Craig & Fred

by Craig Grossi

  Justin had me laughing when he talked about getting drunk for the first time as a teenager in Pittsburgh. He’d been drinking Stroh’s, this shitty, watery Michigan beer. I only knew what it was because my aunt Marie used to carry cans of it around in her purse wherever she went. It was all she ever drank.

  I also finally told the guys the story about Fred. As I got to the part about Fred following me to the helicopter, they shook their heads and smiled. “I can’t wait to meet him,” Justin said. “My dog Duchess is gonna want to meet him, too,” Ysa added.

  After a few hours, the sky began to brighten, and the sun showed up on the horizon. We were off the clock, and we walked from the garden through an archway into the main compound. We’d stashed our gear in a room and we headed there to catch some sleep. On my way across the compound, though, I spotted something I hadn’t seen in Afghanistan outside of Camp Leatherneck: a bed.

  It wasn’t actually much of a bed—more of a metal frame with plastic bands stretched across it, almost like an oversize pool chair. Still, it looked like a welcome change from sleeping on the ground.

  “Dibs!” I said, grabbing it and pulling it into the breezeway for shade. My boots and pants were still wet from wading through canals, so I took them off, changed into my shorts, and laid back on the little cot. It wasn’t quite long enough—I propped my head against the mud wall behind me—but it was good enough. I closed my eyes and started to drift off to the sound of the lieutenant sending routine radio checks back to the compound.

  Then: a force against my body like a wave on a beach. The sound of a loud crack. Darkness.

  The memory is murky. In my mind, there’s an image of one of the marines’ hands—Garrett’s—coming through dust and debris. I remember my body being lifted, moved. I remember hearing my name called.

  As the fog began to clear, I realized I was now sitting against a wall, across the courtyard from where I’d been sleeping in the cot. Garrett was looking at me, asking something. “Craig. Buddy. Are you okay?”

  I looked to where I’d been lying, and the ceiling of the breezeway was now in rubble, on fire. Rocks and debris covered the ground. The sound of a firefight buzzed in the air.

  Disoriented, I remember thinking something had gone wrong. An explosion. It must have been friendly fire, I thought, confused. How else would it have been so close?

  Garrett looked at me and said: “Get your shit on.”

  I looked up. The guys were scrambling around, getting onto the walls, returning fire. It was starting to register: we were under attack. I found my stuff and put on my boots, then tried to pull on my pants. Something was very wrong. The pants wouldn’t go on over my boots. I knew that I should be able to put my pants on easily, but the task had become a problem, and my brain was struggling to comprehend what to do next. Instead of taking off the boots and starting over, I pulled out my knife, leaned forward, and cut vertical slits at the bottom of my pants so they’d fit over the boots. I pulled them up and grabbed my gun. I saw Ysa and Justin on a wall and went to them. Just do what they do, I thought.

  Later, I’d learn that a Taliban rocket had landed in our compound, directly behind the wall of the breezeway where I was sleeping, causing the whole area to collapse. Justin and Ysa said they’d felt the blast in their bodies; it left a ringing in their ears. When the guys looked at where I’d been and saw only a pile of rubble, they thought, That’s it.

  Now, everybody was returning fire on the compound where the rocket had come from. Its launch had sent a cloud of smoke into the air, so the guys knew their target. There was a pause; it became quiet. Then the Taliban opened up on us from another compound, much closer. We switched walls, returned fire. My body and mind were functioning on adrenaline. It was the first time we’d been in a battle like this, where the neighboring compounds were so close and we were all on flat ground. We were only a small platoon trying to secure a compound in a hornet’s nest. The fact that they were able to land a rocket so accurately on our position was saying something. We were vulnerable.

  The decision was made to call in HIMARS, a High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System, which could be fired with precise accuracy from a distance. Ours were launched from Leatherneck. The lieutenant sent the coordinates over the radio; a team back on base launched the missiles. With a crack, they shot into the air, a stream of smoke in their wake. They’d be landing within fifty meters of us—danger close—so we all took cover. Like lightning, the missiles came crashing down around us. The impact of the blasts washed through me like a force, sending painful pulses through my body.

  After that, it got quiet. If the Taliban were still alive, they were fleeing. The corner where the rocket had landed was smoldering. I took off my gear and helmet and wiped the sweat from my head.

  Doc Finn came over. We sat in the shade so he could give me a field exam.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Craig.”

  He asked for my mother’s name and her maiden name. I answered. Then he asked me how old I was.

  “My girlfriend is twenty-eight,” I said.

  “Okay, but how old are you?”

  “I told you,” I said. “She’s twenty-eight. I’m younger than her.”

  Finn patiently tried again. “Okay. But do you know your age?”

  “I just told you!” I shouted, frustrated.

  As the adrenaline faded, my head began to throb, and a contusion on the back of my skull started to swell. I felt like shit. Doc Finn had the information he needed. I wasn’t right.

  He radioed back to the other compound: “Grossi is fine but showing signs of head trauma. Potential routine medevac needed later.”

  I resisted. I’d grown up getting rocked in ice hockey games, taking falls against the wall. In my mind, I just needed a break—to sit on the bench for a while, shake it off, then I’d be fine. I didn’t think it could be that bad. I looked okay. And I didn’t want to leave my guys.

  Meanwhile, Justin and Ysa did a postblast investigation of the impact site. They could immediately tell the rocket must have been bigger than an RPG. The pair poked around the rubble, and it didn’t take long to find the culprit: a 107mm Chinese antitank rocket. Afghanistan was littered with them from the war with the Soviets. Now, the Taliban typically used them as IEDs because they didn’t have a way of accurately firing them. They were huge—a few feet long—with the capability of incapacitating a tank. But since the Taliban didn’t have the proper launch vehicle, all they could do was prop them up with a metal stand and hit the back with a hammer to launch them. We’d seen the rockets whizzing by during previous battles, always out of control and far off. We practically laughed at them.

  Justin walked over with the rocket motor. I was in the middle of telling the corpsman I was fine when Justin put the motor in front of me. It was at least a foot long and wider than I could wrap my hand around. At the top end, the metal was warped and twisted from the explosion.

  “Look at this,” he said. “You’re fucked up, man. You can’t be as close to this as you were and not be messed up. You gotta get checked out.”

  He was adamant. He didn’t know how I hadn’t been turned into jam. Plus, the shock waves from the HIMARS would have only added to the beating my brain was taking.

  Instead of staying another night and day in the Green Zone, our command decided the whole patrol would hump back to the rest of the company in the desert compound. It was dangerous for us where we were; part of the compound was in rubble, and the standoff between our position and the Taliban was too risky.

  We waited for night to fall, huddled along the wall at one end of the compound. The pain pounded in my head. I started to feel like my brain was too big for my skull; the pressure was miserable. I couldn’t eat; I was too nauseated. Instead, I tried to close my eyes. I dreamt a grenade floated over the wall and landed in my lap. I jolted awake, my heart racing.

  Once it’d been dark for hours, we stepped off into the night. Trying to walk quickly made me realize m
y equilibrium was off. Each time I stepped down into a canal, or up again on a bank, I felt my balance shift, like everything was moving sideways. Using the night vision was out of the question, and with my head throbbing, I took off my helmet and strapped it to my ruck.

  Justin was walking behind me in the patrol. “You okay, man?” he whispered.

  “Yeah,” I said sharply. I hated how I could tell the guys were keeping their eyes on me, worrying. I’d worked so hard to prove to the RECON marines that I was tough, that I could keep up, that I was valuable. Now I felt like a pile of mashed potatoes.

  When we finally reached the compound, I met with the head corpsman, who agreed with Finn that I needed to be medically evacuated back to Leatherneck. Again, I tried to insist I just needed to rest, that I could stay; I’d be fine. If they sent me back to Leatherneck, would that be the end of my work in Sangin?

  Justin and Ysa didn’t want to hear it. They helped me pack up my stuff while I waited for the helicopter.

  “Look, man, you won’t be doing anyone any good out here if your brain is bleeding,” said Justin.

  “Yeah—you don’t have the brain cells to spare,” Ysa joked, stuffing my sleeping bag into my ruck.

  When the helicopter touched down at Leatherneck, my commanding officer, Gomez, was waiting for me in the back of an ambulance on the airstrip. I’d only been gone a few days, but I was a mess—completely covered in dirt, with a beard coming in, wearing an unauthorized uniform. The RECON guys and I occasionally traded gear with the British Royal Marines, and I was wearing British boots and cammies. Gomez didn’t care. I’m sure he could tell from the reports—and by looking at me—that I felt like hell.

  We pulled up to the hospital, and I had to hand over all my gear. I gave Gomez my gun, knife, and bandolier. I hated to part with it all. What if this was it for me?

  Inside, the doctor ordered an MRI, then sent me on my way to the recovery center. Reluctantly, I went.

  The recovery center was run by the air force. As I walked in, a wave of air-conditioning shocked me. The lobby smelled like Otis Spunkmeyer cookies and blueberries. As I stood there, still covered in filth, I felt like the ground was moving beneath me. From behind a tall desk, I realized a pretty air force servicewoman was smiling at me.

  “Hi there,” she said, getting to her feet.

  A jar of candy sat on the countertop, and a huge flat-screen TV hung on the wall next to a large, stainless steel fridge. Everything was pristine and cold, like a freezer. Suddenly I got the urge to vomit.

  The air force worker was quick. She rushed over, followed by two others, and they led me to a bed—a real bed—with clean white sheets. I fell asleep instantly.

  I don’t know how long I was out for, but it must have been a while. My face had done a number on the pillow. I’d gotten mud on everything. Some brave soul had taken off my boots and put them at the end of my bed. On a chair next to me sat a shave kit with a towel and soap, as well as a fresh uniform. Mac and Sergio must have come by, leaving a bag of beef jerky and a handwritten note: “Clean yourself up, you’re filthy. P.S. Glad you’re not dead.”

  I woke up thinking of one thing: Fred.

  I took a shower, shaved, and got cleaned up. I didn’t feel quite like myself, but the sleep had helped. Back at my bed, I was greeted by an air force officer. With a clipboard in her arm and a cup of coffee in her hand, she leaned forward and shook my hand, introducing herself.

  “Is it okay if I ask a few questions?” she asked.

  From the way she was talking to me, I gathered she was sent to evaluate me to see if I was fit to continue my deployment. At this point, I was more nervous about Fred than anything else. If I couldn’t convince her I was okay, I’d likely be shipped off on the next flight to recover in a military hospital in Germany, while Fred would be stuck in Afghanistan.

  I put on my best performance. I didn’t stop smiling the whole time we talked. I cracked jokes. She asked about my job and my life at home. I found out she’d lived in the D.C. area before, and soon enough, we were talking about the weather and beltway traffic like we were old pals.

  After about forty-five minutes, there was a pause in our conversation, and the doctor looked at me. She was smart and could probably tell what I was doing. But she let me go, agreeing to sign the release form with the stipulation that I attend two weeks of physical therapy in the traumatic brain injury (TBI) clinic before returning to the field.

  “You got it,” I told her, grinning like a little kid.

  Back at the intel office, I caught up with Sergio.

  “Hey, man, Fred was not happy while you were away. I went over to DHL the day you got hit. I brought his favorite—roast beef—and he wouldn’t eat it,” Sergio said.

  There was this 24-7 sandwich station in one of the chow halls. Before I left on my mission, we’d go late at night and grab a fistful of lunch meat and cheese for Fred. It was his favorite. After I left, Sergio kept up the routine for me, checking on the little guy at DHL and bringing him treats. But according to Sergio, Fred knew something was up.

  “The DHL guys said he moped all day, too. Wouldn’t play soccer,” Sergio added.

  I shook my head in disbelief. I’d felt it from the very beginning: Fred and I were connected. I couldn’t wait to see him.

  Sergio gave me the keys to the truck and I headed toward DHL. As I got close to the compound, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw trouble: a convoy of black Suburbans was making its way up the road. It had to be a general or chief of staff getting a grand tour of Leatherneck—DHL included. It was the only facility up ahead.

  Shit, I thought. I pulled over and watched as they drove into the DHL compound. Once they were inside, I jumped out of the car and ran up to the fence. I found a hole in the green sniper netting and looked through. Where Fred had been tied up, there were a few empty water bottles strewn around—makeshift chew toys—and a big hole he’d dug. But no Fred.

  It looked like the general and his staff had started their tour. Tinashe emerged, clipboard in hand as always, and walked the group around, pointing to the whiteboard of scheduled shipments and to a truck with a bed full of large A/C units. I guessed this was probably some kind of capabilities brief. The general kept reaching for a handkerchief in his pocket, bringing it to his brow and dabbing the sweat.

  I started to panic about Fred. He was still nowhere in sight, and I worried he might have run away. Or, if the DHL guys were hiding him somewhere, it was only a matter of time before he’d start to bark, giving himself away. Whoever this guy was receiving the tour, he was high ranking, and it was clear everybody around him was trying to impress him. If Fred got in the way now, his life would be in danger.

  I was about to move to another spot to get a better view when I saw Peter step out of the office. Like Tinashe, he wore the usual DHL polo shirt tucked into khakis, and he stood upright, as if he were a little uncomfortable. Then I saw him. Fred was trotting beside Peter at the end of a leash. His big, fluffy tail was bouncing up and down and his snout was waving in the air as always. Peter, clearly trying to act as natural as possible, led Fred to a row of crates. The two slowly walked up and down the row while Fred sniffed along the bottom of each crate. At one, they paused. Peter lifted the palm of his hand, then smacked the top a few times, as if patting it. Fred looked up at him. Then, sending a little poof of dust into the air, he leapt on top of it.

  I burst out laughing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: Peter was parading Fred around, pretending he was a bomb-sniffing dog. And Fred, with his confident trot and natural curiosity, was actually making it look legit.

  Before the show carried on much longer, the general seemed to have had enough. After wiping his brow again, I watched as Tinashe shook his hand, along with the other entourage members, and they returned to their SUVs and pulled away.

  With the general gone, I got back into my truck and drove into the DHL lot. Inside, the workers were all celebrating their performance. Standing in a big circle,
they kicked a soccer ball back and forth. Fred stood in the middle, happily chasing and yelping with glee.

  I sat and watched for a minute, tears brimming in my eyes. The weight of responsibility for Fred came rushing back to me, but it didn’t feel like a burden this time. Instead, it was my mission. I was resolved. No matter what had happened, and what might still happen, I was getting this dog home.

  Eventually, Fred spotted me. He came flying over, kicking up a trail of dust and whimpering frantically with excitement. I was assaulted with love. He zipped around my ankles, popping up to lick my face, then burst away to run big laps around the compound.

  “Wow, buddy!” I said. “So you’re a bomb-sniffing soccer player now, huh?”

  Tinashe stepped out of the office.

  “Are you okay, my friend?” he asked. Sergio must have tipped him off about my injury the last time he was here.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m all right.”

  Then Tinashe handed me a big manila envelope.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Fred’s freedom,” he answered. “You finish getting these filled out, and he’ll be out of here on the next flight.”

  While I was away, my sister had mailed the paperwork to Sergio. He’d delivered it to Tinashe to confirm the forms were what he needed.

  I leafed through them. There was the customs paperwork and the veterinary certification forms. Sarah had filled in as much as she could, but there were still a few veterinarian signatures required. There was no way I was going to be able to get them. But I knew what I had to do now. I was going to have to forge the forms. I knew it wasn’t right, but I wasn’t prepared to let a few pieces of paper stand in the way of Fred getting home.

  Alone in my room that night, I spent hours practicing signatures of made-up veterinarians till they looked natural. I only had one shot to make the forms look official. If I screwed it up, it might be weeks before I’d receive new ones from Sarah. I meticulously filled in the missing fields, signing in all the right places with my practiced signature.