Spent Shell Casings Read online

  For me and my brethren, ARS was the big filter. Broken into three phases—Land Navigation, Patrolling, and Amphibious—the days and weeks were generally dictated by extreme amounts of daily physical training followed by classroom and field instruction with regards to the particular phase we were in.

  Patrolling, the largest phase, contained a special week that we had been preparing for since RIP. A student was likely to experience several days in a row without so much as a minute of sleep, little food, and full combat-load movements in the steep terrain of Fort A.P. Hill. Also, it was rumored that if a tactical error was made to a certain, loosely-defined degree, we would be subject to instantaneous CS gassing.

  Patrol Week in Fort A.P. Hill was an event that required the whole of you, nothing less. The entire class had already been operating in small six- to eight-man teams since week one. As people dropped, and they did, the teams got smaller and occasionally had to be slightly reformulated. Bussed from Fort Story to A.P. Hill, those who remained knew a significant, maybe the most significant, course challenge was at hand. After a quick terrain walk and a final land navigation exercise, Patrol Week arrived.

  The inner-team billets were to change every twenty-four hours, as a mission ended (whether success or failure) and another began. A guy who had survived ARS up until then as a tight-lipped, grey man, who hadn’t even chimed in once about how the chow was at Little Creek, would all at once be bequeathed the role of team leader. And then, of course, the opposite was in full effect: Some grunt from the fleet or some Marine officer with years of time in service would then be positioned to take instant and obedient orders from a PFC53 who had just celebrated his first anniversary in the Marine Corps. Couple those changes with increasing fatigue, and interesting results were bound to happen.

  My team consisted of eight men, mostly guys I had gone through RIP with; in addition, a grunt with about three years of fleet time, a reservist from Montana, and a captain with decadent tattoos circling his thighs.

  Every team would have at least one instructor, or walker, who came along on the patrol. The walker was the evaluator of the team. He carefully watched and critiqued the student’s individual actions, relative to their billet during the mission. He was also the administrator of discipline, the final arbitrator, via what seemed to be a limitless supply of CS gas.

  A quick note on CS gas: O-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile, used most commonly for riot control around the world, is a volatile solvent that irritates the eyes, sinuses, and lungs ferociously. When the milky, faintly yellow cloud disperses into the air, it inexplicably wafts toward the human, who is either running the other way or scrambling to don a gas mask (or both, in my case) . Come across this and you will never forget it. The itch in the eyes feels more like a product of pathology than some chemical reaction. Even the slightest inhale will cause the top quarter of both lungs to burn and result in a rapid fire of shallow coughs. Most significant, however, is the reaction the sinuses have. That acrid unique odor—it crawls into your nasal cavities like a Namera tunnel rat. Clinging to every nose hair and cilia and then all at once attacking every inner realm existing above the Adam’s apple, you explode—a snot bomb. Someone completely naive to such an experience would not believe the human body capable of such instantaneous fluid production. Honestly, it’s a great way to clear up clogged sinuses, and as someone who had habitually suffered from said effect since my late teens, surviving a blitzkrieg of CS would allow for some very comfortable, almost elated breathing afterward.

  The hour arrived, so the missions came.

  By day five, every team was pretty smoked. In total, we had been allotted, I think, around three and a half hours of sleep for that entire week, and had conducted four complete missions, all requiring extensive movement. Of all the missions that teams were responsible for conducting, the “bridge report” was rumored to be the most difficult.

  A quick note on reporting: Stemming from the Cold War era, the reconnaissance community was generally expected to operate as an information-gathering tool, conveyed to the appropriate higher personnel via NATO report formats. A red-covered manual containing specific, line-by-line instructions covered pretty much anything imaginable to potentially report on: road, river, landing zone, etc.

  Bridges have been the target of military defense, engineering, and demolition as long as bridges have been around. It is no great stretch of the imagination as to why Robert Jordan was tasked with destroying one in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. The bridge report, or bridge rep, was like all the other missions: get there in a tactical, clandestine manner; conduct an efficient reconnaissance of the objective; leave objective; and successfully move to extract. Sounds easy enough when read from the comfort of a couch or recliner, but executing this is another story altogether.

  What made the bridge rep particularly challenging was the distance from insert to objective. The team that had gone before us leaked that if we skirted a small river, represented on our maps, it would take us directly to the bridge. Now normally such a linear danger area would be an immediate no-go, but it was confirmed that the CO54 of the school walked with that team the entire mission and had no problem with the route, so we figured what the hell.

  As the sun was setting, all teams rucked up and stepped off. Into the tree line we were absorbed.

  We were immediately gassed. Instructor discretion was apparently paramount, and our walker was in no mood to tolerate a simple route. Within the first hour we had been forcibly augmented from our original route to an extent that our team leader, delirious, had trouble figuring out where we were. I was billeted the assistant team leader (ATL), picking up the rear, and wasn’t doing that bad, considering the circumstances. Recalling the intense elevation and relief (dictated on the map as thin lines, whose proximity to the other indicates the steepness of both incline and decline of terrain) to the west of our planned route, I realized quickly how far west we had deviated as I watched my team ascend the first thick, deciduous hillside.

  Until about 4 a.m., what transpired was a series of: up, down, gas, repeat. At one point, something entirely unexpected occurred. Climbing a hill in the blackness, our team had linked up with several other teams. We were now a platoon-size movement, bursting through the brush. Some of my favorite hard-hitters were there, particularly two guys close to me. One, powerfully built, shaved head, and with a penchant for articulate hatred, he left the insurance industry after 9/11 to do nothing less than go to war. The other guy, equally formidable in stature, was a nail bomb of confrontation. When not telling off some POG lifer or frustrating a platoon mate, he could be found merrily lip syncing to top forty ballads. He never drank, never used tobacco, and dressed like a Hooters waitress in the various gyms we all swarmed together. His inexplicable obsession with ultra-pop divas like Kelly Clarkson was soon forgotten when he would do such things as blowing the neck out of an Iraqi kid with a heavy gun. This duo’s collective loathing for religion (usually taking it on the chin was Christianity) was something they were bizarrely vocal about when around the other. This fact was not lost on me, and in my exhaustion this colocation in the woods felt akin to the four horsemen of the apocalypse—gathering, and just waiting on Petulance to round the bend. They had suffered the beaver dams as well, and now we were fuckin invincible.

  Of course, this was merely a hallucination (an extremely common reaction to extended exertion while with little to no sleep), and I was pulled from it when the team came to an abrupt halt. Our team leader, taken over by hallucinogenic exhaustion, had wandered up to his neck in brutally cold water. Maybe it was some brand new form of a “leader’s recon,” or maybe the mother ship was calling him back up, but his hypothermic tarriance resulted in the removal of his team leader responsibilities. Nestled somewhere in the back, between two guys just a little less tired and a little more warm, he resumed the march as I was tapped as the new TL.

  I got us pretty darn close, I must say. I think it was somewhere during a brief map check, sticking m
y head out from under the poncho liner to see the CS come tumbling in—cumbersome, slow, and obnoxious—that we uniformly said “fuck it.”

  All members of the team got a failing grade that night, but I came to find out that I got one of the highest failing grades.

  Though not particularly a tale of chest-beating triumph or conquest, it was absolutely real. Very few people went through Patrol Week without failing at least one patrol; we had ours, and it was dismal. A few days later we would participate in the final patrol, and then a race involving: distance, water, and of course CS gas. Our team came in second, and I remember the hilarious group showers afterward: cammie paint etched into the crow’s feet of faces too euphoric to fully realize their exhaustion. Two men were next to me, laughing like drunk lunatics. One would die a Master Sergeant in Afghanistan, the other would have a litter of kids and go work for the FBI. Stacked boxes of cold pizza awaited us outside the showers, and the Recon MOS awaited us a few short weeks after.

  13

  GET THE FUCK BACK IN THE BARRACKS

  SUMMER 2005

  Southeastern skies turn from the Bruise to the Great Grey. The air seems lighter than normal and you can taste the electricity. Bandit gusts of wind rile up some nearby treetops and vanish just as suddenly as they had appeared. The base is literally sold out of beer, and the crisp sound of one opening is heard as an excited voice says, “This is gonna be the shit.”

  The hurricane season had come to Camp Lejeune. No one is completely certain as to why, but the Marine Corps has a strange fascination with preparation for natural disasters. The most likely reason is because it is a way for particular higher-ups to push many of the same buttons as seen in war. Sandbags, water sources, personal protective equipment, communication, and accountability—all present and without even having to sweat it out at a CAX55. The hilarious overkill is undeniably countered by the ravenous appetite for booze and mischief that goes on within the base as the rain pours. This schizophrenia was seen very clearly in Courthouse Bay, 2005.

  The Marine Corps’ catch-all for safety, the flak jacket and Kevlar helmet, was ordered to be worn by all Marines on base who would be leaving their barracks room for any reason. If you were to be getting your laundry, you better be kitted up and ready for anything. If you had to run through the storm to your car, they had better see the splatter of rain bouncing off your fastened helmet.

  Not a single flack or Kevlar was seen in the barracks of my battalion, lest in a moment of jest, and usually the only thing on. A wobbling cock and white ass chasing some drunk down the catwalk, and in full battle rattle.

  The base had placed a water bull in the rear of our barracks. The “water bull,” for those who have never seen such a thing, is merely a large tank of water affixed to a trailer body. Holding around four hundred gallons meant for drinking, these are placed in training areas when personnel are to be out in the field for a bit—or at a barracks where the pipe-given water source may be compromised.

  By the time I had made my way out back, one person swam in it and another was pissing down into a four hundred gallon toilet.

  Every bit of hyper-precautious Marine Corps defiled, the hurricane party was in full swing. The wind and rain had come. A few guys in bright-colored thongs, strutting by with beer in hand, as random fireworks would explode, hurled from the top deck of the barracks. Most of the focus was on two guys, one who’d donated all the clothes for Boot Night, and the other Dez, from my team. They were both trying to use 550 cord and a poncho liner to take flight.

  The first guy looked like something out of a B sci-fi movie you see at 3 a.m. This brave space cadet was wearing a racing helmet, full wet suit, and Rollerblades. He had rigged his poncho liner to open in front of him, attached to the 550 cord leash he had made.

  Dez was in a pair of shorts and standard greenside deuce gear (combat-grade belt and suspenders with an assortment of pouches). He had tied his poncho liner, via 550 cord as well, to key points on his belt and suspenders. We were all pretty fixed on him, waiting to see exactly what would happen when a forceful gust took hold.

  From my left peripheral, I saw two guys go running toward the woods in gas masks, disappearing in the sheets of rain.

  It was at this point we all noticed a lone Humvee slowly making its way toward our barracks.

  If it is possible to detect the rage of a vehicle’s passenger by the stalking velocity of its approach, followed by its sudden oblong parking job, it was confirmed here. Out marched what we found out later to be the Division OOD56. He was in so much rain-protective gear you could barely make out the flak and Kevlar. As he high-stepped toward our barracks, his scowl could be seen through the billowing contents of our most enjoyed meteorological phenomenon. Trailing behind him we could make out his driver—a short, squatty Mexican kid who was well aware of the façade he had to uphold until the duty changeover (which had to have felt like it was never going to come). This OOD, likely a young captain, was in no mood for games. It was his watch and by God it was his ass if one of the thousands of stewed Marines happened to get hurt. The thong wearers scattered. He zeroed his attention on the Dez. As luck would have it, a gust of wind inflated his poncho liner at that very moment. Our man Dez looked like a semipro body builder, so the best the wind could do was lift him off his feet just long enough to put him on his ass. Poncho liner still full and being pushed, he skipped and skidded right to the feet of the furious OOD.

  “Get the fuck back in the barracks!” the OOD screamed. “We are in a category one hurricane!” The OOD and his obliged sidekick turned around to return to their Humvee.

  So many things crossed my mind at that moment: my beer was empty, a category one wasn’t shit where I came from, and what was going through the fuming OOD’s head as he turned to see our other poncho parasailer, dangerously flying down the street on a pair of Rollerblades, pulled by a fully inflated poncho liner?

  It was then that the grand harassment began. A chorus of insults, hurled fireworks, and a “go back to Quantico” made their way through the diminishing rainfall. It was like watching some invading army retreat. As the Humvee left, morale exploded. Our spirits were off the charts, and we needed more.

  Some of us decided to go Onslow Beach, the beach connected with the base that was not more than a few minutes by vehicle. About nine of us piled into a couple of cars and made our way to the surging coast. Our group did not run into any interference—no roving Humvees or rain-soaked MPs57 dashing madly toward our unauthorized presence. All was well until we reached the one bridge that we had to cross. Cliché and classic, a wall of sandbags blocked our approach to the churning and chaotic beach, almost within our eager grasp.

  A moment was taken to inventory the situation, then the drivers parked the cars on the shoulder. The wall was scaled, and the beach was ours.

  The winds whipped clothing around bodies, hurled sand like tiny needles, and guided in the monster waves. The hurricane was dying, but its slow death rattle held a lingering rage just enough. We were still in one. Professional surfers would have fought tooth and nail to be standing on this beach, this day. Laughter and smiles that can only belong to the young man, invulnerable and bolstered by his pack, some ran along the beach like human kites while others took to the water. Within the group was Derrick, Dez, a man I’d see at a shooting course years later, one who would survive a gunshot wound to the head in Afghanistan, and another who would succumb to burn injuries received in Iraq.

  That day I was one of those in the surf. The waves were literally pulling the flooring off the sandy bottom. Clumps of shells and crustaceans pounded down on the bodysurfers, almost twenty feet high just a moment before and now rolling in the tumult. Despite what was certainly dangerous, those out in the water would always emerge, unbeaten or damn close to it—a boyish freedom impossible to replicate.

  Pictures taken and with a big middle finger to the powers that wished to contain our energy, we returned to the barracks. A day or so later the sandbags and tainted wate
r bulls disappeared, garrison life resumed, and our group soon returned to a placid, tranquil beach—a timid mimic of a vivid, wilder version.

  14

  EXISTENTIALIST NIGHTMARE AND WRITINGS FROM IRAQ

  My unit had two companies of Recon Marines. Bravo Company (B Co.) was considered on paper to be our battalion’s “main effort.” Usually closer in proximity to the city of Fallujah, B Co. was clean, upwardly mobile, and a shiny stark contrast to my alma mater, Alpha Company (A Co.).

  One night, in TQ58, I dreamt that I was participating in a triathlon. It wasn’t a normal one, though; it had all these obstacle courses and fun houses involved, and a bunch of porn stars were running in it. Some busty blonde and I were neck and neck going through this fun house. We were going up and down stairs elbowing one another, fighting for the lead. You could cut the tension with a knife as the voluptuous vixen and I fought for glory. Suddenly I was detoured. Some brunette was bent over a table in chains and leather, just waiting for me. Fuck the race! I must have thought because I went into the room and started performing analingus on her. We chatted a bit as I tongued her ass. I could taste shit, but I didn’t care. I slipped it in and started having anal sex with my eyes shut. As I fucked, I started to hear a distinct metallic clicking noise.