The battalion traditionally held a sendoff ceremony called a “Hail & Farewell” for its departing officers. Major Benelli scheduled mine for a Friday afternoon when he knew I wouldn’t be in town. It was a snub, but not one that stung, since my allegiance wasn’t to the battalion; it was to the platoon.
Recon platoons are steeped in tradition, and one of the finest is the paddle party. Mine was held at Mike Wynn’s house on a Friday night in August. The whole platoon was there. They put me in a chair in the center of the room and gathered around. The ceremony’s roots stretch back to Viking warships. According to tradition, when a warrior left the crew to settle down and start a family, his comrades presented him with his oar as a symbol of the contribution he had made and of their own collective weakening after his departure.
The youngest Marine, Lance Corporal Christeson, held the paddle first. Gunny Wynn and I had recommended him for combat meritorious promotion from private first class to lance corporal, one of the first since the Vietnam War. The paddle passed from his hands through the whole platoon, moving in order of seniority, with each man telling a story as he held it. “Lower, Christeson. You’re shooting too high.” Rushing to the landing zone at Bridgeport. Task Force Sword. Ambush Alley. Espera and the ever-present cigar. Lasers in Muwaffiqiya. Horsehead. Sydney. Boat raids. “Take the shot.” The paddle passed from Gunny Wynn, the senior Marine in the platoon, to Sergeant Patrick, the man who had made it. Patrick turned the paddle around, showing it to me for the first time.
He had carved it from a four-foot block of cherry. Green, tan, and black parachute cord wrapped the handle. My captain’s bars, jump wings, and ribbons adorned the blade. On the back, Rudy had inked First Recon’s insignia and attached a photo of the platoon in the Kuwaiti desert on the eve of the war.
I reached out to touch it and sensed another crease in history. When my hand closed around the parachute cord, my command of the platoon ended. In their words, I was promoted from captain to mister. In mine, the most meaningful year of my life was over.
A few mornings later, I drove to work for my last day. It was a foggy, cool Southern California morning. In the parking lot, I saw my replacement, a red-haired captain named Brent Morel. We had gone to lunch together the day before and sat for two hours as I tried to put the platoon into words — Colbert’s cool demeanor, Rudy’s enthusiasm, Jacks’s mastery of the Mark-19, Patrick’s southern aphorisms. The war in Iraq hadn’t ended, and I wanted Morel to know the men when he took them back for their second tour.
“Mornin’, Brent.”
He looked up from the waterproof bag he was sealing. “Hi, Nate. We’re heading down to the beach for a fin.”
“Everybody?”
“Whole platoon. Wanna come?” It was a gracious offer, but I couldn’t accept it.
“They’re yours now, man. Have a good one.”
In the office, I collected all my gear, cleaning each piece and stuffing it into my rucksack to return to the supply warehouse. I held my rifle, thinking of Al Gharraf and the dead fedayeen. Putting my hand around the grip of my pistol, I was back at the bridge in Muwaffiqiya with tracers slicing through the dark. Brown bloodstains still mottled my flight gloves, but I shoved them into the ruck. I tried for a moment to beat Iraq’s dust from its canvas but gave up. This pack would probably be retired anyway. A piece of shrapnel had torn through its outer pockets and ripped away all the snaps.
At the warehouse, I waited in a line of Marines turning in their gear. Some were heading to new assignments, others getting out. All were quiet. Near the opposite doorway stood a group of second lieutenants, new guys with fresh haircuts. They joked and laughed, pretending not to see us. I wanted to gather them up and tell them what my father had told me as a new Marine: “Stand tall, but come home physically and psychologically intact.” I knew they would clasp their hands behind them, listen respectfully, and then laugh behind the back of the crazy captain who’d forgotten that Marine lieutenants are invincible. So I walked to my car and drove home instead. They would figure it out for themselves.
A few months later, I was working in Washington, D.C., and the platoon was back in Iraq. I drove down to Virginia Beach on a Thursday morning in April to pin a Bronze Star on Shawn Patrick’s chest. He had recovered from his wound and was an instructor at the Amphibious Reconnaissance School, training new recon Marines. As I passed Quantico on I-95, I listened to the national security advisor testifying before the 9/11 Commission. The symbolism struck me — passing the place where I had begun my Marine Corps career, listening to a debate over the event that had launched me into two years of combat, traveling to a ceremony to close a chapter of the story.
The phone rang. It was Cara Wynn, Mike’s wife. She was breathless, speaking so fast that I could barely understand her.
“The platoon was ambushed in Fallujah. A bunch of guys were hit and flown to Germany. That’s all I know right now.”
While on patrol, Bravo Company had hit a sophisticated combined-arms ambush. A group of insurgents had opened fire on the convoy from behind a berm next to the road. An RPG had exploded inside the lead Humvee. One Marine had lost both his hands, and four others had been wounded. The platoon had attacked the ambushers’ position, killing dozens of them.
In Virginia Beach, Sergeant Patrick stood unblinking as his commanding officer read the Bronze Star citation:
For professional achievement in the superior performance of his duties while serving in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom as Reconnaissance Team Leader, Team Two, Second Platoon, Bravo Company, First Reconnaissance Battalion, First Marine Division, from March, 2003 to May, 2003. On the night of April 1, while entering the town of Muwaffiqiya, Iraq, Sergeant Patrick was shot in an enemy ambush. While under hostile fire from three directions, he applied a tourniquet to his wound, resumed firing, and directed his team’s fire onto enemy targets, inflicting massive damage on the enemy forces. Sergeant Patrick remained in the kill zone and continued leading the Marines in his team until the enemy had been annihilated and his fellow Marines were out of harm’s way. Sergeant Patrick’s exceptional professional ability, initiative, and loyal dedication to duty reflect great credit upon himself and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.
We went to dinner afterward to celebrate, but we worried about our friends seven thousand miles away and wished we could be with them.
On my drive back to Washington, Cara called again. “Nate, I have some bad news.”
I pulled over to the side of the road, waiting as if watching someone wind up, in slow motion, to punch me.
“Captain Morel’s dead.”
Brent had been shot in the chest while leading the platoon’s counterattack. The Marines who fought to save him said that he had survived the golden hour. They recalled that when he died, aboard the casevac helicopter, he was so pale that his red hair had turned gray.
The new World War II Memorial in Washington had opened to visitors before its formal dedication. Still in shock over Brent’s death, I drove into the city under a full moon to see it. I needed a physical connection to sacrifice. Floodlights bathed the circle of granite slabs in a warm yellow glow, much less harsh than the stark white of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Elms towered just beyond the circle of light.
I walked clockwise around the central fountain, reading words carved in stone and letters left behind by family and friends. Three times I ducked into shadows to hide my tears. The names and faces were different, but these were the same men. At one end of the memorial stands a wall of gold stars — four thousand of them. Each star represents one hundred Americans killed in World War II. I stood and counted eight of those four thousand stars, a minuscule slice of the wall’s upper left corner. That was Afghanistan and Iraq combined. All the firefights, bombs, rockets, and helicopter crashes. Brent and Horsehead. All the heroism, blood, fear, humor, and boredom. Eight fucking stars.
