Dirty Secrets

Horrors of the Past

Toward the end of my tour of duty, one of my jobs was to gather dead Marines' personal effects, bag them up, and send them home: their books, their clothes, the rings they had on their fingers when their arms were shot off. Anything stained with blood was considered a biohazard and couldn't be returned. Some of the things smelled like death. Others had the odor of moon dust. Everything had an unmistakable aura of fear.

Still, I was a Marine, and I was efficient, a machine, numbed by it all. I wore two sets of latex gloves as I inspected good luck tokens, letters, photos tucked in books and envelopes, all from dead people and all meant for their survivors. Everything was logged neatly into a laptop.

Sgt. Mark Leduc, 34, wife and two kids. They'd get his ID card, his wedding ring, and a small, blue plastic frog found next to his cot.

Lance Cpl. Jim Blanchard, 40. His wife received the letters she had shipped him and the unsent letter to her he had still been working on when he was killed.

Private Chris McLeod, 22. He had a photo of a beautiful redhead in his breast pocket when he died. On the back, it said: Come home soon in one piece, you sexy man! I love you, B.

With those things neatly categorized and bagged, I turned my attention to the letters. A long sheet of paper was draped over a stone desk. My task was to write to the loved ones of the deceased.

I took a pen out of my pocket, but instead of ink, blood flowed from the tip. That didn't faze me, though, because I was beyond all feeling.

When I looked up, all three dead men were standing before me, pointing.

At me.

Blaming me.

I woke, sweating and gasping. Looking around, I felt the area near my body, then exhaled when my fingertips found cotton sheets stretched over the futon mattress.

Thank fuck. I was still in my bed. And still, fear courses through my veins.

I hadn't had a sleepwalking night terror since New Orleans—probably because I hadn't taken any Ambien, or maybe because Palmira was a truly a calming influence—but the nightmares had returned, and I hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in days. Some weeks, I'd have none and think my mind was on the mend. Then they would come roaring back every night for a long stretch.

This was apparently one of those stretches.

The dreams always involved blood and death. Sometimes, the insurgents fired on me, and on the really bad nights, my nightmares would replay the day the IED blew up the Humvee and killed Steve. In the small moments of the night like these, I felt hopeless. Alone.

As a teenager, I had often wondered whether I had what it took to be a man and fight for something right and true like my father and grandfather. Now that I'd been to war, I was left wondering whether things were ever so black and white. My therapist back in New Orleans had said I not only suffered from PTSD, but also something called "moral injury," which involved guilt and shame over the ambiguities of war.