Death and After
in Iraq
By Chris Hedges
March 22, 2011 "Truthdig" - - Jess Goodell
enlisted in the Marines immediately after she
graduated from high school in 2001. She
volunteered three years later to serve in the
Marine Corps first officially declared
Mortuary Affairs unit, at Camp Al Taqaddum in
Iraq. Her job, for eight months, was to
collect and catalog the bodies and personal
effects of dead Marines. She put the remains
of young Marines in body bags and placed the
bags in metal boxes. Before being shipped to
Dover Air Force Base, the boxes were stored,
often for days, in a refrigerated unit known
as a reefer. The work she did was
called processing.
We went through
everything, she said when I reached her
by phone in Buffalo, N.Y., where she is about
to become a student in a Ph.D. program in
counseling at the University of Buffalo.
We would get everything that the body
had on it when the Marine died. Everyone had
a copy of The Rules of Engagement in their
left breast pocket. You found notes that
people had written to each other. You found
lists. Lists were common, the things they
wanted to do when they got home or food they
wanted to eat. The most difficult was
pictures. Everyone had a picture of their
wife or their kids or their family. And then
you had the younger kids who might be 18
years old and they had prom pictures or
pictures next to what I imagine were their
first cars. Everyone had a spoon in their
flak jacket. There were pens and trash and
wrappers and MRE food. All of it would
get sent back [to the Marines homes].
We all had the
idea that at any point this could be us on
the table, she said. I think
Marines thought that we went over there to
die. And so people wrote letters saying
If I die I want you to know I love you.
I want my car to go to my younger
brother. Things like that. They carried
those letters on their bodies. We had a
Marine that we processed and going through
his wallet he had a picture of a sonogram of
a fetus his wife had sent him. And a lot of
Marines had tattooed their vital information
under an armpit. It was called a meat tag.
The unit processed
about half a dozen suicides. The suicide
notes, she said, almost always cited hazing.
Women, she said, were constantly harassed,
especially sexually, but it often did not
match the systematic punishment and
humiliation meted out to men who were deemed
to be inadequate Marines. She said that
Marines who were overweight or unable to do
the physical training were subjected to
withering verbal and physical abuse. They
were called fat nasties and
shit bags. The harassed Marines
would be assigned to other individual Marines
and become their slaves. They would be sent
on punishing runs in which many of them
vomited. They would be forced to bear-crawlwalk
on all foursthe length of a football
field and back. This would be followed by
sets of monkey fuckersbending down,
grabbing the ankles, crouching down like a
baseball catcher and then standing up
againfollowed by a series of other
exercises that went on until the Marines
collapsed.
They make these
Marines do what they call bitch
work, Goodell said. They are
assigned to be someone elses
bitch for the day. We had a guy
in our platoon, not in Iraq but in California,
and he was overweight. He was on remedial PT,
which meant he went to extra physical
training. When he came to work he was rotated.
One day he was with this corporal or this
sergeant. One day he was sent to me. I had
him for an hour. I remember sending him
outside and making him carry things. It was
very common for them to dig a hole and fill
it back up with sand or carry sandbags up to
the top of a hill and then carry them down
again.
The unit was
sent to collect the bodies of the Marines who
killed themselves, usually by putting rifles
under their chins and pulling the trigger.
We had a Marine
who was in a port-a-john when he blew his
face off, she said. We had
another Marine who shot himself through the
neck. Often they would do it in the corner of
a bunker or an abandoned building. We had a
couple that did it in port-a-johns. We had to
go in and peel and pull off chunks of flesh
and brain tissue that had sprayed the walls.
Those were the most frustrating bodies to get.
On those bodies we were also on cleanup crew.
It was gross. We sent the suicide notes home
with the bodies.
We had the
paperwork to do fingerprinting, but we
started getting bodies in which there
werent any hands or we would get bodies
that were just meat, said Goodell, who
in May will publish a memoir called
Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq.
The book title refers to the form that
required those in the mortuary unit to shade
in black the body parts that were missing
from a corpse. Very quickly it became
irrelevant to have a fingerprinting page to
fill out. By the time we would get a body it
might have been a while and rigor mortis had
already set in. Their hands were usually
clenched as if they were still holding their
rifle. We could not unbend the fingers easily.
The unit was also sent
to collect Marines killed by improvised
explosive devices (IEDs). The members would
arrive on the scene and don white plastic
suits, gloves and face masks.
One of the first
convoys we went to was one where the Army had
been traveling over a bridge and an IED had
exploded, she said. It had
literally shot a seven-ton truck over the
side and down into a ravine. Marines were
already going down into the ravine. We were
just getting out of our vehicles. We were
putting on our gloves and putting coverings
over our boots. I was with a Marine named
Pineda. I was coming around the Humvee and
there was a spot on the ground that was a
circle. I looked at it and thought something
must have exploded here or near here. I went
over to look at it. I looked in and saw a
boot. Then I noticed the boot had a foot in
it. I almost lost my lunch.
In the seven-ton
truck the [body of the] assistant driver, who
was in the passenger seat, was trapped in the
vehicle, she said. All of his
body was in the vehicle. We had to crawl in
there to get it out. It was charred. Pineda
and I pulled the burnt upper torso from the
truck. Then we removed a leg. Some of the
remains had to be scooped up by putting out
hands together as though we were cupping
water. That was very common. A lot of the
deaths were from IEDs or explosions. You
might have an upper torso but you need to
scoop the rest of the remains into a body bag.
It was very common to have body bags that
when you picked them up they would sink in
the middle because they were filled with
flesh. The contents did not resemble a human
body.
The members of the
mortuary unit were shunned by the other
Marines. The stench of dead flesh clung to
their uniforms, hair, skin and fingers. Two
members of the mortuary unit began to
disintegrate psychologically. One began to
take a box of Nyquil tablets every day and
drink large quantities of cold medicine. He
was eventually medevaced out of Iraq.
Our cammies would be stained with
blood or with brains, she said.
When you scoop up the meat it often
would get on the cuffs of our shirts. You
could smell it, even after you took off your
gloves. We werent washing our cammies
everyday. Your cuff comes to your face when
you eat. Physically we were stained with
remains. We had a constant smell like rotten
meat, which I guess is what it was since
often the bodies had been in the sun and the
heat for a long time. The flesh had gone bad.
The skin on a body in the hot sun slides off.
The skin detaches itself from the layer
beneath and slides around on itself.
Our platoon was
to the Marines what the Marines are to much
of America: We did things that had to be done
but that no one wanted to know about,
she said. The other Marines knew what
we did, but they did not want to think it
could happen to them. I had one female Marine
in my tent who would talk to me. The rest
would not give me the time of day. The
Marines in Mortuary Affairs knew that any day
could be our day. Other Marines, who have to
go out on the convoys, who have to get up the
next day, have to get on with life.
Her unit once had to
recover two Marines who had drowned in a lake.
It appeared one had leapt in to save the
other. The bodies, which were recovered after
a couple of days by Navy divers, were
grotesquely swollen. One of the Marines was
so bloated and misshapened that the body was
difficult to carry on a litter.
His neck was as
wide as his bloated head, and his stomach
jutted out like a barrel, she writes in
the book. His testicles were the size
of cantaloupes. His face was white and puffy
and thick. Not fat, but thick. It was unreal.
He looked like a movie prop, with thick, gray,
waxy skin and the thick purple lips. We
couldnt stop looking at these bodies
because they were so out of proportion and so
disfigured and because, still, they looked
like us.
It was hardest to look
into the faces of the dead. She and the other
members of the mortuary unit swiftly covered
the faces when they worked on the bodies.
They avoided looking at the eyes of the
corpses.
Once, the unit had to
process seven Marines killed in an explosion.
Seven or eight body bags were delivered to
the bunker.
We had clean
body bags set up so we could sort the flesh,
she said. Sometimes things come in with
nametags. Or sometimes one is Hispanic and
you could tell who was Hispanic and who was
the white guy. We tried separating flesh. It
was ridiculous. We would open a body bag and
there was nothing but vaporized flesh. There
were not four hands or a whole leg in a bag.
We tried to distribute the mush evenly
throughout the bags. We were trying to do the
best we could sorting it out. We had the last
body bag come in. We opened up the body bag
and it was filled with the heads. I looked at
four before looking away. Not only did we
have to look at them, we had to pick them up
and figure out who it belonged to. The eyes
were looking back at us. We got used to a lot
of it. But the heads worked the other way.
They affected us more strongly as time passed.
We saw on the heads the expressions of fright
and horror. It made us wonder what we were
doing here.
She processed one
Marine whose face was twisted at the moment
of death by rage. The face of this Marine
began to haunt her.
I had this
feeling that something awful had occurred,
she said. The way he had come in and
stiffened he had this look to his face that
made my stomach curl. It looked angry. Often
expressions on bodies would look fearful and
hurt. The faces looked as though they had
received death. But this face looked like he
had given death.
She and the other
members of the unit became convinced they
could feel and hear the souls of the dead
Marines they had processed and housed in
their reefers.
And then
there was a body that was brought in one day
that was not stiff.
He was fully
dressed in his cammies and his whole body was
intact, she said. His hands were
lying folded across his stomach.
She and the others
noticed that the Marine on the table was
breathing lightly. The chest was going up and
down. They frantically called their superiors
to find out what to do. They were told to
wait.
Just wait? Wait
for what? she cried.
She remembers the doc
saying: Theres nothing we can do.
Just wait.
People
dont wait for this sort of thing,
she protested. What are we waiting for?
What if this Marine was your brother, would
we wait?
They stood and watched
as the man died. Goodell stormed out of the
bunker.
There was always
a heaviness in the air, she said.
It felt like I was being watched. We
would feel hands on our shoulders or hands on
our heads. Everyone had stories of sounds
they heard or things they had felt. I was on
watch at the bunker and I heard the back door
open. I assumed it was one of the Marines
coming in to use the Internet or the phone. I
waited for them to come up. They would always
come up. But no one came up. I got up and
didnt see anyone. I went back to my
duty hut and I heard footsteps walk across
the bunker. This kind of thing happened often.
Her return to the
United States was difficult, filled with
retreats into isolation, substance abuse,
deep depression and dysfunctional
relationships. Slowly she pulled her life
back together, finishing college and applying
to graduate school so she can counsel trauma
victims.
Every single
Marine I know goes to Iraq to help, she
said. While I was there that is what I
thought. That is why I volunteered. I thought
I was going to help the Iraqis. I know better
now. We did the dirty work. We were used by
the government. The military knows that young,
single men are dangerous. We breed it in
Marines. We push the testosterone. We
dont want them to be educated. They are
deprived of a lot and rewarded with very
little. It keeps us at ground level. We
cannot question anyone. We do what we are
told.
I am still in
contact with most of the people I knew,
she said. They are not coping. One
lives in VA [Veterans Affairs], constantly
seeing psychologists and psychiatrists. One
was kicked out of the Marines for three DUIs.
Another was kicked out of the Marines because
he took cocaine. Those who have gotten out
are living below the poverty level. And what
people do to cope is re-enlist. When they re-enlist
they do better. They function. I am the only
one who went to school of the 18 Marines in
Mortuary Affairs. But I am in counseling at
the VA. I have been diagnosed with PTSD,
anxiety, depression and substance abuse. What
separates me from them is that I have a great
support system and I found my salvation in my
education.
War is
disgusting and horrific, she said.
It never leaves the people who were
involved in it. The damage is far greater
than the lists of casualties or cost in
dollars. It permeates lifestyles. It infects
cultures and people and worldviews. The war
is never over for us. The fighting stops. The
troops get called back. But the war goes on
for those damaged by war.
Not long ago she
received a text message from a Marine she had
worked with in Mortuary Affairs after he
tried to commit suicide.
Ive got $2,000
in the bank, the message read.
Lets meet in NYC and go out with
a bang.
Chris Hedges
column appears every Monday at Truthdig.
Hedges, a fellow at The Nation Institute and
a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is the
author of Death of the
Liberal Class.
COMMENT
Geronimo ·22.3.2011
so infrequently does the truth about the
psychological ramifications of the culture of
warfare and superiorty and dominance come
from military personnel, particularly in such
vivid convincing detail. so sad it wont end
up on CNN/FOX/CBS/NBC/ABC/BBC/CBC..........
where it would have real potential impact,
cause here it is just preaching to the choir.
all military personnel should impress their
views on their peers since you have a degree
of respect that comes from your shared
experience that cannot be claimed by the
general population. please speak up and speak
out, you will find support from those who
despise warfare, you will not be alone even
if you are ostracized by your former
collegues and peers. please help those who
understand the hell you have been put through
to stop it from continuing. the way that you
became traumatized may be different than
others, but the feelings of being opressed,
used, and denigrated by egomaniacs is
universal and you are not alone