twenty-four hours a day in broiling desert heat.
Our sanitary needs overwhelmed the available facilities, since our toilets were wooden benches with holes in them, perched above trenches dug by a backhoe. When the trench was filled with human waste, it was covered, and the stalls were shifted to a new trench. In the unbearable heat, the stink was awful, and the latrines attracted about a million flies that feasted on exposed flesh.
The tight cohesion that the battalion had forged in combat started to evaporate, and fights, arguments, and world-class bitching left many of us on edge. The auxiliary units that had been attached to us for the combat phase, such as the Bravo tanks, the engineers, and the Amtracs, were all sent back to their original units, so those bonds of brotherhood were broken, although not forgotten.
Most of the lieutenants hung out by Casey’s truck, which became unofficially known as the “Bus Stop,” for we were confident that sooner or later the Marine Corps would remember we were parked out here in the middle of hell and move us on over to Kuwait. The Bus Stop was an oasis for anyone who cared to stop by, and we sat around, hour after hour, day after day, swapping lies and rumors, betting on the date when we would leave, reading magazines and eating candy bars sent from home. We gave a lot of shit to Daniel Tracy, my communications guy, because he had not gotten killed in Baghdad as he had so often predicted. Instead, Daniel and the rest of the guys in our trucks came out of the war as tough combat veterans. The five pigeons that had gone along with the battalion as early warnings for chemical attacks had also all managed to survive the heat, wind, and bullets of the entire conflict. Their cages had been opened before we left Baghdad, and the birds flew away to a well-earned freedom.
Nobody wanted any more damned MREs. We would rather get sick from eating too many Snickers bars than rip open another MRE pouch. Care packages were gold, and time stood still. A virus swept the camp, causing vomiting and severe, stomach-cramping diarrhea that forced the Marines to use those damned toilets even more. Some guys caught it two or three times, but my own immune system proved to be tougher than the bugs, and I didn’t get sick at all.
Every day was the same, and almost every hour somebody at the Bus Stop would stand out in the road, shield his eyes against the sun, and actually look for a bus, but then sit back down and say, “Nothing yet.”
Our battalion-the Bull, the mighty 3/4-had endured a cauldron of combat. From the starting line of this war until the very finish, we were in it, and the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old boys who made up the heart of the battalion had grown even more than the veterans. John Koopman of the
We had battled in Basra, created the deadly efficient Afak Drill, fought hard in Al Budayr, Ad Diwaniyah, and Al Kut, charged across the bridge over the Diyala Canal, and gone straight into Baghdad itself, where we pulled down the statue. Our battalion had a piece of almost every major battle the Marines fought in Iraq. And, as Casey put it, “We cracked the skulls of anyone who tried to fuck with us.” We had lost six good Marines dead, and we held a memorial service on Easter Sunday before a line of six helmets on six rifles that were bayoneted into the Iraqi dirt. More than twenty men were wounded.
Whether we would achieve military victory in Iraq had never been a question for me, and it had come much easier than I had anticipated. When I had factored in the possible use of weapons of mass destruction, I once guessed that our attacking Coalition force might sustain up to ten thousand casualties. Instead, although we were saddened by the loss of our comrades, the overall casualties for the war were extremely light, and the campaign was extraordinarily short.
We had accomplished what we had come to do, which was to liberate the people of Iraq.
Proof that the Iraqis were free from the yoke of Saddam Hussein was dramatically visible when we watched throngs of Shi’ite pilgrims heading to the Muslim holy sites, making their first religious pilgrimage, or hajj, in more than two decades. They were of a different faith, but we were proud to have removed the dictator who had forbidden them to make that sacred journey.
I am by nature an optimist. It was obvious from the chaos we found during our first day in Baghdad that the transition from war to peace would be neither quick nor smooth. It will take years, but I believe that at the end a strong and peaceful democracy will take root in that ancient land.
At the end of May, we transferred back to Kuwait. “Tomorrow” observed Casey, “we will be sleeping back in that sacred nation-state, which is just as dirty as this one.”
There is an eternal question: What do you do with the warriors once the fighting is done? When the warrior returns to the rear, things change, and although I had been through this phenomenon many times, Casey had not. We had been together out where the killing was done and were suddenly back at a base where the administrative offices were air-conditioned to beat the desert heat, the troops had movies to alleviate the boredom, and there was more good food than you could possibly eat. These peculiar places are ruled by the REMFs, the universal derogatory military acronym for rear-echelon motherfuckers, and Casey had not been out of his truck for fifteen minutes before some pretentious senior officer curtly ordered him to straighten his uniform. He was taken aback by the order but dutifully adjusted his cammies, realizing he was walking on alien turf. He also wondered where that officer had been when the bullets were flying.
Then came the news about some of the awards that we expected to be distributed for the action in Iraq. Casey was more than satisfied to receive a Navy Achievement Medal with V for valor, and I was to receive another Bronze Star, also with the distinction of a V. But we were apoplectic to learn that Officer Bob, our ineffectual leader who couldn’t find his way around the block, would receive not only a Navy Commendation Medal but also a bump-up promotion to command a rifle company. I was pissed off beyond belief, and at that moment, Casey stopped caring.
He knew he was on a fast track with the Corps, and in fact he was promoted, to the rank of captain, but I was not surprised when he said he would be getting out. After combat, it is hard to endure the peacetime bullshit, and he told me there were other things he wanted to do. Soon after his return to civilian life, he was accepted at a prestigious university’s law school. I cannot imagine this guy, whom I had depended upon for my very survival and who had been my partner in battle, going to work in a coat and tie. After having been tested in combat, he returned to the civilian world viewing life differently and would no longer accept things at face value. The wide-eyed wonder and jumpy innocence I had first seen in him were gone, and today he is much quieter, calmer, and more thoughtful. There was no longer the burning need to prove himself, and Casey departed from the Corps cleanly, with memories but without longing.
I left Kuwait with a thirty-man advance party from the battalion, aboard an aircraft loaded with Marines from various units, and while they celebrated their flight back to the world, I dreaded what lay ahead. I smiled and kept my emotions to myself, all the way to California.
I had telephoned my wife from Kuwait and finally caught up with her when I managed to get the call patched through to her classroom. Instead of excitement, the conversation was impersonal and cold.
By the time we boarded the plane, I was resigned to the inevitable. As I winged across the broad Atlantic Ocean, and then across the entire United States, her words from that brief conversation slammed my brain.
In thirty hours, we jumped from a desert in Kuwait to another in California and landed at March Air Force Base. Then seven buses took us on a two-hour ride over to 29 Palms, and the long odyssey finally delivered us to the Marine base. Highway 62 was ablaze with bright lights, yellow ribbons, and hundreds of signs, WELCOME HOME! WELCOME BACK!
We checked our weapons into the armory and then were bused to the official greeting ceremonies in the parking lot behind the base gymnasium. Spotlights turned the place to bright daylight, and several dozen tired, happy, and thankful men dashed from the buses into the waiting arms of families and friends, while a band crashed out the “Marine Hymn.” There were hugs and kisses and enough tears to wash away the Kuwaiti dust that still clung to their uniforms.
I searched the crowd but did not see my wife, who was in the midst of the throng, almost as if she were hiding. Ashley was on her hip, but eight-year-old Cassie was nowhere in sight. Trying to hug Kim was like holding a stuffed
