“I was one of the privileged majority who would be leading troops in combat in just a month, and I felt a keen sense of irony when the lance corporal/clerk who processed my orders turned out to be one of the officer candidates who had flunked out of my OCS class. His reward for failure would be a safe stateside tour of duty behind a typewriter, and although I would not have traded places with him for anything, he was living proof of the Marine Corps axiom that the shitbirds get the easy assignments.”