Free One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War by Bing West

buildings. His job as a scout-sniper was to climb onto a roof and cover the alleys while the squad below him searched room to room. As the squad entered a courtyard, five were struck down by firing from inside the house. Esquibel ran to the lip of the roof and hurled a grenade through a window, killing two insurgents and destroying a machine gun. He then crawled across the roof and threw down a second grenade, killing two more and taking out another machine gun. When a tank moved in and began bashing a hole in the courtyard wall, Esquibel took advantage of the dust and noise to drop off the roof and drag a wounded Marine to safety. He then waited until the tank gun fired and dartedback into the courtyard, dragging out a second Marine. When the tank again fired, he raced inside a third time, beat out the flames on the body of a mortally wounded Marine, and dragged him outside.
    Awarded the Navy Cross—second only to the Medal of Honor—Esquibel refused to wear the medal or to discuss his valor. He was so self-effacing that he requested the Marine Corps to delete the medal from the records (which the Marines refused to do). When I mentioned other Marines I knew during the Fallujah battle, he readily reminisced about them. When I asked about his actions, he waved me off.
    “I’m not going there, sir,” he said. “This is my last rodeo. I’m getting out once we’re back in the States. It’s not about me. I’m here for my men, and that’s all.”
    Esquibel was as old as Garcia. He respected the former gunnery sergeant, but didn’t hold him in awe. Esquibel accepted every patrol order and carried out the mission to the letter—his way. Determined to bring every member of his squad back in one piece, he maneuvered 1st Squad firmly and with great caution. He assumed an IED lurked on every cow path, every opening in a tree line, and every irrigation bank. If it took an hour to move 1st Squad one hundred meters—and it often did—that was fine with him. In fact, he took pride in his deliberate approach.
    “I take the most miserable way,” Esquibel said. “We wade across every canal. My nickname is ‘Wet Bridge.’ I go wherever Lieutenant Garcia wants, and I don’t care if it takes me all day. I like open fields. When we take fire, we can outshoot them. Sure, we’re lying in mud, wet and shivering. But that’s better than getting blown up.”
    Garcia considered Esquibel as stubborn as a mule and as reliable. He wouldn’t be hurried or badgered into altering his pace. Believing that any straight path led to perdition, Esquibel invariably took a circuitous route. Despite grumblings from his squad, he chose to hack through thickets rather than trust a cow path. No matter how manyfootprints showed that farmers routinely crossed over log bridges, 1st Squad sloshed through chest-high muddy water.
    From the start, Esquibel made it clear to 1st Squad:he decided how they ran their patrols. He sought no friendships. He viewed his mission as bringing his men home. If that meant hurt feelings or resentments over his cautious exactitude, so be it. After each patrol, he hand-printed in the platoon log a succinct summary, naming those who performed well and those who bitched or hesitated.
    “The Taliban were learning too fast,” Esquibel said. “At first, they fired from in close in the cornfields. But we were too good at trading lead. Once they stayed 300 meters away on the other side of a tree line, it was a lot harder to kill them.”
    The tactics of 1st Squad were typical of the platoon. Cpl. Darin Hess, the engineer, went first, sweeping with the Vallon. Despite being hit three times by IEDs, he found the will to go back out, moving at the ideal cautious pace Esquibel wanted. Behind him usually came LCpl. Juan Palma, aggressive and sure of himself. The battalion had almost left him behind in the States, due to his “too cool for school” attitude and intolerance of regulations. Esquibel, though, liked Palma’s