In 1981, I was NOT looking forward to the Death March to Marblehead. The year before had nearly wasted me, and although it had been a defining moment in my life, I certainly didn’t want to repeat the experience (See Drummond Island: Declassified - The Death March Part I and Part II. - Ed.). As with most things in the cadet program, though, it was easier the second time around.

I have heard many cadets talk about how hard it was in the “good old days”. I always chuckle when they say that since they are usually talking about what happened two years ago. However, there is truth in what they say. The more times we do something, the easier it is going to be for everyone. This is because the first time you do something, you make all kinds of mistakes that the cadets learn from. The next year, the cadet staff has experience that the original staff didn’t.

This was certainly true during the death march of 1981. While our leaders had gone on the march before 1980, they had done so only with a few guys, all of whom were hardcore members with lots of field experience. In 1980, in order to increase the size of the school, the age, grade and field experience requirements had been lowered. This, and extremely bad luck with the weather, made for a horrendous but useful leadership challenge.

In 1981, we had a different situation. The school had again increased in size, but all three of the team leaders had the experience of Death March ’80 to fall back on. We also had excellent weather. As it turned out, the march to Marblehead was an entirely different experience, but it was just as useful.

While in 1980 we carried all kinds of extraneous gear that wasn’t really needed, this time we team leaders only let our people pack what we felt they needed. I told my guys to forego sleeping bags for blankets, and to leave everything behind they couldn’t justify to me.

Another difference is that the weather allowed us to rappel this year. As staff, I was unable to get a chance to rappel, but most of my guys did. Morale soared after these guys overcame their fears and went over the edge. Everyone wanted to do it again, but there wasn’t time.

The evening at Marble Head was very pleasant. The weather was nice, morale was sky high, and there was almost a party atmosphere. We had very few injuries and blisters on my team, so everyone really enjoyed themselves. We amused ourselves spotting satellites flying by. There were even some falling stars. It was probably the most peaceful and beautiful night I ever had on the Island.

Our beach faced east, so when I awoke the next day, I witnessed the prettiest dawn I had seen in years. It went from ebony to navy blue to purple to very pale pink and finally azure blue. The water reflected these colors and it was just stunning. It was going to be another beautiful day. Unfortunately, it was also going to be a sunny day. I would have preferred clouds with no rain for the long march back.

My breakfast consisted of a hand full of homemade trail mix. Somehow, two of my cadets had run out of food, so I had given them the remainder of my rations. I figured we would be back to base soon enough, and I wanted them to feel really bad about losing their food. I made sure they ate my food right in front of me while I nibbled at my handful of dry oatmeal, peanuts, and a few raisins. I gave them the patented “disappointed look” the whole time, but I wasn’t really mad. I just wanted them to remember the lesson.

The march back was pretty uneventful. It was just a long walk in the sun. Some of the cadets became sun burned, but otherwise it was just another forced march that happened to be a few miles longer than usual. Sweat kept dripping off my forehead into my eyes. I ditched my wool beret and tied my cammo handkerchief on like a headband. We sang songs and tried to keep things light.

At one of our breaks, I noticed that the Alpha Commander, who was carrying an unloaded, slung M-1 carbine, looked pretty tired. He had to carry the rifle in case of a bear problem. For safety reasons, he kept the clip separate from the weapon.

I offered to carry it a while, but he declined. He probably figured I wanted to look cool by carrying the rifle, but I honestly just wanted to help. I only asked once. I knew he took his responsibility for weapon safety very seriously.

Later, I was surprised to see that two students had tried to give up. They were tired and in pain from blisters, but they had no idea what a REAL Drummond Island death march was like, at least no more than I knew what it was like to be on the actual death march on Bataan 40 years prior. This little stroll was a pice of cake. I was disgusted with them. Rangers don’t give up. They Charlie Mike: Continue the Mission.

They were convinced to keep going, but probably only because they didn’t want to be left behind. The bear threat was very real, and nobody wanted to stray too far from the column. I was just glad the two of them weren’t on my team.

They ended up as Tail-end Charlies with a sergeant chewing them out whenever they started to fall back. Eventually one of the cadet officers went back and pulled him off. He was nicer to them, but he didn’t let the little slackers stop either.

I was kind of surprised when the bus came into view. While my stomach was rumbling from hunger, I wasn’t tired at all. I could have marched for the rest of the day with no sweat. I couldn’t believe that it was over so soon and with so little pain. The students around me didn’t seem to notice the ease of the march. They acted like we had just done the most difficult thing in the world. Of course, from their perspective, it had been.

The colonel had a visitor (I can’t remember who) that he had wanted to impress. Instead of driving us into the compound, the senior dropped us off on the Mekong, and we marched into camp singing jodies. It was pretty gung-ho and morale stayed high.

The seniors had decided to provide us with a hot meal when we got back. I was really happy to hear it because I hadn’t eaten since my small breakfast. The meal was a bit of a disappointment to say the least.

I don’t remember what accompanied it, probably bread and butter, but the main course was what was to become known as the Atomic Rice. The female senior member who helped out with mess was told to conserve water since fresh water was in constant short supply. She decided that it would be a good idea to boil the beets with the rice. By the time we had arrived at camp, the beets had disappeared and the overcooked rice was a bright, fluorescent pink. No… Seriously… It was a glowing pink like a reflective vest.

We all lined up for chow and the seniors dumped this pink slime into our mess tins. As cadets pulled up a piece of ground and dug in, the general consensus was that it was inedible. As I queued up for seconds (I was starving and it was no worse than my mom’s pot roast), I saw cadets dumping the whole mess into our garbage container. Others took it into the woods and dumped it there. I didn’t understand the big deal about it. I mean, the food was ALWAYS bad at ranger school.

Despite my ambivalence, “Atomic Rice” became one of those things that would become legend in the 77th. When rangers get together, within 10 minutes someone will ask “So how much Atomic Rice were you able to choke down?”

There was one interesting development from the Atomic Rice. After some cadets dumped it in the woods, the bears stopped coming into our base camp… While we had had them traverse our compound repeatedly in past years and even that week, we never saw them again, even in later years.

There was some concern about whether we had actually killed them. Would this be considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions as it relates to chemical warfare? Would the Department of Natural Resources be coming around looking for who poisoned their bears? Would PETA be throwing pink rice at us as we ran our mile run?

There was also the theory that the glowing rice had simply scared the bears away. We thought it might be prudent to register the rice with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but we decided that we’d stay quiet until someone had noticed. Why go looking for trouble?

The effect of the Death March of 81 itself was different than the one the year before. Instead of shattering our students and bringing the survivors to a point where they were bonded by common trauma, it built esprit de corps in another way. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t had as hard a time as we did. What was important is that we had pushed them farther than anyone had before. The march was still harder than anything anyone else was doing in Michigan wing, and these guys had flung themselves off a cliff in spite of their fears. They had reason to be proud.

It was an interesting lesson for me. I suddenly understood that training did not have to be exactly the same every time to be effective. There were more ways to train cadets than just the way I had been trained. This went against my training as a drill instructor, but it was very true. In the future, I wasn’t so quick to dismiss the ideas of my peers or seniors when they were different from my original training.

This made me a better instructor because I could adapt my training to my audience instead of trying to adapt my audience to my training. How many times have you heard some cadet officer say “I’m not going to change my leadership style just because some cadets don’t get it.” It seems to me that it is the officer who says this that doesn’t “get it”. Actual leadership is more important than leadership “style”. Are you a leader, or just a leadership stylist?