Evan Wright - Generation Kill

“Brother, I wear clothes that are body-conscious, but I don’t dress like no goddamn pimp queen. I’ve got too much respect for myself.” Reyes howls with laughter. He and Colbert tap knuckles after a successful exchange of put-downs.

ABOUT TWO HOURS before sunset, First Recon’s commander, Lt. Col. Ferrando, gathers his men for a final briefing. In the chain of command, Ferrando is at the top of the battalion. As officers go, platoon commanders like Fick are at the bottom. Each platoon commander answers to his respective company commander, and each of these—the commanders for Alpha, Bravo and Charlie—answer to Ferrando. For all practical purposes, within the battalion, Ferrando is God. In war, especially, his authority is absolute.

Every Marine is indoctrinated with a simple saying that clearly states the Corps’ priority in achieving its aims in war: “Mission accomplishment, then troop welfare.” One thing about the Marine Corps is it doesn’t bullshit the troops about their place in the scheme of things. The responsibility of deciding when their lives might become expendable for the sake of a mission falls on Ferrando.

Ferrando’s command post out in the field is a small black tent set up by a movable antenna farm of seven-meter towers held up with guy lines and stakes. It looks like the deck rigging of a sailing ship washed up on the desert. About a hundred of his officers and senior enlisted men and team leaders gather by his command post. Ferrando is forty-two, thin, with a narrow head and eyes slightly close together. But the thing you notice about him is his voice—a dry, whispered rasp. Seven years ago his vocal cords were removed after a bout with throat cancer. Because of his distinctive voice, his call sign is “Godfather.”

Even standing fifteen meters back from him in the open desert with wind whipping through your ears, Ferrando’s croaking whisper carries. It’s kind of creepy. It sounds like someone with his lips pressed to your ear speaking directly into it, clear as Satan’s whisper to Eve.

“Good news,” Ferrando rasps to the men. He arches his eyebrows, not really smiling but still making a sort of happy face. “The BBC reported we struck Baghdad. The outcome of this war has already been determined. Iraq will go down.” He gazes out at the rows of Marines standing before him, bulked up with their MOPP suits, toting their weapons. “If you bump into an Iraqi who wants to fight, you will kick his fucking ass.”

Marines generally love this kind of tough talk from their commanders. The men in the crowd grin and nod enthusiastically. But then Ferrando loses some of them. He turns from the excitement of impending combat to the topic that often seems to obsess him more than anything: the Marines’ personal grooming. “I don’t know when we are going to get to the Euphrates,” he says, “but we will, and when we cross the Euphrates all mustaches will come off. That is the rule. Make sure your men shave their mustaches.” It’s an adage among officers that “a bitching Marine is a happy Marine.” By this standard, no officer makes the Marines in First Recon happier than Ferrando. Since assuming command of the battalion about eighteen months earlier, Ferrando has shown a relentless obsession with what he calls the “Grooming Standard”—his insistence that even in the field his troops maintain regulation haircuts, proper shaves and meticulously neat uniforms.

In traditional deployments, such as Colbert’s tour in the Afghan War, Recon teams go into the field without their commanders. Ferrando and others at the top stay behind at Camp Pendleton. Usually the highest-ranking authority in the field during a Recon mission is the team leader.

Some of the tension in the battalion that Fick alluded to when I first met him at Camp Mathilda stems from the fact that due to Maj. Gen. Mattis’s unorthodox plan to employ First Recon in Iraq as a unified, mobile fighting force, Ferrando and other senior commanders are now for the first time accompanying Recon Marines into the field. This stress is compounded by Ferrando’s singular obsession with maintaining the Grooming Standard.

Experienced team leaders in Bravo Company—like Colbert and Kocher—think they did a fine job in Afghanistan without always keeping their shirts tucked in and wearing color-coordinated running uniforms as Ferrando made them do at Mathilda. Kocher complains, “Out here we have a pile of captains, gunnery sergeants and staff sergeants with us that can’t do jack shit. They don’t even know how to refuel vehicles, get us batteries. All they do is make us get haircuts and shaves.”

For his part, Ferrando seems bent on stamping out the uniquely individualistic nature of Recon Marines. “These men who don’t like the Grooming Standard probably don’t belong in the Recon community,” he told me earlier. “They are the ones who gravitated here because of the myth that as Recon Marines they would become cowboys, exempt from standards everyone else in the Corps maintains.”

One of his senior enlisted men, tasked with enforcing the Grooming Standard, is more blunt. “These Marines are incorrectable [ sic ],” he tells me. “They are cocky. They are not as good as they think they are.”

The hostility is mutual. To some Marines their battalion commander’s obsession with appearances makes him seem like a careerist out of touch with the men he leads. “The problem is, higher-ups like Ferrando aren’t warriors, they’re Marine Corps politicians,” a Marine in Second Platoon gripes. “They’re terrified some general’s going to walk over here and see someone running around with his shirt untucked.”

Prior to commanding First Recon, Ferrando was the parade commander at the Marine Corps’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., a position he himself admits is “the most ceremonial billet in the Corps.” He has never been deployed in combat before, and while his job turns on his ability to inspire and lead several hundred young men, he admits, “My temper and personality are not suited for today’s youth.”

Away from his men, Ferrando displays a dry humor. When I ask him about his cancer—if he ever smoked, chewed tobacco or had other bad habits—he tells me he was a runner and a fitness nut, then adds, smiling, “I guess I’m just lucky.” At Camp Mathilda, Ferrando spent much of his time agonizing over the ROE, perfecting ways to strike a balance between protecting his Marines and not harming civilians. He also sincerely believes the Grooming Standard will give his men better odds of surviving in combat. “Discipline in all its forms enhances the survivability of troops,” he tells me.

Despite his virtues, he has a tough time getting these across to his Marines. Fick says, “I respect Lieutenant Colonel Ferrando, but for some reason he’s been unable to inspire trust in the men.”

Following his prewar invasion briefing this afternoon, Colbert expresses disappointment in his commander. Walking back from the briefing, even Colbert, who seldom complains, says, “Why would he bring up mustaches tonight of all nights?” He shakes his head, laughing. The order for Marines to shave their mustaches at the Euphrates originated with Mattis, not Ferrando. But what bugs Colbert is Ferrando’s timing. “We’re getting ready to invade a country, and this is what our commander talks to us about? Mustaches?”

JUST BEFORE THE SUN DROPS, Colbert and his team pull down the cammie nets from their vehicle and prepare to move out. The wind has died down, and it looks like it’s going to be a clear night for the invasion. Nearby, the battalion chaplain, Navy Lieutenant Commander Christopher Bodley, walks among the platoons, offering final prayers. Bodley is a tall, dark-skinned African American with a gentle manner and a high, melodious voice. Though several Marines in Colbert’s Second Platoon profess religious beliefs, they treat the chaplain with the polite disinterest you’d show a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman.