What Was Asked of Us by Trish Wood & Bobby Muller

Author:Trish Wood & Bobby Muller [WOOD, TRISH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS027120
ISBN: 9780316023207
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2007-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

“Definitely not California”

JASON SMITHERS

USMC/INFANTRY

2004

SUNNI TRIANGLE

I joined the marines to better myself and prove to everybody that I wouldn’t be in trouble like the rest of my family, like going to jail, things like that. Growing up, I was three years old, and my brother was four, and my sister was two, and my dad went to jail, so my mom abandoned us in the house, and my grandma found us, like, a week later and took us in. From there I went from foster home to foster home and got locked up a couple of times and went to my group home, and that’s when I got my life on track.

We flew out to Kuwait and we were there for a week and we were doing a lot of real hard-core training. When we were in Kuwait, a lot of people were wanting to quit and, you know, just say, Forget this. If there’s a way I can get out, get me out. One dude killed himself. He went to the chaplain and shot himself in the head, right inside a tent; he shot himself in the head and it went all over the roof, and we found him over there because he stole a razor and got yelled at for it and he felt bad. It was pretty stressful over there. It wasn’t no joke.

A lot of people didn’t like him for it, didn’t like the guy who killed himself. A lot of people called him a coward for taking the easy way out before we got to combat and figured that’s why he did it. I knew the dude. It’s just . . . everything built up. It wasn’t that he was a coward, not like that. He was actually a pretty tough dude, and enough was enough for him. A lot of people have a different mental stability about what they can handle and what they can’t.

From Kuwait, we convoyed over to Junction City. It’s a really big army base near Ramadi. As soon as we stepped off the bus, instantly the humidity . . . you’re fucking sticky and sweaty, the smell of shit all around you, trash everywhere. You just smell the air around you. You see all the trash on the ground. They’ve got shit creeks running right down the side of the road. We saw kids playing in it. It’s just nasty shit. It’s all their rotten garbage. They throw it in this little creek. Some of them, they shit in cans and dump it in the creek. They’re dirty people and that’s what it is, it’s shit, smells like shit, looks like it, and it is. They were just dirty, dirty fucking people, mugging you, giving you dirty looks when you’re over there to help them. Immediately I didn’t like the place at all. Definitely not California.

I just played it cool, you know, hearts and minds, that’s why we went over there in the beginning, and we were just waving, smiling. The

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