Tom Sileo

by Brothers Forever

  “It’s not going to be easy over there,” Travis told his good friend as they walked out of the Redskins’ stadium. “But I guess doing something important never is.”

  “Well, if there’s one motto I try to live by, it’s this,” Brendan said. “If you make the most of what you are doing, there is no way to regret what you are doing.”

  “Thanks,” said Travis. “I’ll remember that one.”

  More than a hundred American troops were killed in Iraq in December 2006, including Major Megan McClung, the highest-ranking female Marine officer to die in the Iraq war and the first female Naval Academy graduate to be killed in combat. McClung was a thirty-four-year-old former classmate of now Major Doug Zembiec, the Naval Academy wrestler-turned-warrior whom Travis admired. She was killed along with two US Army soldiers by an enemy roadside bomb in Al Anbar province on December 6, less than three weeks before Travis was scheduled to arrive.

  “It’ll be tough for both of us,” Travis now said. “But just think, the next time we hang out . . . you’ll be a SEAL.”

  “Yeah, if I can make it through BUD/S,” Brendan replied.

  “You will,” Travis assured him. “Just pretend I’m there trying to finish first.”

  “That might work,” Brendan said with a grin. “And the next time I see you, you’ll have made it out of Fallujah twice and probably be a captain.”

  Brendan, in a rare display of emotion, reached out to pat his friend on the back.

  “You stay safe over there,” Brendan said.

  “I’ll try,” Travis said. “I’ll definitely try.”

  After a few days that felt like old times, the onetime roommates were once again going their separate ways, like thousands of friends and family members separated by war. While predicting the future was impossible for any warrior deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan, the close friends couldn’t have known that particular day’s significance. It was the last time Brendan and Travis would see each other alive.

  5

  NO GREATER HONOR

  All First Lieutenant Travis Manion could taste was chlorine as he vomited on the bombed-out rooftop of a Fallujah government building on the morning of March 28, 2007. Surrounded by explosions, vapor, gunfire, and debris as he looked down at a chaotic scene resembling the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, the twenty-six-year-old Marine Corps officer for 3-2-1 MiTT felt as though he’d just swallowed a gallon of water from a filthy pool. This was the hellish reality of the Iraq war, in which Travis was embroiled in an al Qaeda chemical attack using two one-thousand-pound chlorine bombs.

  Earlier, just after sunrise, American and Iraqi forces were scrambling to evacuate wounded personnel and secure the Fallujah Government Center’s vulnerable perimeter when Travis and two fellow Marines appeared on the roof to relieve US Navy Lieutenant (SEAL) Eric Greitens and a young Marine, who were providing cover for troops below. Greitens had first awakened to deafening blasts and strange burning sensations at around 5:00 a.m., when terrorists unleashed chemical warfare on American troops, Iraqi soldiers, and bystanders.

  “In the barracks, I heard men coughing around me, the air thick with dust. Then the burning started,” Greitens later wrote in his book, The Heart and the Fist. “It felt as if someone had shoved an open-flame lighter inside my mouth, the flames scorching my throat and lungs.”

  Greitens was in the western barracks when gunfire and the massive first explosion rocked the entire compound. Travis, meanwhile, was asleep at the nearby civilian military operations center. He jumped out of his bunk when he heard the first explosion. It didn’t sound like the usual mortar fire from al Qaeda and groups of Iraqi insurgents. This had to be something even more serious.

  Before several of his fellow Marines, including First Lieutenant Chris Kim and Staff Sergeant Paul Petty, had the chance to blink, Travis was already dashing toward the command operations center (COC), which he helped operate, to radio Iraqi soldiers at the building to his west, where Greitens, other Americans, and their Iraqi partners were under attack.

  “What the fuck is going on?” a bleary-eyed Petty shouted.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going over to the COC to find Manion,” said Kim, quickly putting on his fatigues. “Meet us over there.”

  Travis was already on the radio to the Iraqis.

  “This is the COC,” he said. “We need to know if you have suffered any casualties.”

  The chaos of the attack, along with the already difficult language barrier, rendered Travis’s efforts all but useless. Then an equally deafening second explosion shook the entire Fallujah Government Center, which put the Marines of 3-2-1 MiTT squarely in the middle of a coordinated, all-out terrorist assault.

  As gunfire echoed through the compound and lights flickered all around the Marines, Petty came darting down the hall to find Travis putting together a plan.

  “Shit, I think we lost radio contact in that last explosion,” Travis said. “We need to get the hell over there and help those guys.”

  “What we need is a four-man team,” he continued, looking at Kim. “Chris, grab two men and come with me.”

  “What do you want me to do, Lieutenant?” Petty, still confused after waking up to the alarming jolt, asked Travis.

  “We need airpower and tanks,” Travis said. “You’re the communications guy, so get up on the roof and get us some communications.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Petty, who had trusted and admired Travis since they trained at Twentynine Palms together before their first deployment. Whether it was having a few beers after a long day of training, stacking sandbags during the historic October 2005 Iraqi constitutional referendum, or conducting raids on high-value targets, Petty, who enlisted out of love for God and country, always felt safe around Lieutenants Manion and Kim. If they asked him to follow them to the gates of hell, Petty wouldn’t hesitate.

  As bursts of enemy gunfire and blasts from rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) rattled out from the west, Petty carried a large antenna and other radio equipment to the south building’s roof. By that time Travis had already loaded his M-4 rifle, which had an M-203 grenade launcher attached. Travis was already known for using the grenade launcher, which many of the Marines referred to as his “badass M-203,” effectively on the battlefield.

  With bullets flying everywhere, presumably from insurgents outside the gates and Iraqi Army soldiers firing back, Travis, Kim, and two fellow Marines ran a distance of about two football fields to the western building, which was covered with powder and residue from the chemical bombs. The white-walled barracks building, which looked like it was being pummeled during the frigid World War II battle of Stalingrad, was riddled with bullet holes and all but gutted on one side.

  Although gunfire was sporadic and vigilant guards had just stopped two more terrorists at the gate, who had detonated their suicide vests, the situation remained perilous for Travis and everyone else inside the blood- and chlorine-soaked compound. If the outside looked like Stalingrad, the inside of the barracks felt like a Russian bathhouse. It was hot, uncomfortable, and smelled like a collection of large pools.

  Travis, coughing and trying to cover his nose and mouth, asked Iraqi soldiers if they were alright as they ran past him trying to escape the dispersing chlorine. He didn’t see any dead bodies, but assumed there were many in need of help. In order to evacuate the wounded, however, Travis knew someone had to guard against another attack. He again looked toward First Lieutenant Kim.

  “Chris, you stay down here and help these people,” Travis said. “I’m taking these two [Marines] and heading up to the roof.”

  Travis didn’t need an engineering background to know that the building could easily collapse. With an entire side of the barracks cut open by a massive bomb blast, ascending to the roof could have been a death sentence. But much like the brave firefighters he had recently visited in lower Manhattan, Travis put the safety of others ahead of his own.

  Taking one last deep breath before plunging into the chlorine vapo
r and heading up the stairs, the young Marine ran straight into a precarious situation.

  Greitens, the Navy SEAL, later wrote in his book that he was in desperate condition just before Travis arrived: “The sun rose. We felt the heat of the day begin to sink into the roof. We waited. We watched. My breathing was still shallow, and I felt as if someone had tightened a belt around my lungs and was pulling hard to kill me.”

  As the weakening SEAL’s skin and lungs burned from the desert sun and weaponized chlorine, the arrival of an already queasy, slightly disoriented Travis was a welcome sight.

  “You got it?” Greitens, who had been on prior patrols with Travis, asked.

  “Yeah, I got your back, sir,” Travis told the SEAL.

  Greitens would never forget him.

  Fortunately, Petty had established communications from the other building, and US tanks were arriving. It was time for Greitens and the young Marine to get to the hospital before breathing became impossible.

  Shortly after Greitens left for the hospital, Travis threw up. With the sun bearing down from above, the ground below him was still littered with wounded Iraqis and Americans. As Travis pointed his rifle toward the chaos, it was incredibly difficult to distinguish good guys from bad amid so much confusion, yelling, and gunfire. To make matters worse, there were still body parts from the two al Qaeda suicide bombers littered near the front entrance. A stray cat was dragging around a dead terrorist’s severed hand.

  After throwing up a few more times, Travis rallied to push his physical symptoms aside, knowing from the hellish sights below that many could be killed in a subsequent explosion or firefight. Every time his stomach churned or his eyes started to burn, Travis would block out the discomfort and focus on his responsibility to save lives. After identifying the area from which insurgents were still shooting, Travis pointed his rifle and began to fire.

  Major Joel Poudrier, a Marine officer whose head had been wrapped by MiTT team Navy Hospital Corpsman Edwin Albino after it was nearly crushed by falling debris, was subsequently flown to Baghdad for urgent medical care. In addition to Poudrier and Greitens, fifteen US troops were wounded and experiencing severe complications from the explosion and chlorine vapor, while seventy Iraqi troops were injured. Thanks to the rescue effort, which was protected by Travis and his rooftop security team, all were evacuated from the blast zone safely. Every American survived.

  Later, when Greitens told the wounded major that Travis was the first Marine from the other building to run through more than two hundred yards of bullet-filled chaos to relieve him of his post and secure the battle zone, Poudrier wasn’t surprised. Travis had been running toward danger during the entire deployment, and the major had once been moved to try to calm him down.

  “Hey, man, you don’t have to get shot at every single time,” the higher-ranking officer told Travis after about a month in Fallujah. ”Take it easy. . . . It’s a long deployment, and we need you to stick around.”

  Travis appreciated the advice, but tried to explain that he was just doing his best to get the Iraqis ready.

  “I understand that, Travis,” Poudrier said. “But you can try to let other people lead from the front once in a while.”

  Poudrier knew it was almost impossible for a warrior like Travis to let anyone step in front of him. But when the major was later wounded during the chemical bomb attack, Travis rushing toward the chaos played a large part in Poudrier being safely evacuated.

  As the story of the chemical attack was subsequently told, Travis and his Marines—the guardian angels—were applauded for risking their lives to take the rooftop and shield the Americans and Iraqis below from more danger.

  It is no wonder that shortly following the March 9, 2007, release of the movie 300, which was playing to full movie theaters back in Doylestown and all over the United States, Travis was among the first US service members in Iraq to get his hands on a bootlegged copy. The intense action film, full of triumphant rhetoric and bloody battle scenes from Greece’s epic conflict with the Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, inspired Travis as he fought a ruthless enemy in one of the world’s most dangerous places.

  “Spartans never retreat,” the film’s narrator proclaims. “Spartans never surrender.”

  Although Travis arrived in Iraq in late December 2006 and didn’t see the movie until mid-March, the film, like the Steven Pressfield book Gates of Fire, which all Marine officers read at TBS in Quantico, had a huge influence on the rest of Travis’s deployment. Just as King Leonidas (played by Gerard Butler) repeatedly tells the 299 fellow Spartans he leads into battle, Travis believed there was nothing more honorable than sacrificing everything for the country he loved. He didn’t want to die, but if that was the result of his second deployment to Iraq, so be it.

  “Freedom isn’t free at all,” Queen Gorgo, played by Lena Headey, says in the film. “It comes with the highest of costs: the cost of blood.”

  Travis had seen his share of blood, but had never needed to wash any from his hands. That all changed in January, less than a month after he returned to Fallujah for his second deployment.

  Although the city had been violent during his first deployment, when Travis’s role was split between administrative duties and running supply convoys to units on the front lines, early 2007 was an even more dangerous time. Skepticism over whether the strengthening insurgency in western Iraq could ever be defeated was growing in Beltway circles, and less than three months before Travis returned to Fallujah, some inside the military were questioning whether an area where so much American blood and treasure had been spilled could ever be turned around.

  “The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country’s western Anbar province are dim and there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents,” Thomas E. Ricks wrote on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

  With the troop surge that President Bush would eventually order in January 2007 being hotly debated, most press reports about the Iraq war, along with public opinion polls, were decidedly negative.

  “(Colonel Pete) Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province’s most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report,” Ricks wrote. “Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.”

  Travis, who called home as often as he could from the war zone, had a much different view. He was in Fallujah when the troop surge started, and he believed more Marines would help the US and Iraqi militaries turn the tide against al Qaeda once and for all.

  “We’re close to getting the job done, dad,” Travis said in one phone call. “The extra support is really going to help the Marines on the ground over here.”

  Travis and his fellow MiTT members went on combat patrols virtually every day, sometimes running as many as three missions over a punishing eighteen-hour span. In Fallujah and throughout Iraq, Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Iraqi troops did everything from hunting insurgents and enemy weapons caches to disposing of dead bodies. Using his operational expertise and prior experience with Fallujah’s jagged urban terrain, Travis planned many missions and would often use PowerPoint slides to prepare his team for the day’s operations. The Marine’s planning was so meticulous that Petty, who had served with Travis in Fallujah a year earlier, would sometimes needle him about the detail of his presentations.

  “Hey, sir, how about you keep the next one to five slides instead of twenty,” Petty once joked.

  Travis laughed and took the teasing in stride. In the first lieutenant’s mind, there was no substitute for thorough preparation, and he would leav
e no stone unturned before leading Marines into one of the most dangerous cities on the planet.

  Adding to 3-2-1 MiTT’s challenges were joint patrols with the Iraqis through some of Fallujah’s most dangerous sectors. The Iraqi soldiers would sometimes respond to the slightest sign of violence with what some US team members nicknamed the “Iraqi death blossom.” When a shot was fired in their direction, the Iraqis would sometimes form a circle and fire in every direction, with little regard for the consequences, including tragically catching innocent civilians in the crossfire. Civilian casualties were a sometimes unavoidable reality of war, but Travis and his fellow Marines were determined to use every means at their disposal to prevent them.

  While some MiTT team members understandably became frustrated with the often untrained, underpaid Iraqi soldiers, Travis positioned himself as a mentor. During lunch, he would bring his chow to their mess hall and sit with Nick, an Iraqi translator who helped bridge the gap between the US and Iraqi armies. They talked not only about combat strategy, but about simple things like soccer. That July, Iraq’s national soccer team was scheduled to compete for the Asian Football Cup, and the sport seemed to be the only thing that truly united the war-torn country’s Sunni and Shiite populations. Travis used his appreciation of soccer to forge an initial connection with the Iraqi troops, who he knew were essential to the overall US mission in Anbar province.

  The senior officer of 3-2-1 MiTT was Major Adam Kubicki, a thirty-five-year-old Marine from Kenosha, Wisconsin, on his first deployment to Fallujah. Travis, Kim, and Jonathan Marang were the first lieutenants, along with Navy Lieutenant JG Jared Tracy, while Second Lieutenant Scott Alexander was the MiTT team’s junior officer. The rest of the team was made up of enlisted personnel, including Petty and several other young men from cities and towns across America. They had different backgrounds, beliefs, and stories, but all had joined the Navy and Marine Corps to serve their country. Fallujah was about as close as it got to hell, but serving there in 2007 also represented a chance for these twenty-and thirtysomethings to make history.