Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL (41 page)

The operations officer was a lieutenant commander, a nice guy, and he looked embarrassed even to be asking us. He apologized before I heard my own voice saying, “I’ll stay.” In the same breath, Frank said he’d stay.

I remember the shock on the man’s face. We were both certifiable. I considered myself lucky to have lived through one tour, and now, casually, I was saying I would stay in Lebanon for another six months. I had not just said it, I had said it in front of witnesses, and I stood scratching as the commander spelled out our names on his clipboard. P as in Peter, F as in fox, A, double R, E, R. Charles, middle name Patrick. LTJG, USN. O-positive. Catholic. Suicide victim.

I was doing the unthinkable; Doc had found out, and he was busting my chops.

“What are you?” he was saying. “Some kind of retard?”

“How many tours did you do in Vietnam?”

“I don’t see what—”

I cut him off. “How many, Doc?”

“Too goddamn many.”

“Did you volunteer, or did they send you back?” I asked, knowing that like almost every Viet-era SEAL I knew, he’d asked for a second tour.

“You know what,” Doc said, “Vietnam wasn’t like the shit we just went through. You’re stupider than the average cake-eater if you asked to stay back in Wally-world.”

He was right. I was insane. So was Frank.

“Why don’t you go up on deck,” Doc said quietly. “You look like you could use a little air.”

On deck late at night, the marines at the rail had no faces. In the clear, moonless night, darkness was an almost opaque pigment that made their features uniformly dark and formless. It was a night in which you could not have recognized your own brother. The shadowy forms were made vague by both the mottled colors of their camouflage BDUs and the wind, which pulled and inflated the uniforms so that their shapes were changeable, hardly recognizable as human.

The red glow of cigarettes would rise and fall from the rail, burning bright, then fading. This night was unseasonably mild and perfectly, eerily still. The wind across the deck was only that caused by the ship’s forward movement, and around
Portland,
the sea spread away, mirrorlike and flat. The water was black, and the wake seemed afire with the unearthly light of bioluminescence.

Standing in the wind, I thought of the long lines of bodies we had laid on the tarmac. I was haunted by the letters and envelopes that had blown down the street after the bombing. Pictures of families, of children and wives, seven thousand miles away, made suddenly into widows and orphans.

I was scared now, fucking terrified, and standing alone in the darkness, I cursed myself for offering to stay. But I knew why I’d volunteered. This was not over, I told myself. It was not over, and I wanted to stay until it was.

Escaping the silence of the empty troop spaces, I stayed up on deck all night, staring into the glow of the wake until the sun rose, and then I stood with my face red from the wind and looking, in the moment of dawn, as though quite suddenly the sun had ambushed me.

The following evening Frank heloed over from
Iwo Jima.
It had been decided that our services would not be required by the incoming troops, and we were spared a second tour in Lebanon. Somewhere up the chain of command, a small decision made by a faceless staff officer had certainly saved my life.

I can’t remember if I was relieved or not. I remember only that my offer to stay had been serious, and that I was fully aware how ridiculous and self-destructive I had become.

PORTLAND
CONTINUED
to steam slowly west. The platoon spent days cleaning and repairing gear and weapons, making ready for homecoming and the scrutiny of the bean counters back at the Team. Our trip across the Med was unremarkable.
Portland
was still an unhappy ship, and when Frank and I could no longer abide Captain Zimanski’s tantrums in the wardroom, we took meals in the connex boxes, liberating sandwiches from the crew’s mess or happily accepting Doc Jones’s invitation to dine in the chief’s quarters.

Along with the rest of the squadron,
Portland
passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, and two days later we were in the teeth of an Atlantic gale. “Sweet Pea” was no beauty, but she was built to last, and the storm tested her. For two days hurricane-force winds and monstrous seas beat upon the squadron. From the bridge, we watched green water surge over the bow of
Iwo Jima
and roll across her flight deck. The bow of an aircraft carrier swept over by the sea was a majestic, fearsome sight.

Portland
rolled and plunged, and we subsisted on coffee and sandwiches until it was calm enough for the cooks to prepare hot food. Watch on watch, day and night, the 1-MC would crackle and from the loudspeakers would come a strangely indifferent voice intoning, “Stand by for heavy rolls.”

The ship, all 553 feet of her, would shudder and slow as fifty-foot waves heaved on our bow. Thumped by Atlantic rollers, the entire vessel seemed to ring, a deep, groaning clang like that from a gigantic, lopsided bell. Finally, the gale blew itself out, vomit was swabbed from the decks, and on a bright, chilly morning, the coast of North Carolina hove into view.

As we cleared the sea buoy, the lads loaded kit bags and made a clean sweep of their berthing spaces. Frank and I went and found our friends in the wardroom, wishing them the best and thanking them for favors big and small during the cruise.

Although other units in 24 MAU came ashore to military bands and parades,
Portland
docked at an isolated pier at the port of Jacksonville, North Carolina, far from press, relatives, or hoopla. In truth, there were not that many men nor much equipment to be unloaded. “Sweet Pea’s” embarked troops had been mostly headquarters elements, staff, and battalion-level support units. Almost to a man they had been killed in the bombing. Maybe two platoons of marines and a half-dozen jeeps were put off the ship. Like the empty passageways on the way home, the offload was quiet and forlorn.

The day was clear and cold, promising to be colder that night. In the general hubbub, I made sure the ship’s cranes hooked up our connex boxes, the Seafox, and the SDV. Flatbeds from SPECWARGRU-2 appeared under the appropriate loads, strapped them down, and drove off. Lugging my kit bag, I went down the gangplank and tried not to look back as I trotted for our ride.

As I plopped down into a seat on the bus, I slowly began to realize that it was over. I swung my feet up on a parachute bag and tossed my hat across the aisle at Dave. “Tell me I’m dreaming,” I said.

“You’re dreaming,
Diawi,
” said Doc. “You’ll wake up and it’ll be the first day of the trip all over.”

“Then shoot me,” I said.

Frank climbed aboard and collapsed into the seat beside me.
“Vamos,”
he said.

As we drove away from
Portland,
Cheese pressed his naked ass against the rear windows. He got a rousing ovation from the men in the bus and on the pier. “
Adios,
motherfuckers,” he yelled.

Adios
indeed.

As soon as we were off the base, Frank told the driver to pull over at a 7-Eleven. It had been months since the lads spent a paycheck or had any cash, but together, Frank and I had a couple hundred bucks in our pockets, wrinkled and soft from months in the safe of our stateroom. Two hundred dollars was a fortune in the backwoods of North Carolina, and the pleasures of the state were ours.

The bus doors hissed open and the lads piled out. I peeled off a hundred bucks and handed it to Doc. “Get all the beer this will buy,” I said.

Doc blew into the store, strode back into the cooler, and started to stack cases of beer on a handcart. The clerk gaped at us—we looked like a gang of slow-motion robbers.

“Get what you want for the ride home,” Frank said. The lads loaded up on potato chips, pig rinds, fruit pies, beef jerky, jalapeño-pickled sausages, red licorice, and even a loaf of white Sunbeam bread—delicacies only dreamed about in the Levant.

Doc wheeled the beer in front of the counter, and Frank counted out a pile of wrinkled dollars, twenties, and fives. Bubba came up to me holding an extra-large cherry Slurpee. “Can I have one of these, Mr. Pfarrer?” He looked exactly like a kid.

“Knock yourself out, Bubba,” I said.

The beer and the frogmen were loaded back into the bus, and we started north. It was now just about sundown, and as we passed through the crisp evening, the little town of Jacksonville, North Carolina, was somber. Though it was the first week of December, we saw no Christmas lights. Normally, the place would have been a carnival. A returning marine battalion could be counted on to spend money, buy beer, and propose marriage to half the women in the county. The problem was, a lot fewer marines came home than had left.

We drank beer and did our best to make merry, but the gloom of our homecoming was hard to shake. We hadn’t been met by bands or crowds on the pier side, but the little town had not forgotten the men she had lost. There were flags and homemade banners stuck up in front yards and windows. Under the neon lights of pawnshops and tattoo parlors, messages were cobbled together out of sliding plastic letters:
GOD BLESS THE MARINES
and
WELCOME HOME
24
MAU.

In the back of the bus, I sat with a beer and watched the night come on. As we headed north, shops and houses gave way to pine trees and lopsided double-wides. About halfway out of town, the bus stopped at an intersection, two lanes meeting two lanes under a single streetlight. As we turned north, I looked beyond a row of battered mailboxes. In the window of a mobile home was an American flag hung like a curtain. In front of the flag, leaning against the glass, was a color portrait—a photograph on brush-textured cardboard, the kind you sit for at Kmart. It was a picture of a marine sergeant in his dress blues. Beside him was a woman with dishwater-blond hair. In the sergeant’s arms was a kid of about six. The corners of the garish wooden frame were hung with black tape. Next to the picture was a hand-lettered sign, crayon on construction paper:
GOD BLESS MY DADDY.

At last we drove out of town, and the pine woods loomed over us, our two-lane meandering 150 miles through swamp and little redneck towns back to Virginia Beach. The night was clear, without even a small part of moon, and I was glad when the light left the windows, because my eyes were wet.

I STOOD IN THE PARKING LOT
of the SEAL Team Four building, pulling up the collar of my field jacket, waiting. Our arrival, half drunk, at 2230 hours was noted by the watch, and the trucks were parked in the secure area behind the compound. The lads had been driven singing and reeling to the transit barracks, while a tide of beer cans washed around the back of the bus. The OOD told us we were to report to the commanding officer at 1300 hours the next day. We had a sleep-in pass.

I’d offered to give Frank a ride to the BOQ, but my car, parked where I’d left it in March and half an inch deep in dust, would not start. Buzzed and smiling, Frank thanked me and caught a cab ride to the BOQ. Carrying my kit bag, I walked across the base, hoping the wind would sober me up. I wound up in front of a pay phone next to the base chapel, where I called Margot.

“It’s Chuck,” I said. “I’m back.”

Margot’s voice sounded odd on the phone, distant and formal. My last letter to her had arrived five days before. Written from
Iwo Jima,
it said I had volunteered to remain in Lebanon. A postcard I sent from Spain telling her I was coming home had not yet arrived. She was surprised and happy to hear from me.

“I’m on the base,” I said. “My car wouldn’t start.” I told her how to get a pass at the front gate and where to meet me.

The wind blew colder, and I stood with my parachute bag in the small white light put out by the pay phone. I was trembling from the cold, or something else. Above, the stars were bitter against black, and all at once none of this seemed real to me. It was as though I was sleepwalking when I saw a set of headlights coming at me. An aching sort of dread seized me, as though I’d found myself in the worst kind of dream, a dream of getting out of Lebanon, and I did not want to wake up before the car came to me. I had the terrible feeling that none of this was real, that I might come to back in the bunker, pressed into the sweaty nylon of my cot, with months to go until rotation.

Margot’s car stopped next to me, and for a long moment she just stared. Her mouth opened slightly, and she told me later that she was shocked by how thin I was. The wind pulled at me, and I stood there like some kind of sunburned scarecrow, the gaunt doppelgänger of the buff jock who’d left nine months ago.

I finally said, “Hi.”

She got out of the car and held me, and I was amazed by how warm and whole she felt in my arms. She was real. This was real, and I was alive.

“I have presents for you,” we both said at once.

We laughed, and she kissed me, and when she pulled away, I could see something like worry in her eyes. I wasn’t the only one who felt this wasn’t real. I was viscerally different from the man who’d gone away in May. My eyes burned through her, like they burned through everything else.

We checked in to a hotel on the beach, drank champagne, and made love, and then I held her as she slept, and through the windows I could hear the surf pounding as a whole gale blew from the immaculately clear sky. I slept and woke and woke again.

I pulled my arm from under Margot’s shoulders and walked to the windows. The first purple light of dawn was spreading across the Atlantic. The sea was rough, heaving upon itself and shimmering like a sheet of hammered silver. The coming day wavered on the horizon in a mirage brought on by the bitter cold. It was maybe twenty minutes before sunrise, and across the sea it was noon.

In Sidon and Tripoli, in Shabra, Chatilla, and along the corniche of Beirut, the sun would now be high, and I knew the muezzin’s call was drifting from the minarets. It was something I had heard many times in Lebanon, in city and countryside, from minarets pocked with tank fire, from tiny loudspeakers attached to mud-brick country mosques. In a trilling cry would come the
Thuhur,
the noon call and warning to the faithful.