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Inside, in neat, tight script, is the record of one man's war, from March 18, 2003, the day that Sgt. Robert L. Sarra ate two brownies and helped pack an armored vehicle in preparation to cross the border from Kuwait into Iraq, to June 1, 2003, his 11th day in Hillah, notable only in that he went on patrol with some nervous Iraqi police.
There is the story of the dead child lying outside a burning car in Nasiriyah and the story of the memorial service the Marines conducted around the helmet, rifle and vest of Pfc. Juan Garza, who was killed by sniper fire outside Baghdad.
And there are the stories that Sgt. Sarra didn't tell when he came home, except to his mother and a friend or two. The first is the story of how he shot at an unarmed Iraqi woman, who died clutching a bag under her arm, and how he began to question what he was doing in Iraq. The second is the story of how, two days after that, he told his platoon commander he couldn't fight.
In Rob's version he faltered just once, on that day, but others in the platoon say he never recovered. These two events ultimately led him to leave the Marine Corps. Although he received an honorable discharge, his requests to transfer to a non-combat position and to re-enlist were rejected. RE-4, not recommended for re-enlistment, one form declared. "Failure to obey orders in combat and cowardice."
Which partly explains why Rob Sarra came to be standing on a corner in downtown Chicago on the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, wearing a desert camouflage hat embroidered around the brim with his name and the words "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the notebooks tucked into a pocket of his cargo pants, at a rally to protest the war he had fought.
He stood a few steps away from his mother, an anti-war activist. The Tribune has been chronicling the experiences of Rob and his mother, Fran Johns, throughout the war and occupation in Iraq. Now Rob was 16 days away from life as a civilian, a 32-year-old veteran who had long believed that the best thing to be in life was a Marine but who learned in combat that he wasn't the Marine he had thought.
The boy who once fought imaginary battles up and down the alleys of Lincoln Park now found himself a man on the other side of war. A man who had drunk too much and slept too little and gone to counseling and ultimately found the best way to deal with what had happened to him was to talk about it. A man who had come home safe but not the same.
If there is an explanation for how Sgt. Sarra changed in Iraq, it lies in his journal entry for March 26, 2003.
A year and five days later, Rob opens the notebook to that date as he sits in a coffeehouse in Lakeview, just around the corner from his mother's condominium, where he is staying until he can find an apartment of his own. His hair has begun to grow out from the "high and tight" cut he used to sport. He still is wearing his Marine Corps-issue boots.
He looks at the notebook and shuts it again before he continues. He was, he says, part of a convoy of armored vehicles--called amtracs in Marine-speak--that took up positions outside Ash Shatra, a small town in southern Iraq, on the push toward Baghdad.
By then the war was 6 days old. The Marines had been fired upon and fired back and seen dead bodies, and no one had slept for more than minutes at a stretch.
A woman began to walk toward the assault vehicles parked on the side of the road, Rob says. The Marines shouted at her in Arabic to stop.
"So she's walking and walking and walking," he says. "I'm like, OK, we've had reports of suicide bombers, she's wearing all black, she's carrying a bag under her arm.
"One of two things is going to happen. Either we drop this woman--either she's going to stop or we'd better drop her or she's going to blow up and kill a bunch of guys.
"So she's walking. She's walking. She's walking. I perceived her as a threat. You know what, I've got a shot. Two shots. The first one, I think I missed her. Second one, I saw her buck. And then the Marines from the other amtrac opened up on her. And I was the only guy in my platoon to fire.
"And she hit the ground and when she hit the ground, there was a white flag in her hand, a piece of white flag in her hand. And I was like, `Oh my God.'"
Rob's account of that incident is generally corroborated by a military report and Marine Corps officials. The report says he was the only member of his platoon who shot at an Iraqi woman in traditional black dress. The woman was killed by Marine fire, the document states, but she continued to move after his shots, indicating he did not hit her and was not responsible for her death.
Because of the perceived threat the woman presented and her failure to heed the warnings to stop, the shooting was considered justified within the rules of engagement, Marine Corps officials said.
Later, in his notebook, Rob listed seven reasons he felt he had done what had to do. (No. 2: He didn't see the white flag.) He could not so neatly organize his feelings.
"That's when I had enough, right then and there," he says. "I wrote in my journal, I felt sick. I didn't have the stomach to do this," he says.
Two days later, the battalion was supposed to return to Ash Shatra to rescue a missing Marine. Rob didn't want to go.
"I said, `I've got a bad vibe about this,'" he recalls. "I said I was scared, I was freaked out."
Rob's platoon commander, 1st Lt. Scott Cuomo, said he learned of his refusal to fight from a younger Marine, who was angry and upset.
As the platoon guide and its third-in-command, Rob was responsible for helping lead junior Marines, as well as handling various logistical details for the unit. His refusal to fight, his superiors say, threatened the morale and safety of the men under him.
"If you can't do it for your platoon," Cuomo remembers saying, "do it for your fellow sergeant--our brother--who is very likely trapped in the city by himself.
"I was so incredibly let down," he recalled in an e-mail exchange. "I was almost speechless when he said that he would not go and fight to free one of our brothers."
The mission ultimately was conducted by another unit. According to his platoon commander, Rob never regained his footing. He was counseled and given a chance to rest but "still could not come to grips with what his job required him to do, especially in a combat environment," Cuomo wrote in a report.
Rob acknowledges that he never resumed his responsibilities as platoon guide but says he did continue to fight.
His platoon commander and platoon sergeant say they do not recall seeing him fire his weapon during the only serious firefight the unit encountered on its way to Baghdad. Later, four members of his platoon wrote letters at Rob's request, saying he did leave the armored vehicle and fight during the war.
A Marine who refuses to fight can face court-martial. Rob's platoon and company commanders did not pursue charges against him, saying via e-mail that they believed he was a good man and did not want to ruin his life.
Rob believes his actions showed a lack of leadership, not cowardice.
"I was fighting like everyone else," he says. "I wasn't in a foxhole, shaking and cowering. To me, that's a coward. If you're firing back, you're not a coward."
Nonetheless, Rob's relationships with some platoon members had become strained. "Standoffish" is how he describes them.
His superiors offered a harsher assessment, saying in one account that he had "so damaged his credibility that Marines openly expressed their reservations about serving with him."
The unit arrived in Baghdad on April 9 and took up residence in a cigarette factory. Later the Marines moved to a former United Nations compound, where a Tribune reporter found and interviewed Rob. He did not speak about shooting at the woman or his refusal to fight, saying only that he would not talk about the worst moment of his war.
In Baghdad, Rob officially was removed from his position as platoon guide and transferred to another platoon. The 1st Battalion, 4th Regiment then traveled to Hillah and Babylon, where the Marines patrolled the towns and provided security for other troops.
In mid-June 2003, Rob was sent home. Before the war he had been selected for recruiter training, and the Marines needed new recruiters. He was happy to leave.
"War sucks," he says. "War is not a good thing. But I may not be the best warrior."
The first time he heard a firecracker after he came back from Iraq, Rob thought someone was shooting at him. It didn't matter that he was in Pentwater, Mich., smoking a cigarette outside an ice cream shop the day before the 4th of July.
He dropped to one knee and spun around. His mother, Fran Johns, who had been talking to him from a few feet away, caught her breath.
"It was so immediate and visceral," she remembers. "It was horrifying."
The small town on Lake Michigan where Fran owns a vacation home had served as the family's refuge.
They used "Pentwater" as the code word for safety in their letters and e-mails. When Rob returned to Chicago in late June on a month's leave, they left the city for what Fran hoped would be a quiet family reunion. Instead the trip marked the beginning of a difficult adjustment to life after war.
Rob left early from the fireworks display on the beach. He didn't like the feeling of sand beneath his feet or the thud of rockets in the air.
He began drinking a lot. He couldn't sleep. During a trip to visit a friend in Milwaukee the next week, there was a fight at a bar that left him with a smear of blood down his arm and the fear that he could not control his temper.
"I started to get worried," recalls his friend Chris Madding, who had pulled Rob off the other man in the fight. "He was on a reckless mission to just party and get out there and really let loose his opinions and what he had been through."
By the time Rob returned to Camp Pendleton, Calif., in late July, he suspected he needed help. His medical records show he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was referred to a combat stress group.
Once a week, Rob says, he and seven other newly returned Iraq veterans met and talked about the war. After about a month, the sessions ended.
As Rob waited to begin training as a recruiter, there was a mix-up with his re-enlistment paperwork.
His battalion commander had approved his initial request to re-enlist, but when Rob resubmitted a form that had gone missing, the battalion commander was told of his refusal to fight and called him in, Rob and Marine officials say.
The battalion commander told Rob he could not recommend him for re-enlistment unless he agreed to go back to Iraq and prove that he met the requirement that a Marine be fit for rigorous combat duty on foreign soil.
Rob said no. The battalion commander then rescinded the transfer to recruiter school and recommended that Rob not be allowed to re-enlist. Rob later appealed the decision to the regiment commander but lost.
The news, which came in early December, threw him into a tailspin. That weekend he decided he was going to leave. He took down the mementos from Iraq that decorated the walls of his barracks room, wrote his platoon sergeant a letter and drove to the beach.
"I get the feeling no one in the battalion trusts me as a Marine anymore," he wrote in the letter. "I can't look myself in the mirror and am ashamed at being a `coward.'"
He came back Monday morning and went to bed instead of reporting for duty. His platoon sergeant found him in his room. By lunchtime he was back at work.
During the last fiscal year, about 17 percent of career Marines considered for re-enlistment--1,568 out of 8,978--were found ineligible. Reasons for rejection can vary widely, but Marine Corps representatives said they could not determine how many cases involved situations like Rob's.
He received an honorable discharge, which is not considered unusual if someone's actions prevent him from being considered for re-enlistment but do not reflect broader discredit upon the Marines, officials said.
Despite what happened, Rob insisted he felt no bitterness toward the Marine Corps. "I don't want to give the Marine Corps a black eye," he said. "I respect the hell out of the Marine Corps. I love the Marine Corps."
As of April 5, 2004, his service as a Marine was over. The man who used to close his letters and e-mail with the Marine Corps motto, "Semper Fi," concluded his active duty handing out rental movies and video games at the base recreation center.
Sometimes, when Rob was in Iraq, his mother would lie awake at night, running through the litany of terrible things that could happen to him there.
He could get killed. That was always first. He could lose a limb. Two limbs. He could become brain-damaged. He might get captured. Tortured.
Then there was the other list of fears, not about what might be inflicted upon him but what he might have to inflict upon others.
"That was exactly what happened," Fran Johns says now. "It was what he did and what he saw that wounded him. When he started telling me these stories of body parts in the road and dying children and shooting a civilian and being afraid of going back into battle, it was everything I worried about."
Fran had begun protesting the war well before she knew her son would be sent to fight it. His return home did not dim her anger.
She continued to attend the rallies and lectures and political meet-and-greets that had served as her battlefields. Through much of the winter, Fran campaigned for then-Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean and was listed as a Dean delegate for the Illinois primary in March.
When Dean dropped out, she switched her allegiance to Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, albeit without much enthusiasm.
If Rob bore the Marine Corps no resentment for his exit, Fran did and she feared that her outspoken opposition to the war had something to do with it.
"At this point in time, how bad does somebody have to be to tell him he can't re-enlist?" she says. "There's something that doesn't add up here."
As Rob's service neared its end, Fran began to reduce her public involvement in the anti-war movement, saying she felt the spotlight should turn to families whose sons and daughters still were there.
On March 20, the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, she stood at a protest and joked that it was almost time to burn the "Marine Mom Against the War" sign she always had carried with her.
The Marine stood a few steps away, wearing his desert camouflage hat. Rob had returned to Chicago in March to count out his final weeks of leftover leave, a civilian in all but name and habit.
He still spoke what his mother referred to as "Marinese," saying "No joy" when he couldn't find a parking space or "1500 hours" to set up a time to meet.
He watched the war on television and read about it in the newspapers and in books and on the Internet.
He couldn't explain exactly why he went to the peace rally with his mother. He "wasn't in a sign-waving, yelling mode," he was careful to say, but he stayed long after she had gone home, listening to the speeches in Federal Plaza.
"I'm getting to see what my mom saw," he said at one point, glancing around at the protesters. "But she still hasn't seen what I saw."
As the weeks passed, Rob got a temporary job in a mailroom and filled out an application for the Secret Service.
His backpack sprouted a pair of peace buttons. A new tattoo appeared on his left shoulder, with the initials of the two men in his company who had died in Iraq.
He began to talk more openly about how he felt about what was happening in Iraq. "I think," he said one night, "being home, I've just realized how screwed up it is."
He decided to go to another anti-war event, on Memorial Day. He was asked to speak, and he agreed. The rally, sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, centered around a podium set up next to the Chicago River, at the corner of Wabash Avenue and Wacker Drive, and heaped in front with carnations dyed purple, pink, orange and red.
The day before, Rob had gotten his hair cut, trimming it from short to shorter, and he wore a Marine Corps flight jacket dotted with military patches.
His mother didn't attend. Exhausted from a tough stretch at her job as an advertising executive, she went, instead, to Pentwater. Rob looked down at his speech as he read, talking about some of what he had seen and done in Iraq and what he had heard from Marines who were there now.
He did not talk about the Iraqi woman. He did not talk about the day he could not fight. He did not say he was opposed to the war, although he did say this about the drive to Baghdad: "I found myself and some of my fellow Marines asking ourselves, `What the hell are we doing? Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Who are we fighting?'"
And he did say this, about the day they arrived in the Iraqi capital.
"People cheered in the streets and we were thrown cartons of local cigarettes. Children gave us flowers, which we wore in our body armor. We all felt this justified what we had gone through. We felt we had a purpose."
When he finished speaking, Rob stood in the back of the small crowd and pulled a cigarette out of a pocket in the sleeve of his jacket.
He stood alone, smoking, a man carrying a war in a pair of green notebooks and facing a future as blank as the 46 empty pages at the end.
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ON THE INTERNET Find the previous articles about Sgt. Rob Sarra at chicagotribune.com/marinemom