One Bullet Away

After nearly two weeks at Jacobabad, we were all getting restless. The company received warning orders for three different missions, but none of them launched. Everyone had a different euphemism for Afghanistan — “up north” or “over the mountains.” We were fixated on it. On the ship, we had wanted to go ashore. But sitting at Jacobabad wasn’t enough. We were so close but not doing anything. We felt like the second string and imagined other units doing all sorts of missions across the border. Our generation had been reared on the hundred-hour war, and we feared this one would end without us.

Early one evening, Jim and I sat on the porch of the building we used as our headquarters. It was incongruous, lounging there on wooden chairs in the dusk, looking out across a baked field to a distant line of trees. Except for the pistols strapped to our thighs, we could have been anywhere. A field ration heater gurgled at my feet, warming a ham omelet for dinner. I took a bag of M&M’s from the MRE pouch and tore it open, reading a printed advertisement on the inside of the bag.

“I can enter to win tickets to the Olympics.”

“Which ones?” Jim had opted to pass on dinner and was drinking coffee instead.

“Summer Games. Barcelona. 1992. This fucking MRE is ten years old.”

“Enjoy that omelet, bro.”

Captain Whitmer joined us. He had just come from the nightly commander’s meeting, and he was smiling. We were leaving Jacobabad as abruptly as we’d come. The next morning, the Army’s 101st Airborne Division would relieve us, and we would fly back to the ship and prepare for a follow-on mission in Afghanistan. The Twenty-sixth MEU, sailing from North Carolina, was cutting through the Suez Canal to join us. Together, the two MEUs would be known as Task Force 58, commanded by Brigadier General James Mattis. I sat upright. Task Force 58 had been the name of my grandfather’s unit at the Battle of the Philippine Sea. That night, we packed our gear, excited finally to be going up north, over the mountains.

“Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Celebrate it on your own time.” The Dubuque’s captain spoke wryly over the ship’s intercom, but his message stuck: we’re busy out here, and it’s no place for the comforts of home, even if they are only in your mind. I sat at the desk in my stateroom, catching up on paperwork. I had made the mistake of not bringing my laptop to Jacobabad, thinking we would be busy with missions. Now I waged war by keyboard, ensuring that Marines were promoted and evaluations written before we jumped off for our next stint ashore.

In spite of all the competing demands on everyone’s time, the Dubuque’s crew prepared a feast for us the following evening. We sat down at a wardroom table decorated with paper turkeys and plastic pumpkins. Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and apple pie. For a short time, we were able to pretend that life was normal again. We held hands around the table and said a prayer for our families at home, for the thousands of families celebrating their first Thanksgiving with an empty chair at the table, and for our comrades whose vigilance allowed us the simple gift of sharing a meal together. When we finished eating, I returned to my room to pack for the flight to Afghanistan.

Rucksack, flak jacket, ceramic plates to stop AK-47 fire, helmet, M-16 rifle, twelve magazines of 5.56 mm ammunition, M9 pistol with five magazines of 9 mm ammo, ten quarts of water, sleeping bag and Gore-Tex liner, fleece jacket, wool hat and gloves, face paint, first-aid kit, maps, blood chit, grease pencils, compass, GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver, toilet paper, eight-inch dive knife, two pairs of underwear, five pairs of socks, three T-shirts, one rain jacket, Pashto and Dari translation guides, disposable cameras, calculator, plastic transparencies, case of PowerBars, iodine tablets, earplugs, entrenching tool, picture of my family taken the Christmas before, camp stove, signal mirror, Angle of Repose, atropine injector, sunglasses, headscarf, toothbrush, electric razor, American flag, and a thousand dollars in twenties, just in case.

While I worked, I listened to a CD sent to me by a cousin in New York. It was a benefit concert held only a month earlier at Madison Square Garden, an outpouring of sorrow, rage, and resilience in response to 9/11. A New York firefighter named Mike Moran started the recording.

“All I can say, on behalf of my brother John and the twelve members of Ladder Three that we’ve lost, the twenty members of the New York City Fire Department football team that we’ve lost, and all the people from my neighborhood, my hometown, Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York, our friends, our neighbors, our relatives, they are not gone because they are not forgotten. And I want to say one more thing, in the spirit of the Irish people: Osama bin Laden, you can kiss my royal Irish ass.”