I ran into Sergeant Hansbarger quite by accident, as one of my interviews called for me to enter one of the largely isolated Veteran's encampments, little more than shanty towns, that seem to spring up outside of all the major cities since the end of formal conflict. Through casual conversation he revealed that he was one of the Marines that held Rock Island for over a year, easily considered one of the most difficult enclaves in the war. When they were finally "relieved" (He imparted to me early on that the few survivors of Rock Island, being mostly veterans, preferred that term as opposed to "rescue") I immediately rescheduled my prior engagement so that he could recount his story.

How did you wind up on Rock Island?

It was called a "Presidential Recall" back then. In certain circumstances the President can call back service members who were way past the end of their active service. You've heard of the Army's "Stop-Loss"? Think of it as a retroactive stop-loss. My first tour in Iraq I met a Staff Sergeant who had served in Vietnam, Desert Storm, and then subsequently Iraq under one of those. It had never been used on such a large scale before, but even before things got way out of hand, I guess the President knew this conflict would be different. And then of course, part of the Marine Corps mission is to go anywhere and do anything the President directs. I guess it's just the nature of being "The Nation's shock troops."

So why weren't their more of you?

Not enough time. The conflict broke out in a matter of days or weeks, not months. Frankly I'm surprised we made it out there. Then again the 1st Marine Provisional Brigade went from a loose assemblage of civilians to landing on the Beaches at Inchon in under two weeks back in Korea, so it probably isn't that unprecedented. Originally the idea was to secure certain locations of strategic importance. Rock Island was one of the Nations primary Armories and foundries ever since the Civil War. It's almost as if they thought we'd be using cannon against Zed. Anyway, we were about two provisional rifle platoons worth when we started. That lasted for all of about two weeks.

Were all of you veterans?

God no! Most of the (Non-Commissioned officers) were, but the majority of our strength was pretty fresh out of Boot Camp. And we had one butter-Bar straight out of TBS.

Butter-Bar? TBS?

Sorry, I'm so used to talking to other veterans I forget myself sometimes. A Butter-Bar is a derogatory reference to a 2nd Lieutenant freshly commissioned and usually just as dumb as any other dumb-ass that just got out of training. TBS is the school that Marine officers go to learn their jobs. This particular Lieutenant, like so many other ones meant well, but suffered from ignorance about their own ignorance. Fortunately the Detachment commander was a Captain who was prior enlisted, and we had a Major that was stationed there as a liaison to the Army. They saved a lot of lives. The death of the Major was one of the hardest things for us to endure out there.

How did he die? What happened?

Well, (sigh) it was an Army post, so naturally, they assigned the Marines to pull perimeter security. At first Zed only came in ones and twos. Nothing too difficult. We lost two guys before we learned to take headshots only. We're trained to do that anyway, so it wasn't anything too serious. The Major just made that part of our (rules of engagement) and we were set for about a week and a half. But then, as the infection spread, we started to see them come in waves. So we cordoned off all the bridges, set up some barriers to slow down the Zed and channel them to where we could shoot them better. That was one of our staples in Iraq and Afghanistan, but you know what they say about always fighting the last war. We were focusing on how normal humans would try to get on the Island. At the risk of stating the obvious, Rock Island was an island, surrounded by water. Zed doesn't swim, but he doesn't need to breathe either, does he? One night, we had a whole lot of them from upstream get on the Island from the North. Came in right behind us. Our HMMWV's were cut off. To make things worse, Zed was only coming in such small numbers that that one Butter-Bar decided we should only carry 20 rounds in our combat load so that we would have to conserve ammo. God damn that was a shit-storm…

We were staying in a cluster of buildings in the middle of the Island. We had grown accustomed to hearing pot-shots every once in a while, but once we heard the Machine guns letting loose we knew it had to be bad. I popped my head out and saw the issue. We had a fire team, four Marines, on each of the three bridges. That's eighty rounds between them, plus 200 rounds of 7.62 for the (machine gun), and maybe three 40mm grenades for their (launchers). Plus, there was a generator on the bridge powering a flood lamp. It's almost cliché now to say that Zed likes to cluster around bright lights and loud noises, but back then we didn't understand that. There was a stream of Zed between them and us growing thicker and thicker around them. In short, they were almost fucked...