CHAPTER ONE
NO REGRETS
If I die in a combat zone
Box me up and ship me home
Pin my medals upon my chest
Tell my Momma I did my best
Now Momma, Momma, donât you cry
The Marine Corps motto is âDo or Die.â
âTraditional Marine Corps Running Cadence
APRIL 2010
SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF MUSA QALâEH
HELMAND PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN
The Afghan insurgents were aiming at me specifically, I was certain. The closer the bullets were to hitting my head, the slower time seemed to go, and the slower I seemed to be moving.
âGoddammit, where is that wrecker?â I yelled to my platoon sergeant.
âI donât know, sir, but itâs gotta be coming up soon. Godfather went to go get it like ten minutes ago,â Staff Sergeant Joseph Caravalho, my Hawaiian-borne platoon sergeant yelled back. Godfather was the callsign of one of our sergeants.
A hundred-plus pound IED had nailed one of our trucks. It was one of the biggest IEDs we had seen. The engine compartment was shredded, and tires had been thrown over a hundred feet in the air with a mushroom-shaped dust-filled shockwave. We couldnât recover this truck without our giant armored tow truck that we called a âwrecker.â As soon as we were stopped by the IED, Afghan insurgents began firing at us from several directions and dropping mortar rounds on our position. Bullets ricocheted off the truck I was working on, inches from my head.
âWhat the hell am I doing here?â I asked quietly. I chuckled to myself and answered with a canned refrain, often heard among the Marine Corpsâ junior officers to describe their own obliviousness. âThe lieutenant donât know.â
DECEMBER 2012: CHRISTMAS COCKTAIL PARTY, SYRACUSE, NY
Every year, my in-laws throw an old-fashioned cocktail party, with drinks and hors dâoeuvres. I was talking with one of the guests at the party, I suppose one of the neighbors, when I was asked a question that I hadnât ever gotten.
âDo you regret becoming a Marine?â he asked.
I was taken aback, insulted evenâbut it was an honest question. Iâm pretty sure that he could tell I was surprised (or maybe notâthe libations flowed freely and he had drunk quite a bit), but I tried not to let it show on my face.
âNo, you know, not at all,â I responded. âI joined the Marine Corps to serve my country as cliche as that sounds and to learn, and to do stuff that I could never do anywhere else. Iâve gotten to do things that none of my college peers have gotten to do. So no, I donât regret joining the Marines.â
I meant it, too. Even though I certainly had some difficult experiences, which, to be fair I expectedâI also wanted them. I donât regret it. There are different variations to the question âAre you glad that you joined the Marines?â I think the best way that I have found to answer the question is that it was the right decision for me, at that time, with what I knew then.
People would almost always follow that up with a question about Afghanistan. It might be âWhat do you think about Afghanistan?â or âWhatâs it like over there?â or the most irritating of all âDid you kill anyone?â As for Afghanistan, Iâm proud of what I accomplished over there, and more so of what my Marines did, day in and day out. We answered the call of our country after 9/11, and did what we were asked to do.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: MR. JOHNSONâS HISTORY CLASS, GREEN HOPE HIGH SCHOOL, CARY, NC
I donât think any American will forget where they were when they first heard about the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I was a sophomore in high school. One of the students had gotten word of the first plane hitting the tower, but nobody believed him. In 2001, most kids didnât yet have cell phones, and smartphones were a thing of the future, so we had to ask permission from the teacher to use one of the computers in the classroom to check the news. Though he hadnât heard anything, Mr. Johnson consented, hoping that the report wouldnât be confirmed.
We couldnât quite believe it or understand the magnitude of the attack, but Mr. Johnson turned on the TV and we learned of the plane hitting the Pentagon and the second World Trade Center tower.
All students at the school, as most students did nationwide, spent the rest of the school day watching the news. The bells would ring, and we would all race to the next classroom, trying not to be away from a TV for too long. My English teacher got a phone call and through her tears she laughed sarcastically as she told us what was said. The administration had directed all teachers to turn off the TVs, to resume teaching according to their lesson plans, and that âtoday was a normal day.â
âToday is a pivotal day in world history. You watch,â she said to the class. âToday is not a normal day, and to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. You all have a right to be informed.Youâre not legal adults yet, but this will affect most of your adulthood.â
Pretty much every news station played the same few clips of the planes striking the towers and of the smoking buildings. I donât think anybody really believed the World Trade Center Towers would hold, but it was still shocking watching them crumble an hour after the planes hit. Certainly after the first tower collapsed, everyone held their breath, hoping against hope that the second tower wouldnât follow suit.
The final list of casualties totaled 2,996, but during the day the estimates from the various âexpertsâ ran as high as 30,000.The commentators speculated wildly, and nobody yet knew what had happened with United Airlines Flight 93 (which was deliberately crashed near Stoneycreek, PA by the hijackers as the passengers were about to regain control of the plane).
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: PRAYER SERVICE, ST. MICHAELâS CATHOLIC CHURCH, CARY, NC
I donât think Iâm alone in saying that by about noon on September 11th, I was in a state of âemotional overload;â my capacity for further shock or devastation was exhausted. Like many others, my family went to church that night, where a special prayer service was held for the victims of the attack. Again, we didnât really know anything yet, but I agreed with Senator John McCain who said that this was an âact of war.â
I had long planned on joining the Navy. Both of my parents and both grandfathers had been in the Navy. The September 11th attacks strengthened my resolve. As much as the prayers for the victims might be worthwhile, if I could help prevent another attack, I felt that I must. Itâs one thing to attack combatantsâanother entirely to attack people who are just going about their daily routine.
Sitting in that church in 2001, there were still seven years before I would commission in the military. I was sure that any counterattacks or wars would be resolved long before I would be old enough to play a part. After all, any military interventions would have to be twice as long as World War II for me to get a piece of the action, right? Still, I wanted to go to the Naval Academy, join the Navy, and help prevent another attack like 9/11.
FEBRUARY 2004: CARY, NC
I had been waiting for months for the admission decision letter from the Naval Academy to arrive. I knew the chances of being admitted to the Naval Academy were slim, but it is what I had always wanted to do. When I was at St. Bernadetteâs Catholic Elementary School growing up, I used to pretend that our blue and white uniforms were the uniforms of midshipmen, and when we walked in two neat lines as a class, I would pretend that we were marching. I was the only one in the class who would square the corners in the hallway. I thought I was pretty cool. Everyone else just thought I was weird. I was wrong; they were right.
But it had finally arrived. I still have that letter, actually. I pulled it out to make sure I got the words that I read that day just right:
Dear Jeffrey:
Congratulations! We are pleased to announce that the Admissions Board has found you scholastically qualified for admission to the U.S. Naval Academy with the Class of 2008. You are guaranteed an offer of appointment. . . and so on . . . look forward to welcoming you as a member of the Brigade of Midshipmen.
Sincerely,
S.B. LATTA
Captain, U.S. Navy
Director of Admissions
I was ready to sign the paperwork and send it back that day, but my mom was insistent that I wait.
âYou donât have to send it in yet, so donât.You have a little more time to make the decision. Take the time.You might change your mind.â
I was sure that she was wrong. But as usual, she was right. My parents had insisted that I look at a few other schools, just in case. I had gone to the prospective student orientation weekends at Georgia Tech,Virginia Tech, and NC State. I donât think I seriously looked at any other schools. I was so dead set on engineering, I didnât even look at any other majors.
The NROTC recruiter called me every week, asking me why I hadnât sent in my application yet. He didnât listen when I told him that it was because I didnât want to do NROTC. âWell, youâll submit your application eventually.â He was right.
I donât remember when it hit me, but at some point I realized that it wasnât so much a conscious decision as a realization, that I didnât want to go to the Naval Academy. I think the academic challenge and the engineering student life at Georgia Tech was attractive, as was the idea of living in Atlanta.
I was still 100% committed to joining the Navy and I still wanted to be a surface warfare officer, but I was presented another road to get there. So I signed the NROTC papers and accepted admission to Georgia Tech. I was going to be a Ramblinâ Wreck from Georgia Tech and a helluva engineer.
AUGUST 2004: GEORGIA TECH NAVAL RESERVE OFFICER TRAINING CORPS INDOCTRINATION, NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE KINGS BAY, GA
Freshman year at Georgia Tech began with INFORM, the Navy ROTC Indoctrination for Midshipmen. It was a weeklong orientation session run by a staff composed of senior midshipmen, the staff officers, and most memorably, the Marines assigned to the unit. Several Marines are assigned to each NROTC unit to assist in the training of young midshipmen. Instead of separate Marine ROTC units, midshipmen are all lumped together in the same unit and are designated as either âNavy Optionâ or âMarine Optionâ with slightly different program requirements for each group.
Although I was a Navy Option midshipman, I received âinstructionâ from the Marines at INFORM. One of the most fear-inspiring among them was Sergeant Joshua Roberts, who had just graduated from Marine Officer Candidate School. A Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program (MECEP) candidate, he was a sophomore at Georgia State University and a fearsome sight to behold for new midshipmen. INFORM left us with an introduction to the Navy and Marine Corps, and a definite impression that only a few were qualified to be Marines.
âMost of you Navy pukes couldnât hack it,â Sergeant Roberts said, âbut youâre welcome to come out to Marine PT to see how much you suck.â
Throughout my freshman year, I continued attending Marine PT, but I thought I still wanted to be in the Navy. I didnât begin to realize that I might want to be a Marine until the summer after my freshman year at CORTRAMID, a summer training program for midshipmen.
MAY 2005: CAREER ORIENTATION TRAINING FOR MIDSHIPMEN, NAVAL STATION NORFOLK, VA
CORTRAMID stands for âCareer Orientation Training For Midshipmen.â The program is organized into four, one-week segments, each designed to expose young midshipmen to one of the major career paths that they might choose, both to help them make their career decisions and to give them some perspective on other types of naval operations. We would spend one week each with the Surface Navy, the Submarine Navy, Naval Aviation, and the Marines.
Getting to CORTRAMID was not as simple as I expected it to be. I had a set of paper military orders, as well as a paper itinerary and printout of my plane ticket from Raleigh to Norfolk. I tried to check in online, but got an error message. I chalked it up to the fact that the plane ticket had been booked through the military, and headed to the airport with my seabag. I got to the counter where the agent informed me that though my ticket had been reserved, it had never been paid for.
It looked like I would be late. Here I was, ten minutes into my career, literally on my first day of active duty, tasked with a simple assignmentâ move myself from Raleigh to Norfolk with a prepaid plane ticketâand I couldnât even get that done. After a while on hold with a few different customer service reps at the Defense Travel Service (DTS), the agent called me over to the counter.
âAlright, honey, thereâs good news and thereâs bad news. Your ticket has now been paid for. The bad news is that we just cancelled your flight.â
âThatâs not good.â
âBut it looks like we can get you there just a few hours late.Youâll have to go through Charlotte, but I think we can get you on a first class seat.â I was rebooked on the later flight and managed to get to Norfolk. This was to be the first of many experiences with the military bureaucracy and administration that was less than stellarâalthough the pinnacle of administrative failures was not to come until a few years later, which resulted in every official document for the duration of my Marine Corps career having my first name spelled incorrectly.
The CORTRAMID staff met us at the airport and brought us to our home for the next few weeks at the Bachelor Enlisted Quarters at Naval Base Norfolk. After a few days of getting settled in, taking the Navyâs Physical Readiness Test and other administrative tasks, we began our rotation.
Aviation Week was spent at Naval Air Station Oceana, nearVirginia Beach. After completing swim quals to make sure we could float if the plane crashed, and the parachute simulator to learn how to bail out, every midshipman went up in a T-34. A two-seater, single engine propeller plane, the T-34 was the Navy and...