Thank You for My Service - Mat Best Page 0,31

do a full medical sweep and search more thoroughly for any wounds. That’s when he exhaled a mouthful of blood.

Goddammit. Goddammit. Goddammit.

At twenty-three years old, five-foot-nine, and maybe 185 pounds, Sergeant Dale Brehm was a fireplug and the consummate team leader. He always had us prepared for any situation. And he’d told us many times that if he was ever wounded, we should key his mic to call in help. So that’s what I did.

“Medic, we need a medic in building 10!” I shouted through his push-to-talk.

Before I could release the button on Brehm’s radio, automatic fire opened up on the opposite side of the building. Bravo Team had just made entry from the black side and engaged an enemy combatant, killing him as they cleared their way to us. When they finally entered the living room, Peters had joined Hansen pulling security as I attempted to administer first aid to Brehm. Our platoon medic, who followed Bravo Team in, immediately dropped to his knees next to me.

“Where is he hit?” the medic shouted.

“I’m not sure, he has no exposed wounds, but he’s exhaling blood,” I replied, as the medic began to work.

I jumped to my feet, realizing that we still had no understanding of what or where the threat was. At that point, another squad from our platoon arrived and we began preparing to stage on the room where Barraza’s body was still lying motionless. The only portion of the room we couldn’t see was the far back left quadrant, so the front member of our team tossed his flash bang in that direction. Boom. I followed him and another team member in. As the white lights of our weapons intersected, we saw a man lying underneath prayer mats, trying to hide, holding an AK-47 in his hand.

We all engaged with a flurry of gunfire, killing him immediately, although he may have already been mortally wounded.

With the immediate threat neutralized, we turned back to our wounded. We had two Rangers down. Two of our leaders. Two guys who gave everything they had to every mission and would give their lives to protect every man in their command. We needed to get them on a medevac as soon as possible. As this reality began to sink in, I let my emotions get the best of me.

“You motherfucker!” I yelled as I began to pummel the dead body of the insurgent with my fists. “You fucking piece of shit!”

I was wearing my carbon fiber gloves, and they began fracturing every part of the dead combatant’s face. I could feel his orbital bones caving back into the soft tissue of his head. It was a feeling unlike any I had felt, before or since.

“Best, that’s fucking enough, let’s go,” a squad member yelled at me.

I wish I could sit here and tell you, all these years later, that I should have been able to keep it together in that moment, that I should have understood that my desire to kill these dickheads was reciprocated by their desire to kill me, and that this was just the nature of war. But you know what? Fuck that. If I could travel back in time, I would change the course of that night just to make him feel every punch while he was still alive.

As my platoon began to regroup, we prepped Brehm and Barraza for the medevac. The Black Hawks were ten minutes out. We needed to pre-stage the casualties and get them to an open field about three hundred meters away that we’d designated as the HLZ. One team loaded Brehm on a stretcher and began moving him. Barraza wasn’t so simple.

Twenty-four-year-old Staff Sergeant Ricardo Barraza was six-foot-two, 220 pounds, and a PT (physical training) stud of the highest order. Whatever the Spanish for “brick shithouse” is, he was that. Several weeks earlier, our base had held a giant flag football tournament. Our Ranger platoon fielded two twelve-man teams, one of which was led by Barraza. The rest of the teams in the tournament came from the four companies’ worth of Marines, about six hundred men total, stationed there along with us. Barraza was not going to let a bunch of Marine infantrymen outperform Rangers. In his mind, it wasn’t even an option. So he did what he always did: He went balls-out and won the whole fucking thing. He was an animal. He played with his team until 3 P.M. or so, then got some rest, got some chow, and