Doc Bryan looked up expectantly as I approached. He and Dr. Aubin had stabilized the boys but made it clear that the younger one would die without immediate surgery. The older child would probably linger on for a few days before infection killed him. Colbert stood there, with tears in his eyes.
I pulled Aubin aside. “Sir, the battalion says these kids can get fucked. They want us to let them die. What’re the rules if you take control of a casualty?”
There was our escape. Once the battalion medical officer had control of wounded civilians, we were legally and ethically required to give them all available care. We gathered eight stretcher-bearers and struck out, on foot, across the field to battalion headquarters.
“Here you go, sir. You want to let them die, they can die right here in front of your tent.” Doc Bryan gingerly lowered the stretcher in front of Major Benelli, who, for once, had nothing to say. Faced with a small-scale mutiny and the growing realization that posterity would frown on Marine officers who sat by while children died of Marine-inflicted gunshot wounds, he slipped around the back of the tent to wake the colonel.
Ferrando ordered the boys’ immediate evacuation to RCT-1’s field hospital, where they would be treated by a shock-trauma platoon. Doc Bryan rode along with them to maintain continuity of care until they were turned over to the surgeons. I walked back to the platoon, trying to think of what I could tell them.
Gunny Wynn and I spent the afternoon cleaning our weapons. I sat in the sunlight next to the Humvee and took off my boots for the first time in two days. My feet were white and shriveled. They smelled like something between cheese and roadkill. I spread a dirty rag in my lap and pulled my M-16 apart. First I wiped down the receiver with oil and set it aside. Then I popped off the plastic hand guards and cleaned the barrel with the rag. I punched a cotton swab down through the chamber; it emerged black with carbon. Tapping the bullets from each magazine, I wiped the dust and grit from every round and then stretched and cleaned the magazine springs. Staff Sergeant Marine had taught me that most weapon failures were due to problems with the magazines. After reassembling the rifle, I pulled my Beretta from its holster and unloaded it. Racking the slide to the rear, I took it apart, laying the pieces in my lap. One by one, I cleaned them, turning them over in my hands and watching the sun glint off the dull blue steel. There was comfort in doing this; it gave me time to think without appearing to daydream.
When Doc Bryan returned, I called the Marines together. Platoons are families. In the worst platoons, the Marines love one another. But in the best, they also like one another. We had one of the best. I couldn’t bear to see it destroyed. Conflict and disagreement had to be aired, or they would fester, simmering below the surface and corroding the relationships on which our combat effectiveness was built. We had to talk about what had happened. I had to be psychiatrist, coach, and father, without anyone suspecting I was anything but platoon commander.
“Fellas, today was fucked-up, completely insane. But we can’t control the missions we get, only how we execute them,” I said. I explained that the battalion had an obligation to General Mattis, an obligation to provide him with options instead of excuses. We were at war, and a different set of rules applied. There was no way to eliminate all the risks, either to ourselves or to the people around us.
“I failed you this morning by allowing that ‘declared hostile’ call to stand. My failure put you in an impossible position.” Tragic as it was, shooting the two boys had been entirely within the rules of engagement as they had been given to us. There would be no command investigation into what had happened. Investigations exist in a narrow sense to assign blame, but they also serve to propagate lessons learned. I tried to draw out those lessons for the platoon.
“First, we made a mistake this morning,” I said. Technical details aside, we were U.S. Marines, and Marines are professional warriors fighting for the greatest democracy in the world. We don’t shoot kids. When we do, we acknowledge the tragedy and learn from it. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it was the last time we’d have to make those kinds of decisions.
“Second, I need you to compartmentalize today.” I told the guys to tuck the experience away in their brains, way back there with their wives and their girlfriends and their dogs. It wouldn’t help them survive tomorrow. I needed every one of them to learn from it and put it away.
“Third, no second-guessing and armchair-quarterbacking.” We made fast decisions all the time. Sometimes we were right, and sometimes we were wrong. We couldn’t hesitate tomorrow because of a mistake today. That could get us killed. Come what may, we were a team, and we’d stay a team.
