Jessica Goodell & John Hearn

by Shade It Black: Death

  Most explosions and most deaths occurred on and around bridges. The insurgents hid on top of them or underneath them and watched as we approached. Our orders were to drive slowly to the bridge and then gun it when passing over or under it. We always saw people on top of and under the bridges and we wondered if one were holding a remote detonator and, if so, which one. Which one has a grenade? Which one has his crosshairs on us? There was no way to tell. The Iraqis wore long, shapeless, cotton clothes under which anything could be hidden. The bridges were scary to drive under and scarier to drive over. Insurgents constructed what were called “daisy chains,” or a series of interconnected explosives. A single detonator could trigger a number of bombs that could blow up several vehicles in the convoy rather than just one. There may be four or five simultaneous explosions, or there may be a single explosion, then another and another and another. The blasts may hit different vehicles in the convoy, trapping the still unscathed trucks in between the burning ones. The convoy may continue driving through dense clouds thick with smoke and debris, only to fall through the air, truck by truck, where a demolished bridge had stood seconds before.

  Driving through villages was a challenge too. We couldn’t get too close to the vehicle in front of us because it could explode and we might get trapped. Yet we couldn’t fall too far behind it either as that could allow a car or bicycle or pedestrian to get in among the vehicles—although, when you think about it, we were the ones getting in their way; it was their village, after all. They really should not be that close to us, but they are trying to cross the street, so what was I suppose to do? Children would run into the road and a burdensome decision would fall upon the drivers. We want to stop—any human being would want to stop—but we are in a convoy, with each vehicle moving at the same speed and maintaining a precise distance from the one in front of it, and the child might want to slow us down because his uncle has an automatic weapon and is standing on a roof thirty yards away. It might mean a child’s life or a Marine’s life. Normally, a driver would say, without a second thought, “It’s my life.” But it is not just his life. It is the lives of all of the Marines who are in the Humvee, and maybe even the ones who are behind it. Or in front of it.

  Sometimes the locals would be cheering us as we drove through their village. Other times, they would be screaming at us and throwing things at us. Occasionally they would yell something in English, but as the driver, I was so focused on maintaining our place in the convoy and not getting lost, I couldn’t make out what they were saying, exactly, but I knew it wasn’t a welcoming greeting. I do not recall seeing women alongside the roads, just men and small boys.

  At one point we were driving through a village that was completely razed. Houses were half-standing. Doors were broken off hinges. A ghost town. No one. Nothing. We could see the dilapidated houses and the leftovers of the village. Cars abandoned. Stray dogs. It hadn’t really hit me that we were in Iraq until I saw that devastation. I was struck less by the remnants of the village in front of me than I was by what wasn’t there. My eyes searched for them, but I couldn’t find intact houses, moving vehicles, living people. My brain tried without success to make sense of what wasn’t there.

  The men and women who came through during the initial invasion had to do this so that we could pass through this village successfully and get to our camp. They had to do this for us to have a chance of passing through alive. Marines do not talk about what they did during the initial invasion. They may say, “Well, we cleared a village.” But a village can not simply be “cleared,” like a kitchen table is cleared for a poker game. The process of “clearing a village” can be logically and verbally explained: it means we go into a house, we get the people out, we tell them to leave the village. That’s how it can be explained. The reality of it is that there is a house with a family in it and a bunch of Marines kick open the door and maybe throw in a smoke grenade, maybe not. They have their rifles loaded and ready and are pointing them at the mother or father or kids, and are yelling at them to get out. You know that there were people who did not want to leave. How could there not have been? There had to be some who refused to go. How could there not have been? The people who refused to go were the corpses we saw as we drove through what had been their village. Killed. Splattered. There was blood on the walls. On the doors. In the streets. On the cars. It wasn’t Marine blood. It was civilian blood. There were bodies. Who was going to pick them up? There was no way the families would come back: they’d be scared for their lives, and rightfully so. The invading Marines had to keep moving. We could not stop to clean up the mess that was left behind. This is what the invading Marines—boys and girls, who, only recently had been advancing down the field during a high school football game or rushing a freshmen fraternity—had to do for us to pass through safely.

  This was just before we got to Taqaddum.

  One man walking, alone, in the middle of nothing, like a solitary man on the moon. It didn’t make sense. (Photo courtesy of David Leeson)

  2

  Mortuary Affairs

  As the U.S. military death toll mounts in Iraq, the trauma on the overall force is softened by the fact that the fallen troops come from different battalions and different companies. In a force of 30,000 Marines, for example, only a few will be able to say they knew someone who died.

  But for the 20 members of the Marine mortuary affairs unit in this former Iraqi air base west of Baghdad, each person lost to combat or accident becomes a personal memory as they gather the body parts at the scene, sift through possessions and prepare the often mangled body for shipment back to the United States.

  From: “Unit Prepares Fallen Troops for the Journey Home,”

  by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2004

  A month earlier we were in another desert, at Twentynine Palms in Death Valley, California. It was the first part of February, 2004, and the war in Iraq was worsening. A group of Marines who thought they had missed out on the opportunity to serve in the Middle East were gathered in a metal garage when they heard the good news. There was a need for volunteers for the Corp’s first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit for active duty Marines, to be located in Al Anbar province. The moment the request was made, hands shot up.

  Two weeks later, twenty of us met for the first time to start two weeks of training. There was Grinell who was Native American. He was athletic and quiet. We called him Nelly. Gonzalez came from Chicago and, like every Gonzalez in the Marines, he became Gonzo. Moran, a disc jockey from Chicago, became DJ Razor. Why the “Razor” I do not know. We had a reservist named Troescher who we called Trash Can because we couldn’t pronounce his name with its weird spelling and string of vowels. Slater was a bald, completely built Louisiana boy, and a total nutritionist. We called him Bucket. Rodriguez—Ro—was from Texas; she was small, had really long hair, and had been a cook before volunteering for Mortuary Affairs. McLaughlin—“M.C”—was a California boy. Cotnoir was from Boston and had the thick accent to prove it. He was the only other reservist among us, but because he was tough enough and was a mortician in civilian life we accepted him, despite the fact that he wasn’t active duty. We came up with a variation of the end of Pineda’s name and called him Tayta. Also a Californian, he was a hilarious kid, always playing pranks and invariably in a good mood. Sergeant Don Johnson was also from California. He didn’t really get a nickname, maybe because he wanted one so much, but only a good one. He wanted a Hispanic nickname because they made you look cooler and more of a badass than the English ones did. He kept asking the platoon what the Spanish word for “boss” was, but no one would tell him. John son seemed to be one of those white guys who believed he wasn’t a member of a real race, one with a sufficiently rich or substantive culture, and he therefore felt obliged to emulate the ways of those who were so blessed. Eventually, he learned the Spanish word for boss and nailed a three-foot wide sign with “El Jefe” painted on it over the doorway to his room. Despite his persistent effort, we would addr
ess him only as “Sergeant.” Instead of becoming an exotic, ethnic badass, Johnson became a rank, a predetermined slot in an impersonal hierarchy. Our Chief Warrant Officer was James Patterson, who we named The Sir, with an emphasis on “The” to highlight the fact that he was the most awesome officer around.

  Occasionally, a Marine wouldn’t like his nickname—Bucket and Trash Can, for example, didn’t seem too fond of theirs. But the nicknames stuck, and if one wasn’t liked by the owner, it stuck harder. For one thing, they were functional in that they afforded us some small degree of playful control over who we were, and in that way they reminded us that we were still a part of that greater humanity in the real world. They also streamlined our interactions in situations in which efficiency could save a life. It was no longer Rodriguez, but Ro’. Gonzalez was now Gonzo. And neither Grinell nor Goodell any longer had to snap their head toward whatever direction the other’s name was called from.

  The women were assigned nicknames by the men who reminded them of how they were perceived, what they were seen as, names like Legs and Dolly, names that were unshakable and became what the women were called, at least behind their backs. Gender impacted how we referred to one another in a second way: if several of us were discussing a fellow Marine with whom one of us may not be familiar, we’d refer to him by his last name or by his nickname or by his job or unit. But if that person was a woman, we’d identify her as the “female” this or that. He’s, “Benson, the mechanic.” She’s, “Anderson, the female mechanic.” She’s always a female first and a Marine second. That’s just the way it was.

  If nicknames individualized us to a small degree, they could also remind us that we were all the same. There was a generic nickname that was at various times applied to each and every one of us. “Hey, ‘devil,’ where you going?” we might ask one another. A popular cadence wanted to know, “What’s the sound of a devil dog?” and the platoon, in unison, would respond by barking twice. “Woof! Woof!” we would shout back.

  We were from different parts of the country, had different racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds, and varying socio-economic statuses. We also represented a wide range of jobs in the Corps: we were mechanics, motor transportation operators, NBC technicians, communication specialists, military police, supply clerks, and cooks. Just about the only commonality among us was that we were all Marines and we all volunteered to form this Mortuary Affairs unit.

  The first thing The Sir had us do was run, and right away I noticed that Ro was keeping up with the rest of us. I saw that as a good sign. Maybe she wasn’t going to fall into that typical female Marine role in which she’d slack off, not pull her weight, and expect special favors from the guys. A lot of the women did that and you could tell which ones would just by watching them run. They’d fall out early. I knew this is what happens, because I had seen it a hundred times and so by this point, I would watch for it. But Rodriguez ran long enough and fast enough for me to see that she trained, prepared, and did what a Marine was supposed to do.

  There are female Marines in this male Marine Corps who manage to avoid becoming stereotypical “female Marines,” and become top-notch Marines. Flat-out superb Marines. Period. They run longer and faster than their male counterparts; they meet their weight and fitness regs better than the males do; they can do more pull-ups; they have higher rifle range scores and have earned a higher belt designation in the martial arts; they do their jobs more responsibly; they are more squared away. Maybe Ro would prove to be one of these Marines.

  These women would like to be judged by the accepted standards that define a “good” Marine, even if those standards evolved from an exclusively male culture, whereas many of the men would prefer to judge them first by their gender, to see them as females who happen to be Marines. This is especially true of those men who don’t run as fast or shoot as straight or aren’t as fit. It’s not talked about, but there is a more or less constant struggle over this issue. Will these good Marines be judged as Marines first or as females first?

  The males remind the females and one another all the time that the females are, well, female. They tell dirty jokes to make the females blush, or refer to the females as “Marine-ettes.” The women may emulate the men, even to the point of assuming the loud, curt, male Marine voice, language, and gestures—that, however, typically doesn’t work. Frustrated, they occasionally try to challenge the entrenched culture of male superiority. What will Ro do? I wondered, as I watched her run.

  During this two-week stretch, we were given a series of thick, syrupy anthrax immunizations and, on several afternoons, those among us who were married, were allowed to visit spouses. One day we were sent to Admin to write out wills and power of attorney forms. We were young and many of us hadn’t been deployed before, so the meaning of our act was lost on us. We could have been signing another cell phone contract.

  Later that afternoon, when we did an inventory of all of the gear we were bringing with us to Iraq, I filled a quadcon—a large, bulletproof storage container—with body bags. Even then I still had little sense of the significance of the sheer number of bags I was packing, or of their impending function.

  The training sessions were taught by two officers who showed us how to complete the reams of necessary paperwork. One form had the outline of a body and they showed us how to mark where wounds were and where tattoos were and they explained how we should describe them. We were taught to shade black the Marine’s missing body parts on the outline. Another form was for information regarding the identification of the body, such as the Marine’s name, social security number, and unit. We Marines would not only process remains, but we would also assume search and recovery responsibilities. We did mock runs to a site where plastic body parts and pieces of raw meat had been scattered around and we were taught how to cordon off the area and how to mark all of the body pieces, and how to pick them up and sort them and organize them. The instructors held up or pointed to pieces of search and recovery equipment. A personal effects bag, a human remains pouch, a litter, a rectangular aluminum transfer case. They demonstrated how to wear the hazardous materials suits, the gloves, and the surgical and respiration masks. They talked about a “remains timeline” that specified the number of days from when a casualty was brought into our bunker or picked up to when they would arrive at Dover Air Force base back in the world. They discussed how to preserve the remains by housing them in large refrigerated trucks—reefers—that were kept running on generators. Throughout, we were shown how to safeguard the remains and how to treat them reverently. At the end of the last training session, our instructors mentioned PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. “It’s a real thing,” they assured us. “Like the flu,” they said.

  Maddox wrote this sign that we placed in the bunker so that other units would know our location. (Author collection)

  3

  Camp TQ

  Camp Ridgeway/FOB Ridgeway was renamed Camp Taqaddum when the US Marine Corps cast off the Army’s monikers for their new homes as part of a wider USMC effort to put an Iraqi face on the Corps’ mission. Camp Taqaddum is located approximately 74 kilometers west of Baghdad …

  An order issued March 25, 2004, by I MEF’s commanding general, directed that all base names be changed immediately. As a result, and to connect with the local communities, the new camps’ names were associated with the local urban or geographical areas that they are near.

  Camp Taqaddum [aka TQ]

  —Globalsecurity.org

  The base, roughly 50 miles west of Baghdad, between Fallujah and Ramadi, hadn’t been set up yet. It was in the process of being construct ed. The initial invasion took over the airport and it became a part of our base. The US had control of the land, but we had to build the base.

  When we arrived, everything was disorganized. For example, there were 35 females in a tent designed for eight. Cots were so close together that it was impossible to walk between them. There was no place to put the gear, so it was placed at the heads of the cots, nex
t to the tent walls, pushing them outward. That tent was a microcosm of the base. After a week or so, we started to get organized. “Mortuary Affairs over this way, Heavy Equipment mechanics over here. Motor Transport over there!”

  We lived in tents that had plywood floors. The tents’ canvas had been dipped in kerosene to repel the mosquitoes—even though that would mean that if one were hit by mortar fire, it—and then the others—would go up in a flash. Right? It doesn’t make sense to soak canvas in kerosene and then spread it out in a war zone, but that’s what we were told. Although there was air conditioning hooked up to generators, both were constantly breaking down due to the stress of running continuously and the sand blowing into them. It was not uncommon for the power to shut down and, with it, our tent’s two light bulbs that were used to illuminate the books from home that we read at night, and the refrigerator, which held our cold water. The tents were surrounded by reinforcing sand bags.

  Mortuary Affairs had two tents that were designated for the males and were separated from the others in Tent City. They were about a mile from the bunker, in a back area, outside of Tent City proper, away from where the other Marines lived. The females slept together regardless of their MOS or job, so the two MA females had no choice but to sleep in the same tent with women from other units. The Sir slept in the MA bunker.