Charlotte M. Brock

Hymn

            I sat outside the hangar on a wood board and sang and prayed. I didn’t believe in God but I opened my mind, my heart, my soul to the universe and asked for guidance and tried to prepare myself for what I was about to do. I sat, knees pressed on my chest, and sang what I could remember of three songs over and over.

            They were my favorite from Mass, which I hadn’t been to in years until I decided to attend the Catholic service, out of boredom, when I arrived in Camp Victory, Kuwait, in February 2004. By chance, three of the songs sung in the makeshift chapel that Sunday were my three favorite hymns: “Be Not Afraid,” “On Eagle’s Wings,” and “Here I Am, Lord.”

            A few days later, as I sat in an unarmored HMMWV, facing outboard, ready to take my M-16 off “Safe” and fire at any moment, I watched the Iraqi countryside flashing by… Be Not Afraid. I go before you always. Come, follow me! And I will give you strength. I couldn’t remember the rest of the words… something about arrows flying… and not getting hit by the arrows.

            Our convoy made it through all of Southern Iraq, up to the Tigris Valley, and West to the Anbar Province without getting hit, although the convoy that followed us was attacked. When we stopped for the night at U.S. camps, we could hear the call of the Imam from a Mosque a few hundred feet away. Getting ready to go to sleep, laying on top of my vehicle, I looked at the stars and felt alive and happy and ready for anything.

            Sitting outside the hangar a few weeks later, in Camp Taqaddum, Iraq, on that wood board, I hugged my knees and rocked back and forth for a long time and sang out loud. I was about to do something that I was sure would change me forever. I was about to do something that scared me and fascinated me. I was in awe at the task at hand. I wanted to be ready. I wanted to know that I was making a conscious choice to do this. I wanted to know that Charlotte, the Charlotte inside the Lieutenant, inside the Marine, inside the grown woman, inside the world traveler and the college graduate and the well-lived teen was ready. Beyond experience in the ways of the world and knowledge of heartache and all-knowing cynicism, there was still a Charlotte who was innocent and hopeful and full of love and wonder. The me I imagined I was as a little girl. I had to find her and make sure she would make it through the next few hours.

            I sat with my back to the hangar, looking out at the desert. Here I am, Lord. It is I, Lord. In the distance, bunkers, hangars, tents. It was late afternoon and I watched it get darker. I have heard you calling in the night! I tried to remember the rest of the song. I felt the hot air and the board and the sand. I watched the sun and the horizon approach. I will go, Lord, if you lead me. There was something magical about that song. About how it seemed to have been written for this moment, for me. I will hold Your people in my heart.

            I came to feel peace. I was calm; time didn’t flow like it usually did. The present moment and the future times when I knew I would look back on this hour were merged. Everything in my past led up to now and nothing in my future would be the same after tonight.

Time passed none the less and I got up and went back into the hangar. It was dusk and getting cooler. I had left my blouse inside. I put on a pair of hospital pants and waited with the other Marines. Any minute, a plane would be flying into the AACG/DAACG (Arrival Air Control Group/Departure Air Control Group). Finally we got the call. A team of Marines went to meet the airplane. They came back after about 15 minutes and parked the truck at the back entrance of the hangar. When I heard them open the door, I turned around and busied myself with putting on rubber gloves, then a face mask. I stared at the equipment on the table in front of me: scissors, pads and ink for fingerprinting, various forms to fill out, pens, plenty of bottles of disinfectant, towels and cleaning gear. I could hear steps behind me, slow, hesitant steps from people carrying a heavy, awkward package. I heard them as they talked themselves through lifting it to the height of the table, and putting it down. My back still to them, I heard them unzip the bag. I took a breath, made a final decision – be not afraid – and turned around. I was looking at dirty combat boots; then cammie pants, a blouse. I forced myself to look at his face. He was dead.

            So this was death. So this was a dead body. Simple. Here was a man who was no longer alive. Here was a soldier whose family did not yet know how he would be coming home. Here was a person with a life, a story, thoughts and a consciousness like mine, but no more. Here was what everyone I knew – mother, father, sisters – would one day become. Here is how I would end up one day. A body. Gone. Simple.

            One Marine was in charge of taking notes and filling out paperwork while another cut off boots, socks, trousers and shirt as needed to find wounds, tattoos or other distinguishing marks. It took two of us to take fingerprints of each hand, each finger dipped into ink, pressed onto little boxes on a paper form. We went through the clothes, emptying and inventorying the contents of pockets. We looked at dog tags; the main job of the MA (Mortuary Affairs) unit at Camp Taqaddum was to get tentative I.D. on all U.S. casualties – whom we called “Fallen Angels” – and to prepare the remains for shipment to Kuwait, and then to Dover Air Force Base, where they would be positively identified, using DNA samples.

            This soldier was not in too bad a state. He had died a few hours before, from gunshot wounds, and rigor mortis had already set in. His body, although dirty, stiff and pale, was intact. His face was set in a rictus which made it difficult to look at him for too long. The smell was wet and sweet and thick. He was THERE. My position in the huge room was relative to him. He was the zero around which we moved, quietly but quickly. Even as I was there, and fully engaged in the work at hand, I could see myself looking back and regarding the scene from above. As he was seeing it?

You who dwell in His shadow for life…

As I worked more and more bodies over the next weeks and months, I came to sense, or imagine, or imagine I was sensing, them looking at us, at me.

And He will raise you up, on Eagle’s wings…

Floating somewhere among the rafters of the hangar, they took note of what we were doing. They observed as we carried in the body bags from the back door, set them on the “operating” tables, and pulled on the zippers. They saw what they looked like dead, and looked to see how we, the live ones, reacted. I could not grimace or turn my head in disgust. They might see it and feel sorry for themselves, or for me.

…Bear you on the breath of dawn.

Here were bodies of men whom their loved ones would cry over, would want to hold and cherish and love. The mothers and wives of these Fallen Angels were present in some way to me, in addition to the men themselves, the souls of the dead and their survivors looking down and observing us. They couldn’t act or touch or talk, but I could. I could take care of them as if they were babies. I could look at their faces and see that they were individuals, and unique, and beautiful. Make you to shine like the sun! I could find something to love about them. And hold you in the palm of His hand.

In the weeks that followed my first MA experience, an image kept flashing in my mind, a memory or a symbol that I couldn’t quite identify. It had to do with me at the table, with the Angel. Seeing myself there reminded me of something but I couldn’t say what it was. Had I seen this in a dream? Read it in a book? It was something more universal, something timeless yet deeply tied to me and my memories.

            When a call came in that we had Angels incoming, I would feel dread – but also adrenaline and anticipation. Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I wanted to be there when they came. I have heard you calling in the dark. I wanted to take care of them. I had to, nobody could do it as well I could. I will go, Lord, if you lead me. Nobody was as conscious of them as someone’s baby as I was. No one would touch them as gently and look at them as lovingly as I would. I will hold your people in my heart. I was never as conscious of life and of my soul as when I was waiting for their arrival.

            There were times when I wanted to kiss them. My hands lingered on them longer than was necessary. I didn’t want to be the note-taker; I handled the bodies themselves. I reached across the table, grabbed a shoulder or a hip and pulled it in to my body, to allow the Marine on the other side to get a look at the back. I pulled IVs out of their veins, as gently as I could – I knew it was crazy but I didn’t want to “hurt” them. I cut off socks and looked at dead feet and toes. I saw holes in every part of their bodies. I saw bones sticking out of flesh. I saw brains leaking out from heads and eyes that had been popped out of sockets. Bodily fluids dripped on my boots. I gagged at horrid smells. I jumped back when the swollen, bright red body of a drowned man belched up water and weeds.

            I opened a bag that had no semblance of the shape of a man. We found a head. An arm with a hand. And a hand. The rest was torn rags of a uniform, gore and intestines and slabs of skin covered in shit and blood. The head was perfect, serene. I closed his gray eyes. He had a beautiful face with fine, perfect features and a small, distinctive moustache. He was a Gunnery Sergeant and he had a ring on the fourth finger of each hand. We spread him out over three tables to try to figure him out. I put his hand in mine and took it over to a table, then got his arm, torn off above the elbow. I fingerprinted him. It was much easier to get each finger at the right angle since there was no body attached. We identified what we could and tried to put him back in the bag in some kind of order, but all we could do was put his head where his head should be and his hands on either side. We put the rest in the middle.

            Half a dozen sailors were killed at once by indirect fire. They had been playing soccer at their camp on a Sunday morning. They came to us, and occupied all the tables in the hangar. Another time, soldiers were hit by an IED hidden in a tree. They were Civil Affairs soldiers and they had been going to a village to distribute supplies to a school. Their lieutenant was not hurt. He came to see them at MA. Here was a young man in his early twenties, like me, who had just lost four of his soldiers. Here was someone who would have to talk to their parents and live the rest of his life with this burden. And here I was, me, Charlotte, who had to talk to him. And say what? What can be said? How do you offer comfort to a stranger? How do you avoid banalities and platitudes but still say something you mean? He asked if he could have his soldiers’ dogtags. We couldn’t give them to him. But I got a piece of paper and a pencil and got the imprint of his soldiers’ tags for him. I was so happy to give him something. I was proud of myself for thinking of doing this.

            The time spent in MA was time spent in a world apart. Nothing mattered like taking care of the people who came to us. MA was the center, the core, of my existence. It was what had meaning, significance in my life. I was a caretaker, a love-giver, the mother of the dead. I was Mary bringing Jesus down from the cross and washing her son’s body before laying it in the grave. That was the image that kept coming to me but had been just out of reach in my subconscious – the three Marys washing Jesus’ body. I was the eternal feminine holding the body of the fallen warrior, who in death is just a little boy.

            But I was not in a painting. I was not the stoic, beautiful heroine in a Greek tragedy; I was not the Virgin Mary, or even the reformed Mary Magdalene. This was Charlotte, with weaknesses and passions and a past, and despite my exceptional ability to dramatize my situation and my life, MA was significant in a way that goes beyond the horror and desolation of death. But part of me is still there. Part of me wishes I was still with them. Part of me feels MA is where I should be, wiping away the blood and grime from a young man’s face so that his fellow soldier can come tell us that yes, it’s really him.

Charlotte M. Brock is a Marine Officer. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, of a French mother and American father, she was raised in Jamaica, South Korea, the Cape Verde Islands, Washington, D.C., France, Mexico, and West Africa. Charlotte attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Peace, War and Defense in May 2002. During college, she participated in Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps upon graduation. She was stationed in Camp Pendleton, California, and deployed twice: with the 1st Force Service Support Group in 2004 and with Multi-National Corps-Iraq in 2005. She is currently stationed at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina.

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