e c l e c t i c a
s p o t l i g h t a u t h o r
Jason Arment
e c l e c t i c a
s p o t l i g h t a u t h o r
Jason Arment
(This is an excerpt—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
When Marines of my generation were kids, the Corps ran two recruiting ads on television. In the first, a Marine fought a lava monster and won, and in the second, the silent drill team stood on the peaks of a razorback jutting out of the ocean, tossing rifles back and forth to each other without looking. Both commercials featured a lot of ominous smoke and a color palette of mostly burnt umber. Fire. Many of the Corps' strange war words use it: hang fires, free fire zones, lanes of fire, fire for effect, rates of fire, enfilade fire, and fire from the defilade.
