We were about a mile out from an IA checkpoint (Iraqi Army) when the world tore open.

A roadside IED (Improvised Explosive Device) went off on the right side of the road.

I was driving an MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle), and I remember my head turning almost by habit, scanning the right shoulder. Just in time to watch the blast hit the vehicle ahead of me in the convoy.

The feeling of seeing it was surreal. Not just “this is intense” surreal, but full-on wrong, like physics had been temporarily rewritten. Everything around me looked like it was moving in slow motion except for me. I was clear. I was fast. I was almost detached. I have read other guys describe that state as being in “the zone,” and that is the closest label I have for it. Time stretched out, but my mind did not. It narrowed down into a clean, sharp tunnel.

Then training snapped back into place and the convoy locked up.

From the moment the bomb detonated, everything that mattered happened in a handful of moments. Not minutes. Moments.

We stopped. We went straight into IED drills. The convoy had to communicate fast and clean. Vehicle to vehicle status checks. Radio calls up and down the line. Gunners scanning sectors. Higher getting notified. We had to evaluate the scene immediately, figure out what had been hit, and determine whether we had casualties.

This was the first IED our platoon had ever been hit by, so even with all the training, there was a raw edge to it. You could feel everybody doing the same math at the same time. Is there a follow-on? Is this a complex ambush? Where is the triggerman? Who is hurt? Who is missing?

We were stopped with the city close on the left, maybe thirty or forty yards from the buildings.

And the whole place went dead.

Not quiet like “nothing happening” quiet. Quiet like a room going silent when somebody walks in with bad intentions. No normal street movement. No curious faces. No bystanders creeping closer. The normal citizenry would not dare. Not after an explosion. Not with Marines on the road and weapons up. Even an innocent man would know he could get himself killed just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was preternaturally still.

And that is why what happened next hit me so hard.

In the middle of that stillness, almost right away, I caught movement in my mirror.

An Iraqi man was walking up the left shoulder from behind us, between me in the driver’s seat and the city.

Not running. Not ducking. Not panicked.

Casual.

He came closer. Closer. He was suddenly alongside my door, no more than ten feet from my window.

He looked straight at me.

And I looked straight back.

No smile. No curiosity. Just a flat, direct look that landed in my chest like a weight. I did not know his name, did not know what he had or did not have under his clothes, but I knew in that immediate gut-level way you do not argue with that this man was not there to help.

We held eye contact as he walked, neither of us flinching.

And here is the part that still does not make sense to me. Something kept me from calling it out. I was and still am surprised nobody else saw him. Even more surprised that I was held back from saying anything, like some instinct or warning I could not explain had its hand over my mouth.

A second later the man turned off the shoulder and disappeared into the buildings on the left like he had never been there at all.

Right after that, our scouts were dismounted. Dismounted, meaning they were out of the vehicle with rifles up, providing overwatch and inspecting the area around us to see if there were any other IEDs waiting to finish the job. They were moving fast, doing exactly what they were trained to do, because in those first moments after a blast you assume there is more coming, even if you are praying there is not.

All of that, the explosion, the immediate evaluation, the radio checks, the man walking up beside my vehicle, the scouts hitting the ground, happened in a tight burst of time.

And then I sat there.

In the driver’s seat. In armor. Watching my brothers out there on the road doing their jobs.

And something started nagging at me.

At first it was just discomfort. Then it was anger. Then it was pressure, and it was not coming from anyone else. It was coming from me. A need to prove to myself that I could handle being out there too, that I was not going to sit behind steel and glass while other Marines were exposed and working the problem after someone had just tried to kill us.

A few minutes after the scouts got out, I leaned toward my VC (Vehicle Commander) and told him I had to take a piss adn asked if I could get out.

I did have to piss.

But that was not the whole reason.

He gave the okay.

I grabbed my rifle. Opened the armored door. Hopped down onto the road.

Behind me as I faced out at the city, away from my vehicle, smoke was still trailing into the sky from the shoulder where the bomb had just gone off.

In front of me, was the city, close enough to feel like it was leaning toward me. Same buildings. Same dead stillness. No movement. No crowd. No faces. Just that eerie quiet. No sign of the man I had seen before.

I stared out at all of it, and I did the most human, stubborn, defiant thing I could think of.

I faced out at the city, unzipped my CVC (combat vehicle crewman) suit, and took a piss right there, defiant, exposed as I could possibly be to any unknown threat in the dark foreboding buildings. The only message I could send in that moment was simple:

“Fuck you.”

I stared out at the city for a few more moments, waiting.

Nothing happened.

I zipped up my CVC suit, climbed back into the MRAP.

Not long after that, the casualty picture became clear.

We did have casualties.

Nobody died, thank God, but we had a seriously wounded Marine. The Gunner from the vehicle that had been hit. We rushed him back toward Fallujah for medical, and from there he was evacuated. The details of what happened to him, and what he went through after, are his story to tell, not mine.

And once that happened, once the wounded were moved and the immediate chaos was replaced by procedure, the tempo changed completely.

Everything slowed down.

Now it was waiting.

We were still sitting there with the city close on the left and the blast site on the right, knowing someone had tried to kill us and not knowing if they were done. We had to hold security, maintain comms, and keep scanning because you do not get to relax just because the first bomb already went off.

We were waiting on help from the Army units stationed at BIAP. They sent a team out to link up with us, but it took a long time.

After our Marine was evacuated, the rest of the ordeal stretched out for several hours. Tense. Quiet. Everyone watching. Everyone listening. Everyone waiting in that unnatural stillness, with only the radios and the engines and your own breathing to remind you that time was still moving.

We got no recognition for that incident, no awards, no medals, although the vehicle that got hit was awarded combat action ribbons, still I faced my own insecurity and fear and got out on the road to prove to myself I wasn’t afraid, and even if I was that I could push through it.

That’s worth more than any ribbons.

Memories.