William Christie 03 - The Blood We Shed

by William Christie

  When I returned from the head Staff Sergeant Frederick said, "PFC Jenkins's wife is here, sir. She wants to see you."

  "Me?" I said, in a much higher vocal pitch than John Wayne would have employed. "What does she want to see me about?"

  He only shrugged.

  It looked like one of those days that was only going to get worse. "It's either twenty grand in credit card debt, or he hit her," I predicted. I spent more time being a financial and family councilor than a platoon commander.

  To the troops there were two kinds of officers: the ones you could talk to and the ones you couldn't. Since I'd admitted to Corporal Asuego I was wrong I'd been the first, and I was more than proud of that. But one thing was certain, no matter how open my door I only got the call after the Titanic had hit the iceberg. This wasn't going to be something I wanted to hear. "Don't run off. I've got a feeling I may need a witness."

  PFC Jenkins had been Lance Corporal Jenkins, fire team leader, before he popped for marijuana on the same urinalysis I threatened Lance Corporal Valentine with catheterization. Incidentally, Valentine also popped. As predicted, his drug was ecstasy.

  Jenkins's wife was all dressed up to talk to me. Without him. The Staff Sergeant got her a chair, and we all sat down.

  She launched right into it as if she'd over-rehearsed and was afraid any extraneous small talk would throw her off track. "My husband can't go on deployment."

  I was right, I didn't want to hear this. "Why can't he go on deployment?"

  "Because I need him."

  Staff Sergeant Frederick's anger was hiding behind his poker face. "All the wives of Marines in this battalion need their husbands," I said. "How are you different?"

  "Because I'm different. I'm not well, and I need my husband with me."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. How are you not well?"

  "My nerves. My nerves are very bad from stress."

  "Your nerves?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I'm very sorry about your nerves, but your husband made the decision to join the Marine Corps. He's a Marine, and he's going on deployment."

  I got up and moved toward the door, so she really had no choice but to come along. I held it open and she went out. If she hadn't, I would have. On the way through she turned and said, very determined, "No he's not."

  It took a lot to get Staff Sergeant Frederick excited, and right then he was totally ballistic. "Who the fuck does she think she is? Comes in here and says, I don't want him to go, like that's all it takes. I tell you what, sir, now I know what made Jenkins go pop that piss test."

  "Well," I said. "Either nothing's going to happen next, or something is." I tried not to indulge my imagination about what that something might turn out to be.

  Another fire team leader had to go down. Lance Corporal Westgate was now fully recovered from alcohol poisoning.

  "You know why you're not a team leader any more?" I said.

  "Because I fucked up, sir."

  "Because you didn't set the example. What if I missed the MCCRES because I went out and got drunk off my ass the night before? You'd say, "Who is he to tell us how to act?" Right now that's you. I can't rely on you to show up sober for a major exercise, and you've got no credibility with the Marines in your fire team. They made the MCCRES—you didn't. You understand what I'm saying?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You've got the next move. You can either start working your way back to being someone I can rely on all the time, and acts exactly the way he tells other Marines to act. Or not."

  We had the MCCRES debrief, and as we suspected we'd kicked some serious ass. Got 100% on the beach assault, but were chastised for straying over a fire support boundary during our long end-around. Typical. But Golf company didn't fare as well, and Captain Chef got kicked upstairs to be the assistant operations officer.

  We also replaced Golf as the helicopter company. We were stoked about that, even though grunts hated riding in helicopters. They crashed with depressing regularity. We knew that the top of the class in flight school got jets while the rest went to helos. We also knew that of the elements vital to safe helicopter operations—maintenance and spares, modern avionics, and enough flight time for pilots to be proficient let alone expert—the Marine Corps never fully funded all three.

  But Afghanistan was landlocked, and everything was going to have to come in by helicopter. And we wanted to go in very badly.

  We already had helicopter skills. We just needed to go up to the air base at Cherry Point to spend some time in the helo dunker, a mockup helicopter fuselage that was dropped into a pool to simulate a crash into the ocean. It was a lot of fun until they put blackout goggles on us and we had to get out by feel.

  We also brushed up on fast-roping, which was how you left a helicopter that didn't have room to land. A nylon rope as thick as the ones you had to climb in gym class got kicked out, and wearing heavy gloves you slid down it like a fire pole, braking with the hands and feet. Now that was fun.

  Helicopter raids and urban warfare were the main mission, so we went back to the MAC ranges and the grenade house.

  And there Captain Zimmerman brought all the platoon commanders and platoon sergeants together and gave us a direct order that the troops were to let the grenades cook off before throwing them into the rooms. Just as we'd do in combat, and the responsibility all his.

  When it was our turn I took Corporal Turner aside and said, "I want PFC Francois to throw a grenade."

  The look on his face was worth paying money to see. Private First Class Francois was a young Marine with zero self-confidence. But it didn't make him withdrawn, quite the opposite. He was all insecure bravado. When walking around he liked to affect a pronounced inner city strut. It was never a secret when he was in the vicinity, because the air would be filled with outraged NCO bellows of, "FRAN-COIS! Don't you be diddy-boppin' through my fucking area!"

  By general consensus a four-star pain in the ass, and sorely in need of a good ass-kicking. A court-martial offense I was afraid one of my NCO's would eventually provide.

  It wasn't that I didn't think a little tune-up would do more than a few of my Marines a world of good. But I valued a good NCO's career more than the potential reform of some young pain in the ass. And that's how I made the case to them.

  So in the absence of a thumping I'd decided that Francois needed something to give him some confidence.

  But my solution rocked Sergeant Turner's world. "You want Francois to throw a live grenade, sir?"

  "Your hearing is just fine, Sergeant Turner. I'd rather have him do it now than in combat for the first time."

  He obviously felt the need to bring the lieutenant down from Utopia. "We may never get to combat, sir. But Francois could fuck up real bad in the next few minutes."

  "I'll be the range safety officer, Sergeant Turner. And I'll be standing right behind Francois the whole time."

  The Sergeant replied to that with a grudging smile and some typical grunt fatalism. "And we'll be behind you, sir. Maybe not right behind you, but we'll be behind you."

  Francois's hand was trembling as he removed the grenade from his pouch. Something that could blow you into hamburger was a hell of a lot different from an otherwise identical blue practice grenade. I was locked onto that hand, war-gaming everything possible that could go wrong after he pulled the pin, and what I'd do in the time available. Like something as absurdly simple as him fumbling to get the spoon off and dropping it at our feet. Or "milking" the grenade, as we called it. That is, nervously squeezing and relaxing his grip on it, releasing the constant tension on the spoon and possibly starting the fuse burning even while he was still physically holding the spoon down.

  That shaking hand, not to mention flashing back on what one grenade had done to a whole squad, was fast making me reconsider my master plan for boosting Francois's self-esteem.

  But of course I had to go through with it. Gripping the grenade hard enough to crack the casing, Francois thumbed off the wire safety clip. T
hen he pulled the pin. You couldn't do it with your teeth; they'd come out before the pin did.

  Now all Francois had to do was release the spoon, quickly count thousand-one, thousand-two, out loud just the way he'd been taught, and throw the grenade into the room.

  His face screwed up in concentration, determined to do everything right, Francois flipped off the spoon and slowly and deliberately chanted, "One.. .thousand...and... one. One..."

  The whole squad and I screamed, "THROW IT!!!"

  I lunged for the grenade but Francois instinctively obeyed orders and whipped it into the room. It blew just as it passed through the doorway.

  Everything went down way too fast for me to get scared right then. But I can't deny that once the dust settled my sphincter was so tight I couldn't have passed a piece of dental floss. I looked back into the blood-drained faces of the rest of the squad. The room clearers were frozen in place.

  Francois's slow count had probably let that 4-5 second fuse burn for close to 4 seconds. Surprisingly, considering my past history, I didn't lose my cool.

  I put my arm around Francois's shoulders and led him out of earshot. Praise in public and punish in private. "Tell me what you did wrong," I said.

  "I...I counted too slow, sir. I'm so sor...."

  "Show me how to do it right," I said.

  He walked through the whole procedure again, with the right count this time.

  I walked outside, plucked one of the extra grenades from the case, removed it from the protective fiber canister, went back into the grenade house, and handed it to Francois under the disbelieving eyes of 2nd squad.

  "Okay," I said. "You know what you did wrong, you learned from it, no one got hurt, and you'll never do it again. The only thing left is to do it right. You ready?"

  He whispered, "Do I have to, sir?"

  I wasn't going to give him permission to quit. "Yes, you do. You think I'd give you another grenade if I thought you couldn't do it?" I sure hoped I was right.

  He let out his breath hard, and shuffled into position. While Francois was readying the second grenade, I looked back over my shoulder. The whole squad had subtly edged back a few feet to put themselves within diving distance of the nearest corner. I didn't say anything; it struck me as a prudent move, though one I couldn't take advantage of.

  Francois thumbed off the safety clip and my stomach clenched as he wrestled with the pin. He got it out, and I went back to being totally focused on that grenade.

  He flicked off the spoon and called out, "Thousand-one, thousand-two," threw it into the room, and then, "Frag out." It blew, and as the clearing team charged through the smoke to take down the targets, I grabbed Francois by both shoulders and gave him a hard "well done" shake. He looked back at me, and that formerly sullen-is-cool teenage baby face was lit up. My stomach hadn't quite fallen back down into its normal position yet, but that was all right.

  Later we were sitting around eating MRE's and Francois was taking his due ration of shit from the platoon. After the razzing died down a bit, Corporal Crockett, one of Sergeant Harlin's team leaders, said, "Staff Sergeant?"

  "What is it, Crazy?" Staff Sergeant Frederick replied.

  Corporal Crockett was a tall kid from the Bronx, a basketball player. Not because he was black, because he loved basketball. He'd kicked ass in front of the meritorious corporal promotion board to make his rank, and was a natural leader with great personal force.

  At first maybe a little too much force. Right after the promotion Lance Corporal Peterson came to me complaining that Crockett hit him. Fortunately there were no witnesses. I wouldn't trade ten Petersons for one Crockett.

  When I had a talk with Crockett he guilelessly admitted everything. "You tell him to do something, sir, and he's got a million punk-ass reasons why he shouldn't have to. He's a little bitch, so I bitch-slapped him."

  That really wasn't what I wanted to hear. "Corporal Crockett, a superior isn't allowed to bitch-slap his subordinates."

  He squinted in disbelief, as if I'd just told him he had to wear a G-string under his uniform. "You mean I can't hit 'em, sir?"

  "No," I said. "You can't hit 'em."

  Staff Sergeant Frederick had been profoundly embarrassed, telling me it was all his fault. The Lance Corporal team leaders were used to inviting their fellow lance corporals outside to settle any problems. But once they became corporals it was an offense. He held NCO school starting that afternoon. Corporal was the toughest job in the Corps. I didn't get promoted one day and have to boss around my peers, dealing squarely with friends, enemies, and all the attendant jealousies.

  I'd made Crockett one of Sergeant Harlin's team leaders because his qualities were those Sergeant Harlin wasn't overly endowed with. He'd also been one of the first to rush to the scene of the grenade accident.

  His question for the Platoon Sergeant was delivered in such a serious tone I knew he had to be up to something. "Staff Sergeant, all those Medal of Honor citations hanging up in the hallway of the battalion CP? Most of them are Marines who jumped on incoming grenades and let themselves get blown up to save their buddies' lives."

  "What about it?" Staff Sergeant Frederick asked.

  "They're all PFC's," Corporal Crockett said. "What's that about, Staff Sergeant?"

  Equally deadpan, and without missing a beat, my platoon sergeant said, "That's 'cause when a grenade comes in, the Staff Sergeant and the Lieutenant grab the nearest PFC and throw his ass on it."

  I nearly choked on my MRE. The platoon fell over laughing, and there were cries of, "Francois, that coulda been you." Someone out of my sight line yelled, "I saw the Lieutenant behind you, Francois—he was ready."

  We went aboard ship twice, the last for the Special Operations Exercise. Our part was a non-combatant evacuation with Fox Company, getting American and friendly civilians out of a war-torn country. Basically some role-players throwing rocks at us as hostile natives; dealing with the occasional sniper; and "diplomats" who refused to leave their poodles behind. The best were the girls who promised the Marines sex if they'd take them to America. The troops shrewdly demanded that the role-players strip to see if they were worth it. That was when the role playing stopped.

  Captain Zimmerman hated working with Captain Lafrance of Fox Company. An early victim of male-pattern baldness, built like a small college lineman, his blustering earnestness had quickly won him the nickname Captain America. Pretty soon even the Chaplain was calling him that. As Captain Z said, "I wish Captain America would stop saying "God bless" when he really means "fuck you."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  My having the duty that weekend filled Jack O'Brien with joy. "Just reading about it isn't enough anymore," he said. "Maybe we can arrange some kind of live video feed?"

  "Like Cops or something?" said Frank Milburn.

  "Have your little fun," I replied. "But no matter what the crisis, the battalion will be safe in my capable hands."

  "You hope," said Milburn.

  "It has gotten worse each time," O'Brien pointed out.

  "Sooner or later," I said, "the laws of probability have to kick in."

  "You hope," said Milburn.

  I had Sunday duty this time, which made me cautiously optimistic. I suspected that Saturday night might have been the root of all my previous problems.

  My tour began with controversy right at 0800. I was relieving Lieutenant Daniels, the Weapons Company 81mm mortar platoon commander. And he got huffy when I removed the magazine of the Beretta and counted out the rounds.

  Believing his honor to be in question, he demanded, "Don't you trust me?"

  "Absolutely," I said. "Trust you with my life." But I kept counting rounds. With your career on the line it was much easier to be a moral coward than a physical one. If something happened to provoke an inventory, and I came up one round short of what I signed for because some previous OD had lost it and kept quiet, I was the one who got screwed.

  My staff duty was Staff Sergeant Buck, from the Weapons Company antia
rmor platoon. He was famous throughout the battalion for having taken the physically brutal Force Reconnaissance indoctrination test three times, and either passing out or succumbing to heat exhaustion all three times.

  The Staff Sergeant confided that he'd accepted a few dollars from a fellow Staff NCO to take the duty with me. Evidently the word was that you saw too much action on my watch.

  That pissed me off. "I'm the one who has to go out and handle all this shit," I said. "The Staff Duty just sits here and works the phones."

  "That's what I thought, sir," said the Staff Sergeant. "But you know how stories get bigger the more people tell them."

  The day was pretty uneventful, which according to past history meant nothing. When we hit the rack for the night Staff Sergeant Buck thought I was some kind of eccentric. "You don't take your boots off, sir?"

  "Let's just say I've learned not to."

  Sure enough the phone rang at 0200. "Sir, this is the Golf Company duty; someone just fired a rifle behind the barracks."

  "I'll be right there," I said, whipping on my pistol belt. It was inevitable, of course; there would have to be a terrorist attack when I was on duty.

  "Rifle fire behind the barracks," I told the Staff Sergeant. "Call the MP's and the reaction force."

  "Yes, sir. Shouldn't you wait for them?"

  That brought me up short, and I had to think it over. "I'm not going to go rushing into a firefight," I said. "But I have to see what's going on."

  "Okay, sir." He said it with the resigned finality of a Staff NCO who'd performed his due diligence. The lieutenant was now free to step into the shit on his own.

  It was the usual. Out the door at a dead run, pistol in my hand. Not that it would do much good if there really were rifles out there. I might get the chance to pop off a couple of rounds, just to demonstrate the proper elan, before being shot full of holes. I tried to stay behind cover as I came up.