Spare Parts

by Buzz Williams

  “I left my post because we were under fire and couldn’t identify the shooters! And because I couldn’t raise you on the radio . . .

  couldn’t maneuver to take cover . . . and didn’t want to take a rocket up the ass! But mostly because I thought you needed us more than we needed you! Why else wouldn’t you answer our calls for help?”

  Inside the driver’s compartment I was cheering. Let that cocky sono-fabitch have it!

  “So again. Radios up, Platoon Sergeant?”

  Krause knew he was fucked, but tried to save himself.

  “You abandoned your post under fire! Why did you abandon your post under fire?”

  “I’m asking the fucking questions,” Sgt. Moss replied. “We both know what happened here tonight. Do you really want to point fingers?”

  “It’s your word against mine! And your word doesn’t hold a lot of weight—”

  “No,” I said stepping forward. “It’s your word against ours.”

  The rest of our crew rallied behind Sgt. Moss.

  We waited on full alert at Red Four’s position until first light, when Capt. Cruz began his investigation. After several hours of searching, questioning, and consulting with local authorities, the CO returned with his findings. One of the buildings to our front was a Kuwaiti jail, holding Palestinian prisoners of war. Overnight, S P A R E P A R T S

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  Palestinian guerrillas had attempted a rescue, engaging the Kuwaiti police in an intense firefight. According to the report we had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time—caught in the crossfire.

  I balked at the theory. There were too many rounds impacting around us to be accidental. Besides, rounds fired from the police station would have shown muzzle flashes. We’d had three sets of night vision goggles looking for bursts of light.

  Sgt. Moss stifled my criticism of the theory, and he was right. Regardless of the origin of fire we had made it through the incident without casualties. Moss reveled as Capt. Cruz offered congratulations.

  “No muzzle flashes . . . no comm . . . and under fire,” Capt. Cruz said. “I would have gotten the hell out of Dodge too!”

  Although Sgt. Moss’s after-action report omitted any mention of Sgt. Krause or his crew falling asleep on watch, he reported the incident to Capt. Bounds the next morning. Nothing would come of it in the way of disciplinary action against Sgt. Krause, but Sgt. Moss had expected that.

  Sgt. Moss was finally at peace with himself. His decisions had saved a city block from annihilation, prevented countless civilian casualties, and brought the entire crew through safely. Most importantly, though, he rose above Sgt. Krause in performance, integrity, and honor before his fellow Marines. It would carry him valiantly through the last days of the war.

  5 MARCH

  We returned to our original position after the investigation, with new respect for our circumstances. Although the ground war was over, we were still in danger. Operation Desert Storm had ended, but our post-ground-war mission had just begun. Our LAVs provided the mobility, speed, armor, and firepower to keep the peace during the civil unrest that followed the Iraqi retreat. Our journey home would be seven weeks away.

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  What we needed was information about our surroundings.

  Dougherty figured the best way to learn the landscape was from a minaret a thousand meters to our right. The narrow concrete tower was used to broadcast Muslim prayers throughout the community.

  Five times per day the unintelligible rambling, chanting, and singing blasted. It was the only structure left untouched by allied bombers.

  Every building around it was destroyed.

  After the minaret speakers fell silent, Dougherty and I humped twenty flights to the top. Clear skies provided a panoramic view, ten miles around—it was an awesome perspective. The LAV looked like a matchbox. Delta Company’s LAVs were positioned around a semicircular stretch of highway. We covered an entire community from the nine o’clock position to three o’clock, with our LAV at nine. At twelve o’clock a six-foot chain-link fence separated us from the highway. The far side was lined with buildings, including the jail. Our company’s position was a sniper’s dream, with hundreds of places from which to fire. We were vulnerable to attack from the right and back as well.

  There was a construction site that stretched several hundred meters to our right, well past Sgt. Krause’s position. That explained the stockpile of steel pipes that had provided cover the night before. Farther behind the pipes was a residential community with several blocks of row homes, but no people. It was a ghost town.

  To our left was an industrial plant, which was the only asset within our sector of responsibility that might have been a target for attack besides us. A twelve-foot concrete wall encircled the plant, except for the guard shack at the entrance. Cars traveled in and out of the plant, and people milled about the guard shack. That was the only sign of life in our area, and it was our next stop after the tower.

  Sgt. Moss and I teamed for the visit to the guard shack, while Dougherty assumed fire-watch duty. Inside the shack we met a jolly Kuwaiti named Jabul. He identified himself as the manager of the plant, which was a water treatment facility.

  “Come in! Come in, my friends. You sit and drink tea,” he said.

  Sgt. Moss took the lead. “You speak English well.”

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  “Not as well as I want, but I try. Now you sit.”

  We sat, and drank, and listened to Jabul’s broken English. During the first thirty minutes he thanked us, praised us, and prayed for us in the name of Allah. I thought it was overkill, until Jabul started telling stories about life under Iraqi rule. He started with the invasion of the second of August. It was the day we graduated from LAV school, when the CO talked about those atrocities I couldn’t relate to, which I hadn’t cared about or understood.

  “The tanks rolled right down the street. . . .” He stood and pointed to the road in front of us. “Trucks too. Big trucks that hold the men. . . .” He walked outside and pointed to the homes behind our position. “The soldiers come and take them. All the men gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” I asked.

  Jabul held his hands up. “Some give up and go into truck.” Then he pretended to shoot an imaginary rifle. “Some run and the soldiers shoot them.”

  “What happened to you, Jabul?” I asked.

  “I am old man. . . . They leave me to work. . . . They need water.”

  Jabul pointed to the community in ruins behind our position.

  “This is where the soldiers stay . . . seven months they stay.”

  Jabul’s tears let us know the worst was yet to come.

  “The women they keep. . . .” He pointed again to the houses.

  “The children they send away. They take all this. They steal it all.

  The big trucks come back to load, and go back to Iraq. Then they come back for more.”

  Sgt. Moss was aghast. “Motherfuckers rolled through here like the Third Reich.”

  Jabul grabbed my arm and pointed onward. “You come. I will show you. . . .”

  Sgt. Moss declined for both of us. “We need to stay here. We’re protecting you, Jabul!”

  Sgt. Moss had no intention of going into the houses behind us.

  “Way too fucking creepy,” he said later. “Not for me.”

  But Jabul had opened Pandora’s box, and the monotony of standing guard, day after day, intensified my curiosity. Eventually I 244

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  wore Sgt. Moss down and he allowed me to search the houses, as long as I took a rifle and a buddy. Cpl. Shane was as restless as I, and up for the adventure, so in we went.

  Sgt. Moss paced nervously as we walked off. “You’ve got thirty minutes! And if you hear the engine start, get your asses back here!”

  We turned into a dead-end alley where the backyards lined each side. The concrete drives were lit
tered with trash, clothes, broken appliances, disabled cars, and broken glass—a ghetto. Most of the windows were shattered, the doors ripped from their hinges.

  Then I saw something move. Cpl. Shane looked at me strangely when I tilted my rifle his way to emphasize clicking the safety off.

  “Why aren’t we talking, Will? You know something I don’t?”

  My rifle led the way through the back door, finger on the trigger.

  Beads of sweat rolled down my face. Don’t be a chickenshit, I thought.

  You’re a Marine, for Christ’s sake. Once inside, a shadow darted in front of me. Immediately I dropped to one knee, sighted in, and scanned the front.

  “What the fuck was that?” I said.

  Cpl. Shane was amused. “It was only a dog, Will. Better let me go first before you shoot the whole place up.”

  Not that it mattered. The place was a pigsty. Food-encrusted plates filled the sink, spilling onto the counters and floor. Flies buzzed, maggots crawled, and mounds of shit steamed on the tile in the sun’s rays. The funk forced us into the living room. Beautifully decorated, the walls were outlined with ornamental crown molding and fancy wallpaper borders. A single couch remained against the far wall, contrasting against carpet matted with shit, mud, and blood. On one of the cushions lay the Koran. Cpl. Shane snapped a photo of me holding it.

  “Remind me to take this on the way out, for Jabul.”

  Cpl. Shane disappeared down the hall while I flipped through the pages.

  “Hey, Will. Take a look at this.”

  “Bedroom?”

  “No. Rape room.”

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  It didn’t sink in right away . . . a mattress on the floor . . . bloody undergarments strewn about . . . lengths of rope for binding hands and feet . . . kerchief gags for muffling screams. It was a nightmare.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Yeah,” Cpl. Shane replied. “Savage bastards.”

  As I walked back toward the living room, a toilet caught my attention. What I wanted was to take a leak, but even the bathroom wasn’t what it seemed. Electrical wires from a chandelier ran along the ceiling, with bare ends dangling into the bathtub. Next to the tub was a homemade device fashioned with batteries and wires. And more rope. A torture chamber for electrocution! The pain and suffering the prisoners had endured was sickening.

  “Cpl. Shane, let’s get back to the LAV. I’ve seen enough.”

  But Cpl. Shane was entranced. He detoured into a small room off the kitchen. The washer and dryer showed it had once been a laundry room. The blood splash on the wall, though, showed that it had been used for executions. The walls and floor were sticky with innards—blood and guts and brains. The grisly scene drove me out into the alley gagging on the stench of death, spitting to rid my mouth of the taste, and blowing to lose the smell.

  Even the unflappable Cpl. Shane was shaken. “Un-fucking-believable!”

  “You got the Koran?”

  “Oh, shit . . .” Cpl. Shane stopped in his tracks.

  “You going back in?”

  “Fuck, no.” he said.

  That was the first and last time I ventured into the houses. The scenes played as vivid nightmares for many nights after. Jabul’s description hadn’t done the suffering of those people justice. Nor had the description that the CO had given us on graduation day. The people of Kuwait had endured much more than I could ever imagine. Seven months of torture, rape, and murder. Did anyone back in the States really understand?

  No one back home feared tanks rolling down Main Street, blasting holes into the local church, bank, and school. Husbands and fathers and brothers didn’t worry about being dragged away from the 246

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  dinner table to be taken prisoner or shot. Children had no fear of being discarded, locked outside, left to pound windows and claw doors while their mothers and sisters screamed inside. Women did not have to fear the hell of being tied, beaten, and raped to death.

  Back home parents worked, children played, and life went on.

  Thank God they didn’t understand.

  12 MARCH

  After a week of twiddling our thumbs and ducking bullets, we said good-bye to Jabul, leaving him and his plant in the hands of the Kuwaiti police. Their return allowed us to move into desert positions on the outskirts of the city, where the soft sand made it easy to dig holes for cover. Our new positions, however, would provide even greater dangers than the firefights in the city.

  We occupied a position in our former battlefield, just outside the city limits. Although the Iraqis were gone, the landscape was still very much alive—and just as deadly. Tanks and mines—bunkers and trenches—grenades and rifles. But we were different. We were no longer afraid. For some the abandoned battlefield was a playground.

  For others it was a museum. And for the misguided, like me, it was a wasteland of combat trophies. Tanks with all their gear, supplies, and rounds. Bunkers with all their rocket launchers, grenades, mortars, rifles, and uniforms. All free to anyone brave enough, or stupid enough, to go inside and claim their prize.

  The desire to get trophies was irrational. Everyone wanted to get his share. Worse yet, there was competition to get the best souvenir.

  That often meant going into harm’s way. But harm’s way didn’t seem very daunting this time through. There were no Iraqis in the turrets, under the bunkers, or inside the trenches. There was no thunder or lightning. The storm had passed. We thought the cease-fire had granted us immunity from death.

  Sgt. Moss had enough sense not to stray far from the vehicle. He wanted an AK-47 to hang in his den as much as the rest of us, but he was disciplined. Not me, though. I walked right out into the mineS P A R E P A R T S

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  fields, climbed up into the tanks, jumped down into the bunkers, and crawled through the trenches. Many of us did. Our balls were bigger than our brains. Day after day the trophies got bigger, and so did the risks.

  Then one night Sgt. Moss called our crew together for the evening brief. “Have a seat, boys. . . . Got some word to pass.”

  He was more subdued than usual.

  “This afternoon a Marine from Bravo Company was killed by a grenade, and another was wounded. Word is they were trophy hunting . . .”

  No one spoke.

  “They were pulling grenades and ammo belts out of an Iraqi armored vehicle. One of the rounds caught the grenade pin and pulled it out. . . . His flak jacket was open. . . . He didn’t have a chance.

  The CO issued an order to stop all scavenging immediately.” Sgt.

  Moss continued. “All the shit we’ve been collecting must be turned in—all of it.”

  We grimaced.

  “You have a one-hour immunity to turn in your shit. Then Capt.

  Bounds and Sgt. Krause are going to inspect.”

  My desire to collect vanished immediately. Reaching over to my sleeping bag, fastened to the outside of the vehicle, I found the strings that kept it rolled. With one tug the bag opened and all of my trophies dropped to the sand. My most prized possessions lay on top—two AK-47 assault rifles with folding stocks. Beneath was an Iraqi helmet, diary, canteen, shoulder patches, and dozens of coins, round casings, and other trinkets—weeks of hunting, buying, and trading.

  Sgt. Moss had no idea I had half of it. Rubbing his hand back and fourth over his head he lamented, “Goddammit, Wee-ams!

  How’s this gonna look?”

  “I thought you said we had immunity,” I answered.

  “I’m pretty sure that doesn’t apply to me. Did you forget about Krause?”

  Dougherty cut in. “Bury it.”

  That’s it! Bury it!

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  While the others dumped their stuff onto the pile, Sgt. Moss and I dug the hole. By the time Sgt. Krause made it to our vehicle, we were clean.

  “So where is it?”

  Sgt. Moss acted aloof. “Where’
s what?”

  “I’ve seen your boys snooping in the field, Moss. Don’t fuck with me.”

  “I have a look-no-touch policy,” Sgt. Moss replied. “There’s nothing here that Uncle Sam didn’t issue.”

  Pissing Sgt. Krause off provided some temporary entertainment.

  The next morning, however, we were buried in depression after attending our first field funeral. Bravo’s position was a few miles from ours, an easy hump. Their base camp, like ours, had abandoned tanks, armored vehicles, bunkers, and trenches. One armored vehicle, though, had a group of Marines clustered around it. Odd, I thought, until I realized it was not just a vehicle. It was the vehicle where the grenade had exploded, and the Marine died. It looked like so many others that I had crawled through.

  We slowed to pay our respects. There were still grenades and belts of ammunition inside. The back hatch was charred black from the blast. Hallowed ground. A few hundred meters ahead Marines formed for the funeral. Along the way I spotted a shiny object in the sand. It looked like a foil wrapper from an MRE, and I nearly dismissed it as trash. Far from trash, it was the mangled ID tag of the dead Marine. I picked it up and found the information was barely readable. The bottom was missing, and the center had a jagged hole punched through. There was just enough tag to make out the last name—EDSAR.

  “Sgt. Moss!” I called, showing the tag. “Edsar!”

  “No. Couldn’t be,” he replied.

  It was. Edsar, the popular kung fu comedian from LAV school, was dead.

  A lone rifle, bayonet fixed, was sunk blade-down into the sand.

  Atop the butt rested a helmet, a photo of Edsar in the elastic band around its brim. None of us held back our tears. We stood beside the rifle, bowed our heads, and listened to the words of the priest.

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  He spoke about honor, courage, and commitment . . . Edsar’s Marine family . . . his wounded buddy, Frye . . . his family back home . . .

  and of everlasting peace. Shivers danced along my spine as the trumpet blew the first notes of “Taps.”

  That day I broke the vow I had made at my brother’s funeral not to listen all the way through. It was painful, but I owed Edsar that much. As my body remained in the desert, my mind drifted back to the rainy April morning in 1985, to the memorial garden where I had sat crying before my brother’s casket.