I'm a Gunner: It's who I am & what I do

All of my pre-chaining ceremony feels summed up, by someone else :)

I’m a Gunner I am trained to look the best, march the best and be the best leader I can be. I am Qualified Petty First Class Alec Ricard. I have spent 15 weeks going through the gruesome training they put us through. They put us in the wild on a mountain for four days the only time we had to race up the mountain and come back down. I have learned the ways to manipulate people to follow me. One night the night before my chaining ceremony I had a dream a dream that was like an epiphany. I sit on a cool rock that juts out from the sand like a wound in the earth on this lonely beach. The sound of the waves, crashing against the rocks in the near distance. The cool feeling of metal between my fingers it is my chain.

I sit on this solitary rock not moving just thinking. Thinking of a time before the blood, the sweat, and the tears. Back to a time when there was something in the end, a chain of my own. For some reason I thought the chain was what that final goal. Now I feel trapped in a world with a dark, unknown future. Nothing to work for, confused, just realizing this is not the end but only the beginning of my life as a Gunner.

I hold my chain and call up suspended in the air it glimmered and shone like a prized jewel in the setting sun. I remember the past summers the joy and dedication doing what I loved. I remember the clunking heels of heels dug into the ground instep, the heads held up high in pride knowing we were the best it shadowed my true ignorance like a disguise as the D.P.O. calling the commands as if we were deaf.


I remember the friends I made it feels wrong to call them friends when they are more family then anything else. I think back to one night my friend Joshua Hilts and I were running around the barracks during the night. As we ran through I hear my friend josh say “what the hell is this?” We turned around and went to the communal bathrooms to see what it was. “Who the hell sprayed me with shaving cream?” I was laughing hysterically chuckling to myself at how hard I laughed.

Then the memory of the hard work crept into my thoughts. The perfect gunshirts shining in the sun, the boots blinding in the sunlight, pants; creases harder then cardboard and sharp as a sword, white tops piercingly bright. The pride reflecting in our eyes and in our marching. The pride in being known as gunners. We sang Heart of Oak at the top of our lungs during the March pasts. The late nights to have that perfect uniform to avoid the cruel scrutiny of our P.O.’s. the early and physically demanding P.T. before breakfast.

Now that it’s all over there is a strange feeling in back of my mind; missing that life. If only I could go back to the fun years on course. The idea of staff awaiting next summer is promising, fun and authority. Authority; like a tainted alcohol corrupting easy to get intoxicated by it. Seeing it take over someone, the brink of their common sense, gone like a broken dam flooding them and overwhelming them.

I remember when I was on course I always thought that once that chain was placed around my neck somehow my very soul would intertwine between the links and I would be reborn. Reborn into the gunner inside of me the person I have dreamed I would be.

Was this chain worth it? I sense confusion in me as if I was betraying myself by asking that question. Before it was always undoubtedly I will get my chain I will be that guy everyone remembers, that person that shows what the saying take a chain leave a legacy really means.

Why is everything so different? Everything is different from what it was, I can feel it in people around me like it’s another sense I have. I see it in they’re eyes like I’m some new toy to be tried out until they are tired of me. I just hold on to anything I can in some vain attempt to not be swept away in this insanity. Like a demon it pulls at my ankles offering the easy way out to just be taken away as my knuckles turn white not understanding why it suddenly changed to this way because of some metal? I wear it with pride but as soon as I place that chain around my neck I feel as if I bind myself to it’s turmoil of confusion. I feel the authority that comes with the chain starting to build as if it were a giant brick wall about to fall and crush me. Why do they see me differently I bet without that chain it would be the same. I don’t regret getting it I just want to understand how it changed me, why people suddenly like me more, why I am suddenly more of a friend then I was before.

After all of these questions flow through my brain like a flood enveloping me pulling me from the present into the depths of my mind. Staring out at sea as if my soul has left my body to explore my conscience and somehow not being able to find answers. I feel a sudden pang of sadness. Am I worthy of my chain? I sat there alone on that deserted beach. Breathing in the salty smell of the cool ocean breeze. Then I realized I can be worthy of my chain. When it gets hard, even in the dark, unknown future. I am a Gunner. It’s who I am, and what I do.

By: Alec

Author's Note

Hope you like it!