Fleet Week
After seeing the Blue Angels practice above the city in preparation of Fleet Week, I decided I’d go explore the event. On the first day I went to board a naval ship. As I approached it I saw someone wearing an 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit t-shirt. My gut turned and chills ran up my spine. This was my old Marine Corps unit. I sailed around the world with this unit, on a boat just like this. It’s been 7 years now, all the people I knew are gone, but walking onto the ship was like walking back into 2003. I think my face turned pale white. The smells, the textures, it all came back. I remembered that time I got a concussion on the tarmac after someone leg-swept me too hard. And the time I got hazed in the storage den after I earned my blood stripes. And the time I sneaked onto a gun turret at night to smoke cigarettes and stare at Hawaii as we approached the glowing island in the dark. I remember the shooting drills, the fast-roping, the anthrax shots, the constant moaning and swaying of the ship. I remember the heat and stink and the possibility of never coming home. And that peculiar feeling of seeing ocean in every direction. It was all the same way I left it. And I found it hard to take pictures. I felt ill.

I soon became overwhelmed by the civilians, the parents with their children, they were everywhere. Kids climbing tanks, playing with guns, sitting in cockpits. The irony was almost intolerable. It was an unsettling experience, and I couldn’t concentrate enough to take pictures. Feeling that this was something I had to capture, I came back another day, more prepared.

Mother's giggling and Father's taking pictures. Their boys and girls posing with automatic weapons, imitating the sounds of machine gun fire. I could not comprehend how oblivious everyone was to the fact these weapons just returned from war. Were they unaware, or were they proud? I wonder though, did they stop to think about the possibility that the 240 Golf they were posing with might have killed a child? Did they understand what that Mk-19, the one their child was playing with, can do? I invaded Iraq with this Unit. I have disassembled, carried and fired these weapons. They are not toys. They are tools for war. They are for killing. What do these people know about any of this? Violence and combat is glorified in our society. It is a word in polished marble. We watch the history channel re-runs but we never understand the depth of what we see. I don't blame people for this. The relentless echo of true horror is not something one can understand until it is heard in person.

Watching the Marines, who had recently returned from Afghanistan, I could see in there pursed lips and restrained behavior how they really felt, “These people have no idea.”

Peter McCollough San Francisco, CA
www.petermccollough.com
www.petermccollough.com/blog
916.595.2448
petermccollough(at)gmail(dot)com

Peter Earl McCollough, 1982, was born in Billings, Montana, and raised in Davis, California. Shortly after turning 18, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps where he served from 2000­2004. After being honorably discharged he began studying photography in Sacramento. In 2008, after transferring to Ohio University, he received a Bachelor of Science in Visual Communication with an emphasis in Photojournalism. He is currently a freelance photographer based in San Francisco.