Frank Castle, On The Record
Karen Page, for Noisey/Vice
Just for a minute, try to be Frank Castle. You’re 19 years old and standing in hot sand. The sun is beating down on your neck. There is noise – yelling, gunfire. The only thing that you know for sure is that you’re surrounded by an enemy that wants you dead.
A year ago, in the recruitment office, someone told you that the Marine Corps will break you down, but build you back up – stronger than ever before. You watched the Twin Towers go down from your childhood home. Stronger than before sounds pretty good.
You survive the first round in the desert. You excel, even. Being a Marine is something you’re good at. You understand the consequences of being a Marine. They’re your comfort, when you’re rolling down Iraqi highways in an open-top humvee you’ve had just four months to train with. You understand that there are consequences that come with laziness, lack of foresight, bad intel, and cowardice (or, as Castle himself puts it, “being a chickenshit”). You know that those consequences come for the soldiers who make stupid decisions. So, you just have to make smart ones.
Except someone else flips the switch. Those consequences will never come for General Mattis, nor for the commander that Castle refers to only by his call-sign, Godfather. Instead, those consequences will come for Frank Castle in January of 2004. They will come at night, when Frank – a Captain in the United States Marine Corps – and the men serving under and alongside him, will not be able to see in the dark because battalion HQ didn’t bring enough batteries to run their night-vision devices.
They will come in the shape of a bullet, shot from a gun belonging to Charlie Company – the brother to Frank’s own Bravo Company. In the middle of the night on January 10, 2004, Frank Castle will be pronounced dead. And, nearly a full minute later, his heart will start beating again. He will be 22 years old.
i’ve got the mic (if you’ve got the mosh pit)
chapter 2: summer 2017
titsay
kianamaiart
jacobvanloon
jbbartram-illu
baratheonpilled
2087
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
germansingergirl
