VINCE EMANUELE |
DEADLY DAYS
It was an unusually chilly night for Iraq. I was sitting on a plastic lawn chair in our wooden shack we call a "C-Hut." This twelve-foot by twelve-foot room was my home for seven months in the summer and winter of 2004-2005. I suddenly heard the raspy voice of our squad leader Sgt. Abernathy scream: "Saddle up, boys." Now this was supposed to be our day of rest, our "off" time. No one was particularly happy that we were about to do anything at this godawful hour of the night. A couple of buddies and I started loading the wood into our armored trucks, all the while smoking cigarettes and complaining about our upcoming excursion. These were always the worst missions - middle of the night, unexpected, little preparation. No one was in a jovial mood by any means. After rounding up the guys, loading the trucks, and receiving our mission statement, we hit the road.
The outpost, called the "RE-TRANS site," was a good twenty-minute drive from the main base. The ride seemed like an eternity. However, I can't say our particular Humvee and its personnel were in poor spirits. I had my CD player and headphones on. PFC1 Glasper, who was an African-American kid from the inner city of Chicago, was up in the turret gun on top of our vehicle with the same goofy smile and lost look on his face as he had for most of the deployment. Lance Corporal Villa, a Mexican friend of mine from Southern Texas, was behind the wheel as always. Villa is truly a great spirit, rarely in a bad mood and willing to talk about anything. It didn't matter that it was the middle of the night; the jokes kept coming as if it were Villa's job to be as sarcastic as possible. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing a vehicle with these two gentlemen during our stay in the desert. It turned out to be a safe trip to our destination; we dropped off the supplies and had a chance to smoke and joke with some buddies of ours from the second squad. I suddenly heard the Humvees starting. Time to hit the road and head back to base!
Every time we drove at night, Iraq looked so much prettier - no blindingly bright sun or hot desert floor, just the endless stars in the night sky and all its wonderful beauty. The moon was spectacular, full and bright as ever. I remember thinking this almost every time I looked out the window on that drive home. I faded asleep fast from this sight and from the melody in my ear. I know this probably doesn't sound like the most vigilant thing to do while driving around in a combat zone, but I figured we'd taken this route a thousand times, I might as well catch up on some much-needed sleep time.
I was awoken by the two deafening gun shots. It was Sgt. Abernathy, "GO, GO, and GO," he screamed at the top of his lungs, and pointed wildly in the direction of a field off to the left side of the road. Villa frantically asked, "Do you see anything? DO YOU SEE ANYTHING?" Louder and louder each time, with the response being the same, not a thing in sight. WHAM! We hit a deep ditch going about forty miles per hour, my weapon turned around and the plastic hand-guard to protect my skin from the red-hot barrel busted off. PFC Glasper took the hit hard; he was crunched over in the back seat of the truck in the fetal position from having his rib cage smashed against the roof. I finally caught a glimpse of a silhouette. It was a man running and in a flash of a second he was gone - he jumped down into a drainage ditch. Villa stopped the Humvee, and I quickly exited the vehicle. All I could think while approaching the ditch was, "Please do not pop up and shoot me in the face, please do not pop up and shoot me." I looked down but couldn't see a thing. BANG, BANG, BANG ... I emptied my entire magazine of rounds into the ditch. I couldn't stop pulling the trigger, and I even stopped and reloaded another magazine and continued to fire. Villa came running towards me with a flashlight. There he was, dead as dead can be, no more than a couple feet in front of my face. To this day I can't remember why, but when Villa put that light on him I fired two more rounds into his already bloodied corpse - maybe out of fear of him still being alive, or the possibility of me having to care for a man I already had tried to kill. "Check the body for bombs," Sgt. Abernathy shouted as he came running towards the scene. Upon picking up the body, we saw that I had shot the man in the back of the head, resulting in the complete collapse of his skull structure. His forehead also had a baseball-size gaping hole where the bullet exited. There's something sensational about taking another human life. My immediate reaction was that of accomplishment, satisfaction, of being a "hero." Overwhelming, that was the sense I had at the time. Not sure whether to cry or let out a primal scream.
I soon found out that the man had three accomplices, all of whom were attempting to plant a roadside bomb on the path we were traveling. When the explosive experts arrived, they told us that if we had gotten there a couple minutes later we would have never disrupted them, and one of our trucks would have been blown to pieces. The euphoric feeling faded fast. On the way home I felt numb almost-not upset, not excited-almost a sense of complete and utter tranquility. Back at the base we arrived to a small crowd of fellow marines who heard of the news, who congratulated and patted me on the back for what I had done. I remember wanting to get to the showers as fast as possible_-_maybe cleaning myself would rid my body of this awful energy it was receiving. Still pumped from the adrenaline rush, I thought showering was the best option. The entire rest of that night, I felt as if he were watching my every step, lurking around every corner, perched under every stair. I hadn't felt such fear since I was a young boy. Attempting to wind down the night, I was on the porch of our shack having a smoke. Vick, a quiet guy from a Southern Baptist family of Kentucky, came out to talk to me. "Pretty crazy we ran into those guys out there ... how you feeling man?" I didn't know what to say - I mean, how did I feel? I was happy we didn't die, yet I was extremely upset that someone had to die in the end. I said I was fine, and we talked about how it's a part of war and how I did the right thing. I told him I always wondered what it was like to take another human being's life, and now I know.
Unfortunately this wasn't the last time I had to discharge my weapon in self-defense during our tour in Iraq. Two days later we were ambushed, and my best friend and platoon member was killed in a five-hour firefight with insurgents. Maybe this was part of life. Maybe this was God's way of showing me what it was like to have a life so close to me taken so fast. I found out really quickly what killing and the tragedies of war were like, all within seventy-two hours. There are a million ways to describe a war: unneeded, useless, tragic, horrific ... I would also say missing and sad. Missing is a piece of me that I will never ever get back. Sad is the state of affairs in the world in which we live in today. That piece of me and that empty sadness that fills my heart is and forever will be in Iraq and in my memory.
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VINCE EMANUELE |
