Spent Shell Casings Page 3

  I would creep to the forward most edge of the concealment. There were inexplicable moments when our collective gut dropped out of us. Like a small group of VC, or something; we had some serious intentions in those suburban woods. I knew the growing sensation of “fuck it, let’s just get the next group” would grow to a mutinous tumor. That was so quickly remedied by a smile, nod, and “remember your routes—let’s blast these assholes.” The “NOW” almost always came from me, as would the first potato. Uniformly, the salvo of fire would follow, and morale couldn’t be lowered with a Singapore cane as we ran for our lives amidst the curses of befuddlement and shooting pain.

  Some would say the act of throwing things at people is silly, childish, and indicative of a propensity to violate the law and hurt others, and they may be right. But sweating in the woods, skin torn by thorns, dirt in the corners of the eyes, taking risks—those kids had courage, and that is more than can be said about most.

  As is the case, all good things must come to an end. We were, in fact, eventually caught and mightily humiliated; however, we were graciously spared the arrest or the beating. As girls, booze, and concerts took their inevitable precedence over Battlefield: Good Walk Spoiled, the complaints of mysterious bands of potato-chucking kids vanished altogether. Scrapes and cuts on my limbs vanished as well; in their place came body hair and tattooing. When the time came that I donned a camouflage uniform once more, golfers teed off, chipped, and drank in peace.

  3

  NEVER SHALL I FORGET

  FALL 2003

  I had kicked, screamed, and likely violated every form of command structure and military courtesy in existence. As a result, I was allowed to take the Recon screening. This was most likely to shut me up, as well as to stoke the furnaces for the years of teasing and torment that would follow my humiliating failure.

  I think I slept an hour the night before, then got up at some god-awful time to drive from main side to Courthouse Bay to meet a few other fleet guys waiting on the white bus from SOI4 . It was time, and I was ready.

  As per usual, before any great undertaking, I had to take a nerve-rattled shit; just this time in a cluster of trees. After sacrificing a sock, the screening began, and at the end, upon passing, my barefoot was welcomingly bloody.

  The day I officially arrived at 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion, I was handed some gear and a paper copy of the Recon Creed, was given a barracks room, and immediately slinked away into its closet. With my head in my hands, a wave of “be careful what you wish for” immersed me.

  I had fought so hard to get to that moment. I was there and took a cynic’s inventory on my skills and conditioning, evaluating whether I had prepared enough or had brought a knife to a gunfight.

  I knew that if I failed I was damned back to the artillery regiment—for me at least, a fate worse than death. Giving credit where credit is due, there were solid Marines and professionals scantily peppered in the ranks. In addition, many artillery Marines in the GWOT era would end up occupying an infantry-centric role, some of whom wouldn’t see a single howitzer in country and got into as many gunfights as numerous infantry members. However. . . this does not blind the eye to the SNCOs5 who could barely speak the English language, likely destined to work at Home Depot upon their reluctant retirement from the holy fucking Marine Corps—desk clerks, who never saw a bush past the hedgerow entrance to base housing, who fancied themselves warriors, and people who were pitifully unfit trying to exude the maxim of the Marine Corps warrior culture and killer instinct. Frankly, as an aggregate, it was a waste of government money, and I spent most my days cutting grass, picking up trash, doing change of command ceremonies, and wishing possibly the most common wish of all time—that I’d had a more ethical recruiter.

  With my head in one hand and the Creed in the other, I scanned it; tracing all the outlines of harshly typed words. Memorizing those words was the first thing I had any real power over—the first step in a great vetting and then emerge into a new MOS6, a new unit, a new life.

  What is the Recon Creed? Some say it was stolen from the Army Rangers, then heavily modified. It’s a good way to stir up a mug-draining debate; often proprietary and occasionally tempestuous. I never cared where it came from. No matter the literary origin, it doesn’t alter the sweat either group pours out or hold any weight on the ways they forcibly alter the world around them.

  The Creed consists of five paragraphs, all starting with the first letter of each letter that spells RECON. The first paragraph starts with R, and the second with a big E, and so on. Within these five paragraphs is purportedly our community ethos. A decade removed, one can see the generalities of “not giving up” as qualities seen in the Army Rangers—or hell, boot camp, maybe even the Cub Scouts. In fact, many of the principles mentioned don’t really distinguish Recon from much of anyone. That is. . . until you put the fat to the fire. A saying such as “Never quit” means something entirely different to a group of young Ropes who knocked out a seven-mile log run on no sleep, or low-crawled in the sugar sand on Onslow for a quarter mile, followed by a 1,500-meter fin out past the breakers and back prior to the Bulls coming out to feed. The Recon Creed, printed and in the hand of a Recon hopeful, was a map, manifesto, guidebook, and bible.

  The next day, morning PT began—and I do mean morning. There is an odd snap and lick that you feel when running around certain places in Camp Lejeune in the late fall. Stinging snot makes its way down out of the maple and pine, hitting your skin right about the time the cold sets into the lungs. An intense run through bush, brush, and a few skinny trails later, we were standing in a formation on Ellis Field.

  “You,” said an instructor.

  “Yes, Sergeant!” Chris yelled. I’d met Chris the night prior. He’d stormed into my room, burped, announced he was to be called “Bullet,” and then stumbled out.

  “First paragraph.”

  Bullet began, “Realizing it is my choice and my choice alone I—”

  One done. Another stutterer then picked out of the pack by the fixed-eyed RIP7 cadre. “Second paragraph.” A bit of a pause, an initial stutter, and then the next paragraph was recited.

  How I hoped they didn’t pick me. My palms, clammed and sweaty, tickled in their center. I was brand new to the RIP platoon. These guys had just got back from Fort AP Hill, where they had gotten their nuts crushed. This was a unified group, tightened by the fraternities that suffering brings, and I knew I had to earn a place among them, somehow. I was also nervous because I had a growing feeling one of the instructors was going to eye me out of the group, so I could ingloriously fuck up the lines I’d tried so hard to memorize the night before. Who knew, one of the cadre in a particularly bad mood. . . I could smell the artillery chow hall from there.

  Third paragraph over, recited perfectly, and now onto the fourth. The guy right in front of me got summoned for this one, and boy was he doing lousy. Through the forest of lean bodies in green, I could see the disdain on one instructor’s face, all the more illuminated as he came closer to the stutterer, and eyeing me while he approached. Our selected orator spit up the last portion, apparently just good enough to pass.

  It was time for the final paragraph. They asked for volunteers. Volunteers? Volun—go-fuck-yourself—teers? They always called someone out of the group, but not this last one.

  “None of you motherfuckers know the whole thing?”

  I found that I had raised my hand, barely.

  I felt the way a deer or something must feel the moment its worst fear is confirmed and sees the predator make its first step in its direction. Eyes fixed on me. “Go,” he said with a slight menacing nod, partly riddled with the look of I have no clue who the fuck this guy is.

  “Never shall I forget the principles I accepted to become a Recon Marine: Honor, Perseverance, Spirit, and Heart. A Recon Marine can speak without saying a word and achieve what others can only imagine.” I hid a monstrous gulp—then waited.

  “. . .How long have you been here?” asked the
instructor. “Uh. . . three days, Corporal.”

  Extending his neck forward and cocking his chin up. “This guys been here three days and knows the entire thing. How come you fucks don’t?”

  I had apparently gotten it right. It was here, at this exact moment, that I first learned of a ritual deeply ingrained into the world of Marine Recon.

  “Everyone else, twenty-five and five.” Demanded the instructor. I felt awkward and naked and alone as the rest of the RIP platoon dropped to the pushup position, a simple, often-executed exercise that served as a reminder for why we were there. Twenty-five pushups followed by a moment of stillness, then five more pushups, yet somehow qualitatively different than the rest. Whether on a pool deck, an LZ8, a beach, or Ellis Field the twenty-sixth through twenty-ninth pushup would all end with a unified “Wannabe!” and concluding at the thirtieth with “Wannabe Recon!”

  With a full stomach, a good night’s rest, and muscles that aren’t baying like the hounds of Hell, the event is rather tame. However, capping off a few rainy, miserable days in the field, eaten alive by bugs and chased by an alligator, ducking under lightning storms and carrying an oppressive load on your back over every stump, log and bramble. . . the event is something quite different.

  In my life prior, I had always been surrounded by the cult of the obliged—kids forced to play little league, students who held no interest in learning, employees in jobs they hated, and spouses in marriages they despised. Yet suddenly, by merely signing a few pieces of paper and forgoing some personal freedoms that weren’t doing anything for me anyways—then just taking some pain—I found myself embedded in a living body of pure determination. I was among people who wanted something as much as life itself, and the word Wannabe was blasted out of voice boxes with intensity like a high-speed collision, and done so many more times.

  As they rose in unison, wiping the wet blades of grass off the palms of their hands, I was squirming in my running shoes. They were going to be mad at me for making them push. But rather, I was applauded for learning it so fast. Sure there were some teases later, some good-humored threats and locker room antics, but their collective reaction, the chorus from pushups twenty-six to thirty, was indicative of the caliber of man I was to be working with in the very deadly near future.

  4

  ATTACK OF THE TREASURE TROLLS

  “Well intentioned souls now offer me their sympathy and tell me how horrible it must have been. The fact is, it was fun.”

  —R. B. Anderson, Parting Shot, Vietnam was Fun(?)

  FALL 2004

  Misfit 29 was placing a detachment for a daylong OP10. Our vehicles were staged on a notorious road in the Zaidon11. River Road, named so for running along the northern shore of the Euphrates, was so littered with IEDs12 that, for a point in time, a platoon would get hit up to four times in a single day.

  In the driver seat of the lead Humvee, I sat and watched a team make their way to the river’s edge. Suddenly a call came out on battalion net. A platoon from another company, Nemesis 1, was being ambushed and we were the closest platoon to the fight. As the word was being disseminated now on our platoon frequency, my blood was pumping like a caged animal about to be freed on taunting, passing prey.

  This was going to be my first firefight and I couldn’t get there soon enough. More than just “getting some,” I had close friends in Nemesis 1. They were in trouble, and fighting to potentially save their lives was the only thing that held priority over the need to kill someone.

  Watching the guys heading for the OP was a bad Benny Hill skit. They’d quickly shed their gear, put it back on, then off, then on again. Apparently there was confusion as to whether they were going to assist in Nemesis 1’s support or keep on with the mission. The decision came over the radio for them. They ran back to their Humvee right as I was given the word to start our convoy toward the bullets.

  Fishtails, skids, and parting herds of goats with impunity, my Humvee led the way. It wasn’t long before we could see smoke. It was thick, black, and appeared to be coming from a single source.

  Nemesis 1 was patrolling an area in the Zaidon where a large bridge was being built. My platoon had been all over that exact area just a few days prior, uncovering numerous weapons caches. One thing I recall was the land mines, Italian I believe, and how terrifled I was handling munitions and explosives I wasn’t familiar with. On this day, Nemesis 1 had driven right into a massive ambush. Numbers were reported to us as approximately 120. Nemesis 1 was twenty-five men, at most. Truth be told, I have no clue how the hell the number 120 was formulated, but higher Intel stuck with that number, and it so it was written.

  As we neared, from our elevated position, I saw all the black smoke was coming from a lone Humvee. It was on a small dirt road, and engulfed in fire. We rolled up to meet a few of Nemesis 1’s lead Humvees that were crawling toward us. As the one Humvee raged in flames, the rest, sturdy like beetles, were growling onto the hardball13.

  Nemesis 1 let out sporadic volleys of fire from their crew-served weapons. Enemy! As hard as I tried, however, I couldn’t see what they were shooting at. All I could see where Americans.

  Under the booming of the gun trucks, Marines on foot, some bandaged, and all draped in random weaponry, made their way to the berm. It was apparent they were at least a partial group of the blazing vehicle’s former occupants. I recognized two of them immediately.

  We unloaded out of our Humvees like they too were on fire. Guns up and members thickening, we collectively scanned toward a massive, grown-over berm that ran parallel to the road we were on. Word was making its way onto our radios that the main body of the ambush came from the berm. I tried to listen more. Voices crackled out from the handset. My attention was soon pulled, however, to the one-man freak-out occurring to my left.

  Nemesis 1’s platoon sergeant, a man disliked by most, had been one of those in the destroyed vehicle. Losing his primary weapon to the flames, he had an M40 sniper rifle strapped behind his back like a quiver and sported a cigar in his mouth. He would periodically remove the cigar and yell at the Nemesis 1 platoon commander: “They are enveloping us from the north!”; “This is fucked up, sir!” and a few other one-liners that frantically questioned our two-platoon action of staying put. Things almost got right interesting when he gave up on his superior and moved to one of his team leaders. This team leader was an operator from the previous recon unit that we’d relieved. He’d stayed behind to work with us, and would later win fame for killing an Iraqi man with a knife. The cigar-wielding E-614 was sort of choking this team leader; losing it, along with any remaining respect his men had for him. Some people in the Corps just have it rough, I guess. My own team leader had banged that platoon sergeants cousin’s wife, and a late-night encounter in a pool hall, before we deployed, almost relit that powder keg before my very eyes.

  Word soon came to our platoon that Nemesis 1 was nearly out of crew-served ammo. Random Misfit 2 members, along with our combat engineer attachments, unstrapped ammo cans of 7.62, MK-1915, and .50-cal16 and ran them to the smoking weapon systems. Toward me came one of our engineers, bereft of his metal detector for once, and laden with two cans of MK-19. He was panting, smiling, and didn’t skip a beat when I playfully kicked him in the ass as he passed me. He would be dead a few days later, blown forty feet in the air like a rag doll. He expressed to a comrade just prior to that day that this day, fighting alongside Recon, was the most fun he ever had in his short, happy life.

  My team was in full swing, with Dez, a powerlifting health freak who grew up near Amish country, to my immediate left. My team leader shoved our most junior man out of the turret and was unloading a belt of .50-cal tracers into a two-story house across the river. The brilliant pop of light against the walls, followed by the delayed thwack of the impact. Yet not everything was so brilliant. For one, Dez and I took it upon ourselves to confront this alleged “envelopment from the north.” However, we didn’t see some raiding party of mujahedeen. We did see faint movement in d
itches.

  They were crawling toward us.

  White ribbons of movement, AK-47 wielding men in man-dresses were advancing on their bellies—and they were shot. The next day, during a comprehensive BDA17, we learned a bit more about our enemy. It was a few cows, apparently trying to avoid their obscure cow death, and in vain.

  Having stopped all movement from the north, and semi-convinced that we had just “got some,” we turned around just in time to watch Chase’s SAW18 drum detach from the weapon. Chase was a country boy, modest and never one to have a quick temper, but with his SAWs ammo belt extending down to his boots with a furious veeeeep sound, his “oh shit, god damn it” in a thick southern draw forced the rest of us into bursting out in laughter.

  As Chase fought with his unruly SAW drum, over and over again, going into an ever-increasing downward spiral of curses and mumbles, the rest of my team positioned southward, scanning for enemy movement. In the spray of Chase’s frustration, our most junior operator, freshly kicked out of his turret, wasn’t about to miss out on the action. He was a red-faced drunkard from some dearly-missed, snowy suburb. He’d put his M4 on full auto. A gleaming stream of gold flew from the ejection port as he conducted several speed reloads.

  In league with his ferocious expenditure of ammunition, the truck next to us, possibly the most bizarre team in the entirety of Marine Recon, was going ape shit.

  A four-man team, three of whom looked like frat boys who would make the nine o’clock news for a prescription drug ring and a keg-fueled case of date rape. The fourth man, the team leader, was a squatty, bald man, reminiscent of a drunken Russian built from years of chopping logs in the permafrost. At first appearing gross and overweight, with severely outdated ARS19 deuce gear squeezed against him. . . a single gym exploit of his later, one would know his body, while it may have been burnt and dismembered before ever seeing the cover of a recruiting poster, actually housed an immense strength.