Shortly after 8 o'clock on Sunday night, Staff Sergeant Matthew C. McKeon, favoring a pulled leg muscle, limped into the barracks of Platoon 71 at the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C. As the shaven-headed Marine boots popped to attention, McKeon gazed coldly around and snapped: "Fall out in two minutes." The men—mostly 17-and 18-year-olds—grabbed for their caps and fatigue jackets, scrambled for the door, formed outside the barracks. Lean, usually soft-spoken Matt McKeon, 31, rapped out a crisp command and, using a broomstick for support on his lame side, hobbled off briskly into the moonless South Carolina night. The 74 boots of Platoon 71 followed him toward the salt tidal marshes of Parris Island, where death was waiting.
Two Desserts. As Parris Island drill instructors go, McKeon had been gentle with the clumsy, eager boots of Platoon 71, whom he supervised as junior D.I. under saltier, tougher-talking Staff Sergeant E. H. Huff. It was McKeon's first platoon after graduation from drill instructors' school, and he aimed to make it the honor outfit of the famed Parris Island boot camp. He encouraged the lads when they shot low scores on the rifle range ("Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it"); he patiently repeated his drill instructions until even the dullest could understand; and he conscientiously passed on to the boots the lessons of his eight years in the Marine Corps. As a machine-gun section leader in Korean combat, McKeon had learned that survival depends on discipline. He had fresh in his mind the grim stricture of the D.I. school: "Let's be damn sure that no man's ghost will ever say, 'If your training program had only done its job.'" And McKeon saw disturbing signs in Platoon 71. "There are still men in this platoon," he fretted, "that could not have made the grade in Korea."
That Sunday morning, during a smoke break, he had found some of the recruits stretched out on the grass, even sleeping, in totally un-bootlike posture. Although it was Sunday, he had ordered a "field day" —a complete cleanup of the barracks with swab, scrub brush, creosote and yellow soap. At supper that evening the watchful McKeon had noticed that some of his boots took second helpings of dessert, despite his warning (as one recruit recalled) "against overeating sweets, especially when out on the rifle range. It makes shooting more difficult." With calm detachment, McKeon ordered another scrubdown of the already bleach-cleaned barracks, then decided to interrupt it with the night march—a form of stern discipline that had helped make a Marine out of many another boot.