While on an exercise in Albania with 26 MEU(SOC), I decided to go and see how the RRT was shaping up in their hide site out among some abandoned buildings in the middle of the airfield. They were doing just fine. I played rockball with Will O'Donnell and Levi Daly. We ended up breaking a lot of old windows. At some point Joaquin Legoretta came back from some errand. He walked up to me with his hands behind his back and said, "Well, sir. Do you want Gatorade...or Amstel?" And he brought the two bottles out for me to choose. Good officer that I was, I took the beer.

Later that afternoon we decided to see how easy it was to break a beer bottle to use as a weapon. You know, like they do in the movies for a bar fight. Turns out, you have to hit the bottle pretty goddamned hard. And what's left is usually just the neck in your hand. Not much use in a fight. We decided that the better tactical solution would be to use the whole bottle, and if it broke on someone's head the better.

When darkness finally hit, Nick Rowe pulled out a deck of cards someone had given him. He'd never heard of the game, but because he assumed all officers were omniscient, he asked me if I knew. And because all officers ARE omniscient (and omnipotent and all the rest), I knew that what he had was a deck of Rook cards. Now, as it turned out, I had grown up playing Rook with my grandfather and knew the game inside and out. But Nick insisted on reading the "constructions" (as he called them). I don't know if he got more of a kick from the beer he'd put away, or from the description of the cards' finish so that they had a certain "luxury snap and feel." I think that still tickles him today.

So, maybe I'm not a recon Marine myself, but I certainly enjoyed the time I spent with my fellow Danger Mice...or Meeces...or...whatever. You are all the finest, most professional, most unconventional, discourteous, nasty, unclean, and most-like-me sons of bitches I've ever known.

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