Redeployment(82)

We were getting far afield. “The citation…,” I said, looking it over again. “A lot of what you write here… it’s beside the point.”

Boylan put his head in his hands.

“Look, Kevin,” I said, “I’ve edited a million citations. Some of them for valor. And the point is not what a wonderful guy Deme was. I’m sure there’s plenty of wonderful guys in your unit. I think you’re a wonderful guy. Should we give all of you the Medal of Honor?”

Boylan shook his head.

I turned to my computer and clicked through my folders. At random, I pulled up a citation from my last deployment. It was for a Corpsman who’d treated Marines injured in an IED despite having a ballpoint pen–sized piece of shrapnel stuck a centimeter below his groin, barely missing his balls and a hair away from his femoral artery. “Displaying the utmost courage…,” I read, “with complete disregard for his own injuries.” I closed the file and opened another. “Decisive leadership,” I read, “fearlessly exposing himself to enemy fire… great personal risk… with complete disregard for his own safety.” I opened another one. “Displaying the utmost courage… bold leadership… wise judgment… his courageous actions enabled…” I looked up. “You get the idea.”

Boylan’s face let me know he didn’t.

“We don’t give awards for being a great guy,” I said.

“He was a great guy,” Boylan said.

“No shit. That’s pretty f*cking clear. But you don’t use a citation to describe the richness of all his humanity and blah blah blah. He’s got to measure up to every other Marine who did ridiculously brave shit. And there’s a lot of ridiculously brave Marines. Really. It’s ridiculous. So it’s not about Deme. Or rather, what it’s about is how Marine he was, not how Deme he was. You’ve got to fit him into all the right categories.”

Boylan didn’t seem to be listening.

“Hey,” I said. He looked up. “There’s good news. Decisive leadership, check. Rapidly organized his unit to provide suppressive fire, check. Complete disregard for his own safety, check. Utmost courage, check. I could go on. I don’t know the full details, but there’s a lot to work with here.”

Boylan smiled. “It’s good talking to you,” he said. “There’s no chicks here. But I can talk to you.”

I sighed. “Great,” I said. “How about I write the damn thing?”

Boylan nodded happily, one small weight among many lifting off his shoulders.





? ? ?


The colonel let me track down the details and I ended up getting the story in bits and pieces. The Marines I talked to tended to ramble in little grief-stricken monologues, so I learned not only what Deme did that day, but also that he and his wife rescued pit bulls, that he wrote terrible rap songs and sang them over oddly soothing homemade beats, that his wife was “crazy hot, wanna-lick-her-ass-like-an-ice-cream-cone hot,” and that his daughters were “crazy f*ckin’ retardedly cute.” But I also got, “There was a ceiling of small-arms fire,” and, “When I saw Vockler’s head snap back like a broken f*cking doll,” and, in a hollow monotone from James Vockler himself, “I should be dead, not him.” Everything I needed, and I took those phrases and turned them into the flat, regimented prose the Corps requires for its medals.

Here’s what you won’t get from Vockler, who quickly became known in the battalion as “the guy Deme died saving.” The highlights:

After the (unidentified) enemy opened up on his squad in a narrow alley, Sergeant Deme rushed to the front of the squad, realized he had three helplessly wounded men, organized suppressive fire, and ran into the kill zone to rescue his guys. I don’t have any experience with combat, and I certainly don’t have any experience with organizing suppressive fire, running into kill zones, or rescuing people, but I’m reliably informed by Marines who know about those things that it takes huge f*cking balls.

With bullets flying everywhere, ricocheting off the narrow walls of the alley like some pinball machine of death on tilt, Sergeant Deme ran up and grabbed the unconscious Vockler by his flak and pulled him out of danger. Then he ran back and was pretty much immediately shot in the face. So it’s more accurate to say that Sergeant Deme died while trying unsuccessfully to save the lives of the other two Marines in Vockler’s fire team than it is to say he died saving Vockler.