Evan Wright - Generation Kill

Now he’s standing over me, turning his head to his side in a quizzical gesture. Another feature of gas masks is that you can’t really talk through them; nor can you hear too well through the MOPP hood. We try to carry on a conversation. It sounds like the parents in a Charlie Brown cartoon: wa wa wa. I gesture to the g-string now twisting my testicles, and Garza immediately unsheathes a pair of Leatherman pliers he carries on his vest and looms over me. I lie back, my legs spread as if I’m about to undergo a gynecological exam, and Garza delicately nestles the plier tips against my balls and clasps the g-string. When he rips it off, he tears a dime-size hole in the front of my MOPP, rendering the whole thing useless.

A few minutes later, pulling my mask off after they sound the all-clear, I’m greeted with a rush of cold air and laughter.

“I just performed testicle surgery on the reporter,” Garza brags.

The funny thing is, all the Marines who’ve been standoffish the past week are suddenly pounding me on the back, bruising my ribs with affectionate punches. “You’ve got brown shit all over your chin,” one of them says, brushing tobacco juice off my face with his sleeve. I seem to have gained acceptance by making a total jackass of myself.

The comedy session near Colbert’s Humvee is cut short when Marines down the line shout, “Scud! Scud! Scud!”

Everyone MOPPs up again. This time, expecting missiles, we dive into a large pit—deeper than the Ranger graves we’ve dug—which Colbert’s team excavated next to his vehicle. The way to avoid flying shrapnel from a missile detonating nearby is to get as close to the ground as possible, though you have to turn sideways because the mask ventilator protrudes several inches from the front of your face. Waiting for what presumably will be some sort of explosion, your breathing becomes rapid. Underneath the MOPP hood and mask, every internal sound is magnified. With each breath, you hear the mask ventilator apparatus clicking and wheezing like a hospital life-support system. Due to the odd acoustics of the MOPP suit, little grains of sand rolling down the side of your hood sound like bombs. What the MOPP basically does is encase you in your own private panic attack.

I’m directly across from Person. Our faces are inches apart. His chest rises up and down quickly. He’s breathing rapidly, too, which makes me feel better. Maybe I’m not the only one panicking.

Eventually you get bored of lying in the hole, and you want to look over the edges and see what’s happening. I edge up a little, looking for birds. If they’re flying, it means there’s no gas.

There’s a series of explosions in the distance. Different from the blasts earlier. These are drawn-out sounds— gagoon, gagoon —followed by a series of sharp bangs. Then it’s silent.

After the all-clear ten minutes later, Gunny Wynn walks over, grim yet excited. “That was a no-shit Scud attack,” he tells the men.

“I guess this really is war,” Colbert says.

“What’s a Scud?” Garza asks.

Gunny Wynn smiles. “It’s a missile, Garza, a pretty big one. They can load them with chemicals if they want.”

Garza ponders this for a moment, then smiles. “That’s awesome. I just lived through a Scud attack.”

Later, Fick finds out the sounds we heard were not Scuds. While some Scuds were launched toward Kuwait City, out here in the desert, the Iraqis are firing Silkworm antiship missiles, one of which, according to Fick, landed 200 meters from First Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters south of us.

There are several more gas and missile alerts throughout the afternoon. Between them the Marines congregate under the shade of their Humvee cammie nets, recleaning all their weapons, linking individual machine-gun rounds into belts and talking. Sitting in little clumps, passing the weapons and gear back and forth while doing the intricate finger work, it almost looks like a ladies’ sewing circle. No one talks much about the invasion they are supposed to launch in a few hours. If anything, their focus on routine humor and bullshitting is almost more determined than ever in the face of the impending assault.

The most flamboyant figure in Second Platoon is Reyes, the Marine on Team Two who on my first night in their tent talked about the romantic idealism of being in the Corps. This afternoon he sits beneath his team’s cammie netting, cleaning his rifle, dressed in an outrageous camouflage overcoat his fellow Marines call his “Chicken Suit.” Tufts of multicolored fabric hang off the arms and shoulders like feathers. He wears a similarly peacockish cover on his helmet, the ensemble complemented with heavy-duty orange goggles that somehow manage to look stylish. They call them his “J.Lo glasses.”

Reyes has the insanely muscular body of a fantasy Hollywood action hero. Before joining the Marines, he lived in a dojo, competed nationally in kung fu and tai chi tournaments, and fought in exhibitions with the Chinese national team. He is the battalion’s best martial artist, one of its strongest men, and seemingly one of the gayest. Though he is not gay in the sense of sexual orientation—Reyes, after all, is married—he is at least a highly evolved tough guy in touch with a well-developed feminine side. With his imposing build, dark, Mexican-American features and yet skin so pale it’s almost porcelain, he is a striking figure. His fellow Marines call him “Fruity Rudy,” because he is so beautiful.

“It doesn’t mean you’re gay if you think Rudy’s hot. He’s just so beautiful,” Person explains. “We all think he’s hot.”

While the other Marines spent their free time at Mathilda poring over porn and gun magazines, Reyes read self-affirming articles in Oprah’s magazine, waxed his legs and chest and conducted afternoon yoga classes. His father was a Marine, but when he was three the family split apart due to drug problems. According to Reyes, a close relative of his who was a drug-addicted cop used to bust prostitutes and bring them home to babysit him and his brother. Reyes wound up in boys’ homes in Kansas City. “Those boys’ homes were gladiator academies,” Reyes says. “Darwin was living and breathing strong. I was twelve years old and seventy pounds. I had older men making sexual advances on me. I was preyed upon by bigger, stronger people. I was always the new guy in a shitty neighborhood in a shitty school. I was inspired by Spider-Man, Speed Racer and Bruce Lee. I decided to become a warrior.”

Reyes adds, “I have very low self-esteem. I need to empower myself daily through physical training and spirituality. I identify with redemption stories like The Color Purple. I love the journey of a woman from weak and less-than to someone who is fully realized.”

This day, on the eve of invading Iraq, Reyes is concerned about his body. “I am going to hell out here,” he says, handing a belt of machine-gun rounds to Manimal, his teammate. “I eat terribly in the field.”

“We’ve had plenty of chow,” Manimal says.

“Back home I only eat sushi and vegetables,” Reyes counters. “The food we eat here is garbage, that awful American diet. Someday, I think Sheree and I will live in San Francisco,” he says, referring to his wife of five years.

“What’s so great about San Francisco?” Manimal asks.

“There’s no fat people there,” Reyes answers. “And Chinese martial arts are very much a part of the culture there.”

“Why would you give a fuck if there are fat people where you live?” Manimal laughs. “People are people.”

“I want to live in a place where people care about themselves.”

“Jesus Christ, Rudy,” Colbert says, slipping in under the cammie net. “When are you going to realize you’re fucking gay? When we’re on libo,” he says, referring to liberty port calls Marines make around the world, “you wear Banana Republic Daisy Duke shorts, and now you’re rolling into battle with your goddamn chicken suit and J.Lo glasses. You dress like a pimp queen.”