Some Gave All

This entry is about how the Army mourns.

Within forty-eight hours of the deaths of PFC Wallace, SPC Fisher, and SGT Drier; Bravo Battery was required to attend a meeting that we were told would teach us to deal with the deaths of our comrades. I really resented that the Army was going to try and tell us the proper way to mourn. I really didn't want to go. But it was mandatory.

What I thought was supposed to be a class telling us how to mourn actually turned out to be an exercise in group mourning, which turned out to be helpful in my opinion. I am glad the Army did it.

We went to the MWR(morale, welfare, and recreation) building where the Battery was split into its five platoons. My platoon went to the movie room where we met a LT Colonel, who said she was also a psychologist, and a Sergeant First Class, who was a mental health technician.

First, they talked about the grieving process, and the stages of grief. The Colonel went to each person in the room and had them talk about where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news. Then each person talked about how they first felt when they had heard what happened.

The Colonel taped some paper to the wall and and wrote down the names of the three soldiers. She asked everyone to list the good and memorable qualities of each one.

She talked briefly about physical problems that can be caused by the stress of grief, like insomnia, and gastrointestinal difficulty. Then she asked each person to talk about how things will be different as we go on with our mission.

A couple days later, we had the memorial ceremony. It was like any other funeral I've been to with, of course, the exception of military traditions. Instead of coffins, we had a stand with memorial symbols for each soldier, a rifle driven into the ground by the bayonet, a pair of boots in front of the rifle, a helmet resting on the butt of the rifle, and dog tags hanging from the handle. After the benediction, the First Sergeant performed the last role call, in which he called out the names of the soldiers of 4th platoon. When he got to one of the dead soldiers names, and they did not answer, he called out their name two more times before going on. Then they did the firing of volleys and the sounding of taps. Then everybody filed past the stand to say there final goodbye and salute the fallen soldiers. When the Generals and Colonels filed by, they put coins at the feet of the memorials. Some of the younger guys openly cried. I usually don't cry at funerals, I just have a hard time talking. Luckily, I didn't have to this time.

Everyone in America should know that these three were good guys who really deserved better. I know it's hard for average Joe American to find room in his heart for sympathy for three guys when the death toll for this war tops sixteen hundred. But one shouldn't give into the temptation to dwell only on numbers and forget the individual sacrifices made.

PFC Wallace was one of the youngest guys in the battery. He was only twenty when he died. He had married right before leaving for Iraq. The thing I remember most about Wallace is that I never ever saw him in a bad mood. He always seemed to have a smile or a friendly word. You can imagine how refreshing this trait would be on a bad day during a field exercise or deployment.

SPC Fisher was a pretty cool guy. He also had married right before leaving for Iraq. I didn't really know him that well, but I did get to party with him a little on one of those last drinking nights in Savannah right before the deployment. I was walking around with my friend, PFC Guzman when I saw Fisher, Wallace, and SPC Cummins walking down a dark Savannah street. I ran up to them and screamed "Gimme all your money!" Scared em all shitless. It was pretty funny. After that we all ended up at Club Ibiza. Fisher really knew how to party.

SGT Drier was kind of an intellectual type. He was the go-to guy for younger soldiers in his platoon for questions about their job or life in general. There are a lot of people out there who think soldiers, especially soldiers with jobs like infantryman or artilleryman aren't smart. SGT Drier had attended college and studied computer animation before putting education on hold and joining the Army to experience adventure. He said he planned on getting out of the Army and finishing his degree so he could make animation in the style of Veggie Tales. After he died, other people told me that he wanted to join the police and go SWAT when he got out. But I guess that doesn't matter now. SGT Drier and I both shared a love of books. He would stop by my bunk every now and then to see what I was reading. A fan of Richard Bach novels, Frank Miller and Preacher comics. I introduced him to one of my favorite authors, Andrew Vachss, whom he seemed to like. I think he would have got a kick out of learning that I have a desire to become a writer, but I guess that doesn't matter now either. He had an interest in philosophy, and was an ardent critic of organized religion. He wasn't married, but he had a girlfriend he planned to marry after the deployment. He was an all round nice guy. He wasn't complacent in his role as a non-commissioned officer. He helped out the soldiers under his watch. He died way too young. All of them did.

I will always remember them. Every Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, Armed Forces Day, Independence Day, September Eleventh, and any other day when I think about the sacrifices made to keep this country free. And I think everybody in America should remember them. I can't talk about the other sixteen hundred men and women who have died in this war. I can only talk about these three men, because I knew them. I know that they came to this dangerous place of their own volition to do a dangerous job. I know that they paid the ultimate price while trying to make America and the World a better place.

They were common men of uncommon courage. They are not victims of hate-filled zealots, or pawns of a power game between nations. They are heroes.


Private First Class Jeffrey Robert Wallace

Specialist Dustin Cole Fisher

Sergeant Charles Allen Drier


All gave some... And some gave all.

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The Day of Adversity

When I started this blog, this is what I was hoping I would never have to write about. Some days, in my more immature moments, I wished that we would get some action that I could write about. People who wish for "action" can learn that it's not as thrilling as Hollywood narratives make it seem.

Up until this point, the worst casualty suffered in our entire Battalion was a guy who was grazed by a bullet, leaving a bruise on his leg. Then one day, Tuesday, May 24th, Bravo Battery lost three men in one instant.

It was like any other day in Baghdad. My platoon, 3rd platoon had been tasked with with gate guard, prolly the most boring, grueling task for the soldiers of FOB Honor. It was my job to search vehicles. It was over a hundred degrees in the shade. My desert camo was dry where uncovered, and soaked completely through with sweat underneath my body armor. I was hating life at that moment.

One of the guys monitoring the radio told us through the walkie-talkies. Oh shit guys, 4th platoon just got hit by a car bomb at the corner of blah blah blah. He said that it was a "three litter urgent." "Litter" means that whatever the injury was, they weren't able to walk on their own. We pressed the soldier on the radio for more information. But of course, they're not going to put specifics, like names, over the net.

Within minutes, an extraction team of humvees line up at the gate to go to the scene. After they left, I heard over the walkie-talkie that they had put out a new command over the net. Shut down all personal communications. All the phone rooms and internet cafes. Why would they order this? It must be serious.

I started to pace back and forth the vehicle search area. One of the other privates working vehicle search with me had become visibly upset. He had trouble talking, and his eyes were getting red. He's only nineteen years old.

I noticed that I couldn't feel the heat anymore.

When our relief, 2nd platoon arrived, I asked one of the soldiers whether he had heard the news. That 4th platoon had been hit, and three guys were hurt. I could tell by the look on his face that he knew more than I did. "They died." he said.

I walked back to the barracks in a daze. As soon as I got into the palace, I saw the younger private who was working vehicle search with me throw his kevlar helmet to the ground and start cursing. It seemed like every body I passed had a glazed look over their face. I saw a sergeant who was twenty-three years old sitting on the cement stairway entrance, silently holding his face in his hands.

Back in the barracks, the men of my platoon acted in a way not too different from any other day when the work was finished and it was time to relax. They had turned to the comforts of their distractions. There was no conversation. Nobody felt like talking. But the air was filled with the noise of DVD players. Minds were transported to another place. There was a new high quality bootleg of Star Wars available from the Iraqi merchants on base. A galaxy far away was surely better than the violent here and now. Most of the guys didn't want to be alone with themselves. Being alone right now would force one to think things over and come to inevitable conclusions. It could have easily been any one of us out there. For some reason, we were spared.

I asked around and got some bad information. A couple guys told me that two completely different soldiers died. I spent a couple hours thinking that someone was dead who wasn't.

I took a shower. When I returned to the barracks, I was told about the actual soldiers who died. I didn't trust the information at first, but then I heard it from enough different people that I supposed that it was safe to assume that I knew who had really died.

I went to eat dinner. On Fox News, they announced that three soldiers had died in Baghdad. When I returned once again to the barracks, a couple of the guys complained that the news of the three mens' death hadn't even been officially put out to the Battery, and they were already reporting it on fucking Fox News.

Finally, they did announce a Battalion meeting for later that evening. But my platoon wouldn't be able to attend. We had been tasked to take 4th platoon's place as gate guard.

Instead of searching vehicles, I was placed as a sentry at the very front of the gate. It was real quiet that night. It was too late for traffic. There was no gunfire in the distance. And as I stood there until three AM, I had plenty of time to think.

I thought about how the danger of this place suddenly became very real. I thought about what it would be like, now that we all knew how dangerous it was. I wondered what the guys would have been saying about me, if it were me who had been killed instead.

But mostly I wondered why I had been spared. In my younger, more foolish days, I would say that God had plans for me. But now I know that that's bullshit. There's no reason why it couldn't have been me. Perhaps it should have been me. Indeed, I am older than all three men who were killed. I don't know why it wasn't my truck that wasn't hit. That night, it seemed like God was asking me that if someone else in Bravo Battery had to die, would you care if it were you? And are you ready to die, tomorrow if need be?

People in America will have a hard time understanding how upsetting something like this is. "Well, you were going to a war zone, what did you expect?" Most people don't have any idea the amount of preparation that our Battalion put into preventing things like this. The six months leading up to deployment were pretty much just solid training for this. We came here knowing that Our Battery didn't lose a single man on the first deployment, during the invasion. When we got to Baghdad, we learned that 2-82 Field Artillery, the unit that had our job before we got here, worked the streets of Baghdad for an entire year without losing anyone.

We wear body armor and drive in humvees so well armored that most times the worst a roadside bomb will do is flatten the tires. But the bomb that the terrorists used this time was a special type of IED called a "platter charge." While a conventional IED will explode in all directions, a platter charge forces the power of the explosion in one direction. It's kinda like a giant shot gun fired at close range. It rendered the armor useless. It instantly killed the two soldiers in the front seat and the soldier in the gunner's hatch. There was a Coalition soldier from our ally, Georgia, in the back seat. He survived. Although he's at least a double amputee or triple amputee now.

We came to Iraq hoping for the best. Our number one priority was for everybody to return to Fort Stewart, GA. I did my best to ignore the pessimist soldiers who said that the first deployment was lucky, we're not all coming home this time. As I said, up until now, our time in Iraq has been unremarkable. I truly believed that we were all going home. And I was beginning to take this idea for granted.

I came to Iraq hoping for the best and not really prepared for the worst. When the worst happened, it took me by surprise. I still don't think I'm prepared for death. For the wiser, or for the more foolish I find I am telling myself that the rest of Bravo Battery will be going home to America and that the incident on May 24th was extraordinary luck on the part of the terrorists. I don't know what will happen to me or the rest of the Battery if we lose more people. I might still be unprepared. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.

"In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider, God has made one as well as the other so that man may not discover anything that will be after him."
Ecclesiastes 7:14