Summary

The narrator is an unnamed Marine. He is angry. He doesn’t tell people he was in Iraq. If they know he lies about it – usually horrific ones about the death and suffering in the country. He finds it surprising that many people want to hear more. He exaggerates the horror of the dead. Guys think some of it is funny; girls think it’s sad. He embellishes the story even further by saying a lieutenant colonel stopped by to help him with a body bag one occasion. The lieutenant colonel mussed his pressed uniform when blood and guts poured out of the bag. Sometimes he’d add that the colonel “screamed like a bitch.” In reality, no one talked about dead bodies this way.

Some of the Mortuary Affairs Marines swear the spirits hover over the bodies. Later, guys swear that they could...