Jessica Goodell & John Hearn

by Shade It Black: Death

  Even more disconcerting than losing platoon members and volunteers, was the fact that we all started hearing and feeling the souls of the dead we had processed and housed, as well as all of the dead killed in the Middle East since the beginning of religion, if not since the dawn of time. I heard once that the ancient beliefs of this region held that a spirit seeps out of a body that isn’t buried properly or from a person who died violently, and that it hangs around for generations terrorizing the living, occasionally staying underground where it eats dirt.

  In 2004, in the Mortuary Affairs platoon, that belief made sense. It seemed entirely rational to us when it was three in the morning and we were in Iraq, processing. At that moment and in that place, we were true believers.

  There are many religious people in Iraq. It’s the area mentioned most frequently in the Bible. Our bunker was close to the place where, we were taught, Adam and Eve were created, where the original sin was committed, where Christianity began, and where the devil himself once staked a claim and called home. We were taught that this is where civilization began, not far from base, right out there between those two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. It all felt so tangible. We could feel the souls of these civilians, and these mothers and children who died horrendous deaths. Their souls were on the land and all around us; they were in the bunker with us. Maybe what these people know about life and death, human beings and ghosts, was real, not just some hallucination. The line separating the living from the dead, once clear and indelible, became blurred. It often became even less distinct when we were processing remains. A string of lights ran along the periphery of the open bunker’s ceiling, but the light by which we processed remains came from searchlights that surrounded our work tables. They sat atop five-foot high stands and projected our shadows onto the walls of the bunker. There we were disembodied, ephemeral, growing and shrinking in an instant, passing through each other, disappearing and reappearing again and again.

  The bodies stayed with us until we shipped them back to the States after first stopping in Kuwait. The planes taking them back did so on an inconsistent schedule, requiring us to hold the remains for varying lengths of time, keeping them refrigerated to slow down the decomposition process. That was fine during the day, but not at night, when there were only two Marines on duty, and one slept while the other was in charge of refueling the generators that kept the reefer cool.

  One night when I was the Marine who was awake, alone, at four in the morning, and, for security reasons, in the pitch black and without city lights to illuminate a sense of place, I could feel them. I was searching for the generators, in the middle of nowhere, when I felt the energy, or the spirits, or whatever it is you want to call the souls of the dead. I felt it like I felt the desert sun. It was that real. I could hear it like I heard the loud din of the generators. It was that real. It wasn’t just me who experienced this; we all did.

  When I was in the bunker alone on the night shift, when I was on duty and the other Marine was asleep, I’d hear the souls that we’d processed walking around. One night when I was in the front of the bunker, I heard the back door open and shut and then heard the sound of footsteps. We built the door with a weighted pulley so it would shut automatically behind us. We could hear it close shut, clearly, even from the front of the bunker. The floor of the bunker was cement which allowed us to hear the sound of rubber boots as people walked across it. It was very common for platoon members to come to the bunker at night because they would want to use the Internet or the phone and, at night, no one else was there, and there was ready access to both. When I heard the footsteps that night, I’d got up thinking it was my buddies. I was happy they had come by because I was getting tired and starting to feel sleepy. I looked around and there was nobody there. So I returned to the front of the bunker and waited for whoever it was who came through the door. I knew that whoever it was, they would come to the area I was in, where the phone and laptop were. I waited and waited, all the time wondering who it was and why they hadn’t come to the front yet. I left the duty hut again to investigate and again there was no one around. I did a weapons count to make sure that all the weapons were accounted for. Then I checked the gear. Then I made sure that The Sir was in his rack, and that Sergeant Cotnoir and Sergeant Johnson were in theirs. Everything and everyone was where they were supposed to be. All the weapons were accounted for, all the gear was accounted for, all the people were accounted for. There was no way to explain what was going on. I returned to the duty hut and within minutes heard the footsteps again. But there was nobody there.

  One time the base was on high alert because Intel said we were going to be attacked that night. The Sir called every Marine to the bunker and told us that we were all going to sleep there that night. There were five racks in the bunker which meant that ten or twelve of us would not have a place to sleep. After some discussion, several of us tried to sleep on the litters, which are like stretchers, and were what we carried the remains on. We set them up and some of the guys tried to settle in, but none could. Suddenly, one Marine flew off his litter as though he had been catapulted. He swore he had been pushed off. Strong, fearless, exhausted men, stood by their empty litters shaken and unable to get back on. We had an entire bunker to sleep in that night, but we ended up together in one corner. Grown men and women. Combat hardened Marines. It came to feel like we were living in two worlds or between two worlds, between the living and the dead. We were the living among the dead, living in their world more than they were in ours. We were the ones piecing together and shipping home the remains of the dead, but we were never sure what we were doing to the souls of the dead, or what they were doing to us.

  There was a toll, no doubt, but not strictly in a bad way. Sometimes you pay a toll for privilege, like using a particular road or bridge. Well, a toll must be paid. We paid a heavy toll for what we did, but it was a deep privilege.

  One day we pulled our Humvees and guidon out and the Marines took photos posing in front of them. Every Humvee carried a spare tire, and we attached A frames to the hoods in the event one broke down or was hit so we could tow it back to base. (Author collection)

  12

  Immorality Plays

  Documents I recently obtained show that the same hostility found in the other services is deeply embedded in the Marines … According to two DACOWITS reports … women entering boot camp are told that “there are only three kinds of female Marines: ‘bitches, lesbians, and whores.’” Both men and women say that male Marines regularly call female Marines “bags of nasties,” or use the semi-official designation for women Marines, “WM,” to mean “walking mattress.”

  The men stated that women do not belong in the Marine Corps. They laughed about the derogatory names the women are called. One of the investigators, Barbara Glacel, says that a group of men explained, “in very graphic terms, that women should not be allowed to go into any frontline situation because they smelled so bad when they menstruated that they would attract the enemy.”

  From: “A Few Good Men?” by E.J. Graff, The American Prospect, June 30, 2003

  ACT: 1: Iraq. We’re assigned partners for martial arts training and I’m paired with the biggest, tallest, stockiest male Marine in the platoon. I weigh in at 110 pounds, whereas he’s closing in on 250. The instructor’s rationale is that I need to learn to defend myself against someone bigger and stronger than me. Not only do I get my ass beat, but this bear of a man actually butts my face with the tip of his rifle, leaving me with a bloody nose and two black eyes. What I learn is how to take a brutal physical beating in front of fellow Marines. My audience learns nothing that they didn’t already know: a female cannot fight with the boys.

  Constantly reinforced, from the first day of boot camp to the last day of active service, this message was often presented in the form of a morality play. Orchestrated by an officer for the sake of the male Marines—for the sake of the Corps!—these brief performances shored up their basic assumptions about gender and war.
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  ACT 2: Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. This is where heavy equipment diesel mechanics are trained. I am the only female in a class of fifteen. On this, my first day of training, the Sergeant notices me standing in his formation and screams, “Who the fuck is that in my formation? Don’t even fucking tell me that’s a woman! Get the fuck out of my formation! Get the fuck out of my formation!” I stand behind the platoon—separate and different—as the sergeant introduces himself to his men.

  ACT 3: Okinawa, Japan. Only now am I told that I’ll be participating in jungle warfare training. Everyone else is already on site. I arrive two hours late, just after the others finish rappelling down the broad side of a steep mountain. I’m at the peak’s edge, alone with the instructor who is strapping me into the harness. I have the feeling that he wants me to fail. I sense that this entire scene has been orchestrated. Looking up at me from below sit several hundred Marines who have already descended successfully. I look straight down the steep mountainside through “hell’s eye,” a wooden frame through which I must lower myself before beginning a free-fall rappel. I’m scared to death but know that if I hesitate, I won’t hear the end of it. Nor will the other female Marines back at the base. Nor will the next cohort of female Marines, one of whom, after being notified late that she will be joining the jungle warfare training group, will be brought to the top of this mountain, above an audience of male Marines, who sit waiting to see her fail. Nor will relatives and friends of the male Marines hear the end of it, even years from now, when, sitting at a bar in rural Ohio or lifting weights in downtown Chicago, they’ll be treated once again to the story of the female Marine who was too scared shitless to jump off a mountain.

  Here’s how it seems to work. The instructors gather together a group of male Marines and have them do something “manly,” such as fight each other or run an obstacle course or just shout out, in unison, in their deepest, most resounding voices. A female Marine is brought onto the stage and the men become an audience. The female is told to do what the males have just done. Take a huge male Marine to the ground or jump off of a mountain top or climb a long rope or run a fast five-mile course or rip the head off of a live chicken or shout a response to your commanding officer in the same booming voice you just heard the men use. If the female doesn’t perform in the same way the men had, the audience’s view of the world and the assumptions upon which it’s based are reinforced. The Corps is a masculine world, defined by toughness and courage, and it admits females only at its peril. And at the nation’s peril. Thus, the honor of the Corps and its effectiveness to protect the country are threatened by small, weak, fearful women.

  Every now and then the plot of one of these playlets breaks down. Weakness defeats Strength. Villainy overcomes heroism.

  ACT 4: Twentynine Palms, California. Our chief warrant officer is leading a platoon run. I am directly behind him in formation as the run begins. He takes off at a full sprint and I stay right behind him. He speeds up and I remain on his ass. Occasionally, he turns his head to see how we are holding up. I look back too and watch as most of the platoon eventually falls out of the run. The chief warrant officer nevertheless continues to run, and at the same pace. I stay on him. Finally, he slows down and ends the run and walks over to the staff sergeant. I hear him complain about the men in the platoon. “Don’t they have any pride?” he asks. “Goodell was on my ass the entire run. Why weren’t they? Where the hell were they?”

  An occasionally subverted storyline is not nearly enough to shift the entrenched worldview of the Corps as the quintessential male domain. The chief warrant officer didn’t see any virtue in me. I wasn’t hard working or persistent or courageous or strong. It was simply a matter of those men on that day fucking up.

  From left to right is Corporal Sandoval, Corporal Clemente and Lance Corporal Goodell. The three Marines are sitting at the bottom of a ravine used for staggered seating during Jungle Warfare Training in Okinawa, Japan.

  (Author collection)

  13

  Personal Effects

  “One of the toughest things is going through the personal effects,” said Bill Lynch, 66, of Jericho, a retired FBI agent who now works as a consultant. His son Matthew, a 25-year-old Marine lieutenant on his third tour in Iraq, was killed by a roadside bomb on Oct. 31, 2004. Nineteen months later, Lynch and his wife, Angela, only recently completed the difficult task.

  Sitting in a McDonald’s near his office, the elder Lynch picked up a plastic coffee stirrer. “If Matt held this, I’d look at it and go, ‘OK, what about that?’” he said. “You wonder what is significant and what is not. You emotionally weigh every item.”

  From dailypress.com: “The Pain is in Personal Effects,” by Graham Rayman, Newsday, May 29, 2006

  I was sitting in the chow hall with a couple of MA Marines, not really eating, just observing Marines at the other tables. I noticed a man dab his chin with a napkin as he was leaving. I could see a spot of ketchup left on the napkin which he then scrunched up and put in his pocket. Then I imagined having to process his remains and catalog his personal effects. “One scrunched up paper napkin containing a red stain,” I would jot down. It would be sent home to his family where his mother might devote the better part of a decade trying to make sense of it. Why did he have a napkin in his pocket? She would wonder. What was the stain? Was it blood? Had he not died immediately? Was he initially only wounded but alive? Did he dab at the wound with a napkin? Was he in pain before he died? She may be kept awake nights with a thousand unanswered questions.

  This awareness became habitual. I couldn’t see another person put anything into his or her pockets without imagining processing them and their belongings and sending something home that would only add to the family’s pain. It felt like I would be adding to the pain. By this time it was summer and the days would get so hot that the sweat would drip into my eyes and the whole world looked beige except for the sky and sometimes it was too and then the sand would pick up and swirl and blur my vision even more until all I could see was Marines who would be processed. That looks like a letter, but from whom? A secret lover? Mom? From one parent who is expressing negative sentiments about the other? Occasionally all I could discern in the sandy mist was what was going into pockets, and then only sort of. Is that a ring? Who is that a picture of? Are you crazy? Or is it me?

  I began paying attention to what was in my own pockets, what personal effects would be sent home with me when my time came. I got rid of everything I didn’t want my parents to see and I was conscious of every single thing that I put into my pockets. After a while, I put nothing in them; they were almost always completely empty except for my rules of engagement card in my left breast pocket. What was in my wallet was exactly what I wanted in there, what I would want my parents to see and to remember me by. Everything in my tent was always organized and folded and cleaned or it was thrown out. I wanted to be an easy process and I wanted to have everything squared away for my mother and father. And I checked to make sure the labels on my clothing were accurate, so my parents would know that I had died if in fact I did. I made sure that no one else was wearing my clothes so that if they died my parents wouldn’t grieve unnecessarily.

  And from there I began to obsess about what I was putting into me, the type of person I was, and I felt an urgent need to square away that too, to square away me. Am I a good Marine? A good human being? And I reflected upon the type of person I once was, before joining the Corps. Were there people I had hurt and to whom I could make amends? What about that boy in high school who was a loner and who wanted to become my friend and who I ignored? I wasn’t mean to him, but I chose to rebuff his friendliness and to avoid him. I wasn’t unkind to him, but I hurt him and now I wish I could take that back, go back to that time and return his smile, say hello, stop and chat in the corridor. And what about the other loners and outcasts, the high school version of “fat nasties?” Why had I avoided them? What’s the difference, except for the matter of degree, between how I treated t
hem and how we treat Marines here in the Corps? I asked myself. But I also knew what the difference was: the odd Marine who was not sufficiently socialized into the group, who hadn’t fully fit into his role, could get five or ten other Marines killed.

  By June and July the temperature would easily reach 120 degrees or higher. The air conditioning wasn’t always working and we would all sweat constantly, so much so that in the middle of the night, I could slap my hands down on the cot beneath me and the perspiration would splash up. The sand was everywhere: it blew into everything, covered everything, colored everything. The heat and the sweat and the sand together seemed to continue to affect my vision in that disconcerting way: I could see Marines putting things into their pockets that had no business being there. When I’d see such carelessness, I’d imagine them getting shot or blown up, and I would visualize what would happen to their bodies, and then I would mentally shade what was missing black. I would see that Marine in the chow line, the tall one, without a left arm and I would shade that limb black. That guy there playing soccer, a boy really, is missing his head, so I’d shade it black. This woman, in front of me at the PX, has nothing below the waist, so I’d shade it black. By mid-summer, everything was a dismal, sandy beige, or it was black.