House to House: A Tale of Modern War (35 page)

I walked past the compound my squad had been in on the morning of the thirteenth. This was where I’d last seen Captain Sims, and the moment flashed back into my mind.

We’d been clearing houses. When Captain Sims found us, we were taking a breather. Some of us were smoking. A few others had dug into some MREs.

As Captain Sims approached, I figured for sure he would have a comment about our facial hair. Instead he entered our compound looking like George Michael post Wham!

Some horrible human being had taken a giant-sized shit in a bath tub that rested in the front yard of this compound. I attached wires to it as Captain Sims came to the gate.

“Sir, check out this IED we found.”

“Dear Lord,” he groaned in mock seriousness. “Does he need a dust off or the chaplain?”

We shared a laugh and I noticed Sims’s bloodshot eyes. Exhaustion had taken its toll on him. So had Lieutenant Iwan’s death.

“Sir, I am sorry for your loss. We all loved him.”

“Sergeant Bellavia, we’ll deal with it later. But thank you. How is everyone?”

“Good, sir.”

“I heard about what happened the other day. That is some Audie Murphy stuff.”

I didn’t feel that way, so I didn’t reply. Captain Sims came a little closer to me, then chided me. “Listen to me. What you did was Hooah, but it was stupid. We can’t take crazy chances like that, you understand me? We can’t risk any more loss. You have to use your head. You and Fitts are important to these men and you need to stay in this fight.”

“Yes sir.”

Another block ahead had to be cleared. We started to gather our gear to go and do it. Captain Sims shook his head. “You men rest. You deserve it. I’ll take care of this.”

“Are you sure, sir?” Fitts asked as he stood at the gate to the compound.

“First platoon spent the night next to a cache. I’m gonna get some photos. Eventually we are gonna have to blow all this in place. You guys earned a rest.”

It was a touching moment. In Fallujah, in our worst moments, Captain Sean Sims had grown into a leader beyond all our wildest expectations.

Not five minutes later, he was shot dead inside a house.

On the same street two years later, I just could not go on. Three hundred meters from the house he died in, my last carnation fell to the sidewalk. I mumbled one last prayer.

My mission was done, and I felt cold and empty. The closure that had lured me to Fallujah in the first place continued to elude me. There will be no closure with the war still ongoing. I guess I just wanted to find a city worthy of the men who bled and died to liberate it. I wanted to see something of value, something that gave it all meaning. I don’t pretend to know how the war will be judged by history.

I started to walk away when I felt movement behind me. In that instant, like the old days, my instincts kicked in. Somebody was watching me, and I had to get out of there. Without a weapon, I was an easy target. In my rush to put some distance between me and whatever the threat was, I almost crashed into a woman in black as she came around a corner. I noticed she carried a mat with stringy weeds on her head. Our near collision startled both of us, but I hurried on and failed to even apologize.

Then I heard her footsteps stop. I turned, and saw her regarding my carnation. She stared at it for a long minute before looking back to study my face in the early morning light.

My shoulders sagged. I could not even feign a smile for this woman. Instead, I turned up the street to leave her and this miserable city behind. I took a few steps. Behind me, nothing broke the stillness of the morning. I expected to hear the swish-swish of her sandals again walking on the side of the road. But there was nothing. Curious, I glanced over my shoulder again. She was kneeling in front of my flower.

Tenderly, she placed her own weeds alongside my cheap carnation. She touched her heart, then the ground, and uttered a prayer. She kissed her hand and touched her heart again. My mouth fell open. She looked over at me, and as our eyes met again, my heart broke. All the emotions, all the bottled-up angst and grief I’d pretended didn’t exist suddenly broke free. Tears rushed down my cheeks, and I began to sob uncontrollably. I covered my face in complete shame, but I knew the woman still watched me.

She regarded me sadly. For a moment I thought she would attempt to console me. Instead, she nodded, turned, and ambled away, an anonymous elderly woman lost in a city I unapologetically helped destroy.

I slipped off into an abandoned home a street away, embarrassed and surprised by my own meltdown on that Fallujah street. I sat and stared at the front gate. I have no idea how long I sat there, wracked with guilt for surviving. I lost track of time, lost track of where I was. Finally, I moved outside the gate in an attempt to find that woman again. I looked up to see an empty street.

I was alone.

She left without knowing the gift she’d given me.

She wasn’t the reason I came to fight in Iraq. But she reminded me of the importance of why we fight. The soil in Fallujah and all of Iraq has been consecrated with the blood of our dead. And her reverence reminded me of that. Fallujah will never be just another battlefield. This old woman showed me that my time in Fallujah was a life-altering privilege. It was here that we fought for hope. It was here that we fought to end the reign of terror that had descended on the innocents of a city.

Through it all, I witnessed the best of the human condition—the loyalty, the self-sacrifice, the love that the brotherhood of arms evokes. I realized then that I am complete for having experienced that. Those who died gave their lives for their brothers. They gave their lives for a noble ideal: that freedom from tyranny and oppression is a basic human right. We were the force to do that, and my brothers paid the price.

I stood up and headed for the street again, tears gone now. I had work to do, a fight to continue. But I knew this: as long as I honored these men each day, I would have a second chance at redemption.

At last, I understood.

Coming home from Iraq one last time in the summer of 2006, I sat in the airliner as it winged its way west and wondered about my future. I still wonder about it. I’m no longer a soldier. I’m no longer an NCO. I am not part of America’s warrior class anymore. What am I?

I need to be a family man. My son needs me. My wife needs me. But the transition from infantryman to father and husband has been anything but easy. It started with a lack of understanding on both sides. For that, I am responsible. How can I share all that I’ve experienced with my son and wife? How can I get them to see what it meant to me to be with these men when they needed me most?

When it comes down to it, I haven’t been there for my wife or my son. I don’t blame them for being bitter, but that hasn’t made things any easier.

The flight attendant brought me a drink. I sipped it and stared out the window at the vast Atlantic Ocean below us.

Captain Doug Walter gave me three weeks of leave to see Evan and Deanna after our nine-month deployment to Kosovo in 2003. It was the first time I even had a chance to be a father, and I loved every moment shared with Evan. Then I volunteered for Iraq, and all the goodwill and love we built during those twenty-five days seemed burned away by that decision. I went to Iraq to be with my men. Evan and Deanna saw that decision only as a rejection. As abandonment.

Things got even tougher. In the summer of 2004, I was supposed to come home on leave and be back in New York in time for our town’s Fourth of July fireworks show. In emails and phone calls from Iraq, I’d promised them both we’d watch the pyrotechnics together. Then we’d see a minor-league baseball game, go to the zoo, and eat cotton candy. Through June, I could sense their excitement as my leave drew close. Evan talked nonstop about seeing his daddy again. Deanna’s enthusiasm and love shined through every conversation.

The day before I was supposed to leave for Kuwait, insurgents attacked my platoon in downtown Muqdadiyah. We ended up in a sustained, close-quarters battle for several hours at the police station before we finally gained control of the fight. As a result, the convoy that was supposed to take me to the airfield was delayed by a day. I missed the Fourth of July.

I hopped on the first thing smoking back to Kuwait, but when I called home to tell them I was off schedule, Evan was crushed. He wouldn’t be able to watch fireworks with his dad. I’d broken another promise. Deanna’s excitement evaporated as she watched how the delay hurt our little boy.

It went from bad to worse.

The next day, while I was in Kuwait, an IED nearly killed my medic, Sergeant Robert Bonner, and one of our snipers, Staff Sergeant Carlos Pokos. I couldn’t get much information about their conditions. I’d heard Bonner lost both legs and was clinging to life. Pokos was messed up as well, but I couldn’t find out what happened to him. I was frantic to get more details. Would they live? Were they going home? Had they been airlifted to the Landstuhl army hospital in Germany? Or were they still in country?

In my search for information, another plane left without me. I took an ass-chewing in Kuwait for that, but it was nothing compared to what happened when I called home again. Deanna and Evan went from crushed and disappointed to bitterly angry. I’d screwed up with them again.

Three days later, on July 7, 2004, I saw Evan for only the second time in two years. I got off the plane at the Buffalo airport, still dressed in my desert camouflage uniform. Deanna regarded me coldly with that
you’re an asshole
look she’s got down pat and uses when I most deserve it. Evan hid behind her pant legs. When I reached for him, he recoiled.

My own son was afraid of me.

Deanna guided him to me, and I hugged him. He did his best to minimize the contact between the two of us, as if he was hugging a stranger. It was devastating to me. Of course he’d react this way.
I
was
a stranger.
He only recognized me from the photos Deanna taped next to his bed. His memory was empty of any time with his father.

I spent that leave building bridges with my son and wife. We did go to the zoo. We did eat cotton candy together as Evan sat on my shoulder and giggled at all the silly things I said for his benefit. By the end of those two weeks, we had bonded. He’d remember me now, I was sure of it.

But then I had to leave. Evan knew what was happening. The bad guys waited. Dad needed to go fight them. Yet this was the first real time I had been a stable presence in his life, and he didn’t want to let go of that.

He hid my car keys. My hat disappeared. My overnight bag vanished. He did everything he could think of to delay my departure. When none of it worked, he sobbed. The little boy sobs turned to sheer despair from a four-year-old. Leaving him in that state was one of the most painful experiences of my life.

After Iraq, I knew I had to make a decision. I could either be an infantryman or a father and a husband. I could not do both. I wrestled with it, agonizing over which to choose and which to give up. Being a noncommissioned officer was everything to me. Wearing the blue cord of the infantry meant even more.

In February of 2005, Task Force 2-2 left Iraq and returned to Germany. We got back on Valentine’s Day. When we got off the plane, the men were mobbed by their wives or German girlfriends, and I walked through a sea of soldiers and women passionately sharing this homecoming with long kisses and tender embraces.

There was nobody there for me. That night, I sat in the barracks and watched all the single nineteen-year-olds get ready for a night on the town. By eight, they had all left to meet girls and drink. I spent the evening watching German TV in an empty barracks. Out of combat, this would be my life: hollow, lonely, devoid of love.

Two weeks later, I arrived at the Buffalo airport again. Evan recognized me, but he was standoffish and cautious at first. I had to win him back all over again. This time, it was different. He was five now, and through the leave I began to see all the things I had missed. He was in T-ball. Somebody else had taught him how to throw a baseball. Somebody else bought him his first mitt. I had never even played catch with him.

His grandfather had shown him how to ride a bike. Inside, I was furious. These were my duties—sacred ones a father must do as part of his son’s rite of passage. I had failed him again by being absent when he needed me. If I stayed in the army, what else would I miss?

Everything.

We spent March playing family again, but the clock ticked down and soon I had to return to Germany. As my departure time drew near, Evan started hiding my things again. The tears came and wouldn’t stop. These brief interludes, however they balmed my own conscience, were nothing but torture for this little boy who only wanted a dad.

I left the army and came home for good in the summer of 2005. When Deanna and Evan met me at the airport this time, Evan asked me, “Daddy, do you have to fight any more bad guys?”

“No, buddy. No more bad guys. No more trips. I’m done.”

“Done with the bad guys?”

I smiled and hugged him, “Done with the bad guys. Done with the army. I’m home now.”

Except, I wasn’t done. A year went by and this chance to go to Iraq and seek answers cropped up. When I made the decision to go, I told Evan only that I had to go on a three-week business trip. He seemed okay with that, mainly since we’d spent the last ten months tight as any father and son. I was finally starting to find my groove. I was even coaching his soccer team that spring.

At one of the last practices, I asked my assistant coach to take over the team while I was in Ramadi and Fallujah. He said he’d be happy to do that; then he called a team meeting and told everyone he’d be running the team while I was in Iraq.

Evan heard this and fell apart. I’d betrayed him again, and this time he was not ready to forgive.

“You’re going to Iraq, Daddy?” he demanded. I nodded my head, unable to speak.

“What?! You said you were done going to Iraq. You said you were done fighting bad guys.”

The bond we built together hung in the balance. I was losing him. And I had no answers, no defense. Maybe someday he would understand why I needed to do this, but not now.