Generation Kill - Evan Wright [68]
It’s the corniest line I’ve ever heard. But maybe the humor of it was intended to relax everyone. It works. The weirdest thing about a situation like this is that you actually want to turn the first corner—and not just to get it over with as fast as possible. You want to see what’s going to happen next.
We come alongside the walls of the town. Just as Person makes the first turn, a machine gun clatters. It’s coming from the high building with long, narrow windows ahead of us. Then, as we complete the turn into town, I see muzzle flashes spitting out from buildings, or gaps in the walls just two meters to our right. While the guns firing at us are set back from the road and we can’t see the shooters, the barrels must be extremely close. Their muzzle flashes appear to be floating in front of us, like sparklers. We drive right into them.
Bullets striking the Humvee sound like whips cracking on the roof. Nearly two dozen rounds slam into it almost right away. As the lead vehicle of the platoon, Colbert’s is the only one with doors, a roof and light armor. Even so, the windows are open and there are gaps in the shielding. A bullet flies past Colbert’s head and smacks into the pillar behind Person. Several more slice through the edges of the door frames.
The shooting continues on both sides. Less than half an hour before, Colbert had been talking about stress reactions in combat. In addition to the embarrassing loss of bodily control that 25 percent of all soldiers experience, other symptoms include time dilation, a sense of time slowing down or speeding up; vividness, a starkly heightened awareness of detail; random thoughts, the mind fixating on unimportant sequences; memory loss; and, of course, your basic feelings of sheer terror.
In my case, hearing and sight become almost disconnected. I see more muzzle flashes next to the vehicle but don’t hear them. In the seat beside me, Trombley fires 300 rounds from his machine gun. Ordinarily, if someone were firing a machine gun that close to you, it would be deafening. His gun seems to whisper.
The look on Colbert’s face is almost serene. He’s hunched over his weapon, leaning out the window, intently studying the walls of the buildings, firing bursts from his M-4 and grenades from the 203 tube underneath the main barrel. I watch him pump in a fresh grenade, and I think, I bet Colbert’s really happy to be finally shooting a 203 round in combat. I remember him kissing the grenade earlier. Random thoughts.
I study Person’s face for signs of panic, fear or death. My worry is he’ll get shot or freak out and we’ll be stuck on this street. But Person seems fine. He’s slouched over the wheel, looking through the windshield, an almost blank expression on his face. The only thing different about him is he’s not babbling his opinions on Justin Timberlake or some other pussy faggot retard who bothers him.
Trombley turns, smiling gleefully, his red-infected eye shining brightly, and he shouts, “I got one, Sergeant!”
I can’t believe that he is so eager to get approval from the team that he is choosing this moment to take credit for his kills.
Colbert ignores him. Trombley eagerly goes back to shooting at people out his window. A gray object zooms toward the windshield and smacks into the roof. My hearing comes back as the Humvee fills with a metal-on-metal scraping sound. Yesterday Colbert had traded out Garza for a Mark-19 gunner from a different team. The guy’s name is Corporal Walt Hasser, twenty-three, from Taylorstown, Virginia. He bangs into the roof of the Humvee. Now his legs hang down from the turret, twisted sideways. He’s been hit by a steel cable that attackers have stretched across the street to knock down turret gunners. Another cable swipes across the roof.
Colbert calls out, “Walt, are you