Many moons ago, when I was a young Marine Reservist in Pennsylvania, our unit embarked on a weekend adventure to the famous Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg. It was winter and the exercise had the dual purpose of learning something about history as well as testing out the winter gear we were to use the next month on a real field exercise. At that point, we were accustomed to spending our monthly weekend training in various state parks in the central and western part of the state, so going to the east seemed like a real treat. Our commanding officer (CO) was an American Civil War buff and a big believer in teaching the ignorant young Marines in his charge lessons from history.

Marines must be the most shamelessly flamboyant shitters of the highest possible order -- people who proudly boast and display their shitting prowess not unlike male peacocks vying for the attention of a female. I can recall more than a few times when there would be groups of us clustered around a stall trying to get a look at the latest fecal freak show. Over the period of my enlistment I bore witness to horrific corn-studded turds of revolting length, unworldly girth, and rare hues not normally seen outside of a Petri dish.

There was, however, the rare Marine who did not like to shit in the woods and would go all weekend without a movement, saving himself for the comforting feel and familiar porcelain of the home environs. I admit now that I was one of these men. I was a Shameful Shitter: one of those who waited for the restroom to clear before even letting out so much as a toot, much less a splash.

As I was driving to the reserve center that wintry Friday afternoon, I had the strange feeling that my intestinal tract was not going to cooperate with my Shameful mentality. You know how it goes: one minute you're going to shit your brains out, the next minute the feeling subsides and you feel in control again. This went on most of the night and was not helped at all by the constant vibration of a five-hour ride in the back of a military truck.

By morning, my intestinal distress over and forgotten, we ate cold MREs washed down with cupfuls of diluted government coffee. I was not really a coffee drinker then, but it was warm and that was all I cared about. Dressed in heavy winter camouflage with full field gear and rifles, we toured the battlefield. We listened to lectures about the battle, took in a film, and drove around different points of the battlefield in our trucks, sleeping in between stops as Marines are wont to do.

After a hot lunch and more complimentary coffee and cocoa, the CO announced with much enthusiasm that we were to be counted among the lucky. We were going to walk in the footsteps of history. We were going to trace the revered footsteps of Confederate Major General Pickett as he led his division in a frontal assault on Union troops entrenched on a ridgeline -- a maneuver better known as Pickett's Charge. The Confederates had fought with much bravery, but were eventually driven back by a relentless and withering fusillade of musket and cannon fire from the Union line, resulting in a brutal loss of life and limb. Though the Union decidedly won the battle, their own force was depleted to the point that they were not in any better condition to pursue the battered Southerners any further as they retreated back to their lines. The furthest point of advance by the Confederates in this battle was defined as the high-water mark of the Confederacy for the entire war.

My coffee-saturated lunch churned heavily in my stomach as we tromped in knee-deep snow. Sweating and cursing, we Marines trudged onward in our ungainly gear, climbing fences and crossing fields, profoundly ignorant of the historical significance of the landscape beneath our Mickey Mouse boots. The CO naturally led the "charge" (possibly wielding a sword; I cannot confirm this), although in historical reality, General Pickett had been far behind his men, as was customary for an officer of his rank in the day. Nevertheless, we followed the skipper up the hill to the Union battle lines, where the offensive was thwarted.

Sucking down canteen water and breathing heavily, we plunked ourselves down where we pleased. Before we could get too comfortable, an order was barked out to form a tight "school circle" in among the large boulders and rock formations of the ridge and settle in for a riveting lecture from the CO regarding our accomplishment and the impact of the battle on the mission of the modern day Marine Corps.

Ten or fifteen minutes into the lesson, the volcanic feelings of Friday night awoke from its dormancy and struck me with breathtaking acuteness. My stomach was racked with cramping and gas pains. I thought to relieve the pressure by letting out a fart, but quickly realized that to fart was to open the floodgates. I desperately scanned the landscape around me, harboring a distant and futile hope that the National Park Service had conveniently located a restroom nearby. A winter wind whistled through the trees: a signal from nature reminding me that I was far removed from the genteel world of porcelain and piped water. There was no place to go. I would have to duck behind a rock.

I figured I had two minutes, probably far less. I was close to the front, surrounded by forty or fifty Shameless-shitting Marines quietly absorbing the CO's lecture. The CO was an old-school Devil Dog who did not appreciate disorder or interruptions of any sort; but damning the consequences, I stood up.

The CO paused.

And then he continued with the lecture.

I went to the back of the school circle and found a place behind some boulders, away from the crowd. I barely got my ass free from the four or five layers of garments I had on before I unloosed a coffee-induced volley of liquefied shit, followed by a strange yellowish spray of pure bile. A cloud of steam rose lightly around me as the contents of my bowels were violently and noisily disgorged onto the pretty white snow.

Within a few moments, it was over. I felt a wave of intense relief. I fumbled through my pockets and got out my MRE toilet paper and began unfolding it to clean myself up, happy with myself to have gotten this ordeal behind me, so to speak.

And then I sensed a presence.

I looked up. The skipper was standing above me, poised on a clump of snow in a statuesque manner like a battle-hardened hero from the Chosin Reservoir.

He looked down at me. His face reddened. I felt as if I had been caught looking down his wife's blouse. I predicted that a chewing out was nigh in my future. The skipper was a true master at chewing out -- one of those officers who had spent years as an enlisted man where, without a doubt, he learned to cultivate the practice. He had taken this craft with him in his transformation to an officer and brought it to a higher form of art that he practiced with the dastardly skill and efficiency of a salty drill instructor. Moving about his subject, he would invade your personal space and inflict vile insults upon you from all sides and angles like a sculptor adding the finishing touches to a work of art. He could be in front of you and behind you at the same time, eying you up and down as if trying to find that one spot that had not felt his wrath. I began to withdraw into my "happy place" and mentally construct a wall of indifference.

It is customary to stand up when being addressed by an officer, but I didn't dare in this unusual circumstance.

He spoke gruffly, invoking spiritual guidance.

"JEEZIS H. CHRIST!!

"I KNOW you are NOT interrupting my classroom to empty your pathetic bowels onto SACRED GROUND!

"I KNOW that you are NOT defiling the spot where three-thousand men better than you made the ultimate sacrifice!" Laughter erupted from behind him.

"Sir," I offered pathetically, still squatting. "I think I had too much coffee -- my system is not used to it."

He looked around and let out a short hoot of disgust. He leaned forward. "Coffee?"

"Yes sir."

"COFFEE!!? You mean this whole thing is about COFFEE!!"

I began to suspect that he was toying with me.

"WHAT? Do you think that these men just WALTZED up here and had milk and fucking COOKIES?"

"No SIR!"

"Yet YOU think you can saunter up the hill with a belly full of chow like Jack and fucking Jill and interrupt my CLASS, just so you can pinch a loaf on this FIELD OF HONOR?" Raucous laughter erupted from the peanut gallery this time.

"No SIR!"

"You think that the fight is over because the coffee doesn't agree with your SYSTEM?"

"No SIR!"

"Marines fight -- and they don't stop fighting because their little tummies hurt. They don't stop because they need to make a poopie. I WILL tell you this… TARAWA was not won by a bunch of Marines squatting behind rocks dropping their drawers. IWO JIMA certainly was not won by a bunch of Marines bellyaching about drinking too much coffee. Hell, they were happy to drink their own urine!"

"Yes SIR!"

"Marine, are you through interrupting my classroom?"

"Yes SIR!"

"Are you through shitting on American history?"

"Yes SIR!"

"Well, carry on! And before you leave, I want that spot so clean that YOU can eat off of it. Is that understood?"

"Yes SIR!"

He turned and walked back to the group, shaking his head.

With shaking fingers, I unfolded the toilet paper, quickly wiped my ass, and then pulled my layers back on. I kicked some snow over the mess.

I emerged from the boulder. A single clap emanated from within the group from some smartass. And then another. Before long, everyone had stood up clapping and cheering, but mostly laughing. Even the skipper was laughing. I managed an impish grin.

From that point on, I became a Shameless Shitter. I had been inducted into the brotherhood. I was now one of them. The few. The proud. The Shameless!