1SG (R) Will Marshall

1SG (R) Ben Williams sat me down. October 2021. Heroes I Know. This time I was the one in the chair.

I grew up on Randolph Street in Dothan. Cloverdale. White subdivision. Dad drove a Volkswagen to Fort Rucker. Youth minister. Mom played piano in church. Little sister April. Bikes. Basketball. Church on Sunday.

They moved us across town in third or fourth grade. Integration. The neighborhood lost its mind. My parents did not. I did not understand all of it then. I understood enough.

I quit football at thirteen. Wind sprints. I walked home three miles. Water skiing after that. I wanted to fly helicopters because that is what Fort Rucker does to a boy. Sixteen. Eyes. That dream was done.

Orlando before I finished school. Disney. Ice cream. Popcorn. April in a character suit. Grades were not going to carry me. I joined the Army for the college fund. ASVAB came back 99.

September, October 1987. Bravo Battery, 3rd of the 4th Air Defense Artillery, 82nd Airborne. 16 Romeo. Vulcan crewman. Staff Sergeant Arroyo. Terry Raynor on the gun. First Sergeant Tom King. Pete Cuevas. They made me.

Cherry party. Fort McCoy. They zipped me in a sleeping bag, tied it, and threw me out a second-story barracks window. I had to yell I am a toad jumper before they cut me loose. That is how you get in a battery.

Sergeant fast. Jumpmaster School with two months retainability because First Sergeant Frank Calderon went to bat. Korea, 1990. Camp Hovey. SP Vulcan. Kent Maddox. Cameron Cranston. Boards. Gunner. Then Honduras. Night jump. I hit a family’s field. Hard. I would not let them see it. Rolled the silk. America was watching whether they knew it or not.

1992. NCO of the Year, 82nd Airborne Division. Same season my father was employee of the year and April was teacher of the year. That year changed the room I walked into.

Black hat. Advanced Airborne School. I took Maggot’s place. Gus Papillo ran the thirty-day turd program. Pizza bones. Silly string. Smoke. I taught visual aircraft recognition. AESOP. Edition 5 with Dan Bennett. I logged a hundred and nine jumps. Some never made the book.

Green Ramp, 1993. C-130 and an F-16. We lost people. I failed a lieutenant colonel in the door for panic. He wanted an adult. A one-star apologized the next day. The door does not care what rank you sew on.

Staff sergeant, 1999. Headquarters platoon because the platoon sergeant had cancer. Kosovo. Albania. Shots in the night. We did not send any back. No negligent discharges. Then SFC. Officer Basic at Bliss. Captain Tom Lee. We rewrote the problems for the war that was actually coming.

Non-promotable in the 552nd until I was not. HHC. First sergeant. Bravo Battery. Korea again. Then Hood. No mission. Equipment in refit. Twiddling thumbs in a place that would eat you. Twenty-two years. The math on command sergeant major did not work. I told CSM Eimer the paperwork would be on his desk in the morning. He said okay. Bring a twelve-pack of Coors when you come by the house.

Heroes I Know started because Maggot was in a hospital in El Paso and his short-term memory was going. I had the camera. I had the buddies. CSM Adams. Captain James McCormick — Silver Star, three Purple Hearts. Craig Evans. Bishop Chris Parker. Then Sergeant Mason. Esophageal cancer. Hospice. He had been mine in 218. That is when I picked the mic back up for good.

Josie walked into my formation as a private six months after her aunt stabbed her and poured gasoline on her. She became a major. Colonel T.W. Williams lost people in the Pentagon on 9/11, lost his wife to cancer, lost his son. He still showed up. I cry in almost every interview. I am not sorry about that.

I live in Dothan. Pennie. Crawford and Marshall on the weekends. Washer and dryer during the week. The stories in between. Not just the generals. The postman. The first sergeant. The kid who almost did not make it. If you were in my foxhole, I love you. You are my hero. That is why we hit record. Get the story on tape before we are too old or too sick to tell it.