Sgt. Moss looked at me. “Williams . . . count the squad again.”
Before I broke ranks Dougherty called out, “It’s Poole . . .
Poole’s UA!”
Sgt. Moss bit his lip when he gave his report. “One UA.”
Sgt. Krause snapped his head toward Sgt. Moss, who silently mouthed the name “Poole.”
Sgt. Krause shook his head. So, too, did Gunny Brandt when he found out. Poole wasn’t the only one absent from formation. The other platoon sergeants reported UA Marines as well. It was the third time that Gunny Brandt had earned I-told-you-so bragging rights.
After formation Dougherty and I returned to our barracks. Neither of us was surprised that Poole had left. Both of us were surprised when he returned. We knew it was Poole right away. We had heard enough of his drunken rambling to recognize him by voice alone. The echo rang out from the stairwell as he approached singing in slurred cadence, “If I die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home. . . .”
He paused as his pickled mind searched the archives of classic cadences to remember the next verse.
Then he continued, “Pin my medals upon my chest and tell my mom I did my best. . . .”
Dougherty and I walked out to the balcony to survey the damage. Once he reached the top of the stairs his left foot continued upward as if to take another step up, where there was none. He landed in the push-up position, facedown on the concrete slab. Then he S P A R E P A R T S
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lumbered to his feet and proceeded to rebound between the railing and the building like a pinball against its bumpers.
He squinted through his beer goggles to see who was watching as he approached. Then he stopped short of us, wobbled around like a spinning top, and shook his finger at us. “I ain’t gonna die in no combat zone, boys. . . . Uh-uh . . . not this nigga. Ain’t gonna be no need to tell my momma a damned thing!”
He looked up at Dougherty and me as he crossed the threshold of the doorway into our room. “Ya know why?”
He drew patronizing stares from us as he mumbled on unintelligibly.
“I’ll tell ya why. . . .”
He put his finger to his mouth to hush us and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Because I have a secret weapon.”
He staggered backward, but managed to pull up his left trouser leg just enough to expose the knife strapped to his ankle. It was a special forces–type knife. It had a four-inch blade and was sheathed in a leather holder held to his leg by two Velcro straps.
We watched as he reached down, squinting and grasping at air.
After the third swipe he grabbed the handle of the knife and ripped it from its sheath. The blade cut cleanly and deeply into his calf muscle on the way out, leaving a gash that exposed the pinkish white muscle. Poole didn’t even flinch under the numbness of intoxication. Then the tip of the blade hooked his trouser leg. He fought angrily to free the knife, which sliced through the material and opened a slit in his trouser from his knee to his ankle.
Dougherty and I stared helplessly at the drunken spectacle.
Poole paused momentarily, reconsidered his decision, and attempted to replace the knife in its sheath. The first attempt failed miserably, leaving another deep laceration parallel to the first. Then there was a third and a fourth. I cringed while the blood saturated the top of his sock and ran down the leather of his boot to puddle on the floor. Poole’s failure to fit the knife in its sheath infuriated him. I moved toward him and held out my hand as a gesture to take the knife. It was a bad move. It placed me in the crosshairs of his anger. He looked up at me enraged, and before I could react I 168
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was pressed with my back against the wall with the knife to my throat.
Poole held the material of my camouflage jacket balled in his left hand against my collarbone. He wielded the knife tightly in his right hand, his knuckles pressed against my throat. I could feel the pulse of my carotid artery, just under the blade, throb from the pressure.
I stared at him as calmly as I could. Dougherty was frozen in place in the doorway. We were silent and still. Neither of us wanted to incite him further.
Poole panned back and fourth between Dougherty and me. We looked on as nonthreateningly as possible.
Then Poole focused his deranged eyes on mine. “Ain’t this a bitch. . . . Ain’t this a mu-fuckin bitch. . . .”
I thought anything I said might set him off, and there wasn’t much margin for error on my part. So I continued to be silent.
Then he turned to address Dougherty, still in the doorway. “We leavin,’ man. . . . I can’t believe we leavin’ out tonight. . . .”
As he spoke he continued to clutch my collar with his left hand, but waved the knife toward Dougherty for emphasis. “And ya know why I gotta go?”
No response from us. The knife returned to its place at my neck.
“Cause da black man always fight da white man’s wars. . . .”
I tried hard not to show the panic rising within me. Then the knife waved again toward Dougherty. He recognized the pattern.
“Ain’t that right, History Man?”
Dougherty didn’t acknowledge the question. I braced for the knife’s return.
“Goddamned slavery still alive and well . . . mu-fuckin’ alive and well. . . .”
The next time Poole motioned the knife toward Dougherty, he was gone. Neither Poole nor I saw him leave. Even as I feared I’d been abandoned, I felt Poole’s left hand tear away from my collar.
Dougherty had waited until Poole focused his attention on me, and then sneaked around to his blind side. Once Poole extended his arm to point the knife at the door, Dougherty intervened. He S P A R E P A R T S
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executed the knife removal maneuvers the way we practiced during close combat training. Dougherty was good. He grabbed Poole’s knife-wielding wrist tightly with his left hand and then struck the back of Poole’s hand sharply with his open palm. The force of the blow hyperflexed Poole’s wrist and caused an involuntary extension of his fingers, which ejected the knife across the room.
Dougherty then forced Poole to the prone position, straddled his back, and jacked his arm upward behind him. Poole didn’t know what had hit him and offered little resistance.
Once down, however, he began to yell. “Give me my knife! Give me my mu-fuckin’ knife!”
I collected myself and showed a brave front for Dougherty’s benefit, but I was rattled. Part of me wanted retribution. Poole’s head was pressed to the floor but his mouth was still running. I considered kicking him in the face to shut him up.
“What do we do now?” Dougherty asked.
I grabbed the knife and locked it in my wall locker.
Once the knife was locked away, Dougherty released Poole. He wasn’t much of a threat without a weapon.
Poole stormed out of the room and along the balcony, leaving a trail of blood behind. I figured he was headed for Scott’s room. Scott was one of Poole’s boys. I reasoned that Scott would calm Poole down. Dougherty did as well, so neither of us followed him. I headed to Sgt. Moss’s room, while Dougherty reported to Sgt.
Krause. We never figured Poole would double back to the room.
I returned to the room with Sgt. Moss just as Dougherty returned with Sgt. Krause. My wall locker was open and the knife was gone. A scarred bayonet lay at its base. We inferred, from the mangled metal edges, that the door had been pried open with the bayonet. We searched the room, but there was no Poole. There was, however, now a new trail of blood that led down the stairwell.
Sgt. Krause listened to our account of the story and decided to contact the military police. Once we left the room, however, we saw there was no need to make the call—there were already flashing blue lights everywhere. We looked at each other, puzzled, because neither 170
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of us had called the MPs yet. We were even more confused when one of the officers explained the call involved a bleeding victim
. We were relieved, thinking the MPs had found Poole. But it wasn’t Poole who was bleeding.
Sgt. Krause returned to us after meeting with the MPs in the room. He looked pale. “It’s one of the corpsmen from Fox . . . they don’t know what happened yet. They found him on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood.”
Dougherty and I looked at each other in horror. We both thought Poole was responsible.
Sgt. Krause asked us to wait in our room until he returned with the captain, so we made our way back upstairs. We were so busy babbling about the drama that we didn’t even see him when we opened the door. Poole! I couldn’t believe it. He was sitting nonchalantly on the edge of his rack, fiddling with the new bandage on his calf. I glanced around the room, then to his leg, then to his gear.
There was no knife.
Dougherty was poised for round two. I was poised for an exit.
Poole broke the ice. “Y’all can chill the fuck out. Doc Price hooked me up.”
We looked at him intently and tried to put the pieces together.
Poole calmly peeled back the bandage to peek at his wounds. He didn’t look like he had just stabbed someone. I wondered why he had returned and why he was so at ease.
The truth was that Poole had been angry and afraid, but he was no murderer. We later learned that the Fox corpsman had slit his wrist. Poole had had nothing to do with it. In fact, he’d been getting first aid from Doc Price while we were looking for him. That didn’t change my hostility and resentment toward Poole. Dougherty was a bit more understanding, but then again the knife hadn’t been against his throat.
By the time Capt. Bounds arrived with Sgt. Krause, Poole was engaged in rational conversation about the ordeal. He was even re-morseful. I, on the other hand, did not feel forgiveness was in order.
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were more influenced by his behavior after the assault than his actions during it. In the tranquility of the aftermath Poole didn’t seem threatening. In fact he looked pitiful. In the end Capt. Bounds decided that going to war was worse punishment than going to jail.
Poole boarded the bus to the airport with us in the early morning hours of 26 December.
As the wheels of the TWA airliner rolled to a stop, ending our twelve-hour journey, we heard the chipper voice of the flight attendant crackle over the intercom. “Welcome to Saudi Arabia, Marines.
On behalf of the captain, crew, and all of America, we thank you for your service to our country. We wish you a safe tour of duty and a speedy return home.”
Her voice was cheery and confident. It made me feel confident, too, like this was just the first leg of a round-trip flight. I watched her from the rear of the plane helping the forwardmost Marines to exit, and appreciated her upbeat attitude. The side window over the wing allowed me to watch them make their way down the stairs and onto the tarmac. The first Marines on the ground huddled around three mass-transit buses parked beside the plane. The buses looked the same as those back home in the States, except for the Arabic writing that stretched from the front wheels to the rear. They seemed very out of place in the desert—there were no streets. All that lay beyond the airport was an ocean of sand. It looked barren, des-olate, and hot . . . a virtual wasteland. The visual prompted me to fill my canteens.
I filled them in the small kitchenette that separated coach from first class. That was where we kept several five-gallon jugs of water that helped us stay hydrated during the flight. I was anxious to fill up and get out, but the water jugs were near empty and the water had slowed to a trickle. I needed the water, so I held out for the last drop. As the last Marines made their way out of the plane the cabin quieted. That was when I heard it—the sound of a woman sobbing.
I turned the corner and looked forward beyond the first-class 172
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curtain to see the flight attendant—without her façade. She never saw me. She was focused on her reflection in her handheld mirror as she wiped the smudged eyeliner streaming from her tears. Her sudden emotion made the moment very real to me. I wondered how many men she had welcomed to war, and how many more were on the way. I wondered how many would return in the plush chairs of the comfortable cabin . . . and how many would return under flag-draped coffins in the cold cargo hold.
SEVEN
27 DECEMBER 1990
“I THOUGHT THE DESERT was supposed to be hot, Gunny!” I said.
The absence of humidity, combined with a strong breeze blowing across the tarmac, gave me the false sense that the desert would be tolerable.
Gunny Brandt put his arm around me as I reached the last step.
“Do the words any clime or place mean anything to you, Lance Corporal?”
I recognized the words from “The Marines’ Hymn—” “We have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun”—and continued on my way with a halfhearted smile. By mid afternoon I’d experience the hottest day of my life to that point, not knowing that this was still considered the cool season by Saudi standards.
Skin-blistering one-hundred-ten-degree days would be the norm in a matter of weeks.
As I continued past, Gunny Brandt kicked me in the ass. “That’s for being last. Now get over there and start loading seabags!”
I dropped my carry-on bag next to the last bus in the column and marveled at the efficiency of the human chain of Marines that linked the belly of the plane to the undercarriage of the bus. Our seabags flowed along methodically, passed from one Marine to another, until they made it to the stack under the bus. I took my place in the camouflage conveyor belt next to Sgt. Krause.
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“Are we going to pick up the LAVs right from here?”
More than a month had passed since we had loaded them on the ship.
Sgt. Krause kept the momentum of seabags flowing. “There’s no word on the LAVs yet.”
“So where are we headed?”
Sgt. Krause seemed annoyed by my curiosity. “We’re going to a central staging area in Jubail . . . I’ll give everyone in the platoon a brief when we get there.”
As we waited to board the bus, I noticed that our driver was an Arab. He was dressed in traditional garb, including a long robe, san-dals, and a black-and-white checkered wrap that draped over his head. He stood outside the bus doors and watched intently until all of the bags were loaded. Then he turned his attention to Gunny Brandt, whose MacArthur-like presence identified him as one of our unit leaders. He stared at the gunny and waited for him to issue the order to start boarding.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Gunny Brandt said.
The Arab didn’t need an interpreter to understand the insolence.
He held the stare for an extra moment to save face, then acquiesced and took his position in the driver’s seat. He remained at the wheel, eyes focused on the overhead mirror, as the long line of Marines formed at the door. I found Sgt. Moss and Dougherty at the end of the line and waited with them. Nagel and Draper waited just in front of us, entertaining each other with a show-and-tell exchange of comfort items in their carry-on bags. Nagel’s Playboy magazines got the most attention, followed by Draper’s boom box radio.
Draper high-fived Nagel. “Yeah, baby! These rag-head motherfuckers can kiss my ass!”
Draper was as politically uncouth as they came, but we all shared his resentment of the official ban on all things American. During our Culture and Customs brief we had learned the dos and the don’ts while serving in Saudi. The CO explained that we were expected to conform to the cultural norms when in public. Porn was a don’t.
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were a major don’t. Few of us were familiar enough with Middle East politics to understand why.
We had no idea how rigid the Saudis were about such things. It didn’t take long for us to figure it out.
The cheers rolled through the line like a wave as the first Marines to board unfurled Old Glory outside our bus, its top corners held by two center windows which were closed against the fabric.
I had never felt as loyal to the American flag as I did when I saw it hanging there. But I had never felt as protective of it as I did when the Arab stormed off of the bus and tried to pull it down. He would have succeeded if he hadn’t been intercepted by Gunny Brandt.
The gunny stood between the Arab and our flag. “What’s your problem?”
The driver pointed to the flag and mumbled something in Arabic.
Gunny Brandt didn’t get it. He ordered the Arab back to his driver seat.
The Arab didn’t budge.
Then a small, skinny Marine poked his head from the window of the bus and interpreted. “He says he will not drive if we fly the American flag. . . . He says it’s against his government’s wishes.”
The lanky Marine was Lance Cpl. Haley. He was a former Fox Company scout who had studied Arabic in college.
Gunny Brandt looked at the Arab with disdain and pointed to the label US MARINES sewed onto his camouflage jacket. Condescendingly he said, “U . . . S . . . MARINES. The US stands for United States . . . as in America.”
Gunny was a patriotic zealot, scorned.
“You know America, right? How about Desert Shield? We’re the only reason your country wasn’t annexed by Iraq! If it weren’t for us you’d be Saddam’s little bitch right now!”
The gunny worked himself, and us, into an anti-Saudi frenzy. We cheered him on as he faced off with the Arab driver.
“The flag stays!”
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The driver turned and bolted to the next bus forward.
After a few minutes Capt. Cruz arrived and rained on our parade. He met privately with Gunny Brandt and laid down the law.
The gunny returned to the bus defeated, pulled the colors down, and tucked them under his arm. He hated to lose.
Gunny Brandt got a running start and leapt from the ground onto the top step of bus. His approach startled the driver, who leaned away in a protective posture. He grabbed each of the poles at the front of the bus, leaned back, and roared an exaggerated
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