Disclaimer: I do not own G.I. Joe or anything related to it, (except for a movie or three). I own what is original.
Summary: A short analysis on our favorite Sergeant Major.
Author's Note: I fell in love with the quote below when I had heard Michael Ironside's character say it on SeaQuest 2032, and I think it applies to Beachhead as well.
***With Your Shield***
"With your shield, or on it."
Spartan women used to tell their sons and husbands this when they were off to battle. Spartans were, of course, hardassed fighters who would rather be carried out on their shields than come home without it. Pride was their motivation, pride in being the best of the best and not letting anyone under any circumstance beat you at your own game. When a Spartan soldier went off to battle, they took their arrows and other weapons along with their shields. The shield was used for more than just personal protection, it provided constant coverage from the opposition if the soldiers worked as one unit. It was more or less a well choreographed dance, save for the flaming arrowheads and rocks dipped in tar, set ablaze and catapultued into Spartan men. The more they worked together, the less the casualties would be. When they returned from battle, a consensus of sorts would be taken, bodies were identified by the family crest on the shield, and those who chose to leave their shield on the battlefield, well they did not come home for fear of ridicule, or worse.
It was with that premise, of returning home either dead or victorious, that Beachhead tried to drill into his soldiers whether they were man, woman, or animal. He pushed them, often times relentlessly, on his PT course. The ones who had the best times would get to go to breakfast, or continue on their merry way to do whatever it was they did after he was through with them. The ones whose time wasn't up to his extreme standards, ran through the course over until he gave the okay to quit. For the most part, the Joes respected Beachhead, though they didn't have to like his methods of training. If something was said, or someone had the audacity to complain about PT, Beach would yank them up by their bootlaces and explain that in battle, if someone was lost, they all were as good as dead. He told them that he expected them to return home the same way they left, walking out onto the tarmac and boarding helicopters and Sky Strikers.
His attitude about sympathy for the fallen, unless they were seriously injured, was pretty much "Do it better next time.", or "Maybe if you pushed harder you'd have been faster than they were." Though he really wasn't a total ass, he cared about his fellow men and women, maybe a bit too much. He made it his life's work making sure that each person that left for war, returned alive. The times when that didn't happen, when his fellow commrades were returned "On their shield", Beach would find a quiet spot and mourn for them. Tears were never spilled over the blood of a fallen Joe, at least not from Beachhead. He never outwardly cried when they lost one, but internalized the saddness and turned it into anger, resentment and hatred towards himself, for failing to properly train those that passed on.
The best of the best in the Military were offered a position in Joe, and Beachhead knew they all understood the risks of going out to war, letters to loved ones stowed in pockets just in case the inevitable happened. They didn't like to understand the reality of why he pushed them to breaking points each and every day. They didn't like to understand that he was trying his best to keep them alive, to bring them home with their shields instead of on them. They didn't have to admit their thanks to him, he got it in the face of battle, when they would react faster than the enemy, and hold their heads high on the trip back to base. Even if they were sporting plaster casts, and tracks of sutures from taking fire.
With your shield or on it, the best of the best in G.I. Joe understood the risks, and knew that without a shadow of a doubt that they would do their Drill proud by coming back with the proverbial shield in hand, head held high, ready for another showdown with the enemy. Maybe they didn't like him, maybe they didn't care, but they were all eternally grateful to him for what he did to keep them alive for another day.
~end~