Generation Kill - Evan Wright [138]
“I’m like, ‘Ollie, how you doing?’ ” Swarrs continues.
“ ‘Fucking great.’ He takes a dip and says, ‘This war’s going to be over in seventy-two hours. Saddam’s dead.’
“I’m like, ‘Good to go, Ollie.’
“He huffs off, and this colonel comes out who’s in charge of the airfield, and he’s mad. He’s like, ‘You guys just lit up a friendly village.’
“I don’t think Delta killed any of the villagers, but they blew up a few of their huts. We gave ’em a few cases of humrats and got out of there.”
When Colbert hears the story, he just shakes his head. “This is so colossally retarded I can’t even say anything about it.”
I’m not convinced that Gunny Swarr is the most reliable source. I set out to find other people who were there. One of the men from First Recon who was with him is a captain in the battalion, with a reputation for being levelheaded and forthright. He tells me Gunny Swarr’s tale is “on the money.” Later, I talk to Ferrando, who admits, “There was a comm problem for about a week with Delta.” I go over to Delta’s position in the camp and talk to more than a half dozen of the reservists, including the Mark-19 gunner, Lance Corporal Bryan Andrews, twenty-two, who fired on the village. They corroborate essential details of Swarr’s story. Andrews adds, “I guess it worked out okay. I scared off the old man. He ran away.”
KOCHER SPENDS his free day outside Baghdad, sitting in the shade of his vehicle’s cammie nets, writing a journal intended for his wife, who’s also in the Marines. He doesn’t indulge in the open vilification of his commander, Captain America, the way some of the men do, but he tells me when I stop by that he is disturbed by Captain America’s behavior, especially his attempted bayoneting of the Iraqi prisoner the other night. “I could be a lot more personal about my feelings toward the Iraqis,” Kocher says. “My wife is here. Her civil affairs unit is in Nasiriyah. I think about her every day and the things that could happen to her. But I don’t lose control over it.”
Against his powerful forearms, the pen Kocher holds looks puny. The log he writes in is an account of the war he calls his “Bitter Journal.”
“If something happens to me, I want my wife to know the truth,” he says. “If they say we fought valiantly here, I want her to know we fought retarded. They haven’t used us right—sending us into these towns, onto the airfield, with no observation.”
Captain America approaches. One of the men by Kocher’s vehicle shouts a warning: “Here comes Dumbass.”
Captain America’s within easy earshot of their comment, but he sticks his head under the cammie netting and greets the men with a forced, though somewhat wobbly, smile. “Everyone enjoying the day off?” he asks.
The Marines freeze him out with blank stares.
“We’re fine, sir,” Kocher says.
The truth is, I feel sort of bad for Captain America. The way his men treat him reminds me of seeing a kid hazed and picked on on the playground. I sit down with him in the grass a few meters from Kocher’s vehicle. One on one, he seems likable but possesses an unfocused intensity that’s both charismatic and draining. When he stares at you, he doesn’t blink; his pupils almost vibrate.
I ask him about complaints voiced by his men that he’s been a little too zealous in his shooting from the vehicle and in his treatment the other night of the EPW (it’s technically a war crime to strike, threaten or bayonet a man once he’s been captured). Captain America denies any wrongdoing. He asserts to me that in each instance where he’s employed violence, it’s always been in response to a threat, which perhaps his Marines didn’t perceive. “Each man sees things differently in combat,” he says.
Then Captain America veers into Nietzschean speculation on the deadly nature of battle. “Some of us are not going to make it out of here. Each of us has to test the limits of his will to survive in this reality.” He leans forward and speaks in grave tones. “Right now, at any time, we