Two hundred meters was all that separated me from an insurgent carrying an AK-47. I sat in a dilapidated brown leather chair, recessed in the shadows of a second-story room in the government complex of Falluja, Iraq. My sights were perfectly centered as I perched my elbows on the desk in front of me. The clear tip traced the center of his chest. He crept around a corner of a mud wall and slowly moved toward our position. Fear built inside me. I hesitantly began to pull the trigger of my M-16.
I was scared, to say the least. It was the first time my training would be tested. I heard my rifle crack as I fired. The weapon’s recoil nudged my shoulder, and he crumpled to the ground. The aroma of gunpowder filled the room. I fired two more rounds into his motionless body, then stared in amazement as his body lay lifeless, his black and red scarf astray. The sun rose across the city’s skyline. I was 19.
For me, the 10th of November is special. It is the Marine Corps’s birthday, a day for celebrating camaraderie. But it is also the day, eight years ago, when I was pinned down in the relentless firefights of Operation Phantom Fury. It is the day when I took a person’s life for the first time.
These two drastically different events make for mixed emotions at that time of year. In 2004, fighting in a large-scale attack on the corps’s birthday was thrilling. I’d be lying if I said that I am not still motivated by the memory. What better way to celebrate 229 years of decorated service than to take part in writing the corps’s next chapter? But I also feel as though I lost a part of myself that day.
Taking someone’s life brings you to the darkest side of yourself. There are nights when I see the faces of people I killed. There are days when I get lost in vivid memories of violent combat for minutes at a time. But it also leaves you emotionally numb. In the last eight years, I have not been able to cry unless I am reminiscing about Falluja. It is as if my brain created a space where feelings were lost or delayed. And when I did feel emotions after killing, it was often the sense of relief that I was not on the receiving end – an emotion that might readily, but incorrectly, be interpreted as satisfaction.
It was easy then to fall back on the powerful logic that it was either me or them, or worse yet, one of my fellow Marines. But that logic leaves questions with no easy answers. Did I in some ways come to enjoy killing? Was the loss of a life, and my innocence, worth it?
Pulling the trigger for the first time was beyond difficult. But the more I had to do it, the easier it became. With each passing trigger pull I lost more and more of my innocence. In fact, I actually started to get used to “slaying bodies,” as we called killing the enemy back then. And as more and more of my comrades were injured or killed, the sweeter the revenge began to taste. Looking back on it now, I feel bad that I did not feel bad.
Taking someone’s life changes you whether you like to admit it or not. It took me a long time to notice and admit the changes in me. It is something most people will never have to do. I am envious of those people. I look back on taking an insurgent’s life and can’t help but think I went a little crazy from doing so. I wonder from time to time what I was like before that day many years ago. But I also realize I will never be that person again.
I cannot be alone. In the wake of a suicide epidemic among veterans and active-duty troops, there must be others dealing with these demons. There must be other combat veterans caught in a moral struggle over their wartime actions.
Despite pondering these thoughts for many years, I chose to re-enlist in 2006 knowing for sure that I would go to Afghanistan. Part of me wanted the rush that combat gave me. After being so close to death, things that once excited you have a way of losing their thrill when you return home. I wanted to feel alive again. Strangely, that involved surrounding myself with the threat of death.
Afghanistan was very different from Iraq. The Taliban were very persistent in recovering their wounded. My squad fired thousands of rounds, but the most we ever saw was blood spatter and entrails. No dead bodies. No proof that we killed anyone.
The firefights were intense. Some of them lasted hours. The enemy mastered complex ambushes and attacked us from multiple locations at once, which truly tested my leadership. The fear was real. The bullets were real. I loved it, and with time, my men did too.
At the beginning of our deployment to Afghanistan, I was the only one in my squad with combat experience. The first time we took fire, my men briefly froze, just as I did years earlier. Looking at their faces I could see the fear as they struggled to accept our reality. But within seconds of the first rounds’ hitting our position, their training kicked in and we not only suppressed but also maneuvered on the enemy. The pride I felt watching my men execute their training was immeasurable.
After our first encounter with the enemy I knew they had felt what I had felt, and wanted to feel again. It was all they talked about. And when we went for days without enemy contact, my men would talk about how they missed the rush.
I was lucky enough to bring all of my men home from Afghanistan. Even now, two years later, we still joke about missing the firefights. Though I left the Marine Corps last month after nearly 10 years of service, I will still share with my men the memories of being pinned down in alleyways, the sound of bullets whizzing past our heads and the stench of death.
And so I am left with a raging conflict of emotions and memories. I wonder what life will be like without the thrill of combat or the agony of taking a human life. I’m sure I will become nostalgic watching videos and reminiscing over old photos. But more than anything, I worry about the part of me that I lost and whether I will find it somewhere down the line.
Thomas James Brennan is a reporter for The Robesonian in Lumberton, N.C. Before being medically retired this fall, he was a sergeant in the Marine Corps stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan with the First Battalion, Eighth Marines, and is a member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. Follow him on Twitter at @thomasjbrennan.
At War Blog: Ending a Life, and a Part of Yourself, For the First Time
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At War Blog: Ending a Life, and a Part of Yourself, For the First Time
