House to House: A Tale of Modern War (21 page)

We all rush to him. He’s in tremendous pain. Blood covers his pants and both hands.

“What the fuck is going on?” I shout up to the third-floor roof.

“Sergeant Pratt’s been hit,” Sucholas calls back.

Thanks for fucking telling us.

Medic Lucas “Doc” Abernathy eases Pratt into the house. We lay him down and the Oklahoman goes to work on him. I cradle Pratt’s head. The worst thing possible for a wounded soldier is to see his own wounds. I hold his head so he can’t look down.

Doc cuts away Pratt’s pants.

Pratt writhes in pain. “It’s my dick!”

He tries to look down. I fight him and keep his head up.

But I look down.

“Oh my God! Pratt, you’re hung like a Lincoln conspirator.”

He smiles a little through the pain. “Yeah….”

Doc is focused on his patient and Pratt is in no mood to laugh.

So much for keeping everyone loose.

Then I see why Doc is so engrossed. Embedded in the side of Pratt’s penis is part of a dead-bolt lock from an exterior gate. When the building exploded, he was standing on the third-floor roof. Bits of the house, gate, and wall from across the street acted like shrapnel and blew across to us. Pratt was in the way.

Doc Abernathy eases the chunk of lock out of Pratt’s flesh. Sergeant Pratt takes my hand and squeezes it. It is slick with blood and slips out of my grasp.

“Sergeant Bell, I know it’s my dick!”

“Pratt, It’s fine. You got hit in the leg.”

“Don’t lie to me, Sergeant Bell. My dick hurts!”

He grabs my hand again, but we’re both slippery with blood now, and again I can’t hold on to him. I wipe my hand, reach for his, and try to keep him calm as Doc Abernathy continues to work.

Doc really impresses me. He works methodically, but fast and professionally. He locates another wound. Pratt took some shrapnel in the scrotum, and the tear it left is bleeding pretty seriously. Doc fights to staunch it.

Pratt closes his eyes and grimaces in agony. He is terrified that he might have lost his equipment, but he doesn’t moan. He endures. He’s a man.

Ware and Yuri come inside and snap photos. Pratt opens his eyes, and I see he’s in despair.

“My God, it hurts so fucking bad….”

I look up at Ware. “Hey dude, what the fuck? You’re not gonna take pictures of him.”

Ware promises, “I won’t put this in the magazine…you won’t see his face.”

“Come on. Now is not the fucking time, dude.”

“We want to show what you guys are sacrificing.”

“You could publish these.”

Ware shakes his head. “I’d never do that, mate. This is about the sacrifice….”

He clicks a few more photos. Pratt tries to retain his dignity by conquering his pain with remarkable self-discipline. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t scream. He takes it.

This kid is a fucking stud.

Doc Abernathy pours Betadine over both wounds. I cannot even imagine how much that would hurt.

Doc reaches for some gauze and starts to bandage the shrapnel wound on his scrotum. Meno gets on the radio to Cantrell, who is nearby in a Bradley. Meno’s outside on the roof, but I overhear him say, “Pratt’s shot.”

Cantrell’s voice booms back, “Who’s hit? Who’s fucking hit?”

I stand up and move to the roof, then key my mike, “Sergeant Cantrell, Blue Three Alpha is hit.”

“Fuck the feeder card. Fuck his battle roster number! Just tell me who the fuck it is!” roars Cantrell. He’s beside himself with fury.

“It’s Pratt,” I say.

“Pratt?”

“Yes, Pratt.”

Cantrell’s great weakness is his temper. It is directly tied to his feelings for his platoon. He loves us. When he hears one of us has been hit, it is like a knife to his gut.

He starts calling in a medevac dustoff to get Pratt out of here.

“Blue Seven, this is Blue Two. He’s got shrapnel wounds to…near…the groin, genitals. Negative gunshot, shrapnel wounds in the dick zip code.”

Pratt looks up. “What’dja say, Sergeant Bell?”

Fitts looks down. “You’re good, Pratt.”

I reaffirm, “Seven, let me get more info.”

Cantrell demands answers. “Where is he injured? How serious?”

“Priority, possibly urgent—” I pause, and then add, “depending on what you call a limb.”

I am trying to be serious. The rule for calling in an air medevac is “life, limb, or eyesight.” I’m not sure what category Pratt’s wound falls under, but I do know we need to get him to the battalion aid station fast.

Cantrell is now confused and enraged. He shouts into the radio, “Bellavia, what the fuck are you talking about?”

I walk away from Pratt and look over the roof at Sergeant Cantrell standing chest high out of his turret. His screams are hitting me a nanosecond after his mouth moves. I whisper to him, “His cock. He’s got wounds to his cock, Sarge.”

“What are you whispering? What the fuck is wrong with you? We’re going to ground-evac Pratt. Get him down here,” Cantrell says.

I walk back inside. Doc Abernathy is furiously wrapping Pratt’s penis in gauze.

“Hey, Sergeant Cantrell wants to load up and take him to the cloverleaf. Let’s get him on the litter and out of here,” I tell Doc.

As I say that, Pratt becomes desperate. “No! NO! I’m good! I’m good to go!”

Unfortunately, Cantrell hears Pratt over Lieutenant Meno’s radio and loses his mind. “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN HE’S GOOD?”

I try to calm Cantrell down. “He’s trying to be a hero, Sarge. He’s not good. The kid is outta this fight. He’s outta this fight, okay?”

Pratt refuses to accept this. “I can still fight! I CAN STILL FIGHT!”

Fitts remarks, “Pratt, you have no fucking pants on. How’re you gonna be in this fight? Did you bring an extra pair of pants?”

“I did, Sergeant Fitts. I did! They’re in the Bradley. I’m good.”

Sucholas shows up. He’s been on the third-floor rooftop this entire time. “Hey, Sergeant Fitts, Pratt was hit during the explosions. There’s a shitload of blood up here. I’ve been pouring dirt on it.”

Pratt looks waxy and wan.

“Pratt, you’ve lost a lot of blood. We’re gonna get you outta here. We’re not gonna fuck around with this one, okay?”

Lawson comes in, looks Pratt over, and agrees. “We need to get him out of here.”

Pratt resigns himself to his fate. Doc Abernathy finishes bandaging his penis. It looks like a cast, and there’s so much gauze and weight to it that when we get Pratt on his feet, it bends so far down he begins bleeding again. We ease him back onto the floor. Doc needs to immobilize the wound.

He slings Pratt’s penis to his stomach. Everyone marvels at this. It looks like he’s got a third arm wrapped in a cast.

“Dude, you should be a porn star.”

Pratt offers a sickly grin.

Fitts says, “Okay, gut his shit. We need the ammo.”

We take Pratt’s ammo, night vision, and body-armor insert plates. He also has an M4 with a telescopic sight. I’ve got no scope on my rifle, so I grab it.

Cantrell hollers, “Retards! I’m waiting. Get his ass down here, meatballs!”

I move to the roof and peer over into the street. The platoon sergeant’s got his Bradley parked right next to our front door. He’s waiting impatiently, rage boiling. He makes eye contact from the commander’s hatch and keys his mike. A half second later, his voice blasts through my radio, “Get your shit together, Sergeant Bell, and tell me what the fuck is happening!”

“He’s coming down now, Sarge.”

A moment later, Pratt walks outside to the Bradley. Cantrell looks down at him as the men load him aboard the track. His eyes flick back up to me on the roof. He scowls, tosses his cigarette over the side, and looks like he’s about to chew my head off.

Instead, he howls with laughter. The absurdity of a stomach-slung penis is too much even for our platoon sergeant. I relax a little as Fitts comes up along side me.

“He looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Cock.” I say, laughing.

“Frosty the Snow Dick.”

Getting hit in the crotch is every soldier’s worst nightmare. We can either dwell on it and drive ourselves crazy, or make fun of it. Laughter is our only defense.

Our battalion surgeon is a major named Lisa DeWitt. We all regard her as a maternal figure in our infrantry battalion. The thought of her being confronted with Pratt’s injury leaves Fitts and me in stitches. I say to him, “When Major DeWitt sees him on the operating table…they don’t teach you to wrap a dick in any field manual I’ve read.”

The Brad lumbers down the street, bound for our battalion aid station at the cloverleaf east of Fallujah. It is also where most of the reporters are hanging out. Pratt is sure to attract attention when he arrives. A lot of attention.

Poor bastard.

Fitts and I climb to the third-floor roof, and the sight there stops our laughter cold. Sucholas wasn’t kidding. There’s blood all over the roof and parapet. Spatters of it are everywhere. Pratt was wounded right at the beginning of the engagement. He stood with his brothers, ignored his wounds, and stayed in the fight. He fired his M4 until the enemy melted away. For fifteen minutes, Pratt bled through his crotch without thought of the consequences to himself.

I’d had my problems with Pratt in the past. He’d been in my squad at the start of the deployment. I thought he got a little complacent. Then he became a team leader in our weapons squad, and he did a good job. But now, as I look over the evidence of his selflessness, I realize Pratt had something in him beyond common courage. He loved this platoon. This last act with us was the ultimate display of that love. He refused to leave his brothers. He could have bled out and died on the roof. Yet he didn’t say a word until after the fight was over.

Sergeant Alan Pratt of Philadelphia became my hero that day.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Where Feral Dogs Feed

As dusk begins to snuff out our first full day in the city, Michael Ware decides to make his presence felt. I don’t know what prompts this. Perhaps it was the sight of Pratt bleeding. Perhaps he feels a connection to the men he has spent so much time with while covering the war in Iraq. Or maybe he’s just trying to make sure he and Yuri survive.

It starts while Ware is still talking on his satellite phone. Lieutenant Meno gathers up the platoon’s leaders to give us a chalk talk. Team leaders and officers hover around him. Meno tells us we’ve been given a warning order to move into a new area late tonight. We study the area on our maps. We know it already—we’ve got to countermarch north and re-clear the areas we had passed through earlier. We’ve got to eliminate the threat to our rear.

At one point, I glance up over my map and see Ware shutting off his phone. “Hey, whaddya say? Did the Marines catch up?” I ask.

“Mate, they are way the fuck up there. Some units are stymied and barely in the city. Just on the outer edge.”

“Marines. Twenty years from now the Army will have never been in Fallujah. You watch. Just like Guadalcanal, Saipan, and Okinawa. The Army was never there. Whole Pacific campaign was Marine led, Marine fought. General MacArthur? He wasn’t Army either. All bullshit.”

Fitts loves to talk about Marine conspiracy just as much as he enjoys sharing his hatred of the officer corps. He doesn’t miss a beat to sink his teeth into my bait.

“My granddad got gut shot at Okinawa. He was Army infantry. Sat on that beachhead for two days until they found him. Wasn’t ever the same fucking man after that. Let me hear someone tell me the Army wasn’t at Okinawa.”

“He wasn’t there. You are a fucking liar. That never fucking happened. The Army never fought in the Pacific. And furthermore, we are not fighting here in Fallujah. This is a simulator at Fort Benning, you’re all part of a
Jacob’s Ladder
–type experiment, Dr. Bigsby,” I cup my hands and scream off into the wall. “Run that firefight over again, this time let Pulley actually fucking do something of significance for his nation.” Our platoon, Pulley included, are now all openly laughing at the absurdity of this entire bit. Fitts and I have once again taken stress off the minds of young soldiers.

“Where are the Marines, again? Hall asks Ware after we all settle down.

“All the way north,” Ware tells him.

Meno hears Ware and stops what he’s doing. “Sir, did you say that the Marines are barely in the city?”

“Call me Mick. And yes, I just got off the phone with reporters over there by them, and they tell me they are barely in the city. And some other units are stymied near the outer edge of the city.”

Meno goes downstairs and grabs the radio. If what he says is true, then Mick has just given us better intelligence than Captain Sims is getting from battalion.

At that moment, everyone present realizes the importance of Michael Ware. He may be a media type, but he has intelligence that is vital to us. More importantly, he has no problem sharing it with us.

My interest in Ware grows. I offer him and Yuri a cigarette. “So you guys have been around the block. Was today in the top ten best fights you’ve ever seen?”

Yuri is so quiet, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say anything before. Another member of the media pool mentioned Yuri was actually captured by mujahideen forces in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. He nods in response to my question. “Good fight.”

Ware adds, “In Samarra, things got pretty hairy. At one point we were crawling through body parts. It was pretty terrible, mate.”

“That fucking sucks,” says Misa. His cheek wound looks raw and ugly. It leaches black ooze. White phosphorus is just terrible stuff. My guess is that it’s already infected.

Ware continues, “But as far as volume of fire, there was a lot today. But sheer danger factor, I don’t know. You seemed to be handling it. Samarra seemed more dangerous.”

Yuri nods his head.

I’m thinking about what he’s just said when Ware offers,” I will tell you this: this enemy is not done. Not by a long stretch. These men out there, they are here to kill you or die trying.”

“You were here in April. What’s different now?” Fitts asks.