Walk in My Combat Boots, Page 5

  And we take them, because we need the help. We have to stay awake in the aircraft or behind the weapon. When we get back from a mission, our adrenaline is through the roof. We clean up our bird and talk to the ground guys and maintainers, then realize we’ve got to be back to work in six hours—so we take a downer so we can hopefully get some sleep.

  Somewhere in this haze, I turn twenty-two.

  On the morning of October 26, 2009, the last day our squadron is flying together, I’m running the desk when I get word that two Marine helicopters—a Huey and a Cobra—have collided, and four Marines I’ve come to know very, very well—four great men—are dead.

  It’s an extremely tough deployment. But the relationships, the brotherhood, the closeness, the fun and joy we manage to find in the shittiest situations—these are the things I’ll never forget. I’ll hang on to them, and the memories of these four heroes who died that day, for the rest of my life.

  My five-year contract is coming to an end. I return home and fly across the country, attending funerals. I’m ready to reenlist, but first I have to get surgery on my knee. My work is very, very, very hard on the body, and my knee is really damaged. I’ve been putting off the surgery for a long time.

  I’m also having some sort of heart issue. I’m told my heart has suffered some damage from inhaling too much toxic smoke from the burn pits in Iraq. The doctors put me on what’s called a temporary up-chit so that I can deploy again—and I definitely want to deploy.

  I’m at the top of my game. I’m now a staff sergeant. I picked up all my qualifications, I’m good at what I do, and I’ve proven myself to all the guys. I’m ready to go to WTI—weapons and tactics instructor, the highest level you can acquire as a crew chief. I have my package in for MECEP—the Marine Corps Enlisted Commissioning Education Program. It will pay for me to go to a four-year college and become an officer—and a pilot.

  Health issues aside, I couldn’t be happier.

  Then, as I’m going through physical therapy post knee surgery, everything is ripped out from under me.

  I’m told I’m never going to run again. Because of that and the damage to my heart, I’m also told I’m never going to fly again.

  For eleven months, I fight their decision. My CO joins my fight. During that time, I’m stuck running the desk, so I’m not flying anymore. I work as a mechanic, fixing helicopters when they break, and I launch them when they have to perform a mission. I’m watching my nuggets go and fly, knowing that there’s a strong chance I will never fly again myself.

  Six weeks before the end of my contract, my CO walks me over to medical and pulls aside the battalion commander, a woman. My CO and I discuss all the reasons why I should fly again. Why I can fly.

  “She will never fly again,” the battalion commander tells us.

  It’s October of 2010. I leave the Marine Corps in January of 2011.

  My life turns upside down.

  I head off to Southern California and end up bartending. I meet someone, a fellow Marine, and we start dating seriously. I stay in Southern California while he deploys. When he gets back, we move to central California, stay there for a year and a half, and then we move to Annapolis, where he’s going to be an instructor at the Naval Academy.

  I become a volunteer boxing coach at the academy—as a civilian. I got into boxing in California so I could stay in shape without running.

  For some reason, I get it into my head that maybe I can still run. Ten minutes into it, I collapse. The pain is so bad I have to call someone to come pick me up because I can’t walk.

  In 2013, I split with my boyfriend. I stay in Annapolis and get my college degree. When I graduate, I use my Marine Corps security clearance and land a six-figure job with the National Security Agency, working as a facility security officer and contract specialty officer.

  I hate it. There’s no way I can do this for twenty years.

  I leave the NSA and become a personal trainer. I’ve always trained Marines, and I have a passion for fitness. I work for a Gold’s Gym for about a year. Then, as I’m preparing to go off and run my own business, I get a phone call from a Marine Corps recruiter. His job is to call all prior service Marines and try to get us back on duty, either active or reserves.

  “You’re getting a fresh start with your medical record,” he tells me.

  I’m stunned. Speechless.

  “There’s no record of anything, good or bad,” he says. “I’m telling you this because if you can pass all the physical requirements, you can come back to the Marine Corps.”

  As he tells me about life in the reserves, I’m thinking about my civilian life. I have a home. I bought a boat. I have a new career and money in the bank. But I’m still miserable. Something’s missing.

  “Just try it,” he says. “If you don’t like it, you can quit.”

  I check out the reserve unit and sign a nonobligating contract.

  I pass all my tests.

  I rehabilitate myself physically, and even though it’s very, very painful, I’m able to complete the three-mile run that’s part of my PFT—the Marine Corps physical fitness test.

  I get my flight status back.

  The feeling is incredible.

  I burst into tears.

  I’ve made it. After all this time, I’ve made it back.

  During the drive to my first reserve drill weekend, the gunnery sergeant of the shop calls to make sure I know where I’m going. At the end of the conversation, he says, “Welcome back to the gun club. Your reputation precedes you.”

  His tone is clear: my reputation is a good one.

  Around this time, I start getting Facebook messages from women who don’t know me. They reach out and tell me that they’ve heard so much about me, and they want to know if I can give them any advice on how to be a crew chief. They thank me for paving the way for them.

  Hearing their heartfelt words makes all the bullshit I went through fucking worth it.

  And I would do it all over again in a heartbeat, because I love the Marine Corps. I love leading Marines. There is nothing greater, no greater feeling, no greater responsibility or achievement.

  RYAN LEAHY

  Ryan Leahy comes from a long line of military officers, starting with William Leahy, a five-star naval officer who was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under FDR. His grandfathers both served in Army Air Corps during World War II—one as a gunner on a B-17, the other an engineer who was involved in liberating the Buchenwald concentration camp. His uncle was a Marine who served in Vietnam. Ryan grew up in a small town an hour south of Chicago. When he was on active duty, he served as a chief petty officer. He’s currently an ensign in the Navy Reserve.

  In 2001, my best friend gives me a ticket to attend his graduation from Navy boot camp. This kid is like a brother to me, and sitting in the stands and seeing him looking impressive in his Navy dress uniform makes me reflect on the current state of my life.

  I’m eighteen and driving a forklift at a frozen food warehouse. Not the most glamorous job in the world, but I’m making thirteen bucks an hour and I’ve got my own place and a car. The guys I work with are all grown men who eat ketchup sandwiches because they can’t afford a whole lot. They all cram together into one pickup to get back and forth to work because they can’t afford gas. Things are okay for me right now, but watching these guys makes me think this job isn’t really going to take me where I want to go.

  After his graduation ceremony, my buddy gets something like twelve hours of liberty. On the way home, he tells me, “I got paid the whole time I was in boot camp, and now I’ve got all this money saved up—and they’re going to send me to nuke school. I’m going to learn a trade, and they’re going to pay me to do it. This is such a great gig.”

  “How long are you in for?”

  “Six years,” he says. “Six years and when you get out, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a good job.”

  Six months earlier, when 9/11 happened, I had reached out to a Marine recruiter
because my uncle was a Marine, and he was pretty proud of his service. I set up a time to meet with the recruiter to talk in person. I waited for nearly three hours, but the guy never showed up, and I never heard from him, either. I figured maybe joining wasn’t the right idea and went back to my life.

  Listening to my friend now, I’m thinking that maybe joining the Navy would work for me. First thing Monday morning, I walk into the local recruiting office and say, “What do I need to sign?” I tell them I want to go to nuke school, same as my friend.

  I go to a Military Entrance Processing Station and take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test—the SAT for the military. My score is high enough that they guarantee me a slot to go to nuke school, but they can’t guarantee whether I’ll be an electronic technician, an electrician, or a machinist mate. I’ll find out which one during the last week of boot camp.

  In my high school, there was no diversity at all. Boot camp is a complete melting pot. There are people who have never seen snow before or swam in a pool. There are some people who literally can’t read or write. One guy, who’s twenty-five, never learned to shave. We have to sit him down and actually shave him.

  America’s best and brightest, I realize, don’t enlist in the military. There are a small percentage of people here who want to serve the country, but the majority are poor to lower-middle-class kids the country kind of forgot about. Kids who drank too much in college and failed out. Kids who didn’t get a great education. Kids from flyover states in the middle of nowhere who couldn’t get a job with the carpenters’ union or whatever.

  Mostly, I find, they’re all really, really good people who really, really care about their country and want to do the right thing—but at the same time, they don’t have a whole lot of options. What the military does well, I think, is develop the best version of a meritocracy.

  As boot camp draws to a close, I’m told my job. It’s the same one as my best friend. I’m going to be a nuclear electronics technician.

  When I show up to my first ship, an aircraft carrier three football fields long, I stand on the flight deck with all the other new guys and watch as we pull out of San Diego. All the people who have been around for a while are smart enough to know that it’s time to go grab a nap.

  We set sail. Once we get past the breakers, the front end of the ship drops. Oh, my God, we’re going to fall off this thing. A handful of us literally turn around and start running to the other end of the ship. We don’t get very far before the ship stabilizes.

  The people watching us start bawling from laughter.

  We stop in Hawaii first. Standing on the deck and pulling into Pearl Harbor is very powerful. I can see the Arizona and the wreckage of other ships under the water. The hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I’m getting to see this very hallowed and solemn place from a perspective that most people never will.

  We’re not allowed to go out on the fantails on the back of the ship because the fighter planes land like fifteen feet above your head, but I like to sneak out there and sit underneath the flight deck to watch the planes take off and land. Feeling the temperature change fifty degrees from something that’s seven hundred feet away from you, causing so much power, is unfathomable.

  We go to China next. When I step off the boat and look around, I’m thunderstruck by everything. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would visit this country.

  On the ship, I’m part of a reactor department—the third largest department, consisting of nearly six hundred people. When you’re a brand-new sailor, like me, you’re only really allowed to hold a broom and a bucket. My life for the next eighteen to twenty-four months is to qualify, qualify, qualify—first basic qualifications, then qualifying for different watch stations. On top of that, there’s school, where I have to get certain grades each month, and I also have to complete a certain amount of combat exercises to get what they call deployment ready.

  The schedule—the pace—is grueling.

  Sometimes in the middle of the night, even when I’m not on flight ops, I walk out on the back of the boat. There are six thousand people on board, and the only thing you can hear is the rumbling of the propellers underneath the water. The back propellers kick up plankton and a bunch of bioluminescent marine life, and the lights underneath the boat turn the water a beautiful shade of blue, the wake seeming to stretch out for miles.

  I come out here a lot to relax, take it all in, alone. Just a kid from a small western town standing on the back of a multibillion-dollar warship chugging along in the middle of nowhere.

  In June of 2005, we leave Guam and go to Bahrain. The place is dusty, drab, and run-down. Miserable. There’s some guy yelling in a language I can’t understand, pointing us around with his AK-47. We stop on the base, where you’re allowed to buy one single six-pack of beer. We spend pretty much the whole time at the hotel because there’s nothing to see or do.

  One day six of us decide to venture out to a movie theater showing Wedding Crashers.

  We get a cab, and our driver immediately pegs us as military. It’s no secret when a carrier pulls into town. You’ve got thousands of people descending into the city; everyone knows who you are and what you’re doing there. He asks us why we joined the military.

  “Do you just want to kill Muslims?” he asks.

  The question doesn’t come from a hateful place. It’s honest, and it’s clear he wants to understand why we’ve chosen a profession that he believes leads to death across the world.

  “I don’t want to kill anybody,” I explain. “I don’t hate anybody. But I do want to protect my country and my way of life. I do want to protect people who don’t have the ability to protect themselves.”

  English isn’t his first language, so I have no idea how much he understands. When he drops us off, he shakes my hand and says, “God bless you and thank you for explaining things to me.”

  I have no idea if he actually means it. For all I know, he’s going to go home and say he had stupid Americans in his taxi. Still, I try to show a different side of the US military not only to the taxi driver but also to anyone I encounter.

  When the six of us walk into the movie theater, everyone stares. The collective look on their faces is pure hatred. Like if we dropped dead right here, they wouldn’t have a problem.

  An older gentleman holding a little kid’s hand says, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Don’t look at the Americans! They’ll take you to Guantánamo like your father!”

  The six of us look at each other. This isn’t a good situation. There are forty to fifty people in this movie theater, so we’re severely outnumbered. We’re also unarmed.

  “Listen, guys,” I say, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

  The rest of the team says it’s fine, don’t worry about it. He’s just an angry old man.

  But I am worried about it. “I’m leaving,” I say. “And at least one of you guys has to leave with me.”

  We have to travel in pairs. When you sign off the ship, you have to go with what’s called a liberty buddy so that no one ever travels anywhere alone. “You don’t have a choice, so who’s it gonna be?”

  The team decides to leave. When we go out in the parking lot to get a taxi, I see that two cars have blocked the entrance and exit. We venture onto the street as someone yells, “Fuck you, Americans! Fuck you, killers!”

  We manage to hail a taxi. The driver wants to charge us a hundred and sixty dollars for a two-mile ride. There are people walking toward us, screaming, and the driver wants to haggle over our cab fare.

  We pull out a bunch of money and literally throw it in the front seat. He drives over the median and hauls ass out of there to get us back to the hotel.

  Every year on Memorial Day I visit the Arlington National Cemetery and leave feeling pissed off.

  I’ve never seen combat. I’ll never be the guy pulling the trigger on anything other than a paper target. I want to do more for our country. Why didn’t I go back to that Marine Corps recru
iting office?

  In 2007, during the Christmas season, I’m sitting at the end of a bar, dressed in my uniform and having a drink, when a Vietnam vet wearing a Marine Corps hat comes over to me.

  Ah, shit, here we go. He’s going to give me crap about being a Navy guy.

  He grabs my hand and shakes it.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  “You’re the one who actually did something and saw some stuff,” I tell him.

  He glares at me. “Don’t you dare say that. I’d have kissed a Navy guy right on the mouth if I got the chance in Vietnam. You guys saved my life more times than I can count. I can’t tell you the amount of times we would have been dead, but we were able to pick up the phone and you guys came in and got everyone out.”

  I use this moment as I rise through the ranks, start doing more mentoring and coaching with some of the guys. I tell them, “Listen, you’re not pulling the trigger, you’re not doing what you see in the movies, but most people aren’t. What you’re doing by keeping a reactor up, getting that F-18 off the flight deck—you’re literally saving people’s lives. You’re only one or two degrees away from physically saving someone’s life, so have a little bit more onus and understanding and pride in what you do. It might not be the sexiest, the most Hollywood and whatever else, but you’re still doing an important thing for people.”

  I was a skinny, dorky kid who grew up without many friends and pretty low self-esteem. And now here I am getting up every morning and, with my chest out and chin high, putting on a crisp uniform. I’m proud of myself. I’m ready to walk into the world and conquer anything.

  NICK BLACK

  Nick Black’s parents were in the intelligence community. Growing up, he spent nine years in various parts of Africa, followed by four years in London, England, before coming back to the States to attend high school. When 9/11 happened, Nick made up his mind that he was going to serve. He attended Johns Hopkins University, played football, and joined the Army ROTC. He went on active duty in 2007, as a field artillery officer. He got out in 2011 and did two years of North Carolina’s Army National Guard.