My 23 Days In Iraq--Part 1--Civilian to Marine

I, like many Marines, wanted to join the Marine Corps from a young age. About 14. My best friend's older brother was enlisting and told me that the Marines are the first to fight. And that's all it took. I wanted to join. I was young and dumb back then, and actually thought that to die in combat under a hail of bullets was a glorious thing. Almost romantic. But I've learned that that is complete bullshit. That to die in combat is a painful, horrible, gory/graphic, god aweful shitty and tragic thing. There's nothing glorious or romantic about it. A man(or woman) dying in combat is a symbol of a nation's failure to compromise and negotiate peacefully. And that's what happened, and is happening, in Iraq.

On December 17, 2001, I left for boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot(MCRD) San Diego. My first encounter with a drill instructor(DI) wasn't a pleasant one. We were about to get on the bus leaving the airport to take us to hell, when I heard a voice behind me yell "Hey bitch!". I thought nothing of it and kept walking. Then a hand came from behind and grabbed my arm like a pimp grabs his whore's arm. "Hey motherfucker, I'm talking to you! Get a fucking head-count of everyone here, you little cunt!", He said. "Yes sir!", I replied, and did as I was told.

Without getting into too much detail, the next 13 weeks pretty much went this way, more or less: Getting yelled at, getting thrashed/hazed, drinking water till you puke, drinking more water, getting fucked with and made fun of, PT-ing your ass off, and drinking more water. That's it. Then you're a Marine. Okay, maybe it's not that easy, but you get the point.

After boot camp, you go off to your MOS school. For me, a grunt in the infantry field, that meant the School of Infantry(SOI). That's another two months long. It's at this school where real Marines are truly molded. It's at this school where you learn your deadly trade: Killing the enemy with extreme predjudice. Boot camp plants the seed, and SOI is where you really grow. In boot camp you're taught repeatedly to do as you're told, not to question your orders, to fight as a team. SOI picks up where boot camp leaves off. For non-grunts, boot camp will be the hardest thing they do in the corps. Then they go on to learn how to drive a truck, or re-fuel a jet and other POG(Personell Other than Grunt) jobs. But for grunts, the further you go in training, it gets progressively harder. You find that you're constanly being tested and pushed to your limits. The Marine Corps Infantry is the toughest conventional force in the world. The only other force I can compare it to are the Army Rangers. We jokingly refer to Rangers as "confused Marines". They're good to go though.

By the time we finally got to the fleet, it was obvious we weren't going to Afghanistan. That's why alot of the guys joined in the first place, to get payback for 9/11 and do their duty for their country. I would've joined anyways, regardless, but 9/11 quickened my enlistment process. But little did we know that Bushy was gonna start a war with Iraq, and we would be right in the thick of it. But at that time we didn't know about Iraq, just Afghanistan, and it was depressing knowing we wouldn't be going.

I would be assigned to 2nd Battalion 5th Marines, Golf Company, 1st Platoon. We would train for 8 months before going to Iraq, but only during the last 2 did we know we would be going there. We mainly did alot of hikes with our rucksacks and full combat loads(60-90 lbs, depending), and did normal grunt-type training. The first time Iraq was mentioned to us as a potential threat was when we were on a training op in Yuma, Arizona, and our CO called us for a formation in our desert bivuac. He told us that Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein had WMDs, and would use them on our allies and give them to the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11 to use against us. The two words Iraq and 9/11 were all we needed to hear, just like the American public, to make us want to go off and kill the "bad guys" with extreme predjudice. And the whole WMD thing helped too, but mainly "9/11" and "Iraq". That's what was so brilliant, and simple, about Bush's plan: He just had to use those two words in the same sentence to put artificial fear and hatred into the american public and his fighting forces.

Anyhoo, for the next few months we trained our asses off preparing for war with Iraq. When we started having gear inspections every week we knew our time was coming. We would be going off to war soon, and we couldn't have been more excited. Bush used our anger of what happened on 9/11 to push his own war agenda, and we had no reason yet in our minds not to trust the man, so we trained for the battle that was soon to come. All of our cadences(the songs that you sing when running in formation in order to all keep in step) were about going to Iraq and killing terrorists and shoving Saddam's own Sarin Gas up his ass. We were locked and loaded, we just needed Bush to pull the trigger and give the order for us to deploy, so that we could finally go get our "payback" and "revenge" for those who died on 9/11. Just thinking about how we so blindly followed Bush's orders back then makes me sick. But we wouldn't have had a choice anyways, we signed the dotted line.

I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you all just to tell you what you want to hear. I wanted to go to Iraq and kill some motherfuckers. And maybe the fucks we killed did deserve to die for what they and their Baath Party did to the rest of their countrymen in Iraq. But it wasn't the place nor the time for a war with Iraq. And Iraq wasn't a threat whatsoever to us or our allies. If they were, then Israel would've taken care of the problem on their own like they have in the past.

But none of that mattered to us back then. On Feb 2, 2003, we would leave the United States on a one-way flight to Kuwait, in preparation to invade the country of Iraq. We were going off to war. Just like those millions of American fighting men before us in WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam...we would be killing our fellow man for the "good" of all mankind. For freedom, liberty, Mom's Apple Pie and all that bullshit. And some of us, also like those before us, would be coming home in body bags, stretchers and wheelchairs.

I'll continue my little story here next Friday:My 23 Days In Iraq--Part II--War.

I hope my diary was easy to understand and easy to follow. I know some of you probably are angry with some of my statements regarding killing and such. But keep in mind, that's how I truly felt back then. I was young and dumb, and thought war was cool and couldn't wait to get a Combat Action Ribbon(CAR) and kick ass and take names and all that bullshit. If ya have any questions, please ask them, and I'll try and answer.