by Evan Wright
I manage to get it all put together about as quickly as the Marines nearby. We stand around looking at each other through the warping, fisheye lenses of our gas masks. I can’t conceal my feeling of triumph. Not only am I glad that I don’t seem to be showing any symptoms of exposure to gas, but I’m also not a little proud that I’ve gotten fully MOPPed up without panicking. Unlike these Marines, I haven’t spent the last few years of my life in wars or training exercises with bombs going off, jumping out of airplanes and helicopters. In my civilian world at home in Los Angeles, half the people I know are on antidepressants or anti–panic attack drugs because they can’t handle the stress of a mean boss or a crowd at the 7-Eleven when buying a Slurpee. That’s my world, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if, thrust into this one, in the first moments of what we all believe to be a real gas attack, I’d just flipped out and started autoinjecting myself with Valium.
No doubt, some of the Marines expected this of me as well. Ever since the platoon showed its hospitality by putting me in the walkway of their tent the first night I arrived, some have let it be known that they regard reporters as “pussy faggot lefties,” wimps who can’t hold up to the rigors of combat. But I’ve passed this test with flying colors.
Only when we’re trudging back to Colbert’s vehicle, everyone in full MOPP, do I realize I made a critical error while donning my mask.
One of the bad habits I picked up covering the military is “dipping”—chewing tobacco. Smokeless tobacco is the universal drug of American fighting men (and women, too, in integrated units). You don’t actually chew dip. Instead, you pinch a wad about half the size of a golf ball and shove it under your front lower lip. In the process of destroying your gums and teeth, it also wallops you with a nicotine buzz that makes filterless Camels seem like candy cigarettes.
Dip’s only side effect is that it causes you to salivate like a rabid dog. You constantly expectorate thick streams of brown goo. And this is my problem now. Right before the gas alert I had put a fat dip in my lip. It always makes you a little bit nauseated. Now I have this reservoir of spittle building in my mouth. There’s a drain tube in my mask, but I fear the slimy mass of spit and tobacco will clog it.
I drop into the sand by Colbert’s vehicle. Other Marines are sitting around nearby. I lie back and swallow the plug of tobacco, hoping nobody notices in case I become really sick or start acting strangely.
According to military chemical-weapons experts, these are the symptoms of exposure to toxic agents:
1. Unexplained runny nose
2. Sudden headache
3. Sudden drooling
4. Difficulty seeing; dimness of vision
5. Tightness of throat
6. Localized sweating
7. Nausea
I immediately cycle through all of these symptoms as the plug slides down my throat. I fight the urge to throw up, ever mindful of warnings we have received about the dangers of “chunky vomit.” As the waves of nausea subside, I become aware of a new sensation: wind blowing inside my pant legs. When the Marines issued my MOPP, I had complained to the sergeant who gave it to me that it looked kind of small. She had dismissed this as another example of a prima-donna reporter’s whining, and had told me, “The suit fits good.” But fully tied up, there’s about an inch gap between my pant legs and my boot tops, and this is not good.
The culprit is my suit’s g-string—a strap that you take from behind the jacket, pull between your legs and snap in the front. It’s designed to keep the jacket snugly sealed over the pants. Mine is so tight that it has jammed my pants up my crack and is letting air in over my boots.
I lie back and try unsnapping the g-string, but it’s stuck. The harder I pull—my fingers extra clumsy in my rubber clown gloves—the tighter it gets. Marines seem not to notice as I sit back in the sand, struggling with the g-string. My lenses start to fog from my heavy breathing. Then I glimpse a gas-masked figure leering over me. It’s Corporal Gabriel Garza, a heavy-weapons gunner on Colbert’s team.
In the platoon, Garza, twenty-two, is something of a cipher. He wears Coke bottle–lens glasses and a blue bandanna around his neck, which his grandmother, who raised him, gave him for good luck. She is an aloe picker in south Texas, and Garza always grins when he mentions her. “She used to beat me with a two-by-four when I was bad,” he says. “That’s ’cause she cares about me.” Garza has a round head and is not particularly tall or imposing, yet he is one of the strongest Marines in the platoon. According to his buddies, he can bench-press ten repetitions of 300-pound free weights. He works out constantly. Every night at Mathilda he would follow his dinner with a glass of salt water and lemon wedges, or oranges rolled in salt. When I asked him what the point of his unusual diet was, he said, “It makes you tougher.” He seldom talks, but frequently, while sitting alone, will suddenly begin shaking with quiet laughter, the only sound a whistling from his nose. Everyone in the platoon likes him. They call him the “Zen Master.” But when they compliment him on his physical power, he just shrugs and says, “It’s nothing. I’ve got retard strength.”
Now he’s standing over me, turning his head to his side in a quizzical gesture. Another feature of gas masks is that you can’t really talk through them; nor can you hear too well through the MOPP hood. We try to carry on a conversation. It sounds like the parents in a Charlie Brown cartoon: wa wa wa. I gesture to the g-string now twisting my testicles, and Garza immediately unsheathes a pair of Leatherman pliers he carries on his vest and looms over me. I lie back, my legs spread as if I’m about to undergo a gynecological exam, and Garza delicately nestles the plier tips against my balls and clasps the g-string. When he rips it off, he tears a dime-size hole in the front of my MOPP, rendering the whole thing useless.
A few minutes later, pulling my mask off after they sound the all-clear, I’m greeted with a rush of cold air and laughter.
“I just performed testicle surgery on the reporter,” Garza brags.
The funny thing is, all the Marines who’ve been standoffish the past week are suddenly pounding me on the back, bruising my ribs with affectionate punches. “You’ve got brown shit all over your chin,” one of them says, brushing tobacco juice off my face with his sleeve. I seem to have gained acceptance by making a total jackass of myself.
The comedy session near Colbert’s Humvee is cut short when Marines down the line shout, “Scud! Scud! Scud!”
Everyone MOPPs up again. This time, expecting missiles, we dive into a large pit—deeper than the Ranger graves we’ve dug—which Colbert’s team excavated next to his vehicle. The way to avoid flying shrapnel from a missile detonating nearby is to get as close to the ground as possible, though you have to turn sideways because the mask ventilator protrudes several inches from the front of your face. Waiting for what presumably will be some sort of explosion, your breathing becomes rapid. Underneath the MOPP hood and mask, every internal sound is magnified. With each breath, you hear the mask ventilator apparatus clicking and wheezing like a hospital life-support system. Due to the odd acoustics of the MOPP suit, little grains of sand rolling down the side of your hood sound like bombs. What the MOPP basically does is encase you in your own private panic attack.
I’m directly across from Person. Our faces are inches apart. His chest rises up and down quickly. He’s breathing rapidly, too, which makes me feel better. Maybe I’m not the only one panicking.
Eventually you get bored of lying in the hole, and you want to look over the edges and see what’s happening. I edge up a little, looking for birds. If they’re flying, it means there’s no gas.
There’s a series of explosions in the distance. Different from the blasts earlier. These are drawn-out sounds—gagoon, gagoon—followed by a series of sharp bangs. Then it’s silent.
After the all-clear ten minutes later, Gunny Wynn walks over, grim yet excited. “That was a no-shit Scud attack,” he tells the men.
“I guess this really is war,” Colbert says.
“What’
s a Scud?” Garza asks.
Gunny Wynn smiles. “It’s a missile, Garza, a pretty big one. They can load them with chemicals if they want.”
Garza ponders this for a moment, then smiles. “That’s awesome. I just lived through a Scud attack.”
Later, Fick finds out the sounds we heard were not Scuds. While some Scuds were launched toward Kuwait City, out here in the desert, the Iraqis are firing Silkworm antiship missiles, one of which, according to Fick, landed 200 meters from First Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters south of us.
There are several more gas and missile alerts throughout the afternoon. Between them the Marines congregate under the shade of their Humvee cammie nets, recleaning all their weapons, linking individual machine-gun rounds into belts and talking. Sitting in little clumps, passing the weapons and gear back and forth while doing the intricate finger work, it almost looks like a ladies’ sewing circle. No one talks much about the invasion they are supposed to launch in a few hours. If anything, their focus on routine humor and bullshitting is almost more determined than ever in the face of the impending assault.
The most flamboyant figure in Second Platoon is Reyes, the Marine on Team Two who on my first night in their tent talked about the romantic idealism of being in the Corps. This afternoon he sits beneath his team’s cammie netting, cleaning his rifle, dressed in an outrageous camouflage overcoat his fellow Marines call his “Chicken Suit.” Tufts of multicolored fabric hang off the arms and shoulders like feathers. He wears a similarly peacockish cover on his helmet, the ensemble complemented with heavy-duty orange goggles that somehow manage to look stylish. They call them his “J.Lo glasses.”
Reyes has the insanely muscular body of a fantasy Hollywood action hero. Before joining the Marines, he lived in a dojo, competed nationally in kung fu and tai chi tournaments, and fought in exhibitions with the Chinese national team. He is the battalion’s best martial artist, one of its strongest men, and seemingly one of the gayest. Though he is not gay in the sense of sexual orientation—Reyes, after all, is married—he is at least a highly evolved tough guy in touch with a well-developed feminine side. With his imposing build, dark, Mexican-American features and yet skin so pale it’s almost porcelain, he is a striking figure. His fellow Marines call him “Fruity Rudy,” because he is so beautiful.
“It doesn’t mean you’re gay if you think Rudy’s hot. He’s just so beautiful,” Person explains. “We all think he’s hot.”
While the other Marines spent their free time at Mathilda poring over porn and gun magazines, Reyes read self-affirming articles in Oprah’s magazine, waxed his legs and chest and conducted afternoon yoga classes. His father was a Marine, but when he was three the family split apart due to drug problems. According to Reyes, a close relative of his who was a drug-addicted cop used to bust prostitutes and bring them home to babysit him and his brother. Reyes wound up in boys’ homes in Kansas City. “Those boys’ homes were gladiator academies,” Reyes says. “Darwin was living and breathing strong. I was twelve years old and seventy pounds. I had older men making sexual advances on me. I was preyed upon by bigger, stronger people. I was always the new guy in a shitty neighborhood in a shitty school. I was inspired by Spider-Man, Speed Racer and Bruce Lee. I decided to become a warrior.”
Reyes adds, “I have very low self-esteem. I need to empower myself daily through physical training and spirituality. I identify with redemption stories like The Color Purple. I love the journey of a woman from weak and less-than to someone who is fully realized.”
This day, on the eve of invading Iraq, Reyes is concerned about his body. “I am going to hell out here,” he says, handing a belt of machine-gun rounds to Manimal, his teammate. “I eat terribly in the field.”
“We’ve had plenty of chow,” Manimal says.
“Back home I only eat sushi and vegetables,” Reyes counters. “The food we eat here is garbage, that awful American diet. Someday, I think Sheree and I will live in San Francisco,” he says, referring to his wife of five years.
“What’s so great about San Francisco?” Manimal asks.
“There’s no fat people there,” Reyes answers. “And Chinese martial arts are very much a part of the culture there.”
“Why would you give a fuck if there are fat people where you live?” Manimal laughs. “People are people.”
“I want to live in a place where people care about themselves.”
“Jesus Christ, Rudy,” Colbert says, slipping in under the cammie net. “When are you going to realize you’re fucking gay? When we’re on libo,” he says, referring to liberty port calls Marines make around the world, “you wear Banana Republic Daisy Duke shorts, and now you’re rolling into battle with your goddamn chicken suit and J.Lo glasses. You dress like a pimp queen.”
“Brother, I wear clothes that are body-conscious, but I don’t dress like no goddamn pimp queen. I’ve got too much respect for myself.” Reyes howls with laughter. He and Colbert tap knuckles after a successful exchange of put-downs.
ABOUT TWO HOURS before sunset, First Recon’s commander, Lt. Col. Ferrando, gathers his men for a final briefing. In the chain of command, Ferrando is at the top of the battalion. As officers go, platoon commanders like Fick are at the bottom. Each platoon commander answers to his respective company commander, and each of these—the commanders for Alpha, Bravo and Charlie—answer to Ferrando. For all practical purposes, within the battalion, Ferrando is God. In war, especially, his authority is absolute.
Every Marine is indoctrinated with a simple saying that clearly states the Corps’ priority in achieving its aims in war: “Mission accomplishment, then troop welfare.” One thing about the Marine Corps is it doesn’t bullshit the troops about their place in the scheme of things. The responsibility of deciding when their lives might become expendable for the sake of a mission falls on Ferrando.
Ferrando’s command post out in the field is a small black tent set up by a movable antenna farm of seven-meter towers held up with guy lines and stakes. It looks like the deck rigging of a sailing ship washed up on the desert. About a hundred of his officers and senior enlisted men and team leaders gather by his command post. Ferrando is forty-two, thin, with a narrow head and eyes slightly close together. But the thing you notice about him is his voice—a dry, whispered rasp. Seven years ago his vocal cords were removed after a bout with throat cancer. Because of his distinctive voice, his call sign is “Godfather.”
Even standing fifteen meters back from him in the open desert with wind whipping through your ears, Ferrando’s croaking whisper carries. It’s kind of creepy. It sounds like someone with his lips pressed to your ear speaking directly into it, clear as Satan’s whisper to Eve.
“Good news,” Ferrando rasps to the men. He arches his eyebrows, not really smiling but still making a sort of happy face. “The BBC reported we struck Baghdad. The outcome of this war has already been determined. Iraq will go down.” He gazes out at the rows of Marines standing before him, bulked up with their MOPP suits, toting their weapons. “If you bump into an Iraqi who wants to fight, you will kick his fucking ass.”
Marines generally love this kind of tough talk from their commanders. The men in the crowd grin and nod enthusiastically. But then Ferrando loses some of them. He turns from the excitement of impending combat to the topic that often seems to obsess him more than anything: the Marines’ personal grooming. “I don’t know when we are going to get to the Euphrates,” he says, “but we will, and when we cross the Euphrates all mustaches will come off. That is the rule. Make sure your men shave their mustaches.” It’s an adage among officers that “a bitching Marine is a happy Marine.” By this standard, no officer makes the Marines in First Recon happier than Ferrando. Since assuming command of the battalion about eighteen months earlier, Ferrando has shown a relentless obsession with what he calls the “Grooming Standard”—his insistence that even in the field his troops maintain regulation haircuts, proper shaves and meticulously neat uniforms.
&nbs
p; In traditional deployments, such as Colbert’s tour in the Afghan War, Recon teams go into the field without their commanders. Ferrando and others at the top stay behind at Camp Pendleton. Usually the highest-ranking authority in the field during a Recon mission is the team leader.
Some of the tension in the battalion that Fick alluded to when I first met him at Camp Mathilda stems from the fact that due to Maj. Gen. Mattis’s unorthodox plan to employ First Recon in Iraq as a unified, mobile fighting force, Ferrando and other senior commanders are now for the first time accompanying Recon Marines into the field. This stress is compounded by Ferrando’s singular obsession with maintaining the Grooming Standard.
Experienced team leaders in Bravo Company—like Colbert and Kocher—think they did a fine job in Afghanistan without always keeping their shirts tucked in and wearing color-coordinated running uniforms as Ferrando made them do at Mathilda. Kocher complains, “Out here we have a pile of captains, gunnery sergeants and staff sergeants with us that can’t do jack shit. They don’t even know how to refuel vehicles, get us batteries. All they do is make us get haircuts and shaves.”
For his part, Ferrando seems bent on stamping out the uniquely individualistic nature of Recon Marines. “These men who don’t like the Grooming Standard probably don’t belong in the Recon community,” he told me earlier. “They are the ones who gravitated here because of the myth that as Recon Marines they would become cowboys, exempt from standards everyone else in the Corps maintains.”
One of his senior enlisted men, tasked with enforcing the Grooming Standard, is more blunt. “These Marines are incorrectable [sic],” he tells me. “They are cocky. They are not as good as they think they are.”
The hostility is mutual. To some Marines their battalion commander’s obsession with appearances makes him seem like a careerist out of touch with the men he leads. “The problem is, higher-ups like Ferrando aren’t warriors, they’re Marine Corps politicians,” a Marine in Second Platoon gripes. “They’re terrified some general’s going to walk over here and see someone running around with his shirt untucked.”