SETBACKS
“JEREMIAH? ARE YOU going to get off the couch today?”
“Jess, just leave me alone.”
“Come on, you’re starting to stink.”
“I feel like I’m in Fallujah,” I say, rubbing the three day’s worth of stubble on my jaw.
“Yeah, well, you’re not.”
“Thanks for the input.”
She leaves the house to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. I haven’t been out of the house in four days. I haven’t showered in five.
Today is the second anniversary of our firefight in Fallujah. December 23, 2006. All I can do is wonder how Raleigh’s family can enjoy the holiday. I know I can’t.
The families learned their Marines were dead on Christmas Day.
Christmas. The Corps sent contact teams to their doors on Christmas morning. From here on out, the families will always associate trimmed trees and unwrapped presents with the death of their sons and brothers.
I hate Christmas.
I haven’t gone into the museum, but they understand. They know I face a battle every day. Sometimes I gain ground, sometimes I lose ground.
For the past few weeks, the stairwell nightmare has returned. I wake up in cold sweats, Jess wide-eyed and fearful next to me. Apparently, I scream and thrash when I have the dream, and a few times I’ve hit her in my sleep. Because of that, I’ve taken to sleeping in a different room for now. The last thing I want to do is harm my pregnant wife.
I close my eyes and see Kraft again. He shakes me awake. “Merry Christmas, dude.” His voice is dead.
Mine sounds the same. “Yeah, Merry fucking Christmas.”
The season of love and joy, Fallujah-style.
It took me weeks to find out what happened on December 23rd. Hebert finally explained it all to me one night. I’d been sent back to Camp Baharia to talk to a retention specialist. I ended up having to spend the night, so I bunked down in Hebert’s hooch. He was still pretty torn up and could barely hobble around. In fact, the Corps finally sent him back to the States for further treatment after we talked. He was loathe to leave us.
Levine tried to stay in theater as well. For three weeks, he fended off the Bravo Surgical types. He wanted to get back in the fight and be with weapon’s company. Ultimately, he lost this one and got sent home. I heard he was medically discharged and went back to school somewhere in Southern California.
That night, we slept in bunk beds like kids at a sleep over. Through the darkness, Hebert filled in the missing blanks.
Kraft’s squad entered the house, just as we went into the one across the street. Half the men started to clear the downstairs, while Richeson, Hebert, Smith, Phillips, and Doc Sunny climbed the stairs to check out the second floor. When they got to the foyer, they turned right to clear the first room.
Inside, they found sleeping mats stacked almost to the ceiling against one wall. Bedding and blankets were piled nearby. On another wall, a full bank of what looked like lockers dominated another side of the room. As our guys went to go search the lockers, concealed insurgents boiled out around them. Some had been hiding in the lockers. Others were hunkered down in the bedding and between or behind the sleeping mats. A sudden, Old West–style gunfight broke out where everyone shot from the hip.
Outnumbered, Smith, Hebert, Phillips, and Richeson shot their way out of the first room and took cover inside the foyer. That’s when the insurgents in the second room opened up with AK’s and that goddamned machine gun.
They were pinned down in the foyer when I came up the stairs and saw Raleigh. Hebert was in a corner, and I never saw him, but he saw me. As we talked, he thanked me several times for coming after him.
What else would we have done?
That first grenade the insurgents tossed into the foyer did most of the damage. After it exploded, the five men crawled through the outside door and got onto the balcony. Phillips covered them with a SAW and laid fire down on both rooms. Hebert was helping Richeson, who’d been wounded in both arms by the grenade. Hebert was hit in the back of the legs, so things were pretty desperate.
Raleigh Smith staggered onto the balcony, took three steps, and fell over dead. He’d taken shrapnel to the heart and had just enough life in him to get out of the foyer. There was nothing anyone could have done for him.
Phillips held off the Muj while Hebert and Richeson and Eric Hillenburg looked for a way out. Just then, Gardiola called down to them from the roof. He’d been able to get into the house next door and jumped from rooftop to rooftop with several other of our men. They’d been fighting a close range battle of their own, shooting into windows and tossing grenades at the enemy on the second floor. Major D. showed up and fought alongside them.
Hillenburg and Hebert handed Raleigh’s body up to Gardiola. The fight suddenly intensified, so just to get away, Hebert and Hillenburg dropped Richeson off the balcony. Hebert went after him, and Hillenburg climbed onto the roof with Gardiola.
That’s when the insurgents charged Phillips. At that crucial moment, his SAW jammed, leaving him defenseless. He tried to close the door and hold them off, but they pushed their way through and from mere inches away, riddled him with automatic AK fire. Hebert said he’d been shot forty-two times.
Exactly what happened to Hillenburg remains a mystery. I heard different stories, but it sounded like the same sniper that almost killed Hebert and me in the street got him. Apparently, the sniper had built a hide atop a mosque down the street and could see most of the neighborhood around the house.
Hebert saw the Muj up close and a lot better than I did. He told me they were nicely dressed and wore expensive watches. We later found out that most of them were Saudi Arabian foreign fighters.
Hours pass; I think only of Fallujah and my men. I wonder about their families, and how everyone’s getting along. I should call the ones who survived, but I don’t know what to say. Merry Christmas just doesn’t cut it anymore, you know?
Jess returns home from her shopping trip. “Still not off the couch?” she asks.
I stand up and retreat to my war room. It is our extra bedroom, actually. I’ve filled it with photos of my time in Iraq, the certificates and diplomas of the schools I’ve graduated from since joining the Corps, and the coins I’ve been given. All these things are tangible reminders of the successes I’ve had in my life. They remind me that jump school is just the first step on my way back from rock bottom.
I will continue to achieve, and I will pick myself up again. But for now, I’ll take comfort in this room, surrounded by these symbols of achievement, and I will remember my brothers. I owe them that on this blood-soaked anniversary.
Long into the night, I stare at the ceiling and work through my grief.