NJ: How hard is the separation?

I think it'll be far more difficult now that I've got a boy. But -- it -- I hate it, you know. Would I stop deploying? No.

I'm getting itchy right now that I've been here a year and a half. When I leave here, when I leave Quantico at the end of three years, this will be the longest I've ever lived in any one place.

So, I mean, I miss the fleet, I miss the ready room. I miss -- scaring myself, training new guys, flying, being deployed, you know, lack of flush toilets. I don't know what about the lifestyle draws; I think it's something that is either in you or isn't. I don't know why I like it, but I do.

In November 2004, during Faught's second deployment to Iraq, he flew in the battle for Falluja.

Anywhere near the city, you were going to get shot at. And just during Falluja, every time you'd roll in, you'd see these -- they look like flash bulbs, like when you're at an air show and people are taking pictures, except they're muzzle flashes.

The vast majority was small arms and RPGs; that's most of the holes we had in our airplanes. The ones that actually shot people down, there were two airplanes lost on one day, both from our other squadron that had -- there was another squadron up at Al Asad that didn't operate in our area. And they -- all very good, competent guys, but they had been used to flying around low because there's a much lower threat up at Al Asad, and they came down to augment us during Falluja with four airplanes and lost two of them in the space of a day.

One of them was shot down not related to the Falluja fight. He was escorting a Casevac [casualty evacuation] helicopter into Baghdad, and he got into a bit of a tussle with a heavy machine gun and they shot out his hydraulics. And he killed a couple of the guys, but it was an L-shaped ambush, so he killed all the guys in the front, and then he took a bunch of -- they just stitched his airplane up the side -- and he peeled off to one side and made it almost 180 degrees out and then just leveled out and took what he had and pancaked it into a field. And the Frog that he was escorting with the casualty came back, picked him up, and they left.

The other guy, "Misfit 2-2," was -- I was on station over the Falluja Finger and we'd been shooting for 3rd LAR [Light Armored Reconnaissance battalion] and 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. And we had gone "Winchester," we were out of ammo. And this other flight checked in, "Misfit" flight from the Al Asad squadron.

So we did a quick battle handover: I said, "Hey, this is who I've been working for, this is where I am, and we're up here on 3,000 [feet], recommend you come up" -- they were down much lower than that. And he just said "Roger," and then he started shooting for the various -- he started getting the attack briefs, and he started picking out targets and shooting people in the city.

And we left, went back for more ammo and fuel. I went back inside of the ready room and they said, "Hey, 'Useless,' you gotta launch, we just lost another helicopter on the Finger." And I thought, "Ah, it's one of those two guys." And I knew who was in those airplanes, and I thought, "Ah, shit," you know, "they're dead."

NJ: Did they, in fact, die?

No, everyone lived. One guy got a back and neck full of shrapnel and a broken arm. And "Gremlin" was fine; like one piece of shrapnel in the back of his neck, but he's fine.

"Gorby," the guy that got the neck full of shrapnel and stuff, is still in the Marine Corps, and he's -- he lives in the same housing development that I live in.

Not everyone is as lucky as Gorby and Gremlin.

It averages, if you average it out over time, about a funeral a year of a guy that you know. In fact, the last one was -- the last two have been peacetime, crashed their airplane. Just kind of the cost of doing business, unfortunately....

We're talking about various other guys that put one in the water, or ran into each other or got -- one guy, Mike Martino, who got killed just northeast of Ramadi, right before my fourth deployment, sucked up an enemy anti-air missile. And they rode it all the way to the deck, I mean, it killed them both. But we always tend to laugh at -- at him, just funny things that he had done in that squadron prior to, where -- the same as every guy, the same human failings everybody else has. You talk about him in a deprecating manner as if he was still alive, but he's not. He's just not there to defend himself....

Putting a yellow sticker on the back of your car and "I support your troops" -- I could care less. What I want you to do is educate yourself and vote, and don't -- don't cry the crocodile tears for Mike Martino, who sucked up a MANPAD over Ramadi and is now a name on a wall. Spend those lives wisely. I am an instrument of the executive branch of the United States and I execute foreign policy.

The problem is if you send me and my fellow Marines someplace to do that, by its very nature, it's going to be a mess. You know, if we were there, it's Afghanistan, it's Vietnam, it's Iraq. That's what it is, an extension of politics by other means. So if the "other means" is someone in body armor with a weapon, it's going to be a mess, it's going to be awful, and if seen first-hand you should recoil in horror from it, unless you're a sociopath.

What's worse? Having that, or a crazed, genocidal dictator willing to stamp out thousands of people's lives a year, torture houses, and provide a safe haven for extremist, fundamentalist Islam, and willing to export it? I don't know.

What I would -- I mean, I think that the important thing isn't that people say, "Ah, too many casualties, these kids are dying." It's an all-volunteer force. So I take that obligation freely. But I don't think that diminishes that loss. It's just, that's the way it is.

NJ: Is it worth it for you, to keep on living this life? To have chosen this life?

Yes. I wouldn't change anything.

This interview was conducted on Feb. 13, 2009.

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