But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
When the convoy of trucks pulls up at Kunjak, I swing the armored door open and am met by the smell of burning trash from our always-smoldering burn pit, stale urine, and months of accumulated sweat and filth. I’m home. Several members of my squad are waiting and welcome me with hugs, handshakes, and slaps on my ass.
“How’d you like Camp Cupcake, Sarge?” Roche teases. Serge joins in and jokes about how it looks like I’ve eaten well. I have.
My squad fills me in on what happened while I was away. Three Marines from another squad were sent to replace Roche (who has since returned to duty), Orr, and Chun, the trio who were injured along with me. There have been some firefights during patrols. One of the replacement Marines was shot in the forearm in the same alley where we were pinned down on that first patrol with Fin. The bullet severed an artery and shattered the bone, but the Marine survived.
After a few minutes of catching up with my men, Staff Sergeant Gonzalez, the gruff Texan, pulls me aside. “You good to go?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say.
Gonzalez tells me he will be leaving Kunjak immediately and that I will assume command of the post. I’m stunned. Command of an entire outpost such as Kunjak is generally the work of an officer, or at least someone with a higher rank than sergeant. I worry that I’m not experienced enough under the best of circumstances, much less with my head still fuzzy and incomplete. Out here there’s always the dread of making a mistake and getting one of my men hurt or killed. Now that fear is more acute than ever, and the worry about making a mistake and being punished for it is part of what makes life miserable in a place like Afghanistan.
“You fuck up, they scream at you,” Ben Fountain writes in his Iraq war novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. “You fuck up some more and they scream at you some more, but overlying all the small, petty, stupid, basically foreordained fuckups looms the ever-present prospect of the life-fucking fuckup, a fuckup so profound and all encompassing as to crush all hope of redemption.”
I can’t bear the thought of such a fuckup. I choose instead to see my new role as an opportunity. The outpost needs work to make it safer. The best offense is a strong defense. Reinforcing the roofs of our posts will help to protect us from mortar fire. Having a pit to store our ammunition and explosives will ensure that any mortar strike doesn’t trigger our stock of explosives and kill us with our own ordnance. Many of the HESCO barricades on our base that should be filled with dirt are filled with trash. And they’re only four feet tall. Right now we look weak and vulnerable. We need to make our lines of defense more imposing. I begin making a mental list of what needs to be done.
—
On November 16 one of our battalion’s Marines, twenty-six-year-old Staff Sergeant Javier Ortiz-Rivera, is on a foot patrol a few miles from Kunjak when an IED detonates and kills him. That evening I receive the news over the radio that yet another of my friends is dead. I scribble my nightly note to Mel. I tell her about being back with my squad and about Ortiz-Rivera, who was on his third tour of duty—one in Iraq and then two more in Afghanistan—and who left behind a wife and three young children.
The guys were happy to see me and I’m very happy to see them. I also ran into Finbarr at District Center where he did an audio interview with me. It was fun and I hope you get to see it and hear it. He took some more photos of me (go figure) and said he was going to send them to you. I guess he is going to try and come back in February to spend some more time with us. We’ll see. I’m not sure if he is just saying that to appease me.
It’s 8 p.m. We just found out that SSgt Ortiz with 2nd platoon got killed about an hour ago. He hit an IED while on patrol. I feel horrible. I have three of my assaultmen with that platoon. . . . I feel bad for those guys and wish I could be there for them. He was a really great guy. I feel so terrible for his wife and children. How is there a God when stuff likes this happens? . . . What the fuck? It’s so depressing being surrounded by death all of the time.
I go to bed wondering when my head will feel less foggy and when things will get back to normal, as the doctor said they would. I still have four months left on deployment and am worried I won’t get any better. I want to believe the doctors, but I’m skeptical. I tell myself I’m just paying too much attention to what is happening in my mind.
I wake up the next morning and brew a pot of coffee. It’s as awful as I remember. I’m told over the radio to prepare for an afternoon patrol, my first since my injury. As I sip my coffee, my palms begin to sweat. My heart pounds. It isn’t because of the caffeine. To calm my nerves, I start cleaning my weapon for the first time in two weeks. I perform my prepatrol ritual, just as I’ve done countless times before, scrubbing the compensator free of rust, lubricating the bolt, scraping loose and wiping away the carbon residue from the firefight on the day I was injured, then dusting off the exterior. The routine calms me, but as I run through my mental checklist, I find that I still can’t remember how to recite the standard nine-line casualty report used for calling in a MEDEVAC. I think for a few minutes, trying to remember the sequence and the many mnemonic techniques to recall each step—something the Corps teaches us in case we’re “as dumb as a box of rocks” or need something explained “Barney style”—but I fail. I pull out my notebook and read:
Line 1. Location of the pick-up site
The remaining lines flow back, and suddenly I’m able to recite them one by one:
Line 2. Radio frequency, call sign, and suffix
Line 3. Number of patients by precedence
Line 4. Special equipment required
Line 5. Number of patients
Line 6. Security at pick-up site
Line 7. Method of marking pick-up site
Line 8. Patient nationality and status
Line 9. Nuclear, biological, and/or chemical contamination
Okay, a little rusty, but not too bad. Still not good, but I’ll keep practicing until I get it. But there is something else. Every Marine has a ZAP number, used to identify him in case of injury or death. Before my concussion I knew by rote the numbers of everyone in my squad. Now I can barely remember half of them. I didn’t think of any of this between doctor’s appointments on Camp Leatherneck. I was more concerned with clicking a mouse or pressing the space bar on a keyboard each time the screen flashed. I didn’t think about what matters most. Again I pull out my notebook, glance at my handwriting, and wonder how I could forget something so critical. And again I chalk it up to being as rusty as my weapon was. Too much downtime has dulled my memory, I tell myself.
Dreading that I might forget something crucial under pressure or make a mistake on my first patrol back, I run through my prepatrol checks dozens of times. I pull on my gear and walk to the gate, pressing the button on my radio.
“Kunjak, Kunjak, this is Able 3-4 requesting permission to depart friendly lines with one-five packs.”
Part of the patrol’s objective is to distribute food to Afghan villagers. I’m on edge as we head out. The doctors at the hospital didn’t tell me that symptoms caused by blast-induced concussions include problems with memory, concentration, planning, judgment, and impulse control; anxiety; and dizziness. My crappy memory worried me before the patrol and still does, but out in the field I have to contend with other cascading problems. As we hand out food packets, the men and women and children gather closer and closer around me until I feel swarmed.
“Tell them to back up,” I tell my interpreter, HB. “Tell them to back up or I’m going to start hitting people.”
I bring the patrol back to Kunjak earlier than I normally would. I blame it on the “ungrateful bastards” who can’t wait patiently for free shit. “Fuck them,” I say. I call them “animals,” refer to them as “subhuman,” and throw my gear against a HESCO. I’m not happy. I slip on the headphones to my iPod and write another letter to Mel.
“On our patrol today we had to hand out rice and corn. My anxiety was so bad I almost had a panic attack.”
A few nights later I’m still working through my concerns. Another letter home, but this time I explain my fears, and a growing sense of disillusionment.
Nov. 23, 2010. Chun isn’t with us anymore, and with Ortiz and Johnson [another Marine in our company] dead I’m just really scared, not of me dying or getting hurt but of me getting one of my guys hurt or killed.
Taking them out on patrol is just such a huge weight on my shoulders. How can there be a God if he takes [Ortiz] and Johnson away from their kids? It’s just so sad. They lost their lives trying to help a country that doesn’t care. Oh well, right? Everything happens for a reason. I just can’t wait to get home.
I can’t share my worries or reveal my mental lapses to my men. They have to trust my judgment. Winter has set in, and with fewer Taliban fighters around, the insurgents rely even more heavily on roadside bombs, not only to maim and kill but also to instill a constant state of fear. We despise such chickenshit tactics and the Taliban’s unwillingness to face off against us in a fair fight. But there is no questioning the disruptive effect of roadside bombs. For coalition forces in Afghanistan the threat dominates military strategy, slowing patrols and movement while consuming resources employed to detect and dispose of them or deal with the aftermath when bombs explode, hurting or killing troops and innocent civilians. My Marines and I are reduced from being an effective fighting force pitted against a clear enemy to being a wary band of human triggers wandering the desert, waiting to be blown up. The shadow of uncertainty is even more stressful than combat.
Roche’s metal detector is often triggered by mineral-rich clumps of rock, but two or three times each week the pinging detector signals the battery pack of a detonator linked to an IED. His skill reassures the squad, but the Taliban has started to use wooden pressure plates that will not register on Roche’s machine. I remind my Marines not to lose focus. Over and over I tell them complacency kills.
—
One brisk December evening a few weeks later, my men and I are patrolling near Post 1, the easternmost Afghan National Army (ANA) position at the farthest end of Nabu Agha. While searching a nearby compound, Roche identifies a cache of more than five yellow jugs packed with homemade explosives, nearly a dozen pressure plates, and battery packs. I call in an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team to destroy the jugs and examine the pressure plates for fingerprints. Watching controlled detonations always gives me an uneasy feeling. Here’s the creepy way my mind works. If one of my men triggers an IED, I hope he will suffer only amputations and not be killed. It would be hard, but I could deal with it as long as he survived, even if he wound up needing prostheses. I can’t bear the idea of another funeral back home, and another family I couldn’t apologize to. As the EOD team works, my squad and I share sugary tea and a hot meal of beef, bread, and vegetables offered by the Afghan soldiers manning Post 1.
When the disposal is finished, the EOD convoy leaves and I thank the ANA commander for his hospitality. We prepare to make the hourlong march back to OP Kunjak through falling darkness. Roche sets off first. Within fifty paces outside Post I can hear the metal detector squealing. Roche stops, bends down, and gingerly sweeps away the loose dirt. He looks back at me.
“Oh, come on!” he yells. It’s going to be a long night.
I radio in that we have discovered another IED, and I’m told the disposal team has already been called to detonate another cache elsewhere. I’m ordered to mark the IED location with glow sticks and instruct the Afghan soldiers not to approach the area. I do as I’m told and set off once again. I steer my squad through the wadi, which means the final approach to base involves a long uphill slog. The worst part of any patrol is the last five hundred meters. The finish line is in sight, but the weight of weapons, ammunition, and packs seems to increase with each step. Sometimes, climbing the hill at the end of a patrol, my men are doubled over with fatigue. If they reach out their arms, their fingers will touch the ground. This is one of those times. Finally I radio ahead to request permission to reenter friendly lines. As the confirmation squawks back, an orange fireball ignites the darkness near Post 1 more than three kilometers away. Seconds later comes the hollow whump of the explosion.
I know what has happened even before the sound reaches me. What kind of dumb soldier would step on an IED marked with more than fifteen chemical-light glow sticks? I strip off my gear and head to the COC to report the explosion, then go to the eagle’s nest, a sniper position that offers the clearest view from OP Kunjak. In the distance blue and red lights flash across the wadi as Afghan soldiers from Post 1 speed toward Kunjak. I order Doc Howard to be ready to treat any casualties. When the truck peels up the hill toward the entry control point, a dozen Marines meet the Afghans, curious to see the carnage. Skidding to a halt, the distraught Afghan soldiers fling open the tailgate. Inside is a mangled torso ripped in half. In an effort to provide first aid, the Afghans have tied a ratchet strap around the victim’s waist and cinched it tight just above the gaping wound, squeezing the man’s intestines, liver, and kidneys onto the corrugated flatbed. Blood drips off the truck into the sand as the Afghans beg Howard to save their friend. Howard tells me the man has no pulse. It’s more blood and guts than Howard has ever seen. From the bed of the truck Howard snaps off his gloves and jumps to the ground. He tells me there’s nothing he can do. No shit.
Through my interpreter I tell the Afghan soldiers the man is dead. The Afghans weep or stand in shock. They eventually climb back onto the vehicle and speed off toward District Center, lights still flashing as they career through pebbled canals. The scene sobers my Marines and leaves us standing together in silence as we stare at the bloodied ground. If Roche hadn’t found the IED that killed the Afghan, one of us would have walked over it on our way back to Kunjak. One of my Marines cuts the tension by joking that the dead man’s intestines looked like soggy spaghetti spilled all over the back of the truck. The others laugh. So do I. For the next few weeks, whenever the squad sets off on patrol, someone always fucks with Roche about “making spaghetti today.” When heating ramen noodles or spaghetti dinners, someone always makes a quip about eating it off the back of a pickup. A young man’s disembowelment becomes part of the repertoire in our battlefield humor. It gets you laughing, but it also acknowledges that you’ve seen things that never quite leave your mind.
—
On December 10 I’m hunkered in front of the radio giving my nightly counts—how many beans and bullets we have to keep us alive while we kill the bad guys. Each of my company’s seven outposts does this, and in return the hierarchy of the company passes on intelligence briefs and details about operations, and Captain O’Brien gives our two-hundred-man unit his nightly summary of what we’ve accomplished or will do in the upcoming days. O’Brien tells us that Staff Sergeant Stacy Green, one of the most well-liked Marines in our company, has been killed. His voice sounds pained as he recounts the details: Green stepped on an IED during a firefight. He never felt anything. (I later find out the Marines with him couldn’t even recognize him from the remains.) The smile, sense of humor, and compassion I admired in Green are gone. And now I have to tell my Marines. It’s never easy doing this. I last did it when Staff Sergeant Ortiz-Rivera was killed last month. When we are done on the radios, I walk to where my men are lying on their racks. I’d be an asshole if I walked in and told them callously. And it’s insulting to anyone who dies. My men deserve more than a matter-of-fact explanation. I tell them what Captain O’Brien told me—he stepped on an IED and died. He didn’t feel anything. I remind my men that I’m here if they need me. It’s not the first time I’ve said this to them, nor will it be the last. We’re three months into our deployment. Each of my Marines has come to me in confidence to talk about something. I can now expect this to join the list. I may not know the answers to their questions, but if I can tell them their friends are being killed, I can share how I’ve dealt with the same thing myself: Talk with your buddies here inside our sleeping quarters, tell each other stories about them, honor them and remember them, but pull your shit together as soon as we step outside, and watch one another’s backs. We still have a mission to do. Stacy Green is gone. It’s another wake-up call, as if we needed one.
—
It is well into the month of December by the time our cold-weather clothing is delivered to Kunjak. It’s like an early Christmas present. For weeks my Marines and I have shivered against bone-chilling winds and cold nights. Temperatures continue to plummet, and cotton USMC sweatshirts just don’t cut it anymore. I’ve been wearing the same crusty boxer shorts for nearly two weeks. My men and I muse about how good it feels to have clean underwear brushing against our balls. It’s the simple things in life.
The delivery also brings spare uniforms, allowing us to change out of our grease-stained trousers and sweat-encrusted tops. Putting on a clean outfit feels magical. It almost makes me cry. The clothes have the aroma of fabric softener, of Mel, of home. Everything smells fresh and safe. I think about how one month earlier I nearly lost my life, how close I was to never again enjoying this smell. Four more months, I tell myself. Each day brings me closer to my goal of getting my men home alive, and with all their limbs.
The next day is Christmas Eve and I wake up as the mail truck churns uphill toward the gate. For Marines the mail truck is both a blessing and a curse. It brings not just letters and notes from home, when most of us don’t have access to e-mail, but also care packages and goodies sent by family, friends, and sometimes well-wishers and local community organizations. To the best of our knowledge the letters and personal items aren’t censored. I’m supposed to scan my men’s mail for contraband—alcohol, drugs, pornography, weapons—but I have no interest in invading their privacy. They’ve done nothing to suggest I need to. Once opened, the boxes and letters unfurl a painful longing for home that often leaves us feeling even more homesick and depressed than before.
The socks and snacks are always welcome, but it’s my daughter’s drawings and the photographs showing life back home that I cherish. I enjoy the gifts, but it also troubles me that on deployment my life seems to stand still while things back home continue apace. It’s something they warn us about before we deploy, but it never makes sense until we’re here. Each picture brings a new kind of pain, but each new picture also makes me smile. Just as Fin’s pictures tell our Afghan story back home, the pictures sent by my girls do the same in reverse. The pictures are reminders of the days, weeks, and months passing by. They carry me home by showing me that at the moment Mel drops them in the mail, I’m on her mind, I’m missed. But the pictures also make me wonder how often people really think of me back home. Perhaps not thinking about me is easier.
I add my daughter’s artwork to my family shrine and kiss each photograph of Mel and Maddie before I tack them onto the HESCO wall. I’ve been gone only four months, but I can see Maddie is growing up without me. Her drawings are getting better, more accomplished. This makes me proud, both of my daughter and of my loving wife, but it saddens me that I’m missing out while Maddie flourishes. I worry she might miss me as much as I miss her and become sad or anxious. I worry she will resent me for leaving.
That night I spend my shift on radio watch reading news from home. The delivery time lag means that the letters were written a month ago. Mel wrote that Thanksgiving hadn’t been the same without me. Now it’s Christmas Eve, and I feel a wave of sadness that Maddie will awake on Christmas morning without me there.
My shift over, I pack up my boxes and letters and head back to my hooch. Five minutes later my replacement on radio watch comes and tells me I will be picked up at 0600 and transported to District Center. I’m advised to wear clean camouflage utilities, not the flame-resistant utilities issued for patrols. I’m also told that I need to have a fresh haircut and a clean shave. I can’t figure out why I’m being summoned to battalion headquarters, especially on Christmas morning. I sleep poorly and wake at 0500 feeling edgy. Well, this is it, I guess. I’m about to be disciplined for the photograph that got me into trouble for smoking in my bunk. There is no other explanation. I try to calm my nerves, but my mind races.
When the trucks arrive to pick me up, my company commander, Captain Daniel O’Brien, is in the convoy, which makes me even more nervous. The only thing that puts me at ease is that I’m under someone else’s command. It reminds me of Iraq and the easier days before I was charged with the responsibility for other men’s lives. I was a dumb boot before Fallujah. I graduated from the School of Infantry in March of 2004. I did two weeklong training events—one in fighting holes in the woods of Camp Lejeune outside a mock village and the other at an abandoned Air Force housing complex in California known as Camp Matilda—a wasteland of asbestos and lead-based paints, broken glass, and tetanus. After two months with my senior Marines I went on thirty days of predeployment leave in Boston, trying to get laid as much as possible before I deployed. I returned to Camp Lejeune in June and deployed to Iraq. I’d known the men I was heading to war with for only three months, but I trusted them.
By the end of June I was driving down highways in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, in an unarmored military vehicle as a driver for my platoon commander—a lowly minion in a squad of Marines. I was encouraged to think on my own, but I mostly followed orders. There is a hierarchy for a reason—instant and willing obedience. To learn to lead you must first learn to follow. I did as I was told. At Kunjak the roles were reversed. I made decisions that could cost life or limb and my men had to deal with the consequences.
When we arrive at District Center, it looks different. It’s tidy. The motor pool where the vehicles are parked is free of trash and debris. Marines and sailors are in clean clothes and have fresh haircuts. I relax. Unless the entire battalion is going to attend my punishment hearing, something else is planned. As we climb from the trucks, I have my first proper conversation in weeks with O’Brien. The captain asks how I’m doing postinjury and comments on how much better Kunjak looks with the improvements I’ve made during the last few weeks. The suggestion is that I’m doing my job well and should be proud. I finally ask O’Brien why I’ve been summoned to District Center on Christmas Day.
“The commandant of the Marine Corps is coming to present you your Purple Heart,” O’Brien says with a smile. “Congratulations.”
I’m relieved I’m not in trouble but feel awkward about being singled out for recognition. Our battalion has already lost six men and even more are recovering in amputee wards stateside. They deserve a ceremony, not me. It’s the first time my invisible injuries make me feel unworthy of saying I’m wounded. I look fine. And I don’t feel as though I rate the Enemy Accuracy Medal—a joking term for the Purple Heart, awarded to all U.S. service members killed or wounded in combat. The helicopter transporting General James Amos coats the nearly one hundred Marines waiting for his arrival in a thick layer of dust as it lands. So much for being clean. The ceremony is brief—and thankfully the Taliban in our area aren’t keen on using mortars—but my mind races. I think of Marines lying crippled in bed at Walter Reed with no legs, no arms, sometimes no limbs at all. I imagine the commandant giving them the same medal he’s just pinned to my chest. I wonder how I could deserve the same medal as a quadruple amputee. I haven’t been through the same heartache, the same pain, or the same trials. But I’m expected to wear that medal, and to wear it with pride. How does not ducking quickly enough warrant a medal? As the crowd disperses, I remove the Purple Heart from my chest and place it in my pocket, where I massage the cloth and thumb the metal until it is warm to the touch. When I imagine telling my men back at Kunjak about the medal, I feel ill. Will they think I rate it? Or will they mock me behind my back? I don’t want to be viewed as a medal chaser.
The trucks roll up Kunjak’s hill under moonlight. The outpost is quiet. Nobody is at the makeshift gym or pacing the base. The guards are on post, but the rest of the squad is hunkered around the fire, cooking a turkey that we purchased weeks earlier and that my guys slaughtered fresh for the occasion. I ask why they are eating so late. Dinner is usually cooked during daylight so we can see what we are doing. Instead they’re using flashlights. One by one they each stand and congratulate me on my medal. Some slap me on the ass, others hug me, but most pat me on the back. I don’t bother asking how they know, and I’m happy it’s a surprise. They’ve waited for me to get back so we can eat together. It wouldn’t have been Christmas dinner without me, they say.