Then Jew arrives with the bottle of Don Julio and a Helen Back waitress who doesn’t drift far from his elbow. Someone says tequila makes their clothes fall off and then we do a round and the waitress refills the shot glass and then we do another.
Normal sights at Helen Back: shouted stories, whispered tears, men hugging, women kissing, pass the cherry, chants of “E-O-motherfucking-D” followed by silent drinking.
Jessie has been arm in arm with Jenny Schwartz all night, and the two are deep into their cups when I find them again. Jenny left the girls asleep in their hotel room, an older cousin offering to take the trip and babysit so Jenny could break free and relax for the first time in months. Jenny seems desperate for the opportunity to unwind, exhale, droop, like a dress let off the hanger that puddles on the closet floor. A friend of Jenny’s brought a tray full of shots, and we all take one and toast Matt.
Oh, it burns, hot as Satan’s hoof. For today, from hell’s heart, we weep.
Eventually, it starts raining, and we are driven under the few awnings and thatched tiki roofs. Who cares? By now we can hardly hear anyone speak anyway. The goal is not to reminisce but rather simply find the faces of old friends. We are used to long separations from one another, so there is comfort in physical proximity, as if we are all each other’s security blanket. I put my forehead on Jew’s back and breathe.
THE NEXT MORNING, despite all that had happened the night before, Matthew Schwartz was somehow still dead, so we put on our suits and uniforms and drove to the memorial ceremony on the other side of the bay.
The EOD community is not often known for demurring. EOD stands for many things besides Explosive Ordnance Disposal: Every One’s Divorced, Egos On Demand. But where it counts, at the memorial itself and the ceremony associated with it, we are a model of restraint. We live well, and we mourn well. The memorial weekend inspires a certain quizzical awe of one’s personal continued existence, and while there is a lustiness to be found in each unexpected breath, there is also humility.
The monument to EOD technicians who died in service is physically unassuming, on the side of a sand-pitted back road, away from the flight line and main hub of Eglin Air Force Base. It is a sanctuary on the grounds of the main EOD training center, as shrine to monastery. A simple wall, not overly tall or long, curved and tapered, constructed of poured concrete, not marble, and the small open-air plaza it encloses is paved with average bricks. Four brass cenotaphs are struck to the wall, one for each service. Over three hundred raised brass names are attached to the plates. Behind the wall, a single American flag, a line of palm trees, a thicket of piney woods, and then, appropriately, acre upon acre of old bombing range as the final backdrop.
Nothing is gilded. No statue of a general upon his horse or green copper man in a bomb suit. When a mainstream military unit, such as infantry or armor, held a memorial service in Iraq or Afghanistan, the physical monument to gather around was always spare: boots, rifle, helmet in a cross, dog tags hanging like a shroud. The EOD wall doesn’t even have those.
A thousand or more men and women attend the service where we add the names to the memorial. The men wear dress uniforms and suits, and the women wear dress uniforms and short spring dresses and cork wedge heels, tattoos on shoulders and babies in strollers. Most sit on bleachers and open-air folding chairs, but special tents are erected to protect the families of those honored; the ceremony and flag presentation can be hard enough without the oppressive sun or a chilly late-spring soaking rain. The memorial is particularly well attended by our wounded brothers, though an outsider would have to be observant to spot all the steel poking out of pant cuffs. Guys who were relaxing in their wheelchairs the night before seem to make it a special point to put on their legs and stand in uniform for the event.
The ceremony opens with a famous general or admiral speaking words of glowing praise, about glory and self-sacrifice, about skill and danger and the fear we instill in our enemies. It is the one day a year we let others brag for us. In the seats, faces are stone and eyes are red.
The second part of the ceremony is the simple reading of every name already on the wall. Each service takes a turn reading their own list, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, then Air Force. It is the only point in the ceremony that the average EOD technician speaks. I timed it once; it takes twenty-seven minutes to read the entire list of our dead. Recently, they had to change out the old plates that bore all the names because they were running out of space. The monument was almost full, so they installed new plates, and the names are printed much smaller. Now there’s plenty of room for more.
Everyone who died has a name, and they read them all and you start to get numb. By Korea and Vietnam, they start to blend. But then there is a little shock when they say the first name you recognize, a name you really knew, then another name of a guy younger than you, then a good friend from your first assignment. They haven’t said your best friend’s name yet, and you think they might not. Maybe it’s been a mistake the whole time. But then they do say your best friend’s name, they say it like any other, and you want to stand up and yell STOP! just so everyone slows down and realizes what just happened. Can’t we just stop a while, and think about him for a good long time? Just a moment ago, this person was. No, in all of the most important ways he still is. But they read the name as quickly as any other, and the moment passes, and you squeeze your wife’s hand.
When the representative of each service is done with all their names, they say this: “We remember.”
Do not be deceived by this simple declaration. It is more injunction that reflection; carries the weight of duty, not hazy peace. It is a task to be done now, and the day after, and the day after that. It is fresh mud to labor through. It is a soaked log to heft and split and stack. It is an already sharp blade to hone. There are no laurels upon which to rest.
When the Marine Corps gunnery sergeant says, “We remember,” after reading the seventy-eight names on the Marine tablet, what he is really saying is, “Stop!” just like you wish you could. He’s saying, “You volunteered for this. You are the one who wanted to join up. Well, now you’re here, and my best friend in the world is on this wall, and the least you can do is remember his goddamn name for the rest of your life. He’s dead, and you’re alive, and it’s a tiny thing to do, remembering, and you’re going to do it because the only way his sacrifice begins to make a lick of sense is if it isn’t forgotten.”
“We Remember” is scrawled across every program and banner and website associated with the event. It is the Facebook update for every EOD technician on the morning of the memorial. It is the mantra of everyone with a personal friend on the wall, and after fifteen years of war, only the newest graduates do not have one.
The official motto of the EOD community for decades has been: “Initial Success or Total Failure.” Iraq and Afghanistan have all but replaced it with “We Remember.”
We remember that there were 184 names on the wall when we started these wars. We remember that we have added 130 names since. We remember that this has been our bloodiest conflict ever, twice as many EOD dead as in World War II, three times as many as in Vietnam. We remember that in 2012, at the height of the Afghan Surge, we didn’t add eighteen names to the wall during the memorial ceremony, but rather Chauncey, Christopher, Mark, Eric, Michael, David, EJ, Daniel, Nicholas, Stephen, Kraig, Nicholas, Chad, Kristopher, Joe, P-Nut, Matthew Seidler, and my friend Matthew Schwartz.
We remember that the oldest name on the wall is that of Navy Ensign John M. Howard, born 1917, graduate of the third-ever mine disposal class at the Washington Navy Yard, killed in Britain in June of 1942 taking apart a booby-trapped German underwater mine. We remember that, as of the editing of this book, the newest name is that of Army Specialist Justin Helton. He was thirteen years old on 9/11, and killed in June of 2014 in the Arghandab district of Afghanistan, in the heart of the valley that had taken so many limbs and lives. Helton was killed along with four Special Forces soldiers, their interpreter, and a
n Afghan Army soldier, via friendly fire, when the air control and coordination system broke down and a B-1 mistakenly dropped a bomb on their position.
We remember that there will surely be a newer name by the time you read this. We remember that there could be new names before this book is even published.
The final portion of the ceremony is silence. Not a word is spoken or a note of music played, as folded flags are presented to the families of those whose names are newly added to the wall. The length of the silence depends on how many names there are. In recent times, it has made up more than half the ceremony.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, chunks of years went by when no one was added to the wall. The annual ceremony was almost a formality, a lightly attended reading of the names, somber and respectful but small, with none of the immediacy that the post-9/11 wars would bring.
Did they know then how good they had it? I think so. I think enough Vietnam and Gulf War veterans knew what was coming. Not the specifics, of course, but the potential, the inevitability of war-brought grief that lay just beyond the next ridge.
“Screw up and you go on the wall” was the regular admonishment in EOD school. No one had to ask which; there is only one wall when EOD techs converse. Across the street from the school, every EOD student saw the wall, the stakes, every day as they trained.
But the rebuke itself reveals a prejudice in our prewar thinking. For twenty-five years, since the Vietnam War ended, nearly every name we added to the wall died because of a mishap: accidental explosion, mishandling of ordnance, plane crash in Egypt, a Humvee rollover while clearing a desert bombing range. The lessons we learned in EOD school kept us safe in an accident-prone world. One ended up on the wall because of stupidity or ignorance or bad luck, but not maliciousness. Working with unstable ordnance was dangerous enough, but at least no one was actively trying to kill you.
Those days are long since passed.
In the Iliad, the dead fall into two categories. The named characters—Achilles, Nestor, Paris—know that if they die in battle they will be remembered. The second group, the unnamed masses that throw themselves on Troy’s walls, are as forgotten in death as they are anonymous in life.
No more. Not only do we now remember every individual soldier, but we kill our enemy by name.
JENNY SCHWARTZ AND the girls sat under the white tent with the rest of the honored families. Matt had died five months ago, but having a general kneel at your feet and hand your daughter a flag for her daddy wasn’t getting any easier. They already had a pile of flags back in Wyoming. Eighteen names were just added to the wall, and Matt was second to last. Her girls watched every other family cry and then tried to bite their lips when their time came. It was like a second funeral, but worse.
I should have buried him at Arlington, Jenny thought.
Put your husband in Washington if you want to have a life and move on. Bury your husband at home and consign yourself to purgatory.
She understood that only now, that the question of burial is not about where but with whom. Whom should he lie with? That’s what she should have asked. In Arlington, you lie with your brothers and the circle is closed. In Traverse City, though, he lay there alone, in a field of snow-covered gravestones, waiting only for her. No matter what she may do for the rest of her long life, she is abandoning him if she doesn’t loyally return.
The Engineer’s detonation on that road between Leatherneck and Kandahar, first a flash and then silence and then thunder, was an atonal shriek that cannot be silenced. It threw Matt’s truck in the air, threw her whole life into the air, leaving her very existence ringing like an unresolved chord until she go lie down beside him. She must eventually. The natural order demands it.
In Arlington it would be done by now, but in Traverse City it hangs, always on the edge of hearing.
AFTER THE MEMORIAL ceremony, the main crowd trickled away, but the afflicted still gathered. Some approached the wall as they would a relic or shrine, to have their picture taken with a particular name or to simply feel the raised letters under their fingertips. Others wandered the halls of the EOD school, searching for their class photo now twenty years gone. As these unaffiliated mourners milled about, several families—Schwartz, Seidler, and Bell—separated from the group and went into a spare classroom adjacent to the main hall.
That morning, Jenny Schwartz and her girls and Matt’s parents and family would receive two briefings: the personal story of the team’s last day, and the Air Force’s official post-blast investigation.
First up was Senior Master Sergeant Chris Schott—Schottzie to everyone who knew him—the ranking enlisted EOD tech in Matt’s unit. He had returned from Afghanistan less than a week prior and chose to be with the families of the dead instead of his own. Jenny thought he looked like he had some things that he clearly needed to say.
Schottzie told them all the whole story of January 5, 2012.
He told them how he started every day the same: getting a cup of coffee and then texting every EOD team that was out on the roads and away from the main base at Camp Leatherneck, to check on their status and spirits and health and to show them he loved them. And the whole team, Schwartz and Seidler and Bell, Team Tripwire they called themselves, were chipper and motivated and eager to roll. He told them how that afternoon, at a boring administrative meeting at the EOD battalion headquarters, a Navy ensign had stepped in to interrupt and ask, “Who owns Tripwire?” How the ensign had said there was an IED strike, all occupants were unresponsive, and Army engineers were breaching the doors. How he had called his friend, the chief of the Air Force pararescue squadron, and had asked for their help, because they had jaws-of-life to breach armor, and he couldn’t stand the thought of his men being trapped. How there had been initial confusion, because the ops center was receiving reports that three “soldiers” were down, instead of three airmen. How he went to the hospital on the British side of base, because guys got hit in the JERRV all the time and the truck was so tough, and it had been so long since the EOD community had lost a team this way, he expected to be bullshitting with all three of them by sundown. How the British officer who ran the helipad had approached him at the ambulance port and said he could go inside because they didn’t have three “soldiers” coming in, they had three “heroes.” How he didn’t understand at first, how he had said, “Of course they’re heroes, they’re Air Force EOD techs!” How he didn’t understand until the Air Force rescue bird arrived with three flag-draped stretchers. How he had then broken down in tears, and vomited, and beat the concrete blast walls with his fists until his hands bled.
They needed to know that all three men got the white-glove treatment. He had personally identified each body. They looked like they were asleep. He knew Bell and Schwartz had expressed a preference for a Catholic service on their records, so he skipped the British Protestant chaplain on duty and found the priest, a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel built like a cathedral. He had helped load them on the C-130 during the dignified transfer. He had searched their armored truck for a week to find every personal effect. They needed to know he had done everything he could, which would never be close to enough.
When he was done, he asked if anyone had questions. The room was silent. No one moved, except for young Aliza, Matt’s eldest daughter but only eleven years old, who looked around at the adults as she tentatively raised her hand. Jenny nodded at her.
“Yes, honey,” Schottize asked.
“Was there a fire in the truck?”
One of her daddy’s shirts had burn marks all over it. She didn’t know where they had come from. Jenny knew Aliza meant it to be an innocent question. The families don’t know all of our nightmares; Matt had shielded them from all the worst ways we die.
But then Jenny saw all of the color drain from Schottzie’s face. It looked like he had stopped breathing. Over the last eleven years of combat, Schottzie knew what a fire meant. He had seen more than his share. He understood what happened when a team got trapped in a burnin
g truck. Short ribs in the Alabama smoker.
Schottzie finally inhaled and answered.
“No, sweetie. There was no fire. Your daddy didn’t feel a thing.”
THE SECOND BRIEFING, the post-blast report, was borne by Major General Timothy Byers.
General Byers had two stars. His title was The Civil Engineer. The Air Force, like the Marine Corps, ultimately organizes their EOD forces under the engineering branch, and so General Byers was responsible not only for every carpenter, backhoe operator, plumber, electrician, draftsman, and firefighter in the Air Force but every EOD technician as well. He had attended the memorial specifically to speak to the families of every Air Force EOD technician placed on the wall that May morning. General Byers carried a binder and briefing, and with the aid of Senior Master Sergeant Tom Allen, who had compiled the official post-blast study, he intended to tell every wife and mother exactly how their husband and son died.
In 2008, there was not even an investigation into Frost’s attack. In 2011, Fye’s report went into a black hole, and he never heard what happened. In 2012, a two star general sat down with the family of a sergeant to explain every detail.
Matt was on a route clearance mission, between Helmand Province’s Camp Leatherneck and Kandahar to the east, this much Jenny knew. She didn’t know any of the rest that follows.
General Byers was formal and clear. He told Jenny that Matt had done everything right. The report explained the training Matt had received before he deployed, the equipment he was issued, and the type of truck he was in, that it was the stoutest the military had. The report said Matt’s team was on a route clearance mission with Army combat engineers, supporting the Marine Corps grunts of the Second Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment in Operation Double Check, a push into a remote area north of Sangin to find IED manufacturers. General Byers didn’t say it this way, but we understand: Matt was hunting for the Engineer.
All the Ways We Kill and Die Page 30