“I think he wants that thing filled with food, Rod!” Willingham said. “He’s probably got the munchies after all that.”
Rod laughed. They were a sight. Bits of marijuana had gotten stuck in their boots and their packs. Rrolfe even had some caught in his harness.
“That ain’t gonna go well if we go back to the FOB looking like this,” Willingham joked as they picked the leaves and stems away.
GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS, dressed in army cammies and cap, walked over to the two handlers Willingham had selected to meet him while he was making the rounds at FOB Wilson on October 7. Willingham had chosen them because they were still at the FOB and for one other reason he told the handlers.
“Your dogs won’t accidentally attack the general. Eating generals is not good for the career,” he told them. He said it in humor, but there were a couple of more ornery dogs he would not let do a meet and greet when the commander of NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) conducted a visit to Second Brigade Combat Team at FOB Wilson.
Petraeus leaned down and stroked the head of Sara, a German shepherd, who looked up at him appreciatively. Willingham gave the general a shorter-than-usual brief about the platoon of dogs and what they were doing. Petraeus was already sold on the importance of dogs. “The capability they bring to the fight cannot be replaced by man or machine,” he had once said, and media all over the world quoted him. Willingham knew he was preaching to the choir, but praising his teams was fine with him anytime.
BACK HOME IN Cream Ridge, New Jersey, Megan Brenner couldn’t believe what she saw when her husband, Corporal Alfred Brenner—the handler who drew the memorial to Donahue—Skyped her two nights before his last planned mission at Combat Outpost Terminator, in southern Afghanistan. Grief, a mostly black German shepherd with tan legs, was a little hard to see on her monitor, and the audio wasn’t working well, but Megan could make out enough of him to tell he was being downright loving to her husband. She could see Grief coming in for head rubs, snuggling up against her husband, and then, most amazing of all, sitting on her husband’s lap. Brenner had told his wife about his newfound affectionate nature a couple of months earlier, but she had to see it for herself. This was the first time they were able to Skype since his deployment nearly six months earlier, and she was floored.
The dog’s tan eyebrows seemed especially expressive when Grief gazed at her husband.
“Are you sure that’s Grief?” she asked.
Grief, a PEDD, had started out with a general dislike of human beings. “He hates everyone,” Brenner had told his wife. He wondered if the dog’s European breeders named him because he caused them grief, or if there was some other reason. Grief was stubborn in training, didn’t like to be petted, didn’t like treats. It was hard getting through to Grief in the beginning, and Brenner wasn’t sure they were going to make it as a team. But as often happens in bumpy starts between military dogs and handlers, one day something clicked. During training the dog started listening.
“All of a sudden, he just wanted to work with me,” he told Megan that day. “I think he actually is starting to like me.” Still, he wasn’t exactly what she would consider the ideal pet. She had grown up with dogs, hugging, cuddling, and loving them. Grief liked none of the above.
Downrange, all that changed. Being together 24/7, where one life depends on the other, creates the kind of deep bonds that handlers say nothing can compare to in civilian life. In late August, Brenner and Grief were on a mission and the nighttime temperature plummeted. He called Grief over to keep him warm, and they ended up spooning to sleep. Brenner was amazed that Grief seemed to like being held. After that, the dog often approached Brenner to sleep next to him on cots or on sleeping bags during longer missions when they’d stay out for days.
The new sleeping arrangements were especially surprising when he thought about the weeks they stayed at a hotel in New York City to work security for the United Nations General Assembly. He thought it would be a treat for Grief to stay on a real bed. The dog had slept only in hard kennels until then. He coerced Grief onto the bed, but the dog wanted nothing to do with it. Grief looked alarmed in that “I’m being punished for something and I have no idea what” way and jumped off the bed to sleep in his travel kennel. During their time in New York, the dog never accepted Brenner’s invitation to share the mattress.
But now, in the deserts of Afghanistan, Brenner was sure that if Grief had another chance to share a comfortable hotel bed, he’d be all over it.
“What would you think of adopting him?” he asked his wife on that last Skype call before their mission. She couldn’t hear him well, but he could hear her now.
“Oh that’s awesome! He’s keeping you alive. The least we can do is give him a good home.”
Grief was only three years old, but he had been experiencing some minor seizures on deployment. It could be disastrous if this happened in a firefight or during a clearing operation. Brenner was thinking his dog might get dispo’d after this deployment and was happy Megan felt the same way about making him part of their family.
The mission they were about to go on would be roughly seven days long. Another handler, Lance Corporal Stephen Lahr, would head out with a platoon at the same time. Willingham had also brought Corporal Jorge “Gonzo” Gonzalez and Rod to this outpost so they could support the big clearing push. They’d follow shortly after, when other platoons headed out.
About forty-eight hours after the Skype call with his wife, Brenner and Grief were sweeping the sides of the road just outside Terminator as the route-clearance vehicle checked for bombs on the road itself. They were a klick away from the combat outpost when the route-clearance vehicle located two IEDs. Everyone got to a standoff distance and waited for EOD. Brenner and a few soldiers sat against the wall of an abandoned civilian compound, and Grief lay at his feet. The one-story house had sand-colored adobe walls with no doors and no sign of life. Brenner realized there were no civilians anywhere in this area. In his experience, that was always a bad sign.
A short time later they got the call that EOD was going to blow up the IEDs in five minutes and to get farther back. They got up to put more distance between them and the blast and—
Boom!
“What was that?!”
“What the hell? What’s going on?!”
“They blew it too soon. I don’t know!”
Within seconds, darkness descended around them and chunks of small rocks and debris pummeled them. Brenner immediately realized that the explosion had nothing to do with the IEDs that the EOD team was about to blow in place. It was an IED that had been buried near the wall, undiscovered because they hadn’t gone that route yet. Brenner whirled around to find Grief. His retractable leash was out thirty feet and he couldn’t see him.
“Grief, come!” he called in alarm, dreading what he’d find.
He continued yelling for him and pulled the leash, but it was taut. As the debris cleared, he saw Grief and was relieved that he was standing and looked unharmed. He ran to him to pick him up and get him away, but as he was doing so he looked down and saw a gaping crater. Then he heard the screaming. Down deep in the bottom was a young soldier, yelling for help. Brenner could see him flailing his arms and legs, so he was reassured he hadn’t lost any limbs. He summoned help, and as others ran over, he pulled security, guarding the area with his rifle. They got the soldier out of the crater, and he heard a sergeant order a medevac on his radio.
“Hey, can you and your dog go search for a landing zone?” he asked Brenner.
“Sure.”
But something was wrong. He tried to get Grief’s attention, but the dog just stared at him as if he didn’t understand—or hear him. Brenner realized that the blast had made Grief deaf. Brenner hoped it would be very short-lived. He brought him on his search, but Grief didn’t do his usual search activity. So instead of their normal long-leash search, where Grief would t
ake the lead and sniff where his nose told him to go with just a little guidance, Brenner kept him on a shorter leash and directed him. He felt like he was using a handheld mine detector the way he helped him back and forth. He figured Grief would still respond to an explosive because it was almost a reflex with him. At least he hoped he would. Brenner used his eyes, too. They found nothing.
On their way back to the compound, Brenner heard another huge explosion. He ran as best he could with Grief in tow on a path he figured they’d already swept. The place was frantic once again. Another soldier had stepped on a pressure-plate IED while heading to the roof of the compound. He was killed instantly.
It was only the start of the mission, and already they had one KIA, one injured, and a deaf dog. It wasn’t looking good. Rather than push ahead, they decided that since it was getting toward dark, they’d find a compound and stay the night. It was just safer, they figured, and they needed to catch their breath.
They came to another compound that looked like a small fortress, with a thick outer wall that rose fifteen feet, and a large, sturdy metal front door on the dwelling. The building and surrounding area needed to be searched for explosives before they could go in.
“Hey, my dog is done,” Brenner said, looking at Grief, who was panting and staring blankly ahead. “But I’ll take him around and give it my professional eye. It’s only going to be me searching, not my dog.”
The metal door was locked—no big surprise—so Brenner and eight U.S. and Afghan army soldiers carefully walked around the building to find another entrance. Grief was with him but wasn’t sniffing anything. Just along for the ride, to be with Brenner. Brenner knew leaving Grief with someone else at this time of confusion would make a bad situation even worse for his dog. They needed to stay together.
The back door was locked as well.
“You know, it’s never a good thing when you’ve got locked doors like these around here,” Brenner said. He had encountered compounds like this before. He was outranked here, so there was only so much he could push his opinion.
“This is a good spot to hang out for the night,” one said. “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way in.”
One handed Brenner his weapon with a “Thanks” and began trying to peel and chip away at the hard mud around the door. Another said he was going to try to find a different way in. He also handed Brenner his weapon. An officer did the same and joined the soldier who was working on the door.
Brenner stood there holding three rifles and the leash of his deaf, confused dog. If Grief hadn’t just been deafened by a bomb, maybe he would have refused to hold the rifles—being a rifle rack wasn’t part of his job—but he wasn’t thinking straight. He wished he could have left the scene, but that’s not how he operated.
The guys working on the door made an opening just big enough to look inside.
“Sir,” Brenner said. “Do you see any wires? We have to be really careful.”
A couple of minutes later, the door was down. Almost as soon as it fell, the soldier who’d gone looking for another entrance came bounding around the corner.
“Hey, I found a way in!” he announced. Then he saw they’d beat him to it.
Brenner turned around to give him back his rifle and took two steps. Before he could take the third step, his world went white.
At first, he didn’t hear anything. He didn’t think anything. He didn’t see anything. It was a sensation he’d never felt before. Then he became aware of flipping through the air. Just flying and flipping, slow motion. He felt like he flipped several times, and all of a sudden the flipping stopped and he sensed the ground under his body. He didn’t feel arms or legs, but he could hear again—an extremely loud, high-pitched sound.
He started to feel people messing with his body, cutting off his boots. He knew he still had feet. They were doing things to his arms, so he realized he still had arms. He lay there getting very cold and praying. It was all he could do.
“Hey, how you doing?” he heard someone say.
“I’m freezing! Freezing!” The only warmth was from the ground around him. It was getting warmer, and it felt good. He didn’t realize at the time he was lying in his pooling blood.
He felt tourniquets go on. One arm, one leg, another leg.
“Make it tighter!” he cried. He barely felt them. He realized he should probably be feeling a lot more pain than he did, but he was glad he wasn’t.
“You’re gonna be fine,” the medic told him as he covered Brenner with blankets.
“Shut up. That’s what you tell people before they die.”
“No, I’m serious. You’re going to send me a postcard in three weeks from the hospital.”
He heard a call go out on the 9 Line for a medevac request.
“We have one wounded, one KIA.”
Brenner figured the KIA was the guy who took down the door.
As they placed him on a makeshift stretcher and moved him to the medevac landing area, he became aware that he couldn’t open his eyes. It wasn’t alarming. His sense of hearing was now everything. He heard the medevac helicopter coming in. Chop-chop-chop-chop filled his head. It got louder as the helo got closer. He took a little comfort knowing he’d be on his way soon to the hospital at Kandahar Airfield, the best military medical facility anywhere close. He realized maybe he wouldn’t die after all.
Then the sounded faded. The chop-chop-chop-chop grew more distant. The helicopter was going away.
“Where’d they go? Am I going to die here?”
“No, they probably see something suspicious. Don’t worry, you’ll be on your way in no time.”
“STAFF SERGEANT! STAFF Sergeant!” Willingham was working with Rod to set up training problems at an open area of COP Terminator when Gonzo ran up to him. “One of the handlers has been injured! We don’t know which one. Brenner or Lahr.”
“Any word on his condition?”
“He’s got tourniquets on both legs and an arm.”
Willingham felt his mouth get dry. Wiens . . . Donahue . . . Now . . .
He ran to the ops center for more info and to try to get on a bird to the hospital. He compared the information on his kill roster to the numbers he was given.
“It’s Brenner,” he told Gonzo and Rod, who had followed him.
It was all too familiar. As he ran to the landing zone to wait for the chopper, he said the simple prayer so many before him had said throughout the history of war.
“Don’t let him die. Please, God, don’t let him die.”
THE BIRD SWEPT back in to load Brenner quickly and get out of the treacherous area before it could be shot out of the sky. Brenner thought he’d never heard anything as loud as the inside of the medevac helicopter, except maybe for the explosions, but the helo noise just kept going on and on and on. The noise of the engine and rotors and the shouts of the medics as they tried to talk to him were almost painful. He wondered if his ears were already making up for his not being able to see.
After what seemed like days, he felt the helo land and the jostling of the stretcher under him. Then he heard the opening of a metal door. And suddenly, silence. He heard the hum of fluorescent lights and the concerned whispers of people talking in some kind of medical jargon. Now the quiet hurt his ears.
A funeral home? A morgue? A library?
He faded away.
“WELL IT’S ABOUT time! Wondering when you were going to be paying us a visit!” The first words Brenner remembers hearing when he came to in his hospital room were those of a friendly sounding guy with a southern accent. There was another familiar voice he recognized, too. Willingham and Locklear.
“Cool, I got visitors already!”
Willingham couldn’t have been happier to hear those words—any words—from Brenner. It had already been determined that he had a traumatic brain injury from the blast, and Willingham wasn’t sure of i
ts extent. Seeing Brenner with his sense of humor intact so quickly was more than he’d been hoping for.
He had gotten word from the doctor that with some complicated surgeries, Brenner should be able to keep his badly damaged arm. His other arm had only minor injuries. His legs were in no danger of amputation as long as infection didn’t set in. His face was pocked with shrapnel and his eyes were so swollen from it that there was no way to open them. It would likely be days, the doctor had told Willingham.
“So when I get my Purple Heart, does that mean I’ll get free drinks for the rest of my life?”
Willingham had to laugh. This kid didn’t miss a beat. They joked around as if they were friends enjoying a couple of beers. But in a lull, Brenner thought about asking a question he didn’t want to. He hoped that by not asking, he could go on a little longer in recovery mode, having fun with the guys. But finally he had to know.
“What about Grief?”
It was the question Willingham had been dreading. He knew the answer, because the helicopter he and Locklear had flown there in contained the body bag of a marine who was KIA. When they landed, the veterinarian met them and they carried the remains of Grief to the veterinary tent before going to the hospital to see Brenner.
“I’m sorry, man,” Willingham said. “Grief didn’t make it.”
Brenner lay silently in his hospital bed. Although his eyes were swollen tightly shut, the tears still flowed.
Willingham just stood beside the bed. And it seemed to Willingham that Lucca was there, standing just behind him.
10
Home for the Holidays?
NO MATTER WHERE they are in the world, no matter how austere the conditions, no matter who they have lost and the hell they have seen, marines do whatever it takes to honor the Marine Corps birthday every November 10. They have been doing this since 1921, when General John A. Lejeune, thirteenth commandant of the Marine Corps, ordered that a summary of the history, mission, and tradition of the corps be read to all marines on that day.
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