As we loaded the three most severely injured onto the stretchers, I spotted Hansen sitting against a wall. He had ball bearings in his leg and a completely shattered foot. Of my four-man Alpha team, I was now the only non-casualty. It was pure luck, though at the time it felt more like a curse.
Hansen watched as his more seriously wounded teammates were lifted and stretchered to the HLZ. “Of course, I’m going to have to walk my ass out of here, aren’t I?” he said. It wasn’t a question. He stood up on his good leg and hobbled toward the HLZ, in true Ranger fashion.
After hauling our Navy SEAL EOD counterpart to the HLZ (he had also taken multiple ball bearings throughout his body and suffered a significant fracture of his arm), I was finally able to link back up with my platoon and exfil. As I sat crammed in between my teammates and some enemy combatants we had taken off target, a mix of emotions rushed through my head: hate, vengeance, and strongest of all, disbelief. I was in the same position where I’d sat on the helo ride into the target earlier that night. From nearly this exact vantage point only a few hours before, I’d watched Barraza, with night vision goggles lighting up his eyes, stare out over the moonlit Iraqi terrain. I didn’t know what he’d been thinking about, but I knew it was good and it was just, because I knew Ricardo Barraza. Now, as I blinked to clear the blood-sweat out of my eyes, in that brief flash, I could see that moment all over again. It was a moment that was gone as soon as it happened, but it was one that seared itself into my consciousness, a memory that would never fade.
We returned to base just after 6 A.M., later than usual, and were immediately debriefed. That was when we learned, officially, that Sergeant Dale Brehm, twenty-three, and Staff Sergeant Ricardo Barraza, twenty-four, had been killed in action, doing what they loved for something they believed in, something greater than themselves. Duty, God, Country. Their band of brothers.
They died honorably, but their deaths were no less tragic to the people who loved them. Dale, who got his Ranger tab on September 10, 2001, would have had his twenty-fourth birthday coming three days later. Ricky was going to get married just weeks after we got back. Both men, who had grown up less than three hours away from each other in the Central Valley in California and joined the Army out of high school like the rest of us, were on their sixth tours.
About a week later, I was stateside to bury one of my mentors and my friends. As the honor guard carried Dale Brehm across the rolling grounds of Arlington Cemetery to his final resting place beneath a temporary white cross driven into the earth, I made certain to remember the things about him and Ricky that I admired most. I wanted to fuse these things into my character and make sure their legacies lived on in my heart and in my actions. I recommitted myself on a daily basis to my family, the way Dale had when he gave all his focus to his wife when they were together. I resolved to become a better warrior and an even better man, following Barraza’s fearless example in the face of adversity.
Dale Brehm and Ricardo Barraza went down fighting that March night, each one, in his own way, saving my life. Their sacrifice will forever be my motivation to live. But more immediately, it would be my inspiration to double-time it down to Ranger School only a few short days later and work to become the kind of leader they showed me it was possible to be. Godspeed, brothers.
Chapter 7
Tab on the Shoulder, Tats on the Sleeve
Ranger School is a two-month combat leadership proving ground open to all branches of the military, but the 75th Ranger Regiment is the only unit that requires all of its officers and non-commissioned officers to attend the course. It is broken into three phases—Darby, Mountain, and Florida—starting back in the butthole of America and dripping down into its taint by the time it’s all said and done.
Darby, which takes place in a remote corner of Fort Benning in Columbus, is often called the “crawl” phase of Ranger School, because you have to crawl before you can walk. In other words, instructors basically become the worst parents ever and treat you like you’re the baby who should have been a blowjob but who has ruined all of their life plans instead—and now they’re going to make you pay for it. They don’t let you sleep, they shove you to the ground all day long, and they scream at you with colorful words like “cocksucker” and “titty boy.” It’s like a depressing episode of COPS except you also get to learn the fundamentals of squad-level mission planning, which are the basic building blocks of Ranger leadership. If you can’t lock in this stuff, then you weren’t meant to lead men—or at least not yet—and you had a quick trip home ahead of you.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous going into Ranger School, having come straight from Arlington Cemetery and Ramadi before that. Under normal circumstances, Rangers deploy once after RASP on a kind of probationary status to determine if they have what it takes, then go straight to Ranger School to get the tab and become a full member of the Battalion. But because 2/75 got surged forward before I could go, I ended up deploying twice as a probationary private before my chance to attend Ranger School came up. You’d think going in with all that experience would be an advantage—and to an extent I’m sure it was. It certainly kept my mind busy and focused on my goals, partly as a way to avoid getting caught up in my grief over losing Brehm and Barraza. But the benefit of going in six months earlier, after just one deployment, young and cherry, is that you still have the bliss of ignorance. You don’t truly understand, in a visceral way, the real-world implications of what you’re being taught. It’s not all fun and games, obviously, but it’s also not exactly life and death. After two deployments, which taught me the cold realities of war, I fully appreciated the stakes associated with mission planning. I knew what happened when shit went sideways, and I did not want to be the kind of soldier who might fuck that up.
More than anything, I did not want to disappoint Sgt. Brehm, wherever he may be. He knew I’d make it home, he knew I’d make it to Ranger School, and he knew I’d make it through. It was his job to know that, both as a Ranger team leader and as a leader of men. There was only one thing that Dale didn’t anticipate on my behalf: flesh-eating bacteria.
Listen, I could go into the many challenges that Ranger School presents, or you could Amazon the other eighty “how to be a Ranger” books that probably exist. This isn’t a fucking self-help book, okay? And this isn’t a chapter about the rigors of training. It’s about how impressive it is that the only infection I got came not from the multitude of sex acts I’ve committed but from Ranger School itself.
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In Florida Phase, which is the real fun one, you conduct small water operations, small craft movements, and platoon-sized operations, all in an awful Florida swamp on Eglin Air Force Base, situated strategically along the picturesque Redneck Riviera. Those last three weeks of Ranger School are where you learn just how much you want that Ranger tab on your left shoulder, because that entire stretch stinks like a bag of smashed assholes that has been left to rot in a Wal-Mart parking lot in the middle of July—which is exactly when I was there.