A Rambo-Oriented Hoosier Sees War With ‘80s Eyes

A recent afternoon and the living is easy in Southern California. Marty Shanahan has the entire outdoor basketball court to himself and is doing one of the things he likes most in life: shooting hoops. He makes a spin move to the basket and hits the shot. He goes out 15 feet and hits a jumper. He dribbles between his legs and practices another move to the basket.

He came out of the small Indiana town of Hebron and, like lots of other Hoosier kids, has been shooting baskets since he was 3 years old. He plays pickup games almost every night on this court across from Edison High School in Huntington Beach. He’s got some other things going too. He left Indiana after high school and a stint in a Chicago steel mill, deciding to give California a shot. Now, at 21, he’s got a job in a sporting goods store, a fiancee and a baby on the way.

Shooting hoops alone, he says, is “almost like meditation.” It gives a guy a chance to think about things.

These days, he says, he’s been doing a lot of thinking about the Persian Gulf crisis. It doesn’t take much prompting: The Marines from Camp Pendleton who used to regularly show up to play way up here in Fountain Valley haven’t been around for a while.

“I’ve got about 15 friends over in the gulf, just from Indiana,” he says. “It’s a scary situation. This war ain’t going to be no little war, like Panama. This one is going to be decided with nuclear. That guy (Saddam Hussein) is totally insane.”

There’s a part of him, he says, that feels guilty about not being there with them.

“The last time I saw them was on graduation night from high school (in 1988). There are a bunch of guys over there from the basketball team.”

Most of the guys signed up with the Marines because life in a small Midwest town doesn’t offer many opportunities, he says. Doing a military hitch is a good way to save enough money to go to college. Instead, his buddies find themselves staring at war.

“I’d go if I wasn’t getting married and didn’t have a baby on the way. I’d have nothing to lose. My parents would be all I have, and my Mom and Dad would be 100% behind me. I’d definitely go. I’d fight for my country.”

I mentioned that when I was college age, most of my friends were trying to find ways to stay out of Vietnam. He reminds me that guys of his age have grown up during the ‘80s watching Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“I would have signed up for Vietnam,” he says. “I never grew up with war like people did in the ‘70s and ‘60s, but I’ve seen films of the protest demonstrations. If they didn’t like it, why didn’t they go over there and help out and help get it over with? Don’t sit here and smoke dope and get high. Go help somebody. To me, they were bums. That’s how I look at it.”

I asked where he developed his patriotic bent. He’s not sure but remembers watching TV programs about the Vietnam War--documentaries showing real footage. “Watching Vietnam movies caught my eye when I was about 12 or 13 years old. Seeing guys going over there straight out of high school and then seeing things like booby traps. That was the kind of thing we played when we were playing war as kids, and then to see the real thing and see guys lose their legs. That’s when it hit me. I would have said, ‘I’ve got to go help out.’ ”

He’s convinced that a war with Iraq wouldn’t last long. “I figure we are going to go to war. I say it’s going to last a month, at most.”

No doubt it would be a U.S. victory? “No doubt,” he says. “Nobody has the weapons and training we do.”

Despite his sense of duty, Shanahan says he has no thirst for war: “Watching movies, especially Vietnam movies, is pretty scary. Just the thought of having grenades or bullets hit you. . . . I lie in bed and think what happens to all the guys who die.”

And while he says he would gladly fight for his country, he also assumes that he would be afraid. His grandfather once told him it’s the cocky guys in war who get killed.

“I feel really sorry for those guys over there. We’ve got it made over here, and they get to suffer. Life’s a bitch over there, I bet. I think about them a lot and say a little prayer for them at night. That’s about all you can do.”

I let him get back to his hoops. He’s got the fluid shot of a kid who’s played the game a long time. It’s too bad that young kids have to go into combat, I suggested. “I figure it’s like a basketball game,” Shanahan says. “When you’re called into the game, you go in and do the best you can.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.