Collaborator’s Note: Working with “Gunny Pop”

Published Tuesday, May 27, 2008 in About the book

Once A Marine reads a mite loud and in-your-face because that’s the Marine Gunnery Sergeant manner of communication, and it is true to the spirit and voice of Gunny Pop. It’s also the way we put this book together.

Most of the time we really were in each other’s faces, Nick reliving and retelling his tale, and me running it through my mental story processors and writing, and then reading it back to Nick. After our back-and-forth sessions we had our finished copy. Literary live fire, you might call it, because the words flying around hit the page right then and there. Now they’re hitting you, with very little change.

This is one weird way to produce a book. And it is not necessarily recommendable because very few collaborators could stand being stuck in a room for six or eight or even ten hours at a shot. But in our case—for me, anyway—prolonged proximity never got old. Nick’s a good guy to hang out with. To our sessions he always brought his A-game and moto-Marine discipline and energy. No time went to waste and, unless non-book life got in the way, we didn’t quit until our IQs tanked and we started putting out drivel we both new we would throw out and write anew.

Even if we had gotten on each other’s nerves, it wouldn’t have mattered, because we took our orders from this big, demanding, merciless SOB that didn’t care about anything but the mission. By that I mean Nick’s great story. Very early in our collaboration it started yelling to be told, and anything less than max effort, as Nick would say, was not acceptable. It’s strange and wonderful how creative projects take on lives of their own and put themselves in charge. This one you did not want to disappoint.

Our work consumed seven months, starting with just one or two sessions a week and building up to four- and five-day brain burners at the end. As the final days of work approached we pulled a few marathon phoners, putting out whole chapters before we hung up. By then, though, we were so hardwired into the project that physical presence no longer mattered. If we were working, we were there. And mostly we really were, in San Diego where Nick lives or at my place in Los Angeles.

Some days we made huge, easy gains; some were like MS Word root canal. But we always ended up with something worthwhile. Throughout we carried on in Nick’s Marine way—straight toward the objective. One session that probably should have been interrupted shows the sort of roll we were on, and just how dialed in we really were. Not long after Nick arrived on the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner from SD, I got a call from my four-year-old daughter’s preschool. Ellie, they told me, was sick and needed to be picked up. On the way home she was so weak she could barely lift her little head. Anyone in such shape needs watching, but the mission was calling—hard. Pages needed writing, deadlines loomed, and Gunny Pop was there with his A-game. I made Ellie a little warm blanket nest on the floor by Nick and me, and we went back to work as if she wasn’t there. Somehow she slept comfortably through all the back and forth and give and take. Thank God neither of our wives witnessed this. The next day Ellie bounced back, as four-year-olds do, and we turned out all the pages we would have if the preschool had not called.

And then we were there. Nick was (and still is) surprised with how good his story is, but he will never say that out loud. It is simply not his way. For my part, I am astonished at how well we were able to tell it. Once a Marine is so true to Nick himself and the incredible events in his life that mark him as a father, a husband, a Marine, and damn good man.

Human truth is always bigger and better than the mortals privileged to work in its service.

Mike Steere
Los Angeles, California
Once a Marine