Skillfully woven into a cohesive whole, those stories present an entirely realistic view of what might happen when a Marine squad drives up on an Afghan village.
This past Sunday, we were honored to attend a special performance of “We Got Your Six,” presented by the Lightning Rod Theater in Hollywood. Written by Paul Hoan Zeidler and produced by Zeidler and Charlie Pacello, the play had been part of this summer’s Hollywood Fringe Festival and was performed this one last time so it could be filmed to help raise funds for presenting it elsewhere around the country.
The military uses an old-fashioned analog clockface for directional purposes: Twelve is straight ahead, nine is to your left, three to your right—and six is behind you. So if you’ve got someone’s six, you’ve got their back—and this profoundly moving play had our backs from the moment we sat down.
Charlie Pacello and Paul Hoan Zeidler
The horrid bombing at the Kabul Airport during the American evacuation prompts six U.S. veterans and their Afghan interpreter to relive a brutal firefight with the Taliban a decade earlier. The stories of the four Marines, the Navy corpsman, the Afghan interpreter, and the medivac helicopter pilot, both during the firefight and as it affected them months and years later, rings terribly true—because each story was terribly true. Through their Lightning in a Bottle play development program, Zeidler and Pacello collected stories written by veterans about their personal experiences in combat.
Skillfully woven into a cohesive whole, those stories present an entirely realistic view of what might happen when a Marine squad drives its Humvee up on an Afghan village where Taliban soldiers have been reported. They are then forced to deal with all the anguish and confusion and courage and hard decisions I can recall from my own combat experiences a half century or more ago.
I wasn’t a medic, but I had paid attention in the first aid training classes and so patched up as a best I could several of my fellow wounded soldiers, as does Corpsman De Rivera. For a time, I carried a machinegun like Private Geardo—and drowned my rage afterwards with countless bottles of whiskey as he does. And I spent time in the amputee ward at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital outside Denver, something like what Corporal Kimbrough does.
Cameron Gregg, Demetris Hartman, Derek Ocampo
Well, I could go on, but you can guess I identified with so much of the action and emotions displayed on the small stage before me. I bet the same was true of the other veterans in the audience. “We Got Your Six” needs to get before more veterans, on film perhaps but really in person. And the 98% of Americans who don’t serve their country in this fashion might want to know what’s entailed when they agitate for more wars
Almost 10 years ago, Sharon and I attended Tracers Brings War Home, the powerful play by writer-director John DiFusco.
Afterward, I wrote that Tracers “followed eight prototypical front-line soldiers who wended their way from raw recruits in basic training, to green troops learning the ropes “in country” in Vietnam, to more seasoned “grunts” facing snipers and ambushes and the deaths of their fellow soldiers, and then back again a decade or more later to show how combat’s trauma play out in their lives back in “the world.”
Brittany DeLynn, Muneen Jahan, Chris Wood
The deep impact of these two plays is similar, for this veteran and for the other veterans in the audiences. I’m not easily given to tears—okay, I am—but I was afraid to raise my hand during the talkback Sunday because I thought I might break down. I didn’t, but it was close.
Please consider donating to Lighting Rod Theatre to get this play before more audiences.
Cast: Charlie Pacello (Captain Lindsay), Derek Ocampo (Combat Corpsman De Rivera), Mueen Jahan (Interpreter Farjaad), Christopher Wood (Sergeant Stowers), Cameron Gregg (Corporal Kimbrough), Demetris Hartman (Private Geardo), and Brittany DeLynn (Lietenant Jessica Foss). Adapted and written by Paul Hoan Zeidler. Produced by Zeidler and Pacello.
