Chapter 1 of GET IT ON!

Chapter 1
GET IT ON!
I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my Ranger Regiment. 
—1st stanza of the Ranger Creed
THREE WORDS. THAT’S ALL IT took. I was writing a letter home to my mom when the call rang out across the American compound. “Get it on!” And just like that, the course of my life was changed forever.

A mission was coming down and it was time to gear up. Like firefighters running for their coats and helmets or fighter pilots scrambling to their jets, men dropped what they were doing and hustled toward their weapons to begin the transformation from soldier to superman. 
Dear Mom, Hope all is well at home. I’ll have to finish this letter a little later. We just got a call. Nothing to worry about. Probably a false alarm. Love, Keni. 
I was wrong. Fifteen minutes later I was locked and loaded and on board an MH-60 Black Hawk screaming along the African coastline en route to a target building deep in the war-torn heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. A report came in over the headset that heavy weapons were spotted on the objective. We were going in hot. I sat in the open door, knees to the breeze, with the Indian Ocean gleaming beneath me in the late afternoon sun. As the shadow of the helicopter glided off the turquoise water, up over the dingy beach, and into the urban sprawl of the third-world slums below, the thoughts I enjoyed just moments before of home in Florida and Mom’s pecan pie were a lifetime away.

We knew going in it was a dangerous part of town. We knew there were bad guys waiting for us on the objective. We knew a daylight raid was an increased risk. What we didn’t know is by the time it was all done, nineteen of us would never make it back and another seventy-eight would be wounded. Even the fortunate minority who did not get shot, fragmented, or blown up would forever carry the emotional scars that are standard issue for the combat veteran. The body will heal itself in time. The heart and mind take a whole lot longer.

Three words were all it took to get me there. I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to figure out why God pulled me out.

“The army taught me some great lessons—to be prepared for catastrophe—to endure being bored—and to know that however fine a fellow I thought myself in my usual routine, there were other situations . . . in which I was inferior to men that I might have looked down upon had not experience taught me to look up.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)

It was supposed to have been a day off for the men of Task Force Ranger. We had been in Somalia for almost three months going nonstop day and night. If we weren’t running a mission into the city, then we were busy training for one. Here it was October and finally we were catching a break. It was good to hear the boys laughing and enjoying the afternoon. Some of them were outside playing volleyball. Some were doing whatever it is they do on their downtime to kill time.

The military is full of all walks of life. You get some pretty squared away people who become your best friends. But there’s also those stereotypically strange individuals who, on their day off, would prefer to sit in the shadows sharpening knives for hours at a time. Good thing they were on our side. You don’t have to like everyone you work with. You just have to count on them.

I climbed on top of a big storage connex to find some real estate to call my own. Seclusion is a pipe dream when you live with four hundred men in an airplane hangar. From up there I could at least enjoy the breeze coming in off the ocean. The Mogadishu Airport was less than a mile from the coast. Thank God, because without the wind, the air smelled like crap. Literally. The nasty, stinking porta-potties were baking in the heat. But, if you closed your eyes and forgot where you really were, it wasn’t so hard to imagine being home on the Florida coast, where right about now, my friends were probably on their way to the beach or church, it being Sunday and all.

It felt like a small victory to enjoy the sun rather than curse it as we usually did while training out in the sand dunes. The African heat will put a hurtin’ on you when dressed in full battle uniform. But for now, the first sergeant relaxed just a little on our dress code so most of us were hanging around in our PT uniforms of shorts and T-shirts.
Be nice if I could take my shirt off, I thought. But I knew First Sergeant Glenn Harris still wasn’t going to let us go “all Hollywood” like the Delta operators and flight crews in their Oakley sunglasses and Teva flip-flops. You can take the Ranger away from Regiment, but you can’t take Regiment away from the Ranger.

Other than the weather, there was very little to like about this place. You would think being on a beach might be enjoyable. It might have been, except the beach was strictly off limits. This wasn’t for security reasons or a fear of some random Somali attack while we were in the water. The rule was in place due to an entirely different threat—sharks.

About a mile down shore was an old meat processing plant where the Somalis used to butcher cattle and dump the remains into the water. If you’re a shark, hey, free food. But when the supply of dead cow stopped coming, the predators turned to slow humans. One Russian soldier was killed. Another U.N. peacekeeper lost a bite-size portion of her hip. So no beach for us.

It didn’t matter if we were allowed to go swimming or not. We rarely had time to ourselves, except at the end of the day before lights out. That’s when we would return to our cots to write letters, read books, listen to music, play board games, or maybe go to the TV room and watch movies. We had a box of tapes and a VCR. But how many times can you watch Platoon? Quiet time to ourselves is a place when a soldier starts thinking about something other than soldiering. Home. How’s my family? Wonder what my friends are doing? Wonder how she’s doing? Suddenly those somewhat average evenings on the couch watching a movie at my girlfriend’s house sure seem a lot more wonderful now.God, I miss her.

Sometimes, if we were lucky, we had a letter to read or a package to open. Mail call for a soldier is a bit of a magic moment. When something arrives with your name on it via the U.S. mail, it feels like your own personal Christmas, only with more meaning. When you’re stuck out in some remote godforsaken chunk of the world, as soldiers always are, it’s easy to think no one back home remembers you. A letter with your name on it meant someone still cared. It meant you weren’t forgotten. It was your one link to the magical place we once knew called home. I was fortunate. I got a lot of letters, so I would spread the love and share them with my buddies.

I think the reason I got more mail than most was because I knew a lot of girls. I’m not sure if it’s been documented or not, but it’s a well-known fact girls are much better at writing letters than guys. If you write to a girl, she’ll usually write you back. You see how that works?

We didn’t have cell phones and e‑mail back then, so if you wanted to receive, you had to give. You had to make an effort. Find a piece of paper and the preferred writing instrument of your choice. A pencil or pen for most. A crayon for some. And then, here’s the hard part, convert your thoughts into actual sentences and write them down. Sign your name, fold the letter up, put it in an envelope, write an address on it, seal it up, buy a stamp, lick it, stick it, walk it to the mail box, and drop it in the slot. And then you wait. Waiting is something a soldier is very adept at doing.

The only real excitement going on around the compound was the occasional mortar attack. The first couple times it was a bit unsettling. For a split second you hear the incoming round ripping through the air. Then you feel its impact followed by the sound of the explosion. Everyone would grab their gear and run for a bunker. The randomness of where the rounds might land was not a gamble I liked having to make. It was like an old lady pumping nickels into a slot machine. Sooner or later she’s gonna hit one. I didn’t want to be the jackpot for some Somali insurgent and his mortar tube.

By about the third time we got mortared, we somehow got used to the ordeal. It became more of a hassle than a threat. I realized there wasn’t a thing you could do about it, so what was the point in fearing it? Eventually, it got to where guys began to cheer when a random mortar round would explode somewhere in our vicinity. I’m not kidding you. They cheered. There was even a mortar betting pool where you could wager on how many rounds would land and on what day. For the soldier doing time in a combat zone, humor is good cover and concealment from reality.

“And each man stands with his face in the light of his own drawn sword. Ready to do what a hero can.” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

The call to “Get it on” was always welcomed, and I’m sure you can see why. Like a lifeguard secretly hoping someone starts to drown, it meant perhaps this time we would finally get the chance to do what we came here to do. What we trained to do. What we enlisted to do. What we thought about doing our entire lives since we were kids playing army, running around the streets of our neighborhoods shooting at each other with sticks, dirt clogs, and bottle rockets.

Wanting to fight lies in the heart of every man since boyhood. Thank God, because where would we be without those very same boys who we have trained and sent to do the dirty work of the real world? War is a terrible and unfortunate reality, but it is as much a part of mankind as fire and rain. Both can be beneficial. Both can be ultimately destructive.

The point is, without warriors willing to stand up and be sent, the world would be ruled by the wicked and ill-intended. We were born into a world at war. Before any of us even drew a living breath on this planet, there was good and there was evil. Both are fighting for your very soul. The fight has always been here. But somewhere along the line of raising a boy into a man, the obscurity of moral correctness gradually concocts itself into a confusing cloud of ambiguity. Society, school, church, friends, the opinions of scholars, or your mother divorced from a combat veteran who chose duty over family, begin to remold your conscience, which tells you wanting to go fight is wrong. It’s a bad thing and you are screwed up for wanting to do so.

As a soldier, you ignore those “voices of morality.” You learn to embrace the role of the warrior and its social outcast image. So you speak with comical rhetoric using tough guy one-liners to reinforce the triviality of death—“Kill something everyday no matter how small, just to stay proficient” or one of my favorites, “You can run, but you’ll only die tired.” We name ourselves “devil dogs” and “Night Stalkers.” “Hunter/killer teams” always sounded better to me than “reconnaissance.”

From day one of basic training, the soldier sings “Hooah, hooah!” and callous cadences about the honorable destruction of the enemy. Call him “the enemy” and he’s no longer human. Say it enough and you’ll begin to believe it. You have to desensitize yourself because, if you don’t, your conscience will tear you apart and you’ll become combat ineffective. You will be incapable of doing whatever needs to be done at the time it needs doing. So the warrior must hide the good boy that society expects of him and become the hard man the nation needs him to be—a highly trained, highly motivated, and highly effective killer of men.

This is why we used a lot of humor about ourselves. It was a way to mask our “socially unacceptable” enthusiasm for what we really hoped for, the call to “get it on.” Though it may very well be screwed up, we wanted the real deal, the chance to pull the trigger and get “the enemy” we were after. Besides, the sooner we got the job done, the sooner we could get out of this hole and back to America, the land of hot showers, our own bed, real toilets, wives, kids, and girlfriends.

“Get it on!”

I tucked the letter to my mom away and hustled to the hangar toward my cot where my gear was stowed. I pulled the desert‑patterned BDU pants up over my PT shorts, buttoned the blouse, laced on the boots, and started gearing up. All around me men were doing the same, strapping on body armor, slinging equipment, checking weapon systems, and mentally transitioning from volleyball to combat. Some guys were joking with the usual sarcasm that “this was gonna be the big one.” Some guys said nothing at all.

Whatever the outside appearance of these soldiers may have been, I can tell you with certainty what was going on inside. The mental roller coaster we put ourselves through was in full swing. One afternoon you are on your own time thinking like a son, a father, or a husband of life back home. Then suddenly you are called to action and, just like that, you are expected to transform into a combat professional, concentrating only on the immediate task at hand.

Your brain begins to pump adrenaline into your system. Your mind starts racing through your job responsibilities, tactics, mission parameters, combat scenarios, and other life and death matters. All the while, you’re hoping this time will indeed “be the big one,” but you never let yourself get too excited because more often than not, it’ll end up being a false alarm. In fact, that very same morning we were alerted, geared up, and made it as far as the aircraft, only to be told the mission was a “no go.” “Oh well, back to playing volleyball.”

Being alerted was a fairly common occurrence. Since the Somali militia already knew we were there, the idea was to keep them guessing as to when we were coming. Sometimes we would simply fly around the city in what was called “signature flights.” Sometimes we would do false insertions. Every now and then there was a real live confirmed target and the mission was a go. But you never really knew until the last minute. Combat has always rightly been described as long periods of boredom interrupted by instantaneous chaos.

Even though the call to arms was becoming routine, it was crucial you never took the routine for granted. Like a firefighter on duty at the station, sooner or later the call is going to come. Can’t tell you when. Can’t tell you where. But it’s going to come. And when it does, you better be ready. In his haste to get out the door and rush to the emergency, you can imagine how easy it might be for the firefighter to forget something important like his oxygen tank or an IV bag. The true professional, however, does not make that kind of mistake, because he knows if you start taking routine for granted, it leads to something called complacency.

I don’t care what it is you do for a living; complacency is going to cause issues. And in the business of combat, those issues cost lives. Do not assume just because it was right the last time, it will automatically be right again. Always do your double checks.

“Don’t Forget Nothing!” (Captain Robert Rogers)

There was a man named Robert Rogers who is generally considered to be the very first Ranger. He and his men fought in the pre-revolutionary French and Indian wars of the American frontier. Captain Rogers had a very practical list of standing orders, appropriately called Rogers’ Rangers Standing Orders. They were an absolute given for all his men. Even the Rangers today are required to know them. The very first thing on that list was “Don’t forget nothing.” Excellent combat advice if poor English.

Once everyone gathered their gear, it was my job as a team leader to line my men up and make sure we had everything we were supposed to have as a squad. Every person had a job to do and every job depended on the other. So in heeding Capt. Rogers’ orders and to ensure nothing necessary was forgotten, we all had to double-check each other. Does the machine gunner have all his extra rounds? Is the gun bubble-wrapped to keep the dirt out on infill? Is the medical bag packed to standard?

Some of the guys carried explosives like C-4, which is a Play-Doh-like substance that can be molded and shaped to fit just about any of your demolition needs. By itself C-4 is harmless. It takes two things to make it explode, heat and pressure. This is usually accomplished by a tiny firecracker device called a blasting cap. You jam it into the Play-Doh and send an electric current to the blasting cap.

Doesn’t take much of a charge either. A 9‑volt battery is all you need. The blasting cap explodes, causing heat and pressure, which in turn detonates the C-4 and KABOOM! Your door is blown down or the wall you want to go through now has a hole in it. Since all I had was young guys who were prone to make mistakes, it was very important to me to ensure one of my guys did not pick up the blasting caps and put them in the same bag with the C-4. KABOOM in that case is not good.

Our basic load weighed about fifty pounds including the body armor and weapon. Some guys had even more to carry depending on their particular assignment. At times a Ranger feels a lot like a pack mule, only he’s expected to move as quick as a racehorse. In addition to my rifle and basic load of grenades and ammo, I also carried a sawed-off Remington shotgun I Velcroed to my hip and a rocket launcher called a LAW (light anti-tank weapon). It was a small extendable tube I hated carrying mostly because it added another four and a half pounds, which was just enough to make my knees begin to buckle.

I remember asking my platoon sergeant Sergeant First Class Sean T. Watson, “Hey, S’rgnt Watson. Why do I have to carry this thing? They don’t have any tanks.” He fired back a one-liner that could only have come from a man with years of experience and a lot more rank than me. “Because, Sgt. Thomas, it’s better to have and not need, than to need and not have. I might need it, but I’m not carrying it. So you will.” Good combat advice.

The only thing we knew for sure we would not need is our night vision devices and water. Since this mission wouldn’t take much more than an hour, we’d be back long before dark. So why carry the extra weight?

Now I’m sure Captain Rogers came about his standing orders by years of hard lessons learned and many lives lost. If “don’t forget nothing” was his very first and therefore most important point to make, you would think we Rangers would have listened more carefully. We keep relearning what history has tried so hard to teach us again and again.

Don’t forget nothing. It is better to have and not need, than to need and not have.

When you heed a lesson, it’s a good thing. When you find yourself relearning a lesson, it’s usually a bad thing. I would live them both in just a few short hours.