Spare Parts

by Buzz Williams

  I stood up cautiously and squinted into the glare of the sunlight through my fogged lenses. Up above, on the ledge of the trench, Staff Sgt. Rodriguez waved us back to the entrance. As I slid my thumb under the bottom of my mask, the briny fluid drained down my neck and chest, making room for my first breaths of fresh air. I swaggered back toward the staff sergeant, still wearing my armor.

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  Of all my accomplishments in the Marine Corps to that day, none compared to the unparalleled honor of Staff Sgt. Rodriguez’s handshake at the trench. I had finally become a warrior. Not a boot camp warrior, or weekend warrior, or spare part warrior—a warrior.

  The truck ride back to Tent City the next day provided plenty of time to reflect on my time in the field. In the grand scheme of things it had merely been nine days of training. But it was nine days of realistic training—active-duty training. Our time with Staff Sgt. Rodriguez and his instructors had closed the gap between the reservists in us and the active-duty infantrymen in us. It was a metamorphosis in terms of attitude and appearance. We had left Tent City as naive anxious college kids with scrubbed bodies and laundered uniforms.

  We returned cocky, confident grunts with battered bodies and salt-stained uniforms.

  As soon as the truck stopped, I jumped out and headed straight for the shitter. Like most of the Marines in the company I had been working through a vicious case of diarrhea. Doc Price, our platoon medic, figured that we hadn’t washed our hands properly after wiping our asses in the field, so that fecal matter had ultimately found its way back into our mouths when we handled our food. All I knew was that when my bowels started rumbling I only had minutes to release, which was a lot easier in the desert than it was in the bed of the truck. I had been holding back the dam in my guts for the last thirty minutes of the ride. As soon as the wheels stopped rolling I bailed out of the back and hit the head.

  I slammed open the door to the shitter and stormed inside. A wide-eyed private jumped from his seat when he heard my raucous approach. I recklessly dropped my gas mask and rifle on the deck, plucked the buttons on my fly, and forced my pants to my ankles.

  As soon as I touched down the nuclear explosion detonated beneath me. Things didn’t just fall, they shot out. There was a noxious combination of gas and fluid and droppings that splattered, plopped, S P A R E P A R T S

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  and splashed. The stench rose instantaneously. I moaned and groaned and pushed like a mother giving birth.

  After the first wave of cramps passed I looked over at the Marine next to me, who looked like he had just stepped off the bus. He had an awkward, embarrassed look on his face. His uniform was clean, his boots polished, and he smelled of soap and shampoo. I stared at him blatantly because, quite frankly, he was an anomaly. His face wasn’t sunburned. His lips were not chapped. There were no bags under his eyes, or goggle rings around his eyes, or sand trapped in his eyes—or caked in his ears, or nose, or mouth, for that matter. His hands were not cracked, or blistered, or bleeding. . . . I didn’t see a single scab. His boots were black, and his skin was white, and his uniform did not smell of sweat, gunpowder, and shit. He was quite a sight.

  As he rushed to finish he glanced over as if to question my stare, but he left without an explanation from me. It was just as well, because I didn’t know if I could have explained it anyway. I sat for the longest time, in that grotesque head, thinking back to how I had acted, looked, and smelled just days before when I stepped off the bus. It seemed like such a long time ago.

  Sgt. Krause understood that rest and relaxation were just what we needed. We were afforded seventy-two hours of uninterrupted personal time before the basewide stand-to order on 14 January—the eve of the UN deadline for Iraqi troops to evacuate Kuwait. We slept through most of the twelfth. I probably would have slept through all of it if Sgt. Moss hadn’t waked me to make our phone calls home.

  The three-mile hike to the phone center provided plenty of time to banter. I rambled nonstop about the proposal letter. I burned Sgt.

  Moss’s ear all the way to the phones, worrying and wondering whether Gina had received it, and if she had, whether she would accept. All the worry was for naught. When I got through on the phone to her, she told me she had received it. And she did accept.

  It was exactly the news that I needed. With the deadline 204

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  approaching quickly, there was no doubt in my mind that we would participate in the offensive. All that anyone talked about back at camp was the pending gloom and doom on the horizon. The hottest topics included the casualty rates among the infantry troops on the ground, the likelihood that Saddam would use chemical and biological weapons on us, and the overwhelming numbers of Iraqi troops and armor that waited across the border.

  The climate was somber and morbid, to say the least. But Gina’s acceptance buffered the pessimism, and shielded my consciousness from considering the unthinkable. That was priceless peace of mind.

  The 15 January deadline came and passed peacefully. The six-teenth did as well. But peace ended at 0300 on 17 January when we heard the first sorties thunder overhead. We lay awake until sunrise listening to the hum up above and preparing mentally for our roles down below. As anticipated, Capt. Cruz called us to formation at 0600 and delivered the news. Operation Desert Storm had begun.

  The offensive was under way. And so were we.

  We repeated the routine from our first departure for the field. It was a lot easier the second time around. We loaded our packs on the five-ton truck and formed two columns that lined the dusty road leading out of Tent City. I guessed that we were humping back out to our dreaded defensive positions. Although we started on the same familiar road, a few hundred meters into the hump we turned and headed in a different direction. No one challenged the devia-tion. One location in the desert sucked just as much as the next. It just didn’t matter.

  Then without warning we stopped. We stood in place and watched as the CO continued forward to the crest of a sand dune up ahead. Capt. Cruz looked pleased with what he saw, and soon the platoon commanders joined him on the top of the hill. Sgt. Krause followed the other platoon sergeants as well. They stood and pointed and scanned with their binoculars. Then they stood and pointed some more. Our curiosity was thoroughly piqued by the time Capt. Bounds and Sgt. Krause rejoined us, but they wouldn’t tell what they had seen. They wanted us to see for ourselves, so they led us up the dune.

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  The first Marines to reach the top stopped and looked too. Then they disappeared over the top of the dune. Then other Marines followed quickly to see for themselves. The column continued to move faster and faster as Marines disappeared over the crest, until we had all broken into a run.

  When I hit the top of the dune I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought it was a mirage. Our company was scattered along the downward slope. There in the flatlands below was the greatest sight any infantryman could ever see. Wheels. And LAVs were attached to the wheels . . . Six platoons’ worth of LAVs, to be exact.

  EIGHT

  29 JANUARY 1991

  THE UNCHARACTERISTIC RADIO CHATTER blasted inside my helmet and roused me enough that I sat up in the cramped driver’s compartment, sure that I had missed the cue to start our engine. We started the engine every four hours, for thirty minutes, to keep the batteries charged. The glow from my wristwatch showed only 2200, which meant we had two more hours to sleep before our start-up.

  As I lay back down atop my flak-jacket mattress, I keyed the microphone on my helmet and called to Dougherty, who was monitor-ing the radio traffic on fire watch. “What the fuck is all the noise about, Dougherty?”

  He snapped, “Get off the intercom, Will! I think we’re about to stand to . . .”

  Before he even finished I was asleep, but not for long.

  The next thing I heard was Dougherty’s call inside the hull.

  “Stand to!
Stand to! Take a NAP pill and go to MOPP Level Four!”

  Stand to meant engagement with the enemy was likely, which was scary enough. But the call for a Nerve Agent Protection pill, combined with MOPP Level Four was terrifying. Going into the Mission-Oriented Protective Posture meant we were under imminent threat of attack by biological or chemical weapons. The NAP

  pill meant the threat included exposure to nerve gas.

  Practice was over. It was game time.

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  I held my breath while I pushed a NAP pill through the foil lining of the plastic strip and popped it in my mouth. In a matter of seconds my mask was on and my canteen was plugged into the drinking tube. But the mask and the pill offered little guarantee of survival. The gas mask was only MOPP Level One. MOPP Level Four required special boots, gloves, trousers, and jacket. The first and last time I wore the whole suit had been during Capt. Ricks’s class back at Lejeune. There was no time to think about his class, or review notes, or to discuss the steps with a partner, or any of the luxuries afforded during training. It was time to act.

  I reached back behind my head and pulled the plastic bundle that held my MOPP gear onto my lap. Then I shoved it up through the driver’s hatch onto the top of the LAV engine compartment. As I pulled myself up and out of the hatch, I gripped the plastic tightly, careful not to let it slip from my hands into the pitch-black void beyond our vehicle. Once topside I glanced around to see what was happening outside the LAV. Dougherty was climbing out of the gunner’s hatch with his bag in hand. Cpl. Shane and Haley assembled on the port side of the LAV. Doc Price was wriggling inside his sleeping bag like a caterpillar struggling to break free from its cocoon.

  Nagel was spazzing inside the turret. “Where’s my goddamned MOPP suit? It was right here! Who took my fucking MOPP suit?”

  Shaking my head, I climbed down the side of the hull to link up with Cpl. Shane, my designated MOPP buddy. Once I hit the sand, Nagel emerged from his hatch, suit in one hand, gas mask in the other. He panicked when he looked down at the seven of us wearing our masks. He was still sucking unfiltered air. It would have been funny had it been training. Under life-and-death circumstances it was just pathetic.

  To show my composure I pulled my Ka-Bar knife from its sheath and carefully sliced my way through the protective bag that held Cpl. Shane’s MOPP suit, just the way Capt. Ricks had taught us.

  Just as I started lacing my protective boots over my regular boots I looked up to see Nagel tugging furiously at both ends of his MOPP

  suit bag. It soon burst, sending the pieces of his suit everywhere.

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  Some were on top of the LAV, some under the LAV, and some landed in Dougherty’s pile. Nagel was so frantic that he started a tug of war with Dougherty over a protective boot.

  Fortunately Dougherty was strong enough to pull Nagel onto his face. Then in true Dougherty fashion he stopped dressing until he found Nagel’s missing boot. Dougherty was a far better man than I.

  Had Nagel been my MOPP buddy I would have let him low-crawl through the sand to find his own gear.

  Once dressed we boarded the LAV, pulled our helmets over our hooded heads, and listened to instructions. Black Six, the radio designation for Capt. Cruz’s vehicle, called all crewmen to stand by for a short count. That was the audio countdown—three, two, one—

  which synchronized our start-up. The procedure was designed so enemy troops within listening range could not count individual engine starts, and consequently identify the number of vehicles in our unit.

  After the short count I yelled, “Fire in the hole!” and flicked the switch that brought the engine to life. The engine and radio chatter left me virtually deaf to Nagel’s calls from above. It was difficult to hear anything recessed down inside the driver’s compartment. The thump on my helmet got my attention, though. Nagel crouched down and yelled into my face as I stood on my seat.

  “I didn’t tell you to start the engine! Why did you start the engine?”

  “Black Six ordered a short count!”

  Nagel clenched his jaw and ran back to check with Dougherty, who confirmed the short count.

  Then Nagel stormed back to yell some more. “Take your NAP

  pill!”

  I was annoyed. My shit was together. “I already took it!”

  His order caught me off guard. “I said take it now . . . I have to see you take it.”

  That was bullshit—another Nagel power trip! With no idea about the effect of a double dose I shook my head no and repeated, “I already took it!”

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  My refusal sent Nagel over the edge and he called me out of the LAV. Pissed that I had to leave the radio to deal with Nagel’s non-sense, I removed my helmet, threw it onto the open hatch, and pressed myself up onto the engine compartment. Just as I gained my balance I looked up into the barrel of Nagel’s M16. Unbelievable.

  He ordered me again, this time at rifle point. “Take your NAP

  pill! Now!”

  His absolute insanity infuriated me. I knew that he was a piss-poor leader, but under the stress of combat he had become a certifi-able lunatic. My reaction was just as idiotic.

  I charged forward, ramming my chest into the barrel, screaming,

  “Go ahead and shoot me, motherfucker! Go ahead and shoot!”

  My charge drove him back a step. Then I used my forearm to knock his rifle out of the way.

  I grabbed the material at his collar with both fists and bellowed as loud as I could, “I told you I took the pill! Do you hear me? I took the fucking pill!”

  Completely flabbergasted with his breakdown, I released him, turned my back on his rifle, and returned to the sanctity of my driver’s compartment. Once in the confines of my hole I had my own conniption, pounding the steering wheel, stomping the deck, and raging inside my mask. I cursed Sgt. Krause for separating me from Sgt. Moss and forcing me under Nagel’s thumb.

  He stuck it to me every chance he got. The latest, in a litany of beefs I had with him, was my assignment as driver. Dougherty had complained that he was too tall to fit comfortably in the driver’s tunnel, so Nagel switched us, even though I was the better gunner.

  Between rants I heard Capt. Cruz over the radio, which diverted my attention back to driving. Iraqi armor was rolling our way, and at least one active-duty LAV company was engaging them. Engines raced by as LAVs advanced. Our moment of truth had finally arrived. Dougherty fumbled with the ratchet to upload rounds. Nagel slapped a belt of ammunition onto the feeder of the machine gun.

  Cpl. Shane briefed the scouts and issued ammunition. Black Six’s frazzled commands faded in and out of my helmet. My heart raced, S P A R E P A R T S

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  my chest heaved, and I repeated my silent prayer into my mask—

  God help us all.

  LAVs roared on our left and right as Nagel’s overanxious voice blasted into my helmet. “Move out! Let’s go!”

  My foot remained on the brake as I called back to Cpl. Shane on the intercom, “Are the scouts aboard?”

  Cpl. Shane called back, “Wait one! Doc is looking for his sleeping bag!”

  Nagel cut in, “Goddammit! Get him the fuck in here! Now!

  We’re pulling out!”

  Doc Price was the thorn in the foot of our crew. He was dead weight, a complainer, and a pussy through and through. What pissed me off most about him was that he never assimilated into our grunt world. Most navy corpsmen fit in so well, it was difficult to tell them apart from the Marine infantrymen, but not Doc Price. He was a prima donna. Doc refused to dig his own fighting holes or to serve fire watch. He argued that he was supposed to be kept from harm’s way. It was a fight we let him win for the sake of our safety.

  None of us was confident that he could keep watch for enemy contact or fire. Doc’s ineptitude always bit us in the ass. Now the rest of the comp
any was rolling off into a firefight as he was crawling around looking for his sleeping bag.

  Nagel was no longer screaming about Doc. He had turned his attention to Dougherty, who was having radio comm problems.

  Dougherty was screaming into his microphone that his comm was down, that he couldn’t hear anything. Nagel was screaming just as loud into his mike, “Dougherty, can you hear me? Dougherty?

  Dougherty!”

  Finally, after removing and reinstalling the comm cables, Dougherty was back on-line.

  That gave Cpl. Shane enough time to drag Doc and his bag inside. “Troops are in!”

  Next I heard Dougherty’s voice in my helmet for the first time.

  “Permission to cycle the ghost round?”

  “Cycle!” Nagel replied.

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  Cycling the ghost round was the procedure that involved firing the main gun once to move the empty link through the feeder and place a live round in the chamber. If performed properly, there was no risk of misfiring. But I knew Nagel was too impatient to read through the gunner’s checklist to assist Dougherty. The checklist was to be read by the VC and gunner before firing, like a copilot and pilot before takeoff. Nagel should have called out, “Turret powered up?” After which Dougherty should have responded, “Check!”

  Instead I heard Dougherty’s frustrated curses as he banged and clanked his way through the power-up procedures. There was only so much I could do to help from the driver’s tunnel. The most I could do was reach into the tangle of metal and wires to double-check the switches were in the right positions, the chutes were fastened properly, and the rounds were loaded correctly.

  There was little time for a thorough check. As I slithered back into the driver’s seat I called over the intercom to Dougherty, “Make sure you’re on single shot.” Dougherty appreciated reminders.