Part 40 (1/2)

He was the guy I'd called a dumba.s.s on the radio earlier. I've never seen a more grateful Marine.

”THE LEGEND”

My boys returned from their adventures out east soon afterward. They greeted me with their usual warmth.

”Oh, we know the Legend's here,” they said as soon as they saw me. ”All of a sudden we hear there's two kills at Camp Ramadi. People are dying up north. We knew the Legend was here. You're the only motherf.u.c.ker who's ever killed anyone out there.”

I laughed.

The nickname ”the Legend” had started back in Fallujah, around the time of the beach ball incident, or maybe when I got that really long shot. Before that, my nickname had been Tex.

Of course, it wasn't just ”Legend.” There was more than a little mocking that went with it-THE LEGEND. One of my guys-Dauber, I think it was, even turned it all around and called me THE MYTH, cutting me down to size.

It was all good-natured, in a way more of an honor than a full-uniform medal ceremony.

I really liked Dauber. Even though he was a new guy, he was a sniper, and a pretty good one. He could hold his own in a firefight-and trading insults. I had a real soft spot for him, and when it came time to haze him, I didn't hit him ... much.

Even if the guys joked about it, Legend was one of the better nicknames you could get. Take Dauber. That's not his real name (at the moment, he's doing what we'll call ”government work”). The nickname came from a character in the television series Coach. There, Dauber was the typical dumb-jock type. In real life, he's actually an intelligent guy, but that fact was of no consideration in his getting named.

But one of the best nicknames was Ryan Job's: Biggles.

It was a big, goofy name for a big, goofy guy. Dauber takes credit for it-the word, he claims, was a combination of ”big” and ”giggles” that had been invented for one of his relatives.

He mentioned it one day, applying it to Ryan. Someone else on the team used it, and within seconds, it had stuck.

Biggles.

Ryan hated it, naturally, which certainly helped it stick.

Along the way, someone later found a little purple hippo. Of course, it had to go to the guy who had the hippo face. And Ryan became Biggles the Desert Hippo.

Ryan being Ryan, he turned it all around. It wasn't a joke on him; it was his joke. Biggles the Desert Hippo, best 60 gunner on the planet.

He carried that hippo everywhere, even into battle. You just had to love the guy.

THE PUNISHERS

Our platoon had its own nickname, one that went beyond Cadillac.

We called ourselves the Punishers.

For those of you who are not familiar with the character, the Punisher debuted in a Marvel comic book series in the 1970s. He's a real bad-a.s.s who rights wrongs, delivering vigilante justice. A movie by the same name had just come out; the Punisher wore a s.h.i.+rt with a stylized white skull.

Our comms guy suggested it before the deployment. We all thought what the Punisher did was cool: He righted wrongs. He killed bad guys. He made wrongdoers fear him.

That's what we were all about. So we adapted his symbol-a skull-and made it our own, with some modifications. We spray-painted it on our Hummers and body armor, and our helmets and all our guns. And we spray-painted it on every building or wall we could. We wanted people to know, We're here and we want to f.u.c.k with you.

It was our version of psyops.