Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [63]
As it turned out, that was not to be. Within a few days, Mark Evnin would die in a firefight.
The battalion had finished with Ad Diwaniyah by lunchtime, having no casualties of our own but killing at least ninety-two Iraqi soldiers and taking another fifty-six as prisoners. The actual butcher’s bill could have easily been three or four times what was reported, but we were intentionally lowballing the numbers, minimizing enemy casualties instead of maximizing them to avoid the Vietnam body-count habit that created unrealistic numbers and expectations.
Once again back at the Main, I was gulping water and washing some of the thick dust off my skin when a Marine stopped by to tell me the security platoon had picked up some prisoners over in the area by the bridge, including a guy who had been hit by what appeared to be sniper rounds. The Panda and I headed for the prisoner pen and found the wounded man sitting on the ground with his legs crossed and plastic flexcuffs shackling his wrists.
He was no more than twenty years old, and his cheeks were bare, as if he were just starting to shave. He had taken one bullet in the left arm, and the second had penetrated his back and emerged out of the top of his left breast. Somehow the big slug went through without ripping out his heart or hitting anything major. He was not even bleeding hard.
I checked the wounds, and they looked about the right size. Was this the guy I had shot? I grabbed a nearby interpreter and asked the boy how he had been wounded. The Iraqi refused to talk, and his dark eyes flashed in anger, but I saw some fright, too. I put on my war face, leaned close to let my own eyes pierce his, shouted a few choice expletives, then had the interpreter ask again. The kid was growing pale, and this time he answered, saying he had been trying to surrender when he was shot. Bullshit. He still had on his boots and had been carrying a rifle while he was running. “Where?” I wanted to know, and he described the area. Same place.
He said the first bullet hit his left arm and sent him stumbling forward, off balance. Then another shot went through his shoulder. I asked why, if he wanted to give up, he didn’t throw down his rifle and take off his boots. He said if he tried to do that, then his own people would have killed him. I decided to ease up on him. I had the interpreter tell the prisoner that I was the one who had shot him. The Iraqi soldier glanced at my big M40A1 rifle and nodded.
Weird, conflicting emotions swept over me. I was glad that I had not missed a target, but I was also strangely delighted that this guy had survived. Never had I felt personal responsibility for the safety of an enemy combatant, so this sudden kinship was unexpected, and it was kind of cool.
The fighting was over for the day, so I didn’t want him to die. I felt he had earned a new lease on life. I called him “Achmed,” because I didn’t know his real name. By doing so, I crossed the invisible line of humanizing my enemy.
Next, I had Achmed carried to the front of a long line of other wounded Iraqi soldiers at an aid station, and I told the doctor, an old friend, to patch him up. “He’s the only one I’ve ever shot that lived through the experience,” I said, and the doc balked.
He apparently thought that I wanted to make sure the kid didn’t survive much longer in order to keep my record intact. No, I explained, just the opposite. This new patient was one lucky bastard, so I wanted him to receive special treatment. The interpreter explained to the soldier, “You’re hooked up, man. You’re a celebrity.”
He began to lose that defiant look. As the doctor removed the shirt, pumped in some anesthetic, and started to work, I stood there, talking quietly to the boy.
GAS … GAS … GAS!! The dreaded warning roared through the area in a hasty echo of