Rachel Powers hangs out with Iraq War vets at the local VA Hospital, just in time to remember the 4,071 Americans who won’t be around to celebrate this Memorial Day

On March 20, 2003, the first American soldier left a boot print on Iraqi soil in the battle to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Monday will be the fifth Memorial Day of the war. In that time, 4,071 American servicemen and women have been killed. California—by far the hardest-hit state in terms of casualties—has lost 487 citizens. Long Beach has seen 10 coffins.

That is an index of one sort of loss. Getting a sense of the others—loss of time, physical well-being, peace of mind—requires talking with living veterans. To that end I spent several days in the Long Beach VA Hospital, wandering halls and sitting for hours in the canteen, hoping to speak with someone who had been to Iraq. This was not as easy as I had expected. The Long Beach VA services an older population: I did not see a single next-generation prosthetic made with visible shocks and high-tech plastics, but I saw quite a few empty pant legs, neatly folded and safety-pinned, resting on the seats of clunky wheelchairs.

I interviewed three veterans: one Army soldier, two Marines. They were in different parts of Iraq at different times and performed different duties. There was also significant variation in post-war transition: One veteran spoke jovially about his soon-to-be completed BA in sociology; another, an alcoholic with six days of sobriety, paused mid-interview to take his anti-anxiety medication with shaking hands.

They had this in common: They are fatalists. When I asked how they had found the courage to go out on patrol, day after day, each vet gave me an answer that amounted to, “What can you do? If you’re going to die, you’re going to die.” Each reminded me, multiple times, that they joined the military willingly and with open eyes. All of them described the adjustment to civilian life as brutal, but also spoke of a solace that can only come from being in the presence of other vets, be they 18 or 80. As Jeff Beauchamp put it, “The other veterans, they know exactly how you feel. Even these World War II vets, you don’t have to explain to them because they know, too, because they’ve been through just about the same amount of shit. Or the Vietnam vets. Or the Korean War vets. Or the Gulf War vets. A war is a war. No matter what war they’ve been through, I feel [a kinship] with them.”

A final note: In each instance, I was a complete stranger to these soldiers. I asked them to describe the most harrowing period of their lives in great detail. Every question was personal, and no question went unanswered. In short, all three responded with extraordinary generosity.

RAMIRO CASILLAS
Age at Enlistment: 17
Rank: Corporal, Marines
Time in Iraq: January 2003 to May 2003 (during initial invasion)

RESCUING POWS
I was part of the first group to leave Twenty-Nine Palms for Iraq: from one desert to another. I was stationed in Safwan, about 15 to 20 miles from the invasion. We waited at the border and watched Saddam shoot the Scud missiles over us, and after two weeks we crossed over. [The Army] got some information about seven American POWs, so they put together Task Force Tripoli. We went all the way up to Tikrit and took part in the rescue of the POWs. Iraqi police officers had said, “We’ve got prisoners, prisoners of war.” But [the Army] didn’t know if it was true, so they just sent eight of us. It was nine at first, but then one of my guys died, so it was eight.

We were dropped off [in Tikrit], but the directions were wrong so [it was] the wrong place. It was morning, and we were the first American troops that [the locals] had seen, so they all wanted to take a look at us. But that’s kind of dangerous. So we started patrolling down the street [on foot] really quickly, but we couldn’t find the house. And then everyone started surrounding us, and we thought, “This is going to get ugly.”

Then one of my guys notices one of the hostages coming outside a door. And he said, “Isn’t that one of them?” But we worried that it was an ambush, because we weren’t really sure. Because honestly, most Iraqis look American. I mean, I look like an Iraqi. We’re all scruffy.

If [the POW] hadn’t come out, we never would have found the house. He yelled, “Hey, we’re over here,” so we went over there—we were getting surrounded, so we had to go somewhere—and the house was open. But because we really didn’t know who this guy was, we kicked him in the chest and knocked him to the ground, and tied him up. Just until we found out who he was. He kept saying, “But I’m an officer! I’m enlisted!” We busted the door in—the POWs were in a big rectangular room, in pajamas. And we’re screaming, crazy, trying to terrify them. Then they were screaming, because they thought that we were the Iraqi police, someone coming there to kill them. And the POWs got really panicked, really, really paranoid. They didn’t realize who we were. We secured the rest of the place, and my CO talked to them while we tried to radio for vehicles. We let the [tied-up] POW go. The POWs started saying, “Don’t hurt the Iraqis! They’re our friends! They give us Pepsi and stuff!” They were really confused, shouting out that they were in the Army, their rank, all that. So I had them all sit down in the front yard, waiting for the vehicles. They kept saying, “Don’t hurt [the Iraqis]!” and we kept saying, “We’re not here to hurt anyone.” And they would say, “We’re in the Army!” They were totally panicked. A couple of them were crying and they were disoriented. And they were realizing that they were going to be leaving, but they still weren’t quite out. And that’s when one of them became really paranoid, and was getting the others worked up by shouting, “Don’t hurt them, don’t hurt them!” They all thought that we were going to start killing the people taking care of them, but we weren’t going to do that. So I started screaming at him. I grabbed him and threw him on the floor and yelled “shut up!” So after he calmed down we helped them into the vehicles, secured the house, and got out of there. The helicopters took [the POWs] and I never saw them again.

‘NO BEST FRIEND,  NO WORST ENEMY’
There was one fatality in my unit. Christopher Gurtner. 19. Left a 6-month-old daughter behind, Christina. From Ohio City, Ohio. We still don’t know [the circumstances]—if it was an accidental discharge or if it was something else. On March 31 he got shot at 2 a.m. He was next to a vehicle and he was asleep when it happened. We kept him alive for about three hours, but after two and a half hours he started going into shock, and that was it. We kept [calling] for a helo to come pick him up, but it never came, so we watched him bleed to death, right there, out there in the middle of nowhere, on the ground. It was a sucking chest wound. We really don’t know what happened. The guy on watch had heard a round go off, and we looked around and there was Gurtner, right there.

When that happened we weren’t really shaken up . . . it just got everybody angry. When you first get out there the motto is “No best friend, no worst enemy,” and everyone talks about [things that they would never do in combat]. But after a death, it enrages you. It feels like a game until someone gets shot, and he was our first casualty in the whole battalion. It struck a nerve with everybody. Everybody hated it, we hated everybody, and after that we just wanted to engage Iraqis.

But that all changed after we [got to] Tikrit. We actually stayed there for about two days. There was this family, with a little girl who kept looking at us, and after a while we offered them candy, and they kind of opened themselves up and gave us tea. There was another time when we were staying in a remote area, and there was a house out in the middle of nowhere, and one day they just came out with food! For us! They just came out with food—chicken broth—and we sat down with the Iraqis and we ate. We kinda realized that we’re not [after] everybody, just that 10 percent. That kind of calmed us down.

‘DYING IS EASY’
There was one guy who killed himself when we were just standing by. He put the thing to his head and blew his head off. This was before we crossed over [into Iraq], before the fighting started. I never knew him, but I saw the aftermath. I was taking care of vehicles and cleaning out weapons, and we all heard a round. He had gone inside a port-a-potty, loaded his weapon, and he blew his brains out. A big mess everywhere. Then right away we had formation to figure out who was missing. I can’t remember the kid’s name. He was 18, 19, 20—somewhere in there.

It’s just life, you know? That’s what I realized when I was out there. It’s life. People are going to die, I’m going to die, everyone is going to die. Living is hard. Dying is easy. That’s what I think.

‘THAT SIXTH SENSE’
The adjustment was pretty horrible. The first day I came back [to the U.S.] I wanted to leave. I wanted to go back to Iraq. I felt so out of place. I think a lot of people re-up because of that, because they come back and things just don’t feel right. For a while I felt anxious, that I didn’t want anyone behind me. You know, “Make sure you’re always in the corner.” Another Marine told me to go [to the VA], and said, “They’ll help you out,” so I went to get some mental help. It was helpful and explained lots of things. No one is going to drive up with a truckload of bombs here. But out there, after the first engagement, you get sort of a sixth sense, a feeling that something isn’t right. And that feeling was never wrong for me. But here we’re civilized. Out there we’re more like animals, we go by instinct. More reaction, less thinking. I realized that going from nothing but instinct to being civilized again . . . there’s a big gap. But that sixth sense keeps firing off, and you learn to live with it.

FELIPE ADAMS
Age at Enlistment: 25
Rank: Sergeant, Army
Time in Iraq: July 2005 to September 2006

‘YOU’RE GOING  BACK TO BAGHDAD’
I did 11 months in northern Iraq—Mosul, Tel Afar, Sinjar. When it was over I flew back to my base and was there just two days. I was about to go out to the local bar to go get a drink and was standing at the front desk in the barracks. One of the soldiers at the desk was on the phone, and when he got off he looked at me and said, “You guys are going back.” I said, “Going back where?” He said, “You’re going to Baghdad.” I said, “I’m not going. I’m never going back.” But the next day we got the word. You had guys trying to commit suicide, and two soldiers tried to get out by shooting themselves in the foot, which was stupid. Another guy started cutting himself. He sliced up his wrists, so he didn’t go back. It never crossed my mind to do anything like that because, like I said, I volunteered. You just have to do your job and suck it up. So we packed ourselves back up and went into Baghdad.

Baghdad is often compared to Los Angeles: It’s a big metropolitan city. Not a lot of space between buildings. A lot of those buildings are abandoned, leaving a perfect hiding place for insurgents who can just wait for someone to come by. One of my biggest fears was walking down the street and just seeing three tracer flashes coming out of one of those empty windows. And by the time you see it, it’s too late. In any other city in Iraq, if you hear a gunshot you can kind of tell where it’s coming from. But in Baghdad, if a gun goes off it echoes out for blocks and blocks. You can’t tell where it’s coming from, who’s doing the shooting, what kind of rifle it is. You just hear these noises. If it’s a bomb, it’s worse. You just hear it echo over and over. You’ll see a mushroom cloud, and then hear a “boom” about two or three seconds later, and you feel this gust of wind, this force, and you pray that that doesn’t happen to you that night. And you know that if one goes off, there’s a good chance that another one is going to go off. That second one might be right underneath your vehicle. We had really powerful Stryker vehicles, but [the insurgents] just made the bombs bigger and bigger. They had these things called EFPs, almost like a shape-charge, and it can slice right through the vehicle. I heard a story about one of these bombs: It went off, and a piece of shrapnel went straight through a vehicle, like butter, and a guy sitting in the rear of the vehicle was cut right in half.

Imagine the worst part of any city you’re familiar with, a place where you won’t go at certain times, or wearing certain colors, and that’s Baghdad. Every house is allowed one AK-47, so everyone is pretty well-armed. A lot of Iraqis have just left the city, and insurgents caught on to that and started booby trapping the doors [of vacant apartments]. So we were going house to house, using crowbars and battering rams to get inside the locked doors, and there was another unit doing the same thing on the other side [of the block]. All of a sudden we hear a boom and see a big mushroom cloud. Two minutes later we hear over the radio, “Watch out for booby-traps!” We learned later that someone from the other unit had hit a door with a battering ram and it blew up on him.

You hear that, and I don’t like to admit it, but you say, “Better him than me.” You go back to your bunk and you pray that you come back. And when you do come back you pray and give thanks for coming back.

SHOOTING
Two months into Baghdad my platoon gets ambushed and I take an AK-47 round to the right side of my abdomen. It severed my spinal cord and exited my left side. I was pretty aware through the whole thing—I have flashbacks throughout the day, every single day—and I remember having an instinct, a gut feeling, about where the round was going to come from. I remember everything up until I went into the medical tent in the desert and then I passed out. I was injured on a Saturday, and woke up Monday in Germany.

This particular Saturday we were supposed to do a mounted patrol in Sadr City, and a kid—maybe 13—came outside of an alley with an AK-47 and shot at our vehicle. We went down the alley on foot, in tactical formation. Couldn’t find the kid, and all of a sudden insurgents popped up on the rooftops and started shooting at us. I was the first and only one to get hit.

Was I frightened? Well, as they say, you volunteer to join, and you know what the consequences are. But it was a pretty tragic moment. If you can imagine two-story apartment buildings to your front, your rear and your right, and standing there, all you see is windows. No screens, no glass, just a bunch of open windows. It’s bright out, so you can’t see into them. And I’m just looking up thinking, “They can shoot at us from any angle.” Two minutes go by, and I can see a muzzle flash in the corner of my right eye. As soon as I hear a “pop” I look around and see that nobody else was hit. So I try to take a step. I look down and my legs aren’t moving. But the momentum from my upper body makes me tumble over, and I yell out that I’m hit. Two guys from my platoon pick me up, and one guy is supposed to stop the bleeding. He asks me where I got hit and I say, “I don’t know, I just can’t feel my legs.” So he lays me down on the ground and starts taking off my armor. The entry wound isn’t bleeding so much, but the exit wound starts gushing. I’m looking up at him—his face is upside-down—and his eyes light up and he screams, “Oh, shit!” I look down and see the blood, and say, “Hey, can you patch that up real quick for me?” 

It was one of those moments when you realize that there is nothing that you can really do, and you just hope for the best. Try not to get too scared.

I’m in a wheelchair now. I’m a T-12 level, pretty much paralyzed from the waist down. Right now I’m taking a break from my physical therapy because about a month ago I had a surgery—a bladder augmentation—and I’m recovering from that. That was surgery number six. Two more to go, and hopefully that will be it.

BACK IN THE U.S.
Now I catch myself looking up at abandoned rooftops, and if there is an abandoned car on the side of the road that freaks me out sometimes.

Talking about how I feel about the war is a touchy thing. I support the troops, but I don’t support the war. From the get-go I saw no purpose in the United States being in Iraq. A lot of people say it was to get rid of this evil man, but now they have more than a few evil men running these insurgent groups.

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY

JEFF BEAUCHAMP
Age at Enlistment: 17
Rank: Corporal, Marines
Time in Iraq: February 2003 to March 2005 (Ramadi), March 2006 to September 2006 (Fallujah)

TWO TOURS
Ramadi? I was at the FOB [Forward Operating Base] called Camp Blue Diamond. During that tour I mainly spent time in the guard towers doing clerical work. I didn’t see much of anything the first deployment. Not much. Not many firefights, not many bombs going off. We got mortared just about every other day, though. And that’s scary, because you never know when it’s coming. You don’t know where it’s going to land. We always had casualties whenever they did, though. The closest a mortar ever came to hitting me was about 50 yards. And ever since then I’ve always been on edge: If there is a door that slams I don’t jump anymore, but the hair on the back of my neck stands up. And then my adrenaline gets going, and I get kind of nervous sometimes. I didn’t really seek any treatment for that, but I told the docs [in Ramadi] about it.

The second time I was outside the wire a lot. We got redeployed, as augmentation for RCT5, which is Regimental Combat Team 5, 5th Marines, the most decorated unit in the Marine Corps. Some of us got augmented with EOD—which is Explosives Ordinance Disposal—and that’s where I went. The most seasoned vets got to go be an augmentation with EOD. The reason they wanted the seasoned vets is because that’s a pretty dangerous job, especially being security for EOD. I didn’t diffuse the bombs. I was the lead machine gunner for the security team. I got to see a lot, you know, the second time around. A lot of dead bodies. Friend and foe.

INFORMANT
I remember one engagement. We were out on call, and it was about dusk, and we gave this guy who was driving a green four-door sedan a warning. We shot flares to try to get his attention, to get him to stop. But I guess because the sun was in his eyes he didn’t see it, so we shot at his tires. I guess I aimed too far back and I shot him in the leg. He hopped out of his car and blood was running down. It took the corpsman about 10 minutes to get to him and give him first aid. That was probably the most exhilarating moment out there. It was kind of a rush, a power trip. There’s no other feeling like it. No other feeling like getting shot at, either.

This guy who got shot—we started paying him to be an informant. A couple weeks went by and he disappeared. And then his head popped up at the front of the base that we were at. Just his head. So they killed him, and I guess they were trying to say that they’re not playing around.

THE LITTLE GIRL
We also did post-blast duty. There were a few marketplaces, but mostly checkpoints, where there are a lot of coalition forces. We saw some dead soldiers, sailors, Marines. It’s an unfortunate sight to see, dead bodies. How do you get over something like that? The answer is you don’t. You can’t get over seeing a two-year-old baby girl still holding onto her doll, with her clothes melted to her skin, and her skin charred up, and her pink guts hanging out. When I saw that I just stared. There’s nothing you can do. My mind just went blank. Then I thought, “How the fuck can these people do this to each other?”

I saw a lot of dead Iraqis. Mainly adults, but I saw a lot of dead kids. A lot of blast victims, so people looked like Swiss cheese. Mutilated. There was another call we went on, a post-blast. My vehicle was parked about 15 feet away from this suicide bomber. And it was just his upper torso. Just laying there. That I can’t get out of my head. I have nightmares about that, too. That and the little girl. You can’t cope with something like that. I’ve been having nightmares since the first deployment. You know when you doze off, and you feel like you’re falling, and then you wake up? Well, I don’t feel like I’m falling. I feel like I’m getting blown up again. There’s a flash. I see a flash, and my hairs stand on end.

Drugs and alcohol will help you sleep at night. The corpsman, the doc, would give me Benadryl. You’re so on edge—being on the security team you have to be on edge—so whenever we got a chance to rest I’d ask the doc for five or six Benadryl, and I’d knock out for three or four hours, and then we’d go back out on call.

But that was business as usual; it was unpredictable, and you could do three post-blasts in a night. No time to debrief, we’d just go out, do our mission, go out and do another mission, go out and do another mission. The most we went out was 10 calls in a row, and we were out for about 26 hours. Most of them were calls to disarm bombs, but one of those calls was a post-blast, the one that I was telling you about, the one with the dead girl.

The day I got home I bought a fifth of rum and downed it. I take medication for anxiety . . . and, in fact, I’m getting a little tense right now. You can see my hands shaking. It’s hard to be in crowded areas. I always look around. I see everything that’s out of place. I’m never complacent, which is why I drink so much. It helps me lose my senses. And I can sleep.

Tags: iraq war, Long Beach, memorial day, va hospital, veterans