Redeployment(84)

When we got back from Iraq he was a mess, embarrassing himself at the Marine Ball, blacking out every weekend and probably weekdays, too. I remember him one time walking into the admin office, eight in the morning, hung over, with a huge dip of chewing tobacco in his lip, asking, “Anybody got a dip cup?” Nobody wanted to let him spit into anything they owned, so he shrugged, said, “Ahhhh, f*ck it,” and then grabbed the collar of his cammie blouse and spit into his shirt. The Marines talked about it for weeks.

That was one approach. Vockler had another. Pretty much as soon as we got back, he’d started angling to get on a deployment to Afghanistan. Iraq was running down; that much was already clear by the tail end of our deployment. So he stalked a company commander from 1/9 until he got them to reserve a line number for him. Which led him to the admin office, my office, and instead of having my Marines handle his shit, I had them send him in to me. I wanted to see him again, face-to-face.

“So you want to go to Afghanistan?” I said.

“Yes, sir, that’s where the fighting is.”

“1/9,” I said. “The Walking Dead.” As battalion mottos go, they’ve probably got the best. Thanks to Vietnam, 1/9 boasts the highest killed in action rate in Marine Corps history. Marines, who like to think of themselves as suicidally aggressive rabid dogs and who sometimes even live up to that self-image, consider this “cool.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know,” I said, “they set minimum dwell time for a reason. Just because you think you’re ready to deploy again doesn’t mean you are.”

“There’s a lot of Marines from 1/9 who’ve never deployed, sir.”

“And you’ve got the experience they need?”

“Yes, sir. They’ll need good NCOs.”

Marines often speak to officers in platitudes, so it’s sometimes hard to tell how much of what they’re saying they actually believe.

“1/9’s got a lot of Marines who’ve been over three, four, five times,” I said.

He nodded. “Sir, I know what it’s like to have really bad things happen.”

Impossible to argue with that.

“It’s very hard,” he said, his voice calm, as though he were describing weather patterns. “Chances are, these guys are gonna have to deal with the same thing.”

“Some probably will.”

“I’m good with people,” he said. “I’d be good with that.” He spoke with absolute composure. It made the room around him feel cold and still.

“Good to go,” I said. “I’m glad you’ll be over there. They’ll need good NCOs.”

I went through some of the steps he’d need to take as he checked out, then sent him on his way. The last thing he asked me was, “Sir, do you think they’ll give Sergeant Deme the Medal of Honor?” It was the only point where a little of his composure seemed to crack to let some emotion through.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope so.” It hardly seemed a decent answer.





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I saw Vockler only two more times after that day in my office. First was at the ceremony where they awarded Sergeant Deme the Navy Cross, where he and Boylan both tried and failed to avoid crying. That was the week I got my acceptance letter from NYU. I was certain I wouldn’t have gotten in without my Marine Corps résumé. To NYU, I was a veteran. Two deployments. That meant something to them.

The last time was the day Vockler left for Afghanistan. I was doing a three-mile run during my lunch break and his company was staged up off McHugh Boulevard, waiting for the buses. The families had enough U.S. flags that if you’d draped yourself in the Stars and Stripes it’d have constituted camouflage, and it was hot enough that every fat uncle there had pit stains big enough to meet in the middle of their chest.

Vockler was in a circle of Marines, all of them smoking and joking like they were about to go on a camping trip, which from a certain perspective was true.

I stopped my run and dropped by. Vockler saw me and grinned. “Sir!” he said. He didn’t salute, but it didn’t seem disrespectful.

“Corporal,” I said. I put my hand out and he shook it vigorously. “Good luck over there.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’ll do great,” I told him. “Handling your transfer, that’s one of the things in my job I get to feel proud of.”