You won’t ever catch Sergeant Brad Colbert, the twenty-eight-year-old commander of the vehicle I ride in, engaging in any moto displays. They call Colbert “The Iceman. ”Wiry and fair-haired, he makes sarcastic pronouncements in a nasal whine that sounds like comedian David Spade. Though he considers himself a “Marine Corps killer,”he’s also a nerd who listens to Barry Manilow, Air Supply and practically all the music of the 1980s except rap. He is passionate about gadgets: He collects vintage video-game consoles and wears a massive wristwatch that can only properly be “configured” by plugging it into his PC. He is the last guy you would picture at the tip of the spear of the invasion forces in Iraq (р.2)

Colbert, the platoon’s top team leader, is in charge of Team One. The year before, he was awarded a Navy Commendation for helping to take out an enemy missile battery in Afghanistan. He greets me with a formal hand-shake and a crisp salutation: “Welcome aboard. I hope your time with us is enjoyable and productive.”

His politeness is so exacting it almost makes him come off like a prick. Everything about him is neat, orderly and crisp, in keeping with his Iceman nickname. Colbert is decidedly not one of the big ball-scratchers in the platoon. There is about him an air of Victorian rectitude. He grew up in an ultramodern 1970s house designed by his father, an architect. There was shag carpet in a conversation pit. One of his fondest memories, he later tells me, is that before cocktail parties, his parents would let him prepare the carpet with a special rake. Colbert is a walking encyclopedia of radio frequencies and encryption protocols, and can tell you the exact details of just about any weapon in the U.S. or Iraqi arsenal. He once nearly purchased a surplus British tank, even arranged a loan through his credit union, but backed out only when he realized that just parking it might run afoul of zoning laws in his home state, the “Communist Republic of California.”

Beneath his formal manners, there is another side to Colbert’s personality. His back is tattooed in a garish wash of color depicting a Louis Royo illustration of a warrior princess babe from Heavy Metal magazine. He pays nearly $5,000 a year in auto-motorcycle insurance due to outrageous speeding tickets. He routinely drives his Yamaha R1 racing bike at 150 miles per hour on southern California’s freeways, and his previous racing bike was rigged with model rocket engines by the exhaust pipe to shoot flames when he wanted to “scare the bejesus out of commuters.” He admits to a deep-rooted but controlled rebellious streak that was responsible for his parents sending him to military academy when he was in high school. His life, he says, is driven by a simple philosophy: “You don’t want to ever show fear or back down, because you don’t want to be embarrassed in front of the pack.”

He holds sway over the other men not through physical power or personal magnetism but through sheer force of skill, determination and a barely concealed sense of superiority. During mountain warfare training, he’s legendary for having ascended the final thousand meters of Mt. Shasta on a broken ankle, carrying 150 pounds of gear. Where other Marines speak of the special bonds of kinship between them, the mystical brotherhood formed in the crucible of shared hardship, Colbert shuns the crowd.

He spends as much time as he can alone in his corner of the tent, engrossed in a military laptop, studying invasion maps and satellite imagery. While his brother Marines cavort and laugh around him, Colbert says, “I would never socialize with any of these people if we weren’t in the Marines.” (р. 22-23)

Colbert sits upright in his Ranger grave, filling his rifle magazines with bullets, peering out at the opaqueness of the desert—the dusty winds blowing past the cammie nets—and says, “It almost feels like we’re at the bottom of the ocean.”

Colbert’s specialty within the platoon is deep-sea diving.He’s trained to lead his team through miles of ocean and penetrate coastal defenses. Despite the years he’s spent on training missions in the water, he confesses to me that the deep sea terrifies him. “The scariest thing for me is to open my eyes under the ocean, especially at night,” he says. “I’m scared every time I do it.” He adds, “That’s probably why I love diving.”

Colbert tells me his feelings about the upcoming venture are similar. As a professional warrior, politics and ideology don’t really enter into his thoughts about why he is here in the desert, waiting to invade a country.

“I’m not so idealistic that I subscribe to good versus evil. We haven’t had a war like that sinceWorldWar II.Why are we here now? I guess it’s to remove this guy frompower. I’mnot opposed to it, and I wasn’t going to miss it.” For him, it’s a grand personal challenge. “We’re going into the great unknown,” he says. “Scary, isn’t it?” he adds, smiling brightly. “I can’t wait.” (р. 31)

“As soon as we capture Baghdad,” Person says, “Lee Greenwood is going to parachute in singing ‘I’m Proud to Be an American.’”

“Watch it,” Colbert says. “You know the rule.”

One of the cardinal rules of Colbert’s Humvee is that no one is permitted to make any references to country music. He claims that the mere mention of country, which he deems “the Special Olympics of music,”makes him physically ill. (р. 77)

Colbert seems to blossom under extreme duress. He goes into full Iceman mode, becoming extra calm, alert and focused even when everyone’s just standing around waiting for another blast.

Marines tear into their MREs. They eat a lot during lulls in firefights. Most just squeeze main meals—like the pressed, crumbly steaks and chicken patties—directly from the foil pouches into their mouths.

Then a new sound erupts nearby—a rapid-fire thunking. Everyone drops to the ground except Colbert. He remains upright, eating. “Those are ours, gents,” he says between bites. Colbert informs the Marines flattened in the dirt that the “thunking” was unmistakably the sound of Marine Bushmaster weapons. No need to worry. (р. 100)

“Never have kids, Corporal,” Colbert lectures. “One kid will cost you three hundred thousand dollars. You should never have gotten married. It’s always a mistake.” Colbert often proclaims the futility of marriage. “Women will always cost you money, but marriage is the most expensive way to go. If you want to pay for it, Trombley, go to Australia. For a hundred bucks, you can order a whore over the phone. Half an hour later, she arrives at your door, fresh and hot, like a pizza.” (р. 111)

Despite his bitter proclamations about women, if you catch Colbert during an unguarded moment, he’ll admit that he once loved a girl who jilted him, a junior-high-school sweetheart whom he dated on and off for ten years and was even engaged to until she left him to marry one of his closest buddies. “And we’re still all friends,” he says, sounding almost mad about it. “They’re one of those couples that likes to takes pictures of themselves doing all the fun things they do and hang them up all over their goddamn house. Sometimes I just go over there and look at the pictures of my ex-fiancée doing all those fun things I used to do with her. It’s nice having friends.” (р. 112)

Colbert tries to ignore them.One of the kids, however, stares him down. He makes clownish faces at Colbert, trying to make him laugh. “Fuck it,” Colbert says. “Break out the humrats,” he says, referring to humanitarian rations. “Let’s feed the ankle-biters.” We throw several bright yellow humrat packs out the window. As kids run up to grab them, Colbert says, “You’re welcome.Vote Republican.” He gazes at them, now yelling and fighting each other for the humrat packs, and adds, “I really thank God I was born American. I mean, seriously, it’s something I lose sleep over.” (р. 126)

Bullets striking the Humvee sound like whips cracking on the roof. Nearly two dozen rounds slam into it almost right away. As the lead vehicle of the platoon, Colbert’s is the only one with doors, a roof and light armor. Even so, the windows are open and there are gaps in the shielding. A bullet flies past Colbert’s head and smacks into the pillar behind Person. Several more slice through the edges of the door frames. The shooting continues on both sides. Less than half an hour before, Colbert had been talking about stress reactions in combat. In addition to the embarrassing loss of bodily control that 25 percent of all soldiers experience, other symptoms include time dilation, a sense of time slowing down or speeding up; vividness, a starkly heightened awareness of detail; random thoughts, the mind fixating on unimportant sequences; memory loss; and, of course, your basic feelings of sheer terror. (р. 136)

The look on Colbert’s face is almost serene. He’s hunched over his weapon, leaning out the window, intently studying the walls of the buildings, firing bursts from his M-4 and grenades from the 203 tube underneath the main barrel. I watch him pump in a fresh grenade, and I think, I bet Colbert’s really happy to be finally shooting a 203 round in combat. I remember him kissing the grenade earlier. Random thoughts. I study Person’s face for signs of panic, fear or death. My worry is he’ll get shot or freak out and we’ll be stuck on this street. But Person seems fine. He’s slouched over the wheel, looking through the windshield, an almost blank expression on his face. The only thing different about him is he’s not babbling his opinions on Justin Timberlake or some other pussy faggot retard who bothers him. (р. 138)

Hunched down by Colbert’s vehicle, I am so disoriented at this point that I actually think for a moment that the sandy field we are in is a beach. I turn around, looking for the ocean, then hear Colbert repeating, “We’re in a goddamn sabka field.” I think he’s saying “soccer field.” I can’t believe Iraqis would play on sand like this. I’m looking around for the goalposts when Trombley grabs my shoulder. “Get behind me and take cover,” he says. The battalion operations chief runs across the sand, shouting at Colbert, “Abandon your Humvee!” He orders him to set it on fire with an incendiary grenade, yelling, “Thermite the radios!” Colbert pounds the roof of his Humvee, screaming, “I’m not abandoning this vehicle!” One of Espera’s Marines watching the spectacle from a distance glumly observes, “We’re going to die because Colbert’s in love with his Humvee.” (…) Finally, a truck full of Marines from the battalion’s maintenance unit rolls up. Support Marines—the POGs so often belittled by Colbert and others—jump out under fire, attach chains to the trapped Humvee and yank it out. (р. 142)

Hasser standing in the turret, begins pounding the roof of the Humvee, screaming “Fuck!”

“What is it?” Colbert shouts.

“The Mark-19 is down!” Hasser yells. “Jammed!”

“My Mark-19 is down!” Colbert screams on the radio. Being the lead vehicle of the company, racing onto an airfield to fight tanks and AAA guns without a heavy weapon is a disaster in the making. “I repeat, my Mark-19 is down!”

It’s the first time Fick has ever heard Iceman lose control on comms. “Calmthe fuck down,” Fick orders Colbert.“I’mputtingTeamTwo in front.” (р. 168)

Colbert kneels down over the kid, right next to his mother, and starts crying. He struggles to compose himself. “What can I do here?” he asks.

“Apparently fucking nothing,” Doc Bryan says. (р.173)

The talk Colbert delivers to Trombley is considerably more concise. After returning from the battalion headquarters, he sits him down beside the Humvee and says, “Trombley, no matter what you might think, or what anybody else might say, you did your job. You were following my orders.”

Colbert then strips down to his T-shirt—the first time he’s removed his MOPP in more than a week. He crawls under the Humvee and spends several hours chipping away at the three-inch layer of tar and sand clinging to it from the sabka field. (р. 175)

Despite the fear and stress, Colbert remains an extremely polite invader. When we pass more farmers on the road, he pulls the barrel of his M-4 up, so as not to point it directly at them. (р. 200)

We see the tiny heads of children poking around the corner of a small adobe hut. Several girls, maybe eight or nine, run toward us. Ever since the shepherd-shooting incident, Colbert’s demeanor has changed toward civilians, especially children. When he sees them now, he’s prone to uninhibited displays of sentimentality. “How adorable,” Colbert gushes as the girls laugh playfully a few meters outside his window. “They’re so cute.” (р. 233)

Colbert is excessively cheerful this morning. It’s not like he’s maniacally energized from having escaped death. His satisfaction seems deeper and quieter, as if he’s elated to have been involved in something highly rewarding. It’s as though he’s just finished a difficult crossword puzzle or won at chess. (р. 252)

He jams the chewed, mashed tip of his cigar in my mouth without asking if I want it, and points to Colbert. “Look at that skinny-ass dude,” he says.

“You’d never guess what a bad motherfucker he is.” Espera felt sorry for Colbert when they met a few years ago.They were in different units but happened to find themselves on leave together in Australia. While other Marines were out drinking and chasing whores, Colbert went off alone to prowl electronics stores. “I thought he had no friends—he was such a loner,” Espera says. “But now that I know him better I figured out he just can’t stand people, even me. I’m only his friend to piss him off. I look up to him because the dude is a straight-up warrior. Getting bombed, shot at don’t phase him a bit. Shit, in the middle of all that madness by the bridge he observes those dudes in the trees waiting to kill us. That’s the Iceman.” (р. 252)

Hasser stands to the left of Colbert, with the butt of his SAW pressed to his shoulder. It was his gun that fired. “That was a wounding shot, motherfucker!” Colbert yells, uncharacteristically pissed. “What the fuck were you doing? I said, ‘Do not engage’!” (…) None of the Marines say anything for a moment. Colbert looks at the car, then down. He breathes deeply, as if struggling to put his emotions aside. Having watched him cry a few days ago after the shooting of the shepherd, I suspect it’s not always easy being the Iceman. (р. 260)

Colbert comes over to help. He instructs the mother with the bleeding baby to sit by the road, and summons a corpsman over. The bleeding, the corpsman believes, is a result of dehydration. Several other mothers come over with their sick babies. It’s already in the low nineties. Colbert dabs the infants with water, trying to cool them down. Soon, more mothers are handing him their babies, perhaps thinking he’s a doctor. One baby has chicken pox. Colbert takes the infant, kneels down and rocks him. “Is there anything we can do?” he asks the corpsman. “Nothing, man,” he answers. “They just need lots of water.”

Colbert now wears an expression that I’ve come to see more frequently. He looks helpless. When confronted with these small human tragedies up close, some Marines shut down. Their faces go blank. Despite his Iceman reputation, Colbert doesn’t hide his feelings very well. In combat he looks almost ecstatic; now he appears overwhelmed, though still trying to deal with this situation. He hands the baby back to the mother, along with a water bottle. “Put water on the little one,” he says, speaking English into the mother’s uncomprehending face. She nods gratefully. (р. 273-274)

Some Marines routinely flout the rule, but not Colbert. Suddenly, he stands up, throwing his helmet down, ripping off his flak vest and stripping down to his T-shirt. “You know what?” he announces. “I’m going to run through that field waving my arms like I’m an airplane.” Colbert runs through the grass, making jet sounds, banks into a loose turn and flies back to his Humvee. He quickly dons his gear. “Better now,” he says, strapping his helmet on again. (р. 278)

“We’re not shooting the village, okay?” he says. In times like these, Colbert often assumes the tone of a schoolteacher calling a timeout during a frenzied playground scuffle. Mortars explode so close we feel the overpressure punching down on the Humvee. But Colbert will not allow his team to give in to the frenzy and shoot unless the men finds clear targets (р. 293)

We draw past the hamlet lit up so heavily by Delta. “That was a civilian target,” Colbert says. “I saw them.” He sounds tired. I think this war has lost its allure for him. It’s not that he can’t take it. During the past hour or so of shooting, he still seemed excited by the action. But I think after mourning the loss of his friend Horsehead, trying to care for dehydrated, sick babies among the refugees the other day, the shot-up kids by the airfield before that, and having seen so many civilians blown apart, he’s connected the dots between the pleasure he takes in participating in this invasion and its consequences. He hasn’t turned against the aims of this war; he still supports the idea of regime change. But the side of him that loves war—his inner warrior—keeps bumping against the part of him that is basically a decent, average suburban guy who likes bad eighties music and Barry Manilow and believes in the American Way. (р. 294-295)

Upon his return, Colbert received one of the highest honors in the Marine Corps, a combat meritorious promotion to staff sergeant. He was nominated to enter a two-year exchange program with the British Royal Marines, with whom he is now serving. (р. 351)