It had gone out over the net that there were five casualties from an IED: two KIAs, three WIAs. I was in Lieutenant Heyward’s truck, and I asked him if I ought to go and help out, seeing as I was supposed to be a medic. He sent Specialist Sullivan with me.
An up-armored Humvee was overturned and on fire in a bomb crater. There were three wounded lying on the road near the truck and two dead in the truck, in the fire. The wounded were stable—broken bones, minor burns, concussions, shit like that, nothing life-threatening. The Charlie Company medic had done well getting the wounded ready for medevac. Some medics from HHC had come out, and they’d helped him.
The medevac helicopter touched down in a field to the left of the road. We took up the litters with the wounded and carried them out into the dark and over the broken ground. We were all crouching down low well before we were under the rotor blades, and with what little light there was I could see the man on the litter I was helping carry. His eyes were wild and grieving. He was in his lizard brain. We made eye contact; and I said, “I got you.”
I said it real loud so he could hear me over the helicopters. And then I was embarrassed because it was a stupid and melodramatic thing to have said and I had said it.
Back at the road the upside-down Humvee wasn’t on fire anymore. There was a wrecker trying to take it out of the hole in the road, and a lot of people were in the way trying to get a look at the bodies that were still inside the truck. A master sergeant was ground-guiding the wrecker, and he got to yelling, “EVERYONE OUT OF THE WAY. THIS AIN’T A FUCKIN SHOW.”
Sullivan and I were in the way. So we walked back to Heyward’s truck, and Sullivan said, “Did you see those bodies? You could see all the bones.”
When we got back to the FOB, guys were waiting for us in the motor pool. They asked us what all had happened and who had got killed and what we had seen. I wasn’t much good for telling them anything. I went and talked to Shoo. Shoo thought it was funny that I was being such a bitch about it. He was laughing at me some. He said I’d just got my cherry popped. I went back to the room I stayed in. Some of the others who stayed in the room were there. Burnes, Yuri, Lessing, Fuentes, Cheetah: they were there. All of them but Arnold were there. They wanted to know what had happened. I didn’t really know what had happened but I told them anyway. Fuentes left to go to the company TOC. He had to go on radio guard. He left the room solemnly, like he was off to embalm his own grandmother.
Arnold came in. Fuentes had relieved him. He said he’d heard on the radio that the three guys we had put on the helicopter were dead. It fucked me up; I was kind of devastated. They hadn’t looked like they were going to die. What had we missed?
Arnold’s boss, Staff Sergeant Drummond, came in, and I said, “Sarr, is it true the guys we put on the medevac are dead?”
“No. Who told you that?”
“Arnold said he heard on the net that they were dead.”
“Arnold’s a retard.”
“I thought that was what I heard, Sarr.”
“Shut up, Arnold. And you, calm down and don’t get so excited. You’re acting like a woman.”
Drummond left.
Yuri said, “That guy’s an asshole.”
We all smoked cigarettes.
Lessing was pissed off; he said, “We got our asses kicked today.”
Lessing was from Chicago.
Burnes was doing some math. “We took eight casualties today,” he said, “out of a population of what? Maybe eight hundred?”
“And we’re here for a fucking year,” I said, “a year’s worth of fucking days.”
Yuri said we were fucked.
Lessing said, “What did you guys think you were coming here to do?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A few days after Christmas, Second Platoon had an IED go off on one of their patrols. A Humvee was torn up and on fire. All the soldiers got out of the truck okay, but a reporter was still inside. The reporter’s head was fucked up pretty well from the blast, and he was unconscious in the backseat of the burning truck, next to the ammo boxes. Sergeant Thorpe went back into the truck to get the reporter. This was brave of him to do since the truck was on fire, plus he thought he was getting shot at. The shots he heard were rounds cooking off.
Thorpe pulled the reporter out of the truck and got himself shot by a cooked-off round in the process. He was hit on the inside of the thigh. But he wasn’t hurt bad—just a flesh wound, as they say.
The reporter was the worse for wear. He was burned on his face and upper body and had what would prove to be some brain damage. But Burnes, who was Second Platoon’s medic, helped him out and kept him from dying till they could put him on a helicopter. The guy ended up living. So Burnes had done well and Thorpe was a hero—a no-bullshit, shot hero.
* * *
—
THORPE’S WIFE was pregnant. She was in the Army too. She was with 4th ID but she hadn’t deployed. She was with the rear detachment back at Fort Hood, and she’d got knocked up there.
Seeing as Mr. and Mrs. Sergeant Thorpe had said goodbye to one another in November, and seeing as it was still December, you’d think she’d have tried telling him the baby was his. But the thing was she couldn’t. The reason being Mr. and Mrs. Sergeant Thorpe were white people and Mrs. Sergeant Thorpe had got knocked up by a black guy.
When she first told her husband about this, she said it was a consensual thing between her and the black guy. Then she said the black guy had raped her. The police must have believed her because the black guy was in jail.
Sergeant Thorpe more or less lost his mind over all this. And he’d talk to anyone who’d listen about what had happened to him. He’d get all philosophical about it and quote Top 40 radio songs. He had this look in his eyes, like he’d about died; she’d almost killed him.
Staff Sergeant Drummond said, “I could’ve told you ol girl was a whore.” Thorpe was on radio guard and we were talking about him behind his back because we all felt bad for him, even Drummond, who wasn’t big on sympathy. He said, “Me and my wife had those two over to our house for supper one time, and this was in September, and she told me and my wife, right in front of her husband, how she’d screwed her first-line supervisor in a Porta-John when she was deployed back in oh-three. She said it right there at the table while we were eatin supper. My wife couldn’t believe it. She thinks that woman’s trash. I felt bad for Thorpe. I knew it was going to turn out bad for him. But what could I say to him? Your wife’s a no-good straight piece-of-trash whore? No! Now old Thorpe, he’s not the sharpest tack in the box. He’s a good man, so don’t get me wrong. He’s better’n most of the idiots we’ve got in this company. Still he should’ve known better than to get hisself hitched to a whore like that one. Cripes! Foolin around on him with a gosh-dang porch ape, son.”
* * *
—
THERE WERE two rows of chemical toilets: one in front of the company area, atop the berm that came up to the motor pool; the other in the back, atop the berm that went up to the road that took you through the power plant. All told we had a dozen chemical toilets. Most of the shitting, pissing, and masturbating to be done inside the wire would be done in these.