From Baghdad with Love by Jay Kopelman (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .TXT) 📕

how perverse it seemed to toss kids a sense of their own mortality with the casualness of a softball?

“Most had yet to experience combat . . . ,” she reported. “Soon they would know.”

They weren’t adults, most were old-ish teenagers, so for Anne, humping along after them was like trying to follow a pack of adolescent pit bulls previously chained up for too many days. Most had just left home—left rented video games, first cars, and part-time jobs—to defend, against all enemies foreign and domestic, the Constitution of the United States even though many would be hard-pressed to tell you what was actually in the thing.

Was that enough? Would people back home get it? She could just come out and say it—They’re too young to be dealing with this, folks. They aren’t ready for this, folks. They only just learned to ride bikes, for God’s sake, folks—but she wondered if it would bother anyone for any meaningful period of time.

“They wanted more from life than what they had back home. They believed the Marines when they said, You can be the best.”

But she hoped she snared it when she interviewed one young grunt and asked him what his mission was here in Fallujah.

“Kill the enemy, man,” he said into her microphone. “Kill the enemy, that’s about it.”

I don’t let Lava sleep with me at first. I always scoot him off toward Anne or somebody else more willing to sleep with a snoring piglet who farts MREs all night.

Then one night Anne says to me, “He’s so adorable. What’s going to happen to him?”

I give the shrug. “Dunno.”

Another night we’re talking and she tells me she’s scheduled to go back to the States in a few weeks. Lava bounces around on our sleeping bags.

“Good for you.” I smile and roll Lava onto his back and scratch his belly until his back paws quiver.

“Then I’m coming back to report on the elections from Baghdad.”

I nod and stare down at the puppy, who provides a convenient diversion from eye contact as I tell her that I’m scheduled to rotate out in April sometime. I feel guilty about it. About leaving. But I don’t tell her.

“I imagine you’re happy about that.”

“Sure.”

“So what’s going to happen to Lava?”

I turn the puppy upright and nudge him away.

“Who knows?”

Lava rushes back, grabs one of my bootlaces, and tugs.

“He is so cute.”

“Yep.”

I push Lava away again. The puppy turns and faces me as he bends his front legs down and pushes his rear end into the air. He wags his tail and barks. Then he rushes the boots again.

“Cut it out.”

So I shove him away, right? I suddenly don’t want the little shit chewing on my boots anymore.

“What will you do when you get home?”

Lava regroups and charges.

“Not sure yet.”

This time I really push him away, let him know what’s what, and he loses his balance and his legs give out while he makes little squeaks of terror and rolls several times across the floor.

“Oh man.”

I mean, I can’t begin to explain how bad I felt about this. I mean, really bad. You know, I just shoved a little puppy across the floor. So I pull Lava back toward me and scratch the bridge of his nose. He looks up at me all tough and wags his tail like it’s no big deal.

“Hey, sorry.”

But I feel like shit and let him sleep on my poncho that night, and I think that’s how Anne finds her story.

During the fighting, the battalion gained a new member, a tiny puppy they named Lava Dog . . . Though filthy themselves, they’ve lovingly washed him down to get rid of the sand fleas.

He sleeps nestled in a Marine poncho.

CHAPTER FIVE

November 2004

Fallujah

General Order 1-A is taken pretty seriously by the military. No pets allowed. That’s because they’ve invested a lot of time and money into trashing your moral clarity, and they don’t want anything like compassion messing things up. Your job is to shoot the enemy, period, and if anything close to compassion rears its ugly head, you better shoot that down, too, or you’re in some deep, scary shit.

None of us talks about what will happen to Lava, because it means making decisions we don’t want to make for reasons we’re not being paid to consider in the first place. Frankly, it’s easier to just go blow stuff up.

Most nights Lava sleeps outside on the roof of the compound with a group of the BLT 1/3 Marines, but once the weather turns colder, he comes inside at night. That’s when he starts bugging me, hanging around looking wide-eyed and cute, all paws and snuffles and innocence.

In reality, when he isn’t asleep, he’s anything but innocent. I personally saw the little monster destroy several maps, two pairs of boots, one cell phone, photographs of someone’s kids, five pillows, and some grunt’s only pair of socks.

One morning I wake up and find Lava sitting near my sleeping bag staring at me, with his left ear flapped forward and the remains of a toothpaste tube stuffed in his mouth.

“Morning,” I say.

He replies with a minty belch and then barfs up standard-issue Colgate all over my sleeping bag.

In addition to forbidding pets, General Order 1-A also prohibits any conduct that is “prejudicial to the maintenance of good order and discipline of all forces,” meaning that anything that diminishes morale or discipline is banned. This includes drinking alcohol in countries that don’t allow it, entering religious sites without special orders, the theft or destruction of archaeological artifacts, and the taking of souvenirs. Anything that bargains with a Marine’s discipline, anything that toys with his ability to shoot and shoot well, has to be censored.

I know what’s what in that department. During World War II only 15 percent of the troops actually fired at their enemies in battle, because most of them didn’t want to kill anyone. The problem is that sticky moral compass that