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You join the Marines to go outside and get shot at; it’s just the way it is. Even the wiredawgs and the commo guys harbor a secret hope that one day, they’ll get a chance to show their true marrow, get a chance to live up to the great Chesty Puller’s dream, get a chance for the cadences they once sung marching to actually come true.
Depending on how long they’ve been in, that secret desire is more or less shameful. Brad’s impression is that it’s a bell curve. Young boot Marines are too infused with the violent passions of, well, of young anythings, to feel any shame for believing in the glory of war, exactly how their DIs told them. Middle-of-the-road Marines who just finished an enlistment have decided they’ve seen all the shit the Corps can give them, and all the ways the Corps can shit on them, and they’re world-weary and just about done with that pretentious bullshit.
And old men, faded veterans who keep their uniforms in their closets to finger with thoughts of days gone past and the comrades of their youth, well, they’ve decided shame is for the young and the frail. A Marine is made to fight, and it’s no surprise if he takes some pride in it. A person must take pride in what he’s done, in what he is, and accept that he is due some respect as a human being for being alive and for having been through so much.
Brad is both young enough to feel the hit of a real recon mission like a shot of ancient aphrodisiac, and old enough to know better. He’s old enough to feel some fondness for both Cpl. Person’s nothing-is-sacred attitude and LCpl. Trombley’s itch to get some. He’s young enough to be uncertain sometimes, still.
So far, though, he’s pretty certain about Lt. Fick. Sure, he’s new to Bravo, and a bit of a mystery hidden behind a deceptively pretty face. Nate Fick may be young enough to see the war with eyes wide open and still hope—but he carries himself like he’s got the strength of countless dead battle commanders, old as history. He knows enough to keep his questions and his philosophers to himself, and enough still to put them out of his own mind when the real important things demand his attention: life, death, MREs, and the mission.
So far, Brad’s willing to put down money he got very, very lucky with his platoon commander.
Good lieutenants are not uncommon, coming out of infantry school—contrary to popular belief among the lower enlisted, the Marines train their officers well, hard and right. Brad has enough pride to admit that. But not many will make you feel like you’re in the presence of greatness, if only for a moment. Not many can make their troops want to listen, meld something down-to-earth and something archaic into a personality that inspires trust and fervent loyalty.
Not many would go to bat for Ray Person and his espresso machine. Not many would tell two young corporals to stand down, a snap in his voice, at the thought his men would put themselves in danger for him. Anger at the thought that the men he leads would think he needed protection.
So when Brad hears Schwetje is pushing the agenda that Fick’s unfit to command—well. He laughs. Isn’t that just how it goes, in these Corps.
Schwetje’s got no idea what real command is.
*
“Brad.” Fick puts a hand through the Humvee’s open window. “We push off at zero nine hundred.”
Brad looks up and gives him a mock salute. “Three hours from now, got it, sir.” Fick’s hands have dirt under the nails, oil and sweat making dust stick.
He looks over at Ray, who wiggles his fingers at Brad and smiles wryly from under his cover. He’s trying to sleep, for once, but he’s still penciling in “0900 move” in his mental schedule.
Traces of light filter through the minarets in the distance; Brad awaits the morning prayers. A signal that the day is up and moving. When in Iraq, might as well do as the Iraqis. Until the bells ring, Brad’s not getting up for shit.
At zero six thirty, Brad’s idly studying the Blue Force Tracker, reveling in the rare moment of quiet. He lets his eyes droop.
There’s something moving in the trees.
He reaches for the radio without thinking. “200 meters east, possible enemy visual,” he says. One hand goes for his rifle.
Shots ring out and Brad thinks no. No, what motherfucking fool wanted to start this fight? There’s no need to tell the enemy we know they’re there—
A bullet ricochets off the Humvee and Ray sits up with a start. “Brad,” he says.
“Yeah, under fire.” Brad cuts him off before he can start. No time.
“Fuck.”
“What are we gonna do?” Reporter asks from the back, and Brad shushes him.
Fick’s voice comes on the radio. “Hitman Two-One, this is Two-Actual. Retreat behind cover. Brad, let me know if you see anything.”
“Roger, sir,” Ray says, his face turned all the way serious. He puts his arm on the gearshift and shoves it.
“Would be nice if we had some decent cover,” Trombley mutters, and Brad has to agree.
“Might be safer getting out of the humvee and hiding behind it,” Reporter says, huddling into a ball in the back seat. He appears to have taken the LT’s talk to heart, the other day. The safest place in Iraq was now outside of your humvee.
“Reporter, don’t be a moron,” Ray starts, and Brad interrupts.
“Let’s just get behind the tent,” he says.
Ray actually shuts up and drives a risky U-turn to cover. Then he laughs. “Isn’t that symbolic,” he says. “For once, we get to hide behind the officers’ tent.”
**
In the end, Garza gets in a good shot, they have two more dead Iraqis, the Republican Guard is no closer to neutralized, and they have to move camp, but at least intel’s got some more tattered ID to investigate.
Bravo Two take their places around Rudy’s coffeepot, trading shots, hot aluminum warming their hands. Fick comes by and Brad hands him a cup, taking his nod as acknowledgment.
“I’ve been thinking, Brad,” the LT says. His voice is pitched to carry only between the two of them, but his stance is casual, leaned back against the Humvee, staring at something just out of sight.
“Dangerous stuff, sir,” Brad says. Fick cuts him a glance.
“Some people say dreaming is a way for our brains to grasp reality,” he says. “We unconsciously retell and re-analyze the events of the day. Figure out what happened.”
“Like an after-action.”
“Yes. But better.”
“Like storytelling.”
Fick nods, twice, considering.
Brad breathes in the coffee smell, mixed with dust in the heavy air. “Too bad we’re all sleep-deprived as fuck, sir,” he says.
“Quite,” says Fick.
**
There’s too much time in California. It’s something any Marine knows—either you got assigned to the black hole desert that is 29 Palms after boot camp or Quantico, or you had boot buddies that got sent there, and you got to watch their slow spiral into insanity by boredom.
It shouldn’t get to you as badly after you’ve been to Iraq, to Afghanistan, after you’ve had a chance to get the kill and the moto BS out of your system.
But it does.
It’s almost worse, if Brad’s being honest. It’s worse after you come back, because you can tell how wrong, how off everything is. The glare of sunlight off of industrialized smog-lit city life is a blight on the desert, which doesn’t feel like desert should. Everything is Hollywood-clean, and Brad wonders whose bright idea it was to put a Marine base right outside the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Someone had a contradictory sense of humor.
For a while after they get back, Bravo Two mostly doesn’t see each other. The change of pace is total, and it doesn’t seem right to see your deployment buddies in the wrong country. Everyone is too busy catching up with their parents, their girlfriends, living respectable “returned soldier” lives. Everybody needs some space.
Brad goes hiking on Pendleton.
The young men—boys, really—he sees there just out of ITB double-take, their eyes shining for a split second in recognition, and Brad evades a few before accepting the inevitable.
“You’re Brad Colbert, right? Sergeant—sorry, Sergeant Colbert,” says one of them, and Brad tamps down the slight, reflexively vicious instinct to order him to parade rest, to put the fear of God into him like any other recent graduate. No, they’ve all had enough of that.
“Yes,” he says, simply.
Private Hauser goes to parade rest anyway. Brad almost laughs. The kid opens his mouth, then appears to think better of it. “Good to meet you,” he says.
“Word of advice,” Brad says, surprising himself. “You’re gonna meet a lot of people in the Corps. Take the good with you. Even if you never see them again, make them a part of you. That’s the best way you can honor them.”
The kid nods, earnest. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he says, and the idealism burns through him a bit. Maybe Brad needed that. Maybe he needed to learn a bit from the young.
He nods back. “Thank you, Private,” he says, and turns, walks back down the way he came.
**
“I don’t miss anything from home,” Brad says, and it’s not even a little bit lying.
Brad isn’t waiting for packages of dip, Ripped Fuel, porn mags, batteries, hash chunks, or a dirty-ass jerk-off letter from Suzy Rottencrotch. Brad deliberately doesn’t want any creature comforts or soothing mementos.
This is Iraq, and the weeks-old dust in his desert cammies reminds him of that. This is another world. It’s a world of MREs and sleeping pits dug in the ground and tracer light and half-awake command decisions and dead children and coffee breaks after a fight. It’s half Mesopotamia, half dystopian future, and another half top 40 radio.
It’s not supposed to be comfortable.
And if Brad lets himself get too comfortable, he’ll start having doubts about everything they’re doing, doubts he can’t allow to get in the way of his mission effectiveness. His team is counting on him. His platoon commander is counting on him. Brad is the Iceman, and nobody—well, maybe Ray, maybe the LT—knows that’s because he doesn’t let home get to him when he’s deployed.
In truth, it’s no major feat of self-discipline. Brad isn’t the Iceman because he’s just that skillful, that strong. Brad is who he is, what he is, because he likes it.
Very few people would get this. It’s not kosher; it’s the kind of human instinct that only surfaces in a place like Iraq. Certainly, nobody at home would understand. Brad lives for the blurred, greyscale, washed-out morality of war.
Narrowly escaping an alley stuck in the third-world middle ages, tanks and bullets clanging across some timeless barrier—it puts everything in perspective. Lines at Kroger don’t matter anymore. Hell, even breakup letters from your high-school sweetheart don’t matter anymore. Essays you turned in late, arguments with your parents, the pervasive, pointless anxieties of life in America—none of it matters anymore. You almost died, and you’re brothers with every other human being who’s almost died on this soil, since back when Babylon grew out of Pangaea.
It’s the kind of freedom Brad never got in the land of the free. The freedom not to give a shit about anything except what’s really important: two hours of sleep and a football match, his rifle, and his platoon.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to let go and be the warrior the Marine Corps taught him to be.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
— W. B. Yeats, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death."