by Sean Parnell
“Well, First Sergeant, I was getting shot at!”
“Keep it calm, Lieutenant. Keep it calm,” he replied, laughing.
Captain Dye came over and asked for a full report of the engagement. It took about thirty minutes to walk through everything that had happened. By the time I finished, my stomach was growling. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. At last Captain Dye let me go, and I headed off to grab a late dinner. Everyone else on the base had eaten already, but First Sergeant Christopher had made sure that the cooks stayed put to feed Outlaw Platoon when we got back. It was a kind and appreciated gesture, the mark of a great first sergeant.
When I walked into the chow hall, my platoon was huddled together, talking excitedly. When they saw me enter, the chatter stopped. I sensed trouble in the silence.
Baldwin rose from his table, where all my squad leaders had congregated. Staff Sergeant Waites, who had not been out with us, was missing. I ran through our homecoming and realized that he hadn’t been there to greet us either.
Before I could think that absence through, Baldwin strode across the chow hall toward me. His jaw was set. All eyes were on us. Not a word was spoken, which made me fear that the men had been talking about me before I came in.
Baldwin stood in front of me, and for a second I couldn’t meet his eyes. I felt his hand slam down on my shoulder. “Sir,” he said loud enough for everyone in the chow hall to hear, “I just wanted to tell you that you did a great fucking job out there today.”
The entire platoon erupted in cheers.
Baldwin escorted me to the squad leaders’ table. Greeson, already with two empty cans of near beer next to his tray, echoed Baldwin and grunted, “Yeah, sir. Good job.”
There is no finer feeling for a young lieutenant than to receive such praise from his sergeants. Once again, a surge of love went through me. These men were family now, not just brother warriors. Family.
Sabo regarded me, head cocked.
“What?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything at first, just shoveled a forkful of food into his mouth.
He returned his attention to me. “Yeah, you did all right, I guess. Just don’t get cocky.”
Laughter never felt so good. And in that moment, I knew the highest high of them all: victory in combat.
But later that night, as I lay in bed, unable to sleep despite my exhaustion, I felt the flip side of that victory.
Bray’s fifty thundered. A man’s arm was torn from his body.
I reveled in that moment.
The mortared machine-gun nest was a charnel site. Men blown apart leave a vile, stinking mess. Ruined bowels, the copper scent of blood. Bits and pieces. Nothing more. Defiled by firepower.
I had watched Garrett score that hit and felt enraptured. Victory was evident in every kill. And none of my men had been hit. An infantry leader could not ask for anything more.
But what about the man you are?
I am a warrior.
Where is the human side?
Ugly thoughts boiled within me. Unformed, terrifying, they swirled around in my head as if my mind had tumbled across some truth my subconscious could not face.
Today I watched a man get blown to pieces.
I did what I had to do as a soldier to win a desperate battle.
Yes, but about the man you wanted to be? How did you serve him today?
I tried to drive the thought from my mind.
Can Sean the human coexist with Sean the combat leader?
Today we had felt the indescribable rush created by bloodlust, survival, and victory. It had bonded my platoon in ways I couldn’t quite grasp. Now, as I tossed in my bed, I wondered how we could ever return to our former selves after what this fight had done to us.
We were becoming—exactly what I didn’t yet know, but just sensing the permanence of the transformation inspired more fear than anything else I’d faced that day.
Restless, I rose from bed and stepped into the black Afghan night. I had never felt farther from home than at that moment.
Eight
Bring Out Your Dead
May 8, 2006
FOB Bermel
The off-key notes of an R-and-B song woke me from restive sleep. The sun had yet to reappear, and a check of my watch revealed that it was not yet 0430.
The singing grew louder. Delta’s platoon sergeant was billeted in the room next to mine. His bunk and mine were separated by only a sheet of half-inch plywood. Recently, he’d taken to slipping on headphones and bellowing along to his music, a source of enduring frustration for me, especially since he rarely seemed to patrol with his men and kept odd hours. As far as I could tell, he spent most of his days hopping flights back and forth to Bagram, which made no sense to any of us. But since he belonged to Delta, his chain of command was at a different base, so he openly blew everyone here off—including First Sergeant Christopher.
He let loose with the chorus to an R. Kelly tune. He possessed the creepiest falsetto voice I’d ever heard. It grated on my ears until I wanted to punch him through the wall.
It wasn’t worth it to try to go back to sleep. I had to be up soon anyway, so I climbed out of bed and got dressed. I heard Lieutenant Taylor stirring, and I wandered over to his room. Even though we were neighbors, the two of us had had precious little time to talk in recent weeks due to the demands of our jobs. In half whispers, we caught up. Dave was scheduled to head back home on leave in a few days, but he was going back to a very sad situation. His dad had fallen ill, and Dave had just learned that he was getting worse. He and his father were very close—as close as my own dad and me. We spoke at length about his dad’s condition, and by the time the conversation was over, I felt as close to Dave as I ever had.
“Thanks for listening,” he said to me. “I know how you and your dad are. Makes it easy to talk about all this with you.”
“Anytime, man. Anytime.”
I left his room, worried about my friend. I found it hard enough to lead men in battle while totally focused. I didn’t envy Dave having to do it while worrying about his dad’s medical condition. I was glad he’d get a chance to get home and see the situation firsthand.
Hours later in the tactical operations center, I met up with Captain Dye, who briefed me on the day’s mission. Our prophet spooks had spent the night listening to the enemy’s radio chatter. Going off the information they had gleaned, Captain Dye pointed to a grid behind Rakhah Ridge just a few kilometers west of the border. “I want you to take your platoon out there and see if you can find ’em,” he explained. “Leave at first light.”
“Roger, sir.”
I headed out to grab a bite before briefing my squad leaders. Yesterday the enemy had brought the fight to us. They’d caught us by surprise, and they’d given us hell until we’d gotten out of the low ground. Today we were going to carry the fight to them. I loved the aggressiveness of the mission.
Stepping into the chow hall, I spotted Pinholt standing by a rack of single-serving breakfast cereal cups. He was proudly holding a cup of Cocoa Krispies. The kitchen crew rationed them out so that only one was put out for our consumption every morning. Pinholt knew how much I loved them and made a point of competing for them with me. At times, he’d get up before anyone else in the platoon just to score my favorite cereal.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Pinholt! Dammit, not again!”
Given his intellectual qualities, it was easy to forget that he was all of nineteen. In a different world back home, he probably would’ve been goofing on his fraternity brothers at some university in Texas.
I grabbed a cup of corn flakes. “At least these are healthy.”
Pinholt waved the Cocoa Krispies in front of me. “Oh, but sir, these are so full of chocolate goodness.”
“Bastard,” I muttered, trying to look pissed.
“Maybe tomorrow, si
r, maybe tomorrow.”
“Whatcha reading?” I asked as I poured a cup of coffee.
“Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand,” he replied.
“Haven’t you been reading that since Fort Drum?”
He shrugged. “Beats Maxim.”
“Hey, want some coffee?” I asked.
“Sir, you know I don’t drink coffee.”
“Yeah, well, I figure I couldn’t convince you to have a few beers back in Watertown, I gotta find some way to corrupt you.”
“Not gonna happen, sir.”
I grabbed some sugar and turned to find a table. On the other end of the chow hall, Yusef sat shooting the breeze with some of Second Platoon’s men. He was always asking us to define words and sayings. He loved jokes, the raunchier, the better. He preferred to hang out with our troops, something that unsettled me at times because of the familiarity it bred. That level of closeness could become an operational security issue, and I made a mental note to talk to the men about it.
As I walked past him, Yusef greeted me with all the effusive warmth of a used-car salesman. “Commander Sean, I get an AK-47 today?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“But Abdul carried AK,” he said.
“No.”
“But how will I defend myself? Besides, I’m senior ’terp now. I should carry AK.”
“Sorry, Yusef. Besides, it’s not my call anyways. Talk to Captain Dye.”
He smiled ruefully and returned his attention to the Second Platoon troops at his table. I heard him ask, “So tell me, what is ‘douche bag’ mean?”
I walked along the row of tables and found Emerick busily sketching something on his pad. We were going to paint his skull design and stylized words on our Humvees as soon as we finished this patrol cycle.
“Whatcha working on, Emerick?” I asked.
He flashed a puckish grin and held his sketch pad up. With loving detail, he’d drawn two demons having sex.
“That’s an interesting new position.” I wondered if he had used the Kama Sutra as a reference.
“I’m going to add a few more,” he said.
“Demon orgy, eh?”
“The finest kind, sir.”
I sat down. Pinholt picked a place next to me. Soon Sabo, Baldwin, and Campbell joined us. Greeson, his tray stacked with near beers and scrambled eggs, slid into a spot across from me.
“What’s the word today, sir?”
“We’ll brief in fifteen,” I said, “but we’re going after ’em.”
Baldwin lit up, “Right on.”
“Sir,” Sabo said seriously, “if we catch up to them, can you do us all a favor?”
“What?”
“Kill ’em or capture ’em, fine with me. Just whatever you do, don’t show ’em your sack again.”
I went beet red. “Did you really just go there?”
“Yeah, I did, sir.”
“Again?”
“Hey, sir,” Greeson chimed in, “if we didn’t love ya, we’d ignore ya.”
“Well, that’s a comfort.”
“When they make a movie about us someday, I can’t wait to see that scene,” Pinholt said.
“It’ll have to be a porno,” Sabo noted.
I shook my head and covered my eyes with one hand. I had no defense. I’d been taking this shit for weeks after I’d put in a less-than-stellar performance on our first attempt at reaching out to one of the local villages.
We had rolled into town in our Humvees, all set to meet with the elders to assess their community’s needs and address any complaints. We’d just completed our cultural sensitivity training, and I had nervously focused on the key lessons from that class. Take your boots off. Don’t maintain eye contact too long. Never show them the soles of your feet. Don’t ever use your left hand for anything.
The village elders had gathered for a shura, the Afghan version of a city council meeting. They had greeted us cautiously. Accustomed to seeing units come and go, they had learned that every U.S. outfit would treat them differently. So they were taking a wait-and-see attitude with us.
After I took off my helmet, I tried to find a way to get seated without showing the soles of my feet to anyone. As I did, I managed to tear my crotch seam wide open. We infantrymen never wore underwear—it chafed us raw and sometimes caused infections. I heard the seam split, felt the sudden rush of cold air where there shouldn’t be, and noted the studious nonsmiles the village elders had planted on their faces. Most of them tried to look away but kept casting sideways glances at me and my exposed parts.
Baldwin had been standing next to me. “Did that just happen?” he asked incredulously.
“Talk to them, Baldwin! I gotta cover up.”
“What the hell do you want me to say to them?” he asked.
Everyone had been sitting cross-legged. I couldn’t pull that off anymore, and I was frantically trying to figure out a way to conceal myself.
“I don’t care. Anything!”
One of the elders broke his facade. I saw him cover his mouth as he smiled. Two more exchanged glances. Abdul was our ’terp that day. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor and tried hard not to snicker.
I sat on my knees and covered my thighs with my body armor. As unobtrusively as I could, I scooted back against the nearest wall. One of the elders leaned over and took a sideways gander at me. He looked back at one of his pals, and they both smirked.
After the meeting, Baldwin came up to me, his face deadly serious. I expected him to ask me something about what the elders had discussed. I had no idea what had gone on. I’d spent the entire time petrified that I was still exposed.
“Sir,” Baldwin called to me, “you really have a unique way of establishing rapport with the locals.”
“Thanks.”
Straight-faced, he added, “Yeah, not many people have the balls to pull that off.”
Now, as I sat in there in the chow hall, I realized I had a long way to go yet before I would live that episode down. Campbell polished off the last of his eggs, wiped his mouth, and decided to join in on the fun. A broad, shit-eating grin striped his face as he leaned forward to ask, “Sir, you gotta tell me how it felt when the village elders checked out your junk?”
“I don’t know, Corky, you tell me. You’re the one who’s used to showing your balls to other dudes!”
He stared at me, surprised that I had used the nickname his fellow squad leaders had given him. His brain searched for a pithy comeback. He gave up, scrunched his brow and fired back, “Shut the fuck up, sir!”
I loved how he added “sir” at the end of that. Four months ago, we could never have shared an exchange like this one. He was my enigma, a hard man to get to know. Initially, he’d been an almost fanatical hard-ass on his men, but he’d eased up as they accepted him. I’m not sure that had ever happened to him before, and their loyalty surprised him. He’d responded in kind. I couldn’t crack his solid-steel defenses. I could tell that the man behind them was significant, but he cut me off every time I tried to get through to him. Then, just before we left Fort Drum, his wife gave birth to a baby girl. I visited them in the hospital, held his daughter, and spent time with his young family. That broke the wall down. Ever since then, we’d been open to each other, and we’d grown close.
These moments in the chow hall gave me a chance to take the platoon’s pulse, for us to decompress and just be ourselves. This morning, despite lack of sleep and knowing we were about to launch our own offensive to catch and kill the remaining enemy ambush force, the men exuded happy confidence. No doubt the lingering effects of our first victory had a lot to do with the mood around the table.
An hour later, I took five trucks and thirty men out the main gate. Baldwin led the way. We looped behind Rakhah Ridge and plunged into the sawtooth ridges just west of the international frontier. The road gr
ew treacherous as it wound around towering mountains. At times it became so narrow that we would have had a hard time dismounting had we been attacked. Sheer cliffs ran straight up on one side. Dizzying drops into vast canyons greeted us on the other side. We crept along, everyone vigilant for the enemy.
Five kilometers from the border, one of our gunners spotted movement on a mountaintop about a thousand meters away from our column. Through my binoculars, I could make out a group of men, all with rifles slung over their shoulders, loading long tubes into the back of a flatbed truck. A few of them peeled off from the crowd and walked over to a dark patch of the mountainside a short distance away.
Dark patch, hell. That’s a cave.
Several men ducked inside the cave, grabbed more long tubes, and began walking back to the truck. Given that we were a kilometer away, it took some study and patience to recognize the tubes were actually 107mm rockets.
“Greeson, these are the guys that have been barraging the FOB. Probably the survivors of yesterday’s fight, too.”
“Roger that, sir. Let’s pay ’em back.”
I called Captain Dye and requested a fire mission. If we could smother that mountaintop with 105 shells in the next few minutes, we could kill the entire rocket team and destroy their stash of reloads.
We waited. Every second seemed like a wasted opportunity. My impatience grew until I could hardly sit still.
Come on, Dye. You had our back yesterday. What’s the holdup?
I checked my watch. Five minutes had ticked off. On the mountaintop, the enemy team returned to the cave and carried another batch of rockets to their truck. The stack of 107s on the bed was growing high. The cave must serve as a resupply point. Given the amount of ordnance they were taking from it, they were either clearing it out or planning a major bombardment of FOB Bermel.
The radio crackled. Finally. “Blackhawk three-six, stand by for Mountain six.”
Pinholt and I stared at each other in surprise. “Did he just say Mountain six?” I asked.
“That’s what I heard,” Pinholt confirmed.
Mountain six was the commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division. Why would he want to talk to me, probably his most junior officer?
