To try and put into words my experiences over the past three years feels at times like a mission even more daunting than the ones I was assigned in Iraq.

DECEMBER 2002

Before I deployed to Iraq in January 2003 I was living the high life. I had an amazing job on Capitol Hill working for one of the most influential members of Congress. I was a Marine reservist who would occasionally fill the empty seat next to the disgruntled Vietnam veteran at local dive bars, all the while picking up the tab to try and express a humble thank you. I had my stuff: a brand new Honda, a home theatre system that would make even the most critical Best Buy employee proud, and my guitars that allowed me to compose teen angst music to deal with my frustrations in not finding a parking spot close enough to my apartment building. My apartment in downtown DC was the size of a shoe box which allowed me to Swiffer the whole floor in a record time of 32 seconds. A convenient time for an aspiring yuppie. My girlfriend was the token blonde bright Midwestern beauty who was proud of all I accomplished for myself or possibly us. Most importantly, I had my friends and family to assure me I was following the right path to a full and fruitful life filled with BMW’s, a cookie cutter suburban home with a mailbox in the shape of a barn, and maybe even a soccer coaching gig to top off my warm and fuzzy existence. My hand of cards was a solid twenty one and I had plenty of money in the bank. In a whirlwind of legislation and military orders it all vanished in a matter of a few days. Five to be exact.

JANUARY 2003

Somewhere, in the middle of the Atlantic, I relaxed on an iron slab that I called a bed pondering how I had gotten here. As the ship swayed from left to right so did my emotions. I missed home, but the excitement of taking part in liberating a nation was worth the sacrifice. Most of my time spent on ship consisted of smoke breaks and occasionally watching guys, who had not made purchasing motion sickness drugs a priority, barfing off the edge of the ship. I can’t even begin to imagine how many sea creatures we pissed off on the way. Sorry, Greenpeace, but we have a war to fight. One night we watched on the closed circuit television as President Bush addressed the United Nations giving his plan for Iraq. A surge of energy flowed through the ship as high fives were exchanged and rock music cranked over the loud speakers. I am not sure if Limp Bizket knows how much they contributed to the American war machine by sticking to the lyrics “Let the bodies hit the floor” as opposed to the original lyrics “Let the mops hit the floor”. They did mean enemy bodies, right?

MARCH 2003

As I dug through the dirt I found a portion of a human hand. It looked nothing like the graphic images I had seen in horror movies. The hand was grey and dull looking and it never really hit me that this was what remained of a fellow Marine. I carried it over and placed it on the hood of the HMMMV with the other remains. I did not even wash my hands afterward. The Marines had been killed after their vehicle was hit by an RPG. Iraqi citizens had shown us where some of the pieces of these young men could be found. We rewarded them with Meals Ready To Eat, minus the fine menu of boneless pork chop. We were in the town of Al Nasiriyah making our way up north. Our surprise attack had been blown when an Army convoy got lost and drove through the city hours before us only to be attacked on their way back after realizing their mistake. Jessica Lynch was one of the soldiers with the convoy and she was missing. I remember driving by the Army convoy as it still smoldered. I glanced to my left and became very aware of the centimeter thick nylon between the outside and myself. The fighting was intense and the grunts had a hard time of it. With the North and South bridges secured, our mission was accomplished and we began to assess the city. I was assigned to 1^st Battalion 2^nd Marines as a civil affairs specialist. We were there to reduce civilian interference and a bunch of other military jargon. Basically, we were the guys to try and help the people of Iraq any way we could and to answer the many questions that were asked of us from our fellow Marines. Some of my favorite examples of these questions were, “What the hell does this fucker keep crying about?” in reference to a man who was comforting his wife who had a severed foot. Another fond question was “Are you civil affairs guys here to make these brown bastards like us?” Yes. As the war ravaged these people, it was our job to patch things up. We were a band aid with a rifle. As one of our fellow civil affairs teams befriended the Iraqis on the other side of the city they we were given bits of information on the whereabouts of Jessica Lynch. The information was correct and with a rescue from the Navy seals and some really sweet Fox News footage she was safe. Amazing. We had gathered perfect intelligence without shoving bamboo slivers under anyone’s fingernails or hooking electrodes to their balls. Someone should tell Dick to get off Johnny’s back. He knows what he is talking about. A hand shake and a smile within a civilian populace will always outweigh the intelligence gains that torture might, and I emphasize might, produce. Gain the respect of the Insurgent’s camouflage (the Iraqi civilians) and you have beaten them at their own game.

At the bridge where four American contractors corpses were hung


APRIL 2004

I did not realize what I was looking at when I gazed up at CNN on my television as I stuffed my Econ book into my bag for another arduous day of college life. I had the television on mute as I watched the Iraqis jump and dance like I tend to do at many eighties cover band rock shows. Then, as the screen changed to show a burning SUV and to display something dangling from a bridge, I knew this was not good news. When I found out that it was burned and dismembered corpses of four American contractors caught in the Wild West town of Fallujah something snapped in me. Shit. A few hours later I was in the Prior Service Recruiter’s office to drop back into the active reserves. I do not like to think that it was a sense of duty that drove me to make such a drastic decision. I do not think it was a drive to have another combat adventure. It was something else, but at the time I could not pinpoint it. At the time I made the decision to go back to Iraq, I no longer had a hand of twenty one. My girlfriend had left me, my job vaporized and to top it all off I was running out of money saved from my last deployment. After budgeting myself and finding that one tour in Iraq equaled one semester of college I knew I was going to be in trouble. A 24-year old can only take out so many students loans before imploding with financial debt anxiety.

OCTOBER 2004

I remember exactly what I was thinking as I squeezed the trigger and watched the insurgent fighters fall: I hope one of these guys was the one that laughed and danced last April on CNN. I also thought about how inaccurate Hollywood is when Bruce Willis shoots someone in the head. There is no pretty hole where blood oozes out. There is an explosion that looks like an egg cracking leaving behind a disfigured skull. The bodies do not fly back, they just sort of crumple and then stop. Here I was, ironically, in Fallujah fighting with the roadside-bomb-hiding, civilian-murdering, media-hogging Insurgents that I had never had to deal with my first tour. I eventually stopped shooting when I learned that there was a civilian car that had been caught in the crossfire. Time for Civil Affairs to do what we do. During the process of trying to get to the car, I noticed that I was being specifically targeted. Did the insurgents see me trying to help one of their own? Why would they keep shooting if they saw that I was trying to help these people? Evil bastards. As I ran back down the roadway to try and get some cover, the HMMMV I was next to drove off. I was completely in the open like an infidel bulls eye at the Mujahadeen carnival of Fallujah. As I tried to get cover I saw the notorious muzzle flashes that I had always been so skeptical of. I raised my rifle and brought the window into the reticle. As I saw his head peek out I fired…… waited……… fired again and then I acquired the biggest headache of my life. I spun around and saw blood dripping off of my face on to the Iraqi pavement. Did I just get shot in the head? Do I now possess one of these cracked egg skulls that I had just learned about during Insurgent Killing 101? I am not that pretty to begin with, so this was the last thing I needed. It turns out that the sniper bullet had missed my face by about half an inch and lodged into the scope on my rifle. The blood was coming from shrapnel wounds, caused as the bullet broke apart when it hit the left side of my scope. “You are one lucky son of a bitch” the doc told me as he applied the bandages. How can I be lucky? I subscribed to cable television months ago so I could watch CNN, and now look where it has gotten me? This is the part that you will never read in the headlines. There was no vengeful rise from a Marine who had just been wounded. I did not storm off to find the bastard that hit me and kill him, even though I really wanted to. What I did after being wounded was something that will allow me to continue my life knowing that I made a difference. No one will ever take that away from me. After refusing a medevac, I took off to finish what I had started. If I was going to accomplish anything this day, it would be trying to save those civilians. We were able to get them out of the car and undercover. Only two emerged. I tried to help the medic administer first aid to an old man and a young boy. The man had been shot through his stomach and the boy through his arm. I ran up to the car to see about the other occupant. He was dead. He was really dead. The interior of the car was a morbid modern art rendition of war, using a man who made a wrong turn that day as the paint and a car as a canvas. A wrong turn and he was gone. I ran back and we got a convoy together to get them out of there. I did not want to leave. I wanted to stay and continue fighting, but that is not my primary job. Civil Affairs had a mission and I was going to stick to it. I do not know if the man and child survived. When I went back to the surgical unit a few days later to see what had happened to them, no one knew. The civilians had been sent off to another medical unit. Essentially lost. I know that I helped them as much as I could. It is what I don’t know that will haunt me forever. Did they live through the entire ordeal? And if they did, will that young boy pick up an RPG someday to fight the American invaders?

TODAY

So here I am. My hand of cards still is not a solid twenty one and I have no money in the bank. In fact, I have left the casino and I am panhandling for a beer. I am back in DC trying to finish school and putting life’s little pieces back together. The difficulty is that I have a few more pieces that come in the form of shrapnel in my face. They serve as a constant reminder of that day in Fallujah and the unanswered questions that I continually ask myself. I finally found my reasoning in going back to Iraq for a second tour. The hope that I could get as far away from all the political mess and save someone’s life was my reasoning. I left the politics behind twice to try and make a difference. Now after being home for so many months the politics are driving me nuts again. Treatment of veterans, debates on the hill, and the media have brought me to the level again where all I want to do is go back to Iraq. I want to put my blinders on and focus on the one thing that makes me feel fulfilled. Helping the innocent who have been caught up in this mess. But now I know that I can make a difference for the Iraqis here in the good old US of A. I will continue to make a stink in any way I can to get the job done. I will play with the politics as they have played with me over the past three years. I will take one side and one side only. That side is the one that ensures Iraqis will not suffer any further from our bumbling on Capitol Hill. There is a right and left side of the aisle in both houses of congress. I am walking down the middle with a big fist and a grin on my face. Will I go back? I have no idea. I may not have a future in Iraq, but I will always have a past and whether you like it or not, you will hear about it.


Sandstorm

Please help us continue bringing you unfiltered stories straight from Iraq and Afghanistan. Click here to donate.

To arrange an interview with this veteran, contact media[at]iava.org.