From Baghdad with Love Page 3

  “. . . rarely saw insurgents up close, just outlines through their night-vision scopes; the scurry of feet on rooftops above . . .”

  Or how, without a sleeping bag, the cold night air magnifies the convulsive jitters that plague you after a while, so when you wake up one morning to find a Marine’s poncho draped over you with no one claiming responsibility, you think how at this moment, in this place, in this real-time, hellish virtual video game of hide-and-go-seek, a cashmere blanket holds nothing over a dirty Marine poncho.

  She doesn’t even bother with that one.

  We sit up at night in the compound and talk by the glow of the light sticks used to avoid detection by insurgents. We talk a lot, Anne and me, and usually Lava snuffles around us and plays cute, pretending not to listen, but he’s taking it all in, I can tell, because every once in a while, when the conversation gets tough and I start, like, talking about something I normally don’t and can’t find the right way to describe what I’ve seen or what I’ve done or what somebody else did and just stop talking, Lava looks up at me and cocks his little head as if waiting—I swear—for the rest of it. So I shrug and finish the story.

  Like, the light sticks glow on our faces while everything else around us is dark, so we’re on the moon, right?—a million miles away from our gods, our rules, our lives, and I hear my voice plowing through every roadblock and checkpoint without halting, because there’s nothing, no gods, no rules, no lives standing guard to stop it.

  “. . . parents hate me being in the military, wanted me to be a doctor . . .”

  “. . . the marriage didn’t work out . . .”

  “. . . sure, I want to be a dad someday . . .”

  Anne listens and smokes and nods and smokes some more while we talk in the dim glow, and I never worry that she’ll turn around and use anything I tell her in one of her radio stories. And I tell her some stuff.

  “. . . the first guy I killed . . .”

  “. . . found this baby in the rubble . . .”

  “. . . his face just exploded . . .”

  She seems more focused on the stories of the younger guys anyway, the twenty-year-old grunts just in from basic training who walk around acting tough, like this is no big thing, like they’ve done this all their lives even though FREAKED OUT blinks on and off across their foreheads in neon. I think she feels sorry for them. She never says that, but that’s what a lot of her stories home are about in the end.

  Like the story she did about the initial bombing of Fallujah, as they waited on the outskirts of the city for the invasion to begin, when she realized how different this assignment was from any she’d been through before. Unlike the initial offensive against Iraq, for example, when aloof bombings killed anonymous enemies in uniform, this assault turned defensive as soon as it began. The enemy wasn’t a soldier hired to shoot back anymore; he was now a civilian who hated you so much he’d down his breakfast, walk out of the house, and then blow himself up in your face.

  Most of the Marines in Bravo Company had been in Iraq only two weeks when they convoyed to Fallujah where the new enemy, in a white Suburban van, introduced himself by careening into their seven-ton ammunition-laden truck, taking eight of them with him to wherever young warriors go when they’re burned alive.

  A few days later Anne interviewed a Marine psychologist sent in to offer counseling, who said the surviving members of Bravo Company didn’t feel the expected anger or guilt nearly as much as a sense of disgrace.

  “They experienced horrible shame of being helpless,” he told her. “Marines hate above everything to be helpless, passive. It’s not the way they see themselves, and it makes it hard for them to get back the feeling of confidence.”

  Anne knew the feeling, but none of it compared with the sense of professional disability she felt in Fallujah. How could you possibly report to people thousands of miles away how perverse it seemed to toss kids a sense of their own mortality with the casualness of a softball?

  “Most had yet to experience combat . . . ,” she reported. “Soon they would know.”

  They weren’t adults, most were old-ish teenagers, so for Anne, humping along after them was like trying to follow a pack of adolescent pit bulls previously chained up for too many days. Most had just left home—left rented video games, first cars, and part-time jobs—to defend, against all enemies foreign and domestic, the Constitution of the United States even though many would be hard-pressed to tell you what was actually in the thing.

  Was that enough? Would people back home get it? She could just come out and say it—They’re too young to be dealing with this, folks. They aren’t ready for this, folks. They only just learned to ride bikes, for God’s sake, folks—but she wondered if it would bother anyone for any meaningful period of time.

  “They wanted more from life than what they had back home. They believed the Marines when they said, You can be the best.”

  But she hoped she snared it when she interviewed one young grunt and asked him what his mission was here in Fallujah.

  “Kill the enemy, man,” he said into her microphone. “Kill the enemy, that’s about it.”

  I don’t let Lava sleep with me at first. I always scoot him off toward Anne or somebody else more willing to sleep with a snoring piglet who farts MREs all night.

  Then one night Anne says to me, “He’s so adorable. What’s going to happen to him?”

  I give the shrug. “Dunno.”

  Another night we’re talking and she tells me she’s scheduled to go back to the States in a few weeks. Lava bounces around on our sleeping bags.

  “Good for you.” I smile and roll Lava onto his back and scratch his belly until his back paws quiver.

  “Then I’m coming back to report on the elections from Baghdad.”

  I nod and stare down at the puppy, who provides a convenient diversion from eye contact as I tell her that I’m scheduled to rotate out in April sometime. I feel guilty about it. About leaving. But I don’t tell her.

  “I imagine you’re happy about that.”

  “Sure.”

  “So what’s going to happen to Lava?”

  I turn the puppy upright and nudge him away.

  “Who knows?”

  Lava rushes back, grabs one of my bootlaces, and tugs.

  “He is so cute.”

  “Yep.”

  I push Lava away again. The puppy turns and faces me as he bends his front legs down and pushes his rear end into the air. He wags his tail and barks. Then he rushes the boots again.

  “Cut it out.”

  So I shove him away, right? I suddenly don’t want the little shit chewing on my boots anymore.

  “What will you do when you get home?”

  Lava regroups and charges.

  “Not sure yet.”

  This time I really push him away, let him know what’s what, and he loses his balance and his legs give out while he makes little squeaks of terror and rolls several times across the floor.

  “Oh man.”

  I mean, I can’t begin to explain how bad I felt about this. I mean, really bad. You know, I just shoved a little puppy across the floor. So I pull Lava back toward me and scratch the bridge of his nose. He looks up at me all tough and wags his tail like it’s no big deal.

  “Hey, sorry.”

  But I feel like shit and let him sleep on my poncho that night, and I think that’s how Anne finds her story.

  During the fighting, the battalion gained a new member, a tiny puppy they named Lava Dog . . . Though filthy themselves, they’ve lovingly washed him down to get rid of the sand fleas.

  He sleeps nestled in a Marine poncho.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  November 2004

  Fallujah

  GENERAL ORDER 1-A is taken pretty seriously by the military. No pets allowed. That’s because they’ve invested a lot of time and money into trashing your moral clarity, and they don’t want anything like compassion messing things up. Your job is to shoot the enemy, period, and if anyt
hing close to compassion rears its ugly head, you better shoot that down, too, or you’re in some deep, scary shit.

  None of us talks about what will happen to Lava, because it means making decisions we don’t want to make for reasons we’re not being paid to consider in the first place. Frankly, it’s easier to just go blow stuff up.

  Most nights Lava sleeps outside on the roof of the compound with a group of the BLT 1/3 Marines, but once the weather turns colder, he comes inside at night. That’s when he starts bugging me, hanging around looking wide-eyed and cute, all paws and snuffles and innocence.

  In reality, when he isn’t asleep, he’s anything but innocent. I personally saw the little monster destroy several maps, two pairs of boots, one cell phone, photographs of someone’s kids, five pillows, and some grunt’s only pair of socks.

  One morning I wake up and find Lava sitting near my sleeping bag staring at me, with his left ear flapped forward and the remains of a toothpaste tube stuffed in his mouth.

  “Morning,” I say.

  He replies with a minty belch and then barfs up standard-issue Colgate all over my sleeping bag.

  In addition to forbidding pets, General Order 1-A also prohibits any conduct that is “prejudicial to the maintenance of good order and discipline of all forces,” meaning that anything that diminishes morale or discipline is banned. This includes drinking alcohol in countries that don’t allow it, entering religious sites without special orders, the theft or destruction of archaeological artifacts, and the taking of souvenirs. Anything that bargains with a Marine’s discipline, anything that toys with his ability to shoot and shoot well, has to be censored.

  I know what’s what in that department. During World War II only 15 percent of the troops actually fired at their enemies in battle, because most of them didn’t want to kill anyone. The problem is that sticky moral compass that discourages human beings from killing other human beings, so over the years the smart guys devised ways to overcome any and all ethical thorns, because not wanting to kill the enemy in combat posed, well, problems. Effective warriors, they decided, had to be trained without regard to moral repercussions.

  So after World War II Marines were trained to act immediately and reflexively rather than to stop and think about it first. Through the use of Pavlovian conditioning, we were taught to kill on command. Instead of shooting at the old-time bull’s-eye targets, we were taught to shoot at human-silhouette-shaped targets that popped up out of nowhere, and the repeated use of pop-up marksmanship ranges combined with fire commands, battle drills, and continued orders to “Shoot!” from authority figures not only controlled our reactions but anesthetized them as well. By the time the Vietnam War rolled around, 90 percent of American troops fired at the adversary. Now killing was as reflexive as answering a phone when it rang, and nothing was supposed to interfere with progress. Nothing.

  Another morning I wake to see Lava’s entire front end stuffed into one of my boots with his butt and back legs draped out over the side. He’s not moving, right? So I think he’s dead.

  “Oh shit.”

  Probably from the MREs.

  “Oh no. Oh shit.”

  Lava’s body doesn’t move at first, but when he hears my voice, his tail starts waving like a wind-kissed flag, and I decide that from now on, he’s not eating any more noodles, biscuits, or beans in butter sauce. No more M&M’s. No more toothpaste. Only meat. That’s what real dogs eat, meat.

  Out on the streets one day during that first week, I discover the Iraqi soldiers with looted candy bars and cigarettes in their pockets, and because we’re supposed to train them to be just like us—moral except for the killing stuff—and because looting breaks all the rules, I decide to give them a little additional training.

  I pace the ground six inches in front of them with an unopened candy bar clenched in my fist. They wince and lean back.

  “Well, excuuuuse me, am I invading your personal space?” I say through the interpreter, letting concern drip like battery acid from every word, because, you know, I have to make an impression here.

  The three soldiers try not to move, but their eyes swivel back and forth between me and the interpreter, who is the closest thing they can trace back to the good old days when everyone spoke Arabic and no one yelled at them for eating a little candy.

  “Well, I have some information for you pathetic excuses for soldiers.” I push my face into exhale range of one of the men and deliver a jab to his chest with each word.

  “You have no personal space.”

  I step back and stare at the unopened candy bar in my hand as if it just fell from a spaceship.

  “What is this?”

  The three soldiers eye the interpreter.

  “And what are these?”

  I march toward them, yank packs of cigarettes and more candy bars from their vests, and throw them on the ground with as much passion as I can muster. The soldiers look at the interpreter, down at the loot, and back at the interpreter again.

  “Did you pay for this stuff?”

  The three nod in unison.

  “Which one of you paid for it?”

  The three point to one another simultaneously.

  They just don’t get it. These guys are supposed to take over their country’s security, and here they are acting like the Three Stooges. Disobeying orders threatens survival out here, and while just about everything threatens survival out here including walking, talking, and pissing in the wrong place, lack of discipline is up near the top of the list of sure killers, along with panic, loss of focus, and too much compassion.

  “You are less than men for stealing.”

  I pace up and down in front of the soldiers.

  “You humiliate yourselves and the Iraqi forces.”

  I spit at their feet.

  “You are no good as soldiers and I will abandon you here in Fallujah, where you will be beheaded by insurgents.”

  I rip off my helmet.

  “You are nothing but shit.”

  The interpreter stops and looks at me.

  “Go on, translate shit. It’s not that hard.”

  I throw my helmet on the ground.

  “Repeat after me. I do not steal.”

  The soldiers mumble their response to the interpreter.

  “In English. I do not steal.”

  “In inglezee. I do not sti-il.”

  “I do not lie.”

  “I do not lie.”

  “I am a moron and I worship the ground you walk on, sir.”

  Discipline overrides everything between Heaven and earth here, including hunger, exhaustion, fear, homesickness, empathy, guilt, hangovers, snipers, regret, hatred, intestinal blockage, thoughts of suicide, calls to prayer, and letters from home.

  “And from this time forth, thy righteous ordinance of discipline will be my guide and I will forgo sex, kill my firstborn, chew with my mouth closed, take no prisoners, do unto others, brush in back, worship my gun, place I before E except after C, leave no Marine behind, oo-rah, praise the Lord, hail Caesar full of grace, Santa Claus lives, Allah is great, yes sir, always and forever and ever and ever, amen.”

  Poor schmucks. They start praying. They don’t even hear me anymore because they’re whispering “Allah, Allah” and trying not to cry, only I see they aren’t looking at me anymore but at something behind my back.

  I glance across the street and at first only see the usual horizon of a city blown to smithereens. Then I see something moving, and I stiffen and position my gun.

  “Allah, Allah.”

  It takes me a second to focus.

  I squint and grip the gun, because my palms start sweating, and my fingers start shaking, and the soldiers keep moaning, and I scream “Shut the fuck up,” because I can’t hold the rifle steady anymore, because what I see is a pack of dogs . . . “Allah, Allah” . . . feeding on meat, “Oh God,” and I think I’m going to puke.

  Another morning I wake up thinking someone short-sheeted my sleeping bag because I c
an’t push my feet to the end. It’s Lava, who managed to crawl in during the middle of the night and curl up at the bottom in a ball.

  “Oh man. This has got to stop.”

  He snores away, and I don’t want to disturb him because it’s still too early to get up, so as I lie there enjoying the warmth of his breath on my feet, General Order 1-A starts tangoing around in my head.

  Prohibited activities for service members under General Order 1-A include adopting as pets or mascots, caring for or feeding any type of domestic or wild animals. While most of the Marines sleeping around me would admit that it feels good to finally do what they’ve been trained to do, they don’t feel so good about it feeling so good. All the rules and training prove valuable out here, but what the hell do you do with yourself later?

  I know what will happen to them later. They won’t sleep much, they’ll experience panic attacks, they’ll avoid their neighbors, they’ll drink, they’ll snort, they’ll shoot, they’ll binge on emotional numbness, and that’s only if they find some kind of counseling that talks them out of feeling so different from everybody else even though they are different from everybody else.

  I tried. I tried breaking the rules once by leaving the fold, when the adrenaline rushes of carrier-arrested landings, airborne operations, and rappelling from helicopters faded and left me itching from the inside out. All the training was fine, all the discipline was great, but what did I do with myself at the end of the day?

  When I left active duty, I joined the civilian world working counternarcotics with the US Attorney’s office in San Diego, then wandered into an Internet start-up in Newport Beach as an officer of the company, and then into Salomon Smith Barney as a financial consultant.

  But it never felt normal. It was like There has to be more than this. What’s the point? What are the objectives? What in the hell are the rules?

  Then the attacks on 9/11 kickboxed being normal to a pulp, and I returned to active duty as soon as I could. I deployed with the Eleventh Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) to Kuwait and Jordan. Then I deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom in February 2003 and, by August, found myself assigned as the Special Forces liaison officer for the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Qatar. My third deployment in two years swept me into Camp Fallujah, where I trained the Iraqi Special Forces who are now out here on the streets of this godforsaken ghost town watching stray dogs eat their dead countrymen.