Thank You for My Service - Mat Best Page 0,33

deck. The crew chief signaled a thumbs-up and dropped two stretchers onto the rooftop.

As we loaded the three most severely injured onto the stretchers, I spotted Hansen sitting against a wall. He had ball bearings in his leg and a completely shattered foot. Of my four-man Alpha team, I was now the only non-casualty. It was pure luck, though at the time it felt more like a curse.

Hansen watched as his more seriously wounded teammates were lifted and stretchered to the HLZ. “Of course, I’m going to have to walk my ass out of here, aren’t I?” he said. It wasn’t a question. He stood up on his good leg and hobbled toward the HLZ, in true Ranger fashion.

After hauling our Navy SEAL EOD counterpart to the HLZ (he had also taken multiple ball bearings throughout his body and suffered a significant fracture of his arm), I was finally able to link back up with my platoon and exfil. As I sat crammed in between my teammates and some enemy combatants we had taken off target, a mix of emotions rushed through my head: hate, vengeance, and strongest of all, disbelief. I was in the same position where I’d sat on the helo ride into the target earlier that night. From nearly this exact vantage point only a few hours before, I’d watched Barraza, with night vision goggles lighting up his eyes, stare out over the moonlit Iraqi terrain. I didn’t know what he’d been thinking about, but I knew it was good and it was just, because I knew Ricardo Barraza. Now, as I blinked to clear the blood-sweat out of my eyes, in that brief flash, I could see that moment all over again. It was a moment that was gone as soon as it happened, but it was one that seared itself into my consciousness, a memory that would never fade.

We returned to base just after 6 A.M., later than usual, and were immediately debriefed. That was when we learned, officially, that Sergeant Dale Brehm, twenty-three, and Staff Sergeant Ricardo Barraza, twenty-four, had been killed in action, doing what they loved for something they believed in, something greater than themselves. Duty, God, Country. Their band of brothers.

They died honorably, but their deaths were no less tragic to the people who loved them. Dale, who got his Ranger tab on September 10, 2001, would have had his twenty-fourth birthday coming three days later. Ricky was going to get married just weeks after we got back. Both men, who had grown up less than three hours away from each other in the Central Valley in California and joined the Army out of high school like the rest of us, were on their sixth tours.

About a week later, I was stateside to bury one of my mentors and my friends. As the honor guard carried Dale Brehm across the rolling grounds of Arlington Cemetery to his final resting place beneath a temporary white cross driven into the earth, I made certain to remember the things about him and Ricky that I admired most. I wanted to fuse these things into my character and make sure their legacies lived on in my heart and in my actions. I recommitted myself on a daily basis to my family, the way Dale had when he gave all his focus to his wife when they were together. I resolved to become a better warrior and an even better man, following Barraza’s fearless example in the face of adversity.

Dale Brehm and Ricardo Barraza went down fighting that March night, each one, in his own way, saving my life. Their sacrifice will forever be my motivation to live. But more immediately, it would be my inspiration to double-time it down to Ranger School only a few short days later and work to become the kind of leader they showed me it was possible to be. Godspeed, brothers.

Chapter 7

Tab on the Shoulder, Tats on the Sleeve

Ranger School is a two-month combat leadership proving ground open to all branches of the military, but the 75th Ranger Regiment is the only unit that requires all of its officers and non-commissioned officers to attend the course. It is broken into three phases—Darby, Mountain, and Florida—starting back in the butthole of America and dripping down into its taint by the time it’s all said and done.

Darby, which takes place in a remote corner of Fort Benning in Columbus, is often called the “crawl” phase of Ranger School, because you