Evan Wright - Generation Kill

Pappy, shot in the foot at Al Muwaffaqiyah, returned to duty at Camp Pendleton before his platoon’s homecoming. Despite having received a “lucky” wound in an extremity, Pappy had to undergo intensive physical therapy to overcome a limp. Still walking with a cane when he returned to duty, he was roused one evening in his barracks room by a surprise visit from the ladies of the Key Wives Club—a spouse support group headed by Encino Man’s wife. She and Lt. Col. Ferrando’s wife offered him a heartfelt Key Wives’ welcome home and gifts of fresh baked goods and a new toothbrush, then left a few minutes later. Pappy’s bloody boot, worn the night he was shot, had been out on his floor when the Key Wives dropped in, but they made no mention of it. Pappy thought nothing of the visit, until June 3, when he went to March Air Force base to greet First Recon on its return. The first man he encountered off the plane was Ferrando, who walked up to him on the tarmac and chewed Pappy out for having left his tattered boot on the floor of his room when the Key Wives visited. “I don’t like you showing your bloody boot to my wife,” Ferrando had rasped, then brushed past, without further ado. “At least he didn’t bitch about my mustache,” Pappy later said. Pappy was awarded a Bronze Star for his actions in the invasion.

Upon his return, Colbert received one of the highest honors in the Marine Corps, a combat meritorious promotion to staff sergeant. He was nominated to enter a two-year exchange program with the British Royal Marines, with whom he is now serving.

Person got out of the Marines and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to pursue his career as a rock star while working at the front desk of a twenty-four-hour fitness club.

After being promoted to the rank of captain, Fick left the Marine Corps in August to pursue graduate degrees in business and foreign relations at Harvard. For several months he debated whether he had been a good officer, or whether his concern for his men colored his judgment. He concluded, “My feelings made me a more conflicted officer. There was no celebratory cigar smoking on the battlefield for me. But we achieved every mission objective. I did my job.” Under his command, the men in Second Platoon received more combat citations and awards than any other platoon in First Reconnaissance Battalion.

Capt. Patterson also left the Marine Corps, after being promoted to major, in order to study environmental engineering at the University of Washington. After more than ten years of distinguished military service, Patterson departed following a loss of control in front of his men—one that only raised their opinion of him. In my last conversation with Patterson, he confessed that he was still troubled by the episode in which Encino Man had mistakenly followed an incorrect order to send men out to mark a minefield at night. One of the engineers injured, Valdez, who lost an eye, had served with Patterson’s company. “Valdez was my man,” Patterson said to me. “What the fuck happened?” Despite his anger, he refused to cast blame on any individual. “It happened as a result of dysfunction in the battalion, not because of what a single officer did.”

Patterson’s eruption—and it could be called that given the fact that ordinarily he is so mild-mannered it almost makes him seem diminutive—happened midday on May 3, when the men in the companies were racing in a competition whose winners would receive a phone call home. Encino Man checked a corporal from Alpha Company who was pulling ahead in an obstacle race, and Patterson exploded, rushing Encino Man, throwing him into a headlock and slamming him against a wall. The enlisted men were forced to break the two officers apart. Later, Patterson laughed off the assault, claiming it was done in the spirit of fun. Whatever his motives, Patterson achieved hero status within the ranks.

Captain America departed from his command a few weeks after the battalion’s return. Some thought the move was a demotion, until he was reassigned to a prestigious command staff position in another unit.

Doc Bryan had a sad parting from the Middle East. While waiting at a desert camp in Kuwait to fly home, he was on hand at a football game held among Marines in other units when one of the players went berserk with his M-16 and shot a young man on the opposing team, hitting him in the chest and neck. Doc Bryan and other corpsmen were unable to save the Marine. The incident only added fuel to Doc Bryan’s bitter complaints about war. Later, Doc Bryan had been engaging in one of his typical bitch sessions about the incompetence of superiors when, he says, he suddenly heard his voice as if it belonged to someone else. Something snapped in him, and he realized, “You know what, I’m just not cut out for the military.” But the feeling didn’t last. His first week home, he was happily recruited out of First Recon into a secretive Special Forces unit. He has been training for a mission he is not at liberty to talk about.

Trombley finally completed the Basic Reconnaissance Course and is now a full-fledged Recon Marine. In the autumn he also participated in an LAPD training program. He’s thinking of joining the LAPD when he gets out in a year.

Reyes achieved the dream of a lifetime when his temporary promotion to team leader after Pappy’s wounding at Muwaffaqiyah was made permanent at Camp Pendleton. A week later, he was suspended following a hazing incident that occurred under his supervision. While training a Marine new to First Recon, one who was having trouble keeping up on a fitness run, Garza ordered the kid to dig a Ranger grave. Then Garza and others buried him, leaving only a small breathing space. Reyes had approved of the disciplinary measure, telling me later, “That was the kind of hard training we did under Horsehead.” Reyes was immediately docked a month’s pay. The rest of the men in the platoon took money from their paychecks to make up the difference in his lost salary, while he awaited formal punishment proceedings.

A few weeks after Espera returned from Iraq he had an eerie experience while driving with his family down Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles. Espera was at the wheel of a new SUV, purchased to celebrate his homecoming, when he glimpsed a man on the street who looked exactly like an Iraqi civilian the platoon had fatally shot at a roadblock in Iraq. In an instant he realized it wasn’t the pedestrian on the street who had reminded him of the dead man; the light was glancing off the windshield of his new SUV the same way it had in his Humvee when he’d witnessed the shooting. A short while after this flashback, Espera was invited to a party at a gated community in Malibu where residents wanted to toast a war hero. In civilian clothes, with his hair grown out, and having gained the weight that he’d lost in Iraq, Espera cut a handsome figure. As the guests repeatedly praised his heroism in serving his country, Espera hung his head with an almost embarrassed smile. Then, after his fifth or sixth glass of wine, he rose to his feet. “I’m not a hero,” he said. The guests nodded, their smiles stretching even wider at this hero’s show of humility. “Guys like me are just a necessary part of things,” Espera continued. “To maintain this way of life in a fine community like this, you need psychos like us to go out and drop a bomb on somebody’s house.”

In November the men were told First Recon would be returning to Iraq. Reyes was reinstated as team leader. Gunny Wynn, who was still facing disciplinary action for his disobedience to Encino Man in Iraq, was also cleared. “In the end,” Reyes says, “they need bodies for the war.” Reyes adds, “This is the way the Corps is. You join for the idealism, but eventually you see the flaws in it. You might fight this for a while. Then you accept that one man isn’t going to change the Marine Corps. If you love the Corps, you give up some of the ideals which motivated you to join in the first place.”