by Leadership;Brotherhood Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage
This terse introduction finished, Bowen had begun succinctly listing the day’s training highlights when the Ox interrupted.
“Corporal Bowen, I hear that you’re the Marine who’s running the remedial PT session today.” (Remedial PT, physical training, is extra exercise that is assigned to all Marines deemed too out of shape or too fat by their command. Each remedial session is supervised by an NCO and takes place after the regular training day has ended.)
“Yes, sir. That’s correct, sir.”
“You know, of course, that the PT is supposed to be difficult, right, Corporal?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got a pretty good program today. We’re going to—”
“We’ll see,” the Ox said, smiling. “I want you to make the Marines exercise aerobically in addition to just lifting weights. So many of you guys think that remedial PT is just a chance to get another lift in and sculpt your beach muscles.”
“Yes, sir. I’m actually planning—”
“Why do you think that the Marines need aerobic exercise, Corporal?”
And so it went for about five minutes, with the Ox smiling broadly and asking, with the calmly reasonable tone of voice of the know-it-all, a series of demeaning questions, all of which seemed designed to reinforce that he, the Ox, knew all things workout-related. Unfazed, Bowen responded to every question as if it were the most serious in the world, worthy of a well-thought-out, dignified reply. Not even his body language changed—he looked as engaged and attentive during this strange Socratic session as he did while recounting the day’s training highlights. It was an impressive display of professional bearing and dignity. I had expected to find professional, poised, and knowledgeable officers supervising young Marines in need of a bit of guidance. Instead, I had found exactly the opposite.
THREE
Another week passed, and I still hadn’t met most of my men. The time-consuming check-in process (draw gear from this person, update your medical records with that one, get sized for a gas mask, and so on) that every officer has to complete when he joins a new unit had kept me very busy getting lost as I tried to find offices in a part of the base where all the buildings looked exactly the same. My interactions with my new platoon had been confined mainly to end-of-the-day briefs from Bowen on what the men had done that day. Frustrated, I began planning a group training run so that I could forget the administrative headaches for a while and do something physical with my men, most of whom I still didn’t know by name. However, the CO preempted me by suddenly announcing he had planned an event of his own, and, hearing of it, I was happy. The CO was taking his “company” hiking.
The quotes exist because, at the time of the CO’s announcement, Golf was a far cry from the standard four-platoon, 180-man-strong Marine infantry company that doctrine stipulated. In fact, Golf Company consisted of only two platoons—my infantry platoon and the Ox’s weapons platoon—both of which were operating at about three-quarters strength. By now, I had discovered why the Ox and I were the only two lieutenants in Golf Company: 2/4 as a whole was operating with a skeleton crew.
After sitting out the 2003 ground invasion of Iraq because of the yearlong Okinawa deployment, the battalion had returned to the States and hemorrhaged bitter, dissatisfied Marines. Most felt the Marines of 2/4 had missed the only shot at combat that they would ever have, forever dooming them to unwanted stepchild status in a tight brotherhood of battle-hardened warriors. Most of those who had enough seniority to request a transfer or enough time in to leave the Corps altogether did so, and those who remained were, by and large, very new and very green. Thus, companies functioned at half strength while the Marines inside them, me included, yearned for combat and a chance to redeem ourselves, a chance to join the elite circle of combat-blooded infantrymen.
Captain Bronzi had missed both the Oki deployment and the war in Iraq—he had joined 2/4 only about a month before I—but he had determined that, no matter how remote the likelihood of combat and no matter how depleted the ranks of his company, he would train his men as if they were heading to Iraq within the month. Thus when the CO hiked, he hiked all-out. The infantryman’s job, after all, is to load up with as much gear and ammo as he can carry and then to hump that gear along until told to stop, typically fifteen to twenty miles over any and all terrain, with enough energy left in reserve to fight fiercely if called upon. Nothing—not running, not weight lifting, not swimming—can prepare you for this essential task better than simply doing it again, and again, and again.
So, in what I would soon learn was his standard practice, the CO hiked us that day in every bit of gear that we might possibly carry overseas, including flak jackets (flaks), Kevlar helmets (Kevlars), mortars, and machine guns. A lot of company commanders shy away from making their Marines carry more than packs, rifles, and their load-bearing vests because of the injuries that hours of hiking carrying sixty to a hundred pounds can cause (blisters, turned ankles, stress fractures, and so on), but not ours. If we stood a chance of carrying it in combat, then we’d practice carrying it before we got there.
Hearing of the CO’s plans from the Ox that morning, I had instructed Bowen to reserve one of the medium machine guns, the M-240G, for me to carry along with the standard gear load. I needed to start building credibility with my men, and one of the easiest ways to do that was to demonstrate toughness and physical fitness. Carrying a medium machine gun on a hike isn’t the worst of things, but it isn’t a cakewalk, either, and I wanted my Marines to know that I would, and could, do anything I asked them to do. Also, I figured that if I hiked with this awkward, twenty-five-pound hunk of metal, then I could ensure that another Marine didn’t have to. Thus if I carried a 240 throughout the movement, I could kill two birds with one stone: I could serve at least one Marine and simultaneously prove that I had some intestinal fortitude. Best of all, this way no one else had to look bad for me to look good—ideally we would all make it through the hike and look good together.
Of course, any time you take on extra gear, you risk failing to complete the hike—”falling out”—which is the worst possible thing for a young leader. No matter how smart, composed, or strong he may be, if a lieutenant cannot complete an event that most of his men can, he immediately digs a credibility hole that is very difficult, if not impossible, to climb out of. However, I was in good shape and confident that the machine gun and I would make it through just fine.
The morning of the hike, then, found me at the head of my platoon with a machine gun slung across both shoulders behind my neck, resting on my traps and balanced with alternating hands. My heavy pack rested on my back, with its straps cutting into my shoulders and occasionally cutting off circulation to my hands. A nonbreathing Kevlar vest covering my entire torso completed the painful ensemble. As soon as I had everything reasonably situated on my body, I looked back behind me. My Marines, nearly all of whom were shorter and smaller than I, were bowed under the weight of all the gear, and my platoon was strung out in two long, parallel lines behind me. At the head of Golf Company, the CO suddenly began walking. The hike was on.
Though we normally try to keep the basic two-line formation during hikes, it inevitably breaks down at some point—usually just after particularly difficult hills. Here the Marines sort themselves into different types: the physically fit, gung-ho ones who lead the way, seemingly effortlessly; the less fit but mentally tough ones who hurt but keep going anyway; the unfit and less tough ones who begin lagging as soon as they begin hurting; and those from the first group who consciously drop back to encourage the stragglers.
As I slogged through the hike with the 240G on my back, I periodically looked back and checked on my Marines to see who was struggling, who was straggling, and who was encouraging the stragglers.
It was during one of the check-back moments that I first noticed Lance Corporal Carson. The CO had just stormed his way up a steep hill, and I was clambering along behind. When I got to the top, legitimately winded, sweating rivers down my back and breathing hard, I
looked down to see how the Marines were faring, because a solid hill combined with sixty pounds of gear is a good gauge of physical mettle and mental toughness. Everyone was more or less bent double, strung out like a line of carpenter ants, but on closer inspection one of these ants looked a little different from the rest. Carson, as it turned out, was carrying not one but two packs on his back while simultaneously pushing, with both of his arms, another Marine up the hill and shouting at him not to fall out. I marveled as I watched this twenty-year-old corn-fed kid from Idaho in action; I had never seen anything quite like it. He was about six foot two and weighed in at about 210 pounds of which about 40 percent was sheer heart and guts. Carson, I would soon learn, was that rare combination of physical gifts, mental toughness, and relentless discipline. When he got to the top, Carson didn’t even pause to catch his breath. Carrying his two packs, he passed by me, nodded and said “Sir,” and then kept on walking. At the time, Carson wasn’t one of my team leaders, but I determined on the spot that I would make him one at the first opportunity. With less than a year in the Corps he didn’t yet have the knowledge, experience, or formal training of a more senior Marine, but you can’t teach the kind of heart and selflessness that Carson showed on the hike that day.
Over the next two weeks, I slowly got to know a few of my NCOs, the enlisted men who would become my squad and team leaders. Each of those men has his own little moment enshrined in my memory, that one time when he did or said something that gave me my first glimpse of his true core. Sergeant Leza, the man who eventually became my second-squad leader, completely underwhelmed me during that first hike. A short, round, twenty-three-year-old Marine whose dark features reflected his Hispanic background, Leza looked slightly like a pudgy cinder block even in his formfitting Marine cammies. With all of his gear on for the hike, he looked almost fat. Though Leza didn’t fall out during that first hike, he didn’t particularly distinguish himself, either—he simply walked steadily, never pulling ahead and never falling back until the hike was completed. I immediately concluded that my sergeant probably couldn’t run quickly to save his life.
Furthermore, though Leza had been born and raised in El Paso, English clearly wasn’t his first language. In fact, after my third time tasking him with something, I walked away convinced that the only two American words in Leza’s vocabulary were “Check” and “Sir.” Perturbed by his reticence to speak, I dug a bit deeper into his background and experience and learned that he had been promoted to sergeant just a few weeks prior to our first meeting. He had never led a squad before in his life. Terrific, I thought. A round, out-of-shape sergeant with no experience who can barely speak English. But Leza would soon make me realize that this early impression was wrong. The day after I concluded that I would have my work cut out for me with him, Leza walked into my office.
“Hey sir, I figure that since we’ll probably be fighting insurgencies no matter where we go, you might want to read this,” he said.
I picked it up. It was Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare. Multiple pages were dog-eared, so I opened up the book and scanned them. Paragraphs were underlined and notes had been written in the margins—notes in both English and Spanish.
“Is this yours, Leza?” I was dumbfounded.
“Yes, sir. It is. But you can keep that copy, sir. I prefer the one in the original Spanish. I think there’s some valuable stuff in there, sir. You can read the whole thing if you want to, but I’ve dog-eared the best pages for you.” Leza, as it turned out, was as close to an intellectual as you can find in a Marine infantry squad leader, and his knowledge of guerrilla warfare and tactics more generally would prove extremely useful. And it turned out that he wasn’t so out of shape: A few days later he ran three miles in under twenty-one minutes, which wasn’t bad for anyone, let alone someone as sturdy as he.
A week later, it was 1 AM, and I was lying facedown on the cold ground, my right leg interlocked at the knee with the leg of another Marine. The platoon was out in the field for a couple of days learning ambushes, and I had decided to tag along with my first squad as they did their own squad-level training. Corporal Teague, who at the time was my first-squad leader, was taking advantage of some spare time after dark to teach his squad how to communicate silently with one another in an ambush position. If anyone was qualified to teach this kind of stuff, it was Teague. Growing up in Tennessee’s backwoods, he was the embodiment of the laconic, field-smart southerner, and his natural gifts had been honed through some of the best training and experience the U.S. armed forces has to offer, that of the Army Rangers. At twenty-one years old, Teague was probably our best shot and almost certainly our best navigator, and, since he spent most of his free time rock climbing and hiking, he was in terrific shape. Teague was also a bit taller than average, standing right at about six feet, and had the wiry climber’s build—all broad shoulders and spare, lean muscles wound tightly around a long-limbed frame.
That night Teague was showing everyone, his lieutenant included, how one Marine could signal that the enemy was approaching by shaking his leg. With all of our legs intertwined, the shaking continued down the squad until the last Marine, me in this case, had been alerted and primed for action, so that not a sound had to be made until the first shot was fired. Later that night, the entire platoon had a competition to see who could reload an M-16 the fastest, and it came down to Teague and me. As we started the final round, and he quickly outpaced me, I realized that Teague would be an invaluable resource—not only a great leader and teacher but also one of our strongest individual contributors. I was glad that he had my first squad.
Those moments of quick clarity kept coming, and I soon determined that though my platoon was understrength, it had at least a few strong leaders or potential leaders. Most, including Bowen, who continued to impress me with his competence and unflinching professionalism, and Leza, had been newly promoted, and they now were leading a squad or a team for the first time in their lives. Others, like Carson, showed signs of having the kind of heart and selflessness that couldn’t be taught and that was rarely learned from experience. NCOs have been called the “backbone of the Marine Corps,” and I was beginning to see signs that my platoon’s skeleton would be strong. Eventually we would start hanging fresh meat on the bones and find out whether my initial assessment was correct.
FOUR
October and November were a blur of routine physical activity for Golf Company. As we hiked the hilly terrain around the base, ran muddy trails through the various training areas, and conducted patrolling exercises through the Southern California scrub brush, the NCOs and I did our best to prepare our understrength platoon in the absence of a specific mission. For the Army soldiers in Iraq, however, it was a completely different story. By November 2003, it became apparent that the ever-widening violence in the country was not, in fact, the spastic death throes of the former regime. In some places, the fighting between U.S. forces and their attackers had grown quite fierce, and a strapped Army had its hands full trying to rebuild the major and minor civil institutions of Iraq while simultaneously trying to contain a slowly coalescing insurgency.
Though occupation, with its emphasis on reconstruction, infrastructure, and noncombat operations is not the specialty of the Marine Corps, dismounted (that is, on foot) light infantry is, and as the fighting spread so did rumors that the Marines would eventually be needed in Iraq to help shoulder the military’s load. In 2/4, none of us knew exactly what would happen, but speculation was rampant that the battalion might just get its shot at combat after all. One afternoon in early December, Colonel Kennedy called for his battalion to assemble on the basketball courts. Such gatherings happened only rarely, and they were generally convened only for announcements of the greatest importance. As we made our way toward the courts, tense with anticipation, it occurred to me that I might be spending my second anniversary in the same place as I had spent the first, Iraq, though likely in less comfortable circumstances. If this battalion formation was just a ploy to announc
e another in a series of asinine and restrictive base policies purportedly designed to make us safer, then I was going to be severely disappointed.
For about twenty minutes, Marines poured toward the assembly. NCOs in all platoons barked orders, and slowly several hundred camouflage suits shuffled into the shape of a horseshoe. Once the maneuver was complete and all Marines had been accounted for, Colonel Kennedy took his place at the middle of the horseshoe. As he began to speak, I could see the battalion leaning forward in anticipation.
“The Marines,” Colonel Kennedy announced, “are going back to war.” He paused, then added what everyone so hoped to hear. “And we’re going with them.”
Grunts and cheers erupted, and Kennedy waited for them to die down before continuing. The Army, he explained, had screwed everything up in Iraq by being too hard on the civilians, and now, typically, the Marines had been called in to clean up the mess. In all likelihood, Kennedy’s statement reflected the fine tradition of interservice competition as much as it did his belief in the Army’s Iraq mismanagement. Hearing this, most of us smiled; I know I certainly did. It felt good to be needed. The colonel continued: Running true to form, the Corps had volunteered to assume control of one the most violent pieces of Iraq—the volatile Sunni-dominated Anbar province—not the relatively quiescent Shiite south that the Marines had occupied before their recent withdrawal. As one of only a handful of infantry battalions in the Corps that had not yet been to Iraq, 2/4 had been selected by higher headquarters to be in the first wave of Marine returnees (or, in our case, first-time visitors). Make no mistake about it, Colonel Kennedy told us. You are going to be in combat soon enough.
