Generation Kill - Evan Wright [136]
The men don’t have any orders today. Lt. Col. Ferrando is still working on his plan to get the battalion in on the final assault on Baghdad. Colbert, however, assembles his team for a special briefing beside his Humvee.
“There’s something I’ve been keeping from you,” Colbert says. “I wasn’t sure we were going to live to share this moment.” He produces a dusty plastic bag, reaches in and pulls out several cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli, one for each man on the team. “To celebrate,” he says.
“What the fuck is that?” Person says, spotting something else in the bag.
“Easy there, partner,” Colbert says, sliding out a virgin copy of Juggs magazine, still in its shrink-wrap.
“Fuck!” Person says. “How the fuck did you hide that from me?” Person tries to grab it.
Colbert yanks it away. “Not yet,” Colbert says. “I need some time with this alone. Just calm down. You’ll get your sloppy seconds.”
They cook the Chef Boyardee on a C-4 fire, in the cans, cutting them open with Ka-Bar knives. The team is more closely knit than it’s ever been. Even Trombley has found acceptance. In the wake of the incident in which he accidentally machine-gunned the shepherds, the men have honored him with a nickname: “Whopper.” I don’t get it when they first reveal it to me. “We call him the Whopper,” one of them explains, “because they’re sold at Burger King.” When I look up, still not understanding, the nearby Marines shake their heads at my ignorance. “Like, Whoppers, Burger King, BK—Baby Killer,” one of them says, spelling it out. “Trombley’s our little Whopper BK.”
They call him this to his face, and Trombley laughs appreciatively. He admits, “When I shot those kids I felt the same way as when I shoot a deer. I felt lucky, like I got the Easter egg.” Then adds, “I wanted to look at the kid I shot. It felt weird.”
Lilley nudges him affectionately. “That’s because you’re the Whopper, our little BK Baby Killer.”
Person, sitting shirtless partway underneath the cammie netting, slurps the ravioli juice from the jagged can and starts babbling about his NAMBLA-conspiracy theories behind the war.
Hasser, who has maintained his distant silence for days since shooting the man in the blue car, breaks into laughter. “Look at you, Ray,” he says, pointing at Person. “You’re a fucking mess, man.”
Person’s face is smeared with ravioli sauce, fluorescent orange in the sunlight. More of it’s splattered down his pale white chest, with drippings on his toes. “What?” Person asks, perplexed.
“You’re a fucking messed-up hick who can’t even eat ravioli.” Hasser doubles over, facedown in the grass, laughing.
LATER THAT DAY, the Marines in Bravo are reunited with an old friend, Gunnery Sergeant Jason Swarr. A thirty-two-year-old Recon Marine who works as the battalion’s parachute rigger, Swarr nearly missed the war. He only arrived outside Baghdad a couple of days ago. Now, he comes over to Colbert’s position with a tale of his strange odyssey through Iraq and his remarkable first experience of combat.
Swarr is one of the more eccentric characters in the battalion. Tall and square-jawed, he looks like your average Marine, but in his off-hours Swarr is an artist who writes and directs ultra-low-budget videos. “I’m like the Ed Wood of my generation,” he says. “My goal in life is, people will go in the video store and find my movies in the Cult Film section by Toxic Avenger.”
Swarr is also a warrior. He served in Somalia, and when this war came along, he vowed he wasn’t going to miss it. But the battalion had other plans. When the invasion began, Swarr and two other Marines from First Recon were ordered to remain behind at the Al Jabar airfield in Kuwait to serve as liaisons to the Marine Corps Air Wing. Within a few days, he and his two comrades figured out their assignment was a bullshit job. “They didn’t give a fuck about us at Jabar,” Gunny Swarr says. “There was nothing to do.”
They pulled some strings, got permission to leave and hitchhiked