesman.” I didn’t like what he brought to the Marine Corps uniform. The day’s nearly fruitless efforts flashed through my mind. Like most days during the past several months, I arrived at work about 7:30 a.m., seven days a week, knowing I could look forward to working until after 10 p.m.

“Working? Only one of your appointments showed up and you disqualified him like it was cool!” the old sergeant said. Cutting off my reply, he continued, “If you didn’t make appointments with disqualified people, you wouldn’t have to work so hard and maybe you could put your three bodies in the Marine Corps this month!”

“You know I screen them right before making appointments,” I protested. “I can’t help it if they turn out to be druggies, criminals, stupid or just plain broken when I sit them down and get them talking. But wouldn’t you rather I screened them out during the initial interview than to have them disqualified after we’ve spent days or weeks on them?”

“Don’t tell me you’re working when you know it’s results that count!” The old sergeant was bellowing like he had an itch in a bad place today. “What I prefer is for you to get your three appointments, get them to show up, and give them a good interview. You made them want to join the Corps, now get ‘em processed and in the Corps! Use your investigator stuff to convince them to say they’re ready, not to say they’re disqualified! Maybe then you could get home to that family of yours at a reasonable hour!” He about-faced and marched back into his office.

I walked to my desk.

Shake it off and make these phone calls count I thought to myself as I pulled the marketing lists from my drawer. But my mind wandered.

Being assigned to recruiting from my regular job as a criminal investigator was both good and bad. As an investigator, I wasn’t afraid to talk to people and ask them questions, but as a recruiter I seemed twice as likely to find out the prospect was disqualified. Once a successful screening was done, I smoothly conducted the interview because I had interviewed so many people as an investigator. I had to be honest. As an investigator, I had success reading people and getting them to tell the truth. As a recruiter, I had success getting them to tell me what they thought they needed and then explaining to them how the Corps could meet that need. One out of two interviews ended with the qualified prospect saying they wanted to join the Corps. As an investigator, I had been awarded two Navy Achievement Medals. As a recruiter, those and other awards pinned over my heart on my starched, staff sergeant’s uniform only helped with Joe Public’s vision of the Marine image. The biggest effect being a criminal investigator had on me as a recruiter was leaving a wide path of disqualified prospects in my wake.

A recruiter’s tasks are based on statistics. To get three new people with signed contracts each month, I needed five people to pass my thorough screening and say they wanted to become Marines. The stats demanded I get five prospects to become applicants each month. Two of those applicants would not make it into the Corps. The reasons for losing applicants are many: parents are often pro Marine Corps until their young Johnny or Molly say they want to join; the applicant sometimes have second thoughts, wondering if they can actually handle being a Marine – after all, I am honest with them about what it is like; finally, the MEPS (military entrance processing station) occasionally finds health problems even the applicant didn’t know about. To get the five applicants to say they wanted to be Marines, I needed to interview ten prospects capable of passing that tough screening. To get those ten, I needed twenty to show up for an appointment and allow the screening. To get those twenty, I needed appointments with about fifty people who I had initially screened. That’s because so many of them chickened out and never even showed up for their appointments. To get those fifty appointments, I had to approach and talk to a lot of people. I talked to those people either on the telephone or in person during what recruiters call daily activities. Those activities included about 200 telephone calls a day. And if I didn’t make the numbers, I’d eventually lose my job as a recruiter. If I lost my job as a recruiter there would be no going back to criminal investigation. There would be no career if I didn’t make the numbers.

A little after 5 p.m., now, and I’d already dialed seventy-five phone numbers (not counting the disconnected or wrong numbers), in addition to completing ten area canvasses earlier in the day to obtain contact information of qualified prospects at high schools, businesses, restaurants and various other locations. I’d made six contacts (not counting those immediately disqualified or who refused to give “follow-up” information) during the canvassing. I also made three “home visits,” knocking on doors at homes where someone had shown some interest in joining the Corps in the past, with the usual lack of success; the contacts “no longer lived at that address.” My canvassing and contact activities were supposed to result in three appointments for the next day, every day. Making all those numbers was occasionally impossible, especially the three appointments for the next day.

I looked through the marketing lists and decided to make a head call before making a telephone call.

“Slacking off again? Get busy and sell someone on the Corps!” the old sergeant bellowed.

Sometimes, the old sergeant just made me want to shit. He didn’t even know what the real Marine Corps was like anymore. He had been on recruiting duty for sixteen years and judging by the half-truths I heard him spouting to prospects – Boot camp isn’t as hard as people think it is; You only work eight hours a day on average, once you get to the fleet; You’ll get a promotion every two years on average, and every six months at first – he was out of touch with reality. He was not even familiar with the truth.

“You know you’re not going home until you have an interview and three appointments for tomorrow!” the old sergeant regurgitated.

When I returned to my desk, the old sergeant was heading out the door with his Bible in hand. According to the recruiters who had been around the station longer than me, it was no Bible study he was going to. Prospects weren’t the only people he enjoyed lying to. Scuttlebutt said he had a former mistress at home for a wife and a new mistress on the side. I was just glad he was leaving. My real job was as a criminal investigator. I knew trash when I smelled it. That grungy, old fart of a salesman wouldn’t know integrity if it poked him in the eye, but he was the guy I had to call every night to get approval to secure, to leave work, to go home at night after reporting my numbers every evening. During each call, I could expect to receive a lecture about how sorry I had performed unless I had someone actually join the Corps that day. The old sergeant was a taskmaster who genuinely enjoyed pushing my buttons.

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After another five hours of talking to people on the phone, going out and talking to people at malls, stores and various other public places, I felt done for the day. I found a phone booth near a 7 Eleven and made the required 10 p.m. phone call to the boss, without the three appointments he wanted me to have for the next day.

“What’cha got?”

“Four appointments. Two for tomorrow.”

“Keep looking,” he huffed, “go out and find a good appointment for tomorrow. Call me at eleven.”

The next call was to my wife, the third call that day. “I don’t know why you don’t just come home,” she said. “It would be better if you were sent overseas again. At least then I didn’t expect you to come home at night.”

Until I was assigned recruiting duty, we had thought my time overseas without the family was the worst thing we were going to face except combat.

Dragging ass, I went back to approaching people around the 7-eleven store, acting like I just happened to be stopping by on my way home from work.

At 11 p.m., I made the next required call to the old sergeant.

“What’cha got?”

“I have a few more people lined up to call back over the next couple days but all the legitimate businesses are closing up.”

“You are going to stay out there and canvass the bars until you make that appointment with a qualified applicant! And don’t secure until you’ve got one!” he ordered.

I called home for the fourth time.

“I still don’t understand why a thirty-year-old staff sergeant in the Marine Corps can’t come home at a reasonable hour,” my wife moaned. “This is stupid. Just come home!”

I canvassed about three or four rank, stale bars, each reeking with odors that reminded me of my alcoholic, chain-smoking, family-abandoning father. I avoided the mumbling, stumbling drunks who called out, “Marine, come join me for a drink.” I watched men in their early twenties turn their backs when they saw me approaching their pool tables. Some of them saw me as a shark in their swimming hole and dove for cover. I was more like a lifeguard, offering to lift them out of their fetid water, only they couldn’t see me underneath the pressed uniform with expert shooting badges, personal decorations and the famous dress-blue trousers with scarlet “blood-stripe” down the seams. Enlisted Marines shedding their blood at the Battle of Chapultapec had earned the blood-stripe. I was afforded the honor of wearing blood-stripes in their memory, but I felt the only blood a recruiter feared shedding was that of his career if he strayed from honesty and was caught fraudulently enlisting someone who was disqualified. And if I didn’t stray over line, I could lose my job over the numbers. Over the next two hours, I managed conversations with about five prospects. Each of them saw the shark, but listened without fear or interest.

Just after 1 a.m., I struck up a conversation with a healthy-looking man in his early twenties. He appeared only slightly under the influence of the untold drinks he had consumed.

“Yes,” the prospect said, “I’d like to find out more about the Marines.”

I waded in further, “… but not everyone can be a Marine.” I listed the things that keep prospects out of the Corps: drugs, health problems, lack of education, inability to pass written and physical tests, and on and on. The prospect replied positively each time with things like: I wouldn’t want to be in the Corps with people on drugs either; I don’t have a problem with that; and, I’m good there – answering each disqualifier as I covered it.

As I discussed the importance of becoming a marine, the prospect interjected, “I’ve always thought of joining the Marines.”

I paused.

“What are you doing when you get up tomorrow?” I asked.

“Not much, why?”

“Well I’m about to get out of here but why don’t we get together around two o’clock so I can tell you more about the Corps,” I suggested.

“Sounds good,” He said, and wrote his name and address on the bar napkin I pushed his way.

I finally left the musty tavern and drove home, exhausted and sweaty. The smoke and stale booze clung to my uniform and drifted through the car evoking memories of winter car rides with my smoking father, Canadian Mist on his breath, my three brothers and me squeezed in the back seat with the windows rolled all the way up. I opened my window to let in a breeze. I could hardly wait to get a shower and get some sleep. Unfortunately, my home was half an hour’s drive away. The location seemed like a good idea when my wife and I chose it, but it was too far from the office. While no castle, it was far more appealing than the rusted, modified, mobile home of my childhood where the addition made of scrap wood was better than the original trailer. My three-bedroom home was a block away from the beach to make it as nice as possible for my family.

I eased into the dark, quiet house about 2 a.m., trying not to disturb our children.

“Where have you been?” my wife asked, sounding half asleep.

I was undressing as I went through the bedroom and into the master bathroom. My dress shoes landed just inside the bedroom door. My dress-blue trousers landed on top of a dresser. My sweaty, uniform shirt hit the floor by the bathroom door. “You know where I’ve been, out looking for an appointment as ordered,” I said as my underwear hit the bathroom floor.

“I hate you being out so late! Who in their right mind is going to work all day and night? You always take your shower in the morning. What’s really going on?” She sounded angry and hurt.

I couldn’t hide behind orders tonight. I didn’t say a word though. My day was all talk, too much talk with too many people, Marines at work, students and staff at school, workers at businesses, any people wherever I found them – even the malcontents in the bars. My job as a recruiter was to become known, to build a positive reputation with everybody I came in contact with, whether in person or over the telephone, and to put the eligible ones in the Corps. The only people that didn’t seem to matter to the Corps were my family. I wanted it to end but my tour as a recruiter wouldn’t end for more than two more years.

None of it made any more sense to me than it did to my wife, I thought as I showered.

No one in a bar after 11 is in any shape to commit to a next day appointment. Hell, after tonight I’m not going to be in any shape tomorrow to conduct an interview anyway.

Water rained on my body. I felt no relief.

“You always take your shower in the morning; what smell are you hiding?” my wife called out as I dried off. The fragrance of soap replaced the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke on my body, but inside I felt dirty and the acid taste in my mouth was getting worse.

I climbed into bed. My wife was silent but her almost imperceptible movements told me she was crying. She wanted to know if I had some honey on the side, she was asking if I was like the old sergeant – but I didn’t want to have to deny it. If I were enough like the old sergeant to be unfaithful, I would have just lied like he did.

Her back was to me. I placed a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged off my touch. It was a slight movement that felt like a slap.

I lay there with nothing right to say.

The glowing numbers on the clock said it was a short night before I had to get back up and start another recruiting day, but the night dragged on forever. No rest. My mind buzzed with the numbers and conversations from the day, the recruiting numbers I might not be able to reach, and swarms of disappointment circled like wagons in my head – the old sergeant wanting to make quota, prospects wanting to be a Marine without any sacrifice, my wife wanting me to give more time to the family like I had always done before recruiting duty, everyone wanting me to live up to their image of a Marine and the disappointment I would feel if I allowed such pressures to grind me down like my father or the old sergeant. My wife could not understand why I just didn’t lie to the old sergeant and come home.

That was what the old salesman wanted, too.

A prospector can do everything right and end up with no gold in his pan at the end of the day. I had done everything right and still ended up empty-handed, unable to meet my quota. Disqualified prospects were no good to anybody. A recruiting boss may not want his recruiters to get caught frauding people into the Corps but he is willing to risk it to make his station’s mission. Like a grunt in a battle, one blown-up caught-cheatin’ recruiter lost in battle is an acceptable casualty of war, collateral damage.

The old sergeant wanted me to lie.

I am not the old sergeant. I am a husband and father, investigator and recruiter, a marine – I am not my father. I won’t give that up.

Originally from Florida, David Charles joined the Marine Corps in the mid 1980’s. During the late 80’s, following a couple years as a military policeman, he became a criminal investigator. After a few duty stations in this most enjoyable occupation, David was sent out on a recruiting tour, where he learned that a criminal investigator recruiter is practically an oxymoron. After that successful tour, he happily returned to CID work. Despite the conflicts that took place during his military career, he feels blessed not to have served in a combat zone. Still, he earned the Humanitarian Service medal, Global War on Terrorism medal, National Defense medal, Good Conduct medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medal, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medal, and Meritorious Service medal. During his Marine Corps career, he managed to obtain some college education, culminating with a Master of Arts Degree. David thanks God for his many blessings, including a wonderful supportive wife and two children, whom he loves very much.

David has also assisted in developing Milspeak Creative Writing Seminars

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