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the party broke up, soon after midnight, Mona made a point of saying good-bye to Richard. “Keep safe, Cousin,” she said, “I need all the friends I can get.” She kissed his cheek, and they parted.
    “What was that all about, Streak?” asked Bobby. “Something going on between you and the movie star?” He grinned at his brother and winked.
    Richard elbowed him and said, “You’re just jealous ’cause you wish it was you!”
    Mona lay awake into the early morning hours. She hadn’t faced a lot of things about her life, about how unhappy she was, how lonely, how disappointed. Thinking about another new year made her feel depressed, and it had gushed out in her conversation with Richard. She smiled, through tears, thinking how she must have shocked the poor kid.
    Darkness was just giving way to early morning light when she fell asleep, saying, like a mantra, “I’m a Stuart. We never give up.”
    Richard’s concern that the war would be over before he could get to Korea was clearly unfounded in the early months of 1951. The Communists reoccupied Seoul on January 4. United Nations air forces continually attacked communication centers and airfields north of the battle line. Seoul was retaken on March 14. On April 11, Truman relieved General MacArthur of command of the UN forces for publicly disputing administration policies and replaced him with General Matthew B. Ridgway.
    Soon after, fresh Communist troops launched a general offensive toward Seoul. By April 30, although UN lines had been pushed back south, they held three miles north of Seoul.
    On May 16, Chinese Communist divisions launched an attack down the center of the Korean peninsula along a seventy-five-mile front, but by May 20, the day after Richard and Bobby’s graduation, the attack had been contained, the Communists suffering heavy casualties.
    Entering the marine corps recruit depot at San Diego was like stepping into another universe. All comfort was left behind, and the intangible mystique of the marines began to work. Richard and some other boots had been picked up at the bus station by truck. Their marine driver shouted, “No _____ talking! No _____ smoking! No _____ gum chewing! Sit up straight!” They dismounted from the jolting truck and formed a motley rank in front of a sand-colored receiving building. The base’s buildings were a hacienda style with wide archways and flat or red-shingled roofs.
    A drill instructor greeted them with a piercing scream and turned the air full of more profanity, then shouted, “Fall in!” Gunnery Sergeant Sterken, one of their three drill instructors, was a southerner with a contempt for anyone not born in Dixie. He considered California part of the North since it had not been part of the Confederacy. Sterken was a huge man, some six feet four inches and 230 pounds, and his voice was even bigger.
    Private Richard Stuart stumbled along in clumsy civilian fashion to the mess hall, to a breakfast of bologna and cold lima beans.
    The boots began to lose their individuality at the quartermaster’s, where they had to strip naked. When not a stitch or a thread was left, each was given underwear, socks, a bill cap that came down over their ears, green pants, and a yellow T-shirt with the emblem of the marine corps in red. They mailed their civilian clothes home. The discard of the garments meant the death of the old life. Looking over at another recruit, Jack Smith, Richard said, “A man doesn’t have much personality when he’s naked, does he?”
    Smith, a tall, black-haired man of about twenty, shook his head. “And I hear the fun’s just beginning.”
    As Richard emerged from the quartermaster’s building, he thought, Twenty minutes ago I was a human being surrounded by sixty other human beings. Now I’m just a number— 193153 USMC.
    The next stop was the barber’s, and the cry “You’ll be sorry!” began to greet them. The barber made five strokes; as the last one completed a circle, he said,