Jessica Goodell & John Hearn

by Shade It Black: Death

  On this occasion we were called out on a convoy to another base to pick up a Marine who had killed himself. This Marine went into a port-a-john with his rifle, pushed it up under his chin, and blew his head onto the walls. Slater, Cotnoir, and Maddox went to get him. They removed the body from the port-a-john, then retrieved the rest of the remains. They had to peel and pull off chunks of flesh and brain tissue that had sprayed the walls. They brought all of it back to the bunker and I started the paperwork. The Sir told me to interview the Marines in his unit to find out what they knew and why, in their opinion, the victim took his own life.

  Marines wear a green t-shirt over which is a digi-blouse which contains a rank insignia. The Sir said, “Goodell, take off your blouse and talk to these Marines and find out what you can.” He wanted to eliminate possible hierarchy concerns by concealing my rank. This relieved both parties of formal deference issues and allowed acceptance of the reality of the situation and the feelings that accompanied it. The Marines had found a suicide note. When I asked for it to put with his personal effects, they offered only a copy rather than the original. As they were searching for the original, I sat down and read the copy. The deceased wrote that he could not live up to expectations, that his platoon sergeant and squad leaders were constantly yelling at him and trying to square him away. He wasn’t a good enough Marine. His squad leaders were relentless in conveying their disgust, telling him that he was falling out of runs, and that he needed to square himself away because he was a shit-bag Marine. He agreed that he wasn’t good enough, not for the Corps. He wrote that he could take no more.

  As I read the note, which focused on him not being a good enough Marine, I was struck by the fact that it was written on camouflage paper, which made me think that he obviously had the Marine Corps in his heart. This is the stationery purchased by young Marines, new Marines, who are all hoorah! and proud to be in the Corps. They buy camouflage designed and colored writing paper and envelopes to write home to their parents and friends, their girlfriends or boyfriends, their high school teachers. Regardless of what the proud Marine actually writes, the stationery itself says to them all, “You didn’t think I’d make anything of myself, did you? But look at me now!” The paper itself had me thinking that he still was motivated, even if he wasn’t a good enough Marine. He obviously identified with the Corps and wanted others to think of him as a Marine. He had the Corps in his heart, still. Why, then, would he take his life and cite the Corps and its expectations as the cause? The whole matter seemed discrepant, so rather than put the copy with the rest of the paperwork, I decided to wait until I could examine the original note. When I finally did, the contradiction was resolved. The original note was in fact written on plain white paper. The camouflage effect on the copied note was made by his own blood and guts that had seeped through his clothing and onto the paper in his pocket.

  I don’t know why the Marines take kids like this one who are overweight by Marine standards, kids who aren’t natural runners. They must know that this is going to happen to them. It is inevitable. Marines are trained to kill, to become warriors. We’re taught to be hard core. We’re taught that pain is only weakness leaving the body. This makes it hard for some recruits to make the cut and it makes it easy for us to forget that that kid, the one who can’t make the cut, who can’t run fast enough or run long enough, the one who is not in the best shape, has a mother at home who loves him and who prays everyday for his safe return. Instead, we see him as tarnishing the image of the Corps, as being the weakest link in the chain, as being the guy who could get the whole unit killed. Sad. Tough. Real tough. And when these Marines commit suicide, we are trained to think of them as cowards. In bootcamp, Marine Combat Training (MCT), and at our duty stations, we’re told that suicide is for cowards and it’s the weak way out. A First Sergeant walks in—he’s a high ranking man—to lecture us about suicide, and he tells us that the Corp is better off without those cowards. Nobody says, “Man, we shouldn’t treat these Marines like this. Maybe we need to reorganize our structure or the way we do things. Maybe we need to offer leadership classes that will teach officers how to get these Marines within weight and regs, instead of allowing them to fall victim to suicide.”

  What makes it even harder to understand is that the female Marines aren’t subject to the same treatment. Female Marines who don’t make regs aren’t called shit bags or fat nasties. They’re called “typical female Marines.” They’re called “bags of nasties.” It’s as though the Corps, deep in its soul, believes that males who don’t meet regs fail because they choose to fail, but the females who don’t meet regs fail for a reason beyond their control. They fail because they are female. Females aren’t held back by a single shortcoming that can be remedied, like being fat or lazy. They’re held back by what they are, and that cannot be overcome. They are the embodiment of flaws. They are bags of nasties.

  Mortuary Affairs is about to go on a convoy. Our vehicles are lined up with two Humvees in the front and Maddox in the turret of the seven ton with the 50 cal. Our only protection in the Humvees was the sandbags we used to line the floor in the back. There were no extra protective plates or lining on these vehicles. (Author collection)

  6

  Convoys

  FORWARD OPERATING BASE RIDGEWAY—As Marines continue rolling into Iraq, leaders in Kuwait bustle to outfit as many military convoys as possible with extra protection for passengers from ambushes and improvised explosives commonly used by insurgents.

  According to guidance from the I Marine Expeditionary Force’s commanding general, every effort is to be made to armor the thousands of “soft-skinned” military vehicles the Marines are bringing with them to Iraq.

  Given the tactics currently used by the enemy, the Marine Corps is eager to add higher levels of protection to their vehicles, beyond simply requiring passengers to wear Kevlar helmets and flak jackets with bulletproof inserts and lining the truck’s inside with sandbags.

  Protection for most vehicles comes in the form of add-on kits, which fasten to the chassis or frame. Metal doors replace canvas; Kevlar blankets or steel plates cover floorboards and seats; some even have bulletproof windshields.

  Yet certain kits are on backorder, meaning some vehicles may be driven to their forward operating bases in Iraq with little or no additional protection.

  The area west of Baghdad that the Marines are moving into contains the hot-spot city of Fallujah, which has been the site of numerous convoy ambushes by extremists using rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and improvised explosives.

  Some Marines, worried that the kits wouldn’t reach them in time or even wanting to further harden the vehicles, have sought out numerous alternatives.

  Staff Sgt. Charles J. Willson, who oversaw the staging of I MEF vehicles in Kuwait, was among the handful of Marines at Camp Victory who scooped up Humvee armor plating shed by Army units returning from Iraq.

  “We’re doing the Marine thing,” said Willson. “If they’re willing to give it to us, we’re willing to take it. We’re going to bring all our Marines home.”

  From: “Marines Hustle to Toughen Iraq-Bound Vehicles,” by Staff Sergeant Bill Lisbon, Marine Corps News, March 15, 2004

  It begins with a phone call, with a voice that says, “We have a Marine down!” Or sometimes the voice says that there’s a fire fight and there may be a Marine down. Or maybe there was an explosion and we don’t yet know if anybody has been hurt, so stand by. Sometimes it was for sure and sometimes it was a standby, but it always began with a phone call. We would all come into the shop and prepare for a convoy, not knowing whether we would go or not. The vehicles would be ready, typically three Humvees and a seven ton, which is a large truck with a bed on the back. There was a reefer on the seven ton because we never knew what we’d find. We may be out there for three or four days. We didn’t want bodies rotting, so we’d put them in the cold reefer for the trip back to base.

  There were mounts for the machine guns in the back of
the Humvees. The 50 Cal machine gun went on top of the seven ton. The 50 Cal is heavy enough to sometimes require that two Marines work together to mount it. Every Marine had an M-16 and some of them used SAWS (Squad Automatic Weapons). The NCOs (non-commissioned officers) would often give the drivers their 9mms because it was too difficult to pull up and aim your rifle while driving. Every Marine knew where to go, which truck they’d be in, and where in the truck they’d be. The same Marines drove the same vehicles, the same Marines were the gunners, the same Marines loaded the ammo—making sure it matched the weapons and the vehicles they were in—the same people loaded up the weapons. The entire process was ritualized, all of us working together, in the same manner, every time.

  On those occasions when a female would drive one of the vehicles, the male Marines weren’t happy, and they’d let her know it. “I don’t want to ride with her,” they’d whine. “She drives too fucking slow!” This despite the fact that on this day she may be the only licensed Humvee driver among them and the convoys were driven at a predetermined distance from the vehicle in front. But that’s how the males chose to see it.

  Sometimes a female pushed back on that pervasive, amorphous subculture as best she could, trying hard to be seen as a Marine rather than a girl or a “Marine-ette.” For example, when these tough, built-up, macho guys named their vehicles “the Green Destroyer” and “El Loco del Demonio,” one female named her Humvee “Noodle.” The males became irate.

  “We’re heading out,” one told Razor one day. “Load up the Noodle!”

  “What the fuck you talking like that for?” a male replied. “I’m not going nowhere in no fuckin’ Noodle. Fuck that shit!”

  When the guys gave similar scary sounding names to their weapons, such as Killer, and Death Rod, and Die Hard, she named hers Pork Chop.

  Our Alice packs were already in the vehicles in case we had to stay out for a while. There was an extra green t-shirt or two in the pack, perhaps a couple of pairs of underwear and socks, and certainly a container of baby wipes. The drivers started carrying lists of the names, social security numbers, and blood types of all the Marines riding with them, in case something should happen to one of them. Often, we would arrange the vehicles in a certain order, usually the three Humvees followed by the seven ton. Occasionally, that order would change because we needed extra security when traveling long distances. We may have two MP (military police) vehicles, one in front of us and the other in back, helping to provide security. On other occasions, like the day we went to the lake, we had a Navy vehicle in our convoy.

  When processing, it was typical for half of the Marines on duty to go on the convoy while the other half stayed back. Those Marines who didn’t go, waited, awake, worried, until the others got back. Were they under attack? Will they get back alive? They may be back today or tonight, or maybe tomorrow, or maybe not until the next day. It was the job of those who stayed behind to process the remains, but the group that had gone on the convoy often returned with their adrenalin pumping and could neither eat nor sleep, so they often helped process. They had just had their hands in human remains, were knee-deep in it, and therefore did not want to eat. They were still amped up from being on the convoy and could not sleep. There was nothing left for them to do, really, but to see the job through to the end. Then again, no one slept much. Ever. Undeniably, the Marines who went on the convoy had it worse than those who stayed back, but neither group could eat or sleep.

  We received a call one day and were told that an IED exploded under an Army convoy that was crossing a bridge, blowing a truck over the side, and down into a ravine. The soldiers in the vehicle that followed reported that it appeared as though the truck had just suddenly disappeared into thin air. What actually happened was that the explosion was powerful enough to send the truck so high into the air that it left the field of vision of the guys behind it. They had thought it simply disappeared. Poof! Until it fell back through their windshield framed vista and rolled down into the ravine below. Everyone was called in, we gathered our weapons and packs and ammo. We brought water and food because we didn’t know how long we’d be gone. We climbed into our vehicles and headed out.

  When we’d get to the site of an explosion, we never knew if there were other IEDs around. This would happen sometimes. The insurgents would detonate the initial IED and when aid arrived, they would trigger additional ones. As a result, on this convoy we were joined by an Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team. These Marines see hidden explosives in a way we cannot. EOD personnel are like the Eskimos who recognize different types of snow. Is the snow heavy or light? Wet or dry? Are the flakes falling fast or just moderately fast? Is it fluffy or hard-packed? They can see all of this and much more. When a child sees snow for the first time, all he or she sees is “snow.” It may be a pristine snow-covered alp or a black mound by a curbside. It all looks the same. EOD Marines can spot a handful of out-of-place sand from forty yards away and know that it’s not right. They may have dogs with them or robots with them, but they didn’t on this day. They swept the area, poking at the sand with their knives, squinting and focusing on anything that triggered their attention, which, to me, seemed to be everything.

  As they were doing their job securing the area, we walked, in our white plastic suits, gloves and face masks, toward a five foot wide crater in the ground. I looked down and saw a boot. Then I noticed that in the boot was a foot. The seven ton was nearby on its side. We started flagging remains before picking them up. We stuck a red flag attached to a thin wire in the ground here, and there, and there. We reached the seven ton and saw that the body wasn’t intact. Only the top half was there. When the vehicle exploded, everything inside it exploded. While another unit was on their way to retrieve the vehicle remains, our job was to retrieve the human remains. All of them. There were pieces of burned metal, burned gear, burned clothing, and burned … everything. We tried to figure out what were human remains and what were vehicle remains. We didn’t want to have to tell a mother that her son was gone and all we had to give her was his head … or a limb. We wanted to send every piece home. So we got everything, every single piece that was covering the vehicle’s interior. One reason for our thoroughness was what had happened to the four American contractors who were apprehended by insurgents in Fallujah. They were shot, burned, dismembered, and dragged through the streets behind trucks to cheering crowds. Finally, what remained of them was hung from a bridge. That was not going to happen again.

  Pineda and I pulled the burnt upper torso from the truck and then removed a leg. Pineda climbed into the cab to collect the rest. He picked up or peeled off every single one of several pieces covering the vehicle’s interior. He could not have been more focused or dedicated to what he was doing had it been his own mother’s remains, not even if God had told him, “Tayta, collect every single last piece of your mother’s physical body and I’ll bring her back to life.” Some of the remains had to be scooped up by putting our hands together as though we were cupping water. We put the body parts and pieces from the seven ton and the surrounding ground into a body bag, then scooped up the liquidy remains and poured them in too. When we finished, the contents—the clumps and chunks and pieces and parts—didn’t resemble a human body. Nor did they remain equally distributed within the body bag. If we picked up the body bag at one end, everything moved to the other end. When we lifted it at both ends, it all slid to the middle. It occurred to us to put the body bag on a litter to carry it up the deep sand of the steep ravine. We placed the remains in the reefer to protect it from both the heat and the insurgents on the drive to the base.

  Back at the bunker I interviewed the survivors. I learned that there had been two Army soldiers in the truck, the driver and the A driver. The driver was able to extricate himself from the wreckage and was okay, but the A driver was pinned inside and couldn’t get out. The overturned vehicle was leaking fuel and a fire had started. The driver had fought with his platoon who were holding him back, pulling him away from
the seven ton. “The A driver’s still in there,” he screamed, “let me go. I know I can get him out.” But they would not let go. “The A driver’s stuck and we can’t get him out,” they said. “There’s no helping him.” While they were arguing with the driver, the vehicle exploded and killed the A driver.

  We Marines couldn’t understand that. We know that “No Marine left behind” is a slogan, but we also know it’s more than that.

  The Humvee became the insurgents’ favorite target. (Photo courtesy of Bill Thompson)

  7

  Stigma

  But even combat-toughened Marines prefer not to think about what Mortuary Marines do.

  From: “Unit Prepares Fallen Troops for Journey Home,”

  by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2004

  Among the Maori, a group of people living on the islands off the coast of New Zealand, anyone who in any way handled a corpse was precluded from interacting with the rest of society. It was believed that he would contaminate whomever he came into contact with. He was considered too unclean to even touch the food he ate, so it would often be placed on the ground before him and he would kneel, bent at the waist, and, with his hands behind his back, lower his head to the food, and try his best to eat. It doesn’t sound fair, but this reaction is understandable, even though the corpses he handled were likely still intact, free of the messiness that an explosion brings. Caring for the dead scares not only the caretakers, but those who come into contact with the caretakers too.

  The other Marines seemed to avoid us and because the nature of our work made it easy to identify us as Mortuary Affairs, we were easy to avoid. Many of the Marines who came into the bunker had died from an explosion, and their bodies were burned. The odor seemed familiar at first but was difficult to identify. One day two Marines brought chow back to the bunker for the rest of us and that was it. The bodies smelled like burned meat, which is what they were. Often dismembered, much of them, sometimes in pieces and chunks, they smelled like meat left too long on a grill. It became common for us to throw up. After working many hours straight, a Marine would bring chow back to the bunker for us and we would try to eat but would throw up instead. It didn’t take long for food to stop smelling like food and to start smelling like death. It was no wonder that the Mortuary Affairs Marines lost weight. When it seemed as though remains were coming in continuously over a period of time, we would drop weight. When there was a lull, we regained a few pounds. Our weight seemed to reflect the number of casualties as clearly as a scoreboard.