Hawaii Project (1of 3)

                                                                        I
In the first year of our new millennium I was fifteen years old when I met Antonio delaTorre in an audio visual class at Palmdale High School. He was going to be the editor for a news story I had filmed about Area 51 outside of Rachel Nevada. I still had an adventure high and I asked Antonio what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said he wanted to be a movie director and my stomach sank. I realized at that point that I was not unique, if this kid wanted to be a director everyone probably did.

Antonio flew in from Los Angeles California and I from Portland Oregon meeting in the baggage claim at Honolulu International Airport, it was eleven-forty-five in the morning on May 23rd, 2012. The jetliner touched down February 2004 and I fell in line wearing my Marine Corps issued dress green uniform outside of baggage claim. The humidity was thick and a bald Marine ordered us to attention and to fall in when he called our name. The young men arranged themselves into column and file as their names were read from a list sending them to their new rifle company, and so sealed the fate for those who would later die.

I could not believe I was going to see Marine Corps Base Hawaii again. Antonio and I loaded our gear into the back of my old friend Troy Bader’s car, the last Marine of my generation still stationed on base. In December 2004 Troy and I were riding on large troop transportation truck next to each other as we left Camp Fallujah Iraq bound again for the city. The armored side-wall of the vehicle supported the benches that we sat on and the heavy iron was held vertically by iron pins. At some point as our vehicle reached cruising speed Troy noticed that something did not feel right about his bench. He looked at me as the vehicle bounced through pot holes and said, “One more bump like that and I am going to fall over!”

I laughed like I knew what he was talking about; but I didn’t have a clue. The truck hit the next bump and a pin must have slid out, releasing the iron side-wall our benches we were connected to and sent me head over feet, I looked at my boots in awe but forced my body to relax as I impacted head first into the dirt. I don’t remember being knocked out but I do remember being in the path of the next truck in the convoy and in too much pain to move. The Marines who did not fall off the truck raised hell and stopped the convoy, when our truck stopped I watched my buddies hop off of the back of the trucks and come to aid us while others held security. Ambulances picked us up.
 
 In the morning Troy and I awoke on military cots inside an old Iraqi Army barracks. I moaned in pain and Troy echoed, it took us twenty minutes to get dressed and I remember feeling like every bone in my body was broken. The nurses at the aid station had stripped my chin together after it had been split by my helmet strap. After three days Troy and I convinced a Navy Corpsman (medic) to let us rejoin our unit. The doc informed us that we could stay for a week if we needed to but we declined and hitched a truck full of combat replacements back to our company firm base, we could hardly walk but needed to be with our brothers. Captain Johnson gave us radio watch until we fully recovered.
 
 In 2012 the gate guard waved Troy’s SUV through and I was home again. We drove passed the bronze replica of the Iwo Jima memorial; its flag waving in the wind and at the base surrounded by bricks with all of the names of our fallen brothers. I thought about the last time I had seen my old home, I was twenty two. Troy and I had gone to a Luau with his new wife Lauren and child Zack before we were both discharged in 2007. In 2012 Troy and Lauren welcomed Antonio and I into their home and even let us use the SUV so that we did not have to rent a car.

Tony and I were on a mission to film twelve people I had fought with on November 22nd 2004 during the second battle of Fallujah. Troy had not been with that crew that day but I wanted to open the film with him because very soon Troy Bader would be discharged from the Marine Corps the second time. After Troy and I left the Marines in 2007 we would talk to each other once or twice a month and as time passed and the economy tanked in 2008 it became a problem that Troy had not secured employment. So with a family to feed and a yearning for stability and familiarity Troy reenlisted in the Marine Corps. Troy would become the beginning and ending of our documentary, sharing his thoughts about his upcoming transition that would transition into Catcher Cutstherope’s story. Catcher lived on the big island and would be our next stop. I started the ignition for the SUV and Tony and I headed out the back gate into Kailua. I had training to do and a craving for an old favorite burger.
(Stay Tuned Part II (Oahu) to Follow)