photogrammatical

Blacksheep Platoon, 2004

I got the call from one of my Marines. My old unit is going to Afghanistan, sooner rather than later. They’ll be there before Christmas, possibly before Thanksgiving. My first thought was how fast can I lose 20 pounds and get through the re-enlistment process? I’d been considering this for a while now. While I have no interest in being a stateside Marine anymore, lately the thought of my boys deploying without me has been keeping me up at night. I wondered it aloud and my buddy said,

“It’d take too long. Our slots are all full anyway, you’d just get left behind. Don’t sweat it, man, we got this one.”

WE got this one. It stung, but I needed to hear it put that way.

The truth is, the WE that I was a part of doesn’t exist in the way I want it to anymore. Shortly after I left, my platoon, Blacksheep Platoon, was disbanded and dispersed. Most of the old crew got out, but a few stayed in and climbed the ladder. The Marines whom I’d been responsible for, the young ones whom have never been to war, now have Marines of their own to worry about. Some of them would even outrank me. That’s how the military has always worked, I suppose.

Deep down in my heart I’d give anything to have that old gang back together, the Blacksheep who went to war together. Even the assholes. It sounds cliche when I say it out loud, but we were young and seemingly invincible together. We trusted one another. The same guy that would get drunk and punch you in the face one night would be your closest confidant the next. I have the scars to prove it. Some on my face, some on my knuckles.

Most of the Blacksheep are out now. They’re spread out over the western states, living their own lives, doing whatever it is warfighters do after they’ve taken themselves out of the fight. A few of us have talked about the grand reunions we’ll have, but reality isn’t like the end of White Christmas. Kids get sick, jobs come up, cash gets tight, water mains break. We’ll probably never all be in the same room together again.

Then comes this news of the unit headed to Afghanistan. I’ve never worried for any Marine before. The Blacksheep had me, I had them, other Marines had other Marines. We were all covered. As illogical as it sounds, the thought that some of my old boys will be over there without me feels like I’m letting them down somehow, leaving a hole in their ranks that my own chest was supposed to fill. I know that’s not true, I know I was replaced by a younger, faster, better Marine the day I left, but that doesn’t change anything. These next 8-10 months I’ll lay awake at night and worry about them. It’s a feeling I dread down in my guts. It’s a feeling I know I put my own family through more than once.

I guess this is what vulnerability feels like, and I don’t care for it one bit.

We’d just pulled into Babylon after a long trip from the Iranian border. Our platoon would be occupying some empty buildings near a small man-made lake for a few weeks. Everyone was backing their vehicles in so we could pull the radios inside, but there was a small palm tree in the way of mine. I jumped out and grabbed the ax. With my first swing I caught one of the low fronds with my left hand. It went straight through the base of my fingernail like a staple gun. It hurt like hell, and my hand was shaking, but the vehicles still had to get parked and everyone was tired and pissed off. So I cut down that tree, and spent the next two months trying to dig that frond out of my hand.

I couldn’t go to the docs for something that small, I’d never hear the end of it. So I just put up with the irritation, but as the nail grew it was dragging the frond with it, and it hurt a lot. I put sanitizer on it often to try to stave off infection, but that didn’t work. I wore gloves to hide the swelling. I knew it was becoming a problem and if I went to see the docs at that point I might even get sent to the Army hospital for antibiotics. I couldn’t let that happen. I’d seen some guys get sent back to Kuwait against their will for seemingly minor injuries. I would have rather died.

So one night I got good and drunk, left the boys playing spades, and climbed into the back of my vehicle. I washed my hands as best I could with hand sanitizer and heated my knife up with a lighter. I slid the blade in quickly under the nail until it separated. It hurt A LOT.

I squeezed hard and the frond came out immediately. I was shaking from the pain, and I remember feeling relieved that it had come out on the first try, because I wasn’t sure I could squeeze like that again. I put more sanitizer on my hand and instantly regretted that decision, but I knew if it was going to heal properly I’d have to keep it as clean as possible.

I was surprised and a little impressed by the size of the frond, more than a quarter inch. I’d carried it with me through so much it didn’t seem right to just discard it. So I taped it into my journal, a little souvenir from my summer vacation.

When you talk about injuries sustained in war, a thing like that is not even worth mentioning. But it was something small that I carried with me for too long, a painful irritation that never let up until I dealt with it the hard way. Sometimes there are things like that in life. This one got taped into a little book I keep in my desk drawer.

I have a desk drawer where I keep Iraq. All the negatives, all the test prints, my ragged journal stuffed with wallet pictures and dinars. When I first got home I’d pored over the images, disappointed with most of them. I don’t know exactly what I wanted them to be, but I’d felt they largely fell short. I made a small edit at the time of about 20 or so that I’d show to people, and the rest just got tucked away. As time passed I didn’t want to look at them, I’d made my selections. I didn’t feel much like reading my journal either, not for years.

A few months ago I decided it was time. I sat alone in my room and read my journal from start to finish, I spread all those prints out on the floor. I’ll admit it was hard for me, reading my own words sparked a kind of total recall. The images brought sounds and smells and absolutely overwhelming emotions. Looking back, I’d been so young. Young in a way that you don’t get back.

But it’s all a personal history now. I’d left most of the war on the plane, and tried hard to bring back only pictures. Pictures that upon later inspection offer a view into what I’d seen at the time and felt a need to photograph. It wasn’t digital then, and I’d had a limited number of frames to remember by.

I’ve begun revisiting those images I’d been ignoring. I remember where I was for each one, and many of them coincide with stories in my journal. I have mixed feelings about sharing some of that work. The photographs are often snapshots, made by a young man who didn’t fully understand his light meter. Some of them were with a disposable camera. I know now where I went wrong technically. I know now how I could have made them better. Like a schoolyard fight lost, I’d give anything to relive it as who I would become.

But six years later, I see now where my own history was a part of our history, and I think that’s a story worth sharing.

I’ll start with a new gallery on my site, SPACES.

Mark Smuts and I have been friends since we were 15. We went to high school together, we worked in a restaurant together, he took me to a bar at midnight on my 21st birthday.

When I was in Infantry School, Mark would get calls at 1am on Saturdays and he’d drive down to Camp Pendleton to pick me up.

The day I came back from the war it was just Mark and my girlfriend at the time who were there to take me home.

He’s a hell of a guy, and a hell of a friend.

Happy 29th Birthday Smuts.

Too bad you grew up to look like “The Commish“!

I’d kept flakjacketphoto.com as my url for a while after I got out of the Marines. I didn’t see any reason to change it at first. Even though I was out and didn’t plan on reenlisting, it still seemed to suit me. I hadn’t yet started feeling the former part of being a former Marine. I was still within a window of time when I could have just changed into my uniform and been welcomed back. It took some time for that urge to wear off, but gradually I started to see myself and my future differently.

I was sitting on an ammo can in the desert the first time I said “I’m going to be a photographer.” That was in 2003. The time had come for me to really make good. So I stayed out, put on a little weight, grew a beard, got a dog, and started making life plans that didn’t involve weapons and body armor. I made peace with the idea that the Marine Corps could keep on without me.

A couple of months back I was sitting on the bed of a hotel room in San Francisco. My girlfriend was fixing her hair in front of the bathroom mirror, putting on her earrings. We were going to a fancy restaurant that night. It was a date night. The weather was perfect and we were planning on walking along the waterfront for awhile before dinner. I got a call from my Mother, her voice was nonchalant in the way it gets when there is something wrong.

She said, “A large manila envelope came from the Marine Corps today.”

I’d listed my Mother’s house as my permanent address.

I was taken off guard for a moment. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, this is what I get for becoming complacent, this is what I get for becoming this paunchy, bearded asshole in a pink dress shirt and tweed sport coat. I thought about the large plastic tub in my garage, my uniforms neatly folded inside. My canteen cup now a pen holder on my desk, my Ka-Bar used as a letter opener. I felt that mix of dread and resignation you get when you realize something is coming at you faster than you can step out of its way.

“You’d better open it.”, I said.

And as the words left my lips I recalled standing at the edge of a dance floor, my buddy Franco and I dressed in new suits, scotches in hand. We were watching the groom in his Dress Blues dance with his bride. Franco pulled out his cell phone and said, “Take a look at what I got in the mail last week.”

So that, I suppose, is that. A closed chapter in my life. One that I’m very proud of, often sentimental about.

The chances of my donning a flak jacket again for anything more than old times’ sake are pretty slim, though I won’t rule it out completely. I met more than one salty corporal who had checked back in saying “I went through boot camp when your Momma was a sophomore.”

But I won’t hold my breath for the day I feel like the Marine Corps needs me again. If there is one thing I can rest easy knowing, it’s that there is nothing my boys can’t handle.