Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [88]
The first guys out opened fire to cover Marines and engineers who ran out to fling their loads of sticks and steel across the gaping hole, then fell on their bellies and grabbed loose ends to hold the makeshift patch in place so that no one would fall through. The first assault squad immediately pounded out in single file, ran across the patch, and dashed across the narrow bridge. Other Marines shouted encouragement to spur them, while Dave Howell tried to get them to move more deliberately: “This is a marathon, not a sprint! Don’t bunch up!”
McCoy stepped forward, but Howell wrapped a big hand around the colonel’s arm and stopped him. “We can’t afford to lose you,” the sergeant major ordered his colonel. Then I started to move, but somebody grabbed my uniform and stopped me in my tracks, too. It was McCoy. If he couldn’t go, I couldn’t go. He held tight and growled, “You wait for me.” Howell had hold of the colonel, who had hold of me. As I stood there holding my sniper rifle and feeling like an idiot, more Marines thundered past, and Dino Moreno gave me a puzzled What the hell? look. I nodded for him to take off, and the snipers headed across without me.
After the first platoon and the snipers were on the far shore, sprawled out and shooting, McCoy was allowed to join the assault. Bullets pinged about, but the colonel walked across that bridge like John Wayne coming into a saloon, owning the place. While everyone else was sprinting around him, including photographers who dashed madly around with their cameras, McCoy moved at an almost casual pace, and with his radio handset clasped in one paw, he pulled his radio operator along with him. With his strange idea of fun, McCoy was playing a game within the game, trying to outcool his sergeants, men such as Howell and Courville, and I had no choice but to play along. If he wanted to walk across the damned bridge, then I had to walk, too, when the natural inclination of anyone with a brain was to run like hell.
The colonel is a big man, and his radio operator was also a large dude, so I carefully took a place right behind the two of them and matched the big guys step for step all the way across the broad Diyala Canal, being particularly careful to let them step on that rickety patch covering the hole before I did. When we reached the far side, McCoy looked over and said, “OK. Go have fun.”
I could get on with my war.
21
The Worst Thing
There is a dirty part of war that is seldom discussed. Little is written of it, and much less is said, for no one wants to talk about killing innocent people. By crossing that bridge, we stepped into one such troubled moment, a terrible situation that seemed preordained, with an outcome that was inevitable before it started. No matter how many times you try to turn back the clock, the ugly result remains unchanged. We did not intend to kill civilians, but we did, and we would just have to live with it. We did nothing wrong, but every Marine who was there would be scarred by what happened at the Diyala Canal.
The irregular fedayeen guerillas had taught us, over and over, that just because an Iraqi was not in uniform was no sign that he didn’t want to kill you. Our entire battalion had driven past the smoking remains of an Abrams tank that had been blown apart by a suicide bomber. We had been in brutal combat all day yesterday and had lost Marines to an artillery barrage this morning. Faced with an incredibly tense situation in a zone of ultimate danger, it was almost impossible—even unwise—for the average grunt to hold fire on someone coming steadily closer. Threat or no threat? Guess wrong and you and your buddies are dead.
The bridgehead on the far side of the river looked empty and desolate,