SCORCHED EARTH
WEIGHT ON MY back. I’m stooped so low all I can see is the gray-black asphalt of this forsaken Fallujah street.
Desert heat pounds down on me. My head spins, ears ring, my lungs are still full of smoke.
“HEBERT??” I’m frantic now.
No reply.
I crab-walk sideways and forward, my brother hanging from the strap I’ve thrown over my shoulder. How far from the vehicles are we? I’ve got to look, but the last time I tried it cost me.
Kevlar heavy on my head, neck aching from its weight. I’m not used to moving with my head down, and it has taxed my muscles. I raise my head. The world tilts, but this time, I don’t heave and puke.
Thirty feet away stands our seven-ton truck. Inside the cab, one of our transport guys sits and watches me, one arm resting on the driver’s door.
Why is he just sitting there? His sloth enrages me. I scrabble a few more steps and shout, “Why the FUCK aren’t you helping me?”
The transport guy looks stricken. He jumps from the cab and runs for me. A bullet whines overhead. He sprints for me and pulls Hebert off my back. His head flops to one side, carried by the weight of his helmet.
“Doc! Doc!” I scream with a hoarse, smoke-seared voice.
Together, the truck driver and I pull Hebert to safety behind one of our Humvees. Wherever the sniper is, he can’t see us here.
Doc Sunny’s working on somebody’s arm when we arrive. At first, I assume he’s treating Levine.
“Doc, you gotta help Hebert!” I shout again. Doc turns away from his patient, and I see it isn’t Levine at all. He’s working on Richeson, one of our missing Marines. His cammies are bathed in blood, and his arm’s been wrapped like a mummy. He looks dazed and shares Hebert’s thousand-yard stare.
I haven’t seen Richeson since we first jumped out of our rigs to search this neighborhood. He was with Kraft’s squad. I wonder if he was among the missing who had been trapped on the second floor. If that’s the case, maybe all our Marines are safe now.
Doc finishes up with Richeson for the moment and rushes over to Hebert. He leans down and checks his pulse.
“He’s alive,” I hear Doc say. A flood of relief follows his words.
Doc turns Hebert onto his stomach and starts examining his wounds. Like Levine, he’s lost a lot of blood. I can see he’s been hit all along the back of his legs. Shrapnel? Bullet wounds? Maybe both. I move away to the back of another Humvee, where I start stocking up on fresh M16 magazines. Kraft stands nearby, stuffing mags in pouches. Down the street, the firefight sounds like it has grown and spread, like we’re fighting an entire neighborhood of insurgents.
“Hey, Workman?”
I turn around and see Levine leaning against the wall of a nearby house. He’s only a few feet away, looking Casper-white and gaunt. Blood flecks his face and darkens his flak vest. Doc wrapped his wounded arm and put it in a sling. It hangs across his chest.
“Workman!” he shouts again. His voice rivals mine with its smoke-induced raspiness.
“Levine, are you okay?”
“Come here?”
I stuff another magazine into a pouch on my flak vest and run over to my friend. Before our command ordered us into the city, we spent three weeks just outside of it, supporting our fellow Marines with our 81mm mortars. At night, we slept beside a railroad embankment that served as cover for all the rockets and mortar shells the Muj fired back at us.
Levine and I slept side by side every night, talking about the future, home, women.
It seemed like our long talks always started the same way. Levine would take a long drag on a cigarette, blow the smoke straight up in the air so he looked like a steam locomotive working up a grade, and say, “Workman, we’re hidin’ behind these damn tubes.”
“Come off it, Levine. We’re killing our share,” I’d tell him.
“Alls I’m sayin’ is that I joined up to kill fuckin’ bad guys. These mortars? It ain’t personal enough. I want to see who I kill. You know?”
“You’re nuts.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I lost people on 9-11. You know? I feel like a coward.”
“Levine. Shut up. You’re no coward.”
“Until we get into the city, that’s the way I’ll feel.”
I always wondered about Levine. Was he all talk? Nobody else in the company had his level of bloodlust. He’d talk about looking his enemy in the eyes as he killed them until I couldn’t take it anymore. It made me wonder if his bravado actually concealed a yellow streak.
Now I stare at him, a pizza-place owner turned thirtysomething Marine grunt, covered in his own blood. He’s always had a civilian’s heart: independent, defiant of authority, and totally incapable of putting up with rear-echelon chickenshit, like shaving and keeping his shirtsleeves rolled down.
This man is no coward. He more than proved that today.
Levine raises his unwounded arm. He’s got a smoke in his hand and he takes a long drag from it. He exhales almost into my face.
“Workman, gimme a pistol.”
“What? What the fuck for?” I reply.
“I’m going back in.”
“I don’t have a pistol, Levine.”
“Go find me a fuckin’ pistol, then.”
I notice that he’s bleeding through his bandage. His lips are tinged blue.
“Stay here,” is all I can think of to tell him.
“Fuck that.” He turns to the crowd that our platoon’s become and shouts, “I need a pistol! Somebody gimme a nine mil!”
Our battalion sergeant major appears out of the crowd. He must have just shown up. I hope he brought reinforcements—and tanks.
“Sergeant Major … gimme your pistol!” Levine shouts fiercely.
The sergeant major stops and regards our Bronx Marine. “Levine, no fuckin’ way. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Fuckin’ A, I am! I got one good arm.” Levine pushes off the wall and starts to hobble back toward the house. He only gets a few feet when the sergeant major stops him.
“Come on, Levine. You stay here. That’s an order, Marine.”
At that moment, Corporal Levine becomes my personal hero. No man I’ve ever met has this lion’s heart.
Our friends lead him back toward the casualty collection point. I hear him shouting the entire way, “Just gimme a goddamned pistol! I can still fight! Doc, hand me your nine mil!”
Doc Sunny shakes his head and doesn’t bother to reply.
Hebert’s moving now. Doc’s busy bandaging his legs. Maybe we can all make it through this nightmare. This bloom of hope feels like a battle dressing to the heart.
I gather some more ammunition. Kraft has filled his pouches with fragmentation grenades. We’re going to get back into this fight and end it once and for all.
How much do I have left for this? My leg throbs with pain. I haven’t bothered Doc about it—he’s been way too busy with wounded Marines. Everything seems so floaty, surreal, and distant, the same way I used to feel after getting concussed on the football field.
My flesh feels burned, bruised, and sunbaked. I pluck a tiny sliver of shrapnel out of the back of my left hand. It’s left a jagged, singed hole in my Nomex glove. My stomach still feels like I’ve got the worst case of the flu imaginable. We’ve been fighting for over two hours in hundred-plus heat, running and fighting, getting grenaded and suffering from smoke inhalation. I’ve never felt this level of complete fatigue, utter exhaustion. Every moment, however small, becomes a sheer act of will. If it were up to me, I’d collapse back here with Richeson and Hebert, flip the cap off my camelback’s nipple, and just suck it dry before falling into a coma-deep sleep.
But if I did that, I’d never be able to look Levine in the eyes again.
How much can one human being take? How much can a single Marine endure?
I’m tapped out. Done. Smoked. But I will go back, pride and discipline will triumph over the frailties of the flesh.
A rash of gunfire erupts down the street. Gardiola and his crew in their support-by-fire position suddenly hammer away at a target. I hope it’s the sniper that was shooting at Hebert and me.
I move down the street to get a better view. As I pass the back of a 998 Humvee, I notice boots. Somebody’s lying in the back. What’s that all about? I drop my weapon, find the hand-grip, and raise a weary leg until my boot slides onto the step just below the tailgate. I heave myself up and onto the bed.
There are two Marines here.
The sun beats down with relentless fury. I turn my face to it, and feel its raw power against my face. Its sheer intensity whites out my vision.
Don’t look down, Jeremiah.
Why not?
I open my eyes. My vision flares, then returns to normal. Over the back of the cab, I can see some of our men starting to organize for another push down the street. My gaze falls lower until I’m looking at the men at my feet.
“Raleigh?”
How’d he get here? Last I saw he was on the second floor. He looks like he’s asleep. One arm’s cocked over his face to shield his eyes from the desert sun.
“Raleigh?” More concern in my voice now. When I get no response, I look over my shoulder and call for Doc Sunny.
Doc’s still working on Hebert. He pauses and peers up at me, but says nothing.
What the hell?
“Doc! Doc! Get over here, now!”
“Don’t worry about it, Workman,” I hear him call back in a strangely strained voice.
“Doc, we’ve got wounded men back here! They need help, goddamnit!”
“Workman, they’re okay.”
I look down.
Raleigh’s lips are twisted down. He looks like he’s in terrible pain.
“Raleigh? You okay, bro?” I’m puzzled. Maybe he’s unconscious, or sleeping.
I reach down and pull his arm. It sloughs off his face and flops to the truck bed. I see that his eyes are closed. He is asleep. I pull my Nomex glove off and tap his cheek with my right hand.
Nothing. It feels cold and slack.
“Doc! For God’s sake, get over here now! Raleigh needs you.”
“He’s okay, Workman.”
“DOC!”
“Workman, he’s fucking dead!”
His words don’t sink in at first. Then their implication sends a shock wave through me that’s so profound I’m rooted in place by it. Something stirs deep within me. A tumbler clicks into place and a vault door falls open. Pure, toxic grief spills out. It burns away all that I once was, and all that I hoped to be, like acid to the face.
“Raleigh! Raleigh!”
He’s fucking dead.
I want to see Raleigh as he was just a few days ago when he threw that grenade into the well. His eyes were bright, grin wide and puckish, a jaunty step in his walk. He kept us laughing, even when we found ourselves surrounded by the worst of sights.
His face is still and pain-stamped; no grin will ever stripe his face again.
This can’t be happening. My mind bucks and kicks against what I see. The finality, the total destruction of this free-spirited kid who called me his friend, sends my brain misfiring. A fuse blows, then another. I can’t process anything, save the molten rivers of grief searing me from the inside out.
There is another Marine here.
I don’t want to look.
I have to find out who it is.
My eyes shift. I see a head turned to one side, like the man has tucked himself against Raleigh’s shoulder. I cannot see his face.
Who is this?
A bullet has shattered his temple. Blood covers the side of his head. He died instantly, but that is no comfort. None at all.
His nametape reads HILLENBURG.
Oh God, not Eric.
He had only a few more months to go before his enlistment was up. Five more months and he would’ve been in civilian clothes, back home with his family and going to college. Instead, he lies next to his brother, Raleigh Smith, his head a picture of horror.
More fuses blow. The flow of grief suddenly collides with a paroxysm of pain. The two combust and flare with such intensity that it overloads every sensation, every neural pathway, like a string of lights hit with a power surge.
I stand over my fallen brothers, boots weighing three tons each, legs encased in concrete. I am a statue, paralyzed by what has happened inside me.
The overload fades. The cocktail of grief and agony morphs into molten rage. I throw my head back and scream as the last of me is burned away.
I break the paralysis and leap from the 998, screaming and howling as I barrel down the street one last time. I am a dead man running now, nothing left but a scorched earth soul.