Marine at War

by Merrell Michael

  “You’ve got to play nice.” Rielly says. “These guys are going to get us off the line.

  “They don’t even have any fucking rounds.” I tell him.

  ‘Fuck them.” Reilly says. “Play nice.”

  “Hey, Sargeant?” I ask. “Where are we going?” After the line?

  “You’ll find out.”

  Hours later a new Army creature walks up to our foxhole. This one is thinner, and shorter looking.

  “Hey, guys.” He says. “Specialist Gunter.”

  “Is Neal not coming back?”

  “Nope. You guys scared him off.”

  “That’s good.” Bill points in front of his sandbag “Maybe later he can get his weapon.”

  Gunter looks forward and spies the upper receiver of the M4. “Oh, shit!” He laughs, revealing teeth stained with tobacco dip. “Oh, man, that’s fucked up. Did you guys do that?”

  “Hey.” Bill shrugs. “He left his shit.”

  “Oh man. That’s crazy.”

  ‘Do you want to get it for him?”

  “No. Hell, no. Fuck that fucking fatass. Im sick of him. Always clicking that fucking tongue ring.”

  “Why don’t they take it from him?”

  “They do. He always gets it back.”

  “He doesn’t get his ass beat? He doesn’t get in any fucking trouble?

  “Not really. These days, I guess the Army doesn’t care.”

  “No shit.”

  “Hey, man.” I take out a smoke, and offer the pack. “No offense, but the Army sounds pretty weak.”

  “No, its cool. Hey, can I ask you guys for a favor?”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  “Can I get a mag?”

  Bill looks wary. “What, like ammo?”

  “Yeah. Just for tonight, or whatever. As long as I’m going to be in this hole.”

  I reach for an ammo pouch. Bill slowly shakes his head, back and forth.

  “Sorry dude.” Bill says. “A marine cant give away his gear.”

  “What, is that like, a jarhead rule?”

  “Maybe it is. Its not our fault, anyway.”

  Specialist Gunter looks hurt, and ducks his head. I see Corporal Angulo coming near my fighting hole.

  “Hey, Mikey.”

  “Corporal.”

  “Go find out whats wrong with your squad leader. Ask him why I’m doing his shift.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously. Im not going to talk to his stupid ass. And I know you’re his little bitch.”

  There is a pup tent set twenty feet from the line. Inside I hear coughing. From behind the mesquito netting I see Schueher, looking slightly rougher than usual. “Mikey.” He says. “I had to put Angulo in charge. I wanted to put Bill in charge, and then you. But hes the Corporal. Rielly said I had to.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? Do you get it?” He melts his handsome features, his proud chin, into a look of concern. “I trust you, Mikey. That means something. I trust you, and I wanted to put you in charge. I wanted the other guys to understand. I know their talking shit. I trust you. You’re a great Marine. Okay?”

  “Yes.” There is something in me that laps up the bullshit. All of it, as it comes forth from up his throat. There is something in me that craves his words.

  “Ive got the shits.” He says, closing the netting. “ Osama’s Revenge.”

  I deliver the news to Angulo, in my best professional monotone.

  “That’s what he told you?” He says. ‘Whatever, dude. I know hes your daddy and all, but that guys acting like a little bitch.”

  “Hes not my daddy.” I say. “I hate him.” I add, on an impulse.

  Angulo squats by my hole and scratches his head. His mustache is thin and scratchy, and his face is pockmarked by old acne scars. He looks so young, now.

  “I can see why.” He says. “He treats you like shit. I wouldn’t treat you like that, if you were in second squad.”

  There is a moment when…..

  There is a moment when…..

  There is a moment when she stopped becoming the novelty, to me, and she become my wife. Oh my soul, let me drink this down and be forever quenched. Let me drown in the innocence, and the embrace, in the soft touch. Let me see past the labels. Before I was a Marine I was a man. Before I was American I was a man. Before I was born I was a thought and a voice that had to tell myself this is the world, to make sense to the confusion of it all. Before I was a name I was a man. Do you think that this makes up me? My skin tells you what sort of thing to expect? There is no set pattern, just a series of moves. Nothing makes us good or evil. Good actions exist. Evil actions exist. We perform evil, and it stains us. We become it. Let me perform good. Let me perform love, let me fill my wife with love in its fullness and thrust into her, let me hear her cries of love and let me spill the seed of life. Oh my soul, I was not made to be the sword, or the plowshare. I was made to be a man.

  There is a moment when…….

  There is a moment when………

  There is a moment when the stain fills your heart. The realness of life is brought by the ending. It is made complete by the ending. To become the ending is to accept something that is to big for your own small self. To become that ending is to accept that you were the last page in a Story. The women knew not what the men did. The women knew not that prayer was wrong. The women knew not your anger, you knew not your anger, it was not truly yours, but a mask. A borrowed mask. You wished for this! It was not forced on you! You wished for this mask!

  YOU!

  Wake

  The

  Uck

  “UP Mikey!”

  There are sounds of screeching and cracking around me. Above, I see the cheap fireworks display of mortar illumination rounds. Something smacks the sand bag in front of me. I see muzzle flashes, from across the no mans land, from across the woods.

  Again, I am at war.

  Bill fires one three round burst after another into the direction of the woods. A piece of driftwood splinters, from the crossfire. Scheuher is standing over our foxhole, upright and holding a beretta. In the open. He fires a round deliberately. Carefully. Over his head and all around the bullets scream. The crack in front of me. Sand kicks up in my face. Bill loads his 203 grenade launcher, and fires. There is thud in the no mans land and a puff of smoke, where it lands.

  Specialist Gunter is crouched behind the berm at the far end of our foxhole. Bill notices him and whips out his cell phone. There is a flash of a picture being taken. I notice Gunter’s eyes. The betrayal in them, directed at us, at the Army, at his Sargeant, at everyone that put him here. Pouring out. Threatening to flood

  Oh my soul………..

  Bill shakes my shoulder “Again, Mikey? Jesus.” The blackness is lifted from me. “How do you manage to sleep through this crap?” He laughs. The fire is dying down. The bullets are going in the air, in all directions. Sargeant Rielly is grabbing Schueher by his flak jacket.

  “What the FUCK was that!”

  “Nothing, Sargeant.”

  “Don’t you EVER pull some stupid shit like that again, motherfucker!”

  “Yes, Sargeant.”

  “FUCKING standing up! You can die Bitch! Your not this fucking action hero you pretend to be!”

  “Yes Sargeant.”

  “Ive been THERE motherfucker! Ive seen it happen!”

  The Army looks around, in confusion. Voices are yelling out, down the line, that they are not hurt, and how many bullets they have left. Another mortar pops overhead, and lights us all in the glow of a giant candle.

  NINE

  We are pulled off the line the next day. All of us are allowed to put up tents. The ground freezes, and in the mornings we burn trash for heat. This is a period of relative comfort and luxury. During the day, Hunter passes around the Listerine bottles of whiskey he is getting in the mail, and I am getting drunk. Stories of home are exchanged. Stories of whats been done, whats left to be done.

  “Have yo
u ever fucked a chick up the ass?” Hunter says.

  “Hell yes.” Bill answers. “I did that back when I was fourteen. Right after I lost my virginity.”

  Cory snorts. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Im sorry, but that’s not believable. Your story. If you were to say, yes, I was at some college party, and there was this coed, then I would have believed that. If you were to say, yes, there was this giant fat bitch at the country bar, I would have believed it.”

  “Whatever, dude.”

  “don’t get all butt hurt. Im just saying, you have to make the story believable if you want people to buy into it. Look, here, I’ll make an effort. What was her name?”

  “Karen.”

  “Karen what?”

  “Karen something.”

  “Well, that’s pretty much what I thought it would be.”

  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Somehow, the girl you assfucked is mysteriously missing her last name. That’s not something you forget. I assfucked Aubrey Debears, before my wife would let me do it. I wouldn’t forget the last name. Not ever. That’s not even the worst part.”

  “Oh? Well shit, motherfucker. What in your CSI Oklahoma judgement is the worst part?”

  “The worst part is, Karen is the name of your latest ex girlfriend.”

  Bill turns away, and flips off Cory. Stomping back to the trash fire.

  “Mikey!” Cory calls out. “You ever assfuck anyone?”

  “No.” I say.

  “You should. It’s a life experience.”

  I am cleaning my rifle absent mindedly, and thinking in the back of my mind about sending a letter back home to Turqious. I am thinking about how best to articulate my thoughts. Not in this moment in time, but in another, happier one. It is proving to be to much for me. Things are clearing in my mind. Things are opening themselves up. It is cold in January. Clear crisp cold, with frost on the ground. Rielly inspects the weapon, and nods. In the distance, I see Schueher talking to the Colonel. He raises his right hand.

  There is a tremendous explosion.

  Everyone gets up to look. The explosion has raised a giant mushroom cloud in the no-mans-land, a giant ball of dust that borders on the mini nuclear fire. The psychic shock, felt throughout the masses. Television and movies unite.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “That.” Rielly tells me. “Is Schuehers reenlistment bonus.”

  “That’s what?”

  “His reenlistment bonus. That’s what he wanted. For reenlisting.”

  “An explosion.”

  “Yep.”

  Schueher smiles, a large, good natured grin, and a combat photographer snaps the picture. Bill lights another cigarette and rubs his hands by the fire. Rielly shakes Scheuhers hand, then gathers the platoon team leaders around his tent. After he is done talking, Scheuher comes by.

  “Mikey. Your shit ready to go?”

  “Yes Corporal.”

  “It’ll be yes Sargeant soon enough. You like the fireworks?”

  “Sure.”

  “The word has come down. Were leaving the embassy. Pack all your shit, were moving up north.”

  “What for?”

  “Missions. Were running missions, in the mountains.”

  Bill tosses a plastic bottle into the fire. “Missions.” He repeats to himself, slowly. “The army’s here. And I’m all missioned out.”

  “It might be cool.” I say.

  “it might. But it wont be.”

  The USMC LAV-25 is a light armored vehicle that looks more or less like a tank with eight wheels. More than that, it reminds me of tiger force. Tiger force was a line of GI Joe vehicles like the LAV. Somehow, you can fit way more of us in the LAV that you can fit action figures in the tiger force.

  We climb aboard the LAV. When the hatch in back shuts, the inside fills up with diesel smoke. The ride is rough, and seemingly slow. I see Cory go to sleep. There is very little light inside. What little there is shines in through the thin cracks, and illuminates slivers of dust. The ride is slow. The ride is long. It is warm in a good way aboard. I think of things left behind. My hole is going to be bulldozed. The army is going to dig trenches. If they do anything at all.

  Ocasionally a rock will bounce across the sides of the LAV, the gun turret atop will jostle and squeak with the noise of rusted gears. Ocasionally Rielly will tap his headset, connected to the driver, and mouth words drowned out by the roar of the engine. I think how much we must stink, the lot of us, crammed into these tight quarters and unwashed for months. I fought sleep. It tried to swarm over me, in soft waves. It tried to engulf me in its folds. It turned the world hazy and made lights swim in front of my eyes. I fought it still.

  Hours passed. When the LAV convoy finally stopped, it was cold, colder than I remembered being in Khandahar. We stood in front of a giant hill. The land rose up and down, in front of us. We were in the mountains.

  White Toyota pickup trucks pulled up to us. The ragheads got out of the trucks. They were mostly dressed in what looked like cast off remnants of ourselves, old green flak jackets, green Kevlar helmets, and AK-47’s. Most of them wore loose beards, or heavy mustaches. They stank of cheap cologne and body odor. They were a rag tag bunch, ten to a truck, three trucks, so thirty of them. They seemed to act in an effeminate manner. In a way completely unlike ourselves. They carried their weapons loosely, and the air soon filled with a stream of gibberish.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “That’s the guys were going to be training, Mikey.” Scheuher said. “That’s the haaji Marines.”

  “Afghanistan has Marines?”

  “Marines. Soldiers. Militia. Guys with guns. Does it really matter what you call them?”

  “No. I guess not.”

  The bad joke continued that day.

  The raghead Marines were split into squads and ran through basic tactics. There were many barriers to this. The language barrier being the first one. After that, there was the fact that they were simply undisciplined. There was a distinct lack of pride in their actions. A distinct breakdown in the reason for being. They tried to shoot their weapons from the hip. They could not grasp the concept of cover. We ran a live fire exercise, and one of them was nearly shot. A fistfight broke out, between the two of them. Others joined in. We watched it from a distance and saw the fat, bearded sergeant, jumping around, trying to stop it.

  “These guys are going to die.” Cory offered. “There either going to run away or their going to die.”

  Rielly shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Orders are we have to take them with us.”

  “For what?” I asked. “What are we going to do?”

  “There’s villages to the east. The taliban’s been using them to train. Were going in there, to flush them out.”

  “With these guys?”

  “With these guys.”

  The fight breaks up. I see the afghanis laughing, and smiling. Some of them are holding hands.

  Before breaking camp MRE’s are passed out, for us and the ragheads. The meals are a great novelty among them. There is much discussion flowing. A thin haaji makes his way over to the group of me, Cory, and Bill.

  “Hello.” He says, with a thick accent. “May I sit?”

  “Sure.” Bill says.

  “This is good food. Very good.”

  “You speak English?”

  “Yes. I speak four languages. Farsi, Pashtun, English. Arabic.”

  ‘Where did you learn, four languages?”

  “At the university. My name is Said. Salaam alakum.”

  “Oh. Okay. Hi, Said.”

  “Hello. And now, you say, Alakum Salaam.”

  “Alaykum Salaam.”

  “it means, peace be with you, and when I say it back, it means, with you as well.”

  “That’s cool. I mean, good. That’s good.”

  “I have friends, who would like to meet you.” Three other haaji’s bumble
around.