One Bullet Away

“That’s the best part, Nate,” Eric explained. “Lots of guys live for the violence of being Marines. They thrive on it. I’ve never been that way, nor are you — I can tell.” He sat down on a weight bench, swigging from a gallon jug of water. “When a recon team does its job well, it doesn’t fire a shot. And the information it uncovers can save a lot of lives. When you do shoot, it’s not just spray and pray. This is a thinking man’s game. You should consider it.”

Eric interrupted his pitch to do a set of curls. After dropping the weights, he added, “Your boss is coming over as the operations officer. Talk to him about it.”

Captain Whitmer was reading Code of the Samurai when I knocked on his stateroom door. He invited me in to take a seat.

“Sir, Captain Dill says you’re going to recon when we get back, and he invited me to take over his platoon.”

Whitmer nodded, looking at me expectantly. It was typical of him to keep the news quiet, allowing events to unfold in due time. It seemed as if he’d foreseen this conversation weeks ago.

“Well, sir, why me?” Recon applicants usually had to try out and then pass a grueling indoctrination before even being considered.

Whitmer explained that recon’s new commander wanted to bring the battalion back to basics. The recon community had gotten too caught up in “high-speed, low-drag” training such as parachuting and scuba diving. “This country’s facing an era when units like recon may get used a lot. And it probably won’t be the sexy stuff. It’ll be the fundamentals you learned at Quantico — shoot, move, and communicate. We need young officers with hard infantry skills and experience. You’re one of them.”

Now I was excited. Saying goodbye to the platoon would be tough, but I would have to leave anyway. Officers did only one tour as infantry platoon commanders in order to make room for new guys coming in behind them. My other option was probably to be a company executive officer, the second-in-command, whose primary duties were paperwork and discipline. Going to recon would mean all the good things Dill had said, plus another year or two of command and the chance to deploy again.

“I’d be honored, sir,” I said.

When we got home, I was going to recon.

We never returned to the country we’d left. I hadn’t been in the United States since a month before the terrorist attacks, so the differences stood out. People seemed kinder, more considerate, and also edgier. I saw in them traces of what I had learned in the previous half year — a new appreciation of life’s simple pleasures, of safety and friendship and family.

I made the requisite pilgrimages to Ground Zero and the Pentagon, and went to a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House commemorating the six-month anniversary of 9/11. I saw mourning and sorrow, but also bluster. Posturing. People vowed not to interrupt their daily routines, not to let “them” destroy our way of life. My time in Afghanistan hadn’t been traumatic. I hadn’t killed anyone, and no one had come all that close to killing me. But jingoism, however mild, rang hollow. Flag-waving, tough talk, a yellow ribbon on every bumper. I didn’t see any real interest in understanding the war on the ground. No one acknowledged that the fight would be long and dirty, and that maybe the enemy had courage and ideals, too. When people learned I had just come from Afghanistan, they grew quiet and deferential. But they seemed disappointed that I didn’t share in the general bloodlust.

I was happy to get back to Camp Pendleton in March. I felt more comfortable being around other Marines. Most of 1/1’s platoon commanders looked forward to a few months of downtime before moving back into the MEU training cycle. Patrick took over as CO of Bravo Company, and Jim went back to an artillery battery. Sitting on my desk was a stapled set of orders: “You are directed to report no later than 1200, 25 March 2002, to 1st Reconnaissance Battalion for Temporary Assigned Duty for a period of approximately 65 days.” Recon, but only provisionally. First I had to survive the training.

17

EVERY MARINE THINKS he’s the toughest guy in the room. Most will agree, though, that the toughest unit in the Corps is recon. Of 175,000 active-duty Marines, fewer than 3,000 serve in reconnaissance units. Recon lacks the cachet of the Navy SEALs and the Army Special Forces because a bureaucratic decision in the late 1980s kept recon out of the U.S. Special Operations Command. The Corps’s leadership vowed that there would be no “special” Marines and chose autonomy over the command’s money and missions.