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They Were Soldiers
How the Wounded Return from America's Wars: The Untold Story
Ann Jones
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eBook - ePub
They Were Soldiers
How the Wounded Return from America's Wars: The Untold Story
Ann Jones
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About This Book
"Unsparing, scathingly direct, and gut-wrenching."âAndrew Bacevich
"Jones writes with passion and clarity."âMarilyn Young
"Read this book."âJonathan Shay
Ann Jones shows the dead, wounded, mutilated, brain-damaged, drug-addicted, suicidal, homicidal casualties of our distant wars, taking us on a stunning journey from the devastating moment an American soldier is first wounded in rural Afghanistan to the return home. Beautifully written by an empathetic and critical reporter who knows the price of war.
Ann Jones is a journalist, photographer, and the author of eight books of nonfiction.
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1.
Secrets: The Dead
The base stands in a shallow valley amid steep mountains on the northeastern margin of Afghanistan. It is laid out in a tidy grid behind walls of concrete and gigantic Hesco bags of steel wire mesh filled with rocks and rubble. Itâs June 2010 and every morning the gate opens to release into the high stony desert a convoy of MRAPs, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles, on patrol. Tall and top-heavy, an MRAP is apt to roll down a mountainside, leaving soldiers to crawl out and make their way back to base on foot through a landscape laced with mines and overseen by enemy snipers. Often a patrol does not end well.
One day, the base commander goes to the gate to meet vehicles returning from an ambushed patrol. The MRAPs creep slowly in and park in a row just off the main intersectionâand there the soldiers sit in the vehicles until day turns nearly to dark. Other soldiers walk restlessly up and down the street, but none of them intrude upon the squad in the MRAPs, knowing they have lost a man and earned the right to sit there, still strapped in, doing whatever it is they feel they must do.
The next day I watch a sergeant mount a color photo of the newly dead soldier in a black frame. He holds it at armâs length. A boyâs slightly blurred face, squeezed between a high dress collar and an oversized hat, looks back at us from the shadow of the brim. The sergeant says, âItâs too bad itâs not a better photograph.â After carefully checking the spelling of the soldierâs name, he hangs the photo on the wall in the corridor outside the base commanderâs office at the end of a long row of similar photographs. Such photos, taken as a soldierâs military career begins, are on file when needed for just such occasions as this. Thousands of these photographs stand forever on dressers or mantelpieces in the homes of parents who try to look past the uniform and the hat to find the boy or girl who once was their child.
I realize now that itâs the third time Iâve written about that scene. In war thereâs no predicting what comes to haunt you. Iâm a journalist. I donât have to follow orders. I can leave. Imagine what comes to haunt soldiers. And their families.
In the modern military, while the nondescript official photo is mounted on the wall, the actual body of the âfallenâ soldier is gathered up and carried away. On FOBs (Forward Operating Bases) and COPs (Combat Outposts) in Afghanistan, men were lost every few days to ambush or IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) or a sniperâs bullet, only to be scooped up and tagged and body-bagged and shipped out while their buddies returned to base with memories of boys who had been with them in the morning. Having seen their comrades shot down or blown apart, surviving soldiers confront the presence of death. It blasts their illusions of invulnerability and shatters the newfound family to which they have learned to belong. Yet it is the job of soldiers to get up and go to work again the next day, or the next night, in the same place at the same tasks their friends were doing when things went wrong. Itâs the job they signed up for and from which there is no escape. For all practical purposes, soldiers in the field have the status of slaves, the prisoners of their grand illusions, their training, and their army.
To keep up the fight, the military cannot allow its combat soldiers to dwell upon death, so it assigns the ghastly task of picking up the dead to certain specialists in Mortuary Affairs, a grim little military department always overstressed. Sometimes ordinary infantrymen gather up the bloody scraps of buddies blown up before their eyes, and they never forget. Sometimes medevac chopper crews collect the dead and dying and bring them back to big bases like Bagram or Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan where they hand off those who donât make it to Mortuary Affairs. More often, the specialists of Mortuary Affairs, in their Hazmat suits and gloves, are the ones who pry charred corpses from burned vehicles, dump body parts into bags, scoop up with their cupped hands the bloody shards of flesh and bone and liquefied innards, and later, back at the mortuary on base, try to match the bits and pieces to disembodied heads.
People who work in Mortuary Affairs donât like to talk about their job, which is to get the body parts of dead soldiers and all their personal belongings delivered to their designated next of kin as fast and respectfully as possible. Their official mission is to keep American bodies out of the hands of enemies who might desecrate them, and deliver them into the hands of families to bring some kind of âclosureâ (although for the survivors the subject will never be truly closed). An equally important, if unstated, mission is to conceal from soldiers the grisly and dispiriting sight of their own dead. Being a specialist in Mortuary Affairs is a kind of sacred trust and one of the most disturbing jobs in the military.
When Vicky Slater went to war, she had other tasks in mind. Twelve years earlier, she had joined the National Guard to be of service in her home state. Since then, she had married and borne two children, even while she rose in rank and paid her dues pulling people out of flooded houses and cleaning up after tornadoes. Knowing that the National Guard was never intended to be mobilized for combat in foreign wars, she was astonished when her unit was ordered to deploy to Afghanistan, but she prepared in the same spirit of service. She imagined that her mission was to help Afghan people. She read books about Afghanistan, including one I wrote about my work with Afghan civilians, and having read about Afghan women and girls imprisoned for âmoral crimesâ such as running away from home, she was determined to help them if she could. When I suggested that might not be easy to do on top of her military duties, she took offense, but she kept writing to me anyway.
On the eve of her departure, she sent me this message:
I mobilized over a week ago; I left home and have been at my mobilization station preparing to leave for Afghanistan. There was a mandatory briefing tonight regarding the status of women in Afghanistan. It was led by a female US Soldier just returning from 2 years in Afghanistan as an embedded mentor for the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces]. She delved into the culture of women in Afghanistan and why it is so important to incorporate our female Soldiers into operations. She very passionately and boldly pointed out that if it is true that we, as a nation, want to truly help the country of Afghanistan, we need to recognize that the treatment and status of women is a huge underlying issue that needs to be addressed along with infrastructure. Itâs about time. I have been in the military a long time and I was heartened to see that my Army is finally coming around to realize the integral role of the women of Afghanistan and that it is important to listen to them, it is important to value them, it is important to respect them and include them as they rebuild. I have gained a growing number of female Soldiers who strongly wish to help when I do find a way to assist women prisoners in a form of outreach. If I have to be away from my family, if I am in this war, Iâm going to do what I can in a humanitarian aspect while Iâm here, as well.
Instead, she found herself behind a desk on the giant American base at Kandahar. Her job as an officer was, as it had been at home, to manage logistics for those men she liked to call âMy Soldiers.â She always wrote the word soldiers with a capital letter, as if to show how important they were to her. In Afghanistan some of her Soldiers would be killed and she would find herself unexpectedly looking after them in Mortuary Affairs.
What happened there, she couldnât say. Years passed before she even began to hint about the work she had done in that department. In the meantime, I picked up a book written by a woman who had been a specialist in Mortuary Affairs. Jessica Goodell had enlisted in the Marines in June 2001 just as she graduated from high school. Three years later, to prove herself a ârealâ Marine, she volunteered to serve in Iraq as a member of the Marine Corpsâ first official Mortuary Affairs unit there. In 2011, five years after she left the Marines, she published her book about the ten months she spent in that job.1 It had taken the passage of seven years for her to be able to tell her story.
At first, Mortuary Affairs specialists were asked to fingerprint the dead and submit the results on a printed form, but many of the dead had no fingers, while other fingers were attached to no body. Sometimes the Mortuary Affairs specialists found on a dismembered corpse a pocket with a wallet containing ID, sometimes a name printed on a shirt, sometimes a dog tag carried in a boot. With that to go on, they tried to match up the parts. But a lot of the parts were âjust meat.â
The specialists in Mortuary Affairs began to smell of dead meat themselves. Their fellow Marines avoided them. âThe stench of death is unique, probably the most offensive on earth,â wrote Philip Caputoâwho became for a time in Vietnam âThe Officer in Charge of the Deadâââand once you have smelled it, you can never again believe with conviction that man is the highest being in earthly creation.â2 Goodell reports that once you smell of it yourself, you cannot eat. Broiled meat in the chow hall smells much the same as any charred Marine, and you may carry the smell of the dead on a stained cuff as you raise a fork to your mouth, only to quickly put it down. As they work, Mortuary Affairs specialists are required to fill in a printed form that outlines an anatomical body. They have to blacken in the parts missing from the corpse being âprocessed.â The form gave Goodell the title for her book: Shade It Black. All in a dayâs work.
Years later, Goodell is still in contact with most of the people in her unit. âThey are not coping,â she reports. âOne lives in VA [Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals], constantly seeing psychologists and psychiatrists. One was kicked out of the Marines for three DUIs. Another was kicked out of the Marines because he took cocaine. Those who have gotten out are living below the poverty level.â If you are kicked out, you lose all your promised veteransâ benefits. âAnd what people do to cope is re-enlist.â She adds, âI am the only one who went to school of the 18 Marines in Mortuary Affairs.â She is studying for a PhD in psychology, hoping to become a counselor for veterans. But she herself is in counseling at the VA. She says, âI have been diagnosed with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], anxiety, depression and substance abuse.â3
The Mortuary Affairs Unit becomes a kind of squad of the living dead. âWe all had the idea that at any point this could be us on the table,â Goodell reports.4 She describes the reaction of Mortuary Affairs Specialists to the sight of the body of a drowned Marine recovered from a lake. âHis neck was as wide as his bloated head, and his stomach jutted out like a barrel. His testicles were the size of cantaloupes. His face was white and puffy and thick. Not fat, but thick. It was unreal. He looked like a movie prop, with thick, gray, waxy skin and thick purple lips. We couldnât stop looking at these bodies because they were so out of proportion and so disfigured and because, still, they looked like us.â5
For nearly a year, it was Goodellâs job to look at these bodies herself so that other Marines would not have to. It was her job to handle themâto lay her hands upon themâso that other Americans would not have to give them a momentâs thought. As Goodell explains, âOur platoon was to the Marines what the Marines are to much of America: We did things that had to be done but that no one wanted to know about.â That mission kept the Mortuary Affairs specialists from talking about their work to other Marines, who didnât want to know, and it kept them from talking to each other about the work because they already knew. Years later, after bouts of social isolation, drinking, depression, and a deeply troubled relationship with an abusive and frightening former Marine, Goodell became an outstanding college student, though in her classes she still couldnât utter a word.
Slater had the advantage of being an officer, ten years older than Goodell, and she worked less often with âthe remainsâ and more with logistics and surviving families. Being a mother herself, she always kept in mind the soldierâs mother or spouse back in the States as she did her job. She says that was a departure from the steps outlined in the soulless official procedures that came with the post. She soon rewrote her job description to bring it into line with what she called âAfghan reality.â After she had shipped a number of dead soldiers home, she realized that she must also prepare naĂŻve warrior-boys for the inevitable. She advised all units to requisition body bags for 10 percent to 30 percent of their personnel. âThat shocked them,â she says. âThey got upset and angry with me. I said maybe they wouldnât lose that many, but they would have to bag ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] and Afghan remains as well, as a courtesy, and for sure they would have some cases that needed to be double bagged. That was the worst. Picking up all those little pieces you couldnât even recognize as human parts. Did you even know some parts are sort of green? Theyâd come back and tell me they were glad to have all those bags. And I felt like Iâd done my job.â6
But that wasnât all of it. Like any Mortuary Affairs officer, Slater also had to collect all the belongings of the dead soldierâfrom his billet, his duty station, and his vehicle. Maybe even from his girlfriend. âJoe,â she said, referring to the generic soldier who used to be called GI Joe, âreally has a lot of stuff.â
âThe most difficult was the pictures,â Goodell reports. âEveryone had a picture of their wife or their kids or their family. And then you had the younger kids who might be 18 years old and they had prom pictures or pictures next to what I imagine were their first cars.â7 Goodell says her job demanded that she send every last scrap home to the dead soldierâs family. Slater, by contrast, felt it was her job to sort and (unofficially) censor what she found. Mortuary Affairs officers are forbidden to search a dead soldierâs personal documents or correspondence, yet they are expected to deliver to the familyâto the parents or the spouseâa squeaky clean soldier devoid of interest in drugs, pornography, or sex. âItâs a fine line,â Slater says, âbut I never sent home a soldier that his mama or his wife couldnât be proud of.â
The soldierâs remains are shipped to Dover Air Base in Delaware, and the possessions follow closely behind. At Dover, the soldierâs stuff is sorted out one more time and shipped to his or her home base, from which it is delivered by hand to the family home. In Slaterâs state, the sanitized possessions of a dead national guardsman are delivered in a handmade wooden trunk with a folded American flag on top. She says, âUsually you canât get all Joeâs stuff to fit in the nice trunk. Itâs kind of amazing how much stuff the average soldier just canât go to war without. But we send along all the extra stuff that doesnât fit in the wooden trunk in a regulation footlocker. Lots of the stuff is electronic, state of the art. God only knows what their mama makes of it all.â8
â˘â˘â˘
The dead are not called the dead, but always âthe fallen,â as if they had perished gracefully, by accident, as many do when they step not softly enough on a land mine or a buried bomb. It seems odd in such prolonged and expensive wars that so many should die by mere mishap, and surely disappointing to the fallen who must have imagined clean, heroic, photogenic deaths. But war has a way of mocking its advance publicity.
The dead body is not called âthe bodyâ or even âthe corpse,â but rather âthe remains.â I donât know why âremainsâ is the preferred designation, except perhaps to acknowledge (without actually coming out and saying so) that the former âwarriorâ is often no longer intact. Sent home from wars is literally whatever remains of the soldier. Those remains are supposed to be received at Dover Air Base in Delaware within 72 hours of a soldierâs death, but that, is not always possible in an active war zone where the dead canât always be collected right away, or flown out. The specialists of Mortuary Affairs do the best they can.
Duly bagged, tagged, and boxed in an aluminum âtransfer caseâ draped in an American flag, the remains are carried aboard a C-17 cargo plane by a uniformed honor guard and transported to Dover, where they are carried off the plane by another honor guard and transferred to the $30 million dollar Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs, the Defense Departmentâs largest joint-service mortuary facility, and the only one in the continental United States. (Dover is also the militaryâs largest air terminal.) The families of the fallen are invited to come to Dover at government expense to view the arrival of the casket and what the military calls a âdignified transferâ to the Center for Mortuary Affairs. The ceremony takes about 15 minutes. Then the families go home to make funeral preparations while the mortuary staff goes to work on the remains.
Air Force Colonel Marc M. Sager admits that it may sound odd to find a mortuary âbeautiful,â but in his eyes âthe Charles C. Carson Center truly is.â As a journalist, I was not permitt...