The day before I left, our Marine guard outside the security building shot himself in the head, died instantly.
Up until recently the guys would be in Nam one day and the next day they are home in Detroit or New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
It seems like there were a lot of guys from Pennsylvania, I guess it’s a pretty big state.
Then they had the guys come to Guam for a month to ease back into the big shopping mall known as the USA.
That guard didn’t ease back too well, I’m surprised it didn’t happen more often.
Overstreet was from some little town in North Carolina, north of Wilmington. He was one of five black guys in our company of 84 in boot camp. When we had a break from the stupid routine, he and I would go play basketball at the “Gedunk”, out back on a dirt court. Overstreet wasn’t that good but he could leap like a motherfucker.
One time he and I and a couple other guys were left in the barracks to clean while the rest of the company was sitting in a classroom somewhere.
Somebody stretched a string across the room and had us jumping it, you got eliminated when you missed.
It got up to about five feet and it was Overstreet and me left. You’re running in bare feet over a slick linoleum floor and jumping “nigger” style over the string, no sophisticated high jump moves here.
Overstreet said, “C’mon man you can make that shit. I’ll tell you what, you make that and I’ll buy you a beer when we go on liberty to Chicago! You got this Aaron.”
I ran and ran and my bare feet felt the wax on that floor and I sailed and I swear I felt like I was flying.
Overstreet grabbed me and said,” Yeah man, I knew you could make it, you part blood man!”