Donovan Campbell

by Leadership;Brotherhood Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage

  It’s amazing what a lack of choice and access can do to your taste in movies. Most of the Marines were so eager for something from home that they’d watch anything at all so long as it was made in the United States. Toward the middle of our second week in-country, Noriel walked into his squad’s room to find the long, skinny Mahardy and the short, fireplug-like Guzon lying together on a lower bunk bed, both wearing nothing but their short green nylon shorts and watching The Notebook, a romantic tear-jerker starring an exceptionally beautiful actress. It’s hard to picture a more unlikely couple than the skinny, pale, blond Irish kid and the squat, dark-skinned, dark-haired Hispanic. About the only thing they had in common was the fact that both sported tattoos on their backs and shoulders—Mahardy a Celtic cross and Guzon the USMC logo. Noriel, of course, immediately ridiculed the odd couple for their supremely unmanly choice of movie. Cuddled next to Guzon, or so Noriel described it to me later, Mahardy defended his masculinity fiercely: “It’s a fucking good movie, Sergeant. Watch it.”

  My feisty squad leader swore he’d never do such a thing, but four days later, having exhausted his own entertainment supply, he surreptitiously made his way into an unoccupied squad room, snagged The Notebook, and brought it back to a packed NCO room. Half an hour later, I found him, along with Leza and Bowen, watching the movie with tears running down their faces, engrossed in the story of star-crossed love. Some things, it seemed, cut across all ranks.

  The downtime after our first major success was short-lived. On March 18, one week after our triumphant capture of the terrorists, Captain Bronzi let us know that he needed to revisit the corrupt Farouq police chief because intelligence reports suggested that, surprisingly enough, the man hadn’t changed his ways at all since the previous Army visit. Joker One was slated for the next day’s patrols, so we would take the CO down to the station. As far as missions go, it wasn’t all that complex—just a quick platoon walk down through the Farouq district and back. Nothing seemed amiss or unusual about the operation, and I woke up on March 19 feeling fine about the day and what it held.

  We left the base at 10 AM. Even in March, it was already getting hot—the temperature hovered around ninety degrees that morning. Using a technique borrowed from the British, the “bomb blast,” Raymond’s four-man team sprinted out of the base as fast as they could, dodging cars as they bounced south across Michigan. Moving out of a base is a particularly vulnerable time for any patrol, and the bomb-blast technique minimized that time. I followed Raymond’s team with the next team, and, bomb blast by bomb blast, Joker One crossed the highway and settled into a quick, smooth rhythm. The CO and I walked with second squad while first and third shadowed us, a block or two off to our right and left. We needed to keep them tight—we still didn’t have enough high-powered radios to equip each squad, and my communication with Bowen and Noriel was limited to the four-block range of our PRRs. For the most part Captain Bronzi stayed silent, which relieved me. I didn’t enjoy having senior officers out with Joker One, for they often forgot their proper place and usurped the role of the platoon commander by making decisions better left to their better-prepared subordinates.

  As the platoon moved off Michigan toward the police station to our south, we passed into the thick maze of high-walled compounds of the Farouq district. I constantly scanned the areas all around us, trying to pick out any potential threats. All that I could see were two-story, flat-roofed buildings hiding behind compound walls that ran in smooth, unbroken lines down to the end of each block. Once we entered this part of the city, we were hemmed in for the hundred meters it took to get from intersection to intersection. Moving down different streets, each squad was cut off from the others, and as I entered the first walled block with second squad, first and third had already disappeared into their separate corridors. Losing sight of them made me slightly uneasy, but I quickly turned my attention back to my own surroundings. To my front, I saw Leza’s solid bulk moving just behind his point fire team, watching the roofs, expertly keeping second squad on line and moving. Just behind me walked the CO, still silent, and behind him trailed the rest of Leza’s men.

  The first few blocks we crossed were deserted, but after five minutes Iraqis began to emerge from their houses, apparently to get a better look at us. At first I noticed them only peripherally—I was far too preoccupied with navigating the patrol, maintaining communication with first and third squads, and scanning the rooftops around us to pay much attention to the slowly crowding streets. Indeed, I was so busy that I didn’t feel anything other than hyperfocus. After all, it was the first time that Captain Bronzi had come out with Joker One, and I wanted everything to run as smoothly as possible. After another five minutes, though, I began paying more attention. The residents lined the sidewalks, gawking at the fourteen Marines walking through their neighborhood. One man waited until I was even with him then asked, “Army?”

  “No,” I replied with a smile, “Marines.”

  He pondered this answer for a few seconds, then pointed at Yebra, walking, as usual, just ten feet away from me. “Little Army,” he said.

  I moved on. I was too busy trying to get all of my men to the police station to spend too much time winning hearts and minds, something I didn’t really know how to do without a translator present. And I didn’t like being referred to as a diminutive sister service.

  A quarter of a mile before we reached the police station, Noriel radioed me. He had found a suspected IED and was going to cordon it off and investigate it. I acknowledged and continued onward toward the police station. A few blocks later we reached our destination, and the CO went inside to try and sort out the crooked chief. The rest of us took cover where we could find it—in doorways, behind small concrete blocks, next to parked cars—and waited outside for Captain Bronzi. On general principle, I didn’t like having to stand still in the middle of a foreign city in a war zone, but I wasn’t too worried. The last attack in the area had been well over two months ago.

  After about ten minutes, Noriel called me on the PRR. The signal was weak and the transmission garbled, but I got the gist of his message. On closer inspection, the suspected IED had turned out to be trash. He was coming to link up with us at the police station. Roger that, I told him. No reply.

  Five minutes later, the CO emerged and announced that it was time to return to the base. I explained that we were awaiting first squad’s imminent arrival. Ten minutes later, however, they hadn’t returned, and unable to raise Noriel on the PRR, Joker One got ready to head back to the base. I was beginning to feel uneasy that one-third of my platoon was missing, but I wasn’t terribly worried for their safety. We hadn’t heard any gunfire or explosions, so first squad wasn’t in any immediate danger. The idea that an isolated squad might be attacked flitted briefly through my mind, but, again, nothing had happened recently in the area, so I doubted that anything would happen to Noriel and his men.

  We had a plan for this type of situation, and it dictated that any separated unit head straight back to our last checkpoint, in this case the major traffic circle five hundred meters away from the base. If the squad wasn’t picked up there within fifteen minutes, it was to head straight back to the Outpost. I was betting that without a map (we still didn’t have enough of them to give ones to the squad leaders), Noriel had simply gotten turned around in the narrow city streets, missed the police station, and was now on his way back to the base. I gave the order to move out and the reduced platoon set off, this time with second squad leading and third squad following directly behind, on the same street. It gave us no depth to our flanks, but I was willing to take the risk—the last thing I wanted at this point was yet another lost squad with no communication. The return patrol went smoothly enough, and as second squad started entering the base, I had Yebra call headquarters just to make certain that Noriel and his men had made it back. The report came back negative. No signs of first squad anywhere.

  When I heard the news, I was standing just inside the Outpost’s gates, watching t
he tail end of second squad enter the compound while third patrolled along the south side of Route Michigan, just across the street from where I was standing. My heart sank and my mind began racing, trying to sort through what could have happened to my lost squad. Noriel should have had more than enough time to make it back. If he hadn’t yet, he was far more lost than I thought and probably wandering aimlessly in the unfriendly Farouq area. Grabbing Yebra, I ordered Leza to finish getting his squad back into the Outpost and Bowen to halt in place. Third squad was still about one hundred meters away from entering the base, and they were going to turn around and start looking for the lost first squad. Yebra and I were going with them.

  The CO wished me luck and told me that he’d monitor our progress closely on the radio back in the COC. Yebra and I nodded to him and then re-exited the base at a dead sprint. Despite his extra thirty pounds, the little radio operator had no trouble keeping up with me. Linking up with Bowen, we turned third squad around and headed back into the Farouq area, looking for any signs that first squad had passed through. Every forty seconds or so, I would call out over my PRR: “One-One, this is One-Actual. Come in, One-One.” If first squad was truly in serious trouble, we would probably have heard gunfire and explosions by now. The fact that we hadn’t yet was somewhat comforting, but we needed to find them quickly.

  Third squad and I wandered the Farouq area for nearly an hour, moving quickly from block to block and occasionally breaking into a flat-out run whenever I pumped my fist twice, which I did every four blocks to give our movements more randomness. We kept heading south, toward the Farouq police station. After about ten minutes moving along one street, we moved either east or west to the one paralleling it, again to give our movements more randomness. This was the third time we had passed through the area, and I was worried that anyone with hostile intentions was by now fully alerted to our presence. With each passing minute, my nervousness ratcheted up slightly.

  As we zigzagged through the dense housing compounds, I noticed that the streets were nearly empty. The few people who remained didn’t seem friendly. Some stared and then turned away. One man even spat on the ground after we passed.

  We had almost reached the police station when I heard the Ox’s voice on the radio: “Uh, One-Actual, be advised we have your first squad back here at the base. We, uhhh, must have missed them when they got back. Over.”

  The Ox signed off. I swore to myself. We had been wandering the Farouq area for close to two hours now, confined to a small, fifteen-block box, giving any potential attacker ample time to take note and track us. I pumped my fist twice at Bowen, and we began running again, north this time. I wanted us to move very quickly for a few blocks until we popped out of the dense housing compounds and hit Michigan.

  Third squad ran for about a minute, then stopped as our point man hit Canal Street, the main north-south road running just west of the al-Haq mosque, a giant structure located at a traffic circle a mere five hundred meters away from our base. We almost could see the Outpost from our position, and some of the tension that everyone was feeling fell away. I made a brief joke to Bowen over the PRR, and he joked back. His rear fire team leader, Corporal Brooks, chimed in, and immediately banter was flying back and forth between all three team leaders. “Hey, Carson, this is Brooks. Did you see what that old guy looked like when we passed him? I thought he was gonna have a heart attack or something.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so wrinkled. What do you think he was, like, forty-five years old …”

  I was horrified at what I had started.

  “Break, break, break. All Jokers, this is One-Actual. This is the fourth damn time that we’ve crossed this area. Stop talking, damn it, and pay attention. If anyone is going to hit us, it’ll be now.”

  Everyone shut up. Our point fire team, the one leading the squad, bumped quickly across the street, Yebra and I covering their movement, rifles held up to our shoulders, squinting eyes tracing the pavement back into the Farouq area. Bowen moved up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. It was the signal to get going; he and the second team would cover our movement across the wide-open pavement, a fairly dangerous area as there was nothing nearby to give us cover in the event of an attack. Yebra and I jogged across the road, rifles still held high. Two by two, the squad repeated this process until Corporal Brooks and his trailing fire team started moving across the street.

  I was up near the head of the patrol when I heard two booms, in quick succession. I whipped around. Where Brooks’s team should have been was a large cloud of grayish smoke, about ten feet high and ten feet wide. Its center was nearly black. Outside the cloud, just fifty meters away, chunks of concrete began raining down. I had just lost three of my Marines.

  I had imagined how I would react in this situation. First I would be overcome by emotions, which I would have to tamp down quickly. Once I’d done that, I hoped that I’d then make cool, dispassionate decisions about how to maneuver the rest of my Marines against our enemies. But looking at the smoke where Brooks’s team used to be, I felt nothing at all. In fact I wasn’t even aware of making any sort of conscious decision to react. I found myself running, as fast as I could, back toward the scene of the explosion, with Yebra trailing a few feet behind me, shouting into the radio as he reported the situation to the COC. I remember thinking that I’d never heard my RO speak so loudly before. Looking over to my left, I could see Bowen and his Marines crouched down in a long line near the wall in front of the al-Haq mosque. As I sprinted past them, part of me noticed the distinct bull-whip-like sounds of bullets cracking their way along as they passed close by. For the first time, I understood on a gut level what it meant to “take fire.” I sped up the run—despite the shooting, I couldn’t be bothered with taking cover. I needed to get my missing fire team; it was possible that if they weren’t dead, then they were badly wounded and unable to take cover. I also needed to sort out who was attacking us, and from where, so that I could make decisions on how to maneuver third squad. About three seconds into the run, in which time I had covered about twenty meters, I called Bowen on the PRR, panting from the exertion.

  “One-Three … Flip the squad around … Patrol column … We’re going to see what’s happened to Brooks … and then push back into Farouq to pursue. Over.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Bowen replied crisply, without any hesitation at all.

  Still running, I looked over, saw him rise, grab his point man, and shove the Marine toward the smoke. Shouting at the rest of the squad to get up, damn it, Bowen started running backward as well, getting everyone else following him toward the explosion. About two seconds later I heard a voice talking through the PRR. It was Brooks.

  “Sir. I’m good. My team is good. No injuries. We’ve spotted two guys firing an RPG about two hundred meters south, down the street into the Farouq area. They’re gone now, sir, but someone’s shooting at us from the west.”

  I was so sure that Brooks was dead or seriously wounded that at first I didn’t believe my ears. Then he appeared out of the smoke, a magician’s apparition, running toward me, his team emerging one by one behind him. Their eyes were as big and white as dinner plates. Approaching them, I slowed down. The front of third squad caught up with me, and Brooks and his team fell back to their usual place at the rear of the column. Together now, we all pushed right back the way we had come, running through the now-settling dust of the RPG explosion. We were still taking fire but I couldn’t hear the rounds cracking nearby anymore. Our enemies had either stopped aiming at us or had stopped getting lucky—probably the latter, given what I now know about the typical insurgent’s spray-and-pray marksmanship. What they lacked in accuracy they made up for in volume.

  With most of third squad across the road, I paused my advance briefly and grabbed Yebra. It was the first time anyone in the company had come under fire, and I wanted to report what happened to the COC myself. Everyone there was likely on high alert, having no doubt heard the explosion and the rifle
fire and Yebra’s shouted reports, and I didn’t want them to launch the QRF because I had failed to communicate. Every time someone left the base they put themselves at risk, and I didn’t want to put Quist and his guys in danger unless I absolutely couldn’t manage the situation myself.

  It had been at least a minute since the first explosion, and Yebra was already getting hounded over the radio. “Joker One, this is Joker Six. What the hell is happening out there? I say again, what is happening out there? Give me a SITREP [situation report] now! Over.”

  I stopped moving and tried to slow my breathing. It was my first fire-fight; I didn’t want to sound frantic or panicked on the radio, since how you sound when you call in during your first enemy contact can come to define how you’re viewed by those above and below you for the rest of your tour. Frantic-sounding lieutenants lose everyone’s confidence immediately; they end up getting second-guessed a lot. Calm-sounding lieutenants make everyone believe that the situation is well under control, and people listen to their recommendations and take them seriously. The underlying reality in each case may be the same, and the lieutenant’s state of mind in each case may be the same, but on the radio, appearances are everything.

  I quickly composed a contact report in my head, then grabbed the handset from Yebra. I took a deep breath and began talking. I thought my voice sounded steady and calm, but it was hard for me to tell. I hoped that I was coming across the way I needed to.