Spare Parts

by Buzz Williams

  alarm had sounded and ran my own personal mock drill.

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  I lay in the cot on my back, completely dressed, rifle by my side, and at the position of attention. After I imagined that the alarm sounded, the first thing I did was hold my breath. Before even standing I pulled my gas mask from its carrier, fitted it over my head, blew the bad air out, and sucked in to seal it to my face. Then I slipped into my flak jacket, punched my arms through my H-harness, and snapped the buckle on my war belt. Lastly, I dumped my helmet on my head, snatched my rifle from the cot, and headed out the exit of the tent. The whole procedure took only seconds.

  I repeated that mock drill dozens of times. Unlike the compulsive drill repetitions I had done during peacetime training, no one bothered to tease me now. They were too busy with their own affairs.

  Some prayed, some exercised, some read, and some tuned out the war with their Walkman headphones. Sgt. Moss did none of the above. He watched everyone else—especially me. He had seen me studying compulsively before at LAV school, but that was nothing compared to what he saw that night. He didn’t interrupt me, not that it would have mattered. I was hell bent on getting the drill down to an exact science.

  He, on the contrary, was more concerned with the challenge of falling asleep with the lights on. During one of my breaks between drills I noticed he had succeeded. In fact everyone else in the company had succeeded. They were all fast asleep. I sat on the edge of my cot and tried to convince myself sleep was a good idea. I had completed the series of steps countless times, and believed the process of waking would only add a few seconds onto my time. A few extra seconds seemed trivial when I looked over at Sgt. Moss, who was snoring away in the comfort of his boxers. I lay back, as I had during practice so many times before, and prayed that the next sound I would hear would be reveille instead of the alarm.

  God wasn’t answering prayers that New Year’s Eve. The alarm sounded faintly in the distance, unlike the piercing whine I remembered from training. It was so faint that I second-guessed my ears 186

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  and remained horizontal. By the time Sgt. Moss kicked my rack to jar me from my slumber he already had his trousers and boots on.

  Dougherty was already masked. That wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. I was going to be the first awake . . . the first in my mask . . . the first out the door. I continued to lie, listening to the voices in my head send me deeper and deeper into a panicked funk.

  Finally I sat up without thinking, without holding my breath, and without grabbing my mask. I watched, stupefied, as the gas mask carrier fell to the floor. I looked down but couldn’t make my arms reach to pick it up. My arms seemed like they weighed a thousand pounds, and the bag morphed before my eyes. I rubbed my eyes, looked across the tent, and rubbed my eyes again. I hoped I was hallucinating. The alternative meant it was too late. The alarm seemed to grow louder.

  Streaks of green canvas melted and ran like wax down a candle-stick. Everyone around me moved in slow motion, like we were un-derwater. All the while the Marines’ shouts blended with the siren, slowed in my ears, and distorted like a record playing on slow speed.

  Then, just when I thought it was too late . . . the actual siren sounded, waking me from my nightmare.

  There was no sleeping through the real siren. It ripped through our ears like a chainsaw. My plan worked just as I had practiced. It was nothing like my dream. I was breathing comfortably in my mask before my boots touched the floor. I stood up and surveyed the rest of the platoon. Most were in various states of undress.

  Dougherty was pulling his boots on. Nagel was fastening his flak.

  Cpl. Shane and Lance Cpl. Haley were using the buddy system to unroll their protective hoods. Sgt. Moss was in his mask . . . and in his underwear.

  We helped each other mask and dress, and then headed out single file through the rear of the tent, into the dank night air, toward our hole. We walked with our hands on each other’s shoulders to keep from separating. The blackout conditions, combined with the fog in our masks from the condensation of our breath, had left us virtually blind. When I felt Sgt. Moss’s shoulders drop from my S P A R E P A R T S

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  hands, I placed my feet together and jumped into the black hole below. I landed on Sgt. Moss’s heels. Dougherty landed on mine. The sensation of cold and wet started at my knees and seeped down into my boots. It had rained the past two nights and there was a foot of water in the bottom of the pit. We picked up our boots from the suc-tion of the muck, migrated toward the center of the hole, and made room for the others who had yet to take the plunge.

  Once everyone was in, Capt. Bounds started a head count. He touched the Marine in front of him and said, “I’m one . . . you’re two.” Then that Marine touched another and repeated the count.

  “I’m two . . . you’re three.” It was difficult to speak and hear through the gas mask, especially with all the splashing and crashing in the icy water of the pit. When the last Marine was accounted for, Capt.

  Bounds offered muffled reassurance through the filters of his mask,

  “Ooh rah, First Platoon! Everyone made it.”

  It seemed like we waited for an eternity in the hole—shivering and shaking, cursing and complaining, hoping and praying. Until that point all of my focus had been on preparing to enter the hole.

  Once inside I realized why we were there. We were waiting to hear the whistle of an incoming missile. To feel the ground shake from impact. To see the sky light up from an explosion. To smell anything other than the stink of our own breath inside the rubber of our masks. We were waiting to see if we would live or die.

  Finally, after ten minutes, the long-anticipated call ended our suspense.

  “All clear. . . . All clear . . . All clear!”

  The Marine in front of me didn’t wait to remove his mask. He pulled it off as soon as the all-clear sounded. I removed my mask, too, and turned my face upward to the sky to feel the cool fresh air.

  Then he leaned in close to my face and inquired, “Is that you, Williams?”

  I could tell it was Capt. Bounds. “Yes, sir.”

  He laughed relief as he put his arm around my neck, “Happy fucking New Year, Williams.”

  I leaned in and completed the hug, “Happy fucking New Year, sir.”

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  We found ourselves shivering within the sandy walls of the bomb shelter hole several times over the next two days and nights. We shivered partly from the cold rainwater that pooled at its base, but mostly from the terror we felt, wondering if a gas-laden Scud would come crashing down on us. Despite the fact that no Scuds had actually landed in Tent City, the alarm reminded us it was possible.

  Our imaginations made it probable. Every time the alarm blasted its warning and I leapt into the hole, I hallucinated about the invisible gas working its way under the rubber seal of my mask. Other Marines, too, talked of their hallucinations in the hole. It was a horrible test of our mental strength, and it quickly took its toll on morale. Finally, after six days at Tent City, Capt. Cruz reached his threshold of tolerance playing the waiting game. The status quo was no longer a viable option. Word spread around camp that Capt.

  Cruz planned to move us out of Jubail as soon as possible.

  The evening formation on 2 January was highly anticipated.

  During the day rumors began to spread that our vehicles had arrived in-country. One of the admin Marines from the headquarters tent overheard the officers planning a major troop movement for our company. Our supply Marines reported that a pallet of MREs had arrived, and a five-ton truck was staged on the road adjacent to our company area. The evidence around the company area was compelling—we began to be convinced that the LAVs had finally arrived.

  As we stood in formation waiting for the CO to make the news official, I imagined how different life was going to be with our LAVs. The most important thing
to me was that we have a few days of training time before the 15 January deadline that President Bush had identified as Saddam’s last opportunity to withdraw his troops from Kuwait. The general consensus was he would not withdraw, and that we would quickly switch gears from the defensive mode of Desert Shield to an offensive mode. I knew we had a lot of work to do before we would be ready to launch an offensive attack. None of our crews had even half the proficiency that I had observed during the live-fire demonstration by the Panama veterans S P A R E P A R T S

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  in LAV school. Our most experienced crewmen, like Nagel and Draper, only had a few weekends of LAV driving and firing experience. The majority of our crewmen, like myself, had no experience with them outside of LAV school. But the Fox scouts were most disadvantaged. They had never even heard the engine run. I worked hard to put those thoughts behind me and look forward to tomorrow’s opportunities—training, purpose, and an end to the waiting.

  Capt. Cruz called the company to attention and shared his news.

  “Marines, as many of you know, tonight will be our last night in the rear.”

  Sgt. Krause interjected a motivational “Ooh rah.”

  The rest of the company echoed their approval and returned with a collective “Ooh rah!”

  Capt. Cruz continued, “I didn’t bring you men halfway around the world to wait around for Scuds to drop on us—”

  The company interrupted again with more ooh-rah accolades, as if the CO were delivering his very own State of the Union speech.

  “So we’re headed out to the field tomorrow to train . . .”

  Busy anticipating, I nearly missed what he actually said.

  I turned to Dougherty. “Did he just say without our LAVs? ”

  Dougherty closed his eyes in disbelief and nodded yes.

  Then the CO lowered the boom. “The vehicles are still at sea, and we don’t know when they will arrive. . . .”

  Sgt. Krause asked the most poignant question in the exchange that followed, “What will our mission be after the deadline without the LAVs?”

  Capt. Cruz’s response was predictable. “As of now we are a rifle company, and we’ll train as a rifle company. . . . If the LAVs arrive, we’ll train as an LAV company.”

  It was that simple. That quick. We were no longer LAV crewmen. We were 0311 grunts. That meant humping instead of riding.

  It meant a return to those loathsome days of drill before LAV

  school. It meant we would relive those brutal days in the mountains of Camp Pendleton. It meant enduring extreme weather, sleep 190

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  deprivation, digging holes, holes, and more goddamned holes . . .

  and humping.

  To my knowledge, in any other branch of the service, the loss of a company’s vehicles would have been a showstopper. That was not the case in the Marine Corps. As soon as we landed on the yellow footprints, we learned that every Marine is first and foremost a rifleman. That meant a pilot without a plane became a rifleman. The engineer whose bulldozer finished dozing was a rifleman. We were all riflemen. Military policemen. Mechanics. Air-traffic controllers.

  Electricians. Radiomen. Even the admin pogues—all riflemen.

  To say that we were crushed was an understatement. I couldn’t even fathom the implications.

  Capt. Cruz understood that we were upset, and he ordered the platoon commanders to give us the night off to come to grips with our new lots in life.

  “Give your Marines a night to rest,” he said. “They’ll need it for the hump tomorrow—all eighteen miles of it.”

  We were livid. I spent the better part of the night participating in the platoon tantrum that followed the formation.

  The next morning I stood crunched over with fifty pounds of gear on my back, stuffed from the crow that I had eaten for breakfast, prepared to take the first step of our eighteen-mile excursion. I was still raging inside. We were all raging. Then the infantry gods descended on us and blessed us with good news.

  Gunny Koffman shocked us with his order. “Platoon sergeants!

  Ground those packs and get them loaded on the truck!”

  Then the news got even better. We learned that the gunny planned to use the truck as a troop transport shuttle to relay back and forth between our field position and our hump position. We loaded the packs on the truck in record time, determined to send it on its way before the gunny changed his mind, or before the CO

  changed it for him.

  As the truck disappeared into the dusty distance, we made the final adjustments on our clothing and gear. Even though I had embarked upon dozens of humps in the Marines, this one was like no other. We weren’t just filling time on a training schedule. We S P A R E P A R T S

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  weren’t just building stamina. We weren’t just trying to get to class in a remote location. We were preparing to march off into combat.

  It felt like it, smelled like it, sounded like it, and looked like it. The scene reminded me of the barren wastelands in the movie Road Warrior.

  The Marines in Second Platoon plodded away alongside us, in full combat gear, amid gigantic clouds of white dust that swirled around them like a miniature nebula. They trudged through ankle-deep sand as the earthy powder worked its way upward, covering their boots and trousers above the knee. Some carried rifles, but most wore them slung across their backs. In either instance the rifles were dirt encrusted from barrel to stock—so much that I doubted they would even fire without being punched with a rifle bore. That’s what our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth would have looked like if they had not been completely covered.

  Each of us wore a tan wrap draped over our heads, ears, and necks, much like the Saudi headdress, with tan bandannas around our faces like the cowboys in old Western movies, pulled over our noses and tied behind our heads. Both the wraps and bandannas were held in place by oversized tinted goggles. Our apparel had nothing to do with fashion or style, as it often had during training back in the States. It now had everything to do with survival. Without the wraps our ears would cake with sand and our necks would blister. Without the bandanna it was impossible to breathe. Without the goggles it was impossible to see. We were living testimonials to the message scribbled on the wall back at Staff Sgt. Bader’s issue point, WITHOUT SUPPLY YOU WILL DIE.

  Six miles into the hump, the truck returned to load me and the other Marines of First Platoon for transport to the forward area. It was a slow, arduous, bumpy ride in the back of the truck, but no one dared to complain. The truck was a godsend. I thought about the other platoons back in the sand as we slowed to a halt. We had been on the road for nearly an hour. They were still humping. Poor bastards.

  When I arrived I saw a pile of packs, a squad of Marines, and brown flatlands as far as the eye could see. That was it. That was 192

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  our forward area. There were no trails. There were no identifiable land features. It was like floating in the middle of the ocean, only surrounded by sand instead of water. Even after our entire company arrived, we would occupy no more than a speck on the map. It didn’t seem there was anything productive we could do in the area.

  There was nothing to attack, or protect from attack. I had a queasy feeling nothing good would come from it.

  Sgt. Krause gathered us together as we landed. Our mission was to occupy a defensive position and forward any information about enemy activity up the chain of command for submission to battalion intelligence. Translated, that meant we were going to dig holes, get inside, and wait. Day One was bearable because of the novelty of our new mission and tolerance for the sand. Both faded quickly.

  Sunrise of Day Two started with the unwelcome command,

  “Reveille!” I popped the first button on my sleeping bag and poked my head out. My chin scraped along the frozen dew from the icy night air. After sampling what was waiting for me, I quickly drew back inside my toasty bag. Reluctantly, I reached down to the pocket of space
at my feet to collect my uniform. Everything I needed to wear remained with me inside my sleeping bag, which kept it warm, dry, and scorpion free. Once I had my trousers and blouse on, I stepped out into the freezing air. The frozen layer of moisture atop the sand crunched under my boots as I took a few steps, stretched, and then returned to my bag for my field jacket.

  In the distance I could hear Lance Cpl. Haley’s raspy Long Island accent approaching as he made his way from sleeping bag to sleeping bag, kicking the still ones to wake the heavy sleepers, and yelling into the moving ones to speed up the slow dressers. “Thirty minutes to fall in!”

  Waking in the field was nothing new to me. During our training in the woods I had developed a routine. The first order of business was the head call. Afterward I’d use a canteen cup of water to shave and brush my teeth, then baby wipes to wash the critical areas. If all went according to schedule, I would have a few minutes to eat an MRE. Well, that was my routine in the woods, anyway. I had never S P A R E P A R T S

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  awakened in a desert before, with the sandman as my mate. It didn’t take long for the romance between us to end.

  He clung to my genitals as I straddled the piss trench for the first mission of the day, itching and grinding against me as I made my way back to my pack. He slithered about in the shaving cream, which dulled my razor and chafed my face. He hitchhiked onto the bristles of my toothbrush for a tour between my teeth and under my gums. He embedded himself into the fabric of the wipes, making its once-soft texture feel like pumice. He swam in the stagnant water inside my canteen, and sank in the quicksand mush of my MRE

  breakfast. There was no escape from the sandman, in either time or space, and I hated him for it.