Jarhead

by Anthony Swofford

  Finally my mother peeled away the backing and steam rose from my shirt and on the shirt the glorious Eagle, Globe, and Anchor pulsed like a heart. What splendid colors, scarlet and gold! By air, land, and sea! From the halls of Montezuma! I’d first sung “The Marines’ Hymn” in grade school choir and now I belted out the first verse at the top of my lungs as my mother stood back from her ironing board. I thought I saw fear in her eyes. I ripped off the shirt I’d been wearing and poured my body into the USMC shirt, and the heat from the icon warmed my chest and my chest grew and I had become one of them, the Marines! At the ripe age of fourteen I’d decided my destiny. I would war and fight and make good for those poor boys dead in Lebanon, for my poor dead uncle killed not by the enemy but poisoned milk, for all of the marines of all time killed and dead in all wars and all cheap moments of peace.

  But it was not cool to want to be in the military, so I kept this desire to myself. I wore the Marines shirt only on my paper route and occasionally to school during cold weather when I knew I would never remove my sweater. I kept most of my life to myself, not willing to share what would be ridiculed and tainted by the kids smarter and hipper and better dressed, the better athletes, the better students, the kids who’d fucked already, the punk rockers and the metalheads and all of them—any of the groups to which I could never belong.

  By early December the weather has cooled considerably; the high temperature hasn’t hit eighty in over a month, the mornings are wet with a heavy dew, and occasionally a light rain lingers through the day.

  In America the antiwar movement gains momentum. My friend Jenn sends me articles opposing the buildup in Saudi Arabia and what looks to most observers to be inevitable offensive operations. The articles generally link the Gulf conflict with U.S. energy and economic policies that rely heavily on fossil fuels and the defense of low prices for those fuels. But we marines of STA do not care about fuel, we care about living and shooting.

  Heavy-equipment operators from the Combat Engineers have built a rifle range in the middle of the Triangle. With their Caterpillars they gouged the shooting berm from the belly of the desert, one thousand yards from firing berm to target, each fire avenue demarcated by the tracks of the big diesel machines.

  Below the sand of the Arabian Desert is, quite simply, more sand. We’ve dug fighting holes, but the Caterpillars have reached much deeper. I don’t know what I expected to see, perhaps bedrock, which certainly exists at some level, but the blades of the tractors have not gone far enough, and this disturbs me. Sand—we can’t get away from it, and if we die and are abandoned, we’ll be buried in a sand casket.

  We acquire one thousand rounds of match-quality ammunition (match quality meaning that the ballistics of the projectiles are up to competition standards), the famous boat-tail round, the most precise, most severe round fired from our rifle, the round the rifle was made for, the round that was made for the rifle. The school-trained snipers wear a hog’s tooth—slang for the boat-tail projectile—around their neck, and the rest of us tape our hog’s tooth to our dog tags or carry one in our left breast pocket. I stow mine in my pocket, and just as old punished philosophers and characters from fiction have done with stones, I often take my hog’s tooth into my mouth and suck on it. The taste is of the earth and I recognize the sweat and labor of the first rifleman, wherever he stood and fought and crawled and died on whatever battlefield, for whatever sorry cause. The warrior always fights for a sorry cause. And if he lives, he tells stories.

  At the long-distance range, Crocket and I use duct tape to attach targets to the hulks of bombed and shot-up vehicles. It looks like a quarter acre of junkyard has been shipped to the Desert.

  The platoon shoots for an hour, and after pulling the targets a few times and confirming that we’re consistently hitting in the bull, we stop bothering with the targets and simply fire away. Just as the point guard knows the instant the ball leaves his hands whether the shot will become a basket or a brick, the sniper knows as soon as he pulls the trigger whether the shot will become a kill or a miss.

  The M40A1 magazine holds five rounds. The trigger pull, at three to five pounds, varies from rifle to rifle. Some shooters might liken the trigger to a clitoris, and the well-placed shot to the female’s orgasm, but in STA 2/7 we refrain from anthropomorphizing our weapons. To do so would introduce a human element into an entirely mechanical relationship. To do so might humanize our enemy, a certainly fatal mistake. Trigger pull is trigger pull. Period.

  The preferred shooting position is prone. Some shooters use a tripod to steady the weapon; most use either a ruck or a sandbag filled with dirt or sand.

  The spotter lies to the right of the shooter, and depending on the size of the hide, he might drape his left leg over the shooter’s right. The spotter situates his scope just behind the shooter’s right elbow. Some people argue that the spotter’s job is more difficult than the shooter’s, and before the trigger is pulled much of the workload truly belongs to the spotter, who must acquire the target, assist the sniper in acquiring the target, call the distance and wind, compute the dope, advise the sniper of the dope, and call the shot. But only one person is credited with the kill.

  There is a moment when the target disappears, when the shooter sees only the clear, lovely intersection of the reticle, as if a bucket of sun has been poured into his scope, and the light means it’s time to pull the trigger. For the best shooting teams this is the exact moment that the spotter begins his soft, religious chant: Fire, fire, fire.

  Well before the shot is taken, the spotter will have drawn a field sketch, so that distance is easily estimated and the target rapidly acquired. The spotter might say to the shooter, “Officer without insignia, directing troop movement. Three o’clock from the stand of trees.” Of course, in the Desert we anticipate exactly zero trees in our field sketches. We assume our points of origin will be the burnt hulks of personnel carriers and tanks and the occasional gentle rise of the desert.

  I return to the disturbing nature of the terrain, the lack of variation, the dead repetition, and constantly, the ominous feeling that one is always in the open. The open, we were told as early as boot camp, is a poor place to find yourself. In the open you die, and your friends, when they try to save you, they die. But the whole goddamn desert is the open.

  After the shoot we clean our weapons on the berm. Generally, the sniper sits cross-legged while cleaning the rifle, a pose not so unlike the lotus position of the Buddha under the fig tree, but of course, the sniper does not eat figs.

  The bore-punch rod is made of brass, so as not to disturb the rifling of the barrel, one right-hand twist per twelve inches. It takes two men to punch the bore, one to punch down from the crown, and the other to remove the cotton pad after it has opened, flowerlike, into the chamber. There is something meditative in rifle cleaning, as with most tasks that might help save your life.

  I hold the rifle and Johnny punches the bore. We’re talking shit to Combs and Dickerson about how many bulls we made, invisible bulls never to be counted, ghostbulls, but that doesn’t mean we can’t claim them.

  My team is the duty team, so while the rest of the platoon returns to base camp, we police the range, retrieve what remains of our targets, and attempt to make radio contact with Range Control to inform them that our shoot is over and the area clear. While I’m attempting, unsuccessfully, to contact Range Control, I notice four Bedouins nearby. I retrieve my binoculars and watch the men remove a piece of plywood from the soft side of a rise and begin to enter the rise. I call Johnny over, and he uses a spotter’s scope to gain visual.

  We often see Bedouins in the Triangle—it’s their home, and we’re visitors—but the behavior of these men is abnormal, and we’ve never seen a subsurface structure before. It might be a cache of food or other supplies, but we’re concerned that the men might have observed our shoot or that they’re hostile and entering a weapons bunker or long-term observation post.

  Crocket and Dettmann remain on the be
rm with a sniper rifle, and Johnny and I approach the Bedouins on foot, he with his sidearm and me with an M16, both of us locked and loaded. I switch my trigger selector to burst. Johnny leads the way. The men are four to five hundred yards from the shooting berm.

  I’m nervous and quite prepared for my first firefight. The walk is long, in the wide beige open, and with each step the heat seems to increase and the distance between us and the possible aggressors to grow larger. Their robes warp in the mirage until they look like a battalion rather than a squad. Could they be retreating, or the desert splitting open between us? I decide the men are Iraqi spies, sent across the border in the early days of the conflict and working reconnaissance ever since, blending in with the local tribesmen. I struggle to recall the phrases of Arabic I learned during the first few weeks in-country: I am your friend, Drop your weapons, You are surrounded, I am from the United States military, Stop or I’ll shoot. Since I can’t recall any of the Arabic, I plan to shout all of these phrases in English—if the men are spies, they were probably trained in Western schools and they might understand my English, though they’ll also understand my fear.

  Johnny carries the PRC-77 radio in his ruck, but he’s unable to establish communication with the CP. He says, “If something goes down, we’re on our own. If you see any weapons, shoot first. Who knows how many people are down in their hide. It might be a whole fucking platoon.”

  I’ve been on thousands of training patrols, and since being in Saudi, dozens of supposedly live patrols, but we’ve never actually seen potential enemy. The enemy has remained abstract, as difficult for me to comprehend as my own birth. I need to see the thing to know the thing. I’m on my way toward new knowledge. But the sensations of this first, actual patrol are no different from the sensations of the other patrols I’ve run in-country. A patrol is always equal parts boredom, frustration, and anticipation, and even in this small time frame, the few minutes it takes us to cover five hundred yards, the same principles of the patrol apply. I begin to daydream, to think of the place I will eat my first hamburger, Nationwide Freezer Meats in downtown Sacramento, a double french with cheese, and when Johnny stops, I nearly run into him. He glares at me, aware that I’ve been somewhere else.

  Three of the men are squatting atop the rise and staring at us. We’re within one hundred feet. I could, in two to three seconds, produce fatal injuries to all three of the men. This thought excites me, and I know that whatever is about to occur, we will win. I want to kill one or all of them, and I whisper this to Johnny, but he doesn’t reply. In a draw to our right I see five camels, obviously belonging to these men. The camels are, as always, indifferent.

  We stare at the men and the men stare at us, and this continues for many minutes. Johnny can’t decide what to do, and he attempts to establish communication with the CP. With my right thumb I switch my fire selector from burst to fire to safe and back to burst, again and again.

  Safe, fire, burst…burst, fire, safe.

  One of the men on the berm waves to us, and Johnny waves back. This gesture is both alarming and comforting.

  This man, who an observer might call their emissary, approaches us. He’s young and handsome and smiling, and he again waves and we both wave, and I slowly settle my trigger selector into the safe mode. The man squats a few feet in front of us and draws in the sand, in the same way a team leader will draw in the sand with his index finger, issuing the patrol order. The man speaks a frantic hybrid of Arabic and English.

  While he points at the camels, a few men exit the hide with bundles of supplies in their hands. Now eight men are visible and I begin to see that his complaint has something to do with the camels. But we still don’t understand. We’re huddled over his field sketch of sorts, and he slowly reaches for my rifle. I place my palm on his head and with little effort push him to the deck. I realize his move was not violent, but rather a desperate attempt to communicate. I remove my magazine and eject the round from the chamber, and the brass jacket drops into my palm.

  The man is on his ass, with his arms splayed behind him, and I watch him as I perform this task, the removal of the live round, for me a movement as natural as a yawn. In his eyes I see a mixture of wonder and fear. I offer a hand to help him stand. He pauses before taking my hand. I submit my rifle to him. He takes it the way a child might, and holding it from his hip, he points the weapon toward the camels and makes firing noises. Johnny and I look at one another. Eight men, five camels. Some of their camels have been shot, and they think we’re responsible.

  The man inspects my rifle. I wish the colonel would run an inspection like this, delicately peering into the chamber, afraid of the weapon. I know the man wants to find gunpowder, evidence that the weapon has recently been fired, fired at his tribe’s camels. I take my rifle from him and break it down shotgun style, and I remove the entire bolt assembly and hand it to him. My M16 is spotless, as always, because I clean it a few hours a day and I haven’t fired the weapon since the States. All that comes off on the man’s fingers is cleaning/lubricant/protectant. I reassemble my weapon. The man turns and speaks to the others gathered on the berm, and those men go back to their business of retrieving bundles from the hide.

  Johnny tries to apologize to the man, but he walks away before Johnny finishes. I yell, “Hey!” The man turns around and I wave, and he waves back. Johnny and I patrol backward for a hundred or so yards, watching the men load their supplies on the camels. I retrieve my hog’s tooth from my left breast pocket and pop it in my mouth.

  Johnny says, “I’m glad we didn’t have to shoot anyone. I wonder who played target practice with their camels?”

  We drive back to the Triangle on the superhighway and I sit in the back of the Hummer with Dettmann and Crocket and tell them what occurred with the Bedouins. They think the story is funny, and they both laugh and make jokes about “camel jockeys.” I’m not happy to be in the Triangle, and I’m even less happy about going to war as a hired man for another government, but I find their heartlessness particularly disturbing. I want to defend the Bedouins against this assault from these ignoramuses.

  The Bedouins are not our enemy, the Bedouins will not try to kill us whenever the Coalition decides to act. I’ve just experienced a human moment with the Bedouin, free of profanity and anger and hate. Because they are ignorant and young and have been well trained by the Corps, Dettmann and Crocket are afraid of the humanity of the Bedouin, unable to see through their desert garb into the human.

  Before I have a chance to tell Dettmann and Crocket the reasons they are wrong, before I have an opportunity to explain the difference between the Bedouin and the Iraqis, a Mercedes sedan approaches from the rear, traveling at high speed. We occasionally see large Mercedes sedans on the superhighway, a Saudi male driving with a female or a few females in the backseat, each wearing a hijab, the traditional Muslim head covering. These brief, high-speed glances are our only exposure to the citizens of the country we’re protecting (the Bedouins are less citizens of the country than denizens of the land). We’re sure the Saudis prefer this arrangement. We are the ghost protectors. As the car closes in, Crocket stands in the back of the Humvee, holds the crossbar with one hand, and puts his other hand to his mouth, flicking his tongue between two fingers. The driver of the Mercedes turns his head slowly, a little late to see Crocket, but one covered woman sits alone in the backseat of the car, and I watch her eyes follow Crocket’s crude gesture. I don’t know if she’s registering shock or confusion or disgust, but I know I will always remember her eyes, locked on the crude young American.

  The Mercedes blows past and Crocket and Dettmann yell profanities and excitedly slap each other on the back. Dettmann calls Crocket a “ballsy motherfucker,” and Crocket says, “That bitch will never forget me. She wanted me.”

  The mail generally arrives two or three times a week. I especially enjoy receiving letters on Sundays because it makes me feel as though we’re being treated with special consideration, getting mail on a day of the
week that no one in the States will.

  In the middle of December we begin receiving shipments of Any Marine letters. We don’t know who is behind the campaign—the Red Cross, the USO?

  The first few Any Marine shipments are modest, probably a few hundred letters for the battalion. STA Platoon is given six of the letters. Sergeant Dunn and Johnny decide they’ll disburse one letter to each scout team and that the letter should go to the marine from each team who’s received the least mail from home. In my team that’s Cortes, who after a few months of deployment has only heard his name shouted four or five times during mail call. He’s even tried to communicate with prisoners at the Valley State Prison for Women, Chowchilla, California, via an ad in the back of Hustler, with no luck.

  The six Any Marines are like new kings, smiling as Dunn and Johnny hand them their envelopes. Cortes, just barely gracious, brags about how he now has a stateside hookup.

  “Fuck Larry Flynt,” he says.

  Cortes’s letter is from an eleven-year-old boy, and Crocket opens one from a grandmother of three. We laugh and Dickerson calls Cortes a pederast and Crocket a sick fucking pervert. Kuehn, happily married despite the lack of correspondence, gets a seventeen-year-old vixen from Los Angeles, a girl ready to fuck anything that moves, or so she says in her letter. She has included a snapshot and we are all momentarily saddened by her youth and what we might’ve considered innocence if she hadn’t been so graphic and honest about her grown-up desires. Dettmann, married to his Harley, finds a nice card from a freshman attending college near his home. Her card is so sweet and wholesome she’s silenced us, and I’m sure we all wish we’d received her. Goerke’s envelope is postmarked Cody, Wyoming, but the letter has fallen out. Atticus’s letter is actually a short note scrawled on a pink index card, supposedly from a recent university dropout: I just quit Yale. I like to fuck a lot and drop acid. Write me soon if you like to fuck a lot and drop acid. Thanks. Obviously, Atticus has hit the vein. The other Any Marines look defeated. We all gather around Atticus to read the soon-famous note ourselves and make sure he isn’t lying. I like to fuck a lot and drop acid becomes one of our rallying cries, better than any Ohh-rah or Semper fi.