by Sean Parnell
The outside door opened, and Lieutenant Taylor stepped in. He’d just come back from leave, and I was happy to see him. By that time, we were the only lieutenants at Bermel, which meant that the two of us constituted our peer group. He was the one person on the FOB I could share friendship with and not have it limited by the distinction of rank. Beyond that, his return meant that Sergeant Burley would be less of a thorn in everyone’s side. Perhaps the damage caused between the two platoons could be healed. I knew that my men didn’t hold anyone but Burley responsible for what had happened that day, so I had hope.
“Hey, man, what the hell happened out there on June 10?” Taylor asked.
His blast of anger caught me off guard. I had no response to it.
“I heard what you did on that hill. Do you even care about your men?”
I went from surprised to enraged in seconds. I stood up as he continued to rant at me. Where was this coming from? His words cut to the quick. I wondered if Burley had filled his ear with bullshit.
Finally I could take it no more. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”
“I thought you’d be a leader, Sean. But you’re being reckless!”
“Don’t talk about things you know nothing about, man!”
He looked stunned by that response. He’d been on leave when Second Platoon had been hit in May. So far, Taylor had yet to experience a significant firefight. Throwing that in his face laid bare the divide between us.
He turned and stormed out of the operations center. Yet another relationship had frayed in the aftermath of combat.
When I came off duty that morning, I returned to my hooch to find Sergeant R. Kelly already singing. I sat down at my rough-hewn plywood desk and booted up my computer. I needed to vent.
As I waited for Windows to load, I stared at the screen and thought about Taylor’s words. He was my only peer at Bermel. I couldn’t vent to my men; that would have been a total breach of my responsibilities as a leader. I couldn’t go to Captain Dye; we just didn’t have that kind of relationship. Behind closed doors, I probably would have talked to Baldwin about it.
Right then I missed his guidance with a crushing sense of loss. He’d been like a big brother to me. And now I didn’t even know where he was.
I logged in to my e-mail. Greeson had just gone home on his midtour leave. I wrote him a note to tell him what happened.
Home. In moments like this one, I’d find comfort in my family’s company. I reached for the St. Christopher medal. The silver had lost its luster again, and I didn’t have the energy to clean it. Besides, nothing stayed clean out here on the frontier.
I palmed it and thought about my grandmother’s words: “Take this. It will keep you safe.”
It had saved me twice.
My family’s always been my refuge.
I’d been writing to my dad every chance I had. Most soldiers tell their families none of what happens in combat; they fear how they will react to the details. I hadn’t been doing that. My dad had asked, and I had never been anything but totally honest with him. In the past months, the bond between us had grown even deeper as we exchanged e-mails between patrols. By nature, leaders live a lonely life. As close as we can be to our men and NCOs, there is still an invisible wall that cannot ever be broken down, lest a lieutenant grow too familiar with his men. Familiarity can breed contempt. In a fight, that could lead to a hesitation to follow orders. Plus, a lieutenant who is too emotionally invested in his men might make the wrong decisions in combat. In trying to spare their lives, he could actually make the mistakes that end up getting them killed.
My dad’s e-mails and our few phone conversations had balmed some of the sense of isolation I’d been feeling.
I pulled up his e-mail address. I wouldn’t write about Lieutenant Taylor and what he had said. That sort of company business needed to stay within the company, at least for now.
Right then, a bolt of homesickness left me almost breathless.
The words began pouring out.
Dad,
The enemy meant business, and did not stop coming. It was like the Russian horde. Eventually, we were going to run out of ammo, and they were going to overrun us. I’m a damn Platoon Leader, and I had 1 magazine left when our QRF (Quick Reaction Force) arrived. We killed tons of them, and they just kept coming wave after wave. Half of my platoon will get Purple Hearts. My shrapnel wounds are healing fast, my headache is going away, but I still can’t hear out of my right ear and the ringing is annoying as hell.
I paused and reread the words. As a soldier and a leader, I cannot complain or show weakness to anyone. Such a revelation here would destroy my ability to command in battle and ruin the hard-won respect I’d earned from the men. Leadership exists on a knife edge. Any sign of hesitation, doubt, or inability to hack it would have pushed me out of the platoon’s inner circle.
I could deal with getting shot at. I could deal with the threat of capture and beheading while my empty M4 lay at my side. I could deal with the pain in my head, the vertigo, the sleepless nights where the buzzing in my ears kept me company. The one thing I could not deal with was being pushed out.
Sean the leader had to be tough. Sean the man needed to unburden himself. As I started typing again, I realized that just by reading my words, my father was performing a noble and selfless service for me. Somewhere on the other side of the world, somebody I loved knew what I was going through. And he was standing strong for me.
Seventeen
Skeleton Crew
June 26, 2006
Checkpoint outside Malakshay
The Special Forces lieutenant colonel regarded me with skepticism. Behind us, the rest of his team huddled around a laptop, silencers on their weapons, cool-guy gear dangling from their chest rigs. Before we had left Bermel, I wanted to tell them that all that stuff would just slow them down where we were going. No matter how fit a soldier is, at 10,000 feet the only thing you can afford to carry is water, ammo, and your weapon. Everything else just drags you down.
“So that was the May 7 fight,” I concluded. I’d been instructed to give the Special Forces team a brief on the combat my platoon had experienced. I started to explain June 10, and the lieutenant colonel’s look of disbelief solidified.
I concealed my frustration and continued the brief. The special operators had been pushed down to Bermel to get a better feel for the amount of enemy activity. Captain Dye had asked me to take them out on patrol with us for the next few cycles, something I was not looking forward to doing. We’d had some friction with other Special Forces teams in our area, and as a result my men did not hold them in high regard. There were attitude differences between us regular line infantrymen and the SF guys, and I’d come to regard any liaison effort with them as a ponderous and difficult task. The ones we had encountered seemed to have all the elite attitude without the tactical acumen needed to keep them alive while on patrol. Rather than focusing on the enemy, they seemed to us to be preoccupied with frivolous and extraneous details, such as what color they should paint their weapons. We also didn’t think much of them and their refusal to wear protective gear such as helmets. Most of the time they walked around nonchalantly in baseball caps. After what we’d gone through, that sort of theatrical stuff came across as sheer stupidity.
Having the lieutenant colonel and his men with us ran the risk of compromising our patrols. We did things very differently from each other, and I feared that dichotomy would cause issues on the battlefield. With the enemy all around, we didn’t need issues. We needed smoot
h and seamless. Just thinking about the mission ahead made me tense.
After we had departed Bermel, we drove south to establish a traffic checkpoint outside Malakshay, the village we had passed through on May 7.
When we arrived at our designated point, we dismounted and set up concertina wire obstacles across the road. The trucks took up overwatch positions, and the NCOs posted sentries to provide security for us.
From our vantage point outside town, we couldn’t detect a single sign of life. Malakshay looked abandoned, and I wondered if the last holdouts had finally fled to Pakistan.
Or maybe they were lying low because they knew something was going to happen again.
While the men stopped the few vehicles that approached our checkpoint, the Special Forces lieutenant colonel asked me a few questions. The nature of the questions convinced me that he knew a lot about counterinsurgency operations. As I talked with him and felt him out, I noticed he possessed a hard-bitten aura about him, as though he’d spent his life in places none of the folks back home could ever imagine. His salt-and-pepper hair, close cropped, made me guess that he was perhaps fifty years old. His leathery face was tempered bronze by years of life outdoors.
Shortly before noon, the radio squawked, “Blackhawk three-six, this is FOB Bermel.”
I stepped away from my guest, leaned into my Humvee, and picked up the handset.
“This is three-six. Go ahead.”
“You’re being watched, three-six.”
I glanced around. We had set up our checkpoint on the straight stretch of road east of the village so we had good fields of fire in all directions. A few kilometers away rose Gangikheyl Hill. We’d climbed to its peak on a patrol sometime after May 7 and poked around in the hope of finding anything of intelligence value that could fill in more about the force that had hit us that day. Up along the summit, Wheat had discovered the snipers’ hide. Now I wondered if the enemy was up there again.
“What are they saying?” I asked.
“We heard ‘I can see camels. Five of them.’ ”
We had five rigs out with us. Nobody else was patrolling. They had their eyes on us.
Captain Dye came over the radio to tell me that the enemy was massing for an ambush behind Rakhah Ridge. Their radio chatter was more undisciplined than usual.
“Delta’s coming your way. Link up with them, and head east behind Rakhah Ridge. Movement to contact. Let me know what you need. Six out.”
It would take Delta Platoon at least thirty minutes to reach us.
I briefed the platoon, or what we had left of it at the moment. We had rolled with a skeleton crew that morning. Besides having to leave a squad behind to help guard Bermel, a number of the men were on leave, which had trimmed our numbers to the bone. Greeson had just departed for his fourteen days stateside, which had left Sabo as acting platoon sergeant. Baldwin was gone; Cowan was on leave too. So was Pinholt. Pantoja was off taking his citizenship exam, bandaged face and all. The rest of the men were weary and still carried the bruises and half-healed wounds from our hilltop fight.
After I finished outlining the situation for the platoon, the men checked their weapons and climbed into their Humvees to wait for Delta to arrive. Meanwhile I got together with Reuter to plan a series of artillery missions and target reference points. If we were going to drive into an ambush, I wanted to soften them up first. The Special Forces lieutenant colonel stayed close and observed our preparations.
By that point, we knew the ground behind Rakhah Ridge very well. We knew the best ambush points, the enemy’s infil and exfil routes. Reuter and I worked together and picked out the most likely spots the enemy would use today. Then we gave our 105 gunners those coordinates with specific target reference numbers. That way, once in the fight, we could just call for fire on a predesignated spot. It would save us time.
When we finished, I trooped the line. The men held no illusions about what we faced. We would be in battle again soon, and the anticipation of it weighed on them. They smoked in silence, eyes opaque. They’d put on their game faces.
On my way back to my Humvee, I encountered Yusef. He was leaning against Campbell’s rig, drinking green tea. Technically, he was Captain Dye’s ’terp, but he still patrolled with us a lot. I appreciated that since Bruce Lee had turned out to be a disaster and Shaw usually went out with Delta. I’d once asked Yusef why he made a point of rolling with us. “ ’Cause I like you Outlaws, Commander Sean.” He said that in a sincere tone. True enough, he spent a lot of time with the men. I’d even found him shooting the breeze outside the barracks with them between missions. I’d meant to talk to the squad leaders about it so they could put an end to that level of fraternization, but something more pressing always came up.
“How you doing, Yusef?”
“Fine, fine, Commander Sean.” He beamed at me, cup in hand.
“Be ready today, okay?”
“Okay, Commander Sean.”
I started to walk away, but he said, “Commander Sean, whaddya get when you cross female deer with big green pickle?”
I turned around. “What?”
“A dildo!”
“Dude, do you even get that joke?”
He gave me his best used-car-salesman grin and made a lewd gesture to confirm that he did.
Nearby, Colt Wallace turned to the Special Forces colonel and drawled in his southern accent, “That Yusef’s as funny as a wet joint.”
I returned to my Humvee. Ayers sat behind the wheel. He was a good driver, and I was glad to have him. But I’d grown accustomed to seeing Pinholt there. His calm was always a comfort. I sat down to settle into the wait, door open, one leg dangling outside. Overhead, I heard Chris Brown busy in his turret. I looked up to see him rack his 240’s bolt back. He checked to make sure that his ammo was properly loaded, then slapped the feed tray cover closed with just his left middle and index fingers. The best gunners learned to do it that way so that in combat, their right hand can stay tight on the weapon’s pistol grip and the left hand doesn’t have to move more than absolutely necessary. Attention to such tiny details means the difference between a good gunner and a great one.
I checked my watch. Delta Platoon was twenty minutes out.
What are the chances Sergeant R. Kelly’s bringing ’em out?
No need to be bitter.
That wasn’t me, and the sudden rush of it seemed out of character.
I was in a mood. My head still throbbed, I couldn’t hear out of my right ear, and I still had that pinkish crap leaching out of my ears and nose. Having the Special Forces guys with us didn’t help, either. No doubt the ones with us today were comparing their own firefights with what I’d told them about ours, feeling quite superior to us regular infantry, thank you very much.
I’d had enough of feeling inferior over the years.
Third grade. I sat in class, struggling to read aloud for our teacher, Miss McKewin. She was a bloated woman with craggy teeth and a skin condition. We feared her.
“Whatsamatter?” she asked, laughing at me as I got stuck on a word. “Can’t you read?”
The class erupted in laughter.
What the fuck dredged that memory up? I was supposed to keep all thoughts of home locked away, especially in moments like these.
I snatched a cigarette and started smoking, doing my best to conceal how I was feeling from the other guys in the truck.
When my mom heard what the teacher had said that day, she went down to the school. I found out later that Miss McKewin had said to her, “Your son . . . hmm . . . let’s just say he’s not going to be an engineer like his daddy.”
My mom is the most loving and open human being I’ve ever known. But cross her or come after her family, and it is on. In front of the principal, she tore that teacher apart. By the time she finished, Miss McKewin was sobbing, the sleeves of her cardigan sweater shielding her f
ace.
My mother waited until she poked her head back up. When she could see Miss McKewin’s eyes again, her voice went arctic. “You listen to me. My son may be quiet, but he’s going to be a leader someday.”
I took another drag on the smoke and looked over at the Special Forces colonel. He looked cucumber cool, a slight smirk on his face as if he was eager to see just how fucked up we were compared to his guys.
People intimating I’m not good enough has been a theme in my life. Miss McKewin was just the first of many to follow. And now a new one was sitting in my Humvee, passing silent judgment on things he could not ever understand.
I checked my watch again. Would this wait never end? I hated getting inside my own head, especially given what we were about to do. Now that we’d been through it, we had no illusions. The mystique of combat had been stripped away. None of us longed to be tested by it anymore. By now we knew the measure of ourselves.
I thought through the plan. It seemed sound. I finished the smoke and flicked the butt into the dirt as I war-gamed every possible response we might encounter from the enemy.
This is my platoon. My men. I’ve got this.
Delta Platoon’s four Humvees and eighteen soldiers arrived, prompting Chris Brown to say, “Gee, not Second Platoon. There’s a surprise.”
Staff Sergeant James Newton—“Big Red”—stepped out of his truck. Huge, fair-skinned, and hot-blooded, Big Red inspired equal amounts of fear and affection. His men loved him, even when he jumped on them. All others, including officers, had to play by his rules or suffer his wrath. He didn’t care about rank or convention; he just cared about what he thought was the right thing to do. Morally absolute, devoted to his platoon, Newton was all business and kick ass. He was an NCO I couldn’t help but admire. But I was always careful not to piss him off.
Though Delta’s platoon was technically commanded by Captain Herrera, he’d been a navy supply officer before joining the army and had virtually no experience with motorized infantry operations. When he went out with the platoon, he was smart enough to let Newton run the show, at least until he learned the ropes.
