OCTOBER 22 2005 SAN DIEGO DOWNTOWN NEWS BOOKS IRAQ Young Men and Fire Marine Lt. Nathaniel Fick leads a band of brothers in his memoir of the Iraq War By JASON WATKINS sion of Iraq, breaching the south- DOWNTOWN NEWS ern border with Kuwait sometime in the morning hours of March 21, he most striking evi- 2003, then crossing the Euphrates dence of Nathaniel Fick’s and Tigris rivers and eventually abilities as a world-class arriving in Baghdad just as the military mind comes not statue of Saddam was being top- from his Dartmouth edu- pled by U.S. troops. Tcation nor his reverence for Marine Their journey was chronicled in Corps history nor even the bulk of Evan Wright’s acclaimed book, the decisions he made in battle, but “Generation Kill,” and in his three- rather from the single fact that he part series that appeared in Rolling returned home from war with the Stone, but Wright’s account is same number of men he left with. strictly that of an embedded Fick makes only passing mention reporter while Fick’s was written of this in his newly published book, by the man who was making the “One Bullet Away: The Making of a decisions. (In a sense, Fick’s telling Marine Officer,” in which he of the same story proves how dif- recounts his journey from Ivy ferently an event is viewed by each League upperclassman through observer.) Officer Candidate School to the bat- One of the book’s many virtues is tlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. Fick’s ability to throw a shaft of Fick downplays the survival rate of pure light on the true makeup of his platoon so much, in fact, that his men. The notion of a United one is left with the false impression States Marine as a hardened killer that this is something less than a with a piercing gaze is well war- monumental achievement. ranted (and not altogether inaccu- But Fick is no ordinary officer rate) but Fick offers us another side and his are no ordinary Marines. of the story: Midway through his military career, Fick was invited to join the PHOTO BY JOYELLE WEST elite First Reconnaissance Battal- Christmas morning dawned clear and cold. The patrol had been ion, the Corps’ elite fighting group guessed the television news that uneventful, and I walked the lines that played a vital role in the inva- night was full of reports of collater- to see the Marines. I thought some sion of Iraq and seizure of Bagh- al damage and civilian casualties. I of the younger guys might have a dad. No other group in the Marine wished people could see how much ONE BULLET AWAY Corps trains more and fights hard- hard time that day, but they were we agonized over our decisions and THE MAKING OF A MARINE OFFICER er than First Recon, and their fail- festive. A captured tumbleweed prayed they were the right ones. stood next to each fighting hole, By Nathaniel Fick ures and successes often make These choices didn’t always trans- Houghton Mifflin Company national headlines. Getting shot at, pruned by hand into a triangular late into hesitation on the trigger or encountering roadside attacks, shape of a little pine tree. Candy racking self-doubt, but sometimes October, 2005 even being fired upon by fellow and mini Tabasco bottles from it was enough to sit awake in the Hardcover, $25. Marines – it’s a miracle any of them MREs hung from the branches. cold rain just thinking about them.” made it home alive, let alone all of There were even gifts. During the Much has been made about that past week, Marines had squirreled breed of otherwise virtuous soldier away packets of cheese or pound or Marine turning into to a callous, to call Fick out as a well-to-do, Ivy nd this is exactly where Fick cake — MRE delicacies — for their unfeeling murderer in a war zone, League “thinker” with a good mil- and “One Bullet Away” so buddies. only to return home to face his itary record who aspires to one day Amasterfully succeed. In what demons with eventual unraveling. become a senator. (Why the Amer- he calls the “aftermath” of war, I mourned for myself. On one occasion, after receiving Contempt for this type runs deep ican people would find fault in this Fick is forced to face the evidence orders from his commanding offi- throughout Fick’s platoon; each behavior somehow eludes “Salty- that his experiences as a Marine Not in self-pity, but for cer to move 10 kilometers on foot man deals with war in his own way, Tex.”) Fick himself admits that he officer and as a veteran made him the kid who’d come to across rocky terrain, the Marines in at the time of his own choosing, but has no desire to run for office, into a principled, honorable and Fick’s platoon carried 200 pounds no one falls so harshly upon himself though that almost appears a heroic man. Iraq. He was gone. of gear across the desert of as Fick: waste, given that he’s currently “I took sixty-five men to war and Afghanistan under the light of the earning his master’s degree at the brought sixty-five home,” he writes. NATHANIEL FICK moon while another platoon moved As darkness fell over Valat John F. Kennedy School of Govern- FORMER MARINE CORPS CAPTAIN “I gave them everything I had. in the comfort of Humvees. Evoking Sukkar, I sat alone in the dim green ment at a little place called Har- Together, we passed the test. Fear the spirit of Tim O’Brien’s “The light of the radios. I felt sick for the vard. didn’t beat us. I hope life improves Things They Carried,” Fick writes: shepherd boys, for the girl in the “I’m really interested in policy, for the people of Afghanistan and blue dress, and for all the innocent I’m just not that interested in poli- Iraq, but that’s not why we did them. Exactly how he managed to I thought, then, of my favorite people who surely lived in tics,” Fick said during a phone what we did. We fought for each return with all 65 of his men still time at Quantico, those moments in Nasiriyah, Ar Rifa, and the other interview. “I really like walking other.” puzzles Fick, but he credits some the bunk after we sang “The towns this war would consume. I down the street and being anony- Ultimately Fick was spared from combination of skill, luck and what Marine’s Hymn.” Now, as I had at hurt for my Marines, goodhearted mous.” doing what he feared most. “I knew one of his best Marines, Rudy OCS, I sensed an outpouring of grit, American guys who’d bear these But perhaps the most unsubstan- if anybody got killed, I was the one Reyes, calls the “sacred geometry pride, and raw desire to live up to burdens for the rest of their lives. tiated claim by “SaltyTex,” and a who was going to have to fly to of chance.” the traditions we’d inherited. These And I mourned for myself. Not in difficult one to make, is that Fick’s their hometown and explain to Enrolled at Dartmouth and head- Marines came from places like Erie self-pity, but for the kid who’d come book and Evan Wright’s “Genera- their parents what happened,” he ed for medical school, Nathaniel and Tuscaloosa and Bedford Falls. to Iraq. He was gone. I did all this tion Kill” paints Recon Marines in a said. He never had to. Fick was so moved by a motiva- The most junior of them earned in the dark, away from the platoon, bad light. Both books are honest Both unsentimental and quietly tional speech given by a former nine hundred dollars a month. because combat command is the depictions of a misunderstood (if introspective, “One Bullet Away” Marine that, within a few months, Some had joined the Corps for loneliest job in the world. not completely overlooked) gener- emerges as one of the clearest voic- he found himself aboard a bus adventure, others for a steady pay- ation within the military, and both es to come out of the current war. headed for Officer Candidate check or to stay out of jail. Now they portray these men as honest and Nathaniel Fick is just one man School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia. all kept walking for one another. n a recent reader review on caring, crude and violent, feared telling one story about one particu- “I wanted to go on a great adven- Amazon.com, an anonymous and respected killers. To suggest, lar moment in time, and yet he and ture, to prove myself, to serve my “One Bullet Away” makes no Iperson who claims to be a part like “SaltyTex” does, that these his men prove that uncommon country,” he writes early on in the assertions of the validity or legiti- of Fick’s platoon takes him to task accounts “hurt our reputation” and valor may well be an uncommon book. “I wanted to do something macy of the war — it’s not entirely for writing such a book so soon expose the platoon’s bad side is to virtue. so hard that no one could ever talk clear where Fick falls on the polit- after the events occurred, calling it miss the point entirely. Fick’s book shit to me.” ical spectrum except for a few brief political positioning that’s “20 years isn’t a piece of propaganda for the Former Marine Corps Captain He chose his path wisely.