OBLITERATION
SUNLIGHT ON MY FACE.
Machine guns in my ear.
The once-manicured lawn, now torn and gashed, has been ruined beyond repair.
Major D. pulls me through the doorway and over the front porch. My boot heels scrape across the concrete as he shouts at me to hold on over the din of battle.
Bullets stitch the grass. Hunks of turf fly around us. We’re under intense fire. Major D. lets go of me, spins and hook-shots a grenade over the balcony on the second floor.
“That’ll teach ’em!”
“You have no clue, sir.”
“Hold on, Marine!”
He grabs my flak vest again and tugs me across the lawn. I’m so weak, so nauseous, that all I can do is watch my limp legs trail behind us.
Major D. staggers as a bullet ricochets into his leg. He keeps going and doesn’t let go of me.
Brothers.
Major D. probably doesn’t even know my name. But he knows I’m a Marine, and it is enough. He risks his life for me, just as I did for Hebert. That’s how the brotherhood works: If you wear the uniform and stand against this whirlwind, there will always be a connection so deep that men will give everything for one another.
Major D.’s the best of us. He is a father, a husband, a good and educated man. One bullet and his kids lose their dad. That’s what he’s laid on the line for me.
We get to the wall, still under fire. Major D. limps along until we reach the gate, where a hulking M1 tank now sits in the driveway instead of a Humvee. Its gigantic 120mm gun barrel is pointed right at the second-floor balcony.
A moment later, we’re out on the street and Major D. pulls me to my feet.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“Listen, you guys did the best you can do,” he says to me, Kraft, and Snell, who’ve just shown up after covering our withdrawal.
“What about Raleigh?”
I’d always had a touch-and-go relationship with Raleigh Smith. He kept us laughing, and there was no better mortar man in the battalion, but trying to get him to do anything else could be like pulling teeth. He’d duck out and disappear whenever a tough job came up. I remember getting particularly pissed at him once when we had to fill hundreds of sandbags right after we arrived in Anbar province. He wanted nothing to do with it, and vanished every chance he got.
None of that shit mattered. I know that now. All that counted was what that kid had in him during a fight.
I never got to tell him what an incredible mortar man he was.
Major D. leaves me with Kraft and Snell. The M1 cooks off a main gun round at point-blank range right into our former battlefield. A funeral pyre of smoke shoots up over the outer wall and coils skyward over the house.
We stagger for our vehicles. I’m in terrible shape, but at least I’m on my feet. I start throwing up again, and I know I’ve got to get some water in me soon or I’ll go down with heat stroke.
Twenty minutes later, Major D. pulls us back out of the neighborhood. My platoon withdraws on foot. We are bloodied, black, and charred, so spent that we struggle to carry our weapons. Nobody says a word as the wreckage of Weapon’s Company, 3/5 Marines shuffles through the shattered city’s streets.
We find a house with a mostly undamaged yard and collapse in the dirt. Somebody hands me a cigarette, and I take it eagerly. Soon, we’re all smoking in near-total silence. We’re a broken bunch, our uniforms filthy, our bodies wracked by shrapnel and strain. After a short break, we start checking out our own wounds.
I drop my pants and see a hole in my right leg. I’ve got another one in my arm and elbow. My trigger hand has a small chunk of shrapnel sticking out of it.
The other men are hurt even worse. Doc Sunny looks us over as the sound of incoming jet aircraft grows in the distance.
“They’re gonna nuke the neighborhood! Everyone down!” somebody yells. We take cover in the yard of a nearby house.
The jets swoosh overhead. As they pull up, the ground quakes as their bombs explode on the house we fought to clear for over three hours. Another pass, more bombs strike the neighborhood. Bits of rich Iraqi housing material tumble around us. A brick plummets down between Kraft and me. Bits of wood and concrete fall like rain. I lie facedown in the dirt, hands cupping my face.
You’re still alive.
Another pass and the strike planes release a fresh salvo of bombs. The ground seethes as they explode.
All I wanted was to bring everyone home.
We didn’t do it. We couldn’t do it.
We failed.
The cataclysm continues. The attack jets smother the house and the surrounding neighborhood with bombs. When they finally finish, there’s nothing left but heaps of rubble.