Billy Summers [en]

I told him I would pass and he said that was good, because the rattle was way at the bottom of his pack, and he’d have to dump all his shit out to get it. If it was even still there, that was. All these years later I wonder if it would have worked. I eventually had that tooth pulled.

Pill’s most amazing cure – that I saw, anyway – was in August of ’04. It was the slack time between Operation Vigilant Resolve in April and Phantom Fury, the big one, in November. During those months, the American politicians had their own panic attack. Instead of letting us go in full-bore, they decided to give the Iraqi police and military one more chance to clean out the muj themselves and restore order. The big Iraqi politicians said it would work, but they were all in Baghdad. In Fallujah, a lot of the police and military were muj.

During that period, we mostly stayed out of the city. For six weeks in June and July we weren’t even there, we were in Ramadi, which was relatively quiet. Our job, when we did go into Fallujah, was to win ‘hearts and minds.’ This meant our translators – our terps – made nice on our behalf with the mullahs and community leaders instead of bawling ‘Come out, you pig-fuckers’ through loudspeakers as we drove rapidly through the streets, always expecting to get shot at or blown up or RPGd. We gave out candy and toys and Superman comic books to the kids, along with fliers for them to take home, talking about all the services the government could provide and the insurgency couldn’t. The kids ate the candy, traded the comics, and threw away the fliers.

During Phantom Fury we stayed in what came to be known as Lalafallujah (after Lollapalooza) for days at a time, sleeping when we could on rooftops with overwatch on the four main corners of the compass, keeping an eye out for muj creeping up on other rooftops, ready to do damage and inflict hurt. It was like the death of a thousand cuts. We took in hundreds of RPGs and other weaponry, but the hajis never seemed to run out.

During that summer, though, our patrols were almost like a 9-to-5 job. On days when we went in to win ‘hearts and minds,’ we’d leave when the sun was up and head back to base before it got dark. Even with the fighting in a lull, you didn’t want to be in Lalafallujah after dark.

One day when we were coming back we saw Mitsubishi Eagle station wagon overturned on the side of the road, still smoking. The front end was blown off, the driver’s door was open, and there was blood on what was left of the windshield.

‘Fuck me, that’s the lieutenant colonel’s ride,’ Big Klew said.

There was a CSH tent set up at the base – the Combat Surgical Hospital. Without sides, it was actually more of a pavilion with a couple of big fans set up at either end. It was over a hundred degrees that day. About like usual, in other words. We could hear Jamieson screaming.

Pill went running, slipping off his pack as he went. The rest of us followed. There were two other patients in the tent, clearly fucked up with their own shit but not as divinely fucked up as Jamieson, because they were on their feet. One had his arm in a sling, the other had a bandage wound around his head.

Jamieson was lying on a cot with stuff, I think they call it Ringer’s lactate, running into his arm. The place where his left foot used to be had a pressure bandage on it, but the foot was gone and the bandage was already bleeding through. His left cheek was torn open and that eye was bleeding and all crooked in its socket. A couple of grunts were holding him down while a medic tried to get him to swallow some morphine tabs, but the lieutenant colonel was having none of it. He kept twisting his head from side to side, his good eye bulging and terrified. It landed on Pill.

‘Hurts!’ he yelled. There was nothing of the old bossy (but sometimes funny) l-c in him. The pain had swallowed all that. ‘Hurts! Oh my fucking God it fucking hurts!’

‘Dustoff’s on the way,’ one of the medics said. ‘Take it easy. Swallow these. You’ll feel bet—’

Jamieson raised one bloody hand and swatted the pills away. Johnny Capps chased after them and picked them up.

‘Hurts! Hurrts! HURRRRTS!’

Pill dropped to his knees beside the cot. ‘Listen to me, sir. I got a cure for the pain, better than the morph.’

Jamieson’s remaining eye rolled toward Pill, but I didn’t think it was seeing anything. ‘Briggs? Is that you?’

‘Yessir, Corpsman Briggs. You gotta sing.’

‘This hurts so bad!’

‘You gotta sing. It bypasses the pain.’

‘It’s true, sir,’ Taco said, but he gave me a look that said What the fuck?

‘Here we go,’ Pill said. He started to sing. He had a good voice. ‘If you go down to the woods today … now you.’

‘Hurts!’

Pill took him by the right shoulder. Jamieson’s shirt was shredded on the other side and blood was oozing through. ‘Sing it and you’ll feel better. Guaranteed. I’ll give it to you one more time. If you go down to the woods today …’

‘If you go down to the woods today,’ the l-c croaked. Then: ‘“The Teddy Bears’ Picnic”? You have to be fucking shitting m—’

‘No, sing it.’ Pillroller looked around. ‘Somebody help me. Who knows the fucking song?’