Famous drinker F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives.” Good line, flawed logic.

Good line, flawed logic. 

For example: “Marine infamous for urinating on Taliban corpses helps foil girlfriend’s alleged hit-man plot” reads a late April headline in the Washington Post, and somehow, some way, the story’s actually even stranger than that. Former Marine Staff Sergeant Joseph Chamblin was part of the scout sniper platoon who, following a 2012 firefight in Afghanistan, pissed on the dead bodies of enemy fighters. Someone in the platoon videotaped it, and later the video was uploaded to YouTube. Everyone involved, including Chamblin, saw their military careers go poof. And that was the least of it. One of the other Marines involved, former Sergeant Robert Richards, died of an accidental overdose in 2014, his family pointing to depression and his never getting over the infamy from Afghanistan as the culprit.

That story — the one of the troubled vet who can never shake the demons of war — is an all-too-common one. Chamblin’s is, well, something else altogether. It seems rendered out of a Robert Stone novel. To summarize (no easy feat for this madness, so bear with me here), Chamblin’s lady friend in Tennessee, Laura Buckingham, wanted to hire someone to kill her young child’s father. She mentioned it a few times to Chamblin, who first thought she was kidding. Buckingham — also a former Marine and a veteran of Iraq — was not kidding. Disturbed by her adamancy and also probably not wanting to be an accessory to murder, Chamblin began recording their murder-for-hire conversations and later went to the police with them. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation set up a sting, and Buckingham was arrested earlier this year, charged with “Criminal intent to commit first-degree murder.” 

“War brings out the beast in people — and needs to — if they want to survive.”

Got all that? The tl;dr version is that a little kid still has his father because of Chamblin, and a very troubled woman is now behind bars instead of raising said little kid.

Four years ago, after watching the video, I remember having many mixed feelings about “Pissing on Taliban Bodies” and the ensuing brouhaha. Like too many social media scandals, the short video clip stripped any and all context from the event. They were deep in the mountains of Afghanistan, and these were enemy bodies, not innocents by any means. War brings out the beast in people, and needs to, if they want to survive; also, let’s be honest, way worse things than that have gone down in the immediacy of post-combat celebrations. I got and get all that and suspect most Penthouse readers do, too.

On the other … where’s the discipline? They are (well, were) United States Marines, not irregular jackasses playing at militia. And why record it? Dear Devil Dogs, had you ever heard of the Internet? It’s not exactly interested in nuance or circumstance or the wider view of it all. Put down the recording device and get back to the damn outpost.

Anyhow, regardless of the rights, wrongs, and what the fucks, I hadn’t thought much of the incident or Marines involved since 2012. It’s the world we live in, I guess — on to the next scandal du jour, and it’s not like our terror wars haven’t had more to offer to consider in 40-second increments in the years since. 

Of course it wasn’t that easy to move on for Chamblin (or Richards, for that matter). Chamblin co-wrote a book called Into Infamy. The title says it all. And here he is, a few years later, back in the news, again part of a crazy story but this time being praised instead of being vilified. Which brings me back to that Fitzgerald quote about second acts and American lives.

A lot of young vets right now are trying to determine their own second act. What it’s going to be, how it’s going to contribute to something larger than themselves, and when — goddamn, when — that next act is gonna finally get going. A friend of mine who went back to school on the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill put it this way a while back, as we discussed his job search: “I’m not sure I’ll ever be more than a soldier. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be something other than one.” 

I love that sentiment, for a lot of reasons. One, it defies the stereotype that a lot of civilian America can have for the post-military journey, that we (as vets) are doing anything and everything possible to shed like snakeskin our past experiences. Sometimes that can be the case, I guess, but usually it’s the exact opposite: we’re looking for something where our past experiences can and will serve as an asset. We want to build, not tear down. And two, my friend’s words carry a real pride for his past experience as a soldier for Uncle Sam; it’s part of what made him the person he is today. Why would he not embrace that as he goes forward?

I somehow doubt all the second acts of this generation of vets will be as surreal and strange as Chamblin’s. Nor is this blip in the news cycle the entirety of Chamblin’s, not at all. But it was nice to see one of our own, one who’d played a part in one of the war’s public low points, being more than a vet. He was being a citizen, trying to do the right thing in the midst of a truly messed-up and bizarre situation. 

No second acts in American lives? To hell with that. Fitzgerald needed to hang with more combat vets.

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