Soaked In Memory

When I was in the Marine Corps, I had the distinct pleasure(although I didn't necessarily feel that way at the time) of attending the NCO Leadership course at the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade schools on Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station in Hawaii. Towards the end of the course, we spent a week in the field and it was off to the Kahuku's we went.(The Kahuku's was a training area, with lots of hills, known for its distinct red dirt that would permanently stain your gear and clothing) One of the exercises we did in the field was a hump at MOPP-4.(MOPP was Mission Oriented Protective Posture and was designed to protect us in case of Chemical or Biological weapon attacks). The day started with us filling in the previous night's foxholes (we always left the training areas in better shape than we found them). As we were filling those in, we were placed on MOPP-2, meaning we had to don our chemical weapon protective suits. These were heavy, charcoal-lined suits to keep chemicals off our skin. We kept working under the hot Hawaiian sun and soon had the area back to how it was when we had arrived the day before and all our gear was packed and ready to be humped to the next site. By that time, we were at MOPP-4, meaning we had every bit of chemical weapon protection on including overboots, gloves, gas masks with hoods, and it was high noon in the hot Hawaiian sun. Did I mention that it was hot? Did I mention that we were now wearing our normal camoflage utilities AND these heavy charcoal-lined suits with a hood and gas mask covering our heads?
We humped in our squads with all our gear down a long trail. I emphasize two things: down (as in we were going down a steep hill) and all our gear (we had everything we brought into the field on our backs included a M2 50-caliber machine gun and its extra barrel, tripod, and ammo. We got the squad to the bottom of the trail in tact. We were all sweating up a storm in those suits, my gloves and boots were sloshing in collected sweat.
We were then told we needed to proceed...right back up to where we had been that morning. I remind you at this point that we had been travelling all down hill on this hump to that point, so a return to the beginning meant turning around and staring up at a mountain that we now had to climb.
Each of the NCO School class squads had made it down without a problem, each squad was together so that, had something happened at the bottom of the hill and we had needed to go into action, the squad would have been able to quickly pull together and piece together the parts of our primary weapon (that machine gun) and get busy. Going up the trail was an entirely different scenario. Gravity wasn't helping us as it had on the way down. Proper spacing between the squads was soon lost and with it, any inkling of who was in what squad. Remember, we all had these heavy suits and gas mask with hoods on. No one could really recognize anybody was the spacing was lost and squad integrity fell apart. Soon it became an individual struggle to get up that hill. You looked constantly up, at how far you had to go and pushed on (no one was looking back down at those struggling to take that next step). I was among the first 5 or 6 Marines to make it to the top. I had my squad's tripod, none of the rest of my squad was with me. The rest of the class began trickling onto the site. We were all soaked in sweat and still struggling to catch our breath within our gas masks (these could not be removed without going through the proper procedures for decontamination (this was an exercise but we training for the real thing so we had to do it all by the book). I likely lost about 20 pounds that day. After a while, they finally got everyone up that hill and all the gear too. Had we had to go into battle at the top, it isn't very likely we would have had even one intact M2 to fire, or any ammo to fire it with as that was all still working its way up the hill with other individual Marines. Those of us in the vanguard that made it up first had been feeling pretty smug in the early stages of our recovery. We had made it. How great were we? We were the best! Ooops.
We all failed miserably that day. The mission was to get the squad from point A - B (or really from A - A) and we failed. We left guys behind. We left vital gear with those guys. We left capabilities with those guys. Eventually the every individual within our squad, and all the other squads, made it to the top, but no SQUAD made it to the top as a unit, with all of its capabilities and equipment ready to go.
It it is one of those memories that quite literally SOAKED into my brain-housing group, so much so, that I have never forgotten the lesson I learned in my failure that day in the Kahukus. If I focus on me, I might make it to the end but I'm just as likely to be alone when I get there. If I focus on the group, serving others, I not only am just as likely to get to the end, but I'll have everyone else there with me when I get there!
Leadership isn't about getting there first, being the best, being the fastest, or being the strongest. Leadership is about making sure the last one gets there, making the least better, making the slow faster, and making the weak stronger. So much more so with Christian leadership and the Body of Christ. Are we focused on our own faith so much that we fail to bring the Body of Christ to the end with us?
I pray that God would give us the strength and wisdom each day to serve each other so that all of us poor miserable sinners can go about "encouraging, comforting and urging [each other] to live lives worthy of God, who calls [us] into his kingdom and glory" ~1 Thessalonians 2:12 (NIV)