The Last Patrol

Alleged Gangrey lurker Brian Mockenhaupt: Staff Sergeant Christopher Gerhart's stomach rolled, queasy. He stood alone under a trellis heavy with fat bunches of white grapes, planted his hands against a mud wall, and stared at the ground, head rocking as "Love Lost in a Hail of Gunfire," by the heavy-metal band Bleeding Through, blasted from his headphones. Gerhart had already deployed three times to Afghanistan and once to Iraq. Promoted 10 days earlier, he was 22, brash and outgoing. "You grow up quick out here," he'd told me. "You've got to. You can't be a little kid when your buddy gets blown up next to you."