Generation Kill - Evan Wright [34]
Several Marines pass around a photo pulled from the wallet of a surrendered Iraqi. Most of the Iraqis have ordinary pictures of families—children, wives, parents. But one guy has a picture of himself holding hands with another man. Both wear gaudy, effeminate-looking Western shirts, and one seems to have makeup on. The Marines can’t believe they’ve captured a gay Iraqi soldier.
But the funny thing is, most of the Marines passing the photo around aren’t making the homo jokes they usually make among themselves. Some of them just look at it, shaking their heads. After spending several hours with the surrendered Iraqis, the Marines seem taken aback, almost depressed by their misery. A Marine staff sergeant can’t get over the fact that so many are attempting to make a 170-kilometer trek through the open desert with rags tied to their feet and antifreeze jugs filled with water. “I knew from the first war they’d surrender,” he says. “But I didn’t expect how beaten down they’d be. I wish we could do more for them, give them more water.”
“We’re not the Red Crescent society,” Colbert says. “We barely have enough for ourselves.”
ON WHAT IS ONLY their second day in Iraq, the Marines in Bravo Company’s Third Platoon have concluded that their platoon commander has lost his mind. The men in Bravo’s Second and Third platoons are extremely close. Not only did they share the same tent in Kuwait, but here in the field the two platoons are usually right next to each other. Unlike the men in Second Platoon who universally respect, if not adore their commander, Lt. Fick, the men in Third Platoon view their platoon commander as a buffoon. While he is a highly rated Marine Corps officer, with stellar fitness reports and no signs in his record that he is mentally unstable or incompetent, some of his men have mockingly nicknamed him “Captain America.”
When you first meet Captain America, he’s a likable enough guy. At Camp Mathilda, when he still had a mustache, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Matt Dillon’s roguishly charming con-artist character in There’s Something About Mary. Captain America is thirty-one years old, married, and has a somewhat colorful past of having worked as a bodyguard for rock stars when he was in college. If he corners you, he’ll talk your ear off about all the wild times he had doing security for bands like U2, Depeche Mode and Duran Duran. His men feel he uses these stories as a pathetic attempt to impress them, and besides, half of them have never heard of Duran Duran.
Twenty-four hours ago, when the invasion started, Captain America revealed another side of himself, which further eroded his standing among his men. He’s prone to hysterics. Before crossing the border, he ran up to his men’s Humvees parked in the staging area and began shouting, “We’re in the shit now! It’s war!” All morning since the Iraqi army deserters first appeared by the railroad tracks, Captain America has been getting on the radio, shouting, “Enemy! Enemy! Enemy!”
While it’s perfectly fine for officers to shout dramatically in movies, in the Marines it’s frowned upon. As First Recon’s commander, Lt. Col. Ferrando, will later say in an apparent reference to Captain America, “An officer’s job is to throw water on a fire, not gasoline.”
One of Captain America’s team leaders, twenty-three-year-old Sergeant John Moreno, says, “Something twisted in him the night we crossed into Iraq. He gets on the radio and starts shouting about how we’re going to take on Iraqi tanks. We didn’t see any tanks. It’s like he just wants to exaggerate everything so he’s a bigger hero. It’s embarrassing for us.”
While rolling up to the train tracks yesterday, Captain America provoked Colbert’s wrath for leading his men on a treasure hunt for discarded Iraqi helmets. “We’re in an area suspected to have