Free Redeployment by Phil Klay Page A

had melted into a solid block. There was no Kevlar, which he must have been wearing but which didn’t make it to us.
    Some of the remains we dealt with would have very personal items, like a sonogram or a suicide note. This one had nothing.
    The hands, though, were clenched around two objects. We had to work at them carefully to pry them out. Corporal G had the left hand. I had the right. “Careful,” he said. “Careful. Careful. Careful.” He was saying it to himself.
    While I worked, I tried to avoid looking at the face. We all did that. I focused on the hands and what might be inside. Personal effects are important to the families.
    We worked, slowly, carefully loosening the fingers. Corporal G finished first. He held up a small rock, probably from the gravel pile. After a minute, that’s the same thing I found in the right hand. A little gray rock, mostly round, but with a few rough edges. It was embedded into his palm. I tore skin getting it out.
    A few days later, Corporal G talked to me about it. We’d had more remains come through since then, and normally Corporal G never said anything about any of the remains once we’dfinished processing them. We were smoking outside the chow hall, looking toward Habbaniyah, and he said, “That guy could have been holding on to anything.”
    I tried to tell the story to the mechanic. I was very drunk, and the guy tried very hard to listen.
    “Yeah,” he said softly, “yeah. It’s crazy.” I could tell he was searching for the right thing to say. “Look, I’m gonna tell you something.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “I respect what you’ve been through,” he said.
    I took a sip of my beer. “I don’t want you to respect what I’ve been through,” I said.
    That confused him. “What do you want?” he said.
    I didn’t know. We sat and drank beer for a bit.
    “I want you to be disgusted,” I said.
    “Okay,” he said.
    “And,” I said, “you didn’t know that kid. So don’t pretend like you care. Everybody wants to feel like they’re some caring person.”
    He didn’t say anything else, which was smart. I waited for him to say something wrong, to ask me about the war or the Marine that died or the rocks that G and me had kept with us, that I still had in my pocket that night at the bar. But he didn’t say another word, and neither did I. And that was that for me telling people stories.
    I hung out in my parents’ house for another week, and then I went back to Twentynine Palms and the Marine Corps. I never saw Rachel again, but we’re Facebook friends. She got married while I was on my third deployment. She had her first kid while I was on my fourth.

OIF
    EOD handled the bombs. SSTP treated the wounds. PRP processed the bodies. The 08s fired DPICM. The MAW provided CAS. The 03s patrolled the MSRs. Me and PFC handled the money.
    If a sheikh supported the ISF, we distributed CERP. If the ESB destroyed a building, we gave fair comp. If the 03s shot a civilian, we paid off the families. That meant leaving the FOB, where it’s safe, and driving the MSRs.
    I never wanted to leave the FOB. I never wanted to drive the MSRs or roll with 03s. PFC did. But me, when I got 3400 in boot camp, I thought, Great. I’d work in an office, be a POG. Be the POG of POGs and then go to college for business. I didn’t need to get some, I needed to get the G.I. Bill. But when I was training at BSTS, they told me, You better learn this, 3400s go outside the wire. A few months later, I was strapped up, M4 in Condition 1, surrounded by 03s, backpack full of cash, twitchiest guy in Iraq.
    I did twenty-four missions, some with Marine 03s, some with National Guardsmen from 2/136. My last mission was to AZD. A couple of Iraqis had driven up fast on a TCP. They ignored the EOF, the dazzlers and the warning shots, and died for it. I’dbeen promoted to E4, so PFC was taking over consolation payments, but I went with him to give a left-seat right-seat on working off the FOB. PFC always