Eleven Months

Ronald Reagan had a theory. “Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world,” he said once. “But the Marines don’t have that problem.” So many times I have hoped he was right.

I have not stepped foot on American soil for eleven months.

Eleven months can be hell. Eleven months can take what was living and make it dead, make it forget, make it kill, make it bleed.

What once made me cry now only reminds me that my eyes are too dry for tears. What once made me love now drives me to hate. What I felt has vanished into what I do, what I am, and what I have become.

It took a long time to become this way. I wasn’t like this when I first left. I had friends who wanted to be with me; I had a family who made sure that no matter how far away I was, someone was taking care of me. I knew I was loved. The world changed as soon as I crossed the sea. The letters stopped coming because no one knew where I was. The calls were too expensive. The light faded behind billowing dust and sand. They forgot. Even before I had left the country they had forgotten who I had once been, and they had no warning of what I would be if I returned alive. In a land of washed-out color that still somehow highlighted harsh, bloody reality, I was alone. All around me were men who were as scared and as alone as I was.

*****

Hardly a day went by when the neighbor kids and my siblings didn’t play together. Our favorite game was pretending we were lost, before there was any such television show. The Lost Kids, we called ourselves, and we spent our summer afternoons collecting berries and vegetables to eat, resorting to seaweed salads from our lake, fighting off bears, and building forts. We could hardly wait for my father to finish trimming the trees in our yard. We would scramble to collect the biggest branches and construct them into a shelter, where we would be safe from the elements and our enemies. My name was always Roberta, but I insisted that it be shortened to Robbie. Everyone had their favorite names, as if ours weren’t good enough or desirable. We liked creating board games and swimming and fishing and… well, if we were outside, we were happy.

*****

I waited outside for the men that were part of a sting operation into the desolate apartment building. It was thought to be a terrorist nest. As the only woman in the squad, I was not supposed to take part in the actual raid but rather help secure its perimeter. The men had been dropped off at a neighboring building with another squad, where they mounted three flights of stairs, ended up on the roof, and crossed over to the roof of the suspected apartments. I could hear the men shouting as they burst inside, and then silence. I imagined them charging down the stairs with their rifles at ready. I could barely make out hoarse calls of “Clear!” from beyond the walls. But suddenly a sound ripped through the air that I was not ready to hear. It was machine gun fire, and none of my comrades were armed with such a weapon. I bit my lip and listened. Immediately M-16’s replied to the tearing voice of the machine gun, and then… and then absolute silence. My sergeant ran out the door a second later, calling into his radio with a terrifyingly unknown tone in his voice. He briefly updated me and the other two with me on what had occurred and told us to wait for back-up, then turned to run back to that now gruesome building. Blood was splattered all over his shoulders, but it was not his. There had indeed been a terrorist nest within—and my friend, Mark Rahl, had been the unfortunate man that found them. I’m not sure he lived long enough to know what happened. My sergeant helped bring his body out, shaking his head. He had opened the door on the left, and Rahl had opened the one on the right. It was like a sick game of Let’s Make a Deal.

*****

I liked to watch Andy Griffith with my grandma, who lived with us. I didn’t watch TV shows much, but if Grandma had on Andy Griffith, I was pretty good about finding a reason to go into her room and sit on her bed and watch part of an episode with her. She watched Days of Our Lives too, but back then and even now I’m not one for soap operas.

Grandma always listened to me when I practiced the piano. She always told me it was beautiful, especially the song called “Swans on the Lake.” I loved my grandma. I took her lunch and drinks to her, and I always excitedly waited for my mom to wheel her out of her room for dinner. Sunday mornings was when my aunt visited and brought us doughnuts, and then my family went to church and left her with Grandma. But then there was that morning my grandmother didn’t wake up.

*****

My best friend died last week. His name was Will Malkin, and he was just two days ago promoted to corporal. He was driving a Humvee when the front left tire ran over a land mine. I was a passenger in the vehicle behind his. I had actually been asked to drive the Humvee this one time due to a lack of drivers and since I had previously passed the basic training course. But Will knew how I hated driving military vehicles, and being the only other licensed driver available, he volunteered to do it instead. All I saw was a ball of flames swallowing the Humvee that carried my friend. I don’t remember much. A roaring sound filled my ears as I stumbled out of the truck toward the fiery wreck. I think I was screaming. I reached Will just in time to see his blackened face and torso all smeared with blood as his skin melted off of him. His legs were gone. He was twitching, jerking around as if his trembling would free him of his once strong, now devastated body. He saw me and strained to speak around the blood gathering in his mouth. “They’ll never know how--” And then he was gone. I was pulled away from the Humvee right as a second explosion seared my face and completely engulfed the vehicle. There were three other people with Will, and two of them died, but I didn’t know them. You think you’ll never know them. I knew him. You see, the saddest thing was that Will died on our last mission, and we had just finished and were heading back to base.

*****

I was fascinated with the Civil War. The stories breathed life into me. I sewed my own sack coat together and proudly stitched to the cuff the 150 year-old Union soldier’s jacket button I had purchased at a battlefield in New Market, Virginia. I pestered my sisters until they agreed to do reenactments with me, and then we’d march around our house with a bugle, fife, and flag, and wish we could see what the Civil War had really been like. I had special interest in the flagbearers. They always died first. Bearing the colors was like wearing a huge target. I also had a special interest in the boys that got past the recruiters to get into the war. They wrote the number 18 on a slip of paper and stuck it in one of their shoes so they could truthfully tell the recruiter they were over 18. They thought it would be all glory. They wanted to see more than just their own backyard. They thought the uniform would make them a man. They were wrong. In the end all they wanted was to see the backyard once more.

*****

What can we do? We are all faceless, nameless shells of what we used to be. We didn’t know it would be like this. It’s just a job, but it’s a job that consumes us. It was so hard to get on a plane with fewer people than we arrived with. It was so hard to sleep. Every time the plane shook I reached for the rifle that wasn’t there. If I say anything other than the fact that I have nightmares, I will relive them when I’m awake. This cannot happen. I would kill.

War is not what it seems. It’s not what they say it is. It’s not at all that the reporters and anchors and newspapers so coldly swear is true. We believe in the cause. We know why and for what our friends died and why there are some of us that will never see again, never hear again, never walk again, or never be able to hold our sons or daughters. Do the Americans know why?

*****

I didn’t appreciate the piano lessons I took until I had played for about four years. I hated it. I even told my mom I wished I was someone else’s kid because I thought she was making me practice too much. That is the most hurtful thing I think I have ever said to my mom. I have often desired to take that moment back. I didn’t know that she was giving me a gift. Eventually I struggled over the crest of the mountain and found a new world full of music I loved that I could play and amaze people with. I never considered what I would do if I lost an arm, a hand, or even just a finger. I never wondered what musicians do when they lose their ability to cross universes and worlds due to a physical injury. But I’ve started thinking about that now. Every once in a while I’ll stretch out my gloved hand, flex my fingers, and imagine what it would be like to not be able to play the piano anymore. That thought only lasts seconds before I shrug it nervously away and go back to working. I almost lost it already—there’s shrapnel lodged in my upper right arm that nearly claimed my mobility, but I refused to let that happen.

*****

I remember the most momentous occasion that I flew home after my first few months at a very intense internship. I thought I felt like a soldier as soon as I stepped foot off the plane into the airport. I stood taller, took longer strides, and hefted up my backpack a little higher. I looked at the people around me with a sense of knowledge, as if I knew so much more about the world and its ugliness and the fight to change it. And tonight, as I stepped off the plane again after eleven months in Iraq, I realized how wrong I was then, and how true my then foolish thoughts were now. Now I had a uniform, I had scars, and I definitely had much more knowledge than anyone else in that airport other than the men in camouflage that scattered about me. I paused for a moment to watch them walk the terminal—their heads were held high, but their hearts were so hollow. I saw some of them glance at the men, women, and children steering themselves down shiny floors and onto moving sidewalks—the fathers moving quickly to the proper gate, the mothers wrestling their little ones back to their sides, the little ones struggling with their miniature suitcases all covered in flowers and cartoon characters; the businessmen on the phone who didn’t bother to notice the sea of souls around them; the flight attendants wishing they could stay for just a little longer in just one city where not even one person remembers their name, the teenagers laughing about things that have never mattered and never will, the young women sizing up the devil dogs I love so fiercely… None of them knew what we have lost. None of them will ever know. They don’t know what they have gained because of what was lost to those few silent members of the band of brothers who passed them by in the airport. We are shadows of what we were.

And so I stood taller, took longer strides, hefted up my backpack a little higher, and prayed to God that I would never think these things in an airport again. The knowledge I have is not knowledge to be jealous of, for its price is daunting and its pain is unforgiving.

I passed security still pondering these things. I noticed that my friend, Taylor Stewart, was only a few yards ahead of me, and he walked with a searching determination. Just then, he bent down to scoop his daughter up in his arms as she raced up to him. He hugged her tight with one arm and caught his wife in the other. I had never seen Taylor cry before, but he did then. And it was then that I knew that Ronald Reagan was right.


Acknowledgments: This story could not have been accurately written without the help of a few good men. Over the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I talked to soldiers from the Marines and the Army, some who have served tours in Iraq and some who have not. One Marine shared with me a story very similar to the raid described above. A soldier from the Army relayed his sentiments about how he was merely doing his job—I don’t think he considered himself the hero I do. And, lastly, someone I can mention is my friend, Dan, who has allowed me to ask him many questions about how the Marine Corps works and erased my ignorance for this specific piece. Many thanks to the men and women in arms around the world who know better than anyone else does that freedom is not free.