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The most important moment of RASP, other than graduation, happens the day before, when you find out to which of the three battalions you’ve been assigned. Everyone had their personal preference for their own unique reasons, and with America engaged in a two-front war at the time, dudes were super anxious about where they were headed. Not surprisingly, a lot of guys wanted 2/75 once they heard that that battalion was next up in the deployment cycle.
Of course, the Army didn’t even bother pretending to give a shit about anyone’s preferences. All they did was split the whole graduating class into three sections, lined us up in formation, and randomly assigned each group to a battalion. My group got 3/75, right here in Columbus, the last pick on my list. Well, fuck. I tried to put my bad luck into context. Be happy that you passed, I told myself. You get to join one of the most prestigious units in the military, I reminded my deflated ego.
At this moment an instructor yelled out, “Best, you have orders to go to 2/75!”
Every man in the class turned toward me in confusion. No one else got orders, let alone orders to the place they actually wanted to go. Who was this little cocky Private First Class named Best? That was the question painted on everyone’s faces, instructors included.
“Why the fuck do you have 2/75 orders?” a fellow graduate finally asked me, in total disbelief. What do you say to a stupid question like that? Something witty and insightful, obviously.
“I’m a Make-A-Wish kid. Ken Griffey Jr. must have been busy. This was my second choice,” I said like a total dickhead.
“Fuck you, man.”
“You won’t get to, because I’ll be deployed. Have fun trying not to get the Waffle House waitresses pregnant.”
The next day, after graduation, I called my cousin.
“Hey man, I just wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For the orders to 2/75.”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” Uh-huh.
“Okay,” I said with a chuckle. “Sincerely, thanks, cuz.”
“Good luck,” he said as he hung up the phone. He was a man of few words, but for the few words he offered on that day back in Airborne School and whatever good words he used to get me assigned to 2nd Ranger Battalion, I was grateful. God knows that by getting those orders I pissed off more people that day than I pissed on the previous four weeks, and I was grateful to be on my way to Fort Lewis, and from there into combat in Iraq.
Chapter 5
A Soldier Comes Home
My first real break in the Army, on something called block leave, came after graduating from RASP and returning from my first combat deployment to Mosul.
Hey, Mat, wait, WTF? Did you just skip over your entire first tour of actual warfighting?
I did. I accomplished jack shit on that first deployment. The operational tempo of my unit was high, but as a cherry private I didn’t get to do much of the cool stuff. On most missions, the more experienced guys kicked down the doors while I pulled security. I’d sit in the vehicle hearing flash bangs and gunfire, wishing I were a part of it. Then there were stretches of time where the closest I’d get to direct contact was when the Iraqis decided to lob mortars at our compound. Most landed short of the fence line, some sailed clear over us, but a couple landed on base. A few months earlier the enemy had mortared a mess tent on our compound during lunch, killing twenty-two and wounding sixty-six. They were clearly hoping that lightning might strike twice. The whole experience was frustrating, to be honest, because I had all this training and no chance to implement it fully. I felt like I was in the middle of a fight with both arms tied behind my back.
Anyway, block leave is basically an extended vacation that the military grants to an entire unit around the holidays and before and after deployments. It’s their way of giving soldiers an opportunity to relieve some stress, reunite with family, and find new and unique ways to get in trouble without bringing the rest of their unit down with them.
I decided to spend my ten days of block leave back home on the beaches of Santa Barbara. I hadn’t seen my family in forever, and for months on end I’d been living in a dirty, hellish, backward shithole—and then Iraq—which made me more anxious and grateful for the comforts of home than anything else I could do or anywhere else I could go.
The cliché about military homecomings is totally real, by the way. When I stepped off that plane, I did hug my parents a little tighter. There was lots of crying. I really was genuinely happy to be home with everyone. I felt like one of those suburban moms in Oprah’s audience in that glorious, carefree period between getting a free new Toyota RAV4 and learning that I would have to pay $7,000 in taxes on it. Even more than spending time with my family, though, what I was most excited about was going out and seeing everyone from high school, because I had changed…a lot.
If you’re anything like some of the people in my real life I’ve told about my high school botany and bass-playing experiences, I imagine it’s hard to reconcile the rock-hard instrument of swift justice and All-American handsomeness you see before you today with the idea that I was once a complete fucking dork. But if you think you’re having a hard time with it, just picture the reactions of the people I went to high school with when I walked into a house party that first night back home.
In my mind, I secretly hoped that the whole scene would play out like a Kid Rock video. Pot smoke surrounds me like it’s coming out of a fog machine. I kick open the door to every room I enter. People’s jaws hit the floor. Guys give me the ’sup, bro head-nod, not as a form of acknowledgment but as a way of self-consciously making their chins look stronger and their necks look thicker—like mine had become. Girls’ heads turn on a swivel. And all those “I don’t have the time of day for you” girls from high school seem to have found an open slot for me in their Google calendars. Possibly one of them faints.
As cool as it would have been to the sensitive ego and wild fantasies of that insecure high school kid to have the party stop rotating on its axis the moment I arrived, the reality is that the world managed to keep turning while I was gone, and it would continue turning the same way when I was home. People were happy to see me, sure, but nobody lost their shit over me. Well, nobody except a good friend of mine named Ryan, who ended up bro-ing out a little too hard that first night.
He was that buddy you haven’t seen in a long time who just keeps complimenting you like he’s trying to hint at some kind of personal awakening that you missed while you were gone. It starts with the nod, then the full-body check-down, then the step-back and double-take. Our first conversation was so odd and surreal, all I remember clearly now is it feeling like one of those Saturday Night Live sketches where they take one joke and beat it into the ground for five minutes until not only is it not funny anymore but you question why you still watch that fucking show anyway.