My Men are My Heroes by Nathaniel R. Helms

orders that stung like hard rain, all the endless, repetitious training was behind them. It was time to man up. Before Kilo’s men mounted their AAVs, they were told to make a formation between their respective paths so Kasal and Captain Michael Martin, their company commander,could make a final inspection before they departed.
    Kasal was just as ramped and ready to go as his young Marines, but he couldn’t show it. They looked to him and the other NCOs and officers in the company for guidance. If the leaders seemed rattled in any way, the men would be upset, and now was not the time for histrionics. Kasal stayed calm and exuded a self-confidence and pride in his men that eased their minds and left them determined not to fail the company.
    Kasal had been in their boots before. He knew they were jittery, uptight, and eager to show their stuff. He was also well aware that nervous energy was not the best driving force to motivate young warriors. It leads to mistakes, and mistakes lead to tragedy. Kasal intended to share his lessons learned with the young men now looking to him for guidance. He had learned that being an infantryman is a unique craft, a skill that combines cunning and combat coolness with white-hot, carefully controlled aggression. Every gesture he made, every word he said was designed to teach that craft, to impart that knowledge, to model that unique mental state.
    The command group shook each man’s hand. It was never said but always understood that Martin and Kasal were saying their last goodbyes. Every Marine in the company knew what they were doing and appreciated the gesture, Kasal’s men recalled later.
    Kasal knew something else for certain: The time for training was over. Kilo was as good as it was going to be when it crossed the line of departure to begin the fight to liberate Iraq from Saddam. The moment of truth was at hand.
FORWARD!
    The first day of war in Iraq was relatively uneventful. Kilo Co. headed north in their uncomfortable, overstuffed AAVs along with a rolling city of 68,000 other Marines that flowed acrossthe desert at the excruciatingly slow pace of about 15 miles per hour. They were stuffed in the trucks like sardines, and unless the men had security watch and stood up to look outside, they remained packed inside trying to sleep or scratch their asses without smacking someone. They still wore their MOPP suits, body armor, and helmets. Weapons were clutched in every pair of hands. Several more false gas-attack alarms had reminded them that they were in a combat zone, so their despised gas masks were always near.
    All day and night the endless convoy started and stopped, started and stopped, occasionally deploying in various defensive formations only to start and stop again. Occasionally Kilo Marines would see a distant smoke plume or pass a smoldering car or truck. They even rolled over a few squashed bodies and passed beside dead Iraqis baked into the road from conflicts with the infantry battalions ahead, but the heavy combat the young Marines anticipated had not yet developed.
    Kasal sensed the war was getting closer because increasing numbers of Iraqi soldiers in dirty civilian clothes and cheap civilian shoes were surrendering to the units leading RCT1 up Route 8. Reports coming back to 3/1 identified the Iraqis as the first deserters from the 8,000-man Iraqi division in An Nasiriyah—a division that, it was rumored, would surrender rather than fight when the overwhelmingly disproportionate Coalition force got closer to the bridges at An Nasiriyah.
    Even without combat, Kilo’s men were already tired, dirty, hungry, and stressed. Kasal and Martin were not much better off. They had already run for more than 24 hours on caffeine and catnaps. Kasal knew that the infinite boredom of the road march could be as deadly a foe as combat itself if it made the men complacent and dull. He was determined not to let that happen.
    â€œMarines in combat need to be