Using barrier-breaching techniques I remembered from my Marine Corps training, I moved in front of the group, breaking through fences so we could get to the fire. We toiled past midnight, breaking four shovels in the process. Beau Biglow, a fourth-generation Malibu resident, had been fighting the fires for days and was falling asleep midstride. The guys’ Vans sneaker soles melted from the heat.

We slept at a nearby trailer park, falling across every horizontal surface in a home that had been evacuated by the family of one of our group. It felt like the end of so many patrols I had been on in Afghanistan. The dead sleep, the hangman humor, the stale-urine smell of combat. For the first time, our masks came off, and we exchanged names. We were all from the Point Dume neighborhood, and soon local residents who stayed behind began calling us the Point Dume Bombers, after a crew of Malibu surfers who looked after their local beaches in the 1970s. We resolved to protect the neighborhood from any more fires.

The following morning, more fires burned, but we acquired an important new weapon to fight them. One of the guys worked in film production and was able to get his hands on the high-end radios that they use while filming. Soon we had organized into three teams and I was serving as an observer from atop Point Dume, overlooking the neighborhood and the ocean, directing the Bombers by radio to fires and flare-ups I spotted. When I served as a radio operator in the Marines, our ability to communicate in the mountains of Afghanistan saved us countless times. With our radios, we could see beyond the ridgelines by talking to aircraft and other units. As the fire crept around Malibu, hiding in gullies and bluffs, I knew we would need that same type of coordination if we were to protect our homes and track the flames as they snaked through the dry hills around us. I realized my military skill set had real value here. The other Bombers worked tirelessly, without pause or complaint, with only the occasional request for cigarettes. Often our three teams were responding to different threats simultaneously.

Every Bomber had his own reason for being there. Lyon Herron had nothing to do until his chemotherapy ended. Jackson Winner saw the news in New York and jumped on a plane home, then a boat from Marina del Rey. Finding the piers closed by the evacuation order, he plunged into the ocean just beyond the surf line and swam ashore. C.J. Keossaian flew in and used back roads to sneak past the police barricades, and Sam McGee — well, Sam never left, before or during the fire. In the group, which swelled to 25, some had already lost their homes. Nobody was paid and no one had a motivation beyond feeling bound to help his hometown.