What Was Asked of Us

by Trish Wood

I think that was one of the turning points. It was also the first death in our battalion. So I think that was a big eye-opener for a lot of them too. Before, they’d turn the other cheek. They had put up with a lot of bullshit, the kids throwing rocks at them and stuff like that.

  I told the Iraqis quite often that “I don’t care if I capture your hearts. I just want you to know that I’m being truthful and want you to be truthful with me. Respect is all I care about, you know? I don’t care if I have you bringing me flowers or giving me a ticker-tape parade. That’s not what I’m after.” I just wanted respect and honesty, and in the end, we couldn’t even get that.

  CHAPTER 3

  Don’t Look Away

  In the spring of 2004 it became clear that something very ugly was overtaking the Iraq enterprise. The scandalous abuse occurring at Abu Ghraib prison became public, impugning American claims to the moral high ground. In Falluja, four American contractors were attacked and incinerated in their SUVs. Their bodies were abused in the street by a strangely festive-seeming mob. The charred remains of two of them were strung up on a bridge and broadcast to the world. A young American businessman named Nicholas Evan Berg was kidnapped. Looking fragile in an orange prison-type jumpsuit, he was beheaded by his captors in a heavily viewed video posted on the Internet.

  Sovereignty was handed back to the Iraqis, in a ceremony bumped forward two days for security reasons, but the violence seemed worse than ever. It was now more common for American troops to die in explosions from roadside bombs and suicide attacks than to be killed in a firefight. Survival no longer depended on quantifiable skills like marksmanship or scouting but rather on dumb luck. Death and dismemberment came in an instant, without warning. The thin-skinned military vehicle known as the Humvee made American forces sitting ducks and became a symbol of the Pentagon’s misjudgments about the invasion’s aftermath. While awaiting more armored versions of the Humvee, troops desperately kitted out their vehicles with salvaged metal plates attached with whatever was at hand.

  Some soldiers and marines were already on their second tours of what became known as SASO World (Security and Stability Operations). And SASO World, as they learned quickly, was a very scary place.

  “Don’t worry about it,

  we’ve got him”

  DANIEL B. COTNOIR

  MORTUARY AFFAIRS

  1ST MARINES EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

  FEBRUARY-SEPTEMBER 2004

  SUNNI TRIANGLE

  MARINE CORPS TIMES “MARINE OF THE YEAR”

  The marines always get their guys off the battlefield; we always remove those that are killed. But in Iraq, this was the first time that there was a unit dedicated to nothing but this. I was already a licensed funeral director when I went to boot camp; I had already worked and lived above my family’s funeral home, so I had a lot of training. My job was to pick up the bodies, and my unit picked up 182, and no one was left behind. None of my marines got killed, my commanding officer made it through, and we got very well-decorated for our tour of duty compared to most.

  When our unit rolled into Falluja in early ’04, we were replacing the 82nd Airborne that was there before us. It is a tough city. People talk about the gates of Falluja, and there really are gates when you roll in. It’s like a gated community!

  We took over control of bases around there from the army. But the marines were very upset with the way they were laid out because the army has their rules and we have ours. There was talk that the wires around our bases should be farther out and we should gain more land.

  Our bases were taking a lot of fire. Even when you’re on base, there’s mortars flying in and rockets flying in, so you are never on base going, “Phew, I made it back to base.” Instead, you are actually back on base going, “Well, now I’m just a sitting duck, waiting for something to fall on my head.”

  Just before we hit Falluja the first time, we were taking mortar attacks on the base and rocket attacks, and they started taking random gunfire at the gates. Shit’s just getting blown up and you’re like, OK, this isn’t funny. Then we heard about the contractors getting hung from the bridge, and it was a big deal because they were talking about us going to get them. I was in the building with the chief warrant officer when the call came that they had been set on fire. We got the call over the radio, over the tac phone. I hate to sound mean, but no one’s responsible for the contractors; the contractors are responsible for the contractors. It’s like everything else—why are they making $130,000 a year, tax free, as a contractor? Because they’re probably not going to live long enough to collect it all.

  No one was sure whose responsibility they were. That was the problem. Because you have American civilians on the ground, dead, and the Iraqis are brutally just beating the bodies with sticks, and . . . you know all that crap that they love to do, which is beyond me. And it’s being broadcast on CNN, which really irks me.

  And then they were sent to our command to be identified. They brought them to our headquarters and they asked me if I would work on the bodies, and I told them I was willing to do it, but in the end I didn’t—someone else did. I think some of our people didn’t want it and it was forced upon them. I’m sure our generals were gung ho and offering to take care of it all, but I don’t think that was what they really wanted to do. They didn’t want to become the babysitters of the people trying to make millions. They were like, you know, we have got to do it because they’re Americans and because if we don’t, then we look like big meanies.

  After the contractors were killed and we attacked Falluja, things really got busy. Us mortuary affairs guys had days that we worked twenty-four, forty-eight, fifty-whatever, sixty-whatever hours. And we were just trying to get the bodies in, get them identified, and get them out of the country as quickly as possible to get them back home. We had satellite television over there, and we were getting American media reports of how America was going crazy over the battle for Falluja. I think America was spoiled by Desert Storm. And it became a huge issue. I remember watching it and I knew we had to get these bodies turned around and get them home.

  We had one case of a body we recovered and we were waiting for the inbound flight so we could put him on a plane. We were watching our satellite TV when the marine’s father set a van on fire in Florida. We had his body at our unit at that time. We were watching his father on TV, the news media were at the house when the van was on fire, and we had his body waiting for the plane to go home. The father just got the word. We’d been working on his son for hours and we’re watching the effect it has on the family. I don’t remember how he was killed; I just remember we worked on him and then we turned on the TV and saw the news and went, “Oh shit!”

  When my unit first got there, our guys were mostly dying of gunshot wounds because they were in full-blown firefights. They got in firefights with bad guys with AK-47s versus good guys with M16s. I mean, it was just your common battle wounds—five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten bullet holes or whatever by the time the guy went down. You could see the kind of destruction that an AK-47 could create.

  The first dead marine we got came from the shock trauma platoon. They got him off the battlefield and brought him to surgical, and he was dead at surgical. And we went over there to get him. I can remember the effect that had on my marines. I kind of fell into the funeral-director mode of like, OK, he’s over there, would you get in the truck and go over there, we’ll pick him up, we’ll put him in a bag, and we’ll bring him back. My warrant officer headed over there to pick him up first, and he’s got this blank look on his face, and I say, “What are you looking at?” He’s just, like, shaking his head at me. He said, “I should’ve waited for you to get here.” You hate to sound sadistic, but the question I asked next was “Well, is it a marine or is it army?” Out of the bottom of the drape sheet they had on him, we could see his cammies and his boots, and I can remember looking at that, and the whole base, including the shock trauma platoon, the generals, everybody, was freaked out because it was clear it w
as a marine and our unit’s first casualty of war. They ended up naming a road in our camp after him. I’ve blocked his name out of my memory. I blocked it out.

  It was one of the things that I told everybody not to do: not to use the marines’ names—that when they came in the door, everybody had a rank and everyone that came in the door got a number. And so either you’re done with the lance corporal or you’re not done with the lance corporal. You’re done with number sixty-two or you’re not done with number sixty-two. But it was such a shock that the marines just couldn’t help it: they were using his name. Every time they talked about him. This was early April. Oh, Jesus, he was in rough shape. He had a shrapnel wound to his head. You knew he didn’t even know it was coming. He was a lance corporal who was nineteen, maybe eighteen, and he was killed right outside of Falluja. The chaplain came down and said a prayer over him.

  We had to get his shirt sizes and his clothing sizes as a form of identification because you’re issued garments when you join the Marine Corps, and it’s crazy but grunts are known for wearing five different people’s clothes when they go outside the wire. They have to go on a mission, but “My shirt’s not dry yet. You got a shirt I can borrow?” They go outside the wire with someone else’s boots, with somebody else’s dog tags. They’ve got a shirt that somebody else’s name is on. So you end up with a marine that comes in dead and he’s got four different names on his person. You’re just like, oh crap, you know? With this first one we made an ID and checked for all his clothing sizes and made notes of all his uniforms and made sure he is wearing boots that are his size.

  The lance corporals and corporals and sergeants and—these guys are still dirty from the battlefield, from running down a street with this kid who got blown away, and now they’re trying to identify him. When the battles were going, they were losing men quick, and sometimes we had four and five guys from the same unit inside our place. We’d actually call the unit and say, “You need to send us a list.” If the dead marine ends up being a John Doe, I need to know if he had any identifying marks. Did he have a smiley-face tattoo? One kid got killed and he had no ID on him, and so we got a couple of guys from his unit and we kept asking if he had any identifying marks, but his buddy said, “No, no tattoos, he didn’t have anything.” Finally my commanding officer told the guy he wasn’t going to get into trouble for anything, and so finally this guy’s buddy said, “Yeah, his left nipple is pierced with a bar.” “Do you know what color it is?” He’s like, “Yeah, it’s stainless steel.” We were, “All right, awesome!” It was against military regulation, and we couldn’t figure out how he got so far without getting busted for it. In an infantry unit—no one saw him with his shirt off, you know what I mean? But then it was just like, his buddy’s trying not to get him in trouble; well, he ain’t getting in trouble and you’re not getting in trouble, but we need an ID.

  We tried hard to not have them see their dead buddies, but there were some it was just inevitable that they would have to. We had one guy that we had to call in three different units to identify. We get them and this one doesn’t belong to the others because the entire unit has the same matching tattoo they got before they deployed. We had the navy Seabees come in, they’re all like, no, he’s not one of ours. And so another unit came in and there was an army unit—no, it’s not one of ours—

  and we were like, goddammit, somebody owns this kid. And so we had to call every unit and find out who was on that convoy, who was missing somebody. It turns out he was sent from his own unit to assist another unit, so when they got hit no one made the connection that, hey, this is someone else’s guy. Unit after unit had to see him, but we had him cleaned up—prepped—and we had closed his eyes and closed his mouth, and so he’s not a big bloody mess and he’s got that peaceful look you see when you go to a funeral home. And so his buddies go, “Hey, you take good care of him,” and I say, “Don’t worry about it, we’ve got him.” And then they go right back out the door to the front lines to fight.

  We’re trying to take away all the pain and all the ugliness of death so that someone can see the dead marine, identify him, and then still be willing to fight some more.

  So we had that one death and maybe one or two more, and then the floodgates opened. And we were getting four and five and sometimes so many we couldn’t fit them all in the truck, and we had to take more trips to the flight line, where they were coming in off the airstrip. Originally we didn’t have those silver bullets, those big silver aluminum caskets that they bring them home in, so we were flying guys home in body bags, and they would get put in caskets in Dover. But we were doing very well and actually getting bodies home in, like, twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours. So, you know, I think our longest one was, like, seventy-two hours from . . . from dying on the battlefield to Dover.

  They were coming from Falluja and everything was nuts in Habbaniya. Ramadi was going. Every place that surrounded us was going. Everybody was fighting. We were working all day, all night. And then when we do have a chance to sleep, the mortars are coming in, the rockets are flying in. It was just an insane amount of . . . of, um . . . just input. We had days where we did nine, ten dead marines a day. We had other days that we were lucky and didn’t do any. After the busy days, everybody shows up to work in the morning looking like shit. It became kind of crazy, but everybody . . . everybody got really good at their job really quickly.

  When I talk about it, it becomes tough because I had so many marines that looked to me. I just had to be the one to say, This is what we are going to do, and know that I can’t fall apart, because if I do, then everybody falls apart. We just pushed through. It took two years’ worth of beating it down. It’s rough to talk about because then all of a sudden it becomes . . . as I talk to you about it, I start to think about it and think about all the crap I did and it just becomes very emotional. I’m very proud of what I did, but I wish I didn’t have to do it.

  “If I died, I died”

  JOSEPH DARLING

  FLAG PRESENTER

  CONNECTICUT MARINE

  CORPS FUNERALS

  At the Marine Corps funerals here in Connecticut, I always volunteer to present the flag. Some of the guys hate presenting, but I like it.

  Everything we do at the graveside is ceremonial slow. Instead of the normal salute and cut—that’s what we call it—we hold the salute and bring it back down slowly. Once they lower the casket into the ground, myself and the other marine begin the flag folding. We each take a spot at the head or the foot of the casket. When I am the one who will present the flag, I stand at the head of the casket because that is where the stars are. The stars with the blue background are always over the heart of the deceased. The stars are always over the heart for love of country.

  Once the religious service is over, myself and the other marine grab the corners of the flag and hold it up in the air about chest height, stretch it out above the casket while taps plays. That’s usually when everybody gets really emotional. Once the last note of taps is played, we sidestep to either side of the casket, and the marine with the stripes side and myself on the stars side begin to fold. We tuck it in, tighten it up, make it look presentable, make sure that there’s no red or white showing and that it is all just blue and stars. At that time, the other marine will hold the flag, now in the shape of a triangle with the point away from him, facing forward toward me. That’s the way you always carry the flag, pointing forward. You don’t want to carry the flag backward.

  I’ll do a ceremonial slow salute of the flag. Then I take it, turn around, point it toward him, he’ll do a ceremonial slow salute, then he’ll post, which means to go take your position. He’ll about-face and then march off slowly. Then I’ll march over to the next of kin very slowly and put the flag in their hands but not let go. While we are both holding it, I’ll say the little thing we say. It is a rehearsed saying, but I don’t want people to think that it has no meaning. I mean every word of it, and it rings, it means a lot. It goes, “On behalf of the
president of the United States, the commandant of the Marine Corps, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s service to God, country, and corps. Semper fidelis and may God bless you.” Then I straighten up and release my hands, salute very slowly, and then I about-face and very slowly march off.

  The funerals are a reality check. They are a constant reminder that life is fragile. I have so many friends whom I’m so close to, and if they died I would be such a mess. When a young marine dies, I wonder if he had a girlfriend. When I do the funerals of young marines who get killed in Iraq, I feel like I should be back over there. I should be with them. If I died, I died. That’s my job. That’s a big part of why I joined. If I died doing something that I liked to do, people should just be happy for me. We’re protecting freedoms all over the world.

  Joseph Darling did two tours of Iraq. His first was from March to July 2003. He returned in January to September 2005.

  “For a split second . . . I thought

  I understood it”

  JOSEPH HATCHER

  1ST SQUADRON

  4TH CAVALRY REGIMENT

  1ST INFANTRY DIVISION

  FEBRUARY 2004-MARCH 2005

  FOB WILSON, ADWAR

  I’ve been skateboarding since I was seven years old. I grew up in LA in the ’80s. There was a major drought and my grandma’s pool was drained, so I started skating in the pool. I’ve been skating ever since. Skateboarding is just part of living in Southern California.

  I had been homeless for five years with a heavy drug problem, and I gave up. I gave up on everything. About a year later I attempted to enlist the first time. I popped for cocaine in my system and my entry was delayed for a year, and so I came back a year later thinking, Oh well, whatever. I’ll just do three years and be out. I had nowhere else to go. I had no options. It was plan C. I tried to make money—that didn’t work. Tried to get a job—that didn’t work, you know? You get a job but you can’t get any money in the bank because you’re paying for a hotel room every night and there’s no way to get a place. You’ve got no references. You have nothing. You can tread water for only so long. So I found a way out, and that was the easy way out. I had no options, so that was the problem.