Fight Night, Las Vegas, August 2008
Their screams are the worst. We’re more than a hundred meters away, on the other side of the river, but I can hear Marines dying. Their armored vehicle hit a land mine. It caught fire with fifteen men aboard.
They scream as they burn alive. The radio chatter is desperate, almost hysterical. Nobody can get to them. There will be no salvation, only a torturous death in the flames. From our position across the river, we hear every agonizing moment and can see their funeral pyre rising over the riverbank.
I can do nothing. It is the most helpless, enraging feeling I’ve ever experienced. I have no way to get across the water to those burning men.
It takes forever for the last screams to fade away.
My eyes flick open. I’m instantly alert. For a second, it feels like I’m back in western Iraq.
Travis Manion, one of my closest friends, stares at me from across the makeshift locker room, as if he senses I’ve relived that day in 2005 all over again. He knows I always do.
You gotta have heart for the fight, Bro.
