Farewell
Haditha, Iraq, September 2004
Dried blood on a white vehicle looks like rust. The Iraqi police Hilux truck it covered was torn to pieces, along with most everything else at the intersection in front of the Haditha police station, our home.
The explosion was so large it broke windows at the Haditha Dam, 15 kilometers away. The concussion from the blast blew the three Marines on the roof of the station off their feet an instant before the wave of shrapnel, shreds of metal from a dozen vehicles, and the bones of more than 100 people created a deadly hailstorm.
There were two suicide bombers that morning. After reconstructing the attack, the smaller one, a passenger car with four or five artillery rounds rigged into the trunk and back seat, was probably meant to detonate at the intersection, clearing the barriers to our building. Then, a larger cargo truck with about fifty 155mm artillery shells following behind was to drive up to the station’s front door and trigger his bomb. That would have flattened our building and killed everyone inside.
Instead, the first driver veered into the Iraqi National Guard building located across the street and exploded, sending the engine block through the reinforced concrete structure and several interior walls, killing a score of guardsmen.
The second driver, according to civilian witnesses, jumped from the large cargo truck and started running away as it coasted towards the intersection where it exploded. These two blasts happened in rapid succession.
There was a line of people standing on the street corner that stretched nearly a block, waiting to enter the bank to change their old Saddam money to the new currency. That’s where most of the casualties occurred. Because the blast was so intense, there wasn’t much in the way of body recoveries. The people just ceased to exist, red mist in a scorching wind.
We found a little girl’s twisted and mangled bicycle speckled with red brown blood on the roof of the bank.
The battalion was pulling us from our post, for good this time. The combined action teams across the country were to return to their normal duties. When the Iraqi police found out, they pleaded with us to stay. They said that as soon as we left, they would all be killed for working with us, and we knew they were right.
Our withdrawal was to be slow and systematic. Each week, a third of us would return to the dam. I volunteered to stay with the last group. The move back to the dam was eating at me. Again, we were here, taking up space, letting the enemy do whatever they pleased. I wanted to fight back.
During that same time, my letters home slowed to a crawl, and I stopped making phone calls on our satellite phone, which we could use at night. A luxury that most of the battalion didn’t have. What was I going to talk about?
“You’ll never guess what happened at work today…Mondays amiright?”
The sun came up while I was on watch and the day was heating. When I pulled my flak and Kevlar off, I left the night vision scope of my rifle on, too tired to care, and went out onto the sandbagged smoke deck. O’Donnell and Doc were sitting on cinder blocks we used as benches.
I bit the filter off a French cigarette, lit it and sat opposite Doc. We sat for a long time in silence. Doc was the first to speak.
“Have you had a chance to read that book everyone is passing around, Da Vinci Code?”
“Not yet. I think Jones has it next and then me. You?” I said.
“Yeah, it’s pretty fucking good.”
“What the fuck are we doing here?” blurted O’Donnell. We both looked at him, wondering what had caused this outburst.
“You mean at the police station, or…” I said, leaning my head back and feeling the cool cement wall.
“I mean here, here. Yes, the police station, but also Haditha, Iraq, all of it.”
Doc and I both took long drags on our smokes. I spoke, saying something that I felt to be true but didn’t want to admit. “We shouldn’t be here.”
“I know, right!” O’Donnell stood up and paced. “It’s just all fucked, everything is fucked up about this.”
Doc said, “You’re right. We should be somewhere, but not here.” He spit into the corner. Afghanistan maybe, but not here.”
“We lost our momentum,” I said. “We should be after Bin Laden, and the Taliban, but we started dicking around over here in Iraq because Bush wanted to finish his dad’s legacy. I don’t know.”
“We’ve gotten good at one thing, that’s for sure,” said Doc.
“What’s that?” asked O’Donnell.
“Making more terrorists.”
That remark hung in the air, stagnant and bitter. It was true. Every time an American shot or detained some poor farmer, we were helping create the next suicide bombers and planting the seeds of hate in ten more of his neighbors and children.
“Are we the bad guys?” asked Campell. No one answered. That silence hung the longest. “Fuck it. We’re here,” he finally said.
“Yeah,” I said. “We are here.”
Doc stood up and dropped his cigarette into the ammo can and blew out a final jet of smoke. “I’m going to take a dump.” He turned and walked down the stairs to the trash can from hell. Thirty minutes after Doc returned, a mortar round hit within the walls of the compound. A piece of shrapnel gouged a hole into the makeshift seat of the toilet, right at testicle level. If Doc’s bowels hadn’t wanted to move at that moment, he might have been castrated. Two days later, someone drew a purple heart on the toilet seat.
On the second to last week before the last of us were to be pulled from the station, Matt’s convoy stopped by to resupply us. He looked tired. We all did.
“Michael’s truck flipped yesterday,” he said as we unloaded the last of the MRE boxes. “He died instantly. It was one of the high-backs.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Were they hit?”
“No. Just shit luck.”
“Fuck.” I wanted to say more. I wanted to scream at the first Iraqi that I saw and ask them if they knew we were dying for them. Or were we? But a numbness fell over me instead. It could’ve been any of us. Just damn bad luck.
“He won’t even get a purple heart,” said Matt. If we died in Iraq, but not from enemy fire, we were still just as dead, but our family, in his case, his kids, wouldn’t even have that little trinket. Sure, he’d died fighting for his country, we knew that, but not in the eyes of Uncle Sam.
A week later, we waited for our convoy to come and pick us up from the station. I grabbed our translator and went and to say goodbye to Sergeant Sabba, the Iraqi sniper that I’d come to like.
“He says that he is afraid that they will all be killed when you leave,” said the translator. Sabba didn’t look very concerned. He was almost nonchalant about it. He was a veteran of many fights. I hoped that this was not his last, but I felt the acceptance of his doom emanating off him like a man watching his own gallows being erected.
I shook his hand. “Sergeant, I wish you the best, and I hope you live a long and full life,” and added “Insha Allah.” If God wills it.
His dark eyes bore holes in mine. “Insha Allah.”
As the last eight of us drove away in a billowing dust cloud, I doubted it would be God’s will for that man to live much longer, nor any of them.
Jeremy Martin is a Marine combat veteran of First Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment with a passion for storytelling. He served two combat tours in Iraq, including the harrowing November 2004 Battle of Fallujah. From battlefield to backcountry, his writing captures the connection between man, nature, and the past. His work blends vivid descriptions, deep introspection, and hard-earned wisdom of someone who’s faced the best and worst life has to offer. He now defends America’s public lands as a park ranger and guide in Southeastern Utah helping preserve some of the last truly wild places.
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