The high casualty rate that Joker One had sustained over the past two weeks was par for the course for everyone in the battalion during the late summer of 2004. Throughout August, while most people in America took vacations, injured Marines poured into the Combat Outpost at least thrice weekly. Every time four stretcher bearers and their wounded cargo ran out to the medevac helicopter that touched down at the north end of our base, I wondered whether the young man staining the canvas dark with his blood would ever fully recover, whether his dreams had died in the middle of fire and smoke. I wondered when it would again be one of my men who took his place. And I wondered how many of us would eventually make it back whole to the States.
No longer did I think that just being good at our jobs would be enough to protect us, or that my own decisions under fire could in some way prevent harm from befalling my men. After Bolding’s death, I had accepted the fact that I might not make it back. Now, every time we left the base I simply assumed that someone would come back wounded. It was a grim place to be, but it was freeing in some ways, for I wasn’t carrying the weight of every injured man on my shoulders anymore. Not everything was my fault—sometimes it was fair to blame the enemy, or ill fortune, or stupid missions for our wounded.
Though this mind-set shift made it easier to lead outside the base, it didn’t make it any easier to see the wounded lying in their litters inside it. Some casualties hit us particularly hard, like the time Sergeant Longoria, leader of the sniper squad attached to Golf, had his left hand nearly severed by an IED. The litter bearers carried him semiconscious into the aid station. Little streams of blood dangled off the sides of the litter’s poles. A few hours later, Doctor Crickard, the Navy physician at the Outpost, walked out of the aid station and told us that Longoria would almost certainly never regain full use of his hand again. Everyone looked downcast; all he’d ever wanted to be was a Marine scout-sniper. Another dream, dead.
Some casualties were particularly bad, like the one Duke Wells, the Weapons Platoon executive officer, brought in a few days after Longoria’s injury. His convoy had just been hit by an IED, and when a few of the corps-men threw open the tailgate of his casualty vehicle, a river of blood sluiced out and splattered all over our hangar bay floor. It created a dark, wide pool on the slick concrete. The corpsmen unloaded casualties and carried them to the aid station, and where they walked they left thick swaths of blood behind.
All of the injured looked terrible, but one was worse than most. Where his eyes used to be were two dark red gauze pads, held to his head by an elastic bandage. I had never seen an eyeless casualty before.
An hour later, the wounded had been carried out to the medevac helicopter, but the blood pool and the blood trails all over the hangar bay remained. Staff Sergeant and one other Marine wordlessly started mopping them up. The wet stuff came out, but the dark stains stayed. Staring at them later, I couldn’t think of much worse than losing my vision. I hoped that if or when I got wounded, I’d keep my eyes. And my genitals, for that matter. I hoped the same for my men, and that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the young man whose eyes had been replaced by dark wells of blood.
Apparently, neither could Doc Crickard, because sometime toward the end of August he left the Outpost and was replaced by a new doctor whom we had never seen before. I bumped into the large soft-looking man and asked him casually what had happened to Doc Crickard. The new guy sort of shuffled his feet, and an embarrassed reply came back. “Oh, Doc Crickard was rotated back to Hurricane Point. He was, uh, pretty burnt out from taking care of all the casualties.”
I bit back my sarcastic reply and walked off. I was furious. The doctors got rotated, but the infantrymen were the ones fighting and dying out in the city, and there was no such thing as a day off the lines for us. The wounded and the dead continued to wear at my heart and mind, and it seemed that no matter where I turned, I couldn’t escape the sight of them. Strangely enough, being outside the base had in some ways become easier than being inside it. At least out in the city you were focused, constantly busy evaluating the situation, making decisions, and keeping track of your men. When the casualties happened, they happened, and there wasn’t much to be done about it.
Inside the base, though, there was nothing to do but brood on who’d be hurt next. Every time the booms rang out, or someone slammed a door, you jumped and the adrenaline started and you wondered who’d be brought inside in a litter, or if you’d have to go outside with litters of your own. You thought of all the things that had happened that you couldn’t change, and you watched the bleeding young men brought in one at a time and wondered if they’d ever fully recover. Worst of all, you never, ever forgot, even for an instant, the inescapable truth that man is indeed mortal.
By late August, even the Gunny’s hands had started ceaselessly shaking. The casualties got to everyone; there was little hope of rising above them. So, each night that I wasn’t out in the city, I debated the probability of being called out on a mission before dawn. If I came down on the side of improbable, then I took two or three sleeping pills. If I came down on the side of probable, then I lay awake and consoled myself by telling myself that at least things couldn’t get much worse for us than they were at the end of August.