DIAGNOSIS
AT OUR MAINSIDE BARRACKS, in the drill instructor’s hut, I stand before Staff Sergeant Shelby. He’s pissed. I’ve just come from our company’s First Sergeant’s office, where he ordered me to go home on leave.
“What do you want, Workman?” Shelby spits. He has heard about what happened.
“Staff Sergeant Shelby, the first sergeant told me to tell you that I’m going on leave.”
His jaw sags and his eyes bulge. “What? Oh hell no! You just got here. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Yes I am.”
Shelby shakes his head. “You been over sucking the first sergeant’s dick, eh?”
“No.” I manage to keep the anger out of my voice.
“Go back to the first sergeant and tell him you’re not going home.”
I turn and leave. I walk through the squad bay for the front hatch. The recruits are assembled here, and I feel their eyes on me as I walk past. They’re curious and hostile and pitiless all at the same time.
I try not to care.
A few minutes later, I enter the first sergeant’s office again.
“Workman, what are you doing back here?”
“Staff Sergeant Shelby sent me back to tell you that I’m not going on leave.”
Now there’s a loaded question. I consider my response and decide to just lay it out. “Well, First Sergeant, he said I must have been up here sucking your dick to get leave so soon.”
“Goddamnit!” the first sergeant roars. “Look, go back and tell Staff Sergeant Edds that you’re leaving. Then get your shit and go home.”
I’m playing political ping-pong, and I’m the ball.
I return to the barracks, unsure of how Staff Sergeant Edds will receive me. Of all the DI’s, he and Allen have been the best to me since I got here. They’ve mentored me along, kept me pushing the envelope even when I thought I went too far.
But Shelby has always been a jerk. The first day I met him we sparked a negative flow between us. When he told me my job was to push at least two recruits into suicide attempts during my first couple of weeks, I thought he was kidding at first. Then one look in his eyes stifled any thought of laughter. He was dead serious, and it made me revile him.
Later, after I found the kid slashing his wrists and took him to the base hospital, Staff Sergeant Shelby approached me and offered warm congratulations. I’d just destroyed that kid. He had failed because of me, and that humiliation was so complete he was willing to end his life. I didn’t think the moment merited praise. In fact, if anything, I thought I’d become a pretty despicable human being for pushing him that far. Shelby didn’t think so. He patted me on the shoulder and told me, “I hear you’re really tearing things up. Damn fine job, Workman. Keep it up!”
I reach the front hatch again. Recruit eyes follow me to the DI hut. Inside, I find Staff Sergeant Edds. He greets me warily.
“Workman, how are you feeling?”
“I don’t really know. The first sergeant has told me to take leave.”
Before Edds can answer, Shelby appears. “Staff Sergeant Edds, please leave. I need to talk to Workman alone.”
As Edds departs, Shelby spins to face me. He stands six three with close-cropped brown hair. His face is meaty and ovoid. Again, he reminds me of the WWF wrestler Sergeant Slaughter—a caricature of a real drill instructor.
“Workman! Give me your belt and cover.”
The order surprises me. At Parris Island, only a first sergeant or a company commander can take a DI’s belt and cover.
He sees me hesitate. “Give me your FUCKING belt and campaign cover. NOW!”
I take them off and hand them over. He throws them onto a chair.
“I don’t have another cover, Staff Sergeant,” I say. Every Marine on base must wear something on his head. Right now, I’m probably the only Marine uncovered.
Shelby offers a sick little demi-grin. Anger flares inside me when I see his expression.
“Beautiful. Just beautiful,” he says with a full grin now, his voice almost guttural. The man is toying with me.
He steps to the doorway and whistles a recruit over. The young kid practically sprints to him. Shelby tears his eight-point cover off his head then dismisses him.
Holding the recruit’s cover, Shelby turns to me and gets right up into my face. “Here’s your fucking cover, Workman. That’s what you’re worth!” He slams it down over my head and jams the bill low across my nose. The sudden assault catches me totally by surprise. The cap is greasy with the recruit’s sweat. It stinks.
My fists clench. I burn with sudden rage. I try to lock my eyes with his, but he averts my gaze. Instead, he turns his back to me and steps away.
I stand there at parade rest in complete humiliation. The cap on my head a stigma worse than a scarlet letter.
Back in World War I, some British flying units would identify their cowards and then sew yellow fabric to their uniform tunic in front of a full formation. Everyone would see the coward’s humiliation, and he would be sent back to England that way. I wonder how many committed suicide rather than enduring that terrible indignity.
Shelby’s done the same thing to me with the cap. The recruits outside can’t help but know what’s going on. They can hear. They can see.
I’ve never been degraded by anyone. Not once in my life. Back home, I was venerated as a gridiron hero. People I didn’t know wanted to shake my hand.
Have I fallen that far?
“Workman, I don’t know who you think you are.” Shelby’s shouting right into my face now. His jowls are swaying with every word. I want to break his face.
“You come here, and you pull a zero. You failed us.”
My fist. I see my fist slamming into his nose. I want to feel the gristle as it splinters from my blow. I want to hear it crack, and I want to see him double over in pain. Then I’ll hit him again and again until he’s nothing but a bleeding supplicant, pleading for mercy. I won’t give him any.
I start glancing around the room for something to wield as a weapon, something I can use to break his face.
“You’re screwing over Staff Sergeant Edds and Sergeant Allen! They’re working their asses off. They’re the best DI’s in the company. And you’ve let them down.”
Shelby pauses for a reaction. I don’t give him the satisfaction.
“You know the Third Hat you replaced? He let them down, too. He flaked out. Now you pull this shit? How dare you!”
Flaked out? The man I replaced had to have hernia surgery.
“You’re just going to walk away?” Shelby demands. He’s so close to me now that I can smell his sour breath.
“I don’t want to go on leave,” I say. Every word is an effort of self-control.
He stares at me. My eyes go to his uniform. He has four stateside ribbons on his chest. Four. I’m getting chewed out by a candy-ass Marine who has avoided fleet duty his entire career. I never used to pay attention to how many ribbons a man wore back in my pre-Iraq days. Now I know they’re the measure of a Marine. Are you a POG (Person Other than Grunt) who hides stateside in wartime, or are you a warrior?
“You don’t think we’ve got issues? We all have issues, asshole! Do you think that gives us some pussy excuse to not do our jobs? Our duty?”
I say nothing. I want to do my duty, I tried my best. I have no answers for what happened.
“Look at Sergeant Allen! He’s been here almost three years. He never sees his wife. Never.”
Jessica. She’s still in Ohio. I haven’t seen my wife in six months. We all pay that price here.
“These men have worked their tails off. And you’ve been here for three weeks. Three lousy weeks. And you want time off?”
“I told you I don’t want time off. I am being told by the first sergeant to go home.”
Shelby ignores this and changes gear. “Let me ask you something, Workman.”
I say nothing.
“Would you pull this shit in Iraq?”
What do you know about Iraq? You fought the battle of Beaufort in the bars downtown while I was in Fallujah. I want to throw that in his face.
Discipline holds me in check. I say nothing.
“Would you let your Marines down in Iraq?”
Words form. My lips start to move. I crush them with one last effort of self-control.
Shelby gets right in my face again. Nose to nose, his eyes are bare inches from mine. “I know the real reason why you’re fucked up, Workman.”
He waits, studies my eyes.
“Oh yes, don’t think I don’t know. You dropped your gun, didn’t you?”
I want to seize his neck, crush his windpipe, and savor the moment of his fall. Instead, I’m a statue at parade rest, arms behind my back, fists clenched tight.
“You dropped your gun and Marines died. And that’s why you can’t man up and do your duty here.”
Five years into a global war, Staff Sergeant Shelby has yet to even deploy. And he has the right to say I got my Marines killed? Bilious hatred boils in me. I want to spit in his face.
He cocks his head, inspecting my eyes. I try to hide my hate.
“Well, what if we were in combat here, Workman? Would you let all of us down again?”
That shatters my self-control. I hear myself bellow, “FUCK YOU! If we were in combat I’d kill you myself!”
Shelby reels backward, surprised by the vehemence of my retort. He senses how close to the edge of violence he’s pushed me, and I glimpse fear in his eyes.
“Workman, get the fuck out of here now! Plant your ass on the bench outside my office and wait for further orders.”
I leave, still wearing the recruit’s cover as a hallmark of my degradation. A few minutes later, I find the bench outside Shelby’s office. It is painted red. I sit down and check my watch. Eight-thirty. All of this has happened before normal civilian work hours.
I sit and wait. And wait. My watch ticks past nine. Then nine-thirty. Shelby has left me here as punishment. I’m swollen with anger and resentment, twisted by humiliation.
My watch hits ten o’clock. I’ve sat for an hour and a half on this bench. People coming and going past Shelby’s office have eyed me in puzzlement. Why’s Workman sitting there with a recruit’s cover on his head?
Finally, at eleven-thirty, I pull out my cell phone. Jessica. I need to talk to Jess. I dial the number and she answers right away. “Hello?”
“Goddamn, Jess. I hate this fucking place. I hate these people.” I’m shaking so hard now that holding the phone becomes an effort.
“I … Jess. Something’s happening to me. …” I don’t know what to say. How do you explain to your wife a day like this one?
“Jeremiah, what’s the matter?” The concern in her voice is somehow reassuring. Despite everything we’ve done to hurt each other since Iraq, she still cares. There’s still that connection between us that carried us through high school and into adulthood together.
The office door next to me swings open. Shelby sticks his head out, looks down at me and barks, “Get off your phone, Workman. You’ve got an hour for lunch. Then get your ass back here and ride that bench.”
“Jess, I’ve got to go.”
“Wait, Jeremiah? Talk to me!”
I hang up. Instead of going to chow, I return to the first sergeant’s office.
“Workman?” he says, “Why are you still here?”
As I explain, the first sergeant grows furious. “Where’s your belt and campaign cover?”
I explain that, too. He reaches for his phone. A call later, and my belt and cover are returned to me. I tear off the recruit’s cover and put my own back on.
“Okay, go see the battalion sergeant major,” the first sergeant tells me. “I’ll give him a call and explain things.”
Will this never end? All I want to do now is leave. I want to put this place behind me and seal the memories of it in a vault that’s buried deep in the recesses of my mind.
But I can’t do that. I walk to the sergeant major’s office. He’s waiting for me with a scowl on his chiseled face. It is hard not to be intimidated by him. He’s a stern-looking man with a horseshoe haircut, a square jaw, and a look that says he doesn’t brook bullshit. I wonder what he’ll do with me, a malfunctioning Marine who’s made a scene on his watch.
“Come on, Workman,” he says with compassion in his voice. “I’ll take you down to the clinic.”
As we walk, he says, “You know, a lot of the Marines I served with have been wounded in Iraq.”
“I didn’t know that, Sergeant Major.” The sergeant major’s an old-school Marine. Going on twenty years in the Corps, he served in an elite recon battalion before coming to Parris Island.
“I just want you to know that you have nothing to be ashamed of, Sergeant Workman. Nothing. Unless you’ve been in it, there’s no way to understand what combat does to a man.”
He doesn’t say anything else, but that’s all I need to hear. He understands.
We reach the clinic, and the sergeant major says goodbye to me. He turns and leaves and I find myself alone again until an orderly ushers me into a small room.
A big blue recliner dominates the space. A small desk sits opposite. The walls are lined with books. I’m in a shrink’s office.
The realization crumbles the last remnants of my self-worth. The sergeant major must think I’ve gone crazy.
What’s worse, he may be right. Am I a lost cause, one of the walking dead from Fallujah?
“Welcome, Sergeant Workman.” I look up from my misery to see a navy doctor smiling warmly at me. “I’m Doctor Goldberg.”
“Hi Doc,” is all I can say.
He slides past me and takes a seat behind his desk. He opens a file and produces a pen. “Tell me what’s on your mind today?”
What are my options here? I can hide everything and lie. I can tell him what happened at the chow hall. Or, I can tell him everything and see what he makes of it all.
I’m too tired and too depressed for games. I uncork everything that’s been bottled up inside me these past months. The words flow like pus from a suppurating wound. I can’t even look at him as I speak, but I can tell he’s listening because I hear his pen scratching notes in the file he’s opened.
I focus my eyes on a book resting on the shelf nearest me. The spine reads DSM IV. It is a mental illness handbook. I bet when I leave, he’ll crack that sucker open and conclude I’m a nutcase.
A dam has burst. Even if I wanted to stop the words, I don’t have enough left to do so. They tumble out. Fallujah, my brothers-in-arms. Jessica. The house. I talk for over an hour straight, never looking at Doc Goldberg.
Finally, the flow ebbs. I hold my head in my hands and say, “That’s about it.”
Silence captures the room. At last, I gather the strength and look at the doc.
He’s rigid behind his desk. Jaw open. Pen on the desk where he’d dropped it who knows how long ago.
“That good?” I offer weakly.
“Sergeant Workman,” Goldberg says slowly. “You have no business being a drill instructor.”
“To tell you the truth, Doc, I don’t really want to be a Marine either.”
Did I just say that? It fell out of me without warning. Is it true? What would I do if I wasn’t a Marine?
“We can talk about that later. But for now, I’m going to start the paperwork to get you reassigned.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re also going to get you on some medication, but that’ll need to be done through the Beaufort Naval Hospital. I’ll make sure you get an appointment over there right away.”
“What’s the matter with me, Doc?”
He looks surprised at the question. “Sergeant Workman, you’ve got post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“PTSD? You’re kidding me.”
My mind jumps back two years, when I was still with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. I was just about to deploy to Iraq, and one of the units we were replacing had just returned from its tour. One morning, I saw these men gathered together, smoking quietly in exclusive huddles. Four here. Five there. As I walked past them, I studied their faces. They looked hollowed out. Gaunt. Off.
I remember thinking that I’d never end up that way. I was better than that. Better than they were. All that PTSD nonsense was for pussies who couldn’t hack a warrior’s life. The very acronym was a stigma.
But who do you see when you look in the mirror now, Jeremiah? Who do you see?
I see a gaunt and broken man who wears the same visage as those veterans I scorned back before I endured what they endured.
I have become one of them.
I have always been tough. If it hurts, you man up and drive on. That’s what got me through sports in high school. That’s what got me through life with my mom and an abusive stepfather. That toughness carried me to the Marines. It forms the basis of my pride and self-esteem. Up until this moment, I thought I could take anything.
Have I lived with a false identity all these years?
I wrestle with these questions as Doc Goldberg fills out some paperwork. When he finishes, he hands it to me and says, “We’ll talk about your future as a Marine in a few weeks, okay?”
“Aye, sir. Thank you.”
“For now, I want you to go home and get some rest.”
I leave the clinic. Marines are not supposed to be frail—mentally or physically. And only the frail suffer from PTSD, right?
Right?
Walking to my Tacoma, I pull out my cell phone and dial Jess.
“Jeremiah? Are you okay?” she asks the moment she answers the phone.
“Honey, I have to tell you something.”
“What? You sounded so strange earlier.”
I suck air and wait. How do you tell the one person you love most in the world that your brain is messed up? How do you make that confession?
“Jessica, I just saw a doctor.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Well, yeah. In a way.”
Another long breath. I search for the right words.
“Go on,” she urges. “What’s the matter? Jeremiah, talk to me.”
“Jess, the doc diagnosed me with PTSD this afternoon.”
A long pause. Oh shit. This is going to end it. She doesn’t need a damaged man for a husband.
Her response catches me totally by surprise. “What’s PTSD?”