Joker One (35 page)

When I arrived back at the scene, a pale but composed Bowen ran up and reported in. I noticed that his first aid kit was open and that his sleeves were rolled up to mid-forearm. Both sleeves and forearms were streaked dark with blood. I could barely make out the tattoos.

“Sir, we’ve got most of the little kids back in the school, but that explosion blew them everywhere. We’re still finding them in random places, sir. The docs are working as hard as they can, but we’ve lost some already, and we’re gonna lose more if they can’t get to a hospital or something. We’ve managed to keep some of the most badly wounded alive, sir, but we can only do so much. They need to get some professional help.”

His report finished, Bowen waited expectantly for direction, and right at about that time the rest of the convoy pulled up.

I wish I could say, given what followed, that I thought for a bit then, that I carefully weighed the pros and the cons of the various available courses of action, that I made a well-reasoned decision based on an in-depth analysis of the varying outcomes of any action. I wish I could say that I stepped back and coolly and dispassionately evaluated the situation, but if said that, I would be lying. The fact of the matter is that as soon as I spotted my first and
second squads, my decision was already made. We were United States Marines, and a bunch of dying children needed our help. It was just that simple. There were too many of them to medically evacuate all, and the U.S. doctors might not cooperate even if we did so, but damned if we couldn’t remain there to protect and minister to the little ones until Iraqi help showed up. Of course, a protracted stay meant another attack, and I knew this fact even as I settled instinctively on my decision. But we had been hit dozens and dozens of times to date, and none had yet resulted in any serious casualties. With the decision made, I started issuing orders, and I began with Bowen.

“Okay, Bowen, we’re gonna stay until these kids get some help. We’re gonna form a solid defensive perimeter around the CCP [casualty collection point], so you’ve got the standard six to ten o’clock area. Keep the docs and whoever else you need working on ’em and get Anderson and his scope up on a house so we’ve got overwatch to the west. One-One’ll take ten to two, and One-Two’ll take two to six. Got it?”

Bowen nodded. “Yes, sir. We’ll make it happen.” Then he was off, hustling toward the school and shouting orders at his men. I relayed the defensive perimeter positions to Noriel and Leza over the PRR and got two “Roger that, sirs” in return. With the decision made and the orders issued, I paused for a second to watch my squad leaders in action. They were magnificent. To the north, Noriel had one hand on his weapon and another outstretched as he stormed fearlessly this way and that in the middle of the street, indicating exactly where he wanted his vehicles and their machine guns pointed. I could hear the distinctive Filipino voice ring out.

“No, damn it, I want him here!” He gesticulated forcefully. “Here! No, not Hendersizzle [Henderson’s nickname], stupid, the vehicle, damn it, the vehicle. Right here. Two-forty this way. This way! Tig, where are you, Tig? Oh, good, get your team up in one of these building. Now, move it, damn it! Move it! Bolding, where are you? Oh right, by the Humvee. Okay. Good.”

Then, over the PRR: “One-Two, where are you tying in?”

Leza called back. “I’ve got Raymond’s team right in that building—see it?” I looked over to see him pointing. “No, not that one … Yeah, that one. I’ll watch the street to our south. Make sure you get the one to our north. Hey, One-Three, where’s your guys?”

In my left ear, Bowen spoke up. “Hey, we’ve got the kids inside the building and I’ve got some of my squad tied up with them. Can you guys take more of my sector? I think we’re gonna have to put some guys on the top of the school to cover the west. One-Two, I need you tie in farther south. Oh, shit, I’ve found another kid. They’re everywhere. Hey, if your men find them, bring them here inside the compound.”

Everything was moving fluidly. Just north of the school, the docs were hustling around in the street, treating the kids who were hurt too badly to be moved inside the compound. I wanted to help, to reposition the vehicles and shape our perimeter as I saw fit, but my squad leaders were doing a much better job corporately than I could have done individually. For now, I reasoned, I was best off staying out of their way. Just then, the full impact of the moment hit me: My men didn’t need me, they were doing just fine without me. I had done my job with my squad leaders. The feeling produced ten seconds of beauty inside a day of horror.

The Ox interrupted the reverie, but, for once, I was glad to see him—because, for once, he had a productive suggestion.

“Hey, One, George and I can bang on all of these houses to see if some-one’ll let us use their phone to call an ambulance? We’ve gotta get these kids some fucking help.”

It was a good idea. I had no idea when or if the locals would take action, and we—and the children—couldn’t afford to operate under the assumption that they would. I had already called the COC to inform them of the situation and to let them know that our battalion needed to call the Iraqi police liaison and get some help on scene. The Ox’s idea, however, promised more immediate returns, so I nodded my agreement, and the Ox took off. Something like ten minutes later, though, he was still gone, and my pride in my men had been dispelled by the anxiety of remaining tethered to a fixed position. I called the Ox.

“Hey, Joker Five, where are you, what’s taking so long?”

“Hey, One. These stupid Iraqis won’t open their doors to us. I’ve got the translator screaming at them that we just need to use their phone to call an ambulance, but they don’t care. They won’t let us in. I hate these fucking people. Their own kids are lying wounded in the street and we’re trying to help as best we can and they won’t even let us in. Fucking cowards. Screw this, I’m kicking in a door.”

The tirade over, the Ox signed off. I sympathized with his feelings. Five minutes later, he was back on the PRR. The hospital had been contacted. An ambulance was on its way. I breathed out my relief, then continued moving around the perimeter, keeping a watchful eye on my Marines and the surroundings for any signs of trouble, but it was Corporal Walter who spotted trouble first and called over the PRR.

“One-Actual! One-Actual! The people on that street three blocks west just started running.”

“Roger that,” I shouted back. “Everyone, stand by, we’re about to get hit.”

Later, Walter informed me that right after his transmission and during mine, he had started raising his SAW to his shoulder to take aim down the street over his open Humvee door. Halfway through the motion, two men dressed in head-to-toe black suddenly popped around the corner, one standing, armed with an AK, and the other kneeling, armed with an RPG. Walter fumbled with the SAWs safety for a second, then pushed it through the weapon and loosed off a few rounds. Maybe he hit the men, maybe not. It didn’t really matter. Our attackers had managed to get the RPG off.

At the time, I was walking on the eastern side of the school, halfway down the long side of the rectangle. I heard the first boom and whipped my head north; then I heard the second. Gunfire rang out, and mixed with it came the horrifying cries of my first squad screaming, “Doc up! Doc up! Doc up!” My heart sank. I started running north, toward the sound of the explosion and the gunfire.

As soon as they heard the cries for the corpsman, Docs Smith and Ca-macho rose from where they had been taking cover and ran pell-mell down the street toward the second explosion, heedless of the tracers that clearly zipped all around them. I watched as together they sped across my field of vision, and then I continued my run toward the action. Over the PRR came Noriel’s frantic voice: “Sir, sir, sir. Bolding’s been hit, sir. His legs, they’re gone, sir. They’re gone, sir.”

I heard the transmission, and some part of me howled out briefly, but the rest was so overwhelmed with trying to sort out the tactical situation that it didn’t feel anything at all. Adding to the confusion, at just that time, despite all the fire, an ambulance trundled up to the school from our north. The drivers belatedly realized what they had gotten themselves into, and they
dived out of the van, disappearing into the rectangle’s interior. Still running, I reached the northern tip of the school and took cover behind some junk. Then I called breathlessly over the PRR to Noriel.

“One-One … Get ready to evac Bolding … You and the docs’ll get him out of here … I’ll be there in just a bit.”

No reply came, and I started moving carefully toward Walter to get a visual on our enemies. As I ran across the street, it slowly dawned on me that the firing had ceased. By the time I made it over to Walter, all signs of combat had vanished. All signs save the screaming Bolding, of course.

The human body has a lot of blood, more than most of us realize. Cut some of the major veins that carry that blood and it starts spilling out everywhere. Cut some of the major arteries and it starts spurting out everywhere. Major veins and arteries run up and down the legs, and Bolding didn’t have any of those anymore below his knees, so blood absolutely poured out of the lower half of his body. First squad, Staff Sergeant, the Ox, and Docs Smith and Camacho worked frantically to stop it.

As is often the case, Bolding was unaware of his missing appendages, perhaps because his nerve tissue had been badly burned. The RPG that took his legs had first hit a lightpost next to which he had been kneeling, as he faithfully stayed near his vehicle in case his services as driver were needed. The impact with the lightpost had caused the RPG’s hot metal penetrator to detonate, and some combination of molten copper and sharp metal post fragments had gruesomely severed both of Bolding’s legs at his knees. The Marines collected the separated pieces, and they gently placed them into an ice chest in the back of a Humvee. The legs were still wearing their boots.

The medical term for this type of injury is “traumatic amputation,” and, like much of our shorthand, these two sterile words paper over a lot of gruesome reality, like, for example, the fact that Bolding was shouting, over and over, that his legs felt tangled. Would someone please untangle them, he asked. Or the fact that, for a second, the shouting stopped as Bolding gripped Walter, his best friend, by the collar and demanded to know if his nuts were still in place. I don’t know whether Walter checked or not, but he did reassure Bolding that everything he needed was still intact. I’m told that Bolding was greatly relieved.

I’m told because I never saw the injury at close range. Once I realized that the firing had stopped, I moved out of cover and started walking to the
street corner where I could see the docs hunched over, working on Bolding. I made it to within about ten feet of them when the Ox did a wonderful and magnificent thing. Seeing me approaching, he straightened up from where he crouched near Bolding, walked up to me, and held up his outstretched hand. Blood dripped from it.

“Hey, One. That’s close enough. You don’t need to see this, trust me. It’ll just fuck you up. You need to fight the platoon with a clear head, and you’re gonna have a hard time doing that if you see Bolding up close. We’re doing everything we can. We’ll get him out of here. Turn around. Fight your guys.”

Over the Ox’s shoulder I could see Bolding’s torso jerking and twitching, and the docs working to hold him steady. I still felt nothing, and in my detached state I realized the truth of the Ox’s words. I nodded and turned around to find a defiant Sergeant Noriel.

“Hey, sir,” he said. “We’re good here. We don’t need to go. We need to stay and fight, sir. Get someone else to evac Bolding, sir. I want to fight.”

Later, Noriel would tell me that at that exact moment he was furious and that he and the rest of his squad wanted only to fight and to kill, to exact some revenge in retaliation for what had just happened to their most beloved member. However, I sensed none of this bloodlust. As I stared at my angry squad leader, all I knew was that his squad was the casualty evacuation (casevac) squad that day—they were always the casevac squad—and that now they had to do their job. Whether they wanted to or not was, like everything else in our world, absolutely irrelevant. So I replied very simply to Noriel’s demand: “One-One, you’re the casualty squad. You know that, you’ve been that on every mission. It’s because you’ve got the most drivers. You are evac’ing Bolding and you are doing it ASAP because he’s bleeding out. Get going. Link up with us back at the Government Center when you’re done.”

I have no idea what happened to the children after our departure; the need to fight had yet again overtaken the need for compassion. I know that we saved a few of the kids, and I can only hope that some of the children survived who otherwise wouldn’t have, because God knows we paid a terrible enough price for staying.

As my two squads pushed west, everybody we encountered fled as soon as they set eyes on us. It could have been that news of the fight traveled
quickly, but I believe it was more likely that the civilians knew immediately by our faces, by our body language, by the way we moved in short, vicious spurts that we were on edge and looking for any excuse to take up a fight. None offered itself, and none of my men were so far gone that they made up their own, so we made it back to the relative safety of the Government Center without firing a shot. I have no idea how long our movement lasted or what time we made it back there, only that we did and that I was completely exhausted when we finally took off our helmets in a room inside the center. First squad may have been there by the time we returned, but they may also have arrived a bit after us. Again, time in these situations is very fluid.

As I sat there, vest on, forearms resting on my thighs, head hung down above my knees, weapon slung limply across my chest, I still felt nothing. My mind was fixed in tactical mode, trying to sort out which new problems were going to present themselves and how I should prioritize and respond to them. Slowly, it dawned on me that we weren’t fighting anymore. I looked around at my Marines.