Spent Shell Casings

by David Rose

  Anyways I got promoted the other day. CORPORAL, 1 under Sergeant.

  As I think of it i need u to send me some stuff (I got your package of towelettes and food by the way): I need for you to go to GNC and get me CE2 , Ripped fuel and send me the remainder of my N02 I had in my truck.

  I don’t like dealing with the Iraqi people, I’m not a cop and I don’t speak Arabic, mighty unqualified if u ask me. I don’t have any sympathy on them either, you can’t trust any of them. The shriek of the kids when they see the males being taken away blindfolded was eerie at first but is now pretty comical. none of that jaded Viet vet Hollywood BS but you get used to dealing with them as inferiors very easy. My side note, now that mom has power of attorney I want her to put the $ in my union account into my saving with Marine Federal. Also if you can check and see under my checking account if the transaction of the flowers to the girls was ever cleared.

  I’ve been thinking about tina turning 16 this month and how time has split us into two different echelons of life and of thought. I know her less than anyone in the family, the corps and the road has insisted I miss a lot of things, and I don’t always realize it right away.

  P.s. mom conservative with the emails ok and if you guys don’t get one from me for a couple of weeks don’t bugg out!

  10/27/08

  I never have enough time to unload all I want to say to you gotta take this rough draft as final. I got you and nanny’s letters today. you both have distinct handwriting. Me and tina’s is horrible and I can’t figure out where it comes from. I guess I want to tell you that I sometimes feel bad that we never see each other anymore. Mom has told me how my being away has made your life a little duller and less testosterone induced. I know you realize that I had to go and I’m going to stay out there for a long time. I can’t sit still (even being mortared can be boring). I can’t stomach where we grew up and I never ever get homesick. I think the symbol of future success is a middle finger to a hometown! Regardless it hits me like clock work anytime I listen to CCR, or lately van Morrison, I miss something. Maybe that’s why ambition and discontent put you up to a harsh light where I can say now that I was too hard on you. For some reason I randomly picture a baseball being thrown really high up on dann st., or you and bob smokin’ grass on a beach, or you running on the golf course as a kid w/ the song “mrs. Robinson” playing. I really don’t know why but it fills me with emotion.

  I gotta go

  10/30/04

  I can see those pics without assistance thank you. Anyway, that one you saw was when the other guys were changing over all their ammo to us. That was a 250 rd. belt of 50 cal. Ammo that is in our vehicle as we speak. The guy on the left is our gunner in our team. the guy in the background is Dez, the assistant team leader and a sniper in the platoon. Dad met him.

  I think you and everyone else need to quit praying for our fucking safety! The hand of God can really make life boring (knock on wood). If anything, pray that our command grows a pair of nuts and lets us get some, we work under cowards and politicians. If God wants to save me from death and injury, then good, but please don’t let it be by riding the bench! (a breath later) as you can see it’s starting to get boring and the operators are getting restless.

  11/01/04

  We don’t wear that goofy shit on our helmets!

  11/22/04

  I wouldn’t mind, but don’t mention a fucking word about me.

  11/26/04

  Well whatever yall did I got a message from Dana. They got ‘em. Katie threw a fit like I figured she would so Dana said she didn’t want to write me out of respect for her. I understand. Dana’s mom told Katie to get over it and Dana to write!

  Thanksgiving was less than a joy to say the least!

  Also EVERCLEAR (the cd that has the song “father of mine” or “daddy gave me a name”.

  Bye bye

  12/02/04

  Tuna was definitely eager to get back. He said Bagdad is full of people in their own world, like there’s no war going on.

  Another is gone and this time a toddler is left fatherless. The guy was as trained as one of us could ever get, over a decade in service. fragile is the word of the day.

  I’m not surprised on how unaffected I feel, maybe I’ll realize it later.

  Guess what? I ran into my fucking recruiter in the chow hall. We chatted but I did bring up as professional as possible that he screwed me. I think he remembered everything! He says he’s been here since april!

  Seeya

  12/04/04

  I emailed steve stewart twice. Did he get em. That’s surprising john looked real good. I figured he was on a downward spiral.

  My contract is fine now. it’s just all the time I spent in ft. sill and arty, I could have been going to real recon schools and training packages. Time ill spent for the most part!

  That’s good tina isn’t a bum. Hopefully she doesn’t get too stressed out.

  12/13/04

  Ya, I don’t want a damn thing from anybody!

  Also, our opsec has tightened so no more clues and drunken rants. People have given out info that got back to the wrong people.

  I’d like that simon and garfunkel cd, though!

  01/26/05

  I’ve been emailing henry rolling back and forth for 2 days now!

  My life has some meaning!

  More stuff:

  Rollins band “end of silence”

  Black crowes”shake your money maker”

  Spin doctors “pocket full of kryptomine”

  I know it’s some $$, thanx a bunch.

  01/28/05

  Yall really messed up by giving my email to Lew Scruggs. I get 3 dumb ass letters a day. It’s ok though.

  Books (don’t send)

  Conrad’s “In the Heart of darkness”

  f. scott fitzgerald “the great gatsy”

  evan wright “generation kill”

  bill me later!

  Rollins and I talked about the BS in Iraq & I told him how many fans he has in RECON.

  01/31/05

  Well the elections are over, we had a small hand in security. A few moments of violence and a lot of talking to the people. I’m on a mission to learn all the animal names and teach them the English equivalent. Chelub=dog, ezmalay=donkey

  Nothing else to say really.

  02/02/05

  I remembered an early memory the other day.

  I remember in preschool dad coming and picking me up and taking me to the fair.

  He had on those dark blue work pants and that maroon wind breaker that he still has.

  It’s so weird how this place makes you think.

  I’ve been really happy lately. We have been operating out of an ammo supply point run by civilian contractor. No BS marine corps, like wimps who never leave the gates telling us what it is to be a good marine. I’ve been working out harder than I ever have in my life. Me & tuna are putting up some heavy weight, and I’ve taken the bull by the horns as far as the minor leadership roles a corporal is in duty to. there is a guy here that looks just like dad. Maybe that’s why all these off memories and things are surfacing.

  02/15/05

  Does the battalion email you with dates on our return? I hear april 10th. I should be in lejeune, but don’t know 100%.

  Ya time is flying. I feel like I’m going on 45. I can say that I truly grew up in recon. The tugs, painting, mosh pits, boot camp, first 1.5 years in the corps, I was still something that I’m not anymore. I,m planning on emailing you a sample of the writing I have been doing over here. It’s almost always, short dark, and gives the vibe of a drunk folk singer on a poorly lit stage.

  02/17/05

  Please please print this or something (only way I can figure out how to contact jake)

  Jake,

  Music truly branded itself in and on me. I listen to DOWN in the gym, and when I heard “cemetery gates” the other day I just stood there thinking. I miss ya, and I can’t wait to see ya at the river soon & I can’t wait to i
ntroduce you to a few of my wartime buddies.

  I figured out OUR tatt’s. I’m gonna get the CFH brand on my opposite shoulder of the get some go again piece & you get those on your wrists!! What do you think. I’ll finance this endeavor and I think it would be awesome.

  Keep up the fight for your boy. He deserves more.

  Happy late birthday dude!

  03/02/05

  I wasn’t saying in the least that turning 22 in the heat of a greenside hide with 2 of my best friends with enough power to wipe out eagle blvd was a “crappy birthday”. I was practically bragging!

  I can get drunk and shit on any day. I wouldn’t trade this one for much.

  Last year I turned 21 at ARS on a Monday morning log run where we came in dead last!! Ha! Look at it, a year for recon!

  03/23/05

  I’ve been busy tanning and working out these days. The new recon boys are here and we are data dumping our deployment on them to set them up for success. I have to go out for 2 days starting tomorrow night and I’m done with combat operations.

  I gotta tell ya, this place has changed. The marines from the east coast have taken over and the original fighters have retrograded back to the states or are planted. This place is hardly a war zone anymore and these new people’s attitudes are pissing me off! There is so much involved with “war” that will piss off a set of open eyes and ears that it is best just to walk away from it (i.e. people who never left the gate bragging to girls about how many people they killed. It is so childish. I just tell myself” they know deep down who did what”.

  03/31/05

  What’s up with the pics?

  Tina told me she has lost almost 10 pounds. Is that from exercise or being sick?

  I saved the flight times in a folder but make sure you hold on to them 2!

  Oh, I got and consumed the last package. Chase got destroyed and pissed all over another guy’s clothes!!

  04/03/05

  I am leaving camp today so chances are I won’t be able to contact you via phone or computer for the rest of the deployment.

  04/03/05

  We had a small fuck up, so I am here one more night.

  . . .

  04/06/05

  I leave for Kuwait tonight. Tq is the camp I am at right now. Its an air field.

  18

  GAVE YOU EVERYTHING

  FALL 2007

  Regarding potent words and phrases, literal meaning has been practically raped right out of the English language. “I’m starving” says the morbidly obese at the fudge fountain, “go to Hell” from the scorned teen, “I’m too exhausted to move” from the hungover bartender or mid-management yes man at the cluttered desk. Strange thing to get tripped up about? Maybe. But language painted with such broad brush strokes both dulls critical faculties, and smacks of a culture of leap-before-they-looks who sacrifice aesthetics on the altar of melodrama.

  “Gave everything.” This phrase may also be worthy of being lumped onto the heap of the worn-ragged. It sticks in my head because it is but one of many banner slogans that were squeezed dry during the emergence of the warrior-themed sports. For me at least, an honest assessment indicates a giving of everything twice in my life. Well, one more an era, the other a specific day. ARS and a fight: I felt the most beautiful of pains.

  In 2007, I was fresh out of the Corps, still highly energetic, but unfortunately realizing for the second time why exactly I had joined in the first place. Orlando: truly in many ways a failure in social engineering. It’s a plethora of mediocrity, cheap land molested by anything ready to uproot what little culture the place had and exchange it with an asphalt parking lot and mall music. For the few actually born there, there lingers this Jeffersonian aggregate farming ideology, resulting in having children at socioeconomically inopportune young ages as if it was some badge of honor.

  These societal uglies thrived untouched while across an ocean transpired the eighteen-round fire-for-effect (FFE) against Baghdad, the countless small arms engagements, and all the IEDs in the Triangle of Death. Coming back home to America, not much changed for many lower middle-class kids who weren’t ready for college yet, or much anything else, really.

  The Disney Waste Land! Look at its thoroughfares, such a lie. Come experience the Magic, yes, but please stay a while and experience our felonious extravaganza, our prolific drug epidemic, our terrible traffic, and the fatal attitudes that come with it. Come experience our hilarious education, religiosity. Come enjoy the subdivisions that emerge like mushrooms, in a matter of months occupied by confused transplants, smelling of some unnamable failure from their home states. Come enjoy the land where having no culture becomes the culture of the land. Where a bright billboard for some “family-oriented” attraction, built by a divorced man with an oxycodone addiction who’s the father of a teenage, latch-key son, blinks blindingly at you from I-4. The shadows created by such hide the scurrying of the lost, medicated creatures who stalk the lower areas where God and Mickey are almost certainly not to be found.

  Suffering the rain and the scorching sun stands the two-story world. Low buildings, probably all built by the same contractor, and in the same year. A fucking mile of nothing but fast food restaurants, their clever billboards trying to outdo the business to their left or to their right. The low humming sadness, hanging just above the power lines.

  I found myself back in this ogre, and before long began to panic from the claustrophobia.

  A gym, now closed, used to pump and growl near the slow but unstoppable growth of a religion-owned healthcare juggernaut. Advertised as the oldest gym in Florida, this hole-in-the-wall was something out of Rocky. No A/C, no machines, and no yoga pants. Bouncers and bikers and felons and cops and professional wrestlers congregated in this iron shrine. Feats like “incline press - 535” recorded on the wall, while a guy fresh out of prison with an 82nd Airborne tattoo preacher curls 135.

  I had started to go to this gym while still on active duty. When home on leave, I’d make my way in there whenever I could. The new owner, whom is likely most aptly described as what a homeless man would look like if injected with ten gallons of HGH and two quarts of Diesel, allowed me to train for free. This gruff owner, rumored to have gone to Japan to fight some robot prior to official ownership, felt it his patriotic duty to allow all 165 life-takin’, heart-breakin’ pounds of my flesh at the time to train itself into a vascular fortress. It was through him I met an ex-con, out on an attempted murder charge, who got me into MMA before the world knew the word affliction.

  I had kickboxed as a kid. At ten I was able to do splits and side-kicked another kid in the face once at summer camp. However, my pugilistic days never developed—well, not in any formal way anyhow. So it was a pleasant return to both physical discipline and purpose when I started going to the ex-con’s countertop warehouse to train in some basic MMA. He trained elsewhere as well, but he agreed to teach me the basics of Brazilian jiu jitsu and the lost art of hooking—catch wrestling.

  For several weeks I trained and sparred with him and his band of merry men, a group of heavily tattooed construction types, usually with southern accents.

  All was well until the day the SWAT team raided the place.

  I wasn’t there, but found out later the location was some sort of drugs and/or weapons cache for some white supremacist group. I never got the full story, and that is likely because the day after it occurred, I blindly walked into the aftermath and the remaining guys gave me an interrogation. Some were less convinced than others, but it was an interesting feeling to hear the type of charges, look around, and see at least a few faces thinking they found the rat.

  Martial arts were to be put on hiatus for a while, and I was told to look into an official MMA gym on the other side of town. I was there the next day.

  From the moment I stepped inside until the moment I stopped competing about a year later encapsulates a very alive ribbon in time. I was able to meet and even spar with people whom I’d watched win and lose in the UFC. Several
months in I decided to shed the ground game though, fall back on childhood skills, push the forte, and compete as a kickboxer.

  Put on an amateur Muay Thai team, I traveled Florida for six months and got to experience the thrill of a first-round knockout, the humbling experience of losing in front of my friends, and the desperate exhaustion when neither you nor the other guy has been beaten bad enough to fold, and the bell refuses to ring.

  By the time I put in my mouth guard for my final match, I had switched gyms three times and coaches twice. Twenty-five pounds lighter than when I had started this new warrior road, I’d just accepted a position as a police officer for a city that strikingly resembled the dip-spittin’, monster truck gettin’ stuck, GED maybe, denim nightmare that was the fight card’s host; Lake City.

  My third and final Muay Thai match. My entire team came to fight an opponent. We drove from Orlando, ending our road trip at the entrance of an industrial Quonset hut. It was massive and cheap and for four-wheeled machinery to be stored during rains, repair, or anticipated biblical plague.

  For whatever reason, I was slotted second to last on the fight card. The last fight, the main event, was rightfully so. The guys were machines. . . and I was going on right before them. Had I been recognized as the link between a main event fighter and the undercard? I could ponder that later. Someone in the distance kicked a heavy bag—thuwack! I had more pressing matters at hand.

  Weighing in at a sickly 151 pounds, I scanned and inventoried the growing crowd. The slow southern drawls, all coming together in unison to chant for their hometown hero. He was as tattooed as me, but where I earned mine on docks and in squad bays, his was more after flipping the Ford, a keg party, or celebration after stomping some rival group of perfectly equal people.

  And that was the gist of it, come to find out. Two or three gyms came to the throw down. While some competed against other school-trained fighters, the horde of local rednecks, who came to test their wind and beat some ass, took up about half the fight card.