When a Good Soldier Breaks: The Story of L and Full Metal Jacket
I still remember that day vividly.
The sky was clear, and there was no training. We lay on our barracks platform bed, nursing a week's worth of exhaustion. Then the word came down: there was going to be a little get-together.
When we got to the dining room, there was makgeolli, a Korean rice wine, spicy braised chicken, sausages, and snacks someone had brought from the PX.
Alcohol, in the army. We were all fired up. A few drinks in, the tension loosened, and before long, between jokes, someone brought up the platoon leader.
Getting beaten for no reason. Punishment drills. The insults, the humiliation. How doing something well just meant more work got dumped on you. How he'd seize on the smallest mistake and tear into you for it. One story led to another, until we were practically competing over who'd had it worse.
L said nothing.
That was strange. If anyone had stories to tell, it was him.
L was the platoon leader's orderly. Washed his uniforms. Shined his boots. Ran to fetch whatever the man wanted, whenever he wanted it. No one in that room had suffered more at the platoon leader's hands than L.
And he hadn't said a word all night.
"Tonight I'm going to kill that bastard."
He said it low, almost to himself, then he was up and gone, into the kitchen.
He came back out holding a kitchen knife. Under the fluorescent light, the blade flashed white. But it wasn't the knife that frightened me. It was L.
He was always the mild one, the easy one to be around. But in that moment, his face hardened into something set and resolved, and his eyes burned.
I'd never seen that face on him before. For a second, I couldn't move.
"This guy's lost it!"
Two of the men grabbed him at once. One pinned his arms from behind, the other wrapped around his waist. The three of them went down together, tangled on the floor.
L kept trying to wrench his wrists free. Whatever he'd been holding in, along with the drink, seemed to come loose all at once. The two men held on, straining against him.
Eventually the knife slipped from his hand and clattered onto the concrete floor.
"Let go! Let go of me! I said I'm killing him tonight!"
He screamed it again and again, until he just lay there on the floor and cried for a long time.
We all knew exactly why he was that angry. None of us said a word. We just stayed close.
The next morning, nobody mentioned the night before. We went back to our routines, quietly. I think we believed that was the kindest thing we could do for him. And honestly, it was probably the only thing we knew how to do.
L was cheerful, easy to like, and hardworking. Whatever he was given, he got done, and he rarely made mistakes. We used to call him "Akbari"—someone who never gave up, no matter how hard things got.
That same diligence got him into trouble. The platoon leader made L his orderly.
One memory sticks with me.
The platoon leader had told him to shine his boots, but right then L got called away for unit duties. He handled that first, then came back and polished the boots afterward.
There was nothing wrong with that. But the platoon leader didn't see it that way. He hit L in the face several times.
Those marks stayed on L's face for days. Right where his smile used to be.
Then one day, good news came down: the platoon leader was being transferred to another unit. Just like that, the nightmare was over. And L finished out his service and went home in one piece.
Whenever L comes to mind, I think of Private Pyle. Slow and clumsy, he was singled out by the drill instructor, who seemed determined to break him. The other recruits joined in and tormented him too.
Mentally worn down, he eventually turned a gun on the sergeant who had pushed him to the breaking point, and then on himself.
L never got there. Two men grabbed his arms before he did. And then the platoon leader was simply gone, transferred out. For L, there was a way out—a place to catch his breath.
Pyle had no such escape.
I still wonder, sometimes, what would have happened if we hadn't caught him that night. Or if the platoon leader had never been sent away.
When I think about it, I hear the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black," the song that plays over the final scene of Full Metal Jacket. That upbeat rhythm with something dark and ominous running underneath it.
When I hear that song, I see L.
The young soldier who was always smiling. His face, trembling with anger, a knife in his hand.
And finally, L on the concrete floor, crying as if everything he'd held inside had finally come pouring out.
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