February 17, 2005
No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy
Part 2
by Craig Bernthal
Private Papers

Tim’s next stops were a field hospital in southern Iraq “where they patched me up as best they could,” and the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where after two weeks of medical attention and convalescence, he was somehow able to convince his doctor to let him go back to Iraq. “I was able to talk to the doctor, and you know, made a deal with him that if I was able to walk around the hospital for a day without crutches or any of that stuff that I could sign a waiver, that would say I would go back or whatever.”

Here are Tim’s directions for getting back to the front on your own, without orders:

First, borrow camies. He didn’t have any camouflage gear because, as he said, “they were all tore up.” So he borrowed some from a medic at Landstuhl.

Then, go to the nearest military airfield: “Then, it’s pretty—you go down to the airfield and talk to the air boss; ‘when’s the next time,’ you know, ‘you’ve got a flight going back down to Kuwait?’ I was lucky—I waited there for like two, three days for the flight—and was able to get back to Kuwait.”

So, you’ve gotten back to Camp Commando, the Marine staging area in Kuwait. But how do you enter Iraq and find your unit? “That was gonna be the big problem, actually getting back up and into Iraq, because you’re actually not able to get back in unless you’re in a unit. But I was lucky enough that we had some new Marines coming to 2/5 [2nd Battalion, Regimental Combat Team 5]. So I had a convoy. I would have never gotten back if it wasn’t for that.”

But how did you manage to find those new Marines going to your unit? “Just lucky. I just started asking around. I kept checking in with the camp adjutant . . . it took awhile. So I got a ride up.”

I wondered, “Were the other guys in the squad surprised to see you?”

“Oh yeah, big time. When I got there General Mattis was actually at our place, interviewing Martinez about the fire fight. And, you know, I was able to see him through the window talking to Mattis and I was waiving. . .”

“What if you’d have just stayed there in Germany. Could you have done that?”

“Yeah, I would have gotten home.”

“And you called Alisha and said you were going to try to get back to Iraq?”

“Yeah. I didn’t tell her too much. I didn’t want her to worry.”

If the first part of this history is about having no worse enemy than a Marine, the second is about having no better friend. As Samawah is south of Baghdad, close to An Nasiriyah, and this is where the 2/5 patrolled from April through September, 2003. The people of As Samawah loved the Marines. They were Shiites who indeed felt liberated, and the Marines did their best to demonstrate friendship. They helped the civilians dig ditches, push carts, and rebuild their neglected city. They got “care packages” from home, often loaded with candy, which they distributed to the local kids. One day Tim helped bail hay, and the scene he describes goes back millennia: children cutting hay with scythes while he tossed it onto a wagon with a fork. The Iraqis invited the Marines for dinner—all-male “block party” affairs with grilled chicken, rice, and the Iraqi version of tortillas. One of his friends still keeps in touch by email with the town’s chief of police.

The day after I talked to Tim the elections in Iraq were held, and like most Americans, I was deeply moved by the courage of the Iraqi people and the numbers who had turned out to vote. I was hoping that the thirst for liberty wasn’t just a political slogan or an unsubstantiated ideal. I think that now we have proof that Iraqis do want freedom, liberty, democracy, and that they will beat the insurgency.

After my talk with Tim Tardif, it was especially painful to see how grudgingly many commentators—Molly Ivins for instance—acknowledged the success of the elections with one opening paragraph of faint praise while devoting the rest of their columns to the misery ahead. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show made a smarmy joke about how, after all the destruction we’d caused, the Iraqis could very well be saluting us with their middle fingers instead of ink stained index fingers. One young woman of Iraqi ancestry on NPR’s All Things Considered explained in a gush—sentimental, cynical, and self-congratulatory—how she could have voted in the Iraqi election but did not because she considered herself an American, and that the Iraqis already had too many Americans telling them what to do.

We haven’t spent over 1,500 lives and much blood to tell the Iraqis what to do, and failure to celebrate the Iraqi election, whatever lies ahead, is a failure to honor those who helped bring it about. We have given the Iraqis the chance to decide for themselves what they will do, and all indications are, they will embrace that chance. In his letter to the 1st Marine Division before the invasion of Iraq—a letter Lance Corporal Tim Tardif carried in his flak jacket as long as he was in Iraq—Major General J. N. Mattis told his men: “Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a U. S. Marine.” The Marines of the 2/5 demonstrated to fedayeen and Baathist thugs from the Al Ramaylah oil fields to Samarra that there was no worse enemy. In many instances, and especially to the people of As Samawah, they demonstrated there was no better friend. Among the many things we should see in this election are the courage and kindness of the Marines, kindness whose sincerity has been guaranteed by sacrifice.