Iceland, Winter 1964
The helicopter was behind us now.
There was no warm aircraft waiting nearby, no quick ride back to the barracks. Our objective was
somewhere ahead in those Icelandic mountains, and the only way we were going to get there was on foot.
The storm had been building since we came off the helicopter, but now it seemed as though Iceland had
decided to show us everything it had.
The temperature was around twenty below zero, and the wind was screaming across the mountains at
close to seventy miles an hour. With the wind chill, it felt somewhere around sixty below.
Snow wasn't falling anymore.
It was flying sideways.
It struck my face like handfuls of sand. It worked its way into every opening in my clothing. The wind
grabbed at my Marine Corps parka and tried to push me sideways with every step.
I pulled the hood tighter around my face, lowered my head, and kept moving. Visibility was getting worse
by the minute.
Through the blowing snow I could occasionally make out Cliff Kelly and Brent Fretag somewhere off my
right flank. They would appear for a few seconds through the white, then disappear again.
Dan Heysler was somewhere to my left.
At least I hoped he was.
We were Marines. We had been trained to maintain our formation, watch our sectors and keep moving
toward the objective. But Mother Nature didn't care about our training.
She was doing everything she could to scatter us across those Icelandic mountains.
I gripped my M14 and pushed forward. One step. Then another.
The snow beneath my boots was uneven, and sometimes my foot would disappear into a drift nearly to my
knee. Fighting my way back out took energy I didn't want to spend.
The wind howled so loudly that shouting was almost useless.
Every so often I would look toward my right.
There was Cliff. Then Brent. Good. Keep moving. I looked left. Nothing.
Just white.
Then, for a moment, a dark figure appeared through the blowing snow.
Dan.
Still there.
We pressed on.
There are moments during military exercises when all the excitement disappears. Nobody is thinking about glory. Nobody is imagining himself as John Wayne.
You're cold.
You're tired.
Your face hurts.
Your fingers hurt.
And somewhere inside your head there is one very simple thought:
I want this thing over with.
I remember thinking about warmth.
A heated building.
Dry socks.
Hot coffee.
Anything that didn't involve another step through an Icelandic blizzard.
But nobody stopped.
That's something I remember clearly.
We were miserable. We were freezing. We probably wondered why any sane human being would
voluntarily be wandering through the mountains of Iceland in weather like this.
But we kept going.
Because the Marine on your right was still moving.
The Marine on your left was still moving.
And therefore you kept moving too.
The objective was still ahead.
So I lowered my head against that seventy-mile-an-hour wind, tightened my grip on the rifle and took
another step.
Then another.
More than sixty years have passed since that day, but I can still remember the sound of that wind.
I can still see Cliff Kelly and Brent Fretag appearing and disappearing through the snow on my right.
I can still remember looking toward my left for Dan Heysler.
And I can still remember the one thought that probably crossed every one of our minds:
Baby, it's cold outside.
But we were United States Marines.
And the objective was ahead.
So ahead we went.
Semper Fi.
Michael Cunningham Sr.
United States Marine Corps, 1962–1966
