The following journal entry comes from a young soldier deployed in the Persian Gulf. He has shared it, anonymously, so that others will know something of what young men and women in the military are facing.

“When you feel the wheels jerk to a halt, your feet hit the deck, your eyes become fixed on one thing. Life. Because you never know for whom the bell tolls.”

Not every day on patrols was laid back, and we were not out of danger all the time. Things had just begun to settle down. We were getting into a routine. Everyone was losing focus and thinking about home and loved ones. We were no longer hitting the deck as soon as we heard gunfire. After all, the rule of thumb is that the locals have seen more war than us. If the people on the street start to scatter at the sound of gunfire, then something must be wrong.

I was sitting in our room one day cutting some onions and potatoes. Everyone was there, joking around and telling lies. It was hot, without a cloud in the sky. I heard our Lieutenant enter the large room yelling out orders. Our Lieutenant was an extremely laid back man about as old as my brother, and easy to work for. It wasn’t very often that he yelled.

One day as we patrolled, the kids were following and cheering for us as usual. We turned into a narrow street with two story roofs. The men came out of the building with rubber hoses and began beating the children away. The first thought on everyone’s mind was that we had walked into an ambush, and they were protecting the children. Our company had received sniper shots the day before from the same sector. It was perfect for them — gunners on the roof armed with grenades. Two men could have taken out our squad. It was an eerie feeling. So it was with the sound of the Lieutenant yelling orders directly to the troops, instead of going down the chain of command, “The Snipers have been following an Iraqi Colonel for the past three days and have been compromised (meaning the Colonel knew that they were following him). The Colonel is blocked into his house. They believe there are three loyalists with him, and heavily armed. First and third squads are called as the react team to help clear him out of his house. Be careful for women and children.”

The Snipers were a part of the MEU. Part of their job is surveillance; they don’t always kill people. The next thing I knew I was fumbling around with my medical gear, checking my weapon one last time, gearing up, then on a five-ton speeding through the streets thinking, “I thought this was all over.” We turned down the road that ran by the river. We passed the bank and the gym, as well as the hotel. There were many monuments to prophets that lined the street on the riverside. It was the wealthier part of town with grass and flowers. It was almost surreal.

We turned onto the street the Colonel lived on, and were shocked by the crowd that gathered across the street. The five-ton pulled to a quick stop, and we began off loading. Men were jumping off the sides, and out the back hitting the deck and running. I could see the barrels of snipers’ weapons on the roof and hear the crowd yelling in amusement. We moved up a back alley, point man facing forward, one Marine watching the rooftops, the other covering the six, and sergeant and myself right in the middle of it all. We turned into the street that ran behind the house, and we heard a shot. Everyone was yelling, “Did you see an impact? What did it sound like?” Too loud to be an M-16, not an AK-47, we guessed it was a pistol. No one saw the impact so we didn’t panic. There were children on the rooftop of the building across the street. They were pointing and smiling. A man came up from behind them. “He’s got a gun,” Sergeant said, pointing his weapon at the man. Then the man started sweeping. It was just a broom.

You think about everything. Your mind is racing so quickly. In Umm Qasr I learned how to calm myself down. We had landed in the New Port and patrolled down the road towards the main gate. Gunshots echoed through the town. That is the problem with war in cities. The sound echoes and you can’t tell were the actual shot was fired until you see the rounds make impact. Dogs were everywhere. They ran wild through the town, and never quit barking through the nights. A pack of dogs watched us move through the streets. One left the pack, taking off in a dead sprint across the field towards the man in front of me. Everyone pointed their weapon at the dog. The dog ran right through our lines. Then the gunfire became centralized. We stacked up behind a steel gate.

I saw a big man standing there. His blonde hair curled up from under his helmet. “You scared yet big guy?” I said putting my hand on his back. While in California we had become somewhat of brothers. He would disappear for a couple of weeks, then he would come hang out for a couple of weeks, taking me out to dinner in bars where he had won bar fights. He was a lumberjack from Washington. He had beady blue eyes, and a temper to match it, but he was harmless 80% of the time.

We were at a restaurant in San Clemente one evening called the Tropicana Bar and Grille. I had heard that they served some Hawaiian dishes and was ready for a change in diet. It was early in the evening before the drinkers would come in. It is right on the water and has a nice view of the sunset. I was ready to order my food when the waitress looked at him and smiled, “Not going to throw anyone across the bar tonight are we?” He looked confused for a minute then said, “Have I been here before?” She laughed and walked off to order my food. My toothpick dropped out of my mouth, “Can I go to one restaurant where you haven’t been in a bar fight.”

I remember the day his son was born. His wife hadn’t moved to California due to the fact that we were about to deploy and she would just have to move back to Washington. He had a big grin on his face when I saw him. He gave me one of his bear hugs and said, “It’s a boy. Dad said he was just like me all the way down to the heart murmur.” I took him to lunch that day and paid for him as I usually do. He was often a little low on cash. He paused in the middle of a bite then gave me a serious look that frightened me.

“I’ve been thinking about it. You’re the only man around here I feel I can trust. I want you to be my son’s godfather.”

I nearly choked on my French fry. “But I’m not Catholic.”

That was the way our friendship was. I was always glad to see him sitting in my room, and often glad to see him leave.

“Hey,” he said in a rather calm voice, as he turned around, “What are you doing here? You know they’re shooting at us. Hell, I guess this makes us war buddies.”

“I can’t wait to sit at the VFW with you.”

“Me neither. Two dollars for a pitcher.”

More shots were fired along with a couple of explosions. Just like that he was gone, walking around like there wasn’t any war. The Lieutenant was on the roof with his binoculars and some sergeant from that company was filling him in on the enemy’s positions, “There are snipers over there. These buildings haven’t been cleared. We’re taking heavy fire from that building.” I looked out through the crack in the gate at the distance we had to cover. I felt real fear for the first time. Our troops were huddled behind a wall. I looked around at everything at once. My heart began racing, and the blood was pumping to my head. All my thoughts came in and out without any real recognition to what was actually happening. Then a voice in my head answered everything, “Calm down. Breathe deep.” I took deep breaths and thought about every action I was taking, down to the way my foot landed. I didn’t feel any fear after that… until I saw the broomstick. “Calm down.” And we were moving again.

First Squad busted into a house with a family, clearing them all out. They ran across the street to their neighbors, the women still dressing as they ran out. Gonzalez busted through a door into a side room. “There he was,” he recalled later with the smoke of his cigarette rising over his face, “A little boy. He dropped his bowl and put his hands up in the air. I will never forget the face of that little boy over my sites.”

“Who do you think was more scared you, or him?”

“I will never forget it,” He answered avoiding my question. “Neither will he.”

The squad ran through the back yard over the stone fence and into the house of the Colonel. Our men were yelling. As I stepped through the door of the house, I heard a struggle. Pots fell to the floor. Then a silence.

I walked through the back room, into the kitchen, then to the room on the left. Sergeant was in there with the women and children. They sat holding each other as they leaned against the wall. Sergeant stood in front of the door. I stood in the middle of the room. Two little boys no older than nine stared into the darkness of that room. It was damp. A couple of little girls tried to stare bravely into the air. They could not look at us. “Get down! Get down! I said Get down,” one of our Marines was yelling at the Colonel. He was trying to get to the women and children. He continued yelling and cussing at the Colonel. The women and children started crying out loud and getting up from the floor. The mother was pushing Sergeant. I began fumbling around in my pocket for my translator card. I couldn’t remember the word I was looking for. The struggle became physical as more pans hit the floor. The boy got up and began yelling to his father.

“Iskut. Menfudlick, abka hona!” (Quiet, Please stay here.) The struggle stopped, then I yelled it again. They sat down shaking and crying. I felt a wave of emotions for them. I felt like they were staring at me. I felt that I should cry. I had no control over the situation and I didn’t know enough to determine if it was right.

“Displace! Displace!” That was the call for us to move out. We were leaving. “Go get the guys on the roof Doc.”

I ran up the stairs and opened the door to the roof, and the pigeons flew up and hovered over the roof. “Displace, Corporal,” I said, and we all left. The women and children stayed in the room crying.

We got in the five-ton with the Iraqi Colonel, and another young man we had captured. Their faces were covered with sand bags, and their hands bound. Everyone got out their cigarettes and smoked to victory, then began telling their lies about what had happened. I shrugged it off as best as I could, then once again told myself, “C’est le guerre.”

When I got back to the room, I stripped my gear then sat down and opened a soda. They were almost finished with dinner. Cheese, rice with onions, potatoes, garlic, and spices, all on soft bread. We forked it out as we listened to the others telling their stories, and then began to talk about the usual things that we talked about. Halfway through the dinner someone stopped and said, “You know this is the first time we have all eaten together since we founded the room.” We all paused for a minute. There were about seven of us. We had all been divided by the watch bill, or some patrol. It was the first and last time we would eat together. Outside of the room that unity wasn’t there. We could still hear them telling their exaggerated stories about what happened.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

“I don’t know about the happy part.”

We all laughed and ate together in a way that I can’t describe.

There are many gray areas during war. You look back now and can think of a hundred things that you could have done better. It’s pointless to think about these things. The truth is that no one can ever know what it is like. You have to be in that situation at that time to be able to fit all the multiples into place. Fear, pain, confusion, women, children, rooftops, noise, and other Marines…the list goes on. So many things to think about in one second. You are so afraid, that fear becomes your companion. There is a transformation. I can’t explain it. You just have to experience it. It was a transformation of survival. The only right thing that takes precedence over anything in your mind is getting everyone home, everything else done right is just icing on the cake. I cannot complain because other wars before me were much worse. We were only there for a couple of months. The men and women in Vietnam, Korea, the World Wars, they all suffered worse. Now I have a general understanding of what they went through and can appreciate it. Anytime life would get rough I would think about all those who have fought, and I couldn’t be miserable. Such is war.