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Negligent Discharge

Dennis Humphrey

Exhibit C: 15-6 Investigation of the Suicide of SGT ████████ █. █████, 1 MAY 2012.

Description: Transcript of Sworn Statement Taken During 15-6 Investigation of Negligent Discharge, 1 MAY 2011, Forward Operating Base Echo, Diwaniyah, Iraq.

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I was doing my pre-combat checks like always. You want to make sure your weapon will function when you need it. I know the M240B door gun inside out, forward and backward, I mean I’m the unit trainer on the freaking weapon system. Nobody knows this gun better than me. Nobody. I honestly don’t know how I let the ammo belt anywhere near the feed tray any more than I understand how my wife didn’t know my voice when I called her the night before, after I stood in line at the MWR phone center for two hours. It’s like I’m already a ghost in my own house. Anyway, the pilots were doing their preflight checks too, going down the checklist, just like we’re trained from day one, just like we do every day. I mean, when you do something every day, it’s hard not to do it. Right? It just comes. That’s why I can’t figure any of this. She heard my voice every day for seven years. And I know for a fact she must’ve heard my voice every day even since I left for deployment, with Phoebe, our three year old, walking around with that picture frame I got her, one of them you put your picture in, then you record yourself saying something, so I said “I love you Phoebe.” My sister told me little Phoebe walks around pushing that freaking button all [expletive deleted] day. “I love you Phoebe. I love you Phoebe. I love you Phoebe.” Anyway, the guns were mounted in the aircraft already, slewed forward so nobody would walk into them accidentally. See, I think of things like that, trying to get ahead of things that might go wrong, like somebody hitting his head on the gun barrel hanging out the side of the helicopter. If you can get out ahead of accidents, you can stop them before they happen. It’s the surprises that get you. The things you don’t expect. The things you’d never expect, like how could she not know it was me on the line, saying “Hey baby?” Who else calls my [expletive deleted] house saying “Hey baby?” Anyway, I wasn’t even messing with the gun, had no intention of even touching it, and maybe right there was what did it. If I’d had it in my mind to touch the gun, I’d have done it very deliberately, but I was just reaching in the gunner’s window for the tool bag in the gunner’s seat when I guess my shoulder brushed the butterfly trigger. It’s just like that call. I never meant to start a fight with my wife, but when she didn’t even know me, it caught me by surprise. The words just came out. Little Phoebe always used to try to get between us when me and her mama used to fight at home, between deployments. Phoebe would say “I sorry—I sorry—I sorry!” trying to get us to stop by taking the blame herself and apologizing. “Sorry” is one of the magic words, right? Anyway, when I brushed the door gun trigger with my shoulder, the gun went off, three, maybe four rounds before I could get off the trigger. You know, I didn’t even notice when my wife gave the phone to Phoebe. I was still screaming at what I thought was my wife. Next thing I know, I hear Phoebe cry, not the kind of cry a parent can tell means a kid is cranky or is just trying to get her way. The kind of cry that wakes you up out of a dead sleep, the pitch just a little too high, the tone that gut punch of a tone that tells you your baby ain’t faking it. Anyway, after I cleared the weapon, I ran around to see what damage had been done. That’s when I saw 1LT Snowe on the ground at the nose of the aircraft. I ran over and picked his head up out of the dirt. Bright blood gurgled out of a bubbling hole in his throat, and darker blood ran from the corners of his mouth. He was trying to say something. I think he was mouthing the name of his own little girl. We’d talked about our daughters before on the long flights across the empty Iraqi desert, those miles and miles of sterile sand and lifeless dust. Cockpit chatter to pass the time, you know? We figured out our daughters were about the same age. His girl is named Samantha, I think. I screamed, “Medic! Medic!” until I heard other voices take up the call. Then I rocked the lieutenant as his blood dropped on the dusty ground in gobs the color of liver, the color of the prune baby food I used to feed to Phoebe when her little tummy wasn’t right. It’s the color that tells me that anyone who says we humans dream in black and white is a [expletive deleted] liar. The blood beaded up at first on the fine powder dust that is everywhere in that place, like the desert didn’t know what to do with all that life. Then it sank in, slow, like the ground was drinking it, turning the dust back into the red-brown Euphrates River mud that was there before any of us. It’s still there, you know. Still there. I rocked him and I rocked him saying, “I sorry—I sorry—I sorry” until they came and pulled me away. I haven’t spoken to my wife since that happened. My sister says the house is empty. I guess even my ghost is gone. For now.

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