Field Day in the Marine Corps

In every enlisted barracks across the Marine Corps, there exists a weekly holiday called Field Day, an event that consists of each Marine that resides in the barracks coming together to clean the common spaces, prune the building’s surrounding areas, and dust the tightest crannies of their rooms. The following morning, while the Marines are at work, the command’s leadership arrives to examine the cleanliness of the building at large and inspect the interiors of each room, ensuring that a standard of orderliness has been observed.

Now, while I appreciate the Corp’s attention to detail and cleanliness, I hold fond

memories of the holiest of weekday cleaning holidays not because of the spaces that we tended, but rather, due to the nearly liminal nature of the silliness that it somehow induced in us. You see, Marines are an odd breed. There’s no way around it. Ask any Marine, and they’ll agree that a certain degree of eccentricity is required to fill the uniform, be it a mania for perfection, a love for loud noises, or just a penchant for self-abandonment. What results is generally a motley crew in each platoon, section, and squadron; a mixed bag of oddballs, eccentrics, and perfectionists trained to hold weapons, but more commonly, cleaning supplies.

And so, it naturally followed that on every field day, these masses of strikingly loyal and

spring-loaded killers came together to roam the breezeways of their homes while smoking cigarettes, drinking beers—did you really think this story would be dry?—and cussing at anything within sight or imagination. Brooms became swords as if the men that wielded them were children in boxes of sand. At times, it indeed felt as if we existed closer to the playground than we did a war. We were nothing more than kids after all, passing the time in a supervised and well uniformed rendition of Lord of the Flies. Generally, a sergeant or another poor non-commissioned officer would be placed in charge of the writhing masses, but as the night would inevitably wear on, the mob would come into itself and do as it wished. It was sarcastic. It was rude. And it was fun. We were obliged to come together in the name of order, in the name of obedience, but the nights more often than not became an expression of our shared circumstance in a dancing cacophony of comradery. Of friendship. Maybe even a touch of revolt towards that which we were legally bound.

Come the end of the night, once the courtyards, hallways, and parking lots were swept

and adequately manicured, the crowd would dissolve by ones and twos, retreating back to the steady loneliness of their rooms. Reliably, a few would remain in the smoke-pit to collectively coat their lungs and share laments, joys, and hopes. And in the morning, more than a few would be called back to their rooms to answer to their livid superiors as to why a coating of dust remained atop the mantle of their bedroom’s door frame.