Generation Kill - Evan Wright [95]
“I feel like it’s Christmas morning and I’m about to open my presents,” Trombley says.
Fick treats the Marines to a special breakfast. He distributes two meal packs of humrats to each team, for the men to divide among themselves.
While eating hot lentil stew and rice, Espera ponders American culture. “Dog, before we came over here I watched Pocahontas with my eight-year-old daughter. Disney has taken my heritage as an American Indian and fucked it up with this typical American white-boy formula.”
“Pocahontas. Wonderful children’s cartoon,” Colbert says. “I like the music.”
“Dog, Pocahontas is another case of your people shitting on mine. What’s the true story of Pocahontas? White boys come to the new land, deceive a corrupt Indian chief, kill ninety percent of the men and rape all the women. What does Disney do? They make this tragedy, the genocide of my people, into a love story with a singing raccoon. I ask you, would the white man make a love story about Auschwitz where a skinny-ass inmate falls in love with a guard, with a singing raccoon and dancing swastikas? Dog, I was ashamed for my daughter to see this.”
Trombley slides in next to Espera. “You know, my great-great-great-grandfather was a mercenary up in Michigan who had a militia where they’d kill Indians for hire. He was really good at it.”
“You know, Trombley,” Espera says, “in the fishing village I’m from, Los Angeles, if I mention that I’m part Indian, most white motherfuckers will bring up some great-great-great-grandparent who was part Indian because they want to let me know that even though they look like white motherfuckers, they’re actually down with my people. You are the first white motherfucker I’ve ever met who’s said that.”
“Just what race are you, Poke?” Colbert asks, referring to Espera by the nickname only his friends use. “I mean, are you Latino, Indian or white? Or are you just whatever race happens to be cool at the time?”
“Shut up, white boy, and go eat a baloney sandwich,” Espera says.
“No, I mean it,” Colbert continues. “Your wife is half white. I’ve met your friends from L.A. They’re all white.”
“Bro, you’ve got a point,” Espera says. “I’m afraid to hang out with my Mexican friends at home. I’m afraid if we go to the liquor store together they’ll stick it up. My Mexican friends are shady motherfuckers. No job, twenty-thousand-dollar entertainment system at home, more guns than a fucking armory. The only Mexicans I hang out with are in the Marine Corps.”
Breakfast ends with Fick’s order to get in the Humvees and link up with RCT-1 in preparation for the new mission. “Finally, we get to fuck shit up again,” Person exults as we leave the road by the airfield. Colbert, however, gazes morosely out the window at Marines rolling up the road in Amtracs. They will be stationed here as guards. “That would be sweet,” Colbert says. “Guarding an airfield for three weeks.”
FICK HAS SOME BAD NEWS when the Marines reach RCT-1 at a muddy, bomb-cratered camp at the junction of Routes 7 and 17. “Our original warning order seems to be changing,” he tells his team leaders. “Instead of staging ambushes on enemy positions along Route 17, we will bust north adjacent to Route 7 and do a movement to contact.”
“Movement to contact” is another way of saying they will again be driving into suspected enemy positions in order to see if anybody will shoot at them. Once again they will be following the Gharraf canal on a backcountry trail. “One thing I’ve learned,” Fick tells me. “Is if we do anything involving something named ‘Gharraf,’ it’s not good.”
Encino Man holds a company formation in an attempt to bring out the moto in his men. They stand in a sloping field at parade rest, hands clasped behind their backs, each young man looking ahead with a hard, Marine-Corps-correct thousand-yard stare. “We all know what happened to the chow,”