THE CORPS

The Decision — The Yellow Footprints

The Corps · Rollin E. Trueblood, USMC (Ret.)

This story is inspired by the 1949 John Wayne film Sands of Iwo Jima. Sergeant John Stryker and the Marines portrayed in the film are fictional characters, although the battle and the sacrifices of Iwo Jima were very real. The scene described in this story is used not as a historical account of one particular Marine, but as a representation of the lessons, responsibilities, and burdens carried by generations of United States Marines.

When most people watch Sands of Iwo Jima, they see an old black-and-white war movie starring John Wayne. Marines see something different. They see Sergeant John Stryker.

Stryker is hard, demanding, relentless, and often disliked by the young Marines under his command. He expects discipline when they are exhausted, obedience when they are angry, courage when they are frightened, and responsibility when every human instinct tells them to think first of themselves. His men do not always understand him. Some resent him. Some believe he is unnecessarily cruel. They do not yet comprehend that Stryker is not trying to make their lives difficult. He is trying to keep them alive.

To me, Sergeant Stryker represents every Marine Corps drill instructor who has ever stood before a platoon of frightened, confused, and uncertain recruits. The young men following him represent every recruit who has ever stepped onto the yellow footprints and begun the process of becoming something greater than he was when he arrived.

Every recruit comes to boot camp with a name, a history, an identity, and an idea of who he believes himself to be. The moment his feet are placed on those yellow footprints, that identity begins to be stripped away. It is not destroyed. It is rebuilt. The individual begins to understand that his comfort is no longer the highest priority. His fear is no longer the only fear that matters. His hunger, exhaustion, opinions, and desires must sometimes become secondary to the mission and to the Marine standing beside him.

The Marine Corps takes young men from different families, different towns, different races, different beliefs, and different walks of life, and it begins forming them into one body. They learn that the unit is more valuable than the individual. They learn that weakness in one man can place the lives of others in danger. They learn that courage does not mean the absence of fear. Courage means performing the mission while fear is present.

One scene in Sands of Iwo Jima has remained with me for most of my life. Marines are under devastating enemy fire. Machine guns are hammering their position. The enemy continues coming in wave after wave. Ammunition is running low, and without it, the Marines in the foxholes will have no way to hold their position.

One Marine leaves the relative protection of the foxhole and makes his way back to obtain ammunition. He is doing exactly what he has been ordered to do. He is risking his life for the Marines waiting behind him. He is exhausted, frightened, hungry, and nearly spent. When he finally reaches the rear position, he sees hot coffee or warm chow. For the first time in hours, perhaps days, he is near something that resembles comfort.

He stops.

Not for long.

Perhaps a minute.

Perhaps two.

Then he gathers the ammunition and begins dragging it back toward the line. The ammunition is heavy. His body is exhausted. Sweat pours from him. Bullets are flying. Explosions shake the ground. He is scared, but he continues forward because his fellow Marines are waiting for him.

When he reaches the position, they are dead.

The foxhole has been overrun.

No one could ever know whether those two minutes would have changed the outcome. The enemy may have overrun the position regardless. The Marines may have been dead before he could possibly have returned. The ammunition may not have made any difference at all.

But the young Marine would never know.

That was the burden.

He completed the mission. He returned with the ammunition. He risked his life going out and coming back. Yet for the rest of his life, he would ask himself whether those two minutes of personal comfort had cost the lives of the men who trusted him.

Later, Sergeant Stryker confronts him. It is a John Wayne confrontation, hard words followed by the kind of physical exchange common in movies of that generation. But beneath the anger is a lesson every Marine understands.

In the Marine Corps, your decisions are not yours alone.

The Marine beside you may be depending upon you. The men behind you may be depending upon you. A hesitation, a lapse in discipline, or a moment of personal gratification may affect lives you cannot see. That is why Marine training is so demanding. That is why drill instructors refuse to accept excuses. That is why recruits are taught to perform when they are tired, hungry, angry, afraid, and uncertain.

The lesson is not that Marines must be perfect. No human being is perfect.

The lesson is that every decision matters.

I stood on those yellow footprints when I was seventeen years old. But my relationship with the Marine Corps had begun years before that.

At fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, I watched the Vietnam War on the evening news whenever I had the opportunity. I watched positions being overrun. I watched helicopters lift wounded men from battlefields. I watched young Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen fighting and dying in a country most Americans could not find on a map.

I was too young to serve, but in my heart, I wanted to be with them.

I wanted to become a Marine.

By the time I was finally old enough and stood on those yellow footprints, Vietnam was winding down. I did not choose the year I was born. I did not choose when the war began or when it ended. There was nothing I could have done differently.

Yet for much of my life, I carried guilt.

I felt as though other men had fought the war that I believed should have been mine. They had stood on the line while I watched from a television set. They had carried rifles, ammunition, wounded brothers, and flag-draped coffins while I waited to become old enough to serve.

That guilt was not logical.

But it was real.

Thousands of Marines have carried similar questions. They embraced the Corps. They absorbed the lessons of boot camp. They inherited its history, traditions, discipline, and sense of responsibility. The DNA of the Marine Corps became part of them, yet history never placed them on the battlefield where they believed they might prove themselves.

They will never know what they would have done.

They will never know whether they would have advanced under fire, carried a wounded Marine to safety, held a position against impossible odds, or sacrificed their own life for the man beside them.

Some Marines know the answer because history required them to answer it.

Others carry the unanswered question for the rest of their lives.

We cannot choose the war we will fight.

We cannot choose the year the Lord places us on this earth.

We cannot choose whether history will ever call our name.

We can choose only the character we build, the effort we give, and the decisions we make when our moment comes.

The purpose of The Decision series is to honor the men who answered that call. It honors every recipient of the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Valor, and every decoration earned through extraordinary courage and sacrifice. These men proved, in the most dangerous moments imaginable, that the lessons taught on the yellow footprints had become part of who they were.

But this series is also dedicated to the Marines whose names will never appear in history books.

It is dedicated to every Marine who stood on those footprints, surrendered a portion of his individual identity, and allowed the Corps to rebuild him into a United States Marine. It is dedicated to those who embraced its traditions, understood its responsibilities, and carried those lessons throughout their lives, even when history never provided them the opportunity to earn a medal.

Their mission did not end because they never entered combat.

It simply took another form.

Every Memorial Day is deeply personal to me. I cannot watch flag-draped coffins without feeling grief. I cannot hear certain songs without remembering men I never knew. I cannot look at the cost of war as a statistic, a political slogan, or a line in a government report.

Those numbers were sons.

They were husbands.

They were fathers.

They were brothers.

They were Marines.

I watched men die during Vietnam because political leaders made decisions that placed them in harm’s way. I watched the consequences of decisions made during Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, as our country again faces danger in the Middle East and the possibility of conflict with Iran, I see many of the same mistakes, arguments, and political calculations returning.

I cannot go back and fight in Vietnam.

I cannot fight the battles of Iraq or Afghanistan.

I am now a seventy-year-old Marine and an American citizen.

But I can still serve.

I am no longer a drill instructor, and I never was one. I am not Sergeant Stryker standing before a platoon of recruits. I stand among my fellow citizens as one of them.

But perhaps the lesson is still the same.

Every decision matters.

Our responsibility as citizens does not end when we place our hands over our hearts during the Pledge of Allegiance. It does not end when we thank a veteran, attend a parade, place flowers on a grave, or pause for a moment of silence on Memorial Day.

Those things matter.

But they are not enough.

The freedoms purchased by the men we honor require something from us.

They require us to become informed.

They require us to question those who send young men and women into war.

They require us to examine character, judgment, truthfulness, and consequences.

They require us to place country above party and responsibility above personal comfort.

Above all, they require us to vote.

Voting is not merely a privilege granted to us as Americans. It is part of the civic responsibility handed to us by those who stood on the line, carried the ammunition, buried their friends, and came home beneath a flag.

The men honored in these stories made their decisions.

Now we must make ours.

The battlefield has changed.

The mission has not.

Closing Reflection

The Marine Corps taught me that every decision matters.

That lesson did not end when I took off the uniform.

It followed me into every chapter of my life.

Today, I am no longer carrying a rifle. I am carrying a different responsibility.

I cannot go back and fight in Vietnam.

I cannot stand beside the Marines who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, or the generations before them.

Those chapters have already been written.

But I can still serve.

As a seventy-year-old Marine and an American citizen, I believe my mission today is to encourage my fellow citizens to embrace the moral and civic responsibilities that accompany the freedoms so many Americans have fought and died to preserve.

Every generation has its battlefield.

Mine is no longer overseas.

Mine is here at home, where the future of our Republic depends upon citizens who are willing to seek the truth, think for themselves, and faithfully carry out the responsibilities entrusted to them.

I would like to invite you to enlist—not in the Marine Corps, but in a different kind of service.

A civilian army.

An army of informed citizens.

An army committed to setting aside slogans, fear, and blind loyalty in order to pursue truth wherever it leads.

Do not allow anyone to place scales over your eyes and convince you that your voice does not matter or that your vote cannot make a difference.

Every Marine who has stood on those yellow footprints understood that individual actions affect the entire unit.

The same is true in our constitutional republic.

Every informed vote strengthens our nation.

Every uninformed decision weakens it.

For every American who has given his or her life defending our Constitution, preserving our freedoms, and protecting the right of self-government, we owe more than remembrance.

We owe them our participation.

We owe them our integrity.

We owe them our willingness to become informed before asking others to trust our judgment.

That is the purpose of these stories.

Not to tell you what to think.

But to encourage you to think.

To ask questions.

To seek evidence.

To measure character.

To understand the consequences of leadership.

And then to faithfully fulfill the civic responsibility that generations of Americans have preserved through extraordinary sacrifice.

The yellow footprints changed my life.

My hope is that these stories encourage others to leave footprints of their own—not on the parade deck at Parris Island or San Diego, but in their homes, their communities, and at the ballot box.

The battlefield has changed.

The mission has not.

— Rollin E. Trueblood, USMC (Ret.)