War, Roles, and What We Become
all clear Fallujah, Iraq 2004
People who have never experienced war simply cannot fathom what it actually is like in situ. It's impossible. War is an absurd, sublime experience. The absolute killing power looms over you, oppresses you. No amount of movies, books, or video games will give you a true taste of war—how you would survive through it. There is no way anyone can know how they'd react until they're in it.
Some of the troops who were most eager and gung-ho wanted action were the first to be scared, to pull out of going outside the wire. One ran away from a firefight. He was standing right behind me, then he ran out of the house we were engaged in. He was a Marine. No, he was a normal human being. Some went to seek mental health help during combat operations. Good for them. I, on the other hand, was surprisingly calm when I first saw dead bodies, body parts scattered around Fallujah. I thought I’d be the one to run. Perhaps I should have.
For years after I separated, I would ask myself: What do you mean, sacrifice? Thank you for your service; for what? Why should the tax payers spend all this money on post-military benefits and services when only a very small percent of us experience combat, live through fire and explosions? After all, no one forced me to sign the contract. Not to mention there are plenty of risky occupations, and people in them don’t get anything.
But no, we sign up with an understanding that we could be thrown into war, ready to die for reasons hardly personal, killing and being killed by total strangers who deserve death only by association. Enemies and allies alike, we are all driven by an internal logic that is simply insanity, the moment we enter the field called war zone. The moment we sign the contract, this mountain falls on our shoulders to bear. And those who sign the contract often come from a very small, segmented population, with reasons that often have to do with family tradition or it’s the best rational path to a decent life.
My Marines and I, we all had come from different walks of life. Our lives converged for a few months or a few years, at most, and then we went on to live completely different lives.
Infantry Marines are trained killers. They were in Iraq to kill and destroy. And collectively we did destroy, and we did kill. We smelled death. We heard death. But more than that, they were in a position of charging into death. They weren’t just charging into death, they had to charge into killing. I felt it and I saw it. They really did. They had to.
The bullets flying at us; the grenades tossed. How can you run into bullets even as you see what they're doing to the person next to you and behind you, someone who was alive just a second ago, just last week, knowing you'll have to charge into it again the very next hour? I was on the first floor, running between wounded: Corpsman Up, here, Corpsman Up, there. Sucking chest wounds, frag wounds to arms and legs, dead or dying bodies. Meanwhile, I watched a squad of Marines trying to inch their way up the stairs toward where the bullets were coming from. Smoke and dust everywhere, dark rooms. No one knows what's beyond their line of sight. It was terrifying. Can you make even one step forward? But they must. They MUST. It’s either taking cover or going forward. No other option.
My position was where the wounded were. I heard bullets, but I wasn't running into death. Sometimes that meant I had to as well. But I wasn't a killer. I was a Corpsman. Our roles were inherently, fundamentally different. I was there to save lives. It’s what were deeply etched into my mind and body, over the course of my trainings. Yes, kill too. Of course firepower is the best defense and best first aid, but killing was a means to an end, which was saving lives. For grunt Marines, healing is their means to a killing end. Their raison d'être was to kill and defend, to destroy, to cause havoc. And they did that.
This difference is something I was acutely aware of then, and I'm aware of now. It has shaped me in a way that's ontologically different from my Marines. Same situation, same battle, but we were different beings with different purposes. I can't know what they were feeling, what they feel afterwards. It's impossible for me to know how that shaped them in the years since, how their transitions differ from mine, especially those who got out immediately after those deployments. I, on the other hand, had a chance to spend six more years in non-combat settings, that is, in my case, in a health clinic overseas. In a hospital, surrounded by local Japanese staff and US civilian contractors and healthcare professionals, working in an environment not too different, though still very different, from the civilian world. It was perhaps the best version of warrior transition.
I can't know the experiences of my beloved Marines. What I do know is that everyone who signs up for service must be able to respond to these absurd situations and fulfill the heavily defined role into which one is molded. Very few of us ever find ourselves in that tragic situation, but all of us have to be ready, and we have no other choice if we are to serve honorably.
In our late teens or early twenties (what precious years of life!) we lock ourselves, for whatever reason, in this coercive and absolute institution, with its absurd instrumentality, with its insane raison d'être, so that the vast majority of people living in this nation may not have to experience what cannot be felt, though easily imagined and easily criticized, but for which they voted. So, yes, the rest of the country should thank us. We should thank each other. Thank ourselves, all of us.
