Six years before the selection process
In 1961 Carl Jorgenson was eighteen.
That night he wore the gala uniform of the marines, the one with the dark blue jacket, the pants with the red line and the white hat.
He was a little shorter than average, but really muscular.
Over the wide, big chest his face showed Nordic traits: crystal blue eyes, light skin, blond crew-cut hair. People often asked him if his parents were German but he - having no idea - always used to said no.
He adjusted the perfectly fit uniform on himself.
When he was ready to go out, he checked himself again in the mirror.
He did it many times before going out.
He couldn't believe he was so elegant.
If there was something he had really learnt in the army, it was how to properly clothe himself: to shine his shoes, to polish the buckle of his belt, to correctly place the hat on his head and so on.
He spent all of his childhood and adolescence cutting wood inside his father's sawmill: a life of dust, dirt, sweat and hard work. A life spent wearing (and being) poor.
And this partly explained why the guy was so built and muscular, and why that night he was so happy to be so elegant for the first time.
He had never been so dolled up before.
It was the navy that made him feel for the very first time the pleasant feeling of wearing something really valuable. Being dressed up to the nines made him feel handsome and important, and that made him feel up to the world, which was a new thing for him.
He had spent years dreaming of getting out from that sawmill and never going back there, and with the marines he would probably achieve it.
Maybe, he was really going to master his own life, at last.
Jorgenson wanted to be independent, and had been dreaming of being from all of his life.
His father, despite the financial difficulties of a sawmill that didn't always go so well, never deprived his son of anything: food, medicines, clothes.
He always gave him (almost) everything except school, because Jorgenson senior really couldn't afford it. His firm would have gone bankrupt.
Friedrich Jorgenson really needed his son to work.
So, as soon as he could, he pulled him out of school and made him do small jobs.
But this was just the beginning, and didn't last that long.
After one month he immediately charged his son with harder works, so - a couple of years later - inside Carl's mind it was as if he had spent all of his life working as hard as slave, since he was a child.
And in the end, that was the reason that made him join the navy.
After five years spent working as a slave and eating like a horse, at fifteen Carl looked as if he was already twenty: he was as thickset, big and muscular as a football player, and he couldn't stand that kind of life anymore.
The navy would give him something more than a sawmill job.
After so many years spent as a worker and a beggar (often without a proper shirt for mass on Sunday) when that evening he arrived in front of the marines ballroom, his heart really skipped.
He was inside a spell.
The lights were as suffused as candles.
The guest-book was lying on a wooden rest and everyone had to sign it, him too.
The ballroom had long blue, red and white ribbons hanging from the ceiling, and it was full of men in uniform and women of all ages: husbands with wives, young men with their dates.
The women were all in evening dress, and Korea's veterans showed off large panels of flashes.
While looking at every single one of them, Jorgenson got himself lost.
At least two of them were wearing the WWII VICTORY badge.
There was a General too: Jorgenson clearly spotted the two little stars on the shoulders of that unknown old man. He didn't know who he was but that – fuck! - that was a real general. Carl wasn't a big shots expert, but he surely had to be the guest of honor.
Then he saw her.
A black haired girl, wearing a pearl-white dress, roughly of the same age he was.
She had to be someone's daughter, because she was arm to arm with no one.
He stared at her still as a baby... And she immediately realized it.
She pulled up her skirt a little bit and went to him.
“What's your name?” she said.
“Carl”
“Hi Carl. My name is Mary”
“Hi Mary”
“My uncle is Williams, the sergeant. He is an instructor. Maybe you know him”
Jorgenson smiled.
“Oh yeah I know him. I know him very well”
She laughed and as she did it he immediately fell in love with her.
Love at first sight, and forever.
Carl Jorgenson - who a year later would be given the call sign of 'Grizzly' - fell in love with Mary Williams just like that, without any chance of avoiding it.
It was just like a fall from a high cliff : he fell for her and from then on, he never got her out of his head evermore, for all his life.
“Do you want to dance?” she said.
As they approached the center of the ball-floor, Carl felt hypnotized. He felt a thousand eyes on him and he thought:
Is this real? Is everything real?
The ballroom spun around them while they danced.
Is this really happening? Are these people really seeing us?
But it was true.
And even when they got out of the ballroom to be alone, it was still true.
“Your parents...”
“My father is probably flattering some bigwig and when my father is working, I don't exist anymore. Don't worry Carl, no one has seen us going out”
As they arrived under the moon – and the music was now low and far away - they found themselves alone under the stars, in the silence of the singing crickets.
Jorgenson then kissed her and that was also his first kiss.
And in that moment he understood that the most beautiful thing in the world was his.
His forever.
When the broke away from each other, she looked at him with reddened eyes and cheeks.
Then Carl felt as if he was drowning in those liquid eyes, inside all of that water, while the darkness embraced both of them.
He needed so much that Mary that he felt he would die without her... And he didn't even know her.
Jorgenson brought his face close to hers again and then they both stood still for a while just like that, both in silence and so close that they couldn't focus on each other faces.
“I love you” he said.
“I love you too, Carl Jorgenson” replied Mary.