From Baghdad To America (7 page)

As you can see from that lovely story, I can be somewhat irritable and have been known to lose my patience over the smallest of perceived infractions. This has gotten worse since Iraq. I can also get distracted or distant from my family, for no readily explicable reason. It fills me with shame when I realize it's happening, a feeling multiplied in spades because I have the most patient, loving, and understanding wife in the world, and there's never anything she's done—intentionally or otherwise—to warrant anything but the same in return. Maybe she knows better than I do what's going on, so she tolerates me at these times. And for that I love her even more. When we began dating, to her credit Pam didn't ask questions about what I'd seen and done in Iraq, and I didn't volunteer the information. It's as if she knew this was an area that, while not off limits, required more time to gain entrance.

Healing takes time. It's clear that Lava is not going to get past this overnight, and maybe never will. I know he's doing his best and is coping in the only way he knows how. He acts out, yes, but he doesn't possess the coping skills we do as humans.

And if
I
have whatever label you want to give me—PTSD, shell shock, soldier's heart, wacky vet syndrome—I hope that the holes blown through my soul by the sum of my experiences in Iraq can be filled by love, mine and that of my family.

“The staring eyes, the slack lips, the sleepwalker's stance ... Mercifully, you're out of it for a while;
un
mercifully, down in the center of that numbness, though, you know you will have to come back eventually . . . The Marine in the portrait would be quick as a cat if a mortar round came shu-shu-ing in, or a fight developed. His trained instincts by now are something he can depend on, and have been developed over a long period of combat fighting. The only thing not dependable is whether, if he has bad luck, they will still save him.”

—JAMES JONES, Commenting on Two-Thousand Yard Stare

Lava is the reason I'm able to admit that the same pervading
fear that dogged us day in and day out in Iraq sometimes rears its ugly head here at home. The triggers for the fear might be different, to be sure, but they are just as strong. I fear that I won't live up to my children's expectations as a father; fear that I won't always be the man my beautiful wife married in the hope of sharing a full life together; fear that in the blink of an eye—much like the flash from a sniper's rifle muzzle—everything I have, Lava included, could be gone. Poof! Just like that.

I wake up some mornings covered in sweat, not sure where I am for a minute or two. I have also noticed that if I'm watching a particular type of television show—a documentary about the war, for example—I'll react to what I'm seeing, especially if there are images or reenactments of the types of things I saw or experienced while in Iraq. You have to be affected on some level if you've held the hand of a young man who nearly died in a bomb blast, no matter how tough you think you are.

Maybe the most unsettling sound in Iraq was incoming mortar and rocket fire. There was nothing you could do about that, no enemy to shoot back at. It unnerved you, made you feel helpless. There was a lot of feeling helpless in Iraq.

I never used to flinch or jump at especially suspenseful scenes in movies, but now I do. Recently I even caught myself flinching during a soldier's funeral when the honor guard fired their volley of M16s before the playing of Taps. I knew it was coming, yet something beyond my control drove me. I had never in my life experienced this inability to control my reactions to the sound of gunfire. Not on a rifle or pistol range and not in combat. So why now? I'm sure it's in some way connected to my experiences. An anticipation of what comes after the shots, and a reminder that they could hit at any moment. Let's face it: I saw a lot of body parts, and the sound of gunshots takes me back there without me even realizing it.

Have I suddenly become a coward? No, that's not it. Because while I don't act foolishly or with reckless abandon, I don't shy away from surfing big waves or skiing as many double-black-diamond runs as I can find. I've even become more aggressive in my bicycle racing, waterskiing, and wakeboarding. Those thrills are pure pleasure, because I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder for the bullet that will finally get me.

I think of how my friend Matt Hammond's life changed in an instant. He was working with Iraqi soldiers in Fallujah one night when they were approached by men who weren't immediately recognizable as insurgents. That's when it happened. One of them opened fire, killing an Iraqi soldier. The Marines fired back. A grenade got thrown, and Matt was severely wounded. The grenade managed to do so much damage to his legs that he nearly bled out right on the spot. To top it off, when the Humvee he was riding in hit a bump, the door flew open and Matt's inert, prone body was launched into the street in the middle of the night. He had to crawl his way back toward the vehicle, all the while shouting for help, before the other Marines realized what had happened and found him in the road.

And Matt's one of the lucky ones: He lived to rehab in Fallujah with Lava at his side. I know Lava helped him remember who he was before he was a warrior. Having Lava to encourage him to get out, to get some air, to feel needed, played a big role in Matt's recovery.

What is
fear
anyway? According to Merriam-Webster, it's “An unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.” That's pretty vague, really. Doesn't everyone react differently to danger? We all fear something, whether we admit it or not. The only true way to conquer your fears is to confront them. Look fear right in the eye and remind yourself that you're stronger. This sometimes also involves admitting that you cannot control everything. For a Marine, that's difficult. Being a Marine is all about a sense of duty, of obligation, of success. Failure is
not
an option.

A few years ago, the
Military Review
ran an article about fear and how it can affect a unit's effectiveness. I found it really fascinating, though not particularly surprising. It's a question that's been haunting military leads for as long as there have been wars. The author points out that participants in battle must react to identifiable threats as well as a pervasive, insidious uneasiness—differences that Sigmund Freud characterized as “objective anxiety” and “neurotic anxiety.”

I agree with the idea that pervasive uneasiness does nothing good for a man's psyche, and that combat training should help soldiers to deal with fear, but I'm not sure there's any real way to represent this without actually experiencing it. The Army tries its best, with virtual reality preparation (which, ironically, is also being used to help traumatized veterans to overcome post-traumatic stress disorder). Still, I don't think anyone can know how his body and mind will react.

When I see Lava stretching his legs in the morning, slinking off Sean's bed (that's my stepson—you know, the kid Lava allegedly bit when Pam maneuvered to meet me?), yawning wide and blinking his kohl-lined eyes, I see myself. When Lava's face is bathed in sunlight, his eyes turn a golden brown with a distinctive depth and glint. He acts as a mirror to my soul, and I can only hope that I'm as loyal and protective of my family as he is of me. He doesn't hide his feelings; there's no pretending that he likes someone he doesn't, or vice versa.

Back in Iraq, we all stroked Lava's filthy fur in an attempt to forget the desolate, dusty terrain outside and the rough bedrolls that covered our dirt-encrusted limbs at night (or whenever we slept). I see Sean's hand linger on Lava's head sometimes, and I know his fur is soft as my new baby's skin. Lava shakes his head, ears flapping against his skull, and he opens his mouth in a doggy grin. He's a strong animal, fierce and kind. He's obviously a product of a feral coupling deep in the desert. As I've said, Lava mostly resembles a German shepherd, but he's sleeker and blonder. (It's funny that many of the dogs found on foreign soil tend to fall into this category. I like to think that Lava is more handsome than mostly, but I may be biased.) He's grown dramatically since he first befriended me in Fallujah, when he was a tiny ball of fur that fit into my hand—or my boot. He went through an odd big-eared phase in the time we were apart. I was struck by how much bigger his head was than his body when he first arrived in the States, with a tail that moved his entire being. That hadn't changed one bit.

Lava's jaunty belief in life itself helped me accept that my fears, from mortal to romantic, were part of the fabric of my life. The anxieties of every single moment of my time in Iraq were alleviated by thoughts of Lava's crazy antics. My insecurities about Pam were equally buoyed by the fact that Lava thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sure, he's a dog, but he's got good taste. I fell hard for Pam, and I was able to be a man she could imagine spending her life with because Lava showed me what it means to be open to life.

On the battlefield that is Iraq, we do not always find who we're looking for, but we are always accompanied by the fear that they will find us first. A thousand-yard stare is burned into us after months of dancing this waltz with the fear and uncertainty that each day and night bring. The enemy looks exactly like the innocent noncombatant smoking a cigarette at the Internet café down the street. One military-aged adult male is indistinguishable from the next—and it's not always a male who is waiting with a death machine strapped on. Women, children, dogs, you name it, can be suicide bombers. Because you can never be sure of who is the good native and who is the bad, it's nearly impossible to confront your fear head-on until that terrifying moment when the proverbial shit has, indeed, hit the fan. To tell the truth, it's almost a relief when that happens and you can channel all that aggression into your fight.

Let's face it, to a bunch of Marines and soldiers just off the plane in Iraq from Oklahoma or Indiana or even California, one bearded guy looks just like the next, all wearing the exact same clothing—until one of them pulls an AK-47. This assault rifle, the preferred weapon of our enemy, was developed during World War II and is compact, easy to use, and incredibly reliable. It is at once a beautiful and an ugly thing to behold because it is designed for one thing only: killing. And it sure looks the part, with its wood or steel buttstock and hand guard, its black steel barrel and wood grips, and its ability to cycle round after round of automatic fire without jamming, even with the introduction of foreign matter to the weapon. This is the weapon that appears from beneath the folds of a garment and suddenly releases a hailstorm of bullets and RPGs. Now you've got to react and rely on your training and instincts with no time to think. You confront that fear with your own automatic weapon and your automatic response.

In situations like these, Marines are trained to act/react and
not
to think. Thinking will get you killed. If you think too hard about what you should do with someone in your face, if you worry too much about what side he's on, you die. It's just like on the rifle range—the target pops up and you shoot without thinking, but you do so in Iraq because you
know
it's a bad guy and if you don't react fast enough or with enough deadly force, they'll be holding a memorial service for you back at Camp Pendleton or Camp Lejeune, handing a folded flag and posthumous Purple Heart to Mom and Dad. Not only that, but the Corps invests a lot of time and money in our training and equipment, ensuring that we're the finest fighting force in the world. How do you think it looks when we're taken out by some jackass wearing a “man dress” because we took the time to think rather than rely on our instincts and training? Not good, my friends, not good.

And don't tell me, by the way, that I'm being racist. No one wants to befriend someone you might have to kill in the next minute, or who might open fire on you and your best friend.

Initially, there's the fear of the firefight itself as it begins, but also a sense of relief that at least you're doing something. This fear is subsequently replaced by the fear of letting down your men, which lasts until the shooting is over and you've had a chance to allow the adrenaline to recede to that place it goes and the shaking starts, when you realize you've come within inches of dying (yet again). There's the fear of the unknown, as in being on patrol and not knowing when the sniper's bullet will find its mark or the IED will anonymously scatter your body fragments to the four points of the compass. These are real fears. This is not the branch brushing the window in a storm. This is not a harmless ant crawling across your hand during a picnic in the park with your best gal on a sunny afternoon.

So how does the Marine or soldier overcome such fears? What makes the warrior, a person of the same flesh and blood and bones as the rest of the human race, continue on? How can he bring himself to walk that patrol, breach the door behind which the enemy lies in wait, or rise up and expose himself during a firefight? It is the sense of duty, obligation, and responsibility for his fellow Marine or soldier that allows—no, requires and compels—him to do so. When you're confronted with fear in combat, you face that fear and fight back, much as you do when confronted with the enemy. You allow your fear in, but push it to the back of your subconscious, stomping on it as you would a cockroach or your enemy.