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Authors: David Morehouse

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BOOK: Psychic Warrior
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The feeling of peace was overwhelming. I was scared, but I was calm. I knew this was right; I just didn't know how I was going to do it. I'd not given much thought to being a husband before now, and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do next. I didn't even have a ring. I couldn't afford a full tank of gas; how was I supposed to finance a ring? My mind was racing. I took a deep breath, we kissed, and went for a walk in the brisk night air. My friends remained to clean up the mess, grinning in victory. I'll never forget them.
Debbie and I were married April 22, 1975, in the temple at Manti, Utah. Exactly nine months later, Debbie bore us a beautiful baby boy whom we named Michael. Our lives changed forever on that day. My world was coming together fast. I was a father, and I cherished every second of it. I wasn't very good at diapers, but I was good at getting up at night, being blanketed with vomit, stuff like that. I loved being a dad, even if I was petrified. There we were, sophomores in college, married and parents. The sacrifices had only just begun.
Debbie was a wonderful army wife, even when I was just a cadet. She supported me in virtually every possible way, which was not the case with all spouses. In the years to come Debbie and I watched as many marriages of many of our friends fell by the wayside because of the stresses and trials of army life. Being a soldier isn't easy, but being a soldier's wife is more difficult still. It's a team effort if you are to succeed; both must believe in the profession and believe that it will always take care of you. You overlook the bad—the loneliness, the cramped quarters, the mediocre hospitals, and the lousy pay—because you believe in the greater good of what you are doing. You call yourselves patriots—and Debbie was as much a patriot as I ever was. You trust that your comrades will always be that, comrades, and that they will be there if and when you ever need them. That was the army my father told me about; that was the
army Debbie and I believed in and sacrificed for.
In the first ten years of our marriage we moved seven times, living in everything from roach-infested apartments to incredibly cramped military quarters. I remember the two of us laughing on the front lawn of our quarters in Savannah, Georgia, when we had every inch of floor space covered with furniture and half of the house was still on the truck. Have you ever tried to put a family of five in less than a thousand square feet of living space? It's a challenge.
I was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry on April 16, 1979, and immediately entered active duty. Debbie and my father pinned the lieutenant's bars on my epaulets. I wept at the pride in my father's eyes. Because of my success as a cadet I was granted a regular army commission and designated a Distinguished Military Graduate. I won the General George C. Marshall Award, given to the top graduating cadet of the university. I was also chosen by a national review board to be the recipient of the national Dr. Ralph D. Mershon Award, which is given to the number one cadet among the 2,500 officers who receive regular army commissions. In retrospect, none of that was worth the price of a soda, but it seemed to be setting the stage for me.
From the beginning it was clear that my father had trained me well. Maybe success comes from simply following one's destiny. I graduated from the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1979, and was the Honor Graduate of my class. While we awaited orders to our first duty station, I attended the army Pathfinder school, again becoming the Dis tinguished Honor Graduate. I finished my basic officer professional instruction with the Infantry Mortar Platoon Leaders Course, and then Debbie, little Michael, and I reported to my initial assignment in the Republic of Panama, in November 1979.
During our first tour of duty, I served in a myriad of leadership positions. I was a mortar platoon leader, a company executive officer, an airborne rifle platoon leader, and finally, aide-de-camp for two different commanding generals.
I attended the army scuba school in 1980, and in 1981 the army jumpmaster school, where I was the Distinguished Honor Graduate of my class. As a first lieutenant, I was selected to command the army's only separate airborne rifle company—Alpha Company (Airborne), 3rd Battalion, 5th Infantry, located at Fort Kobbe, Panama—a position formerly held only by senior captains. I barely outranked those I was commanding.
We were young and the train moved fast. Debbie learned to counsel the wives of my- subordinates in everything from finances to marriage. She was a natural. She worked as hard as I did, and harder. We raised our children to think of the army first.
One thing becomes clear after the newness of the army wears off: you are simply a number, and expendable. I guess I knew this, and it was certainly clear to Debbie. We just wouldn't let ourselves dwell on it. We kept busy with the business of being a soldier and a soldier's family. As the years wore on it became increasingly clear that sacrifices didn't matter, that your belief in the profession was expected, not appreciated. You were manipulated, and you were expected to manipulate; how else could you get over two hundred men to do what no normal human being would ever do? An idealist (which is what I was) will tell you that you accomplish that through leadership. A pragmatist will tell you honestly that leadership is a series of overt and covert manipulative acts arranged so as to entice another human being into marching forty miles with a ninety-pound rucksack, into sleeping in the mud at night only to awaken in battle, and into finishing the day by carrying dead friends to a medevac chopper in plastic body bags. Normal men and women are not inspired to act in such a manner, and they don't do it for love of country or fear of consequences. There is a psychology to it, a psychology I slowly began to be aware of over the years, a psychology that would ultimately be used against me.
Despite the pace of Panama, Debbie and I found time to have two more children, our daughters Mariah and Danielle,
who, to their amusement, sport dual citizenship to this day. Finally, after four and a half arduous years, it was time to leave Panama. Good friends remained behind and fond memories came with us. The officers and their wives and children were all family to us. Debbie and the children miss Panama to this day.
 
After a six-month tour back at Fort Benning for the Infantry Officer Advanced Course, we were off to our next assignment, the prestigious 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, at Hunter Army Airfield, in Savannah, Georgia, in 1984. Life with the Rangers was completely different from anything I'd experienced before. These are hardened and serious men, hell-bent on kicking someone's ass in battle. I served as a battalion training officer, battalion adjutant, and finally as a Ranger company commander, our second company command. I was better at it the second time around.
The best part of the Rangers was the noncommissioned officers. I stood in awe of these men. Men like Sergeant Major Leon Guerra, First Sergeant Sam Spears, and First Sergeant Peterson, to name only a few of many. They are dedicated, fit professionals who rarely crack a smile and view officers with a doubting and critical eye—that is, until you prove yourself to them. I'm not certain I ever did that—perhaps they were just forgiving in my case—but I counted them as friends. Every day they drew breath, they pushed their troops to the limit, never faltering, never wanting a break. Officers come and go quickly in the Rangers-most of them rarely spend more than a year in any one assignment—but the sergeants were always there, steady and solid. They were an impressive lot, and it was my honor to serve with them.
I'd been in command a little over a year when my company was selected by the regimental commander, Colonel Joseph Stringham, to go to the Kingdom of Jordan for a lengthy desert deployment. It would be the first time in history that the United States military would send a combat command into the kingdom. The situation was highly political
and would be scrutinized from every possible angle during pre-deployment and deployment and, of course, upon our return back to home base.
Naturally, we were excited. The company endured long hours of extra training, learning some of the basic language skills, customs, and courtesies of the host country. We began shifting our sleep cycle to match the time change. We even spent time assimilating a handful of Arabic linguists into the company. They, to their chagrin, were on permanent loan from a military intelligence unit at Fort Stewart, Georgia. These guys hated being part of the Rangers. Being unaccustomed to the rigors of our life, they were miserable from about five minutes after they showed up until we released them back to their parent unit several months later. I should say that
most
of them were miserable. Several of them, including the warrant officer attached to my headquarters, proved to be real troopers.
After seemingly endless training and preparation, the day arrived for our deployment. The families of our troops had been well briefed on the activities of the company, but that never made it easy to say good-bye. We had the standard prayers from the chaplain, prayers to keep our families safe. But the faces of the children saying good-bye to their fathers never changed; they were always guarded and sad. Even though this was a peaceful mission, all was not safe. There had been peaceful missions before, when young men didn't come home again. In the Rangers death was always a possibility, and the families lived with that knowledge daily.
I knelt in front of my son, the oldest and most aware of what was happening. “I love you, Michael.”
A single small tear dropped from his eye. “Be careful, Daddy. Don't get hurt.” He squeezed my neck with his arms, his face pressed beside mine.
“Don't worry, I'll be fine. I'll bring you back some desert sand, how's that?”
His face beamed as he wiped away another tear. “And a big spider?”
I chuckled, giving Debbie a quick glance. “Yeah, and the biggest spider I can find.”
I gave Mariah a tight hug and kissed little Danielle on the cheek before turning to my wife. “You know I'll miss you.”
“We'll miss you, too. You do like your son said and stay safe, you hear me?”
“I hear you. I promise I won't ride any camels. I love you.” I embraced her and turned toward the aircraft to load it. As I walked I could feel her eyes on me and I turned to give her one last glance before disappearing into the belly of the C-141 Starlifter.
THE BULLET
I
t seems like a hundred years ago. I slapped a platoon leader on the back, took my position in the order of movement, and crossed the line of departure under the cover of mortar and machine-gun fire. It was the spring of 1987.
I tried to keep my mind on what we were doing, but it kept wandering back home to Debbie and the children. I remember thinking that Debbie and I had had an unusual parting. I didn't quite understand why this time had been different, but she seemed to have held on a little tighter when we kissed good-bye. The look in her eyes when she let go of me still made me uneasy. I ordered myself not to think about it.
I glanced upward and saw two silent birds circling in the pale, arid sky; then I closed my eyes and thought again of my family back home. My eyes snapped open when one of my Rangers stumbled to the ground next to me and cried out. He picked himself up, dusted off his precious weapon, and continued to move forward with his platoon. I followed close behind. What happened in the hours that ensued has remained a blur, but the result began a metamorphosis that has redefined my life.
I was commanding Bravo Company of the 1st Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, and we were in Jordan training Jordanian Rangers—probably to kill Israelis. Of
course nobody would ever admit to that, but who else would we be training Jordanians to fight?
I vividly remember the night before I started my transformation. I remember it as though I were supposed to remember it, as though it was the beginning of something that had been set aside for me since the beginning of time. I had marched for an hour or so with my company to a scorched spot on the floor of the valley called Baten el Ghoul, the Belly of the Beast. The Jordanians considered it a haunted valley, where the demons came out at night to murder people. It was not unusual to have one's sleep interrupted by the screams and howls of frightened Jordanian soldiers who swore in the light of day that they had seen a demon. My men and I nervously wrote it all off as superstition, much to the chagrin of our Jordanian counterparts, who repeatedly made every effort to convince us that this was a bad place. We joked about the hauntings at night as we sipped tea around the campfires, but we put no stock in them. From our perspective, if it couldn't be killed it didn't exist.
Baten el Ghoul was a desolate and jagged valley carved out of the desert that spilled over from Saudi Arabia. It looked like the surface of the moon. There was no life there, except for the wide variety of arachnids that crawled out of their hiding places onto the cooling sand at night. If I were God, and wanted to set aside a place where the souls of the living were taken from them as they made their way to Mecca, this would be it. The valley had a kind of energy that made your thoughts drift toward it unconsciously. After a few days of living in it you became comfortable, and as time passed you reluctantly saw some forbidden beauty in it. Still, it was an unclean place. There was something evil here, something I recognized the moment I set foot in it. I wasn't the only one to think so, and yet none of us could ever put a finger on it.
On this evening I was going to hear a Jordanian colonel, the commander of the Jordanian Ranger battalion, speak to my soldiers about the valley, his faith, and his hatred for
the Israelis. The colonel was our host, and while I can't remember his name, I can remember everything else about him. He was a short, stout man, filled with pride for his country and even more contented to be its only Ranger battalion commander. He hated the Israelis and showed no compunction when it came to talk of killing them. His passion for soldiering was the equal of any of ours—and that is rare, to find someone who loves being a soldier as much as an army Ranger does.
We gathered, 260 men, on a barren piece of high ground, a natural amphitheater. The colonel's stage was a section of railroad track half buried in the sand, abandoned decades ago. It was the same track that Lawrence of Arabia's infamous bedouin guerrillas used to blow up, built by the Germans under contract by the Turks. This forgotten section of track surfaced just long enough to take a breath and intersect the ancient road to the holy city of Mecca—the
hajj
road.
As the sun passed beyond sight, a stunning red glow swallowed the valley and everyone in it. For several hours after sunset, the colonel lectured our group of dirty-faced and hardened men on the finer points of the Muslim faith. He spoke on the life of the prophet Muhammad, of the Quran, of the nature of the one true God he called Allah. He told us of the five pillars of Islam: the repetition of the creed, or
shahadah
; of daily prayer, or
salah
; of the sharing of possessions with the poor, or
zakah
; of fasting, or
swam
; and of pilgrimage, or
hajj
. The faces of my men remained phlegmatic as the colonel spoke of the variations of the Muslim faith, of its Sunnis and Shi'ites. He beamed as he spoke of the spread of Islam and grew angry again as he told why his people felt Palestine was their birthright. But his most expressive moment came when he spoke of Allah, how blessed he was to know Him and how certain he was that He watched over him and protected him in peace and in combat. That comment made some heads nod in the group, which was a standing ovation from a Ranger's perspective. And so it was at this historic but forbidding site
that I spent my final hours in the world I had known.
The next morning, after the usual business gatherings of officers and noncommissioned officers had broken up, I had joined my battalion commander, Colonel Keith Nightingale, for a canteen cup of tea. Tea was not our usual drink but something we had picked up being with the Jordanians. For them it was a holdover from British colonial rule, something they hadn't rid themselves of since the last British flag left their soil decades ago. For us it was just good, much better than the instant coffee we had in our packaged rations. Tea, like everything else in this country, sort of grew on you.
Colonel Nightingale was a tall, gangly man with a brilliance I've yet to see matched. You might out-soldier him in some way but you damned sure weren't as ingenious. He was a Mensa man, proud of it and as resourceful as they come. He was an excellent teacher and never missed an opportunity to pass on a lesson in military history. Like most well-read military leaders, he had an anecdote for every possible tactical situation. There were plenty of opportunities for instruction, and if his Rangers were too busy to listen, he could always venture over to the Jordanians for a quick lecture or two.
We drank our tea and walked the mile and a half to the training site. The platoon leader, First Lieutenant Kevin Owens, and his men had just completed the finishing touches on the four enemy bunkers that made up the objective. In a few hours a Ranger platoon reinforced with two squads of Jordanian Rangers would attack it with every weapon in their arsenal. They would be evaluated on their tenacity, accuracy, and ability to systematically destroy the objective with indirect and direct fires. Specially designed targets representing enemy soldiers would fall if struck with a potentially lethal shot, or remain in position if only wounded or missed. The attacking leadership would have to orchestrate the entire operation unrehearsed, adapting to each tactical situation as it confronted them.
Colonel Nightingale and I stood there, our thumbs laced into our web belts.
“It looks good, Kevin.” I grinned from under my helmet. “It looks real good.” And it did. His platoon had built an objective consisting of five bunkers, complete with automatic weapons, trenches, concertina wire, and booby traps. It would be difficult to take down correctly and safely.
“Let's get up there to watch this mortar registration,” Nightingale said, pointing toward a small rise about fifty meters away from the objective.
The mortar platoon was registering—that is, they were dropping rounds onto the target to make sure that they would hit it and not friendly troops as they maneuvered toward the bunkers. Suddenly,
thwack!
a mortar round landed well off its mark, sending buzzing shrapnel past our heads. Nightingale and I looked nervously at each other and shrugged. We felt strange, and very foolish. It had happened so fast there wasn't time to react, but shouldn't we have run for cover, or ducked, or something? Instead we just stood there trying not to look shaken. Perhaps it was an omen.
Several hours later a young Ranger platoon leader received the order to attack; he crossed the line of departure with sixty men, and I followed. The sun was high, baking the valley and everything in it. Heavy, salty sweat stung my eyes while small black flies pestered every orifice. Despite the weight of weapons, ammunition, and radios, it was almost a pleasure to move and try to outrun those goddamned flies.
The platoon leader moved cautiously, picking routes that covered and concealed his men from the enemy. Mortar shells slammed into the objective, sending smoke and shrapnel and pieces of the bunkers high into the air. As he drew closer, the platoon leader screamed into the radio for his support position to open fire. Six medium machine guns ripped the air with their fires, hammering with such volume that several bunkers' wooden beams collapsed under the
pressure, crushing the “occupants.” Tracers spun off rocks and bunkers in every direction, dissolving in the smoke that filled the sky around the objective. The air rang with the songs of the weapons and the smell of cordite. To a warrior's eye, it was great!
I moved behind the platoon leader, watching him closely as he made contact with the left flank of the objective. His intent was to take out the flank bunker and roll up the rest of them one by one, using his machine guns to cover his movement. It was a standard technique, one he had used many times before in the mountains of Washington State and the jungles of Central America. He gave the signal for the guns to shift their fires away from him, to leave the first bunker alone and concentrate on those remaining. This would allow his men to clear each bunker in turn, the fires shifting in front of them bunker to bunker until there were no more. He threw a yellow smoke canister behind him to signal a second time for the guns to shift, and they did—all but one.
A rogue Jordanian gun shifted in the wrong direction, into the assault element, kicking up rock and dust as the Rangers dove for cover and hugged the ground. Men scrambled for shelter. The last thing I saw was the platoon leader screaming into the radio for the guns to lift, and then the world turned black.
 
As if it were another day, another year, another place, this darkness slowly dissolved into a white mist. I distinctly recall not knowing what I had been doing up to that instant. It was as if a channel had been changed and suddenly there I was standing in this endless white mist. I couldn't feel my body or my arms or legs; I couldn't feel anything. But I sensed I was upright. I tried to walk, but nothing happened. I just stood there, paralyzed and confused.
In what seemed only seconds the mist around me began breaking up, slowly revealing my surroundings. I was standing at the base of a grass-covered hill, and I felt the warmth of the sun on my shoulders. I looked down at myself
and saw that I was completely naked, but it didn't seem to matter. A gentle breeze brushed my face. At the top of the hill stood a small gathering of people, perhaps eight or twelve. They were dressed alike, in white, long, flowing clothing. I stood there unable to move, but watched as one of them turned to look down the hill at me. His face was kind, expressionless, and he almost immediately turned away. Then he turned to face me again, this time motioning for me to approach the gathering. For the first time I could feel my limbs as I moved in some strange way to the top of the hill. As I approached, the circle parted and I was ushered into it by the being who had beckoned me. As I entered, the circle closed behind me and I stood alone and naked in its center for what seemed an eternity. Finally, a kind but powerful voice came from behind me; turning, I saw that it was, again, the one who had beckoned.
“Welcome, David. We have been waiting for you.”
“What's going on?” I said in a trembling voice. “Where am I?”
No one answered.
“Didn't you hear me?” I asked. “Why am I here?”
“We called you to give you instructions.”
“
instructions
? Instructions about what? Who the hell are you guys?”
“Who we are is unimportant. What we have called you here for is this: you are to know from this point forward that what you have chosen to do in the world is wrong.”
“Wrong? What's wrong?” I was confused and indignant—and scared to death. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Your choice is wrong. Pursue peace. Teach peace, and the path to it will be made known to you. You have tasted death … now bring life. We will be with you, always.”
A piercing sound filled my head, a ringing that made me clasp my hands against my ears. My eyes stung and my knees buckled. Opening my eyes briefly, I was aware of the absence of the sun and the wind as the strange mist encircled me once again. The mist remained unaffected by
the wind, yet encircled me and the hill, as if we were in the eye of a hurricane. The air was thick as death and heavy. I tried to speak, to cry out, but nothing came from my mouth. All I could do was lie there with the pain, alone and frightened beyond description. The mist crept back around me, masking the hill from my view, and in a few moments it was completely black.
BOOK: Psychic Warrior
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