It was 22:00 and Delta Company had just hit their umpteenth IED in eight hours. The battalion had been taking casualties. We were sent on a raid. The ramp dropped and we weren’t far from some houses. Our company first sergeant, First Sergeant Hightower, had come along. He was a stout man, built like a coconut; he seemed excited. The door on the first house was made of sheet metal like all the doors were. But this one had bullet holes all over it, and the light inside the house glared through the holes. We lifted our NVGs and we were hesitating; then Staff Sergeant Hueso-Santiago came running up like the movies and kicked the door in and we went in after him. Inside were the ubiquitous women and children, the ubiquitous old man. They were all along the wall. The television was on. We searched the room. The wooden chest on the table in the corner was packed full of clothes, and there was an AK-47 wrapped up in a shirt with two loaded magazines. This wasn’t a big deal because they were allowed to have these things. But the first sergeant either didn’t know or had momentarily forgotten because he took the AK-47 away and he was talking to it when he went outside, saying, “Yes, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, yes.”
This was the first sergeant’s first rodeo.
There was ground to cover before the next house, but we didn’t make a big deal out of it and we got there. We stacked up and rushed through the front door and came into a room that had another four doors off it. Everything was in night vision. Nobody was talking. We were making it up as we went. We each took a door. I was in front of a door and I’d never kicked a door in before and I was worried I’d kick it ineffectually. The sheet metal gave way easy enough, and the bolt came out of the slot. It was a small room. There were no hajis, only some goats: a mama goat and her baby goats.
Some shit was happening behind me and I turned around and saw a naked haji was caught up wrestling with Private Miller. Miller had been in Echo Company all of three days. He was just out of basic. Now this shit. He brought a heel down on the inside of the haji’s knee and he dragged it down the length of the tibia. Even before Hueso-Santiago could jump in, it was over. The naked haji was down on the floor. He was young, fighting age. There was a young woman too. She was backed up against the far wall of the bedroom. She had wrapped herself in a sheet. An AK-47 leaned against the wall in the corner across from the door.
Miller said, “He was going for the AK, Sarr.”
He said it like he thought he was in trouble.
Hueso-Santiago said, “You did right.”
Somebody brought an old man and his old wife out from one of the rooms. The old man and his wife saw what had happened, and the old man got to yelling and the old lady started to shake. The first sergeant wanted to question the old man. But the old man wasn’t having it. He said something to the interpreter; sounded like What the fuck is this? And the first sergeant pointed at me and told the old man I was a doctor.
Somebody asked if the leg was broken.
I moved the leg. I felt it. I listened for crepitation. I got the impression that I didn’t know what I was doing. I said, “It might be fractured.”
Moving the leg caused him pain.
He was still naked.
I said, “Can somebody please get a fucking man dress or something for this guy?”
I told the interpreter to say the haji needed to go to a hospital.
The interpreter was wearing a ski mask.
I gave the haji some 800mm ibuprofens. Miller had wrapped a man dress around his waist. I put a few more ibuprofens in a little Ziploc bag for him and I laid the little Ziploc bag beside him on the floor because his hands were Zip-Cuffed behind his back.
The hajis were sitting on the floor, covered by rifles and looking sullen. The joes smoked cigarettes and the first sergeant did his questions.
The radio said don’t detain anybody.
It was time to go.
“No harm, no foul,” said the first sergeant.
* * *
—
WE LEFT and moved on to the next house.
The sun had come up. Some of us got to meet the new platoon leader for Third Platoon. Second Lieutenant Evans. He was sort of a tall goofy-looking motherfucker, like a young Tom Hanks. But he seemed reasonable enough.
We were at the assembly area in the desert outside of town. I was in the troop compartment of the Bradley that was now Evans’s, and I was listening to the battalion net. Miller was there too, in the back of the track. The radio said one of our guys had got fucked up somewhere. The battle roster number went out: hotel hotel charlie echo yankee tree tree six six.
I said, “That’s Yuri!”
Miller didn’t know who Yuri was.
We cleared house all day.
Borges shot a dog in the face.
Seven. Six. Two.
Nothing else happened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The last day of Operation Honor Bright some of us were sent to a schoolhouse to set up a clinic for the hajis. A lot of hajis were lined up outside. One old haji had deep lacerations on his wrists. He said the lacerations were from when he’d been Zip-Cuffed a few days back. I washed the lacerations out with saline and dressed them with bacitracin and gauze. One of his hands was swollen and shaking real bad. To me it looked like it was serious. But I didn’t know and I didn’t know what to tell him either. So I went to ask the two senior medics, two sergeants from HHC who had come along to help with the clinic. They were asleep in a five-ton outside. I woke them up and told them about the old haji and asked them what they thought was wrong with him. The senior medic said it was cellulitis.
I said, “I don’t have antibiotics or anything. Do you?”
He said, “No.”
“What can I do for this guy?”
“Nothing.”
“What should I tell him?”
“Tell him to eat shit and die.”
I went back and I told the interpreter to tell the old haji to go to a hospital and try and get some antibiotics from a doctor because I didn’t have any medicine.
I didn’t have anything.
I didn’t know anything.
A mother had brought her kid in. The kid was about seven. He had a deep laceration on his right hand. There was nothing I could do but bandage it. A photographer from the Army Times took our picture when I was putting the bandage on. This was the kind of shit that happened.
The infantry were pulling security outside. About a dozen kids were hanging around, and Borges was teaching them the shocker. He arranged his fingers just so.
He said, “Two in the pink. One in the stink.”
They went, “YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA!”
* * *
— WE WERE on the road heading back to the FOB. I was in the troop compartment of Evans’s track and I realized I was by myself for the first time since I’d left Fort Hood. So I jerked off into some MRE toilet paper. Then I pissed into a liter water bottle. I filled it up pretty far and I put the jizz in the bottle with the piss and threw everything out the hatch on the ramp. I went to sleep. I didn’t dream. When I woke up we were stopped. I banged on the turret door. It opened and I asked the gunner why we were stopped. The gunner said we’d run over an IED but it hadn’t gone off. The track had crushed the battery so the bomb couldn’t detonate. EOD was taking it apart with a robot. “Three one-five-fives,” he said.
Jesus.
CHAPTER THIRTY
PFC Cecco and Specialist Greenwald were in the aid station overnight. Black Hawks would take them to Baghdad in the morning. From Baghdad they’d go to Kuwait, Kuwait to Germany, Germany to the States. They’d get their coffins somewhere on the way.