Tom Sileo (18 page)

With their son in combat, every day was a struggle. But fortunately for the Manions, they were surrounded by family and friends throughout the Delaware Valley.

“Let's have some people over today,” Janet said, turning to Tom, who knew that having family around would comfort his wife.

At the front of the house, just a few steps from the kitchen, an American flag waved ever so slightly in the gentle spring breeze. In a few hours the Manion house would be filled with familiar faces for a Sunday afternoon barbeque.

About six thousand miles away, the Marines of 3-2-1 MiTT had an early afternoon barbeque of their own on a small FOB in eastern Fallujah. As smoke—for once from something other than an explosion—filled the tiny, makeshift base, the Marines smiled
and joked despite the depressing, predictable landscape around them. The sand beneath their boots was almost the same color as the wooden panels that surrounded the FOB, and the sky seemed to always look the same: hazy and unforgiving.

Still, the MiTT team, including Travis, who was quickly becoming its heart and soul, tried to make the most of this relaxing barbeque, which was an extremely rare occurrence and also a welcome change from their usual diet of MREs (meals ready to eat). Four months into a deployment marked by bloody street fights with a relentless, ruthless enemy, moments of levity were the antidote to insanity.

“One day we're out and someone thought they heard a gunshot, and the Iraqi soldiers start shooting in every direction,” said Marine Lance Corporal Chuck Segel. His listeners laughed. “It's like they're shooting in a giant circle instead of at a target.”

Travis hadn't known Segel very long, but he liked him, especially since he, like Travis, had served in Fallujah about a year earlier.

“I totally get what you're saying,” Travis said. “And remember, that's why we're here . . . to train the Iraqis.”

“Roger that,” Segel said with a nod.

As the Marines talked about their girlfriends back home and argued about the still-young baseball season, there was an unusual sense of calm. Except for the 113 degree heat and pungent stench of trash and raw sewage nearly overwhelming the smell of their hot dogs and hamburgers, it almost felt like home.

Then, amid a temporarily jovial atmosphere, one Marine remembered he was still in Fallujah.

“Today is going to be fucking terrible,” First Lieutenant Chris Kim, the brawny Asian American officer from California, said to a fellow MiTT team member. He had had a bad feeling about that Sunday ever since waking up and smelling the awful stench of garbage on the streets of Fallujah.

The MiTT team, still more confident than ever while leading and advising the Iraqis, had been preparing for a huge mission in
the city that day, called Operation Steel Resolve. But as was often the case in such a volatile, unpredictable area, the mission had been delayed until later that week, which meant Marines on the MiTT team weren't sure how they would spend the rest of this hot, wretched day.

As the MiTT team mulled around the tiny wooden base, eating their lunches before the outside odor turned their stomachs, Major Adam Kubicki, the senior officer, was discussing alternative missions with First Lieutenant Jon Marang.

For weeks an enemy sniper had been stalking an area of western Fallujah known as the “Pizza Slice,” a distinctively shaped section of narrow, crowded alleyways between two main arteries that fed off two bridges crossing the Euphrates River. The northern, much older bridge—the “Blackwater Bridge,” which drivers crossed while driving west on “Route Elizabeth,” as the Marines had nicknamed it—was already infamous as the site where terrorists had strung up the bodies of murdered American civilian contractors working for Blackwater in March 2004, when Travis and Brendan were still at the Naval Academy. The atrocity had ignited the US-led Operation Vigilant Resolve, otherwise known as the bloody First Battle of Fallujah. There had already been a great deal of bloodshed—American and Iraqi—inside the pizza-shaped enclave formed by the two main roads.

Using armor-piercing bullets, the sniper had wounded several Americans and Iraqis, and every Marine on the MiTT team wanted to bring him down. Armed with intelligence about a neighborhood in which he might be hiding, this particular Sunday afternoon seemed to the Marines like a perfect time to end the threat.

The problem Marine officers were wrestling with was that in the spring of 2007, US troops almost never ran daytime missions inside the Pizza Slice. The marketplaces were overwhelmingly crowded, which made it extremely difficult to maneuver and nearly impossible to distinguish civilians from insurgents. With the Blackwater
Bridge as an ominous backdrop, it was a volatile sector in which Americans were obviously not welcome.

Travis was far from reckless, but he also had a reputation for being the first to run toward the chaos of a Fallujah firefight. In fact, he had recently told “Doc” Albino, the Navy hospital corpsman who was eating a hot dog while getting mustard stuck in his thick mustache, exactly how he felt about serving in a war zone.

“Someday, I want to be able to look back on these years and know I did my part,” Travis told Albino.

After discussing the idea with several fellow officers, including Travis, Major Kubicki announced that a team would head into the Pizza Slice to follow up on new intelligence about the sniper's whereabouts. Hopefully they could finally find the terrorist who was shooting at US Marines, Iraqi soldiers, and civilians. Two American Humvees would accompany two vehicles full of Iraqi Army troops. In one Humvee would be Kubicki, Albino, and Kim. They would be joined by the driver, Staff Sergeant Paul Petty, and the turret gunner, Staff Sergeant Josh Wilson.

Marang and Segel would ride in the second Humvee. The driver would be Staff Sergeant Chad Marquette, turret gunner Corporal Zebulin Bryner, and Mohammed, an Iraqi interpreter.

Travis and Second Lieutenant Scott Alexander, a friend and fellow MiTT team member, were supposed to go to a nearby school with Iraqi soldiers and hand out candy, crayons, and coloring books to local kids. Travis was excited about the mission because he cared about the Iraqis and loved to see the smiles of their children.

As the MiTT team members finished their lunches, packed up their gear, and prepared to head their separate ways, Travis was approached by First Lieutenant Kim, another close buddy. Manion, Kim, and Alexander, who often hung out together, had been nicknamed the “three amigos” by Major Joel Poudrier, the battalion-level Marine officer who was wounded in the chlorine bomb attack.

Kim, who had smelled ugliness in the air when he woke up that morning and had reiterated his uneasiness just minutes earlier, told Travis that the smiles of Iraqi schoolchildren would be a welcome sight. Kim was a brave Marine who repeatedly distinguished himself on the battlefield, but on this day he felt worn down. Fortunately he and Travis were close enough that he felt confident asking his friend to take his place on Major Kubicki's Pizza Slice patrol team.

“Is it cool if I head over to the school instead?” Kim asked.

“No problem,” Travis replied, his eyes lighting up because he knew this meant he could go help find the sniper.

“Are you sure?” Kim insisted.

“Go ahead with Scott to the school,” Travis said. “We're all good.”

“Thanks, Travis,” Kim said. “I'll see you in a bit.”

“See you back here,” Travis said with a nod.

Off the battlefield, Travis was a true friend. On it, he had already earned from the Iraqis the nickname “asad,” one of many Arabic words for “lion.”

Travis knew Kim, who would certainly return the favor later in the deployment, needed a break. In addition, Travis wanted to confront the sniper. Just as in his wrestling days at Navy, he was eager to fight against the opposition's most skilled, intimidating opponent. Yet as Travis packed up his gear, including his M-4 rifle and its attached M-203 grenade launcher, it was impossible not to remember a recent conversation with his mother, which had left him so shaken that he had discussed it with Kim one night when they both couldn't sleep.

Like any loving, caring military mom, Janet was in anguish knowing that her son was in combat on the volatile streets of Fallujah.

“I understand you have to do your duty,” Janet had said emotionally to Travis via satellite phone a few nights earlier. “But please make sure to be careful.”

Brendan Looney and Travis Manion met as midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

After starting his collegiate sports career as a Navy football player, Brendan played three seasons of lacrosse. Travis attended several of Brendan's games, after which Brendan would often join the postgame tailgate celebration.

Travis had an illustrious collegiate wrestling career at Navy, where he defeated many of the nation's top wrestlers in tournaments around the country. After being nationally ranked during his junior year, Travis's senior season was derailed by a shoulder injury.

Brendan, a defensive midfielder, was a crucial part of the Navy Midshipmen men's lacrosse team that made an improbable run to the 2004 NCAA Final Four and National Championship game at M & T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.
Courtesy of the US Naval Academy