Full of Heart: My Story of Survival, Strength, and Spirit Read online

  I quickly grew impatient waiting for the next time we were authorized to use the phone, so I came up with a better idea.

  Once our schedules loosened up a bit, we had free time in the evening to write letters, do laundry, or just hang out. PJ, Alex, me, and a few of the others would use the time to jog around the barracks, reasoning that we were improving our endurance, thereby making basic easier. We just weren’t allowed to stray beyond the perimeter of our barracks.

  However, there were other barracks nearby. So one night, Matthew, Alex, and I decided to sneak over to use the phones there. The stakes were high, but eighteen-year-olds are notorious gamblers, although the three of us differed in how risk averse we were. Matthew was at one end—a big risk taker who didn’t mind using his tough-guy attitude to get what he wanted. Alex’s approach bordered on paranoid. I was in the middle: I didn’t mind taking chances but I usually first gave them some consideration. But this plan looked simple to all of us.

  We jogged around the building like always, but then instead of looping back, we continued right over to the other barracks. Since no recruits occupied the area by the phones, it wasn’t lit. We were pinching ourselves: How much better could this have worked out? We were in a dark corner using the phones and no one in our company knew about it. We each had a leisurely ten-minute phone call with our loved ones, then headed back.

  This was too easy for us not to try again … and again. One night, as we were yammering away on our calls, we saw a drill sergeant walking by, dangerously close. We stopped speaking into the phones and squatted. Alex became very nervous and was poised to run but we talked him into staying put. The drill sergeant walked on by, and our deception continued to work smoothly.

  However, I’ve learned many things in life, and one of them is that when you break the rules, you will be caught.

  A few nights later, we jogged away to do our thing, breaking off our route to head toward the phones. Once again a drill sergeant walked by. But this time Alex couldn’t contain himself and headed for the hills. The sound of his footsteps alerted the drill sergeant.

  “Hey, Private, stop!”

  Matthew and I took off running. We cut through the vacant barracks and maneuvered our way around the building, so if the drill sergeant was on our tails he wouldn’t see which barracks we entered. We got to ours, hearts pounding. Our fellow recruits looked on curiously.

  But where was Alex? Then we heard a drill sergeant yelling outside in the main area. We peeked out the window to see Alex being chewed out and smoked by the drill sergeant. I wish I could say that Matthew and I jumped to Alex’s defense. Instead, we snuck back to our bunks and tried to figure whether he would tell on us.

  About thirty minutes passed before Alex showed up, red-faced and bathed in sweat.

  “How did you get caught when you left before us?” we asked him.

  After catching his breath, he told us that he ran into the laundry building and hid under the table.

  We burst out laughing: Why on earth would you run into a room that was right around the corner when the drill sergeant could see you run into it? This explained why the drill sergeant hadn’t followed me and Matthew.

  Alex said he hadn’t told on us. Relief washed over us.

  “What did the drill sergeant do besides smoke you?” we asked.

  “He said he would be telling our drill sergeants about it so they can do more with it.”

  That made us more than a little nervous. Our drill sergeants likely would figure out who the other two guys were.

  Days passed before one of our drill sergeants, with all the recruits in formation, asked about the other two guys. Cowed, Matthew and I stood in silence. When no one spoke up, the drill sergeants dismissed us all with a parting thought: “We will find out, and when we do, you will be sorry.”

  Once the DIs departed, one of the other privates in our group said, “We know it was you. If you don’t fess up, we’ll do it for you.”

  But days turned into weeks, no one ratted, and the matter was never addressed again. Talk about dodging a bullet.

  But I found other ways to irritate my classmates. One day during bad weather, we had to train inside using a shooting simulator. With just a couple of simulators and more than forty guys, the rotation was slow and there was a lot of time doing nothing. I got bored.

  In between yawns, I came up with a plan to get a few more minutes of shut-eye. I told the others I was going to the restroom. Once there, I sat down on the toilet to make it seem as if I actually was using the facilities. I pulled down my shorts to my ankles to sell the point. I nodded out with my elbows digging into my thighs and cheeks resting on my hands, the most comfortable position I could maneuver myself into.

  I was jolted awake by a yell. “Martinez!” The person sounded panicky. “Martinez!” yelled another.

  “I’m here!”

  A couple of privates ran up to the stall door. “Everyone’s lined up outside in formation!”

  “How long have I been in here?”

  “At least an hour. We forgot all about you.”

  I knew I had about two seconds to get to formation before the drill sergeants noticed I was missing, and then all of us would pay for it. I tried to stand up. My legs buckled and I crumpled to the ground, my shorts around my knees.

  “My legs are asleep!” I shouted. “I can’t walk!” I managed to unlatch the door. The guys pushed it open and reached in to help me stand.

  Then they took a good look at me. “Why are your shorts halfway down?”

  Oh God. “To make it believable that I was using the restroom!”

  They just shook their heads. I got the shorts up, put each arm over the guys, and hobbled out of the barracks until my legs began to work again. Once they were completely functional, I was able to do a full sprint to the formation and made it just in time.

  On another occasion, our class went out for field-training exercises, or FTX, armed with our rucksacks, sleeping bags, and MREs, those self-contained rations. As a kid I’d listened to my friends talk about camping trips they’d taken with their families or the Boy Scouts. It had sounded like so much fun, but I’d never had the opportunity to experience it. So going into the field was exciting for me, because I felt like I was camping with friends. The purpose was to practice what we’d learned in the classroom: perform first aid on a manikin, react to contact, run through battle drills.

  One training exercise was called a flanking maneuver, an attack around the side of an opposing force. This means we can hit the enemy from the side or the rear. These exercises were designed, of course, to ready us for combat. Someday we all could find ourselves within reach of the enemy. But for now, it was just plain fun, like playing paintball.

  We privates had to sleep in a big circle, our locations dictated alphabetically by last name. I wasn’t near my friend Alex, but I wanted to be. One night he pulled his sleeping bag over to my area so we could hang out. This particular night I was roused for my shift to pull security. The guy coming off handed me a watch so I could time my segment. We had just enough recruits in our platoon to require everyone to stand watch for an hour by morning.

  I sat up in my warm sleeping bag and woke up Alex to pull the shift with me.

  “I’m so tired,” he moaned.

  “Me, too,” I said. “And it’s freezing out here.”

  That’s when another brilliant idea struck me. “Since we have to do two hours, go back to sleep,” I told him. “I’ll wake you at the one-hour mark to finish off the shift.” Alex grunted his agreement and burrowed back down.

  It was frigid and dark, and I was tired. All around me men were snoring and making other disgusting sounds as they slept fitfully on the hard ground. My eyes grew heavy and my head started to bob down. This just wasn’t going to work for me.

  Maybe ten minutes into my shift, I pushed the time forward by one hour and fifty minutes on the watch. I shook the next guy and told him it was his shift.

  Alex woke up and aske
d, “When is it my turn?”

  “No worries. I took care of it.”

  He rolled over and went back to sleep as I folded into my sleeping bag.

  Hours later I woke up to the sound of trainees loudly arguing about someone having to pull a double shift. One guy said, “If everyone had done their one hour, no one would have had to do two shifts.”

  I stayed quiet until Alex approached me and asked me if I had anything to do with this, since he hadn’t done his shift. I whispered, “Let’s just say time flew when I was on duty.” I smiled and kept on moving.

  Everyone else continued to argue about the clock and how someone had skipped out on his duty. All except me. I understood it had been a selfish move. Yeah, it sucked to see everybody at one another’s throats, but I wasn’t about to step up and confess, because they’d kick my ass.

  I knew it was wrong, but I reasoned that it was only basic training. It wasn’t like we were in combat. We were in the middle of the woods in Georgia. No one was going to get hurt. I figured I was just getting away with something. When I look back on this incident, I feel embarrassed but glad to know that I’ve come a long way since then.

  Basic training showed me a lot about myself, both good and bad. I was able to prove to myself that I was strong, but I also knew that I still had a lot of growing up to do.

  It also brought some fears to the surface. For example, our drill sergeants trained us to low-crawl up to a blank claymore mine and defuse its wires. I broke multiple sweats thinking about how I might be required to defuse a live mine. What if I accidentally triggered it? How would the impact feel? How would it damage my face and body? What if my mistake hurt someone else? What if I died?

  One day, one of our drill instructors paced among us as we recruits sat on the floor and explained, “It’s not if you’ll deploy, it’s when.” Some of us glanced at each other, nervous but psyched.

  He reminded us that the hard days and nights here in basic were preparation. “The way we break you down isn’t for our own enjoyment,” he said. “The training and skills we are drilling into you will help save your lives and those of your fellow soldiers someday.”

  I wondered if I’d really be sent to Iraq. But the concept was so abstract at the time, it didn’t bother me much.

  Thirteen weeks on, as I looked toward graduation, I had become a young man who could face the unknown, who could make new buddies out of a room of strangers, and who was able to push myself through challenges far more difficult than I’d imagined. I was proud of what I’d achieved.

  In December 2002 I stood at attention in my green Class B short-sleeved uniform, eyes forward, spine straight, listening to one of our drill sergeants address the platoon.

  My mom was in the spectator viewing area. She barely recognized me onstage.

  After the Pass and Review (I was really good at marching, by the way) and the ceremony concluded, we were cut loose to see our friends and family. I hugged everyone tightly—my mother and Celestino, Daniela, and my two best friends from home, Emilio and Orlin. It felt like it had been years since I’d seen them.

  My mom was giggly, jumping up and down. She squeezed me and laughed about my shaved head. The look in her eyes told me that she was proud of me, which told me that she was feeling better about my decision.

  I strolled the grounds with my posse, introducing them to my friends, showing them landmarks. I ushered them by my bunk and locker, the chow hall, the latrines, even the phones where I’d hidden to call my mom.

  As a group of us new soldiers walked out of the barracks, we practically ran head-on into one of our drill sergeants, Sergeant Lavalle. He was a white guy with a high-and-tight haircut, sarcastic and smart-assed but a professional soldier all the way through. He wished us well.

  “Thank you, Drill Sergeant,” one of the privates said, using the term we’d been instructed to use three months earlier.

  “Don’t call me ‘Drill Sergeant’ anymore. Now I’m just Sergeant Lavalle.” As he began to walk away he turned and added, “But don’t call me by my first name, or I’ll smoke your asses.”

  I knew I couldn’t let this one go by. “Thanks for everything,” I said. “I’ll never forget this experience, Gregory.” He stepped toward me and I dodged away.

  Later, my family and friends and I all piled into the car to head back to Dalton. I was going home for an entire month before I had to report to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. I was ready for some time off to relax and regroup.

  Sadly, my first order of business was breaking up with Daniela. She had been a good girlfriend and I felt guilty, but I didn’t know how we could continue to keep up a long-distance relationship when I was stationed at Fort Campbell, and I couldn’t pretend anymore.

  Being single again gave me lots of time to hang out with my boys. In the evenings, we went to the bowling alley and high school basketball games. We cruised around Dalton and drove up to a town in Tennessee called Cleveland, where guys would go to show off their cars.

  My days were spent working at the recruiter’s office. I’d go with him to speak to other kids about my experience. That was my first stab at public speaking, and it was good practice. I’d talk about the Army and how it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it’d be. “They toughen you up and you get through it,” I’d say.

  I wasn’t spending a lot of time watching the evening news, but if I had, I’d have seen the potential for U.S. action in Iraq. Despite clear signs to the contrary, I still didn’t think I’d be going anywhere soon. I was much too busy enjoying the prime of my life—fit, fresh out of basic training with a truckload of new confidence, and a bright career in the Army. I chose to focus on making the most of time off, not thinking too much about what lay ahead.

  Before I knew it, it was time to ship off to Fort Campbell, a four-hour drive northwest of Dalton and home to the 101st Airborne. PJ and a handful of other guys from basic were stationed there as well.

  We were there for a few days before we were assigned to our units. We started every day with PT, physical training, which made me sore. I had quickly gotten out of shape lounging around at home the previous month.

  Finally, I got my orders: I would be a member of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, Delta Company. I was bummed to learn that PJ was being sent to a different platoon. We lived in the same barracks, though, so we were still able to hang out.

  Besides PJ, my team leader, Sergeant Christopher Valdez, probably was the most important person to me at Fort Campbell. At twenty-five, he was closer to my age than some of the other leaders, and you could tell he really cared about his guys. He’d already served in Kosovo, and he was a calm, collected person—a natural leader. I considered him a big brother.

  I’d brought my cockiness from basic training with me to Fort Campbell, so Valdez made it his business to help me out and shut me up. I got a lot of hands-on from him, and I appreciated his attention. I had a lot to learn, and between Valdez and our platoon sergeant, Terrence O’Shea, I managed to stay out of big trouble and learn from these professionals.

  A couple of weeks after I’d been placed in my unit, O’Shea gathered the platoon together.

  “You will be deploying,” he said, echoing what we’d been told at the end of basic. “Get yourselves mentally ready,” he said.

  I blew it off. I was still focused on having fun.

  We had free time after work, with few restrictions and no curfew. At night we’d sample from the menu of Fort Campbell’s finer off-base establishments. Unfortunately, most of those venues were out of reach to many of us because we weren’t twenty-one, so we ended up most nights at an eighteen-and-over club called the Lighthouse, which had pool tables, a lounge area, and a dance floor. I loved to dance, and I always worked myself right into the middle of the floor. Although there were at least two guys for every girl, I still did all right.

  Those of us who weren’t legally permitted to drink alcohol got a big black X stamped onto our hands at the door. That really bugged my friends, who wished they
could have a couple of drinks. But me, I never needed alcohol to enjoy myself.

  There was only one time when that damned X turned against me. I was out there doing my moves when I made eye contact with a gorgeous girl on the edge of the floor. She didn’t have an X on her hand. She wasn’t quite cougar material, but she definitely had a couple of years on me. I motioned her over, and we hit the floor together. It was like a scene from a movie—we were all over each other, she was whipping her hair, I was touching her. I knew that she liked me. Everyone was looking at me like, “You got a hot older chick”—not older like a grandma, but a really hot chick. I got some respect for that.

  I didn’t want her to see my X, so I kept up the crazy dancing, trying to shield my flapping hands from her. It didn’t work. She caught sight of the X and asked me how old I was.

  “How old do you think I am?”

  Okay, I’ll admit it, stupid question. Finally I confessed I was nineteen, and that was all she wrote. I never saw her again after that night.

  And then, in early February, a group of us were sitting in our company area when O’Shea came in. He walked to each man and handed him an envelope—our deployment orders.

  I thought back to the recruiter’s office in Dalton. After I’d finished filling out the enlistment documents, the recruiter asked my mom, “Ma’am, do you have any questions?”

  She thought for a second, then said, “In case there is a war, you’re not going to send him too soon, right?”

  He looked her in the eyes. “Depends,” he said. “But it’s not too likely. There are a lot of soldiers who have been in the service for a while, and they would be the first to go.”