At ten in the morning on April 23, First Recon drives south on Highway 8 to its final camp in Iraq outside of Ad Diwaniyah, 180 kilometers from Baghdad. The battalion joins about 18,000 other Marines from the First Division occupying a former Iraqi military complex—barracks, supply depots and training fields spread across fifteen square kilometers. While most of First Recon's Marines wind up occupying brick barracks, through the luck of the draw those in Bravo Company end up in a former tank repair yard in a windswept corner of the camp. For the next six weeks, they will sleep in the open on a four-by-forty-meter concrete strip.
Surveying this infernal spot with an almost satisfied smile the afternoon he arrives, one of the men in Second Platoon says, "One universal fact of being in the Marine Corps is that no matter where we go in the world, we always end up in some random shitty place."
Bravo's Second and Third platoons spend most of their daytime hours here, as well as their nights, as if they're living on a ship. The camp's burn pits and latrines are located adjacent to this sleeping/living area. Plastic MRE wrappings and human excrement, mixed with diesel fuel in steel barrels, are burned round the clock just ten meters from the men. When the wind is still, they live in a haze of flies, mosquitoes and pungent, black smoke. When it blows, they're inundated with dust. Shamal storms, with fifty-mile-per-hour winds, strike every day, usually lasting three to six hours. During them, Marines just lie on the concrete pad with ponchos wrapped around their heads. Daytime temperatures now typically hover around 115 degrees. Wild dogs are kept at bay by a Marine gunnery sergeant who roams the camp with a shotgun, blasting away at them.
According to Navy Commander Kevin Moore, the division surgeon, injuries among Marines at the camp are running high from guys picking up the unexploded ordnance littering the place. Numerous cases of malaria have occurred, and everyone is becoming ill with what Moore calls "ass-to-hand" disease. A few Marines have undergone psychotic episodes and have been picked up running around the wire, screaming at imaginary Fe-dayeen. Moore attributes most of these cases to temporary psychosis induced by overuse of stimulants like Ripped Fuel.
One Marine in First Recon's support unit freaks out early in the stay at this camp. The episode is prompted after a Game Boy (which he brought into Iraq in violation of battalion regulations) disappeared from his rucksack. Early one afternoon following the battalion's arrival at Ad Diwaniyah, he runs into the warehouse serving as a chow hall with his M-16, puts it to the head of the suspected thief, racks a round into the chamber and screams, "Give me back my Game Boy!" Other Marines talk him out of pulling the trigger. The battalion isolates him for a few days, then returns him to his unit. The Game Boy is never recovered.
On my third morning here, I'm sitting with Colbert's team, eating an MRE breakfast. Most Marines still haven't had a proper shower since they left Camp Mathilda more than a month ago. A few rinsed off by spraying themselves with a fire hose in a warehouse they occupied in Baghdad, but not everyone had a chance to use it. Fick washes up for breakfast by spitting in his hands and wiping them on his dirty fatigues.
Colbert says, "You know, I don't miss anything from home. The only exception is my bike. I miss that. Speed, solitude and no one can touch me."
"You mean you're out here in the middle of nowhere, and you miss being alone?" Person laughs quietly. He doesn't say anything else, which is kind of amazing. After a month of insane, nonstop chattering in the Humvee, he barely talks now. When Person detoxes from Ripped Fuel, endless days of mortar fire, ambushes and sleepless nights behind the wheel of the Humvee, he turns into a soft-spoken guy from Nevada, Missouri, pop. 8,607. He now admits to me, despite his relentless mockery of the Corps, "When I get out of the Marines in November, I'm going to miss it."
In spite of the austerities at the platoon's encampent, spirits are high. The men build an open-air gym. They scavenge gears and drive shafts from wrecked Iraqi tanks and turn them into free weights and chin-up bars they hang from concrete pilings. They run for kilometers in the 115-degree heat. They practice hand-to-hand combat in the dirt. They pace back and forth barefoot through gravel to build calluses on their feet. The Marines sleep through each night for the first time in weeks, boil coffee every morning on fires started with C-4 explosive, play cards, dip tin after tin of Copenhagen and spend days, when they are not working out, engaging in endless bull sessions. "Man, this is fucking awesome," Second Platoon's twenty-two-year-old Corporal James Chaffin declares one morning. "I can't believe I'm getting paid to work out, dip and hang out with the best guys in the world."
Up until now, no one has known the name of the war they've been fighting. Gunny Wynn passes on the rumor that he thinks they might be calling it "Iraqi Freedom." Hearing the news, Carazales scoffs. "Fuck that. I'll tell you what 'freedom' was, Phase Three Iraq," he says, referring to the military's term for the combat-operations phase of the invasion. "That was fucking Iraqi freedom. Rip through this bitch shooting anything that moves from your window. That's what I call freedom."
The senior officers, set up in nicer quarters across the camp, are basking in the glow of victory. First Recon, one of the smallest, most lightly armed battalions in the Corps, led the way for much of the Marines' blitzkrieg to Baghdad. "No other military in the world can do what we do," Ferrando tells me. "We are America's shock troops."
I meet Lt. Col. Ferrando in a small office that formerly belonged to an Iraqi officer. The one-story building is shaded by sycamore trees and has thick adobe walls, keeping it relatively cool even on this hot afternoon. One of the issues still dogging the battalion is Captain America's behavior. After a lengthy investigation into the incident in which he taunted an EPW with his bayonet, Ferrando returned him to command but hesitated to fully exonerate him. He finally does in late April, about the time I meet with him. He tells me he thinks Captain America walked a fine line but was still "within the box" of acceptable behavior. But he adds, "In my mind, when you allow that behavior to progress, you end up with a My Lai Massacre." Then he leans across his desk and asks me if I think he should have taken harsher action toward Captain America.
I honestly can't answer him. In the past six weeks, I have been on hand while this comparatively small unit of Marines has killed quite a few people. I personally saw three civilians shot, one of them fatally with a bullet in the eye. These were just the tip of the iceberg. The Marines killed dozens, if not hundreds, in combat through direct fire and through repeated, at times almost indiscriminate, artillery strikes. And no one will probably ever know how many died from the approximately 30,000 pounds of bombs First Recon ordered dropped from aircraft. I can't imagine how the man ultimately responsible for all of these deaths—at least on the battalion level—sorts it all out and draws the line between what is wanton killing and what is civilized military conduct. I suppose if it were up to me, I might let Captain America keep his job, but I would take away his rifle and bayonet and give him a cap gun.
As I'm about to leave his office, Ferrando stops me. "Something I'm struggling with internally is it's exciting to get shot at," he says, sounding almost confessional. "It's an excitement that I hadn't thought about before." He hastily adds, "But at the same time it's a terrible feeling to be the man sending other people into combat."
Earlier, in a talk to his men, Ferrando referred to his order to send them onto the airfield at Qalat Sukhar with no preparation as "reckless." Many of his men feel the whole campaign of rushing into ambushes was characterized by recklessness. But in the end, he's been vindicated. He became, in a sense, Maj. Gen. Mattis's go-to guy in central Iraq. While Col. Dowdy, commander of the much larger regimental force in the region, sometimes appeared to hesitate, as he had in entering Nasiriyah, and was removed from command in early April, Ferrando seldom if ever turned down a chance to race his forces into another hairy situation. Much of the time during the dash to Al Kut, Ferrando's battalion set the pace. He shrugged off the fact that his men weren't adequately equipped or specifically trained for the kinds of assaults they were doing. (By contrast, after Dowdy was relieved of his command he was reportedly castigated in a subsequent fitness report for being "overly concerned about the welfare" of his men, with the idea being that this concern got in the way of mission accomplishment.) In the end, Ferrando's battalion exemplified the virtues of maneuver warfare, employing speed over firepower to throw Iraqi defenders off balance.
As much as some of the enlisted men despise Ferrando for what they saw as his dangerous haste (not to mention his obsession with the Grooming Standard), Fick praises him. "He got the job done for Major General Mat-tis, and in the Marine Corps that's all that matters. It's mission accomplishment first, troop welfare second. Ferrando has no problem with that."
When I talk to Mattis the next day at Ad Diwaniyah, he heaps praise on the courage and initiative displayed by the men in First Recon, to whom he credits with a large measure of the invasion's success. "They should be very proud," he says.
After I return to Second Platoon's squalid encampment and pass on the general's praise, the men stand around in the dust, considering his glowing remarks. Finally, Garza says, "Yeah ? Well, we still did a lot of stupid shit."
"War doesn't change anything," Doc Bryan says. "This place was fucked up before we came, and it's fucked up now. I personally don't believe we 'liberated' the Iraqis. Time will tell."
"The American people ought to know the price we pay to maintain their standard of living," Espera says. Despite his avowals of being a complete cynic, he continually turns back to the incident at Al Hayy, where he shot and killed three unarmed men fleeing a truck at the Marines' roadblock. "I wish I could go back in time and see if they were enemy, or just confused civilians," he says.
"It could have been a truckful of babies, and with our Rules of Engagement you did the right thing," Fick says.
"I'm not saying I care," Espera says. "I don't give a fuck. But I keep thinking about what the priest said. It's not a sin to kill with a purpose, as long you don't enjoy it. My question is, is indifference the same as enjoyment?"
"All religious stuff aside," Colbert cuts in. "The fact is people who can't kill will be subject to those who can."
Despite their moral qualms—or lack thereof—about killing, most Marines unabashedly love the action. "You really can't top it," Redman says. "Combat is the supreme adrenaline rush. You take rounds. Shoot back, shit starts blowing up. It's sensory overload. It's the one thing that's not overrated in the military."
"The fucked thing," Doc Bryan says, "is the men we've been fighting probably came here for the same reasons we did, to test themselves, to feel what war is like. In my view it doesn't matter if you oppose or support war. The machine goes on."
I leave First Recon's camp at Ad Diwaniyah in a Navy helicopter at dawn on May 4. We fly low and fast to avoid enemy ground fire. Our flight path takes us directly over the tank repair yard, where I see the men of Second Platoon stirring from their sleep on the concrete pad. They will remain here for more than a month, returning to Camp Pendleton on June 3, 2003.
Pappy, shot in the foot at Al Muwaffaqiyah, returned to duty at Camp Pendleton before his platoon's homecoming. Despite having received a "lucky" wound in an extremity, Pappy had to undergo intensive physical therapy to overcome a limp. Still walking with a cane when he returned to duty, he was roused one evening in his barracks room by a surprise visit from the ladies of the Key Wives Club—a spouse support group headed by Encino Man's wife. She and Lt. Col. Ferrando's wife offered him a heartfelt Key Wives' welcome home and gifts of fresh baked goods and a new toothbrush, then left a few minutes later. Pappy's bloody boot, worn the night he was shot, had been out on his floor when the Key Wives dropped in, but they made no mention of it. Pappy thought nothing of the visit, until June 3, when he went to March Air Force base to greet First Recon on its return. The first man he encountered off the plane was Ferrando, who walked up to him on the tarmac and chewed Pappy out for having left his tattered boot on the floor of his room when the Key Wives visited. "I don't like you showing your bloody boot to my wife," Ferrando had rasped, then brushed past, without further ado. "At least he didn't bitch about my mustache/' Pappy later said. Pappy was awarded a Bronze Star for his actions in the invasion.
Upon his return, Colbert received one of the highest honors in the Marine Corps, a combat meritorious promotion to staff sergeant. He was nominated to enter a two-year exchange program with the British Royal Marines, with whom he is now serving.
Person got out of the Marines and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to pursue his career as a rock star while working at the front desk of a twenty-four-hour fitness club.
After being promoted to the rank of captain, Fick left the Marine Corps in August to pursue graduate degrees in business and foreign relations at Harvard. For several months he debated whether he had been a good officer, or whether his concern for his men colored his judgment. He concluded, "My feelings made me a more conflicted officer. There was no celebratory cigar smoking on the battlefield for me. But we achieved every mission objective. I did my job." Under his command, the men in Second Platoon received more combat citations and awards than any other platoon in First Reconnaissance Battalion.
Capt. Patterson also left the Marine Corps, after being promoted to major, in order to study environmental engineering at the University of Washington. After more than ten years of distinguished military service, Patterson departed following a loss of control in front of his men—one that only raised their opinion of him. In my last conversation with Patterson, he confessed that he was still troubled by the episode in which Encino Man had mistakenly followed an incorrect order to send men out to mark a minefield at night. One of the engineers injured, Valdez, who lost an eye, had served with Patterson's company. "Valdez was my man," Patterson said to me. "What the fuck happened?" Despite his anger, he refused to cast blame on any individual. "It happened as a result of dysfunction in the battalion, not because of what a single officer did."
Patterson's eruption—and it could be called that given the fact that ordinarily he is so mild-mannered it almost makes him seem diminutive— happened midday on May 3, when the men in the companies were racing in a competition whose winners would receive a phone call home. Encino Man checked a corporal from Alpha Company who was pulling ahead in an obstacle race, and Patterson exploded, rushing Encino Man, throwing him into a headlock and slamming him against a wall. The enlisted men were forced to break the two officers apart. Later, Patterson laughed off the assault, claiming it was done in the spirit of fun. Whatever his motives, Patterson achieved hero status within the ranks.
Captain America departed from his command a few weeks after the battalion's return. Some thought the move was a demotion, until he was reassigned to a prestigious command staff position in another unit.
Doc Bryan had a sad parting from the Middle East. While waiting at a desert camp in Kuwait to fly home, he was on hand at a football game held among Marines in other units when one of the players went berserk with his M-16 and shot a young man on the opposing team, hitting him in the chest and neck. Doc Bryan and other corpsmen were unable to save the Marine. The incident only added fuel to Doc Bryan's bitter complaints about war. Later, Doc Bryan had been engaging in one of his typical bitch sessions about the incompetence of superiors when, he says, he suddenly heard his voice as if it belonged to someone else. Something snapped in him, and he realized, "You know what, I'm just not cut out for the military." But the feeling didn't last. His first week home, he was happily recruited out of First Recon into a secretive Special Forces unit. He has been training for a mission he is not at liberty to talk about.
Trombley finally completed the Basic Reconnaissance Course and is now a full-fledged Recon Marine. In the autumn he also participated in an LAPD training program. He's thinking of joining the LAPD when he gets out in a year.
Reyes achieved the dream of a lifetime when his temporary promotion to team leader after Pappy's wounding at Muwaffaqiyah was made permanent at Camp Pendleton. A week later, he was suspended following a hazing incident that occurred under his supervision. While training a Marine new to First Recon, one who was having trouble keeping up on a fitness run, Garza ordered the kid to dig a Ranger grave. Then Garza and others buried him, leaving only a small breathing space. Reyes had approved of the disciplinary measure, telling me later, "That was the kind of hard training we did under Horsehead." Reyes was immediately docked a month's pay. The rest of the men in the platoon took money from their paychecks to make up the difference in his lost salary, while he awaited formal punishment proceedings.
A few weeks after Espera returned from Iraq he had an eerie experience while driving with his family down Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles. Espera was at the wheel of a new SUV, purchased to celebrate his homecoming, when he glimpsed a man on the street who looked exactly like an Iraqi civilian the platoon had fatally shot at a roadblock in Iraq. In an instant he realized it wasn't the pedestrian on the street who had reminded him of the dead man; the light was glancing off the windshield of his new SUV the same way it had in his Humvee when he'd witnessed the shooting. A short while after this flashback, Espera was invited to a party at a gated community in Malibu where residents wanted to toast a war hero. In civilian clothes, with his hair grown out, and having gained the weight that he'd lost in Iraq, Espera cut a handsome figure. As the guests repeatedly praised his heroism in serving his country, Espera hung his head with an almost embarrassed smile. Then, after his fifth or sixth glass of wine, he rose to his feet. "I'm not a hero," he said. The guests nodded, their smiles stretching even wider at this hero's show of humility. "Guys like me are just a necessary part of things," Espera continued. "To maintain this way of life in a fine community like this, you need psychos like us to go out and drop a bomb on somebody's house."
In November the men were told First Recon would be returning to Iraq. Reyes was reinstated as team leader. Gunny Wynn, who was still facing disciplinary action for his disobedience to Encino Man in Iraq, was also cleared. "In the end," Reyes says, "they need bodies for the war." Reyes adds, "This is the way the Corps is. You join for the idealism, but eventually you see the flaws in it. You might fight this for a while. Then you accept that one man isn't going to change the Marine Corps. If you love the
Corps, you give up some of the ideals which motivated you to join in the first place."
When Person heard through the grapevine that his unit was going back, he called Gunny Wynn at home, drunk, from Kansas City, and told him he was reenlisting. Gunny Wynn told him to shut up, go to bed and stay a civilian.
As this book goes to press, the men in Bravo Second Platoon, along with the rest of First Recon, are in Fallujah, Iraq.