“HOT DOG HEAD!” shouted Drill Sergeant.
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!” said Hot Dog Head.
“DO YOU THINK PRIVATE FERRARO’S BEHAVIOR TONIGHT WAS ACCEPTABLE OR UNACCEPTABLE?”
“Unacceptable, Drill Sergeant!” he said.
The sergeant paused for dramatic effect, priming his vocal cords for his speech’s epic finale.
“Then why the FUCK did YOU let him go?”
Mercifully, he didn’t wait for Hot Dog Head’s sputtering response.
“YOU ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR PRIVATE FERRARO’S BEHAVIOR TONIGHT. THERE ARE FORTY PRIVATES IN FIRST PLATOON, AND EVERY ONE OF YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO STOP PRIVATE FERRARO FROM LEAVING. BUT YOU DID NOTHING!”
Forty pairs of eyes sent invisible laser darts of hatred directly into Ferraro’s body.
“SO YOU ARE ALL GOING TO GET THE DOG SHIT SMOKED OUT OF YOU WHILE PRIVATE FERRARO ENJOYS HIS CANDY BAR.”
Another drill sergeant grabbed the candy bar from Ferraro’s sweaty palm, unwrapped it, and shoved it back into Ferraro’s hand. We all watched him take a bite and start to chew. And that’s when we heard the most despised words in all of basic training:
“HALF RIGHT, FACE!”
“Half right, face” is a command to make a half right turn while still in formation. It gives you just enough room to do push-ups and other PT without bumping into the guy next to you. The civilian translation of “half right, face” is “you’re about to get super fucked up.”
Ferraro finished his Snickers bar. Then he did the only thing he was allowed to do — he stood there, surrounded by drill sergeants, and watched us get our asses kicked.
After hundreds of mountain climbers and what seemed like thousands of push-ups, when we’d all been dissolved to quivering messes, we were finally released to go back upstairs to continue our punishment.
My legs shook as I climbed the steps to our barracks. Sweating and heaving, we gathered like exhausted sheep around Drill Sergeant Velasquez, who was holding Ferraro by the arm. Velasquez kicked a mattress across the floor of the bay — Ferraro’s for the night. Each squad would keep watch over Ferraro so he didn’t take any more field trips, go AWOL, or try to kill himself. Apparently, guys subjected to this level of public humiliation often became suicide risks or runaways. We’d watch Ferraro in shifts: Was it thirty minutes? An hour? I was so tired, even fifteen minutes felt like an eternity. Once our shift was done, the next squad would take up the watch, and we could sleep for an hour or so until it was our turn again.
My squad stood in a circle around Ferraro’s bed. He sat on the mattress, his arms wrapped protectively around his knees, staring downward. No one spoke. The minutes that ticked by felt like centuries under the weight of my body. Ferraro’s eyes started to close.
“Wake the FUCK up!” someone shouted.
More minutes passed. Ferraro began dozing again. I resisted the urge to kick him and kicked the mattress instead.
“If we’re staying up, so are you,” I said.
I have no idea how much time passed, but it felt like going to the DMV after running a marathon. When we were finally relieved by Squad 2, I collapsed into bed for an hour of sleep. Before I knew it, Drill Sergeant Velasquez was back with two other sergeants in tow; it was 5:00 AM and time for roll call.
“Get the FUCK up. Toe the line. Get into your uniforms because we’re going on a ten-mile march. Not you, Ferraro. You come with us.”
I don’t know what they did to Ferraro that morning. A few days later he was back in our platoon like nothing had happened — except he was different somehow. For the rest of basic, he barely spoke to anyone. He kept his head down and his pants on and graduated with the rest of us. But his spirit was broken. His desires had been battered and forgotten, or at least compartmentalized, at least for now. To survive, he had to relinquish the pleasure of individuality, but also its pain and consequences. He joined us, finally, without resistance. Ferraro’s candy bar was forever etched in my mind as a reminder of what it means to be a soldier — to be so connected to others that your personal desires don’t matter anymore. To be so connected that you can say no to what you want because saying yes would suck for everyone else. Becoming a soldier meant becoming responsible for your actions and for everyone else’s actions, too. It meant you shouldered the burden of another’s punishment as if it was your own. It meant you suffered shared pain and connected with others through the bonds of that suffering.
That’s what it was, then, to join the army: to relinquish yourself completely. To let go of your wants and needs and succumb to the will of the whole. To willingly attend your own funeral, step into the casket, and inhale the scent of fresh earth as it was shoveled onto your beating heart. And to be reborn as a single cell in a giant body. To support without thinking, to act without questioning, and to defend the greater body with your life.
I was standing in a hotel corridor in a Holiday Inn in Seattle. I raised my fist to knock on the door in front of me, but my hand just hovered there. Kimmy was on the other side of the door. She was probably still in her underwear, or maybe just a T-shirt, maybe my T-shirt, I’m not sure. I was supposed to be inside the room with her.
Kimmy had flown from Milwaukee to come stay with me for a few days before I was deployed to Iraq. We’d been dating for two years by then. For most of that time, I was away at basic training or stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington State. She was back home in Wisconsin, brightening up our homeland, busy with college classes or work. As I stood outside that hotel room in Seattle, I could picture her back in Milwaukee — smiling at a friend or throwing her head back to laugh at a joke, even if it wasn’t that funny, just to make the joke teller feel good. I could see my ’98 Honda Civic in her parents’ garage, stored out of the way and off to the side, like a high school yearbook you keep in a souvenir box in the closet. I could see her dad starting the car and running it once a month or so, every month, until I returned. So I’d have wheels to pick her up for dates when I got back. So I could pick right back up where I had left off. Most of all, I could see Kimmy waiting patiently for me to grow up and into the man she wanted me to be. A man ready for marriage and children.
We had forty-eight hours — maybe less — to pretend I wasn’t about to be dropped into a war zone. My platoon was headed for Mosul, which would later be considered one of the deadliest battlegrounds of the conflict. The funny part was, at the time I was relieved not to be going to Baghdad — Mosul, in the north, seemed safer somehow. But wherever that military transport dropped me, it was go time. This was what I had trained for.
In the hours that were supposed to be filled with sex and dinner and drinks and one-last-times, the part of me that would’ve enjoyed those things retreated. Someone else rose up in his place. He was a warrior going to war, and his duty consumed him. With a quiet compliance that startled me, love stepped aside to make way for the forthcoming battle.
Kimmy and I sat in that hotel room until our time together turned from days to hours. I couldn’t just sit around and watch the hours become minutes. I couldn’t stay there with her another second. I had to move. I had to get outside. I needed air and sky so I wouldn’t suffocate.
Someone watching us would have looked at me and seen a twenty-year-old kid and a leggy blonde in a hotel room and thought she was some kind of conquest