| << Prev | Next >> |
A U.S. Marine grapples with the loss of life in Iraq
It could have easily been me lying there, with holes in my chest.
I heard a distant thud. Half a second passed. A louder thud, then a screaming whooossshhhh. An instant later, a thunderclap shook the dusk as an incoming rocket air burst near the chow hall, just 500 meters away. A cloud of smoke rose in the twilight.
Camp Taqaddum, in Iraq’s al Anbar Province, had been hit often, and we knew the drill well. I needed to locate my company’s Marines. Major Patrick Sweeny and Master Sergeant Nicholas Formosa had last been seen at the chow hall.
A humvee pulled up. I asked the Marines where they were going. The driver said, “There are some casualties over by the chow hall, sir. We’re going to check it out.”
I felt a creeping dread as I shouted, “I’m coming with you.”
Photo
by Chris SheppardA convoy steams toward battle in Iraq’s Fallujah Peninsula.
The smell of death
When we arrived near the
chow hall, another humvee was already there, its headlights illuminating
the aftermath of violence. The rocket’s twisted, oxidized metal
littered the area. Three forms rested grotesquely on the ground. Sweeney
hovered over the closest one while Formosa tended to the furthest.
Marines buzzed around, administering first aid. They spastically barked
and reacted to orders.
I walked toward the nearest wounded Marine. Blood pooled under his right arm. His right leg was snapped at an impossible angle. Although his face was covered with lacerations, the young Marine was conscious and talking.
A Corpsman was wrapping the injured Marine’s right hand, trying to stop the arterial bleeding. He said to me, “Sir, can you put your hand under the arm as I wrap it?”
I bent down and hesitatingly (I don’t know why) held the bandage in place as the Corpsman carefully wrapped the forearm. Blood covered my hands. It was bright red, syrupy, room temperature, and smelled like sweet rust. The Marine’s pulverized forearm had the consistency of Jell-O.
The Marine asked Major Sweeney, “Sir, how bad am I?”
Major Sweeney said, “You’re going to be just fine.”
The Marine said, “I don't feel fine.”
Chris Sheppard joined the ROTC as an undergraduate at the University of Washington. After graduating in 1997 with a degree in economics and political science, he served three years at a U.S. Marine base in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. He then moved to Tempe to begin a graduate journalism program at Arizona State University.
Chris put his studies on hold between 2003 and 2005 to serve two tours of duty in Iraq. As a platoon commander, he took part in the initial escalation and helped build a pipeline from the Kuwaiti border into southern Iraq. During his second tour, Chris was appointed executive officer of an engineer support company. He led the company to success in the Battle of Fallujah and also participated in the distribution of election materials to Fallujah and Ramadi. Chris has received numerous millitary decorations, including a President Unit Citation.
After returning from Iraq in 2005, Chris volunteered as an English instructor in Brazil. He is finishing his final year of graduate school and interning at the Arizona Republic. He is writing a book about his experiences in Iraq. Chris hopes to become a foreign correspondent.
—Lindsey Gay
The weight of humanity
We put the wounded
man on a stretcher and loaded him into a military ambulance. The second
Marine, with a nearly severed leg, lay still, ashen from shock. Formosa
was frantically trying to keep the third victim alive.
The young man lay on his back, with a gaping hole in his left breast and a smaller hole in his right breast. Pieces of flesh lay on the ground around him. His eyes were blank, staring at stars and not comprehending. His mouth was open; blood smeared his cheek. Pink foam rimmed his chest wounds. He didn’t move.
Formosa said, “This Marine is gone. I had him for a moment when we first got here. I was breathing into his chest, and he tried to breathe and cough. Then he just went. If I could have only gotten to him sooner.”
Formosa’s voice had a deep sadness to it. He had seen this all before, in Vietnam more than three decades earlier.
Someone closed the dead Marine’s eyes. The body was put on a stretcher and loaded into a humvee.
I almost didn’t want to look at the deceased. His death seemed so arbitrary, random, and pointless. I knew it could have been me lying there, with holes in my chest, if I had stayed in the chow hall and watched ESPN for another 20 minutes. I felt horrible about not wanting to look at him, to acknowledge his humanity. I forced myself to look, to have the full weight of the loss fall on me.
I put my bloody hand on Formosa’s back and left it there. I told him, “There is nothing you could have done to save that Marine.”
Formosa looked despondent. “I know, sir. That’s what I’m upset about. I was blowing into his mouth, trying to give him CPR, and the breath was going right out the holes in his lungs. When we put him on the stretcher, we realized it was worse than we thought.”
“How?”
“Sir, his back was blown out.... I feel so bad for that young man....”
Back home
I walked back to my hovel, pondering what would soon happen a world
away. Somewhere in the United States, casualty call officers were
receiving the horrible news. They were putting on dress blues and
rehearsing their lines. They were nervous. They had to tell those
Marines’ mothers and fathers what had happened to their boys.
They would have to tell the awful story, in person, of how their Marines—their
babies—were coming home broken or in a coffin.
I am glad I had my evening rather than their morning.
I got back to my company area, made sure all of my marines were accounted for, and then tried to wash the dried blood off of my hands.