Military history

THIRTY-ONE

Exactly one week later, Ramadi exploded into violence yet again. It took us a bit by surprise—after the citywide fighting of the week before, we didn’t expect our enemies to recover for quite some time. Additionally, the day had started out fairly quietly, with Bowen and his men spending six uneventful hours at the Ag Center, and Noriel’s squad spending eight at another OP to our east. However, on the patrol back to base, first squad had been caught in the middle of a mortar attack, forcing them to take cover in a few abandoned buildings nearby. By the time the explosions ceased and the COC allowed the men back into the base, my first squad had spent close to ten hours baking in the 130-degree heat. So, when second squad and I relieved Bowen at the Ag Center around noon, nearly two-thirds of my platoon were exhausted and thoroughly dehydrated.

Still, for the next hour or so the city remained completely quiet, and I had just started to relax when a massive explosion and small-arms fire rang out to our west. A few minutes later, the COC squawked over the radio that Weapons had been hit by an IED and a follow-on rocket attack. Third platoon was about to launch in support, and we needed to be ready to cover their movement.

Less than two minutes later, Leza’s entire second squad was on top of the Ag Center. From the middle of the roof, I surveyed their arrangement. Niles had a 240 Golf, our medium machine gun, propped up in the very northwestern corner, ready to hose down Michigan and the buildings to our north. His partner, Lance Corporal Ott, stood just three feet away, busily laying out long strings of linked machine gun ammo. When Niles ran out of ammo for the 240, Ott would slap one of these belts on the gun to get it up and running again. Across the roof were Carson and Pelton’s fire team, covering the large open area to our south, and hovering over everything was Sergeant Leza. He moved from position to position, making small changes here, speaking words of encouragement there, preparing his Marines for the inevitable fight to come.

Just as we had finished settling in, third platoon rumbled by, driving down the wrong side of the road as fast as the street allowed. Ten seconds after their last vehicle passed us, all hell broke loose. A massive explosion, closer now, rocked the Ag Center, and streams of tracers lanced out of the buildings west and north of us as the enemy triggered another ambush. The double booms of RPGs started ringing out, and several of them slammed into the front of the first vehicle of third platoon’s convoy, completely disabling it and stopping the Humvees behind it dead in their tracks. Trapped in the middle of the kill zone, Hes screamed orders to his men as he took cover behind the open door of his Humvee.

Under withering enemy fire, the Marines of third platoon jumped out of their vehicles, pointed themselves south, and ran straight into the teeth of the enemy’s ambush. Behind them, the gunners in the backs and tops of the Humvees remained in their positions, motionless and completely exposed to the enemy but pouring out fire so that the assaulting infantry would have cover. The quick thinking worked—the insurgents hadn’t fully set in their ambush position by the time third platoon rolled by, and most of the running Marines were able to slam through the gates of nearby housing compounds without taking major casualties. Those manning the guns behind them spotted a small civilian car unloading RPGs and RPG gunners. The Marines laced it with their guns, and the car caught fire. For the next twenty minutes, explosions rang out as the dozens of RPGs inside cooked off from the heat.

Up on the roof of the Ag Center, we were under heavy fire as well. Insurgents popped out of the buildings to our north and south and started pumping round after round of automatic weapons fire at us, and the bullets snapped and cracked all around as they passed. We took cover as best we could below the parapet. Two huge antitank missiles, launched from an alleyway just to our south, ripped through the floor below us, tearing huge chunks out of the wall, shaking the building like a tree in a violent wind. Every Marine in second squad started firing back at the tracers that lashed our position. To our south, Carson alternately shouted orders and popped off rounds from his grenade launcher. Across the roof, Niles screamed and fired the machine gun like a man possessed. Next to him, Ott lifted ammo belt after ammo belt and slapped them down on the gun when it ran dry. Together, the two of them were a sight to behold. A skinny but fearless Niles dashed from position to position on the roof, slamming the machine gun down on the wall wherever he could find the best firing position to engage newly emerging threats. Ott shadowed his every movement, carrying yards and yards of belted machine gun rounds across his shoulders and two cans of additional ammo in each hand. If I hadn’t know better, I would’ve thought the two were a trained machine gun team, and for a brief second, I marveled as I watched them work.

My quick reverie was interrupted by Leza, who, nearly tackling me as he ran across the fire-swept roof, announced in breathless tones that one of our men had just shot an Iraqi policeman. I was stunned, but Leza continued. The policeman had apparently driven his patrol car nearly all the way up to the Ag Center, and our men had refrained from shooting—after all, the police were supposedly our friends. When the driver jumped out of his car, however, he had a beefed-up AK-47 in his hand, and he immediately proceeded to let loose at us on the roof. After about twenty seconds of stunned observation, Lance Corporal Pepitone shot the man dead. Shaking my head, I told Leza to tell Pepitone good job. Very little surprised me anymore. Then I grabbed the radio and asked the COC to send out the rest of my platoon. We were going to need them in this fight against all comers.

Back at the Outpost, the recovered Staff Sergeant began furiously rounding up the rest of Joker One. Upon hearing the call for reinforcements, he bounded into the platoon’s house and screamed at the Marines to put their gear on and head out. Midway through the rant, Noriel reminded him that first and third squads had just recently returned from the action and that they were still filling up their water bottles. He also pointed out that no one had eaten yet that day, because, without me knowing, Staff Sergeant had forbidden Joker One from taking any food to our OPs—the Gunny was concerned about the trash buildup, and Staff Sergeant was apparently taking no chances.

In reply, Staff Sergeant simply tossed Noriel a bottle of water and screamed at him to get the men moving. My first-squad leader sighed, and, shaking off their lethargy, he and Bowen started shouting, getting their sluggish, bone-weary squads moving. Marines with empty canteens and Camel-Baks crammed bottled water into their cargo pockets as they hustled out of the platoon’s courtyard. Dehydrated from their long hours in the sun and having eaten nothing all day long, first and third squads threw their heavy combat loads back on and ran through the Outpost’s northwestern entrance, back into the fight. Against orders, Yebra attached himself to the reduced platoon as it moved out. I had left him back at the Outpost that day because of severe dehydration brought on by a horrible case of dysentery, but, as Yebra later told me, “Sir, with all due respect, there’s no way I was going to lay inside the base while the platoon was out fighting.” Despite his weakness, our radio operator armored up and headed out with everyone else.

After nearly two hundred meters of sprinting through houses and alleyways, all the water bottles so hastily stuffed into cargo pockets had fallen out. After three hundred meters, Bowen’s squad moved out of the cover of the houses and into the open area surrounding the Racetrack, the large road that branched north off Michigan. As the first team sprinted across the road, an enemy machine gun to their north opened up on them. Rounds skipped and sparked off the pavement, and the squad dived for cover, but there wasn’t much available. Bowen and his men were more or less trapped in the open.

Behind them, still sheltered by the houses, first squad froze. The Marines in front of them had halted their advance under heavy fire, and Teague’s point team paused to work out their next move. Seeing the hesitation, Noriel lost his temper. He ran to the head of the squad, into the open area, and started doing a dance of frustration, completely ignoring the fire kicking off the pavement behind him. A stream of absolutely unintelligible curse words and orders issued from his mouth.

The rest of the squad stared back, amazed. Teague later told me that their hesitation wasn’t from fear or disobedience—it was simply that, worked up as Noriel was, no one could understand the garbled English. However, the failure to immediately comply only further enraged my feisty first-squad leader. He moved closer to the road and started firing his weapon into the dirt, still dancing his jig of anger. Now the message was clearer: If his squad didn’t move, Noriel’s bullets might well join the ones the enemy aimed at his men.

The tactic worked. First squad broke cover and started moving, firing up the Racetrack as they ran. Nearly simultaneously, third squad crossed the road, heading to the cover of the northern soccer stadium. Meanwhile, back on top of the Ag Center, Niles spotted the flashes from the machine gun position nearly seven hundred meters away, directly north of us. He opened up on it, and the gun’s tracers made a great target designator for the Cobra attack helicopters that had just arrived on the scene. Coming out of their holding pattern, they dived close to the rooftops and hit the house hard with rockets and 20mm chain guns. Watching the incredible firepower unleashed on the enemy’s house, I felt a great deal of satisfaction.

It didn’t last long—I needed to get off the roof and to my first and third squads, by now holed up under fire in the northern stadium. Grabbing Ott, the nearest Marine, I headed down the stairs, out of the Ag Center, and to the gates of the compound. Together we squeezed through the entrance and moved through the tangled concertina wire to the open sidewalk. There we both paused briefly, then sprinted across Michigan, stopping only to struggle clumsily over the waist-high concrete median. Ten seconds later, we reached the stadium and ran inside.

The first thing that I saw was Mahardy, nearly doubled over, his butt and thighs against the stadium’s wall. He was clearly having difficulty standing, but immediately upon seeing me he tried to straighten up, and, failing, he began apologizing profusely about his weakened condition. Absently, I reassured my RO that he was fine, grabbed his pack, and slung the radio across my back. Then I climbed the stairs to join Sergeant Noriel.

Together we surveyed the area to our north. The smooth patch of empty dirt normally used as a second soccer field stretched out for nearly two hundred meters. There was no cover there. However, if we moved west from the stadium, and then north, we could use the housing compound Noriel had spotted to shield us from some of the heavy fire. Moving that way would allow us to cross less than fifty feet of open field before we got to the Racetrack and the cover of the housing compounds across it. It was the only way we could see to move against the attackers to our north, so, after a few minutes of assembly, we headed out at a quick jog.

The first team reached the intended cover without incident and edged carefully along a set of compound walls until they ended, making room for the rest of the platoon to find shelter. Both squads stacked up along the fifty short feet of concrete, Marines pressed nearly back to back against one another. At the front of the column, Corporal Walter and I carefully peered around the edge of the wall, trying to get some sense of the enemy’s firing positions. Nearly immediately, a machine gun started up again, firing down the Racetrack from the north. The rounds cracked all around us, and Walter and I whipped back around the corner to safety.

Walter immediately turned backward and yelled down the column for Feldmeir and his grenade launcher to move up and lay down some smoke to cover our movement across the road. Running clumsily up the line, Feldmeir arrived, and without warning, pulled up his grenade launcher, placed the muzzle right next to Walter’s leaning head, and fired off a smoke round. Walter stumbled backward, reeling and flailing his arms. When he had recovered, he launched himself at Feldmeir and swatted him across the head. Somehow, though, Feldmeir had managed to put the round in almost exactly the right place, and now a disappointingly small cloud of purple smoke was kicking up from where it landed.

Walter noticed the smoke and took off at a dead sprint across the street, screaming for his men to follow. Behind them, Ott and I moved from the cover of the wall, took a knee, and started firing furiously at windows we suspected housed enemy machine gun positions. It didn’t do much good. When Walter’s team reached the road, the guns opened up again, but the Marines moved quickly through the smoke and made it unscathed to the steel-gated entrance of a housing compound.

As the team began kicking in the door, Ott and I hurled ourselves out from the wall, moving quickly across the field as Noriel and his men covered us from the rear. Firing, I moved across the road in a crouch. Ott followed, and soon we were running through the gates that Walter’s team had kicked open. As I passed through the entrance, something snagged, and I snapped backward, nearly falling. The radio antenna sticking out of the pack on my back had caught on the top beam of the entrance—unused to carrying the radio, I had forgotten to duck as I passed the threshold. Cursing, I recovered my balance and moved into the courtyard.

Team by team, the platoon crossed over the Racetrack, and within three minutes first squad had occupied Walter’s housing compound, and third was flooding into an adjacent one to our north. Marines raced up the stairs to reach the roof, where they would have better observation and fields of fire. I was moving into the house itself when Flowers’s voice came over the radio.

“All units, be advised, Cobras are doing armed reconnaissance in the area. They’re about to start looking for targets. Break. They need all squads to mark their positions with smoke right now. I repeat, all squads mark their positions with smoke right now. Over.”

I stopped in my tracks and yelled into the PRR for all squads to mark their positions and move to cover. With me, Noriel complied immediately, but from the next compound over, Bowen didn’t reply. As the sounds of the helicopter blades came ominously closer, I grew increasingly nervous. Suddenly, Bowen’s strained voice came across the PRR.

“Sir, we can’t get to the roof to pop smoke. They’ve welded the doors shut up here. We’re trying to pry ‘em open, sir. We’re all in the house but we can’t mark our pos!”

I could hear the Cobra gunships approaching, and I started panicking. I pulled out my GPS and consulted the coordinates quickly. Then I called Flowers over the radio and yelled at him to inform the Cobras of our exact location. No reply came, so I tried again. This time, Flowers’s voice responded nearly immediately:

“All Joker units, be advised, the Cobras are starting their gun runs. Mark your pos now. I say again, mark your pos now. Over.”

He hadn’t heard me at all—something was horribly wrong. I knelt in the courtyard and tore the radio off of my back, frantically trying to roll the radio to the frequency of the Cobras so that I could talk to them directly. Suddenly Yebra was at my side. He knelt, grabbed the radio, and silently began fixing it. I was momentarily nonplussed. I knew Yebra shouldn’t be out here because he should have been confined to his bunk, recovering from dysentery and on bed rest. However, my worry about friendly fire was too great, so I shoved my concerns aside. Straightening, I stood back and let my RO start punching buttons. Suddenly, the distinctive pilots’ voices rang out from the handset, crystal clear.

“Joker COC, this is Cobra One. We have one Marine position below us, marked with red smoke. Looks like there’s enemy in the house next door. We’re beginning a gun run now. Over.”

I grabbed the handset back from Yebra, truly panicked now. “Cobra One, this is Joker One. Abort, again, I say abort! That is my third squad to our north. They can’t pop smoke right now. Abort! Abort!”

It was like I was talking to myself. The pilots called again, completely unfazed. “Joker COC, this is Cobra Two. We’ve got the enemy below us. We’re about to engage with twenty mike-mike, over.” I could hear the rotors getting closer and closer now. I looked up, scanning the sky. Just to my east, I could see the first Cobra, maybe two hundred yards distant.

I dropped the radio handset and screamed back into the PRR. “Bowen, the Cobras are coming. You’re gonna get hit. Pop smoke now, damn it! Pop it now!”

“I can’t sir. We’re still beating at this door!”

“Damn it! Move down! Take cover on—”

I was cut off. The Cobras above me opened up on my third squad. Two helicopters swooped down, their 20mm cannons blazing, tearing the air with the sound of ripping paper amplified fifty times over. It was one of the worst things I have ever heard, and all that I could do was look helplessly up at the helicopter underside as it flew overhead, wreaking devastation on Bowen and his men.

Unknown to me, inside the squad’s house, seconds before the gun run began, Bowen had left off beating at the locked steel door and screamed at his men to start running down the stairs. As the bullets tore through the top-floor walls, all the third-squad Marines were diving down the stairs, Bowen bringing up the rear. The 20mm tank-killing rounds shredded the upstairs, and the squad lay huddled on the first floor, arms over their heads as bits of concrete and plaster rained down on them. Then, suddenly, everything was over. The Cobras had finished the run.

As soon as the helos banked off to the north, I heard their voices over the radio again. “Joker COC, this is Cobra One. We hit that insurgent position but we’re circling back around for another run. Over.”

My heart sank. I immediately called Bowen, praying that he was still alive.

“One-Three, this is One-Actual. Are you there? How many casualties do you have?”

Immediately his voice came back. “We’ve got no casualties, sir. We’re all on the first floor now, sir.”

“Stay there! The Cobras are coming back around. Stay there! Take cover. I’ll try to call them again.”

“Roger, sir.”

Yebra was still fiddling with the radio. He had the handset off the radio body now, and he was wiping down the connections between the handset’s cord and the radio’s plug-in. I knelt back down and reached for the device as he carefully put the two together again.

“Cobra One, Cobra Two, this is Joker One. Abort mission! Abort mission! You are hitting my squad. I say again, abort mission!”

Nothing happened for a few seconds, but then the pilot’s voice came back, calm and unruffled. “Joker COC, this is Cobra One. We have completed our turn and are approaching the house again. We’re going to hit it with another run. Over.”

Flowers came back on. “Roger, Cobra One. There should still be no friendlies in that area. Over.”

I called Bowen again. “Take cover now, One-Three! The helos’re comin’ back! They’re going to hit us again. Take cover, I repeat, take cover.”

“Roger, sir.” Inside his house, Bowen turned to his squad and gave the order. They flung themselves back onto the floor. As the rotor sounds came closer, though, one of his men had had enough. Rising from where he lay on the ground, Lance Corporal Kepler screamed “Fuck this” and began searching for a smoke grenade. As the rest of the squad watched, hunched under whatever cover they could find, Kepler ripped a smoke marker off the nearest Marine and ran back up the stairs to the second floor. As the helos made their final approach, he smashed out a window with the barrel of his rifle, carefully raking the glass from the edges of the window frame. Then, as the guns opened up on the house, Kepler climbed out, up the outside wall until he was close enough to its top to throw the grenade to the roof.

Even as the bricks next to him ripped apart in a solid line from floor to ceiling, he popped the tab on the marker and tossed it to the roof.

Suddenly, I heard the pilots talking animatedly. “Cobra One, I’ve got smoke on that roof we’re hitting. Abort, Cobra One! Abort! There are friend-lies down there!” The fire broke off immediately, and the helos banked steeply off to our east again. Back in my house, I had no idea why or how the miraculous smoke had suddenly appeared, but I was thrilled. I called Bowen.

A weak voice came back. “Sir. We’re all good. We’re gonna move to your pos now. Be there shortly.”

I almost collapsed with the news, and, encouraging Yebra to keep working on the radio, I headed up to the roof of my house to get a better idea of the situation surrounding us. Upstairs, Noriel quickly filled me in on the battle situation as he saw it and showed me how he had arrayed his men. I took it in and surveyed the surrounding houses—no immediate signs of any enemies. Then I headed back downstairs. I needed to get on the radio to coordinate our next move with the rest of the company.

When I got to the first-floor living room, I nearly fell over. There, on a pile of Iraqi rugs, lay Yebra, naked and spread-eagled. Doc Camacho crouched over him, working furiously to insert an IV as Yebra’s body twitched spasmodically. Several other Marines frantically ransacked the rest of the house, obviously looking for something. I ran over to figure out just how my Marine had gone from alert and clothed to unconscious and naked.

Without looking up from his work, Doc tersely informed me that Yebra’s disease-induced dehydration had done him in. Our RO’s core body temperature had shot up to 106 degrees Fahrenheit, and his brain was beginning to be affected—hence the seizures. Unless he received medical care at the Outpost within the next half hour, Yebra would die of heatstroke. The Marines were searching the house for ice in which to pack him, but we needed an immediate evacuation if we wanted to keep Yebra alive. Hearing the news, my shock quickly turned to terror—we had no vehicles, and without them, I had no way of getting Yebra back to the Outpost in time to save his life. Making matters worse, more and more of my exhausted first and third squads were beginning to show serious signs of heat exhaustion. If we couldn’t get them out of the fight, they too might end up like Yebra, naked and twitching on a bare concrete floor.

I turned away from Yebra and considered the options. We could try and call in for a medevac, but with the radio still not working and no guarantee that we’d be able to fix it, we’d probably only waste precious time on a useless course of action. Or we could try a mad dash back to the northern soccer stadium. Echo Company had staged there with four or five vehicles. Maybe we could borrow one or two to use for medevacs. Of course, to do this, someone would have to run back across the machine-gun-raked soccer field. Neither option seemed all that great, but only the latter offered any real hope of saving Yebra in time. I decided to make the run.

Without any more thought, I placed Bowen in charge of first and third squads until I returned, grabbed my two nearest Marines—PFCs Phelps and Meyers—and dashed out of the compound gate with them in tow. As we neared the Racetrack, I absently noticed that the machine gun to our north had kicked up again. As the bullets cracked around us, we made it across the street and sped up—there was still a long way to go. There was nothing tactical about our movement—no bounds, no cover, nothing. It was just a straight-out footrace between us and the machine gunner to our north; us to see if we could reach cover, he to see if he could figure out the appropriate lead before we did so. Halfway through the field, I glanced to my right. Huddled against the same wall we had used for cover not twenty minutes earlier, a long line of Echo Marines watched our progress across the field incredulously—they weren’t covering us because they couldn’t. It’s funny, the things you notice while running for your life.

What I didn’t notice, though, were the rounds impacting all around us as we ran. Others did, and they later told me that watching that run across the open dirt field was like watching a scene from a movie. Marines ran, and behind them a long line of exploding dirt snaked up out of the ground as the gunner swiveled to catch up. He never did, and the three of us made it safely to the shelter of the stadium. There I managed to grab two Humvees from an Echo staff sergeant. Phelps and Meyers leaped into the rear one while I threw myself into the lead one and prepared to zoom off.

As I stared at the unfamiliar dials above the driver’s wheel, however, I soon realized that I had no idea how to operate a Humvee, for, as an officer, I had never driven one of them before. Behind me, Meyers knew exactly what he was doing—he was one of our trained drivers—but without a PRR I had no way to talk to him. Momentarily nonplussed, I studied the instrument panel for a few seconds, then looked down at where the stick shift on a normal car would be. There was only a lever there. I hesitated, then pulled it up one notch and stamped on the accelerator. Nothing happened. I swore, then reached back down and pulled the lever up another notch. I punched the gas and the vehicle lurched forward. Yes! Whipping the wheel around, I pointed the Humvee’s front at the dirt field to our north and sped up. The vehicle rocketed out of the stadium and hit the sloping concrete curb that separated the stadium from the surrounding dirt. I hadn’t realized it was there, and the Humvee launched off it. All four wheels left the ground.

A few feet later, the vehicle crashed back down. The impact threw me chest-first into the steering wheel, and my Kevlar helmet smashed into the windshield (we never wore seat belts—it took too much time to unbuckle them when we needed to exit the vehicles quickly during an ambush). The Humvee nearly ground to a halt as my foot left the accelerator, but I recovered quickly enough and started moving again. Perhaps this time we were fired at as well, but, as before, I didn’t notice, and within twenty seconds Meyers and I had made it into the shelter of the alleyway just outside first and third squads’ house.

I jumped out of the Humvee and headed inside to give more orders, but Bowen already had the men moving. Four of them were carrying the naked Yebra as Doc Camacho trotted alongside, holding up a bag full of IV fluid. Tenderly, they placed the unconscious Yebra in the vehicle. As the loading finished up, a long line of Marines staggered out of the house, some carrying others with their arms flung around their shoulders. There were at least twelve suffering from varying degrees of heatstroke—a full squad. I had no idea the temperature had taken such a toll, but it made sense given the length of time that first and third had been out earlier in the morning. Staggering drunkenly past me, Mahardy again apologized furiously to me for his weakness. Again I reassured him.

Five minutes later, the convoy full of heat casualties roared out of our house, and I headed back up to the roof to get a better sense of the shape of the fight. On my way up, Bowen bumped into me—he had fixed the radio by replacing its antenna. I thanked him, slung the heavy pack across my shoulders, and headed up to the roof. Around us, sporadic rifle and rocket fire could be heard as second and third platoons continued to press the enemy, but the CO ordered us through the now-working radio to stay put. The fighting was dying down.

While most of the Marines waited on the roof, Teague’s reduced team secured the compound’s entrance and the house’s first floor. As he moved around, checking his men, Teague noticed a small, huddled form lying on the sidewalk next to the Racetrack. He looked closer. It was an Iraqi child, maybe ten years old, and he appeared badly wounded. Teague pulled Doc Camacho aside and told him to be prepared—Teague was going to run out and retrieve the wounded boy.

Hearing the plan, Camacho shook his head. “Corporal, you’re gonna get shot doing that. Let me help.” Then, without warning, Doc sprinted out of the compound, into the middle of the Racetrack. Dancing back and forth, waving his arms, Doc Camacho started screaming along the lines of the following:

“Look at me! Look at me! Start shooting, you assholes! Look at me! I’m right here! Shoot at me!”

The machine gunner to our north obliged, and, nearly immediately, rounds started snapping all around our little corpsman, kicking sparks off the pavement where they impacted. Taking advantage of Doc’s distraction, Teague ran out to the sidewalk where the little kid lay. As quickly as he could, Teague scooped up the child in his arms and staggered back to the house. Once they had both made it inside, Doc broke off his dance and ran headlong for the compound’s entrance. The bullets chased him as far as the alleyway.

Safely inside the compound walls, Doc and Teague rolled the little boy onto his back. He was unconscious and breathing shallowly, suffering from a sucking chest wound. A bullet, likely from the trigger-happy machine gunner to our north, had torn open the bottom left side of the child’s ribcage. Quickly, Doc applied a plastic bandage to the hole to seal the wound. Then he rolled the boy onto his left side so that the fluid draining out of his damaged lung wouldn’t impair the functioning right one.

With the boy stabilized, Teague called me on the PRR and told me what had happened. Without a medevac soon, he said, the boy would almost certainly die. Two minutes later, I was down from the roof and bending over the child. It was clear that his condition was worsening by the minute. He was turning pale, and his breathing had faded to the point of near-nonexistence.

I was at a loss—with fighting still fierce in pockets throughout the city, there was no way we could arrange a U.S. medevac, but Teague had an idea.

“Sir, there are still cars driving on the Racetrack right now. I think we could maybe stop one and load the kid in there.”

It was as good a plan as any, and we moved to execute it. Teague bent down and picked up the child again. Once he was ready, Doc, Teague, and I moved to and through the compound’s entrance, back out onto the street. The enemy guns stayed silent, but I was in a hurry to get the child loaded and my men back to safety. One car whizzed by as I ran toward it waving my arms, so, as soon as I made it onto the Racetrack, I stepped directly into the path of the next oncoming car and raised my rifle to my shoulder, pointing the muzzle at the driver. The car screeched to a halt, and Teague and Doc loaded the child into the backseat, repeating, “Hospital, hospital” until the driver got the picture. Teague slammed the door, and the car sped off. Our mission of mercy complete, we moved out of the street, back to the house.

For the next half hour, we held our positions, waiting for orders to move out. Finally, the CO called me. The fight was more or less over, he said. Bowen and Noriel headed back to the Outpost with the remnants of their men, and Ott and I ran back to the Ag Center to rejoin second squad. When I got there, I sat down heavily on the floor, my back up against the wall, completely exhausted and unable to think. Ott sat down as well, then collapsed onto his side. Carson and Doc Smith quickly started him on an IV, and, slowly, Ott revived.

Ten minutes later, the walls of the Ag Center started spinning around me. Something about my hands seemed strange, so I looked down at them. They were shaking uncontrollably, and I realized that I had forgotten to eat anything since my sprint across Michigan several hours ago. I needed electrolytes, quickly—the water I drank had kept me hydrated, but I needed to replace the huge amount of body salts I had lost over the past few hours. I lurched to my feet and staggered over to the trash can that had been set up on the first floor. Marines sometimes threw away the parts of the MREs that they didn’t want, and I had, unfortunately, eaten all of my own food before my run out of the OP.

I pawed through the disgusting mess inside the trash can, throwing out spit cups, used toilet paper, and half-eaten, slippery bits of food until I found a few unwrapped MRE items. Grateful, I sat down next to the trash can and tore into my treasures. Soon enough, the spinning stopped and my hands quieted. After ten minutes more rest, I finally felt well enough to rise, and, once I confirmed that I could walk in a more or less straight line, I headed up to the third floor to confer with Leza.

The fight had broken off completely, and he had moved his Marines off the roof, out of the direct sun and into the standard third-floor fighting positions. Two hours later, the CO sent a squad from second platoon to relieve us. By that time, we had been out at the Ag Center for well over ten hours.

When I got back inside the wire, Noriel and Bowen explained to me how, behind my back, Staff Sergeant had countermanded my orders that every Marine have at least half of an MRE (and preferably a full one) on them at all times. I was furious, yet again amazed by my platoon sergeant’s lack of common sense and his unhesitating willingness to sacrifice the welfare of his men to his own fear of the Gunny. I headed back to the COC, intent on confronting him, but before I got there, the CO intercepted me.

“Hey, One,” he said. “Did you realize you had sixteen fucking heat casualties? Sixteen? You know that I consider every heat casualty a leadership failure!”

I deflated. I felt exhausted and beaten, and I barely had the energy to reply. So I began a halting explanation of why my men had gone down—ten hours out in the sun, not enough time to fill up their water, and so on—but the CO wasn’t interested. He cut me off less than halfway through, repeating again that my platoon’s heat casualties were directly attributable to my leadership failure. I shut up for the rest of the tirade. It was clearly a waste of time to try to explain the difficulties of occupying an OP for eight hours in 130-degree heat to a man who had been to one of them only once, and then for less than three hours.

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