Sunrise Over Fallujah

by Walter Dean Myers

  I hobbled outside and tried to breathe. A burning pain seared through my left leg. There were streaks in the sky and the first signs of morning. What to do? Where to put my eyes? What to think? It had been so long since I had prayed. So long.

  O Jesus God, please don’t let him die. Oh, please don’t let him die. O God, please don’t let him die. Oh, please! Oh, man, God, please don’t let him die. Not Jonesy, God. Please.

  I sat down on a pile of sandbags and realized how tired I was. There was a lot of activity around me and I looked up and saw Roberts’s guys stringing concertina wire around the perimeter of the camp. I figured they must have been expecting an attack. The M-16 felt heavy in my arms.

  Two deep breaths gave me enough energy to head back to the tent where Jonesy lay. I envisioned him sitting up, telling some story about his blues joint. When I got into the tent he was still lying at the far side, the flames from the low fire casting a reddish glow to his skin.

  “You were wounded,” Miller was on her knees near Jonesy’s feet and started toward me. “Let me take a look at you.”

  “Deal with Jonesy,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  She stopped where she was, still kneeling, head down, hands folded in front of her thighs.

  “Captain Miller?” I called to her.

  She looked up at me. Her face, pale and drawn, looked as if she were in shock. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  She began to sob, and then to wail. It was as if something horrible and ugly were pouring out of her. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” She was shouting the words. Moaning the words. They were coming from deep inside her and filled the tiny space we were in. They broke against the walls in a thousand tortured shards that said that Jonesy was dead.

  Several of the Iraqi women came to her. They began to put their arms around her. Now they were talking softly to her. Now they added their wails to hers.

  Jonesy was dead.

  Somehow she got herself together and looked at my leg. There was an ugly cut just below my knee and a huge swelling that bled lower on the side of my ankle. The leg looked different, raw and ugly, as if it was something other than a leg. I was ashamed of the fact that it hurt so much and that I could still feel the pain when Jonesy couldn’t. Miller gave me a shot in the leg that eased it quickly and told me to get some rest.

  I didn’t want rest. I wanted to be outside if we were attacked. I wanted to hurt something, to make something right. But what?

  Roberts. His mouth moving. He babbles on about the success of the mission.

  Sorry about your buddy. He said. We’re calling in a bomb strike. Keep their heads down. He said. The detonators were just what we thought they would be. They’re traceable. He said. There are parts numbers on them which encode the country of origin. Babble. Babble. He said. Detonators and photocells. Don’t know what they’re for. But you guys did well. I don’t think they’ll attack. He said. Babble. Babble. I see he is elated with the detonators. They will save lives. But not enough lives. This I know for sure.

  I found Marla. She was bent over, her arms around her shoulders, rocking from side to side.

  “Marla.” I put my arm around her. She turned to me, the tears streaming down her face.

  “If there’s a God.” Her face was stretched tight in her anguish. “If there’s a God, Birdy, where the hell is He hiding?”

  There was no attack. A day of waiting and watching. A night of bad dreams, of living again the moments that flashed wildly by and that I was already not sure really existed as memory danced them in my tired brain. Those moments and countless images of body bags holding my friend, my blues-loving friend.

  A chopper to Al Amarah. A transport to Baghdad. Marla sat next to me, leaned against me, and put her hand on my leg. Miller sat apart from us. She was miserable, but we were all so equally miserable that we couldn’t comfort her. I thought of the Iraqi women. How long had they known the griefs they shared?

  In Baghdad there was packing going on. I put clothing into my duffel bag, deciding what to take, what to leave behind. There were questions. What happened on the mission? How did Jonesy get it?

  There were many questions and I tried to answer them with some logic. But over and over I thought that we were in a war of complete randomness. Death was hiding in every shadow, lurking along every roadway, flying through the midday air. It came suddenly and randomly. There was no logic except the constant adding up of numbers. How many are dead? What are the names? Where are the pictures for the hometown papers?

  As we line up for the memorial service I think of the blind child, his arms outstretched as if he were feeling for answers in his eternal darkness. And I am glad for him, that he lived for those frantic moments, even though I believe I will forget him with the passage of time. For Miller running toward him, and Jonesy giving up his dreams for that child, was what lifted all of this above fear and loathing. In that one last desperate moment, there was actually something for the blind child to reach, some higher point of humanity.

  “Does anyone know what religion the young man was?” the chaplain asked.

  “He was a blues man,” Marla answered.

  “And an American,” Miller added. “A damn good American.”

  The questions stopped. The service went on.

  “Lord, have mercy on us as we feel the pain of loss, and the endless emptiness that marks the passing of our brother, and have mercy on us as we feel sorrow for ourselves, and for all the angel warriors for whom we feel kinship. Let death be swallowed up in the victory of righteousness. Let us fear death, but let it not dwell within us. Protect us, O Lord, and be merciful unto us. Amen.”

  “Roll Call Officer!”

  Major Sessions, at the back of the tent, marched forward, stopping in front of the first row of chairs. She looked down at her clipboard, and then up.

  “Jones!” she called, her voice wavering.

  Again, the unbearable silence, the longing to answer.

  “Corporal Charles Jones!”

  The stillness between heartbeats held for what seemed an eternity before giving way to the grieving melody of taps.

  There weren’t enough tears within what was left of our squads to wash away the moment; and all the prayers and words of comfort were not enough to hold the griefs we shared. Still, we had to summon the strength to walk out of the memorial tent again, and into the brilliant Iraqi sun with the getting on of our lives.

  When Miller saw me she stopped, looked up at me, with her head tilted slightly back, and covered her eyes from the brightness as if to see me more clearly. We looked at each other for a moment, and then she nodded and went on. There was nothing that needed to be said.

  We got new assignments. All the specialists, the construction people and the plumbers and the electricians from our flying squad, were reassigned to the 422nd. They were given some time off and the option to apply for other units. The rest of us, Coles, Evans, Jean Darcy, Harris, were being recycled back through a training process center. I had been wounded and received a Purple Heart. Marla told me to stick out my tongue to see if that was purple, too.

  “If your tongue is purple it means you can poison them when you bite them,” she announced.

  We turned in our weapons to supply and then there was the coming together and the saying of good-bye. It wasn’t complete, wasn’t over in any real sense. I looked at Marla and hugged her for as long as we could stand it.

  “Birdy, you’re a trip,” she said.

  We swore that we would always be in touch. I would call her a thousand times and she would write to me and we would huddle together over the years. I told her, for the first time, that I loved her.

  “Birdy, when people shoot at you,” she said, “you automatically love everybody that’s ducking down with you.”

  “Is that all there is to it?”

  “No, but it’s all I have the courage to deal with right now.” Marla put her arm around my neck and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “But I’m th
inking heavy on you, Birdy Boy. I’m giving you a lot of thought.”

  The good-byes were hard and filled with tears and promises. We were all going to stay in touch forever, and to keep one another in our prayers and thoughts. There were handshakes and hugs. And Marla coming back to me and putting her fingers to my lips so that I wouldn’t speak and holding me for a long moment.

  Then we were at the airport again. Marla was going to Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey and from there back to the States to train new CA ops. Captain Coles, Sergeant Harris, and Darcy were going to Doha and I was going to Ramstein, in Germany, to have my wounds taken care of and then I would be reassigned. Everybody else was assigned to the 422nd and, for the most part, they were happy.

  I wondered what Jonesy’s blues place would have looked like. If he could have pulled it off. I wanted to think he could.

  June 17, 2003

  Dear Uncle Richie,

  There’s no way that I mail this letter off. Coles and Marla and Evans and all of my squad buddies are gone to their new assignments. Captain Miller left last night before I had a chance to say good-bye to her. Her original unit was rotated back to the States and she went with them even though they never left Qatar. Uncle Richie, I just wanted to write down that I did what I thought I had to do over here. I did it for my country and for the people I love and for myself, too. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. But there’s a distance between what my brain says I’m doing, which is more or less what the missions tell us that we’re doing, and what I’m feeling inside. I think you probably know that, too.

  I got The New York Times today. It was several days old but there’s nothing on the front page about the war, or about Iraq. Inside th ere is a small square with the names of two more KIAs. I touched the names with my fingertips but I couldn’t feel the people they represented. I’m sorry about that.

  Mama said that I shouldn’t be the hero type. I don’t know. Maybe you have to be a hero type to deal with the bigger things that happen to you. At least you have to be bigger than life to fit all the things inside that you didn’t know you could absorb before. I never thought I would see the things I have seen. So many people dead. So many with their parts blown off and them bleeding and crying. I’ve had to cram all of these images into my head, and it’s not easy.

  I tried to think about how I would tell people about my experiences over here. I was thinking that if there comes a day when someone says that we have won this war I know that I’ll have doubts inside. The ones who make it home are just survivors. If there’s any real winning it’s that, once we get home, we’ll know for sure the things we’re living for. And, hopefully, we’ll be more thankful for all those things.

  If there comes a day that someone says that we have lost this war, I’ll know that they are wrong, too. Because once you have seen a Jonesy or a Pendleton desperately reaching for the highest idea of life, offering themselves up, you don’t think about losing or winning so much. You think there is more to life and you go on and you want to find that something more.

  The funny thing is that the people I loved over here—my guys—could become strangers to me. What I mean is that I saw them here, and was afraid with them and cried with them here, but would I even recognize them if I saw them out there in the world? Would Marla be the same without her body armor? Or without her blond hair tucked up under her Kevlar? How about Coles or Jean Darcy? Would they look different to me in the supermarket?

  What was Captain Miller about? How big is her heart? If I saw her riding a bus—maybe reading a newspaper—would I recognize her? I don’t think so. I don’t know if I will ever know anybody again.

  Can I ever hear the blues again without crying?

  Uncle Richie, I’m glad I won’t mail this letter to you. Because the hardest thing to say is that I don’t know if God and I would recognize each other. Why would He let such crap go on like this? How come there’s so much pain in the world if He has anything to say about it? What kind of a God is this?

  The thought came to me that all of this—the training and the bombing and the people being shot, children and old people, and women and crazy-ass guys on drugs—all of it might have been part of God’s plan. I’m not saying it was or even if I believe in any of it anymore. I don’t know.

  If I do talk about the war maybe I’ll try to tell people about a blind Iraqi kid stumbling across the field, bullets flying around him, lost in his dark world.

  Uncle Richie, I used to be mad with you when you wouldn’t talk about Vietnam. I thought you were being selfish, in a way. Now I understand how light the words seem. If I ever have kids, I think I won’t tell them much about what I did here, or what I’ve seen. I’ll tell them something because I’ll want them to know about war. But are there really enough words to make them understand?

  Your favorite nephew, Robin (AKA Birdy)

  GLOSSARY

  A-10

  A U.S. jet fighter bomber used for close air combat

  AK-47

  The first true automatic assault weapon; manufactured in Russia during the Cold War; widely, often illegally, traded and used in conflicts throughout the world

  Al Jazeera

  A worldwide Arabic satellite and cable network, based in Doha, Qatar, that has widely expanded the availability of media in the Middle East; commonly gives the viewpoints of the Islamic world

  Al-Qaeda

  A loosely organized, radical, international terrorist organization whose goals are to get rid of foreign influences in Islamic countries and establish a world order based on strict, fundamentalist Islamic laws. Al-Qaeda was founded in 1989 by Osama bin Laden, among others. The United States, with its worldwide influence, has been particularly targeted by bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, which uses bombings and other forms of tactical violence to further its goals.

  CENTCOM

  The United States Central Command, under the control of the Secretary of Defense, is in charge of coordinating military affairs for the U.S. Armed Forces in the Middle East, Central Asia, and East Africa. CENTCOM is headquartered in Tampa, Florida.

  Civil Affairs

  Branch of the U.S. Armed Forces that acts as a liaison between the military and the civilians in a war zone or disaster area

  Coalition

  The military forces deployed from other countries to join the U.S. military in Operation Iraqi Freedom. At various points during the Operation Iraqi Freedom campaign, more than 30 countries have been listed as part of the Coalition, although the great majority of combat forces are from the U.S., followed by the United Kingdom. Most countries sent significantly smaller forces, which were often limited to support roles, rather than combat or engagement.

  Detonator

  A device used to trigger an explosive

  Fedayeen

  A group of guerilla fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein

  Final Roll Call

  A military ritual in the memorial services for slain personnel

  FOB

  Forward Operations Base; a military base that is located near the front lines of combat

  Green Zone

  The heavily fortified area in central Baghdad from which Coalition command decisions are made

  Gulf War

  Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait in August 1990. In January 1991, United Nations-sanctioned troops, in a coalition led primarily by the United States, waged the Persian Gulf War to liberate Kuwait, which was accomplished by February 1991.

  HMMWV

  A hybrid vehicle, outfitted for a number of different military purposes, with a top speed of 80 mph; commonly called a Humvee

  IED

  An Improvised Explosive Device

  Insurgents

  People fighting in armed revolt against a civil, military, or political authority

  Islam

  A religion based on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Followers of Islam are called Muslims.

  Jihad

  A system of protecting Islamic beliefs. There are traditionall
y four methods of practicing jihad. 1.With the heart: doing what is right under Islamic law. 2.With the tongue: speaking the truth and propagating Islam. 3. With the hand: correcting what one sees is wrong. 4.With the sword: defending Islam against its enemies.

  Kevlar

  A dense material that resists penetration by bullets and can be woven into many forms. U.S. troops wear Kevlar vests with ceramic front plates inserted into specially designed pockets. The U.S. military helmet is also made of Kevlar.

  KIA

  Killed In Action

  Kurds

  A tribal people of the Middle East, most of whom live in Turkey, northeast Iraq, and Iran. Kurds are the second largest ethnic group in Iraq, where they maintain an area of autonomous control.

  LOC

  Lines Of Communication. LOC ensure combat soldiers have essential access to supplies, intelligence, and advice from rear services and commanders.

  M-16

  The standard infantry rifle of the U.S. Army

  Medevac

  The abbreviation for medical evacuation, the process by which wounded soldiers are quickly moved by helicopters or ground vehicles to hospital centers

  Molle

  Moduler Lightweight Loadcarrying Equipment. A Molle vest has special webbing and loops that can hold personal armor and upon which other equipment can be fastened.

  MOS

  Military Occupational Specialty; the job a soldier has been trained to perform

  MRE

  Meals Ready to Eat; individual rations carried by soldiers in the field

  NCO

  Non-Commissioned Officers; any soldiers above the rank of private, for example, sergeants, corporals, etc.

  POW

  Prisoner Of War

  PSYOP

  Psychological Operations. PSYOP military units are specially trained to give useful information to local inhabitants to encourage their cooperation and influence their support of U.S. objectives.