Two Heroes, True Heroes

By TMN

An American Marine carefully peered around the wall. He saw nothing. In fact, the room was deathly silent. Distant helicopter blades hummed in the background, but they were not a danger to the Marine. He knew they were American helicopters. He motioned behind him, and the rest of his team moved into the room. They fanned out, checking every nook and cranny for signs of any Insurgents. There were none. The room was clear.

The team slowly split up, maintaining radio silence. Sweat clung to the Marine’s tan uniform. The Baghdad sun blistered an astonishing 99 degrees Farhenheit, making it one of the cooler days of the Iraqi invasion. The Marine shifted his 40 lb. pack, and silently entered another room. All clear. He walked slowly down another hall, careful not to make any creaks with his rubber boots. He turned another corner, expecting to see no one. He expected wrong.

Facing him was a heavily camouflaged Army Ranger. His M16 rested casually in his arms, but ready to let loose its devastating power in a fraction of a second. The Marine knew that the Rangers could shoot with deadly precision, and this particular Ranger could easily hit a target nearly 100 yards away. He also knew that this particular Ranger’s favorite color was green. After all, this particular Ranger was the Marine’s brother.

The United States Armed Forces made it a policy never to deploy siblings at the same battle site. It limited the possibility that an entire family would lose all its sons in one battle. Losing one child to war was hard enough. Losing an entire family generation was both unbearable and unacceptable. However, the Marines and the Army routinely made an exception with these two brothers when it came to collaboration between the two branches. The two brothers went through basic training together, and they passed that ordeal with unprecedented ease. They simply worked together with an intuitive efficiency that eerily resembled ESP. When one of them transferred to the Marines, the two branches immediately began planning missions that involved both brothers. The result was a string of successful operations that promptly earned both brothers multiple medals for courage and valor under fire. And now that valor was being unleashed on the Insurgents of Baghdad.

The Marine straightened up out of his combat stance. He smiled at his brother. They both clicked an “all clear” through their radio receivers. A resounding number of clicks returned. The building was secure. The Marine’s unit and the Ranger’s unit regrouped, silently slipped into a side alley, and just as silently entered the next building. An armored Humvee division patrolled the main road almost 25 yards away, ostensibly conducting their own search mission. They, however, were merely a diversion for the Special Forces. The idea behind the operation was that any Insurgent foolish enough to attack the Humvees from the safety of the neighboring buildings would not be expecting a swift counterattack from the shadows of that same building.

Striking at the Insurgents, however, was easier said and done. In the months since President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the Insurgents continued to operate with impunity. They were like phantoms, materializing out of nowhere, and disappearing just as quickly. The damage they actually wrecked was in fact strategically minimal. Frankly, Coalition forces could absorb all of the losses in soldiers, armored trucks, and supplies with no apparent impediment to their operations. These losses were simply the fortunes of war, paid dearly but anticipated by every general since war was invented. However, the Insurgents’ guerrilla warfare extracted a heavy moral toll on the Americans. At home, frightened citizens clamored for the return of their loved ones. Congress scoffed at giving more money to the war, and the President applied much pressure for immediate results. Though no one dared acknowledge it, many knew that the influence of the Insurgents reached further than simply the streets of Baghdad.

However, it is in the streets of Baghdad that the Insurgents commanded the most respect. American soldiers like the Marine and the Ranger worked everyday to hunt them down, usually without success. It was simply too hard to distinguish between the Insurgents and the loyal citizens of Iraq. While Americans at home imagined the Insurgents as invisible, masked thugs attacking with ferocity, the Marine and the Ranger actually experienced the Insurgents as invisible, masked thugs attacking with ferocity. It was especially disheartening to the Marine to think that the smiling man who had so graciously helped him fix a bridge one day might later kill his fellow soldiers with a suicide bomb the next day. The Insurgents were indeed phantoms, hiding their hideous faces behind the smiling ones of the loyal citizens.

Today, however, was different. It was now the Marine’s turn to play the phantom. Their unit again fanned out, silently sweeping the building for any Insurgents. The Marine stopped to peak outside the window. The Humvee division was still making its rounds, careful not to upset any of the Islamic traditions regarding entering a home and interacting with women. Suddenly, machine gun fire erupted. The Marine instantly fell into combat position, quickly gazing out to determine its source. He cursed. The Insurgents were firing from the building next to theirs! He radioed his brother and his unit, and they all rushed into the next building.

Urban warfare is deadly. America may have the superiority in the air, in the sea, and even on land, but all of its technology is almost worthless in the city. Sure, they have satellites to track troop movements and tanks to provide devastating firepower, but it was still up to the individual troops to manually sweep every single urban building and purge them of the enemy. Leaving one building unchecked would mean a bullet in the back of your head later. In this kind of room-to-room battle, technology is neutralized. The winner is not the soldier who is more technologically advanced, but the soldier who can shoot straighter. It boiled down to pure fighting spirit, and American soldiers did not necessarily have that advantage.

However, the Marine and the Ranger did have that advantage today. They were finally going to be able to take the offensive on the Insurgents. Their units burst into the 2^nd floor, guns ambushing the surprised ambushers. The two units quickly spread out, organizing into an enveloping formation meant to trap the Insurgents. The Insurgents, however, retreated from the room, opting to fight the Americans on their own terms. The ambush was becoming a room-to-room battle.

The Marine and the Ranger chased the Insurgents running to the third floor. Their units fought with a sense of teamwork that the Insurgents could not cope with. Within minutes, the Insurgents had been scattered, each hiding isolated from the rest of their terror squad. The Marine and the Ranger were following a trail of blood, certain that they would capture another Insurgent in moments. The trail abruptly ended at a window. The Marine heard a soft noise to his left. He cursed under his breath. Even injured, the Insurgent had laid the guile to lay one final trap. They were true phantoms. The Marine saw the Insurgent, obviously injured, trying to bring his rifle to bear on the Marine. The Marine swiftly brought up his weapon and fired. At the same time, another masked man on their right took out a grenade. The Ranger saw the grenade, but could not shout a warning in time. The grenade exploded, throwing both the Ranger and the Marine toward the Insurgent that the Marine was aiming at. All three men tumbled into each other. All three men were injured.

The Marine suffered some heavy bruises to his stomach and some minor shrapnel to his side, but he was otherwise fine. He looked over at the Insurgent who laid the trap. The Insurgent was unconscious. The Marine looked over to the Ranger. His brother took the most damage from the grenade. He also lay unmoving. The Marine had seen such a body many times before. His brother was dead.

The Marine knelt on the floor, his bottom resting on his heels. He was in a daze. His heart felt ripped out, but he did not cry. He wanted to cry for his brother, but he could not. He was too conditioned as a soldier and too hardened by years of combat. He took off his helmet, suddenly weary. Sporadic but distant guns fired in the distance, but he did not care. His thoughts were elsewhere. He reached out to shut his brother’s eyes. They would never see the sun again.

The unmoving Insurgent next to the Marine began to stir. The Marine snapped back to the present, immediately rearming himself. The Insurgent groaned, but moved too stiffly to be a threat. The Marine reached for his knife. This Insurgent had killed his brother. It was only fair that the Insurgent die as well. The Marine would slit his throat, and he will die painfully and slowly. The Marine unmasked the Insurgent…and looked down upon a boy’s face. It was a young boy, barely 16 years old. The will to kill left the Marine, and he soon grew weary again. The phantom Insurgents, ferocious and invisible, were simply boys, frightened and misguided. The Marine could not kill this boy. It would weigh heavily on his conscious, more so than the death of his brother. There was only one thing left to do. The Marine re-gripped his knife, and began to make bandage strips from the boy’s clothing. He began to treat the boy’s wounds.

The boy’s father, the man who threw the grenade, also began to regain consciousness. He had underestimated the power of the grenade, but suffered only pain of being thrown back by the force of the grenade. He immediately thought of his son. He feared that his grenade might have hurt his son as well, or worse. He pulled himself up, and to his great anxiety, he saw the American soldier wielding a knife over the son. The father cursed. These Americans were so ferocious, so methodical. They killed without hesitation, and they killed without remorse. Without a doubt, that American was maiming his son for life.

The father thought back to the early 90’s, when he first saw an American. They were friendly and openly mingled with the populace. Their tendency to take off their sunglasses and wave at the Iraqis did much to demystify their legendary fighting prowess. However, these guile Americans promised to bring down Saddam with the populace’s help. These Americans lied, and the Iraqis paid for it dearly under Saddam. Now the Americans were back, never bothering to leave the safety of their tanks and Humvees unless they went out to kill. Why did they come back now? To help the Iraqis? They did not help the Iraqis ten years ago. They would not help now. They came to appease their capitalist desires. Any self-respecting nation would naturally rise up against such a gross bid at exploiting their country. The Americans called them Insurgents. The father called himself a Freedom Fighter. He would not stop fighting until he was free, free from American oppression, American corruption, and American greed. Iraq belonged to the Iraqis, not to American oil businesses.

The father painfully crawled to his displaced gun, hoping the American had not yet killed his son. As he crawled closer to the weapon, he got a closer look at what the American was doing. He stopped. How could this be? The American was nursing his son. It caught the father with a surprise more forceful than the grenade itself. The father came to his senses. This was a perfect opportunity. He reached for the gun and stood straight up.

The Marine looked up. Another Insurgent was standing over him, wielding a handgun. The Marine was in no position to defend himself. His hands, busy with a bandage a few moments before, were now frozen. The Marine knew he would see his brother soon. To his great surprise, the Insurgent holstered his gun. He knelt down beside the Marine, and began to help bandage his son. The Marine looked confused, but continued to bandage the boy as well. The Insurgent then started to pull out the shrapnel from the Marine. The Marine resisted at first, but the Insurgent wordlessly insisted.

When the Marine was bandaged, the two of them looked at each other, uncertain of the situation. Finally, the Insurgent stood up, and cradled his son in his arms. The Marine likewise stood up, and lifted his brother’s body onto his shoulders. They looked at each other one final time. Perhaps another day, they would meet again. Perhaps another day, only one will walk away alive. But today, they would both walk away.

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