My wife (at the time; she’s now my ex) and I served in the military together. The Marine Corps ordered us to opposite coasts. She was in California. I was in North Carolina. To be together, we had to go to war in Iraq early. Both of us. For twice as long as everyone else in our units. In the name of love and family, we obliged.

In the boredom and heat of war, when we weren’t working, we were at the gym with everyone else. My ex was an avid runner, but the joy of being collocated could only push me to run with her for so long before I quit to lift heavy things and eat ice cream (yes, we had Baskin-Robbins on camp). She soon found another running partner, a firecracker, redheaded lady captain working in public affairs. Camp Fallujah had a gloriously long perimeter, roughly seven miles or so, and they cultivated a strong friendship on daily runs.

She had nicknames for us: Agile (my ex’s initials were AGL) and Buckles (my initials are BCL). We had a nickname for her too: M4, like the compact version of the M16 Marines carried in urban environments since nobody fixed bayonets anymore. The handle kinda fit when she was a captain, but it definitely fit when she was promoted to Major Megan Malia McClung. The three of us made plans for all the fun stuff we were going to do when we got back. Crossfit, hiking, eating, drinking.

I would see the two of them running around the base as I was leaving the gym. “Buuuucklesssss!” M4 would yell and wave her arms. I’d do a weird, uncoordinated hop-skip in reply as they trotted far out of earshot.

Like all good things, M4’s time in Fallujah came to an end and she took off to Ramadi and other bases. She would hop helicopter rides back to Fallujah and surprise us, demanding my ex go for a run. She even threw her rank of major around to get my ex, a lowly corporal, out of work.

We had two mortal enemies in Iraq: the clock tick and the coin flip.

I was at the gym when my ex delivered the news that M4 had died in an IED blast while escorting Oliver North’s crew and some Newsweek folks around Ramadi so they could get good pictures of coalition progress. My stomach sank as I thought back to our two mortal enemies in Iraq: the clock tick and the coin flip. I went back to work after stopping to grab an ice cream.

Some of M4’s colleagues, who were a rather cutthroat bunch of public affairs officers who often criticized M4’s disregard for protocol in the name of getting stuff done, managed to seize all the opportunities to share kind words about her now that she was gone. Usually in front of a camera and always in front of their superiors. My ex was the only one at her wartime memorial service who wasn’t a co-worker, but a friend. Nobody took a quote from her for the newspaper. So it goes.

When we got back to the U.S., we met M4’s parents at a few memorial events. Her mother gifted M4’s triathlon bike to my ex, which remained the only evidence of their friendship, outside of good memories. A handful of scholarships, awards, and significant buildings were named after Major McClung, the highest ranking female officer and only female Naval Academy graduate to die by clock tick and coin flip in Iraq. Now she’s posted up in Arlington cemetery, resting under a headstone stamped with her famous maxim, advice she coined during her media interview coaching sessions with senior officers: Be brief. Be bold. Be gone.