One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War by Bing West Read Free Book Online

served as a platoon sergeant in Ramadi, where IEDs, snipers, and rocket-propelled grenades were daily occurrences.
    “We’re going to get those sons of bitches,” he said. “We’ll honor our dead by going out again today and every day.”
    Staff Sergeant Cartier took Garcia aside.
    “I’m the platoon sergeant, sir,” he said. “Lieutenant West and I trained this platoon together. With him gone, I have to show I’m still here for them. Let me take out this patrol without you.”
    Garcia knew that Cartier had torn the ligaments in his right knee and, in order to stay in the field, was avoiding the battalion doctor. “You got it,” Garcia said. “Take it slow.”
    “I can’t do it any other way.”
    The patrol left the wire, exchanged small arms fire for a few hours, and returned with no casualties. After that first step, Garcia and Cartier agreed to a division of labor. The platoon sergeant set the patrol and guard rotations, supervised camp cleanliness, listened to everyone’s gripes, and took care of problems that shouldn’t reach the lieutenant. Lighthearted where Garcia was saturnine, Cartier fitted into the role of counselor and ombudsman for the troops. Garcia didn’t want to come across as the hardass that he was.
    “After taking so many losses,” he said, “the platoon was ignoring the little things. They weren’t blousing their trousers, wearing Marine-issue boots, shaving every morning. They were losing the habit of discipline. So each day, I’d suggest one correction to Matt Cartier, and he’d get the point across to the platoon.”
    Garcia understood the Marines, but he wasn’t their buddy. As the new platoon commander, he made no effort to mix in. He let thesquad leaders do their jobs, while Cartier kept his finger on the pulse of the unit.
    Garcia’s quiet separateness suggested he had seen this all before. Actually, he had no more understanding of village warfare than did the platoon. The Iraqi city of Ramadi had been the classic urban fight. The concrete streets and sidewalks made it impossible to dig in IEDs; the Marines learned to avoid garbage heaps and abandoned cars. Shots came from the upper windows of apartment buildings, not from distant tree lines. Once the Marines gained control of a city block, concrete barriers were erected at the entrances. There were no open spaces inside a city.
    The Green Zone was a leap in time back into the paddies and bush of Vietnam. No hard roads, no cars, no bright lights, no Quick Reaction Force mounted in armored vehicles. In Sangin, the local Taliban—about 200 full-time and twice that number as part-time help—simply had to prevent the Marines from pushing outside the lines established by the British. The hated occupiers—the infidels or jafirs—were too powerful to assault head-on. But as long as they were penned in close to their forts, they were no threat. Sooner or later, they would leave. The infidels had the watches, but the Islamist resistance had the time.
    Day 5. 30,000 Steps
    Shortly after breakfast, 3rd Platoon heard the distant thumps and rattles of a firefight to their north, up near the Kajacki Dam, guarded by India Battery of the 12th Marine Regiment. LCpl. Francisco Jackson had been killed by an IED and his squad was pinned down, unable to recover his body. After a second Marine was shot, the Taliban closed in to prevent the squad from withdrawing. Back at 3/5’s op center, the air officer, Capt. Matt Pasquali, called for an air attack. Two F-18sresponded by dropping two 500-pound bombs, followed by several gun runs.
    Low on fuel, the F-18s had returned to base before Garcia left Fires with the morning patrol.
    Third Platoon had not moved 500 meters outside the wire before bumping into a Taliban gang. Both sides were moving parallel along thick rows of eight-foot-tall corn when they heard each other. In the ensuing firefight, thousands of bullets scythed down the cornfield. When the shooting ended, the Marines found two dead