Shadow of the Sword: A Marine's Journey of War, Heroism, and Redemption by Jeremiah Workman & John Bruning

Author:Jeremiah Workman & John Bruning [Workman, Jeremiah & Bruning, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Military, Iraq War (2003-)
ISBN: 9780345516664
Publisher: Presidio Press
Published: 2009-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Big hair and all, they got that one right.

I light the smoke and take a deep breath. It’s after ten and I’ll need to take my meds soon. That’ll put me to sleep; the Clonopin takes care of that. For the moment, I’m in a nice little trough—long enough removed from my last dosages that I actually feel a little human, but not too far to start craving the Clonopin. I’m at my most “me” here, and I find I can think clearly. It also lets me remember, which is just about a fifty-fifty blessing and curse.

I enjoy the moment—and the smoke. Don’t tell anyone, but us leathernecks stocked up on Newports in Fallujah. They gave us a minty fresh mouth, or at least that’s what we thought. Anything beat our normal foul breath, which is why I started the habit in the first place over there.

I miss Kraft and Levine, Smokes and Mo. If we’d all stayed together after we came home, this Best Years of Our Lives time probably would have gone easier for all of us. I know it would have for me, anyway. But within a few months, the Corps peeled my unit apart and we went our separate ways with empty promises to stay in touch. Even if you do make the effort, it’s never the same again.

We found ourselves among strangers in uniform, men and women who didn’t have our frame of reference. After seven months together in combat, we had become a family. Nothing stateside can match that.

Okay, that’s a rose-colored way of looking at it. At our best, we were a dysfunctional family with guns and disgusting senses of humor.

We stayed at Camp Fallujah only a short time before moving to another satellite base on the edge of a lake. For whatever reason, the SeaBees set up our Porta-Johns right down there at the water’s edge.

I exhale a cloud of smoke and start to laugh. Kraft was always such a priss when it came to his personal hygiene. I mean, we lived in filth, sat in those Porta-Johns amid clouds of flies, and Kraft would obsess over his hair. He carried his own bottle of hand sanitizer, and he used it constantly. For the rest of us, that just seemed like tossing bricks in the Grand Canyon. What was the point?

One day, Kraft headed over to the Porta-Johns. Mo and some of the other guys decided to play a prank on him. They pushed a Dumpster up against the side of the one Kraft was in. They used it to climb atop the shitter. I came out of my hooch and saw them rocking Kraft back and forth, the Porta-John swaying like a pendulum as he screamed holy hell at them. No amount of hand sanitizer helped him after that.

That lake was something else. It gave us a beautiful view every morning as we emerged from our beachside hooches. When people think of Iraq here at home, I’ve found they have images of endless sand dunes and camels, and blazing heat.

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