Dispatches from the palm groves of Diyala, Iraq.

Xmas in Iraq '07

2008-04-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

There was about four of us sitting around the fire if I remember correctly. It’s hard enough to recall the exact details of things like this, seeing how some instances occurred well over a year ago now. But it’s even harder to remember this particular night, even though it was Christmas Eve. I had received the best damn gift a young soldier deployed to Iraq could hope for on this particular holiday season. Two bottles of hard liquor were sent to me by a source I shall not reveal. They were concealed in all-white mouth wash containers and the plastic wrapping around the cap was hanging shabbily off after a poor attempt to re-wrap it. We were passing one bottle around; buzzed off our asses’ and only getting more and more hammered while sitting around the fire pit right outside our barracks building. Most of our NCOs were either at the MWR calling home or were already racked out on their cots, snug as bugs dreaming about candied plums and other merry filled Christmas shit. Or they were single like us and didn’t even notice the fact that it was the most celebrated holiday of the year.
It was around the fourth or fifth shot when somebody pointed out the fact that it was Christmas Eve. Up until then, we were all too pre-occupied with the fact that this was our first drink in months which, for a group of young soldiers’ who’d lived in the barracks together back at Hood for the past year and a half, was an enormous stretch of time to go without alcohol. So we sat around the fire and enjoyed the warming sensation the liquor gave us as it coursed through our veins. Damn, Iraq wouldn’t be so bad if they’d just let us drink from time to time, I thought. We sat around and bitched about our NCOs and officers, as privates often do, and remembered the few times we’d come into contact with the enemy. Since we were only about 2 months into our tour and our AO wasn’t all that bad yet (the “troop surge” had yet to push the muj into our area), there weren’t many wowing stories to be heard. Besides, if one of the four of us had a cool story to tell, chances were that the other three of us had been there as well.
But then some asshole had to go and point out the fact that it was Christmas. We all got quiet for a few seconds and let that fact sink in. I did the math in my head and figured out if it was 2300 (11PM) here in Iraq, then it was 1500 (3PM) on the East coast where most of my family was down in Florida, and 1300 (1PM) Mountain Time where the other portion of my family was in Colorado. I wondered what they were up to at that moment and hoped they were thinking about me. The conversation quickly turned to family and friends back in the States and we spent a good deal of time talking about the folks we’d left back home, wondering how they were celebrating their holiday’s and all that what-not. We wondered where exactly we’d be if we’d just done something simple like go to college or find a decent job instead of joining the Army. The conversation was quickly turning very depressing. We passed the bottle around some more, some of us staring with empty expressions into the fire, others gazing thoughtfully at the stars. We were just generally feeling sorry for ourselves and having our own little alcohol induced pity party when three mortar rounds landed not more than 100 meters away from us, just on the other side of the Hesco baskets in the Iraqi Army compound. By this time, we’d grown used to the indirect fire attacks around our Troop AO and none of us even flinched.
My friend just casually turned to me and said “Man… we fucked up.” There wasn’t much else to be said after that. We quickly finished the bottle, put out the fire and scurried off to bed since any minute there’d be an NCO coming to check on us all to make sure the mortars didn’t blow one of us into tiny pieces. I pounded two bottles of water before passing the hell out.
I spent the next day incredibly hung over, hiding in the motor pool lest some NCO notice the shadows around my eyes and pale color of my face or smell the booze leaking out of my pores. I labored away with the rest of the enlisted dudes, changing the worn out track pads of our Bradley fighting vehicles. And that my friends, is how I spent my Christmas in Iraq.

Mujahideen firefight with Government soldiers and USA

2008-03-26T23:34:00.007-07:00

Here's the bank checkpoint in central Muqdidiyah. That place was a nightmare...

mortar attack

2008-03-26T23:34:00.005-07:00

This gives you an idea of how completely random an incoming mortar can be...

Ansar Al Sunnah (IED)

2008-03-26T23:34:00.003-07:00

Here's another vehicle from my platoon hitting an IED on the LOC in Muqdidiyah.

Army in Diala

2008-03-26T23:34:00.001-07:00

Here's a vehicle from my platoon getting hit with an IED on the LOC on Muqdidiyah.

Just Imagine This...

2008-03-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

It’s another hot day, the kind of heat that seems to suffocate you. The sun bakes the earth and the wind blows warm air that offers no relief. To make matters worse, you are wearing an outer tactical vest (OTV, made of Kevlar and equipped with small arms protective plates in the front, back and sides) that weighs around 50 pounds with all of the loaded magazines, the small dismount radio, frags, smoke grenades, etc. On top of that, you are in the back of a Bradley with 7 other dudes. Ya know when you’re cramped up in a small area with another person, the body heat being generated will warm you up? Well, imagine that x8 in a metal box with the temperature outside reaching 135 degrees. Now imagine that you’ve been sitting in that Bradley for 12 hours. Your ass is throbbing since the bench you’re sharing with your buddies wasn’t designed for comfort. When the Bradley moves, the forward motion pushes all of your weight onto one cheek and no matter how hard you try to shift your weight to distribute it evenly along your aching ass, there’s never enough room to move around with all the other bodies in there so you just have to do your best to ignore the soreness. You can grab a hold of one of the straps hanging off the inside of the compartment and pull yourself up, temporarily giving your tender butt a reprieve but you can only hold it for 15-20 seconds because all the extra weight hanging off your shoulders beckons you back down onto the bench. You grab a bottle of water from the cooler, or have someone else grab it for you depending on where you’re seated. The ice inside the cooler melted hours ago and the bottle has warmed up. It’s likely that the original bottles of water that were in the cooler with the ice to begin with have already been consumed so the one you’re holding in your hand at this point isn’t just warm, it’s fucking hot since it had been laying on the storage space between the seats and the hull before it was thrown into the lukewarm, now very dirtied water (dirty from everyone sticking their filthy dick-beaters inside it). Someone says fuck it and pops the TOW hatch open just a foot or so to allow some air flow (the TOW hatch is about 1 meter long, ½ a meter wide and is centered over the back of the Bradley behind the turret, it allows for dismounts to re-load the TOW launcher if necessary). When the TOW hatch opens, all of the dust that had collected on the back of the hull pours into the dismount compartment covering everyone’s weapons, receiver, barrel, optics and all in a fine layer of soil. The dust that settles on your sweat soaked uniform turns into a thin layer of mud. The air stops circulating once again and if there is a breeze outside, all it brings is more warm air and dirt. The TOW hatch is then closed since it wasn’t having the desired effect and it would be hard to justify somebody getting fucked up by shrapnel or God-forbid some kid is able to throw a grenade inside all because we were uncomfortable. Somebody mutters “This shit was not in the fucking recruiting video,” and everyone nods in agreement. You sit there, staring at each other, smelling each other’s un-washed bodies and farts, too miserable to even think of anything but your own misery. Somebody notes “Man, imagine where we could be if we’d joined the fucking Navy or something… I could be like, on a ship somewhere in the Pacific about to go on port call to the Philippines or Australia or somewhere cool like that” and everyone thinks back to the days before they enlisted and wonders “Why the fuck did I join the Army?” The patrol moves out once the explosive ordnance disposal team you have attached to you clears a suspect pile of rocks on the shoulder of the road. The EOD guys you have with you now are being extra cautious since they just replaced the ones you had originally brought out with you after their vehicle was disabled by a couple of anti-tank mines equipped with a pressure wire. So far, they’ve already destroyed two other IEDs. The patrol continues and the only thing you can do aside from be incredibly uncomfortable is think. Your mind wanders back to something that happened only hours before. A Humvee gunner manning a .50 cal lit up a truck that was parked in a palm grove after he identified individuals moving around it with weapons. The armed men fled the scene and you were kicked out of the Bradley and ordered to sweep the palm grove in search of them. The .50 cal had been shooting armor piercing incendiary rounds that ignited the dry grass causing a brush fire. The flames were spread out along a 100 meter front forcing you to traverse the “line of fire” and sweep around behind it. The smoke from the fire was choking everyone out and you were becoming light headed. You push your body to its limits and get upwind of the fire, leaving the smoke behind as well as a cow who is apparently caught somewhere near the flames. As the fire grew, the unseen cow’s mooing grew louder and louder. It almost sounded as if the animal was shrieking, if that is even possible for an animal with such a baritone sound. All of a sudden, the mooing stops. While patrolling through the brush, a man wearing all black with an AK47 in hand leaped out of a ditch and tore off at a dead sprint, throwing his weapon to the ground in the hope that you won’t shoot him. He would have been better off just surrendering because he is promptly cut down by your platoon sergeant’s 5.56 and he crumples to the ground, gasping the last breath’s of air that will ever enter his now bullet ridden lungs. As you jogged past the dying man, you saw his eyes blankly staring into the sky, blood seeping out of his mouth and flowing from the holes in his chest. And you felt absolutely nothing. No joy, no sorrow, no delight, no remorse, no pleasure or amusement, no hatred or loathing, just nothing. He’s not even a real human being to you now. He is just another dead corpse. You vainly attempted to shoot three more individuals some 500 meters away fleeing into another palm grove but the distance to the targets and your heavy breathing caused your rounds to miss completely. You searched the area but found nothing more than nourishment in the form of the sweetest grapes you’ve ever tasted growing in a vineyard. You mounted back up into the Bradley and found out that the other dismount team found a bunch of anti-tank mines inside the muj truck. You sat in the back of the Bradley and watched the squad leader's display mounted by the turret and got to see the truck get blown into basketball size chunks and smaller. You’re now riding in the back of the Bradley thinking hard on your reaction to the dying man and wonder what it all means. You realize that you barely even reacted. A few months ago you would have stopped and stared in wonderment, maybe even gave your buddy a high five and snapped some photos. Now, you’re just numb to the sight of another dead body. You don’t get too deep into thought because you’ve finally reached your destination; some no name village dozens and dozens of kilometers from anything other than farm land, palm groves and other tiny villages just like it. You step outside the Bradley and the flow of blood that had been staunched by the weight of your body and the forward motion of the tracked vehicle resumes its natural course and your ass feels blissful. But you can’t soak it up for long because you’ve taken up a light jog through a muddy ditch. The vehicle’s stay behind as you head towards the village. You see why the vehicles can’t follow you into the village; a giant ditch has been dug out of the road rendering it un-passable. It’s just you and about 12 other guy’s on foot heading into town. The village seems quiet, almost as if it were abandoned. You’re there to find the locals and see if the reports that your headquarters had received were true or not. Supposedly, the all Shiite village was attacked by members of the Islamic State of Iraq dressed as Iraqi Policemen and Army soldiers. There were reports of a hundred people being murdered in the streets. You absolutely have to get there before CNN gets wind of the situation and assess what’s really going on in the village. As you approach the village, a couple of people carefully peer out of doorways and around mud walls. Somebody in your patrol points his M4 at a man in order to use the gun sight with its magnification to get better eyes on the individual. The middle aged, disdasha wearing man rightfully takes off down an alley after having a loaded weapon pointed at him. You and your buddies get excited and become more anxious. You enter the village and notice shell casings of various calibers littering the streets. There’s 7.62mm brass from AKs and from PKCs. There’s .51 caliber shells from a Durschka. You see blast marks on the walls from grenades and RPGs and even find a dud hand grenade of Belgian origin. You come across a brown stain splattered along a wall and realize that color was once red and belonged to somebody and it wasn’t put there for decoration. The oldest man in the village appears with an entourage of younger men all carrying AK47s and wearing ammo vests. There’s a brief moment of unease and weapons are raised yet not aimed because of the non-threatening posture they demonstrate. Your uncertainty is finally put at ease when your interpreter assures you and your buddies that these men are friendly and only carry weapons to defend their village. The old man takes your patrol to his home, a walled off compound with three or four houses inside and at least half a dozen families. He shows you one house that is riddled with bullet holes and pock marks from RPG blasts and you notice that the inside has been completely torched. You pull security at the gate of the compound while the XO talks to the people and finds out what exactly happened. An ex-FBI agent turned civilian contractor and weapons consultant who accompanied your patrol bumbles around snapping pictures of every little detail and points everything out to whoever happens to be near him even though nobody gives two shits about what the man has to say. The sky is now grey and the air smells like rain. You know this means the medevac status will soon turn red (meaning no helicopters will be able to come and evacuate any wounded you may have) and you dread the thought of having to ride the few hours it will take to get back to the FOB, knowing that if you get wounded, there will be no immediate evacuation available. Just as the XO finishes up with the locals, your squadron headquarters calls and orders you to move to the nearest friendly base and wait out the weather. You mount back up in your vehicles and head to a town a couple hours drive away (as long as you don’t hit any IEDs that is) where there is an Iraqi Army outpost. On the way there you find out what happened in the village. A group of Al Qaeda insurgents did enter the village dressed as Iraqi Army soldiers and proceeded to kill 27 villagers and rob the people to fund their resistance. Although you didn’t actually see any dead bodies in the village, you did see all the evidence of the fighting and for once, you don’t think the Iraqi’s are exaggerating. The gates of the IA outpost are too narrow to fit the Bradley’s inside so as you dismount to head indoors, you laugh at the crew of the Bradley who will have to spend however long this weather lasts still cramped in their vehicles. You enter the IA soldiers’ barracks and they generously make room in their meager living quarters and offer bread, cai and generic Hajji Pepsi. Since your cigarette supply ran out hours and hours before, you find a group of IA soldiers and bum a cheap Miami brand cigarette. They light it up for you and you start to BS with them. While communicating through broken Arabic and broken English you notice one of the IA soldiers snickering and whispering to another nearby. The IA soldier looks like a young boy though you can tell he is in his twenties. He appears almost feminine. You ask him what he’s talking about and another IA soldier, the one who speaks halfway decent English tells you that the feminine fella thinks you are very pretty. You glance around at the group of IA who surround your position and all of a sudden you fear for the virginity of your anal cavity. You quickly sack the idea as ridiculous since you’re there with your entire platoon and it would crazy for them to try something like that. You politely dismiss yourself from the group and back away, thanking them for the smoke and wishing them a good night. You glance over your shoulder at them and they are all snickering and whispering as you walk away. You relax a little but there’s still some unease because you are in Iraq and you know that crazy shit like that happens here. It’s chow time now so you break open a Jumbalaya MRE and soak the contents with Tobasco sauce in an attempt to give the very bland tasting meal a little more flavor. You contemplate mixing water with the vanilla dairy shake powder but know that if you drink it, you’ll have to take a massive dump in a few hours. You’re still hungry so you drink it anyways. You’re exhausted at this point and after gorging yourself on the 3,000 calorie MRE you have a severe case of ITIS so you spread out your OTV (remember? that’s your ballistic vest), run one arm through your MOLLE gear (the vest that holds all of your mags and frags and such) so no IA soldier can swipe anything off of it, wrap your hand around the sling of your weapon and quickly pass out. Around 0345 in the morning someone comes and walks you up and tells you it’s your turn to pull guard on the roof. As you sit up an immense urge to defecate right then and there overpowers you and you tell the guy that just woke you up that you may be a few minutes late for your shift. With weapon in hand you hurriedly shuffle to the latrine, clenching your ass cheeks along the way. After stumbling around in the dark hallways you find the shitter and are less than pleased to see the small hole in the ground is almost filled to the top with other American dookie (Hajji “toilet’s” are just little holes in the ground shaped like old fashioned key holes). You know it’s from Americans because of the shit stained baby wipes and tissues that lay amongst the heaping piles of poo and you know that Iraqi’s wipe their asses old school; with their left hand. You don’t let any of this hamper your progress though because the turtle’s head is poking and the situation has turned into an emergency. You undo your belt and drop trouser faster than you’ve ever done in your life and as you drop down into the Hajji squat position, a colossal movement takes place along the way. While emptying your bowels you curse yourself for eating that damn dairy shake but your attention focuses elsewhere when you see the pitcher of water against the wall that Iraqi’s use to clean their hands with after they’re done. God that’s disgusting, you think to yourself and then you remember how the IA soldier you bummed a smoke off of earlier handed you the cigarette with his left hand. THAT MOTHERFUCKER! You don’t dwell on this thought since you’ve now realized that you’ve forgotten your baby wipes in the other room with your gear. You curse yourself some more. You weigh your options and even contemplate wiping Iraqi style. There IS water in the pitcher after all, and When in Rome… Negative. You quickly stifle that thought and use your Gerber multi-purpose tool to cut your shirt into strips that you can then use. It’s rough and the sweat that has soaked your shirt all day long stings the sensitive skin but at least you haven’t demeaned yourself to their level. You rush to get your gear on and jog up to the roof to relieve your buddy who is severely pissed off at you for being 10 minutes late. He doesn’t say a word as he brushes by, eager to get some sleep of his own. The next two hours are spent walking around on the roof with one of your buddies and a couple IA soldiers. After about an hour you start to get a headache from staring through your night vision goggles but you keep on scanning the surrounding buildings and streets for signs of any muj that may try something sneaky. You get a radio check with the Bradley’s and they both respond sounding completely drained. You know they’re worn out and you feel sorry for them. After you get relieved you head back downstairs and resume the sleeping position as the sun begins to rise. Just as you're about to nod off the earsplitting call to prayer echoes off the walls and startles you completely awake. You recognize the wails and awful singing for what it is and quickly pass out. You awake on your own a few hours later. Well, you don’t really wake up on your own; it’s the flies that are buzzing around your head and constantly landing on your face mixed with the repressive heat of the mid morning that wake you up. The sun is shining through the clouds as you crack open a beef stew MRE and you look out the window up at the sky and wonder why the hell the medevac status hasn’t changed yet. Before you even set in on the pineapple pound cake you get the word to mount up. All of a sudden you’re full of energy as you throw your gear back on and everyone is in brighter spirits. You wave goodbye to the IA and thank them for their hospitality and are actually very happy to be getting back inside the Brad. The patrol races back to the FOB, IEDs be damned, and arrive in record time. After clearing your weapons and refueling your vehicles you head back to your barracks. The first thing you do is drop off your gear and take off your ACU top. Everyone laughs at you because you’re only wearing half of an undershirt but they don’t ride you too hard since they’ve all been there before. You find the to-go plates from the chow hall that are waiting for you and devour the pizza and jalapeno poppers in no time. It’s time for personal hygiene now so you go shave, brush your teeth and take a cool shower. After cleaning away the filmy grime that accumulated in your under region your skin becomes raw and you are severely chaffing as you waddle your way back to your cot. You put on a PT uniform and spend an hour or so cleaning your weapon. You then stretch out on your sleeping bag, wrapping yourself up in the soft Hajji blanket you bought for 10 bucks of off Moe (short for Mohammed) at his little shop on the FOB. You roll over and see somebody is watching Stick It again. The viewer is wearing headphones but you don’t need the audio anyways since you’ve seen it a dozen times and know the lines by heart, it being your platoon’s favorite movie and all. You rack out and sleep the sleep of the dead until somebody comes to wake you up for a shift on the observation post outside the south gate or tells you to get your vehicle ready for QRF, or tells you to go to the motor pool to help change track pads or to let you know about an upcoming mission you need to prepare for. Hopefully though, you wake up on your own and find out you have some free time for yourself. You work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and have been doing so for over half a year and have half a year left to keep doing it. And after a long ass mission like the one you just came off of, a day off would be nice.

Bitch Bitch Bitch

2008-03-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

As if we weren’t all miserable enough as it was, CPT R- had to make one of those remarks that always make a situation worse. “Well, at least it’s not raining.” Sure as shit, not more than a minute after his comment, guess what? It started raining. The fighting position we were laying up in was large enough to fit a tank. The bottom turned to mud and made us all that much more uncomfortable. We were already freezing our balls off, now we were wet to boot.
Six of us laid low in the ditch while SFC Sal carefully peeked through the shrubs he rimmed our position with. He had his eyes locked on an intersection where two major highways met and where the combat engineers routinely got blown up. (Note: combat engineers main purpose in life in Iraq is to drive up and down the main supply routes clearing them of IEDs, god bless ‘em, I wouldn’t want their job). The ditch was about 100 meters from the road and out in the middle of some wide open farm land. I had wrapped my poncho around my body and was smoking a cigarette, careful to slowly exhale into the poncho and swat away any smoke that escaped and rose to the sky, lest we got compromised due to my nicotine addiction. It was about 40 degrees outside and the sky was overcast gray and thanks solely to CPT R-‘s comment, it was now raining. Seriously, if he hadn’t made the remark, we’d have stayed dry. That’s just how it works.
Our Bradley’s were about 10 kilometers away standing by at an IA checkpoint in case we came into contact with something we couldn’t handle ourselves. We’d left the vehicles at zero dark thirty in the morning and patrolled through the farm land being sure to avoid the villages with their loud ass barking dogs. Traversing the bumpy terrain of the farm land can be difficult enough during the daylight hours since you’re constantly on the look-out for some muj asshole setting up a machine gun that he could then cut you in half with since there was practically no cover to be had. But doing it at night is a real bitch since you’re wearing night vision devices that limit your peripheral vision and have no depth perception. What might look like a very narrow waterway that can be easily crossed with a simple hop is, 9 times out of 10, larger than it appears through your NODs. So when you try to make the jump, you end up landing just shy of the far side, standing knee deep in water, left thinking Goddammit motherfucker shit cock balls! Your feet and socks would now be thoroughly soaked for the remainder of the mission which usually led to blisters forming on your feet and some sort of nasty fungus that won’t go away (seriously, out of the 14 months I was in country, for about 11 of them I had this reoccurring fungus right on the arches of my feet, I think it was from stepping in the sewage water in downtown Muqdidiyah mixed with poor hygiene, sometimes it actually caused me pain so the medics gave me Motrin and told me to drink water…that seemed to be their solution to everything, Motrin and water… oh well).
For the first kilometer or so my shoulders and back didn’t hurt so much despite all the weight hanging off of them. Before mounting up into the Bradley, I would adjust and readjust all of my gear to make it fit just right so it’s as comfortable as possible. The vibrations of the Bradley coupled with poor driving skills that throw us dismounts around in the cramped compartment in the back shifted all of my gear every which way making it pointless to have adjusted it in the first place. Once I got out and got moving I would readjust my straps, my belt, my knee pads while on the move but since I remained in motion the straps would slowly loosen and my gear would start sagging and rubbing against my body causing bruises and severe chaffing. Oh, I can’t forget to mention the chaffing of the balls. Since all of the crotch stitching on all of my ACU trouser’s had ripped open, I had to wear underwear so my balls didn’t flop out every time I took a knee (this happened once right in front of this old Iraqi woman while I was searching her house, I thought she was going to have a heart attack when she caught a glimpse of this infidel’s ball sack…or maybe she was just that impressed). Underwear always bunched up around the nuts and rubbed the inside of your thighs completely raw. Unless I wore tight fitting boxer briefs on long dismounted missions, then the next day I was always walking around like I’d been raped by a donkey the night before. I have to give a shout out here to my Aunt Laura for hooking it up with a couple pairs of very chic and very snug Structure boxer briefs while I was over there. I wore those more than any other undergarments in Iraq, so, thank you. By the time we got about 3 kilometers into the movement, my shoulders would start to throb a little and I’d have to shrug them real quick like in order to keep my assault pack as high up on my back as possible (it caused less strain that way). After about 5 klicks, my shoulders were screaming and my lower back would start hurting because I’d be leaning far forward trying to keep the straps of my assault pack from cutting off the blood flow to my arms. On every long dismounted mission we went on, I got to be the lucky bastard that carried the radio with its extra batteries which added to the load considerably. At least I didn’t have to hump the machine gun though, that guy was always sucking. Oh, I forgot to mention that we were all rolling our ankles every couple of meters because of the short rows of dirt that were dug for the crops.
It all becomes one big mind-fuck in the end. I know it sounds totally cliché and completely un-original, but, if I didn’t mind the pain, it didn’t matter. I’d let my mind wander and would think of things like home, family, friends. I thought about past sexual experiences. Thinking about those always worked to numb my brain from the signals my body was sending. I would sing songs in my head. At the time, I was going through a very brief Ska phase so I was singing the hell out of Streetlight Manifesto on this particular mission. Hell, I even sang some motivating cadences in my noggin to try and get myself pumped up. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
By the time we reached the tank ditch, I collapsed on to the bottom, pounded some water and stuffed my face with a power bar while trying to get a radio check with our Bradley’s. I couldn’t reach either of them. I extended the antennae completely up (about 15 feet) but still couldn’t talk with the Brad’s. Somehow though, I managed to reach our patrol base that was a further two klicks past our vehicles. I could barely make out what they were saying due to the static but I managed to give them our 10 digit grid coordinate and a brief sit-rep. Extending the antennae up that far was no problem for now while it was still dark out, but once the sun came up, I’d have to be real careful not give our position away. It’s a pretty thin antenna so I figured we’d be all right. The rest of the team placed some tumble weeds around the edge of the ditch and SFC Sal took the first watch. That was about the time CPT R- decided we were a little too dry and needed some rain. Fucker. I had to get radio check’s with Bandit Mike ever hour on the hour or else our CO would have a shit-fit and dispatch the QRF thinking we’d all been killed or captured. I would slowly raise the antennae up at a low angle at first and try to get comm’s with the TOC (tactical operations center, think of a war room with maps, radio’s and a coffee pot). Sometimes I wouldn’t have to raise it all the way, sometimes I did.
At about 1100 hours we heard an unmanned aerial vehicle start circling over our heads. I called the TOC and told them to call whoever was in charge of flying that gay ass thing to get it the fuck away from us since having it up there pretty much made it pointless for us to be there at all. If some muj was going to try and plant an IED then he sure as shit wasn’t going to do it with that thing buzzing around in the air. The idea here wasn’t to keep the muj from placing their IEDs, it was to catch them doing it so we could then kill them and not worry about them doing it anymore. Bandit Mike called back and reported that the UAV was flying at X amount of feet and I can’t hear it when it’s at that altitude. Riiiiight. I called back and told them to tell whatever POG douche bag was flying that unarmed over-priced piece of shit that he knows nothing about his own equipment because I can fucking see the damn thing and there’s no way it’s flying at X amount of feet and YES, I can hear the motherfucker, how else could I have known it was there? A few minutes later, the electronic buzzzzzz of the UAV faded off to the south.
After about 6 or 7 hours of staring at the road with practically no activity whatsoever, we’d decided to move to another location. I was freezing cold and looked forward to get my body moving again even if it meant throwing that damned radio on my back. Moving through open farm land during daylight hours is not the smartest or safest of things to do in Iraq. In fact, it can be downright hazardous to one’s health. I pointed out the fact that we would be severely fucked if a machine gun with a half decent gunner behind it opened up on us. I told the dude’s to spread out the intervals between ourselves even wider than regular. CPT R- acknowledged that his biggest fear, being blown up by an IED, had recently been replaced by getting caught out in the open by a machine gun. This time he didn’t start his sentence with “Well, at least…” so I hoped for the best.
We headed towards an abandoned brick foundry. If you’ve ever seen the movie Full Metal Jacket and can remember the last scene where the grunts are patrolling through the city and there are these wide open areas they have to cross to get to the buildings, then you can kinda picture what the rock foundry looked like. I started to sing the Mickey Mouse club song in my head but replaced the letters with F-U-C-K-E-D-A-G-A-I-N. I had the antennae still fully extended into the air and I knew that if we came into any small arms contact, I would be their first target. Needless to say, this made me slightly uncomfortable with the situation. The 10+ pounds of mud that had caked onto each boot added to the misery. This time, singing didn’t help take my mind off of my misery. The radio antennae swayed back and forth with the wind causing me to face plant or slip and fall on my ass every few feet. I pulled myself up and cursed God, the Army, SFC Sal for wanting to move, and most of all Iraq and everything about the place. We crept around the rock foundry but just as it had been every other time, it was completely abandoned. I’m willing to bet that somewhere in or around that place there’s a huge weapons cache, but we never were able to find anything. There were these little brick shacks built and we all took up a spot in separate rooms and watched in every direction for any signs of enemy activity. When I was moving, I just wanted to stop somewhere and sit down because of all the aches and pains and that goddamn radio antennae. But once we did stop, I just wanted to keep moving because I was so damn cold. I was fucked either way and by this point, I’d given up fighting it and feeling sorry for myself. Wishing I was somewhere else didn't help so I just stuffed all those thoughts away as best as I could. I was here, I was sucking and absolutely nothing was going to change that fact so I sucked it up. I cracked a smile and lit another cigarette. SFC Sal pulled out his digital camera and snapped a photo of me as I hid my anguish with a grin.
We watched and waited. Waited and watched. Nothing. Seemed like Hajji liked to come out and play in this weather about as much as I did. Once the sun had gone down, we headed back towards the Bradley’s. About midway there it started pouring real hard and the earth turned into a muddy slush. SGT Jax was behind me and I heard him laugh each time I busted my ass and then as soon as he got to the same spot, he’d slip and bust his ass. Then it was my turn to laugh but I was too fucking miserable to do anything that remotely resembled happiness. At one point, about a klick away from the Brad’s, I slipped and did a complete somersault. I stood up, not caring about a damn thing anymore, threw my pack off and yelled “Fuck this shit! Fuck it! I fucking quit! Fuck this!” Aside from SGT Jax, no one even heard me or noticed my little fit. When SGT Jax came up and offered to carry my pack I realized I was acting like a little bitch and felt totally embarrassed. I mean c’mon, really, you can’t just fucking quit in the middle of a patrol. It’s not like I could call “time-out” and explain to the next muj that comes my way that I’m just not playing anymore. I was being ridiculous. I denied the offer and put that heavy bitch back on and slipped and fell the entire rest of the way back to the Bradley’s. When I mounted up, I put the CVC (combat vehicle crewmen’s helmet) on that we had in the back for the dismounts and SGT Schmidt immediately started ragging on me for my lack of balance. He’d been watching me bust my ass through the gun sights for the last couple of kilometers and had laughed the whole time. Fucker. I took off the CVC and looked at SGT Jax who was as completely caked in mud as I was and miserable as hell. I pulled out a soggy cigarette and lit it up. We stared at each other for a few seconds and slowly started nodding. Tight lipped smiles started creeping across our faces and before we knew it we were laughing our asses off. “How much did that shit fucking suck!?”[Laughs]“Dude, I saw you bust ass at least like 30 fucking times!” [More laughs] “That was the most miserable shit ever, I’m gonna be chaffin’ like a motherfucker tomorrow!” [Hysterical laughter continues…].
We headed home to our patrol base and went to our rooms, changed uniforms, grabbed some chow and sat around and bitched about how much that sucked.
And that, my friends, is what going out on a small kill team and setting up an ambush in Iraq is like. Sometimes you found hostile intent or witnessed some muj committing a hostile act and you got to shoot them in the face (neck, abdomen, hip, whatever, take what you can get) but a lot of times you went out for 18+ hours and spent the most miserable time of your life in the most uncomfortable of circumstances only to come back empty handed. Somebody came by and asked me if we’d come into any contact out there and I told them no, we didn’t see shit. He then said something to the effect of “So it was pretty much a waste of time then, huh?” I wanted to punch him the face but instead I said, “No, it would have been a waste of time if we didn’t try.”

"The Iraqi's win it!"

2008-03-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

“Hey Wal’er, go round up the dudes. You trackin’ who’s going tomorrow?” SFC Sal had taken to pronouncing my name without the “t” for some reason.
“Yuup, roger.” I headed into the Joe’s room to get them outside for the mission brief. (Lesson in Army vocabulary; Joe: noun, denotes a soldier with the rank of Specialist and below)
We gathered around the whitewash board for our mission brief where either the platoon sergeant or platoon leader would go over the operation order for the following day’s mission. This was when everyone found out the who, what, why, when, and where of the upcoming mission. The situation and purpose would be explained and a timeline would be put out for the pre-combat checks/inspections as well as the SP time (SP time is the time we roll out of the gate). Everyone huddled around the board while the brief was given and copied notes onto index cards or notebooks with whatever information that was pertinent to the mission (which was any and all information put out during the mission brief). Tasks would be assigned to individual soldiers. For instance, I might be in charge of ensuring all the communication checks were done the night before the mission as well right before we rolled out. A Joe might be given the task of carrying the breach tools and would be responsible for getting that equipment in order the night before. SFC Sal then pointed to an enlarged satellite image of the area we’d be operating in.
Task: conduct a raid on two suspected Al Qaeda safe houses in a neighborhood of downtown Muqdidiyah.
Conditions: given three Bradley Fighting Vehicles carrying three dismount teams of 6 soldiers each, drive from FOB Normandy to the vicinity of the target houses, dismount, kick in the door, find some hostile intent and shoot everyone in the face. (Note: that’s not what was put out in the mission brief but it’s what I’d planned on doing).
Purpose: disrupt AQIZ activity in Muqdidiyah in the vicinity of said neighborhood where IED attacks on coaliton forces utilizing a major supply route were originating from.
SFC Sal showed us where we would be getting out of the Bradley’s and where the target houses were located on the satellite imagery. The target houses were at least one kilometer away. At first I figured, No big deal, we’ll just sneak and peek our way over to the house, slip over the walls and burst inside before they ever know we’re anywhere near. We’ve done this plenty of times. But every time we did something like this before it was in the wee dark hours of the morning. I then recalled the SP time was in the midmorning hours when the sun would be up and exposing us for the entire world to see. SFC Sal continued, “So, we’ll drop ramp here and take off at a sprint towards the target objectives. It’ll be about a 1,000 meter sprint give or take, so drink plenty of water tonight.”
“Give or take like, what… 800 meters?” I asked, being a smartass. I made the mistake of making the comment within arm’s reach of him. He scowled and punched me in the gut. “Nah ya lazy fucker. We’re gonna sprint the whole way!...Wal’er…you!...” he bowed his shoulders outwards taking on the aggressive alpha male posture. SFC Sal is a guy who scores 350+ on PT tests (that’s out of a scale that ends at 300, no shit). In March, he’d been shot 5 times. By May, he was back with the platoon leading small dismount teams again. He’s not a guy to fuck with. Luckily, he likes me and knew I was only being a smartass. Nonetheless, I raised my hands up and acquiesced. I didn’t like the idea of sprinting a whole klick in full battle rattle during the hottest time of the day. But it didn’t matter if I didn’t like it or not, that was the mission and it had to be done. SFC Sal went on to explain that the muj were only at the house during certain hours of the day (according to our source) and rolling up and surrounding the houses with the Bradley’s wasn’t possible since A) the only way to the houses were through narrow ass alleyways that a Brad couldn’t fit down and B) you can’t possibly achieve any amount of surprise with a 35 ton tracked vehicle that can be heard from 5 kilometers away. It made absolute sense. In fact, it was a good idea. They’d never expect it. Still, I really didn’t want to make that sprint in full battle rattle with the temperature reaching 120+ degrees.
The next day, we geared up, lined up outside near the Brads and SFC Sal went down the line personally inspecting everyone’s equipment. Weapon cleaned and oiled? Check. Full combat load on soldier? Check. All sensitive items secured with 5/50 chord? Check. (sensitive item: anything assigned to you from the arm’s room like night vision device, sidearm, that kinda stuff). Water in camelback? Check. Fire resistant gloves on? Check. Hearing protecting? Check. Ballistic eye protection? Check. (Note: although it was the standard operating procedure for all soldiers to wear hearing/eye protection, I never wore it out in sector when I was a dismount, the eye glasses fogged up as soon as I started sweating, and the ear plugs limited my situational awareness, figuring it was better to be able to see and hear and thus reduce the chance of something happening that those thing s were supposed to protect, I always ditched them in my cargo pockets as soon as the ramp of the Bradley went up).
After the PCC’s we’d mount up, raise the ramp and head to the front gate at which time the ramp would drop, we’d have one last smoke before the mission or take one last piss next to the Brad (another Note: if you ever find yourself in this situation, do not piss on your vehicle, pissing next to it is okay, but pissing on it is just bad luck, like eating Charms out of an MRE on a FTX, if you’re not in the Army, you probably won’t understand that, but trust me, it’s bad juu-juu).
We rolled out and headed to a small, friendly Shiite market area of Muqdidiyah. Ever since Muqtada Al Sadr had declared a cease fire for his militia against all coalition forces (God bless his little cotton socks) we never got attacked in these areas unless it was by the odd Al Qaeda suicide bomber. I’m not saying Al Sadr is a good guy. Far from it, he’s an absolute douche bag and given the chance, I’d send him to Allah. But he definitely made our deployment a lot less of a hassle and more casualty-free with his cease fire.
The ramp dropped and I fell in as we took off at a dead sprint towards our objective. We ran through the market and cut through some alleyways while all the locals just looked at us like, What the fuck’s going on here? We moved to the edge of a clearing that separated this particular Shiite neighborhood from the Sunni ‘hood where our target house’s were located. We hugged the edge of a palm grove, “boxing” the clearing. For some reason, while I was running I kept singing the chorus from the Doors song Break on through to the other side over and over again in my head. We started at a dead sprint but by the time we reached the edge of the Sunni neighborhood we could only muster a light jog. Another 150 meters or so into the complex alleys and side streets that make up these typical Iraqi urban centers and we finally arrived at our target. We quickly stacked along the wall while the breach man moved up and blew the lock off the metal gate with a shotgun. We rushed inside and stacked against the wall outside the front door of the house. The shotgun wasn’t needed as Lobban kicked the cheap wooden door in with a swift blow from his tree trunk sized legs. We tactically cleared the buildings and… we found jack shit. Aside from a poster of Michael Owen in a Liverpool FC jersey hanging on the wall and one room where the previous occupants had stored the household goods before moving out, the place was empty. There wasn’t so much as a shell casing inside the house. The poster struck me as odd though. It was supposed to be an Al Qaeda safe house. Surely, no AQIZ safe house would have a big ass poster of an English infidel superstar. They’d have a poster of Mohammed slaying some Jews or something, right? I was about to point this out to SFC Sal before he informed us, after double checking his imagery and grids that we were in fact, one block too far to the north. So, again, already profusely sweating and completely smoked from the run, we hauled ass back outside, moved to the right house and did it all over again. No one was inside but we did find a bunch of Iraqi Army uniforms and some old school American issued Army gear (like a poncho, canteen, shit like that). We questioned the neighbors and they told us that yes, this was sometimes used by Al Qaeda insurgents but they hadn’t been there for a few days and they only came before or after they carried out an attack. We found sections of the walls that surrounded the house knocked out on the south side allowing them easy escape/entrance routes depending on whether they were running to or from a fight.
I was sitting on my ass outside the house while SFC Sal kept picking through the items in the house, excitedly finding all sorts of cool Iraqi Army memorabilia. The other dismount team charged with raiding the other suspected insurgent house called over the radio and told us that they too had come up empty. I was keeping an eye on the front gate when the entire fucking neighborhood erupted in small arms fire. There were AKs being fired to the north, south, east and west. We all immediately grabbed the nearest piece of cover and held our weapons at the ready. Oh fuck me, this is no fucking good. We’re out here on our own in a spot that our Brad’s can’t get to us and we’re completely surrounded. The small arms fire continued but I noticed that I didn’t hear a single round hissing by overhead or cracking against any of the surrounding structures. Uhhh…what the hell? I had already called up a contact report over the radio.
I asked SGT Jax "Are we getting shot at? What the fuck-?" He shrugged his shoulders, as confused as I was. I raised my head up and glanced around at the buildings across the alley. Nothing. I slowly pulled myself up the wall and peered up and down the alleyway but aside from a couple of teenage girls who were there before the shooting started, there was nobody. SSG W-, who’d been in charge of the dismount team that was covering our exfil route (exfiltration, the path we’d be leaving on), was excitedly calling up contact reports. CPT R- come over the radio and told us all to calm the fuck down. He was standing outside an Iraqi shop watching the Asian Cup final that Iraq’s soccer team had just won, 1 to nil. It was all just Iraqi celebratory fire. Hajji’s like to celebrate by shooting their weapons into the air without any regard where the bullets come down because they’re ignorant and that’s how they’re brought up.
I started laughing to myself. Someone asked me, “What the fuck’s so funny!?”
“Iraq just won a soccer game, 1 to nothing.”
We all instantly relaxed, lit up smokes, had a laugh, and took stock of our situation. The raid was a bust aside from a few Iraqi Army uniforms and some American TA-50 (Army issued gear). I couldn’t help but find the whole situation amusing. We’d sprinted our asses off all this way and didn’t kill or capture a single muj and ended up being absolutely terrified by the sounds of celebration. As we headed back towards the friendly Shiite neighborhood and our vehicles, I passed a group of young Iraqi dudes cheering outside a small kiosk like shop. They hardly paid any attention to us. I thought about the scene from the movie Major League when the Cleveland Indian’s won the pennant and the announcer starts going ape shit. I turned towards the Iraqi’s, clasped my helmet with both hands and started shouting “The Iraqi’s win it! The Iraqi’s win it! Oh my God! The Iraqi’s win it!” Their mouths were still frozen in wide grins but their eyes were saying What the fuck is this dude yelling about? Apparently, they’d never seen Major League. Their loss.

A Paid Vacation to Baghdad

2008-02-23T15:11:00.000-08:00

Where the fuck am I? What’s SGT Pat doing here?

SGT Pat was standing in the turret of his Bradley, pointing at something down the road. SSG H- came running up to me wearing full battle rattle. He was yelling something but I couldn't hear him over the rumble of the Bradley.
What’s he yelling about? “Get to the perimeter”? What the fuck’s going on here?
SHIT! IED!

A ball of flame erupted on the road throwing dirt, debris and large chunks of concrete spiraling overhead.
“GO! Get off the road!” Someone I couldn't see was frantically shouting orders.

My legs won’t move!

I had no control over my body. I looked around and realized that we were in an area we called the "demilitarized zone" that seperated two neighborhoods of a town named Abu Sayda. The Shiites on one side were constantly battling the Sunni militias on the other.
Shit, we’re in the DMZ! I haven’t been here in forever! What the fuck am I doing in Abu Sayda?

Another IED detonated down the road ripping the hull of a Bradley wide open.

Fuck! Another IED! Whose Brad was that? Oh man, no one survived that.
“Contact! Heavy small arms and RPG!”

Tracers from an unseen machine gun cut through the air, impacting the ground all around us. The smoke trail of an RPG floated in the air overhead. I was panicking. I couldn't understand why I wasn't able to move my legs and I had no idea how I'd ended up here.
“Where’s it coming from!? Heyy! I can’t move! What’s going on! What are we doing here!!? What the fuck!? Somebody help me! WHAT THE FUCK!!!??”
I sat up in bed immediately awake, sweating. My heart was racing and I was out of breath. My eyse adjusted to the dark and I instantly looked for my M4 and saw it propped up on my helmet lying on a concrete floor. I looked up and saw the inside of a tent. Not a normal ‘let’s go camping this weekend’ type of tent, but one of the massive, permanent fixed tents with steel beams. I felt bed sheets underneath my body. I grabbed a hold of the blanket and pulled it to my chest, rubbing the material in my hands.
A real blanket? Real bed sheets? I’m in a real bed? Wha--?
I looked towards another bed next to me and saw Lobban curled up, snoring away. I looked around and saw more beds, some empty, some with soldiers from different units and different parts of the country. It all came back to me. My heart rate slowed as soon as I realized where I was. My shoulders relaxed and I let out a deep breath. I tried to lay back down and get back to sleep but all the frozen smoothies I’d drank earlier in the evening finally caught up to me. I slipped on my shower shoes and headed outside.
I stepped out of the wooden door and looked across the driveway running in front of the tent reserved for temporary ‘guests’. I was standing less than a few meters from the largest residency I’d ever entered in my life. Well, he used to reside here anyways. The United States American Embassy in Baghdad was a former palace for Saddam Hussein. I headed into the nearby latrine trailer and marveled at the fact that I was actually urinating in a real toilet. Not a port-a-shitter. Not some little porcelain or mud hole in the ground. Nor was it an empty water bottle. But a real toilet. I hadn’t used a real toilet in 8 months.
Standing outside in a PT uniform, while having one last smoke before heading back to a real bed, I stared up at the massive white columns of the Embassy’s western entrance. Two days ago, I was in Baloor searching homes and avoiding booby traps. Now, after a short ride in a Blackhawk, I was standing outside the embassy in the Green Zone of Baghdad with a belly full of Burger King and vanilla smoothies from Green Bean’s Coffee Shop. Life, for the time being, was great. I headed back inside and as I crawled back into bed, I realized that I hadn’t slept in a bed with sheets since the last time I’d used a toilet. I was in the Green Zone. And for the first time in a very long time, I felt safe.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

“So, basically, what I need is a detailed run-down of what exactly happened that day.”
CPT P-, a Navy JAG officer was the prosecuting attorney. A tall, bespectacled, slightly overweight and very jolly fella; he was the man who’d be representing our case.
“Well, these dudes were about to launch some mortars at an IA checkpoint where our Brad’s were. We killed one of ‘em, wounded another, and captured these two dicks.”
I pretty much summarized the whole case from beginning to end in two simple sentences. I didn’t really feel like being stuffed up in some office at the time. I was in Baghdad. The Green Zone. There was too much to see. The Cross Saber’s. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Burger King. Subway. The whole reason I was in Baghdad with Lobban was to testify in a trial that was being brought against two guys we’d detained a few months back. The trial was being conducted by the Criminal Circuit Court of Iraq. I understood the importance of my testimony and all that jazz. But the last thing I felt like doing was telling war stories to a dude who worked with paper all day long.
“Right. But how did it happen? What were you doing that day? How did you know they were about to attack this….checkpoint?”
He looked at me quizzically. I glanced at Lobban sitting next to me behind the cheap wooden desk. I saw him roll his eyes and sigh. He didn’t want to be there either.
“Well sir, honestly, we didn’t know what they were going to do until after the fact.”
He stared at me with a confused look on his face.
“All right sir, we went to the IA checkpoint to assess the place. We rolled up in two Bradley’s and one Humvee. We were both dismounts that day,” I flicked my thumb in between myself and Lobban. “ We were supposed to just check out the place, make sure they had proper warning symbols up, make sure they were actually searching vehicle’s that came through and all that shit. We were just making sure everything was up to standard.”
“So…these guys, the IA, they had a traffic checkpoint set up?”
“Yes sir. It’s basically just a little IA compound set up right at an intersection where Route’s Detroit and Gold meet a few klicks south of Buhriz.”
“I’m sorry. Klicks?”
“Kilometers, sir.”
“They have like, barracks and shit there. They actually live there.” Lobban said.
“Oh, okay.”
“They get attacked there all the time.”
CPT P- nodded his head while scribbling some notes on a piece of paper.
“Our platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Sal- decided to take a few of us dismounted to a dirt road a couple kilometers to the southwest that could be used to bypass the checkpoint. The idea was to hide out near the road and wait for any vehicles that might be trying to avoid getting searched. We headed down there, got set up along a berm that ran parallel to the road and waited around. There was five of us; me, Lobban, SGT Jax, our XO, CPT R- and SFC Sal. Around 1030, Sargn’t Sal spotted a guy acting suspiciously at a spot where another dirt road intersected the one we were watching.”
“What was he doing exactly?”
“Sargn’t Sal said he was fucking around with something in his hands, like a cell phone or something. It was enough reason to search the guy. So he pops over the berm right in front of the guy, grabbed him, pulled him back over the berm and searched him.”
“How far away was this individual from your location?”
“About 50 meters to our north.”
CPT P- nodded and wrote some more.
“The guy had a Garmin GPS system, a loaded 9mm Tokarev pistol, and a cell phone.”
“What’s a Garmin?”
I let out a short breath and looked at Lobban. He shook his head from side to side while staring at the table. This dude obviously doesn’t get out much, I thought to myself.
“It’s a GPS. Ya know, a global positioning system. It’s like a device that uses satellites and shit. It can pin point your location to within 1 meter by giving you a 10 digit grid coordinate.”
CPT P- slowly nodded his head but his mouth was open and his eyebrows were slightly creased. This dude has no idea what I’m talking about.
“What about this—What did you call it?”
“The Tokarev?”
“Yes. That. What’s that?” He scribbled some more.
“A 9 millimeter pistol. It’s just an Iraqi rip off of our Beretta.”
“Okay. I understand. So he had a loaded pistol?”
“Yes sir.”
“Right. Okay, continue.”
“So….” I stared at the wall, trying to gather my thoughts. All these questions he had were throwing my track.
“Sargn’t Sal brought the dude back over to our position. We zip cuffed him and used his head dress to blind fold him. I was just about to call up a sit-rep to our dude’s back at the checkpoint when I spotted two more guys walking down the dirt road that intersected the one we were watching. They were headed right for us when—“
“So wait…you still had guys at the checkpoint?”
I swallowed hard. I stared at the JAG officer, fighting the urge to say something my rank could not afford me to say. It’s a good thing you outrank me sir, otherwise I’d have belittled you a long time ago and made you feel about ‘yea’ tall.
“YES, sir…like I said, we went down to this dirt road with 5 dudes, dismounted. Our vehicle’s stayed behind at the checkpoint with the crews.”
“Ohhhhh, I see… What’s a sit-rep?”
“Situation report.”
“Okay, okay, continue.”
“So anyways……” Where was I? “These two dicks come walking down the road. They’re shooting the shit, just talking away to each other, not really paying attention to much else. I look at ‘em through my ACOG--“CPT P-‘s eye’s locked on mine, he needn’t say another word. “That’s an Advanced Combat Optical Gun-sight, it has a 3X magnification…” He slowly nodded. “They were both wearing AK47 ammo vests and one was hiding an AK under his clothes. The barrel was sticking out the bottom of his jacket. I saw the sun-light reflect off of it.”
“What’s an AK47 ammo vest?”
Lobban fielded this question. “It’s just a vest. It carries magazines. It goes around your chest.”
“Okay, okay.” He wrote some more on his yellow note pad.
I continued; “They got to the spot where Sargn’t Sal grabbed up the one guy—“
“You mean this individual?” He slid a folder across the table with the mug shot of our bearded, Garmin wielding terrorist in the top left corner.
“Yuuup, roger, that’s the asshole right there.”
“I see… please continue.”
“Sargn’t Sal took Sargn’t Jax and CPT R- towards the intersection and used the berm to hide their move. The two guys got to the intersection about the same time our three guys got to it. The two Hajji’s didn’t know our guys were right there on the other side of the berm tough.”
“Okay, wait, I’m a little confused…”
Without saying a word, I grabbed a piece of paper from off the table and drew a quick map detailing the location of the checkpoint on Route Detroit. I drew Route Gold from the checkpoint all the way to Buhriz. I showed him where we were at the dirt road in relation to the checkpoint. I drew the berm that paralleled the dirt road and the intersection where SFC Sal grabbed the guy with the Garmin. I pointed to everyone’s location at this point in the story and showed how the berm hid SFC Sal’s location from the two guys with the ammo vests.
“Ohhhhhhhhh, okay, please continue.”
There was something about the way he was questioning us that didn’t seem right to me. There’s no way this guy is this dumb. He does this shit every day. I got the impression that he was just trying to catch us in a lie. He kept asking us to repeat ourselves and basically tell him the same story over and over and over again. Occasionally he would stop me from talking and ask Lobban to tell him what he saw from his vantage point. Since we were both right next to each other the whole time, and since we had nothing to hide, our stories matched exactly. It felt like this guy was working against us. This irritated me. All I wanted to do was eat a fucking Whopper and drink a macchiato next to the pool while checking out the Air Force chicks in their bikinis. Instead, I was in here playing fuck around with this guy.
“Sooo…. The two dicks were looking around. They were obviously looking for the guy that had the GPS who was now zip-cuffed with me and Lobban. They looked over towards our location. I was watching them through my ACOG and I saw the one guy that didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon catch a glimpse of me and Lobban. He turned away from us, grabbed his buddies arm and pulled on it, said something to him and started heading back the way he came real quick like. The dude with the weapon turned towards our position. He squared his shoulders away on us. We took this as hostile intent. We shot him. At the same time, Sargn’t Sal and his dudes popped over the berm and also shot him. The other guy dove to the ground and took cover behind his buddies’ body.”
“You just shot him?” CPT P- looked shocked.
“Yes sir!” I exclaimed. “When a dude carrying a weapon, especially a dude you know is up to no-good, squares his shoulders away with you, you fucking shoot his ass before he shoots you.”
CPT P- just stared at me with a blank look on his face. He exhaled and nodded his head.
“Okay, go on…” he said quietly.
“Well, as soon as that happened, this dark blue car came hauling ass up the road from the same direction all three of these guys had come from. It was about 300 meters out and was closing real fast. We fired some warning shots at it but it kept coming so we started engaging the vehicle. It stopped about 200 meters from the intersection and the driver jumped out with an AK in hand and started running away. Lobban here,” I paused and motioned to Lobban with a smile, “took one shot at the dude and nailed him in the back of the head.”
CPT P- looked at Lobban, his eyes wide open.
Though I wasn’t exaggerating in the least bit, I laid it on pretty thick here; “Yuup, he nailed that fucker from about 250 meters away while he was running away from us. Beautiful shot.”
CPT P- scribbled some more. Lobban shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“After that, Sargn’t Sal took his dudes and searched everything. The guy with the weapon had a bullet through his neck, one through his shoulder, and one through his leg. The other guy was just fine. Inside the car, we found a complete 82mm mortar tube (seen in my profile picture) with base plate and tripod, two 82mm mortar rounds, a few mortar round boosters, an M67 American frag grenade, an RPG warhead, an AK47, a bunch of loaded magazines, three pressure wires complete with blasting caps just waiting to be connected to 9 volt batteries and IEDs, 12 black ski masks, and a couple Al Qaeda propaganda cassette tapes. The guy Lobban shot in the head was laying face down bleeding into the dirt. His blood actually turned the dirt into mud and the fucker was still alive and breathing. He was breathing real heavy like and each time he exhaled it made this awful gurgling sound in the bloody mud. It was pretty nasty. I turned him over and saw the round had gone out his eyeball. There was blood flowing out of the hole in his head. His one good eye was all rolling around in his head."

I didn't mention the part to CPT P- when I said "Inshallah motherfucker!" to the dying insurgent. I don't know how he would have reacted to that.
CPT P- cleared his throat, visibly disturbed by my graphic description. He asked, “Did you give him first aid?”
“Ha—“, I stopped myself from laughing and took a deep breath. “Sir, the dude had a fucking bullet in the back of his head. The round came out of his eyeball…. What the hell could we have done? We didn’t have a medic with us. It’s not like I could just strap a tourniquet around his neck.”
He nodded slowly in understanding. “Did you get any pictures from the scene?”
“Hell yeah!” I said, eager to show off my photos. I pulled out the thumb-stick from my pocket and slid it across the table to him. “We got everything on there.”
“So, the guy you shot, was it this guy?”
He handed me another folder with a mug shot on it. It had the picture of the guy that had managed to not get shot by using his buddy for cover.
“No sir. This is the other guy.”
“Okay… So how do you know they were going to attack the checkpoint?”
“Common sense.”
“Right, but that’s not going to go over well in the trial.”
“On the GPS, there was a 10 digit grid location to the IA checkpoint marked as a waypoint. It was titled “Tank” and gave an exact distance to the checkpoint and had a digital compass pointing it in the right direction. That’s all they would need to aim a mortar at it. Plus, after everything was over, we searched the surrounding areas and right where the dude was standing with the GPS, there were some halfway buried sandbags and bunch of safety pins lying around from previous mortars they had fired. We just happened to set up right next to their launch site. “
“Where’s the other guy? The first one we shot?” Lobban asked.
“Chances are, he’s dead. After you medevac’d him, he was brought to a CSH (pronounced CASH, stands for Combat Surgical Hospital). Once he was stabilized, he was handed over to the Iraqi authorities. With the wounds he sustained, it’s doubtful that he lived in Iraqi custody.”
Lobban said, “Hooah”.
I nodded in agreement. “So are we done here?”
Again, he barraged us with more of the same questions, just worded differently. He’d ask me, “When you searched the vehicle, you found three AK47s right?” I’d have to make it clear to him that there were three AKs all together from the whole group, but only one was in the car when we searched it. He’d hit us up with some different questions and then ask Lobban, “So what did you do with the three AK47s that were in the car?” I wanted to tell him, “Look dumbass, I already told you, there was only one AK actually in the car.” But each time I tried to speak up when he directed a question he’d already asked me to Lobban, he’d raise his hand in my face and tell me that Lobban needed to answer the question.
After about an hour and a half, he was satisfied with our statements and felt like we had a strong case.
“That will be all for today gentlemen. In three days, we’ll head down to the courthouse for the trial. In the meantime, just enjoy yourselves. Be sure to call in everyday so we know you’re still here. Talk to [can’t remember name] and she’ll take care of you.” He showed us out and that was that.
Too easy.

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“Dude, I don’t wanna go back to Diyala.” I looked over at Lobban as he stretched out on a lawn chair.
“I was just thinking the same thing.” He took a long sip from his iced coffee.
“Ooo, contact, 1 o’clock, blue bikini.”
We didn’t bring anything to swim in ourselves, but that didn’t keep us from hanging out by the pool. We sat there in ACUs (army combat uniform), our weapons slung across our chests, and blatantly eye-fucked every woman present. There were a lot. Aside from the two or three females we had on our FOB and the Iraqi women we dealt with out in sector, we hadn’t had any contact with the opposite sex for a very, very long time.
“Cannot identify.”
“Far side of the pool, moving from right to left.”
“Roger, identified.”
“What’s that regulation about staring at women?” I asked without removing my eyes from the target.
“Huh?”
“You know, the whole ‘you can stare at a chick for three seconds and that’s it’. After that it becomes sexual harassment, right?”
“Yeah it’s something like that.”
I thought about the potential consequences of our lewd behavior. “Fuck it. What’s the worst they can do to us? We’re already here…”
We had a laugh and continued to monitor the scenery.
A Blackhawk flew past overhead, speeding in the direction of the CSH down the street. When I saw the big red cross on the door of the bird, I said, “Some poor bastard’s in there having a really bad day.”
Lobban looked at me, shook his head, and said, “Dude…I really don’t want to go back to Diyala.”
I looked around the pool and noticed everyone smiling, laughing, and being sociable like they were at a Club Med somewhere in the Caribbean. What a weird fucking war, I thought to myself. Here are all these people who work in offices all day long, spending their lunch time going for a swim. They’ll never leave the wire, never get blown up, never get shot at, and never see their buddies get shot. They’ll spend every Sunday night in the MWR learning how to Salsa dance, and every Wednesday learning how to line dance. They’ll never know what it’s like to go a month without running water, nor will they ever have to ration what water is available. Here they are, hell here I am, sitting by a pool enjoying an Iced Mocha Latte, and a medevac bird just flew over head with some wounded dude in it. Weird.
Seeing that bird and being by the pool was just too much for me.
“Let’s get outta here. I wanna go check my emails.”
“All right.”
Walking through the hallways of the embassy was a trip in itself. There were colonels, majors, hell even generals hurrying from one office to the next. Stressed out captains rushed past us holding bundles of papers tight to their chests. Civilians in suits with ID badges hanging off their collars would walk by us, staring at the young corporal and specialist wearing faded, torn and sweat stained uniforms carrying weapons equipped with Surefire flashlights, ACOG sights, infrared laser equipment and bipods. We looked and felt very out of place.
I was standing in line at the café inside the embassy when I overheard a major and a captain complain about food shortages.
“This is the fourth day they’ve been out of peanut butter. I can’t believe this. Who’s running this? I’m getting tired of not having anything…..” The major rambled on to her captain about her problems. I just stared at her with a slight snarl, the contempt visible across my face. Oh, cry me a fucking river. You work in the fucking embassy; you’ve got nothing to complain about.
There were rumors going around about how they were going to have to eat MREs for lunch because the supply convoys weren’t making it through from Kuwait. Soldiers were getting blown up bringing these people their condiments and I actually overheard multiple soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians whining about this petty inconvenience to their diets. If we were eating hot chow up at our widely unknown FOB in Diyala, then the embassy was damn well going to be eating hot chow. I was disgusted.
One day, we were walking down the street near the CSH checking out the sights, amazed at the fact that we could walk down the street without worrying about the road exploding or snipers shooting us in the face.
A little Iraqi girl rolled up to us on a bicycle and asked, “Hey, you wan’ buy money Saddam?”
“No, we don’t wanna buy any money Saddam.” She was peddling paper bills with Saddam’s face on them, Iraq’s old currency.
“Wha’ ‘bout ficky-ficky?”
“I’ve got plenty of porn already, thanks.”
“You wan’ ficky-ficky?” She asked, lowering her head and throwing us a seductive gaze.
This little girl, no more than 12 years old, just asked us if we wanted sex.
“Are you fucking serious?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it. Lobban and I stared at each other in disbelief with our jaws hanging open.
“Yeah, I bet you got big dick.” She said to Lobban. I held my hand over my mouth, trying hard not to laugh. I didn't want to encourage her.
“I do got a big dick. But you need to take your ass on to school or some shit! Get the fuck outta here.” He replied.
“Fuck you nigger!”
My hands fell to my sides, I turned and stared at Lobban, my mouth agape. This was too much.
“Dude! She just called you a ‘nigger’!” I started laughing my ass off.
“Bitch! Get the fuck on before I kill you and your whole fucking family!”
“Yeah? Fuck you…” She looked over her shoulder at Lobban as she started riding away and added, “Nigger!”
She rode her bike in circles around us, harassing Lobban and calling him “nigger”. He finally started chasing after her but she hauled ass around a corner and didn’t come back. I was bent over at the waist, holding my sides, laughing hysterically when he came walking back over to me.
“I can’t believe that little girl called you a ‘nigger’!”
“Man, fuck these people. I fucking hate Iraqis, dude.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------

“So, is this your first tour?” A young Marine was sitting next to Lobban in the waiting area of the courthouse.
“Yeah it is.” He replied.
“Oh yeah? This is my second.” The young jarhead was obviously very proud of this fact.
“No kidding?”
“Yup, I’m two months into my second tour already. Been in the Anbar province.”
“Well, I’m 8 months into my first tour up in Diyala. It looks like we’ve both spent the same amount of time in Iraq, doesn’t it?”
This seemed to perplex the young lance corporal; he just stared at the ground, confused, unable to do the math.
I meandered over to the holding cell where about 15 men were handcuffed, waiting for their trials. A fat national guardsman was sitting in a chair, mean mugging the prisoners. I made some small talk with him and had a peek inside the cell. Although it had been a few months since I’d seen the two guys we’d detained, I instantly recognized them both sitting next to each other.
I swept my fingers across my face and asked the one who’d been holding the Garmin where his beard went. He stared back at me, not reacting. I looked at the other and asked, “Wayn hawen?” (Where’s your mortar?). He smiled, clapped his hands and held them open as if to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He started laughing and was nervously looking at the faces of the other prisoners. The other “defendant” mumbled something to him and he immediately stopped laughing. His expression was stern and he was now glaring back at me.
“Fuck you dudeki.” Seeing those two in there made me very angry all of a sudden. I regretted that we’d not killed them when we had the chance. But I calmed down when I remembered that I was in Baghdad for their trial. I was then grateful to myself for being such a compassionate guy.
“Hey now, I can’t jus’ be lettin’ you do that there.” The chubby weekend warrior sporting a buzz cut grabbed my arm and pulled me away.
The trial itself was speedy and very informal. It was conducted in the judge’s office. Behind the desk was an older Iraqi man, dressed in a very smart looking suit and sporting a Saddam like moustache. He was the judge. Next to him sat a younger man from Baghdad University who was studying to become a judge himself. He was the judge’s aide and spent the entire time scribbling notes. I sat in a chair in front of the desk, facing the wall so that the judge was off to my right. I was the witness. Across from me was an interpreter; next to him was CPT P-, the prosecuting attorney. Then there was the defendant, then his lawyer sitting next to me. His lawyer was a nervous wreck. Hollywood couldn’t have come up with a more desperate looking defending attorney at his wits’ end. His tie was loose around his neck and his collar was open. He had a scruffy moustache and although it was only 12 o’clock in the afternoon, he already had a 5 o’clock shadow. His suit was ruffled and he was chain smoking cheap Miami brand cigarettes. Behind us, sitting on a couch up against the wall, sat a National Guard soldier in charge of the detainee’s security. Next to him was some flabby civilian wearing a polo t-shirt tucked into khaki cargo pants with high-speed hiking boots. All I knew was that he was from Washington and was there to observe.
I was sworn in and I gave my testimony. More than once I made the mistake of looking at the interpreter while re-telling my story. The judge actually grabbed my arm at one point and told me, in Arabic to look him in the eyes when I was talking to him. Even though an interpreter was needed, the judge took offense at not being looked at in the eyes when I told my story. I’d never been spoken to by an Iraqi like that and for a very brief second I thought about smacking the shit out of him. I quickly realized that would not go over very well for me at all. My face was flushed as I apologized, humbled by the elderly man. It was awkward having to look at the judge while the interpreter did his thing. The judge kept nodding in understanding while looking in my eyes but I knew he was actually listening to the interpreter speaking, not me. It was slightly uncomfortable.
Both defendants said they had no idea what I was talking about and claimed to have never seen me before. They said they were simple farmers who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. The judge didn’t believe either of them.
While Lobban was giving his testimony, I hung out in the hallway making friends with the judges’ bodyguards. I told them why I was there and they told me that I should have just shot the irrhabi dudeki’s (terrorist faggots) instead of arresting them. They then produced a cell phone that had pornographic videos on it. They got a real kick out of showing their cheaply produced, very hairy Arabic porn. Every time a judge walked past, whoever had the phone would hide it behind his back and very politely smile and greet the VIP as they walked by. They were good guys, I liked them.
Once all the trials were wrapped up we headed back outside and towards the Green Zone.
“So what was the verdict, sir? Guilty?” I asked CPT P- in a hopeful tone.
“Well, they won’t be sentenced for at least another month, but the judge told me that he didn’t believe either of their testimonies and it is likely that they will get 15 years each for terrorism.”
“15 years? Not life?” I asked in a disappointed tone.
“Oh trust me; anything over a 5 year sentence in an Iraqi prisoner is the same as a death sentence.”
“Hooah” I said, in a delighted tone.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey Major, I heard they mortared your guys’ compound today.”
A young civilian who I will refer to as Mr. A was an employee of the State Department. He had actually spent some time with us on one of our patrol bases a while back. Lobban and I were shooting the shit with him in his office one morning after running into him at breakfast.
“Bloody ‘ell! It was goddamn rockets it was! The big katyusha’s the bastards.” The British Major was a liaison officer also working at the State Department office of the embassy.
“Did they get anybody?” Mr. A asked.
“Nah, thankfully…Bloody bastards made me spill my tea though!”
“Well that’s just tragic.” Mr. A responded.
“Back in the good ole days, we’d have shot 12 local nationals on the spot for such an offense!” the Major said boldly.
I let out a quick laugh and said mockingly “Now that’s how you fight an insurgency!”
The Major didn’t pick up on my sarcasm and said loudly “It bloody well is!”
Our conversation was cut-short by an indirect fire alarm going off (meaning there’s incoming mortar or rocket rounds).
“Get away from the windows! Come out here.” Mr. A directed us into a circular lobby where we sat and waited out the attack.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The pool was closed due to the frequent indirect fire attacks on the Green Zone. When we weren’t harassing Mr. A and his very cute co-worker at their office, we spent our time hanging out in the lobby watching the myriad of people who had business in the embassy. People from all over the world utilized the internet café, Green Beans Coffee, the chess tables, or they just sat at one of the many round tables talking in several different languages. It felt more like I was hanging out in some international college town instead of the capital of a war-torn country. Georgians grouped together with Poles talking with Americans over a cup of coffee, discussing the situation in Iraq. Koreans played chess against Africans. Australians kept to themselves. I even saw a group of American Federal Marshalls who’d been brought in to train Iraqi Police. They looked like something out of the movie Tombstone with their handle bar moustaches and pistol holsters. Instead of black trench coats, they sported desert nomex body suits. Large, steroid induced Blackwater private security contractors strutted around in tight Body Armour shirts. They had MP5s slung across their backs, very professional looking and obviously very impressed with themselves. Lobban and I lounged across a long leather couch in the corner of the lobby. I stared up at the ceiling with Saddam’s initials carved every few feet in the intricate design made of green marble, thinking about anything and everything.
“Dude, I wanna go home.” I said to Lobban.
“What, like, back to Normandy?”
“Nah dude, home-home.”
“Ft. Hood?”
“No, Florida. I’m done with this shit.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Man…I dunno…I’m just….Fuck man, I’m tired of being scared all the time.”
Lobban swallowed hard and stared at the wall, which also had Saddam’s initials every couple of feet. “I know what you mean, man.”
“I’m tired of rolling down the street, worrying about the road exploding underneath me. I don’t want to worry about going home with no legs. That’s not something people our age, shit anybody’s age should have to worry about. I’m tired of thinking about getting shot in the face every time I stand up in the turret. I’m just tired of this shit man. I’m done.”
“Yeah dude, it’s like, you never know what the fuck might happen. Sometimes I get these panic attacks and I’ll start freaking out and shit. It’s like something just comes over me and I can’t control it.”
“I get that shit too man. Ya just can’t dwell on the bad shit while you’re out there. The “what if’s” and shit. It’ll eat you up if ya do. Ya just gotta bury that stuff ya know?”
“Yeah, I hear ya.”
“I wanna get on with my life though, man. I’m only 21 years old. I wanna go to school. I’m sick of being scared every time I roll out the wire. I hide it well, but shit man, sometimes it eats me up. I don’t want to have to worry about getting killed. I wanna live a nice peaceful life, ya know? I don’t need no white picket fence and 2.3 kids or no shit like that. Just let me be somewhere people aren’t trying to kill me. I don’t think it’s much to ask.”
“Yup.”
“Then again, I can’t complain. I did enlist knowing damn well I’d end up over here…" The memory of actually wanting to come to Iraq sank in for a minute or two. "You remember how back at Hood, there was all those rumors going around that our brigade wasn’t even going to deploy?”
“Yeah, look how that turned out.”
“Remember how pissed off we were thinking we wouldn’t get a chance to come over here?”
He stared at the ground and slowly nodded.
“Fuckin’ A, we were bein’ naïve.”
We’d testified, we’d done our part for the due process of Iraq’s new judicial system, but we were still at the embassy. We’d spent the past three days with absolutely nothing to do, waiting for a flight. Having the extra down time gave us too much free time to question ourselves. That’s not good. I was ready to get back to Normandy and get back to work. As long as I was occupied then I wasn’t thinking about all the negatives. I wasn’t barraging my mind with “What if?” scenarios. Idle time can be the cause for the downfall of a soldier’s morale. My morale, despite being in the most comfortable place I’d been in 8 months, was through the floor. All the comforts and niceties reminded me of home all the while I knew in the back of my head that I was going back to Diyala. It was where I belonged, and I knew it. I was ready to get back.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A day later, we finally loaded on a Chinook and lifted off. As the bird gained altitude, I looked down at the embassy and felt like I was leaving home behind. At least, the safe feeling that home offers behind. We got stuck at FOB Warhorse, outside Baqubah, for another five days. Another five days of bumming around waiting for a flight, only this time we weren’t at the luxurious embassy.
One day we were walking past the airfield. A formation of soldiers stood at Present Arms while a bunch of body bags were unloaded off a Blackhawk. It was a grim reminder of what we had to go back to. We walked into the airfield’s office to see if any flights would be available in the evening. As the clerk behind the desk informed us of the projected weather forecast that would be keeping us at Warhorse for at least another day, I glanced at the whitewash board behind him. The words “6-9 Cav Hero Flight” were written in today’s incoming flight manifest.
“What’s a ‘Hero Flight?” I asked the clerk, not making the connection in my head with the body bags I’d just seen.
“You didn’t hear? 6-9 lost 6 guys yesterday.”
“What! What troop were they in?” I could feel the blood rush to my face.
“I don’t know. I just know they were on QRF and were responding to a downed helicopter. I think a Kiowa got shot down somewhere between here and Muqdidiyah.”
I looked to Lobban, his face showing the same worried expression I’m sure mine was.
“Dude, we’ve been on QRF for like the past month. That’s Bravo troop!” Lobban said.
“Do you know if they were from Bravo Troop?” I asked the clerk, forgetting that he’d already told me he didn’t know.
“I don’t know. You can check up at brigade though.”
I took off running through the Hesco baskets, past the Hajji shops, the MWR and the phone center. I busted into the brigade headquarters looking for Lt. M-, our squadron liaison officer.
“Hey sir, who was it? Was it Bravo Troop?” I was kneeling next to his chair inside the Brigade TOC (tactical operations center).
He leaned over and whispered, “They were in Alpha troop. It was Summers, Lt. West, Ewing, Baker, Marcum, and Alexeev.”
“Alexeev!?”
“They went out to secure the site of a downed helicopter. A Kiowa got shot down near Abu Sayda. They were headed towards Little Abu Sayda. An IED went off underneath their Bradley.”
Little Abu Sayda. They were in the DMZ. I’d had a nightmare about that place a week prior, in Baghdad. Shit man, not Alex. Ahh man….fuckin’…goddammit man…. My eyes welled up with tears and I wiped them away. I headed back outside fighting the urge to just break down and start crying. I broke the news to Lobban. His eyes were wide open, staring at his boots. Fuck, I don’t wanna go back.
Alexander Alexeev was my old roommate back at Ft. Hood. I knew him well. He used to be in B Troop but was transferred to A Troop right before we deployed because of his lengthy disciplinary record. He was a Russian immigrant with an accent that made his English barely understandable. He was the worst roommate you could have ever wished not to have. He’d eat your food, drink you beer and play loud techno music at all hours of the night. But he was a lot of fun also. Sometimes he’d get so wasted he’d forget his English and just speak Russian. And he was an excellent field soldier. He knew his job and performed well while training. God forbid you were an NCO that was responsible for him back in garrison though. I remember one morning back at Ft. Hood, he woke me up, his face crusted in dried blood and his eye swollen shut.
“Hey Walter dude, you wanna go for a ride?” he asked as he dangled a set of BMW keys in my face. “I just stole a car, man!”
“No, X, I’m good dude, thanks though.”
Nothing ever kept him from doing whatever the hell he wanted. “Consequences be damned” and all that. I always admired his carefree attitude but shunned his reckless behavior and total disregard for authority. Looking back, I’m glad he was the way he was. He lived his short life the best way he saw fit. He had a young Russian fiancé back at Ft. Hood who cried her eyes out as he boarded the bus that took him to the airplane that lead to Iraq. He was 23 years old.
We made it back to FOB Normandy in time to attend the memorial service.
I didn’t know the other A Troop soldiers as well as I knew Alex. But I recognized each of their faces from the pictures that were placed beneath the boots, upside down rifles, dog tags, and helmets. As we stood at attention towards the end of the ceremony, General Petraeus (commanding general for the entire Iraq theatre of operations) walked through our ranks. He shook my hand, slapped me on the back, and told me to “Hang in there.”
I’ll try, sir.

"I'd like to think we were blessed."

2008-02-10T14:45:00.000-08:00

“John Travolta.”
“That’s too fucking easy….. John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.”
“Hmmmm…..Uma Thurman….and Darryl Hannah in Kill Bill.”
“Ooo, good one.”
Playing celebrity trivia games was one way to pass the time on the LOC (pronounced “lock”). When you do the same thing for three weeks, working an 8 hour on, 8 hour off rotation, you just about lose your fucking mind. It’s simple little distractions like playing “7 degrees to Kevin Bacon” that will keep you sane.
“Darryl Hannah and Tom Hanks in Splash!”
“Didn’t you use that on that the last turn?”
Even while talking to the other dudes in my truck, my head swayed back and forth and my eye lids began to fall shut. It’s hard staring at the same stretch of dirt road for days on end.
“Tom Hanks to Tom Sizemore in Saving Private Ryan.”
A LOC is a line of communications. In this case, it was a 2 ½ kilometer stretch of road that ran from our patrol base in Shakarat, through a village named Mohada, across the Al Jazeera and Al Azi neighborhood's of Muqdidiyah, and came to an end on the main highway, Route Vanessa. We had to leave half a platoon stretched our along this route at all times in order to keep it free of IEDs so our daily supply convoy could reach the patrol base. We sat there in our vehicles for hours, days, and weeks on end. I had been pulling security at the same corner just down the road from our patrol base for going on two weeks.
“Tom Sizemore……fuck………Tom Sizemore to Val Kilmer in Heat!”
“Michaels, go ahead and turn the truck around,” I said.
“Roger Corporal.”
We started rolling down the dirt road in order to check out a blind spot in between us and the next vehicle stationed near a Mosque in Mohada. If you leave spots un-watched for too long, then the next time you roll through there, the road will fucking explode. It was a little nerve racking. A week prior, SGT Jax had been roving around in his Humvee when he left a corner in Mohada uncovered for a minute too long. Insurgents snuck an IED into the loose dirt and detonated it directly underneath the engine of his truck. The blast left the gunner, SPC B- deaf in one ear, and twisted SGT Jax’s back so badly he was medevac’d back to the states. (You can watch this IED blast on you tube, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWFJEYirCy8 to see it).
“Slow down Michaels.”
“Yes Corporal.”
I was double fisting Citrus Rip-Its while keeping my head on a swivel. I watched the road, looking for any discolored spots where someone may have been digging. I watched the tops of the walls that flanked both sides of the road, looking for any wires running from the ground, up and over the walls and into the palm groves behind them. I watched the locals and how they were acting. Their reactions were always key indicators whether something bad was about to happen or not.
Despite the threat of being blown into pieces, it was hard to stay awake on the LOC. I was living on a strict diet of MREs (meals ready to eat), NO DOZ and the one hot meal brought to us from the FOB on most days. In between my No Doz regimen I had MRE coffee packets (eaten straight out of the pouch, sometimes mixed with sugar and the flammable creamer powder) and 8 ounce Rip It energy drinks. I usually stayed pretty alert while on the LOC but every so often, if I didn’t space out my caffeine injections in proper intervals, I would crash hard and there would be no amount of Taster’s Choice that would keep me awake. I yelled alot at random times just to keep myself awake.
“Michaels!” I shouted.
Startled, he answered “Yes-s Corporal?”, while slowly guiding the Humvee in between the pot holes and craters made by previous IED blasts.
“You’re doing one hell of a job for your country. You’re defending freedom and bringing democracy to a people who have known nothing but tyranny and dictatorship and what-not. Keep up the good work.”
“Thank you Corporal.” He let out a breath and I could see the tension on his face disappear. It was easy fucking with Michaels.
“And Lobban!”
“What up?” He answered from the turret.
“You just pay the fuck attention up there! I’m trying to go to fucking college. I can’t do that if I’m dead, ya know? I’ve got too much to live for and I need you to stay alert up there so I can further my education one day. I’m not trying to end up like them dudes from the 101st.”
“Yeahhh…”
“What guys from the 101st Corporal?” Michaels asked.
“You never heard about them 4 guys? They were doing the same shit we’re doing, sitting on some road south of Baghdad pulling security. They’d been there for like a week. They let themselves get complacent. Their truck was ambushed, the driver got shot in the face, the other dudes were captured. They found their bodies awhile later all tortured and shit.” I told him. The tension on his face returned.
“I heard they had like explosives stuffed in their bodies or some shit” Lobban added.
“Yup. All right Michaels, slow it down up here…”
We approached the blind spot and made sure to stop at a point we’d been able to see from our previous position. Our eyes meticulously picked over every rock, every piece of trash, across every wall and into every window and alleyway visible for signs of some muj asshole waiting for the right moment to trigger the bomb that may kill us all. There was nothing out of the usual. We drove through the blind spot, muscles tensed the whole way, got to a point where the Humvee crew near the mosque was able to see us, turned around, and headed back.
I made Michaels stop the truck before we reached our usual spot and I dismounted with CPL C-, one of our medics who was with me this particular day. I crept up to the curve in the road and peeked around a fence hoping to catch some punk ass kid off guard while he planted an IED in the road. Nobody in the road this time. Damn. But a group of youths were hanging around a street corner further down the road. It seemed like every time an IED went off on the LOC, this group of kids would be out on the street casing us before it happened. The insurgents would use these little kids to observe and report on our locations, how often we moved, when we moved, etc. I could go over and search them, but they were smarter than that and they never actually kept anything on them. Detaining them was pointless since I had no evidence. They would just be released the same day. A little kid acting as a spotter is as dangerous as a grown man with an AK47. After 4 days on the LOC and 6 IEDs later, we were finally given permission to fire warning shots at these little bastards. So I did. Frequently.
POP! I fired a shot at the wall above their heads and they all scattered down the alleyways. There was always a kid who was tossing pigeons from a rooftop in Mohada. SGT Jax and LT swore up and down that this kid was up there throwing his birds in the air before every IED. So I shot at him too, every chance I got.
“Who were we on?” asked CPL C- from the back seat.
“I dunno, let’s start over…” I suggested.
“It’s Michaels turn to start.”
“Fuck that, Michaels is too goddamn old to start. I wasn’t even alive when most of the movies he knows came out. You start C-“
It was true too. Michaels, at 43 years old, was the oldest guy in our Troop. His rank was Specialist due to the fact that he had once served 4 yours in the Air Force before I was even born. Despite the age gap, he was my soldier and my responsibility. At times, when he deserved it, I would have to speak to him in elevated tones in order to convey my displeasure at his job performance. For those of you who aren’t capable of picking up on the subtleties in that previous sentence, I yelled at him. A lot. He was a new guy, just out of basic and he fucked up a lot. Only a couple of days after arriving at FOB Normandy, he was put in the back of a Bradley and driven out to K-Wal. Though I wasn’t there to see it, I heard as soon as the ramp of the Bradley dropped at K-Wal, all of my buddies were surprised to see this really old, really short dude roll out of the back puking his guts out. Apparently, he wasn’t accustomed to the bumpy rideand the hellacious weather. Sometimes, I found it very awkward screaming at a dude who was old enough to be my father. I mean shit, he was quite literally twice my age. He was also a very timid guy and I couldn’t stand that about him. He said he joined the army because he wanted to come over and “help out”. He wanted to “do his part”. I think it would have been better for everyone if he’d joined up to be a chaplain’s assistant or maybe a finance clerk. Scouts are supposed to be aggressive, not timid. We’re supposed to take risks, not treat situations in combat with the caution of a 90 year old woman who’s afraid to fall down. But he worked hard and did what he wast told. I couldn't ask much more than that I suppose. He was also a born again Christian. Deeply religious. I am not religious. Not at all. The fact that he was such a Christ freak was made even more odd by the fact that that he used to be a hard core punk rocker back in the ‘80’s. I could talk to him all day about Black Flag or the Dead Kennedys. But those were the old days. If I got too deep into a conversation with him, words like “faith” and “prayer” would come out and I’d have to cut him off.
“Jonny Depp.”
“Jonny Depp to Keira Knightly in Pirates of the Caribbean.”
It was around midday and we were shoveling hot chow down our throats in the relative comfort of the air conditioned Humvee. The 4 truck QRF from FOB Normandy had just passed us on the LOC and brought chow, fuel, and any and all other logistical support we needed to run K-Wal (you can see them getting blown up on youtube as well, just go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuQcIpd7XyU and see the convoy get hit with an IED as they bring us chow). Seelye and his crew had driven out to each of our vehicles on the LOC, bringing us hot plates and cold sodas.
On our first day at K-Wal for this rotation, SGT Schmidt had driven his Bradley up the road from his southernmost position near the highway, to meet the food runner halfway so he wouldn’t have to come all the way down the LOC. He left his spot on the LOC unwatched for 5 minutes at most. On his way back, an IED blew off the reactive armor on the side of his Bradley and took out the transmission. Aside from some mild concussions, everyone was all right. (Guess what? You can see that IED on you tube also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=xAcymTWT7es if you look closely at the left side of the Bradley turret, you can actually see Schmidt’s head sticking up).
“Keira Knightley to Matthew Macfayden in Pride and Prejudice.” I said with a smile, happy with my answer.
A short pause ensued.
“Did you just say Pride and Prejudice?” CPL C- was looking at me with disgust from the back seat while I finished my chicken and rice. Michaels was chuckling at me over his Dr. Pepper.
“Yeah, so?” I perked up, ready to defend my answer.
“First of all, you’re gay. Second, who the fuck is Matthew Mac-whatever?”
“Whoa whoa whoa…” I started. “Keira Knightley is fucking hot. There’s nothing gay about that!”
CPL C- just shook his head. “Dammit Corky,” I hated it when he called me that, so he did it often, "Can you think of another movie this guy’s been in?”
Dammit. “Hold on let me think….no.”
“Then you can’t use him, simple as that. You’re out.”
“I fucking hate you.”
Michaels was laughing at me now. “Turn the truck around Michaels.”
“Roger Corporal.”
We checked the blind spot and again, nothing out of the ordinary. We stopped in Mohada for a minute or two so I could get out and search an old man pushing a cart full of grass. I'd seen this guy about everyday. In the mornings his cart would be empty. When he came back through in the afternoons it was stacked high with long blades of grass. He usually had his daughter with him. I prodded the grass with my bayonet to make sure he wasn’t moving 155mm artillery shells or Italian made anti-tank mines around. He wasn’t. I thanked him for not being a terrorist. His little 10 year old daughter was smiling at me so I gave her a piece of gum. She smiled and thanked me. He glanced around nervously, afraid who might have seen the American soldier giving his young daughter a gift. I'd hate to think something happened to those two, but one day, they stopped showing up all together. Who knows?
We mounted up and headed back. W’d left one corner un-watched for three, maybe four minutes, at most. A couple hundred seconds. That’s how long we were gone. And that is all it takes.
We rounded the last corner before the stretch of dirt road that leads directly to K-Wal. I was just about to tell Michaels to turn the truck back around and park. There was a loud POP! sound and dirt and rocks went flying across the hood of our truck, coming from a spot on the road directly next to Michaels in the driver’s seat.
“OH FUCK!” yelled CPL C-.
"GO! GO! GO! GO!" I yelled at Michaels who was already flooring it. We gotta get out of the kill zone!
"Lobban start spraying the fucking palm grove!" My initial thought was that a grenade had been thrown at us and we were being ambushed. Lobban stood up behind his machine gun and emptied half a box of ammo into the tree line. There was no follow on small arms fire, and the truck seemed to be working just fine. I ordered Michaels to halt the truck and yelled at Lobban to cease fire.
The explosion wasn’t deafening like an IED blast, and it wasn’t as loud as a gunshot. It sounded more like a powerful firecracker.
I knew it couldn’t have been a grenade, cause it wasn’t loud enough. What the fuck was that!?
I called up a contact report.
“Any station this net, this is Bushmaster 6, contact I-E-D…or something.” I know, I know, you’re probably thinking that’s not exactly very accurate reporting there, Scout. But I had no clue what the hell had just happened. Lobban didn’t see anybody moving around in the palm groves and no one was shooting our way. We were about 75 meters from the “blast” site. I got out of the truck and used my opened door to steady my M4 as I looked at what appeared to be a brick in the road. An Iraqi Army truck had pulled up from its position at the traffic control point outside K-Wal. The driver hopped out and asked if we were all okay. I recognized him from a few joint patrols we'd been on together in the past. He appeared genuinely relieved to hear that we were all right. I pointed down the road at the object lying in the middle of our “kill zone” and asked him if he knew what it was.
Hell, this guy’s probably planted a few IEDs in his life, I thought to myself. He shook his head and decided the best course of action we could take was shooting the unknown object. He took a knee, aimed his AK and began firing. The IA soldier manning the PKC machine gun in the turret of their Humvee, got excited and also started spraying bullets down the road. I saw rounds kick up dirt around the object and impact the mud wall just past it. But none hit the intended target. Disgusted with their lack of basic marksmanship skills, I told them to cease fire, and without really thinking about what the hell I was doing, I steadied my weapon on the object. Now I know you’re probably thinking, Hey, dumbass, that thing that just nearly exploded on you, yeah that thing, it’s probably not very compatible with hot metal objects hitting it, not a good idea to shoot at it, dickhead. That’s what I’m thinking as I write this anyways. But I just had to show off my marksmanship skills. It was an easy shot to make with my ACOG (advanced combat optical gun-sight, it has a 3X magnification). My first round hit the object causing it to flare up in bright white flames and jump a couple of feet off the ground. The IA soldier congratulated me on my fine marksmanship and suggested we not shoot at it anymore. I agreed.
I called the Troop CP (command post) at K-Wal and requested EOD be sent out from FOB Normandy. We had to secure the site until they arrived. Trouble was, from where we were sitting, there was an almost 500 meter stretch of the LOC not being watched. So when the QRF with EOD showed up, they'd would certainly get blown up if we didn't cover that route.This meant, we had to drive back past whatever that was lying in the road to secure the route. I considered sending the IA in their truck down there, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Fuck it, it's my fault that they were able to get that thing in the road. We'll go.
I told the IA to keep their truck there while we secured the far side. As we rolled back through the “kill zone” I was nervous as all hell about riding back past the unkown object in the road. I had Michaels floor it again as we drove through and as we passed it on my side, I saw that it was a very large anti-tank mine that had been hastily buried just inches under the surface. The command wire ran from the mine, directly to the top of a mud wall, and into the palm groves Lobban had engaged. It was so fucking blatant that I am very ashamed of the fact that none of us spotted it. EOD came out and blew the mine in place. It was an old Soviet Anti-Tank mine. A PRC 62 or something. The loud Pop! we’d heard was the sound of the blasting cap attached to the wire going off. For whatever reason, the anti-tank mine itself failed to detonate.
After EOD and QRF had left, we sat there, at our usual spot, staring at the hole on the side of the road, dwelling on how close we came to having a very, very bad day.
I wonder if I’m alive right now because back in the 80’s some drunk factory worker in the Soviet Union overlooked some faulty piece on his assembly line. That thing could’ve fucked us up.
We sat there awhile longer, each man lost in his own thoughts. I decided to break the silence with a smile and a little bit of humor. That was my defense mechanism. It helped me cope.
“Man, Micheals... that thing would have fucked you up!” I exclaimed loudly while gazing wide eyed over the top of the radio’s at my driver, his hands still shaking.
“Yess-s, Corporal.”
“Man, that thing would’ve thrown me out of the truck.” Lobban said from the turret.
“Nah,” I said reassuringly, “it probably would have blown Michaels in half, taken off CPL C-‘s legs, and maybe taken out one of your legs at the knee, that’s all… I’m sure I would have been just fine though.” I’m good at reassuring my soldiers in their time of need. Don’t you agree?
I lit up a smoke and smiled at Michaels. “We’re some lucky sons-uh-bitches, huh?” I asked him.
“I’d like to think we were blessed, Corporal.” Replied Michaels.
“Oh yeah?”
He was staring at me, his eyes bulging out of his head, his face stern, serious. “The power of prayer is the most powerful weapon in our arsenal, Corporal. We just don’t utilize it enough.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say. For a second or two I just stared at him, waiting for a punch line.
“Well, you just keep on doing what you’ve been doing there, guy.”
“Do you have faith, Corporal?” He was still leering at me over the radio’s.
“Michaels…turn the truck around.”
“Yes Corporal.”

My Cherry Gets Popped

2008-02-06T18:10:00.000-08:00

SFC Sal was stepping out of a baker’s shop into the crowded market street when something caught his eye. The chinstrap of his helmet was undone and he was chewing on some flat bread as he peered over his right shoulder. From the turret of my Humvee, my eyes drifted over to a cellular telephone store where a man around 25 years of age was leaning against the wall outside the shop. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, a white button up shirt, some black dress slacks and imitation Versace shoes. Nice clothes by Iraqi standards. The man stared at SFC Sal, “mean mugging” him.
“Hey Sargn’t Jax! Search this motherfucker.” SFC Sal ordered.
SGT Jax promptly moved from the corner of a nearby building where he had been kneeling down, minimizing his exposure to sniper fire.
“Ta-all! Hey! Ta-all motherfucker!”
The man looked shocked and confused as SGT Jax grabbed him and shoved him over the hood of the Humvee. In the man’s pocket, he found $9,600 in 100 dollar bills. SFC Sal called squadron to “request further guidance” on what to do with the guy.
Squadron: “Go ahead and bring him in, over.”
SFC Sal: “Roger, could we have the QRF meet us at the JCC to pick him up? We’ve still got a few hours left until we’re mission complete here, over.” Quick Note: JCC stands for Joint Coordination Center, it was an Iraqi Army/Police Headquarters in the center of Muqdidiyah.
Squadron: “Roger, we’ll spin up the QRF…One thing, you said you had observed him doing suspicious activity. What was he doing exactly? Over.”
SFC Sal: “Well, he was mean mugging.”
A short pause…
Squadron: “Say again. He was mean mugging?”
SFC Sal: “Roger, over.”
Squadron: “Well…uhh…okay…he’s not supposed to have that much cash so go ahead and detain him.”
We later found out that the man was a recruiter for the Jaysh al-Mahdi, Muqtada al-Sadr’s powerful militia. We were told that he was the biggest source of intelligence that anyone had gotten in years in our AO (area of operations). All because he was mean mugging SFC Sal. I heard the guy’s at S-2 (intelligence shop) got a real kick out of that.
After handing the detainee over to the QRF at the JCC, we continued with our presence patrol. I was behind a M240B machine gun in the second vehicle. SSG JJ was in the lead in his M2A3 Bradley. As his vehicle passed a mosque, I noticed the locals on the streets further down the road run for the alleyways and out of sight.
Hey, where’s everyone going? I thought to myself very innocently. I’d only been in country for a couple months and aside from a few IEDs, I hadn’t been involved in any direct contact yet.
An explosion threw trash and dirt into the air about 50 meters in front of the lead Bradley.
“Contact IED!” Shouted SSG JJ over the net.
Holy fuck!
SFC Sal immediately began calling up a contact report to squadron when PKC machine guns and AK47 assault rifles opened up from both sides of the street. I watched a stream of red tracers being fired from a rooftop at my 11 0’clock. They flew high over my head and for a couple seconds I just sat there, mesmerized by the pretty streaks of light thinking; “Huh. Those, are tracers.” I was like a moth being hypnotized by a bright light bulb. The fact that the tracers were being directed at me didn’t really register at first. When the bright stream of flaming bullets began to drop and started hitting my turret shield, it hit me. “Holy shit those are tracers!!”
I instinctively grabbed the pistol grip of my machine gun and aligned my eyes with the front sight post and the building where the tracers were coming from. I sprayed the rooftop in a “Z” pattern. I could see my rounds hitting the low wall along the roof and watched my tracers skim over the edge, but I couldn’t see any enemy. I could hear the Bradley open up with its co-ax machine gun, engaging insurgents poking around corners further down the road.
SGT Jax, in the back seat, started shouting, “They’re over there off the 3 o’clock!”
I could hear so many weapons being fired simultaneously. My mind raced as I tried to overcome the confusion brought on by the sudden attack. I hesitated for a second.
SGT Jax began smacking my leg and shouting “There! There! 3 o’clock! He keeps poking around that corner!”
Staying low, I went to crank my turret around to the right when another burst of fire came from an alleyway off my 1 o’clock. One round slammed into the thick glass shield (known as a “Pope shield”) mounted on top of the steel wall of my turret. The pope shield deflected the round which had been on a direct flight path with my face. I saw a red tracer round hit the front of my turret wall, ricochet off the inside of my turret shield, bounce off the top of the Humvee and fly wildly over my head.
I dropped down low in my hatch and for some reason, for some odd reason that completely escapes me now, I started laughing. Not chuckling. Not giggling. But hysterically laughing while shouting to the rest of the crew sitting below, whose heads were about level with mine at this point, “They’re shooting the turret! Holy fucking shit! They’re shooting MY motherfuckin’ turret!”.
Lucky, the interpreter we had with us, his mouth agape, stared at me with scared, confused eyes. I always wondered how I would react my first time under fire. I never pictured myself finding it funny.
Somebody else shouted, “There there there! Off the 9 o’clock in that alleyway!”
The Bradley had given up on the 7.62mm co-ax machine gun at this point and began hosing everything down with the 25mm Bushmaster chain gun.
Ploomp! Ploomp! Ploomp! Ka-boom-boom-boom! The sound of each round leaving the barrel was immediately followed with the noise of the rounds impacting and exploding.
SFC Sal yelled up to me “Start hosing these motherfuckers!!”
“Fuck this shit!” I hollered. My erratic laughing fit had ceased. Whatever emotion it was that had caused me to break into laughter turned into sheer rage. These dickheads are REALLY trying to kill me!, I realized. No bullshit, they really want me dead! What a bunch of dicks! All of a sudden, I was extremely pissed off that theses assholes were shooting at me and I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my body. I jumped up, grabbed the pistol grip of the machine gun with my right hand, the handle to crank my turret around in my left hand, and began spraying at every window, rooftop and alleyway I could see. At one point, I was just squeezing the trigger while traversing the turret. I engaged the muzzle flashes I thought I saw and the corners of the alleyways I figured they were using. In between bursts from my machine gun, I remember thinking; “I-brrrat-don’t-brrrat-have-brrrat-positive ID-brrratatatat-of any targets.-brrrat-But I –brrrat- don’t give-brrrat- two shits- brrrrattatatat- about that right now. Brrrrraatatatatatatat.”
The enemy stopped firing as if on cue. It was eerie. I sprayed a few bursts at a few rooftops for good measure. As I threw my spent ammo can down into the truck and grabbed a fresh one to reload, SFC Sal was hollering at PFC W- in the driver’s seat.
“Keep the truck moving! Don’t stop in front of alleyways! Drive back and forth! Don’t fucking stop!”
“Roger Sargn’t ! Roger!”, were the only words our driver could get in.
The shooting had only stopped for about 30 seconds when I watched an old woman dressed head to toe in a black buhrka appear down the street, right where the Bradley had been engaging. Trailing behind her was a small girl wearing a red dress, no more than 3 or 4 years old.
What-in-the-hell? I know that old lady heard all that shooting. What the fuck is she doing and why does she have that little girl with her?
The old woman tried walking passed the lead Bradley nonchalantly, ignoring the 35 ton steel vehicle while it’s gun followed her. SSG JJ stood up in the turret and ordered her to turn around and go home. She complied but not before shouting some protests and gesturing towards the building she had just come from.
SFC Sal was calling up situation reports to squadron. He wanted to push further down the road and pursue the enemy but squadron ordered us to halt, pull security, and wait for EOD(the bomb guys) to arrive and conduct a post-blast analysis.
SFC Sal dismounted with SGT Jax and moved to a roof top to see if they could pick anything up further down the road. Straight ahead of my vehicle, to our north about 700 meters, the road came to a dead end at the edge of a dense palm grove. On a side street that ran parallel to the road we were on, out of site from any of our vehicles’ vantage point, SFC Sal and SGT Jax started un-loading their M4s on three men sprinting into the palm groves with AK47s in hand. SFC Sal hit one in the back. He stayed down. SGT Jax hit another who stumbled but did not fall. He hobbled away and disappeared into the tree line.
My head was "on a swivel" and I never stopped spinning my turret, back and forth and back again. All we could do was drive forward, turn around, drive back, turn around, do it again, and make sure not to stop in front of alleyways.
Off to my vehicle’s 9 o’clock, I caught a glimpse of a man poke his head over the wall on the rooftop of a two story building. I trained my machine gun on the spot and waited for him to return. A pair of hands holding a bucket appeared and dumped water out onto the street. What the fuck? I thought to myself. Maybe he’s washing off blood on the wall or something. I did shoot over there. He poked his head again, just barely high enough for me to see his eyes and I decided whatever he was up to could wait until we’d left. I sprayed a quick burst of fire at the wall below him. I didn't see him after that.
PFC W- kept the Humvee moving and I kept the turret spinning. I pounded a Rip It and was suddenly overcome with a feeling of joy and accomplishment. I voiced my emotions loudly and criticized the insurgents’ poor aim.
“AHAHAHAHAHAH!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “I’M STILL HERE YOU MOTHERFUCKERRRRRS! AHAHAHAHAHA! YOU SORRY PIECES OF SHIT CAN’T HIT DICK! F-UUUCCCCCKKK YOOUUUUUU! AHAHAHAHAHA! I’M!-STILL!-HERE!!!! AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Much later, EOD arrived and conducted their PBA. It was determined that the explosion was no IED but was in fact a hand grenade. Either they used the grenade to initiate the ambush, or their throwing abilities were not quite up to standard.
Squadron called us away to check out reports of a power station under attack. By the time we got there, the attackers had fled, or were never there to begin with. We headed back to FOB Normandy.
Later that night, while standing next to my Humvee smoking a cigarette, I stared at my cracked pope shield. Seelye came outside, looked up at the pope shield, grimaced, looked at me and slowly nodded his head.
“Ya remember how the other day we were bitching about not coming into much contact?” I asked him.
“Yeah.”
“If that’s the last fire fight I ever get into, I’d be just fine with that.”
We still had 11 months to go in our tour. We were just getting started.

"Fastest way outta here! GO!"

2008-01-29T18:21:00.000-08:00

“Why don’t you just let Walter walk point, he knows that area pretty well.” Staff Sergeant JJ thought he was being cute by recommending me for point. He was even grinning. I didn’t think it was very funny. I stared at him with a “I’m going to fucking kill you, if I make it back alive” look on my face.
“Ohhh hey there Sargn’t J-, that’s a great idea. Walter…” And with that, First Sergeant B- pointed me to the front gate.
Motherfucker, I don’t want jack shit to do with this fucking patrol. I sure as shit don’t want to walk point. I don’t even know where the hell we’re supposed to be going. All he said was “We’re gonna go for a little walk up north” and now I’m in the lead with 6 of our guys and 5 Iraqi soldiers. What the fuck? I should’ve just lied and told Top I was busy and couldn’t go with him on his “little walk”.
It was about 1300hrs when I went downstairs to hit up the shitter. First Sergeant happened to be walking past when he stopped me and asked “What are you doing around 1600?” I told him I didn’t have anything going on other than my rooftop O.P. shift at 1800. He said, “Good, then you can come with me on a little walk up north.”
A little walk up north? I thought to myself. “Uh, sure first sergeant, where are we going?”
“Oh just up north a ways.” He said with a smile and headed into the house.
I headed for the shitter thinking “ He probably just wants to show CPT B- around or something. We’re probably just going to show him the traffic control points and what-not. After all, our new CO needs to get a feel for the area". Call me naive, but I certainly didn’t think he planned on taking a dismounted patrol all the way up Route Anne to Sinsil. Surely he had no intentions of taking a small group of us on foot into an area that hadn’t been patrolled in months. An area where we heard fierce firefights going on everyday between the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades and the Islamic State of Iraq. We wouldn’t just walk into an area inhabited by these two groups who would gladly turn their weapons on us. No, we’d never do that. That’s naiveté for ya.
To say I had butterflies in my stomach underscores the fear that I had about leading an 11 man patrol with no crew served weapons, no real task and absolutely no fucking purpose whatsoever into an area some referred to as “Indian country” . “Butterflies” is a term used to describe that feeling before playing in a big high school football game or before taking a college entrance exam. At least I think it is. I never did either. But maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have found myself in front of a bunch of dudes from our headquarters platoon and a group of Iraqi soldiers I’d never worked with.
I pulled the charging handle on my M4 and chambered a round as I walked past the Iraqi soldiers guarding the front gate.
One stood up and shouted “Shakoo makoo!?”
“Kushi makoo!” I hollered in return.
“Ahh, good mista!” He gave me a thumbs up and flashed a toothless grin my way.
I headed to the north Bradley O.P. where SGT Pat vigilantly scanned the palm groves and buildings to the north. At least he’s on the north O.P. That makes me feel a little better. I knew SGT Pat didn’t let anything get by him and as long as he was there, someone we could count on to get to us if we needed was near. I took a knee by the concrete T-wall at the traffic control point hoping this was as far as Top planned on going.
“Oh hey there Corporal Walter, go ahead on over the bridge there,” said Top.
The bridge was the beginning of the area no one in our squadron had gone into for months. And for good reason. Our squadron was stretched thin patrolling Muqdidiyah while maintaining an entire Troop at the patrol base in Shakarat. The patrol base was named K-Wal, in memory of SPC K- from Charlie Troop, who’d been shot in the back of the head by a sniper. That happened the last time anyone came north of the bridge. Since then, we focused on the areas to the south. Keeping the road to our patrol base open and free of IEDs tied up an entire platoon. That left one platoon to maintain force protection and conduct patrols. The rest of the squadron was busy patrolling Muqdidiyah. That left no one to head north into the palm groves and villages that made up the area we called the “bread basket”. Hembis is the largest village in the area. We once recovered documents in an Al Qaeda safe house that identified Hembis as a “Brigade” headquarters for the Islamic State of Iraq. I always figured that one day we’d push into the bread basket for a fight. I just never thought I’d be doing it with 11 guys.
I tried stopping at the first buildings I came to. I pulled security to the north, up Route Anne while first sergeant pointed out this and that to CPT B-. SGT W- called up our location to the TOC on the radio. We were only about 200 meters from the Bradley sitting on the bridge. No problem, I’ve been this far a few times, not a big deal. Just as long as Top doesn’t make us go any further we should be all right.
“Corporal Walter, why don’t keep on heading that way,” said Top as he pointed north up the road towards the first village along the route, Sinsil. Oh fuck me, I thought. No matter how this plays out from here, it’s not going to be good.
The road was flanked by thick palm groves on either side. I got the hell off the road and walked along the edge of the trees. As we neared the village, I saw people running. Women, children, old men, they all scattered.
Ho-ly fuck, here goes… When Iraqi’s run away, especially when an entire village clears the streets at the sight of approaching Americans, it’s not good. I took cover behind a thin wooden fence that wasn’t strong enough to stop a BB gun.
“Hey Corporal Walter, what’s going on up there?” shouted Top from the middle of the patrol.
“The entire fucking village just scattered, first sargn’t.”
He ran up to my position and looked into the empty streets ahead.
“Oh, this is a bad place Corporal Walter. We shouldn’t be up here without Bradley’s.” Ding ding ding! That’s right Top! We really shouldn’t be up here at all! Now let’s just head back to— “Why don’t you take us through the palm grove there.” He pointed to the wood line to the east, in the direction of a large cemetery where hajji routinely staged indirect fire attacks on our patrol base. Goddammit.
I got to my feet and headed through the thick brush. I couldn’t see 5 feet in front of me without getting on my knees and looking around. Diyala is full of very short trees that only seem to grow leaves between your waist level and the top of your head. In order to see anything further than a few feet, you have to get on your hands and knees. I’d do this every few meters. I knew Apache Troop had sent a small kill team into this area a while back. They ended up on the receiving end of an L shaped ambush. An Air Weapons Team that had luckily been there at the time bailed them out of that one. I didn’t hear a single bird in the air as we continued through the dense foliage.
Every so often we’d come across a mud hut or old shack and Top would point to it and ask me, “Hey, has anyone ever searched this?”
My response was the same every time, “No first sargn’t, nobody has ever come this far north.”
As we moved along, Top kept pointing out buildings and asking if they’d ever been searched. The irritation in my voice was growing until he finally said, “Well ya don’t have to yell at me Corporal Walter!”
We’d reached the edge of the cemetery. It was massive. Much larger than I’d expected. At least 500 meters across. Towards the northern edge of it was a gigantic dirt hill with graves laid out across it. It was completely surrounded by tall palm trees and the thick underbrush that grows below. I attempted to reiterate to first sergeant the fact that we were in an area we shouldn’t be in.
“Awww, are you scared Corporal Walter?”
Fuck you cocksucker.
“Negative first sargn’t,” I lied. “It’s just that I think this a really bad idea is all…”
“Well okay then, we’ll head back to Shakarat.” Whewww, I knew you weren’t all that bad, Top. “ But first why don’t you lead us around to the other side of the cemetery, then we’ll circle back around and go back.” Oh! You dick head!
“Well fuck-head I could think of a lot of reasons why we shouldn’t do such a stupid fucking thing”. I wish I’d said that. I mean really, I would have probably lost some rank but that would’ve come back to me eventually. Instead, I let out a deep breath and said “Roger.”
I started walking through the middle of the cemetery. A wide open area completely surrounded by palm groves. I headed towards the hill on the other side. First sergeant said “Hey make sure you’re not walking in a straight path. Zig zag a little bit so a sniper doesn’t get a bead on you.” But when I started zig-zagging in between the headstones he told me to get off the graves and stay on the road. Holy shit, you really are a fucking idiot aren’t you Top? This is it. I’m gonna get shot in the fucking face because my first sergeant is a fucking moron. Great. What a way to go out.
As we circled around the hill we came up to a village. Same deal as before. A little kid spots us first, turns and runs through the streets screaming in Arabic and the entire populace just disappears. Like cockroaches in the kitchen when you turn the light on. I immediately take cover behind the largest grave I can find (graves in Iraq are of the same style as those found in New Orleans, like concrete boxes laid on top of the earth).
First sergeant trots up to my position and asks “Well what do you think Corporal Walter?”
“First sargn’t, I think we have 11 dudes, no crew served weapons, and this is a bad idea,” I replied flatly.
“You’re right, this is a bad place, we shouldn’t be here. Head back the way we came and take us to K-Wal.”
Before I jumped to my feet and began running, re-tracing my steps back around the hill, I see the panicked look on everyone else’s faces. Top yells at me, “Hey don’t run! They’ll think we’re scared! And don’t go back around the hill! Go straight up over it!”
Aaaaarrgggghhhhh! I AM FUCKING SCARED! FUCK YOU! I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to point out the flaws in his logic. I wanted to muzzle-stroke him in the face. But at the moment, I knew that would only slow my progress in getting back to K-Wal. My shoulders slumped, I exhaled sharply, and began jogging up the hill. I can’t believe this dickhead wants me to run up and over the hill. He actually wants me to go to the top of the highest point in this wide ass open cemetery. Wow, I can’t believe I’m actually doing it!
We made it up and over the hill without a single shot fired our way. Top wanted to stop and check his map and actually use a fucking compass to shoot an azimuth to the patrol base. I knew exactly where we were. I knew exactly where we had to go. It was only about 900 meters to K-Wal. I even told him this. But he decided to take a detour on a dirt road that lead us further to the east before turning back south to K-Wal.
We headed down the road and came up to an Iraqi home. It was typical of most homes in the area. A two story house surrounded by an 8 foot concrete wall, with a mud outhouse, a cow-pen, and a fenced off area for the chickens. As we entered the compound I looked to the far side wall and noticed a door that opened to the south. As first sergeant approached the Iraqi family with Peter, our interpreter, machine gun fire erupted from the cemetery.
I could hear the ping ping ping of the incoming rounds as they bounced off the house and the quick hiss of the rounds that flew past overhead.
First sergeant, his face with a look of shock on it, yelled out “Fastest way outta here! GO!”
I did a double take of the surrounding walls before remembering the door behind me leading to the south. “FIRST SERGEANT!” I yelled out as I turned and sprinted for the exit.
Machine gun fire tore through the air above our heads as we ran for our lives into the dense underbrush. There were at least two PKC machine guns that sounded like they were on top of the hill in the cemetery. I could hear them alternating fire and in between their bursts I heard AK47s spilling fire into the trees surrounding us. We ran.
The terrain was rough. The trees were the kind that grew at waist height and the ground was flooded and canalized. I was rolling my ankles when I wasn’t jumping across the narrow waterways. The fact that I was wearing around 50 pounds of gear didn’t help either. I stumbled my way through the branches while hearing rounds whistle through the trees. I came upon a barbed wire fence about as high as my chest. I tried to kick over one of the posts but quickly realized it wasn’t about to budge under the pressure of my boots. I started climbing over it when my ammo pouches got snagged on the barbs. First sergeant came up behind me and shoved me over the wire. I landed hard on my back and gasped for air. As I stood up, Top handed me his M4 and I grabbed his arm and pulled him over. I moved away from the fence and across an open path that ran along it. I lay down in a ditch and waited for everyone to scale the barbed wire.
The machine gun fire stopped. Everyone was across the fence and bunched up along the path.
“First sargn’t, we have got to keep fucking moving!” I urged. SGT L- looked my way with wide eyes and nodded his head in short, quick movements in agreement.
SGT W- was earnestly calling our CP back at K-Wal and requesting an Air Weapons Team. None was available. Again, first sergeant broke out with his compass and started to shoot an azimuth to K-Wal.
“First sargn’t, I know exactly where we fucking are! We gotta keep moving that way!” I yelled and pointing to the southwest. He lowered the compass from his cheek and pointed in the direction I just had and said “Keep moving that way!”. No fucking shit!
Before I’d gotten to my feet the two machine guns opened fire again. This time though, they were much closer. Maybe 100 meters. The rounds zipped through and I thought about returning fire. No, that won’t do shit, I thought to myself, one, my 5.56 won’t make it through these trees, and two, I don’t think these dicks know exactly where we are. They’re just spraying and praying. If I shoot back though, they’ll know exactly where we’re at.
“GO! GO! GO!” yelled Top.
And so, we sprinted. We ran for our lives. I was smoked. My body felt beat. My thighs burned and my back was throbbing. A little voice inside my head said “Fuck it, just give up, maybe they won’t find you if you just lay low”. Another little voice in my head answered “Fuck you! They’ll find me and chop my fucking head off! Anyways, this ain’t so bad, you’re only about 500 meters from the Bradley on the bridge, think of it like running coast to coast back at Hood, just keep going!!”
Branches whipped our faces and cut our lips. We ran some more. So did the assholes with the PKCs. They were actually chasing us through the trees, firing their machine guns along the way.
I thought about how Top had taken me to FOB Normandy the day before to talk to the re-enlistment NCO. I thought about how he was trying hard to get me to re-up and stay in the Army. As I hurled my body through bush after bush, my M4 swinging back and forth in my hands, I thought “There’s no fucking way I’m re-uppin’ if the Army is run by assholes like Top. No fucking way. I’m taking my ass to college. I’m supposed to be partying and having irresponsible sex right now! I’m NOT supposed to be getting fucking killed! I’m only 21 years old for fuck’s sake! Fuck this shit!”
I began to hear the rumbling sound of a Bradley on the move off to the west. The machine guns had stopped firing. I can’t remember which came first. The sound of the Bradley, or the machine guns stopping? Didn’t matter at the time, I kept running. We broke through the palm groves and came out on a dirt road that runs east-west along the canal. I knew the bridge, with the Bradley sitting on top of it, was about 300 meters to the west. We got a count of everyone and made sure no one was left behind. We kept running. CPT B-, the man who would be taking over command of our Troop in a month, was lagging far behind, his face beet red and gasping for air.
“We gotta…gasp!.... stop run…running!....We’re losing….gasp!.....discipline!” He actually fucking yelled that from the rear of our small group.
Is he fucking joking? Is he seriously telling us to stop running because we’re “losing discipline”? Do I really have to listen to him? After all, he hasn’t taken over command of the Troop yet. I mean is this dude really fucking serious? Did he not hear the two machine guns chasing us through the palm groves? Is he really going to be my commanding officer? Fuck no, I am not re-enlisting. I ignored him and kept running.
We’d finally made it to Route Anne and I saw SGT Pat’s Bradley some 300 meters north up the road scanning into the palm groves. SGT W- called him up and had him move back to pick us up. I piled into the back of the Brad with 5 other dudes, American and Iraqi. As soon as the ramp went up we all started giving each other high fives and everyone lit up a smoke. We headed back to the patrol base where every weapon we had on the roof top, a couple M240B machine guns and a MK-19 grenade launcher, was raining fire down into the palm groves we’d just come from. They’d opened up as soon as they got the word that we were in the Brads and didn’t let up until their barrels were too hot to keep firing. I seriously doubt they got anybody, but ya never know.
The first thing I did was find SSG JJ and ask him to come around the corner of the building with me, away from everyone else.
“DON’T YOU EVER FUCKING VOLUNTEER ME FOR SHIT WITH THAT MAN! I WAS ALMOST FUCKING KILLED BECAUSE HE’S AN INCOMPETENT FUCKING DOUCHE BAG!” I forget what all I said but I went on for a minute or two like that. Picture that, an E-6 Staff Sergeant being bitched out by an E-4 Corporal. He just stood there with a look of disbelief on his face. I was venting. He knew it. He understood. He didn’t put me at parade rest or anything. He let me rant. I apologized later.
But looking back, what do I have to bitch about? I’m alive now and have a cool ass war story to tell. Fuck it.

Three IEDs Missed, Three IEDs Hit

2008-01-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

Riding in the back of a Bradley, cramped on a bench with three other dudes, my ass was already numb from the constant vibrations as the 35 ton vehicle made its way up Route Detroit. We were en route to a village on the outskirts of Buhriz to conduct another cordon and search. More kicking in doors if the family inside didn’t let us in quick enough, another day of zip cuffing every military aged male and blindfolding them in their own homes while we send the women and children outside to the yard and commenced to tearing their homes apart searching for weapons or any other contraband they weren’t supposed to have. It was an empowering feeling to be able to do whatever the fuck you wanted, within reason of course, but sometimes you felt like a real dick head and could understand why they didn’t like us coming around. But when you keep getting blown up in front of these same people’s homes, you don’t really care about upsetting them and messing up their bedrooms if it gets you closer to stopping the bombs and making it home alive. But today, we wouldn’t be inconveniencing any Iraqi family because we would never make it to our destination.
We had two Bradley’s that day, SSG Johnson leading in the front, LT commanding the rear Brad with myself and my dismount team in the back. I had the internal communications headset on and was monitoring the radio traffic going on in between the two vehicles when I heard SSG Johnson say he knew a route we could take cross-country that would minimize our exposure to IEDs on the paved highway.
“Sir, do not let Sargn’t Johnson take that same fucking path by that one vineyard where we found that cache. He’s used it so much it looks like a fucking dirt road. I guarantee you there will be an IED there.” I advised the LT. The “short-cut” SSG Johnson had referred to led across open farmlands and cut through a very narrow chokepoint in between a dike and a canal. We’d used it so much that there was no longer any vegetation on it. Our Bradley’s had basically created a dirt road that any insurgent with half a brain could tell we often used.
“Yeah I’m tracking Walter. Don’t worry about it.” LT replied. Even though he assured me we wouldn’t use that route I didn’t feel very confident that he even knew where exactly I was talking about.
I felt the front end of the Bradley dip down as it got off the road. The two bodies sitting next to me slid forward and pressed me uncomfortably against the turret door. We hadn’t been off the highway for 20 seconds when a sudden jolt and loud crack rocked the Bradley. All the dust inside the dismount compartment leapt off whatever surface it had covered and created a choking cloud in the vehicle.
“Motherfucker!” I yelled.
“FUCK! IED!” LT shouted.
CPL Clark, one of our platoon’s medics immediately began grabbing everyone within arm’s reach and shouting “You OK!? You good!?”.
“You guys all right up there!?” I asked through the microphone.
LT replied first, “I’m up. Schmidt you all right!?”
SGT Schmidt, the gunner replied “Yeah, I’m good! You guys all right back there?”
“We’re all right, everyone’s good back here.” I replied.
Schmidt then called to Green, the driver “Green, you all right down there?”
Silence.
The three of us with headsets began shouting for Green at once. “Green! Green! Are you OK!?”
The thought of what happened to Fairlie immediately flashed through my mind and I became very worried for my friend in the driver’s hole. CPL Clark was sitting nearest the driver so I hollered at him to see if Green was ok.
“Can’t tell! I can’t see shit!” Smoke and dust were swirling around in the back of the Brad.
Green finally spoke up, his voice trembling “Yeahh, I’m…I’m…I’m all right. I’m good. I’m good.” Instant relief. My shoulders relaxed and I let out a deep breath. LT called SSG Johnson and told him we were all alive and whole.
LT and Schmidt were talking back and forth. The turret had lost power and when Green tried to drive the Bradley forward we could hear the track falling off as we came to a halt.
“It hit the front right side. Blew a road wheel off, threw the track.” LT said.
“Sir, drop the ramp and let us out, we’ll clear the area and pull security while you guys work this shit out.” I suggested.
As I stepped out of the vehicle I warned my dudes to get the hell away from the Bradley and watch out for any secondary IEDs. Off to my right I saw the vineyard where we’d found the cache a month before. We were on the same fucking path I told LT not to let SSG Johnson take. This upset me, to say the least. I wanted to yell and curse LT and SSG Johnson for taking such an obvious route but given my rank and the fact that it wouldn’t do any good anyhow, I let it go.
We started making our way towards the vineyard to search for anyone who may have been involved in the attack. LT ordered us to hold up until the QRF arrived. We took cover in a ditch and bitched about being told to hold our move and wait for Bradley’s to support us. We’d done dozens of missions without any vehicles to support us and with fewer personnel. It didn’t make any since to us but the butter-bar set his foot down when we objected and that was that. An Air Weapons Team arrived before the QRF did and LT had them cover our move into the vineyard.
We’d cleared about halfway through as SSG Johnson’s Bradley began towing LT’s back through the chokepoint. I was walking point and I’d turned around to say something to SSG J when I saw a huge plume of dirt and smoke shooting into the air about 200 meters back, where the Bradley’s were. I managed to get out the words “Oh shit” before the sound of the explosion from the second IED hit us.
We began running back through the vineyard to the Bradley’s when SSG Johnson got on the radio and told us they were all okay and that the IED did little damage. They found pressure wire from the second IED at the blast site. Somehow, when we first rolled through the chokepoint, neither Bradley had hit that IED.
2nd Platoon’s Bradley’s showed up with SSG Stadel in the lead. He stopped at our location and asked us if we wanted a ride over to our Brad’s.
“Fuck that shit, that’s two IEDs back to back, I’m walking.” I told SSG J. He agreed it was probably safer to be on our feet rather than riding in the back of a Bradley around here. We made our way back to the Brad’s and began searching the dikes and culverts on the opposite side of the IED sites. SSG J had gone over to help SSG Johnson, who was now dismounted and searching through the chokepoint for any more IEDs.
“That’s two IEDs we missed man, if I was LT I wouldn’t be going back through that chokepoint, I’d find another way back to Detroit.” I said. Lobban nodded in agreement.
As the Brad’s again began pushing through, my team and I were about 100 meters away when I saw a third IED detonate directly in front of the lead Brad. SSG J was standing no more than ten feet from it and I watched his body get thrown to the ground from the blast. SSG Stadel, who was also on the ground at this point, sprinted over to him yelling “Medic! Medic!”. I started to move towards them but froze after a few steps. That’s three fucking IEDs, I thought to myself, this is a fucking minefield. I looked to the ground and saw all the track marks from where we’d previously used this area to travel cross-country. In anyone of these spots there could be more pressure wires that would only take the weight of my body to set off the artillery rounds they’d be connected to.
A few seconds later I began hearing a fwip fwip fwip sound I’d heard before when shrapnel was falling from the sky and landing around me. I looked at my dudes who were diving to the ground for cover. Trouble was, there wasn’t any cover since we were moving through wide open farm land. So, I stood as erect as possible, sort of angled my body in the direction of the IED blast site, and thought; Please don’t hit me. Please don’t hit me. Please don’t hit me. A piece of shrapnel the size of a baseball landed about one meter right in front me. It was still smoking when I picked it up and was so hot it began to burn my hand through the Nomex glove I had on. Damn, I thought, if that thing had hit me in the shoulder it could’ve taken my arm off.
I looked up and saw SSG J standing there, brushing himself off and shaking his body like a wet dog does to dry off. One lucky bastard. Again, no one was hurt and LT finally decided to take a different path back to the highway. It only took two secondary IEDs to convince him to do so. I carefully led my dudes back to Route Detroit, my eyes glued to the dirt for any signs of buried explosives.
When we all finally made it safely back onto Route Detroit, my team crammed in the back of a Brad along with LT’s crew. SGT Schmidt had a grin from to ear to ear. He was happy as hell at the fact that we’d just hit three IEDs in a matter of 30 minutes and no one was hurt. His hands were still shaking though as he smoked his cigarette. LT just stared off into space and I could see he was a little shaken up. We never should’ve gone down that fucking dirt road to begin with, I thought to myself.

The Long Crawl Backwards

2008-01-28T17:43:00.000-08:00

“Hey Walter Guy, you wanna go kill that dude?” SFC Sal asked me as he lay on his side of the ditch.
I shrugged and without giving it much thought replied “Yeah sure, why not?”
The two of us made our way into the clearing, leaving Lobban and Blair up by the road, and the cover and concealment we had in the vineyard behind. We moved through a small ditch, no more than 2 feet deep, maybe 2 feet wide, paralleling a dirt road that lead to the a village ahead of us just a few hundred meters. Shots were ringing out in Buhriz further to the north which was common and rarely gave us any cause for alarm. At this particular moment though, with each shot I heard, my stomach tightened and twisted. All was quiet in our AO and this made me nervous.
As we neared the village, slipping and stumbling through the wet mud at the bottom of the ditch, an explosion tore at the earth about 20 meters to our front, shattering the silence and sending us diving into the shallow ditch for cover. Off to our northwest, just outside the village, from an area I’d seen there to be tall grass growing along dikes, I heard at least 5 AK47s open up on us. The rounds hissed and snapped over our bodies. I was lying on my stomach with my arms extended to my front, holding my M4 out of the mud. I tucked my chin into my chest as best I could with all the gear on my body and the whole world just seemed to freeze.
“Stay low! Stay low!” SFC Sal yelled back to me. I glanced up and saw him doing exactly the same thing I was.
Well I sure as fuck ain’t gonna stand up, there’s motherfuckers shooting at me!
The incoming small arms only lasted about 30 seconds before it ceased as quickly as it started. For a minute or so we laid still.
“You see anything?!” he hollered back to me.
“Nah I can’t see shit!” All I could see from my vantage point was the southernmost building in the village about 100 meters away with its typical rooftop doorway every Iraqi home seems to have. The door was slightly open and everything was dark inside.
SFC Sal got on the ICOM and talked SSG J onto where we had been receiving the small arms fire. He told him to have Mac suppress the area with a few long bursts from his SAW. Mac opened up from the rooftop they had occupied a few hundred meters behind our location. I watched as the tracers from Mac’s SAW slammed into southernmost building and slowly streamed over to the tall grass. Under the covering fire, SFC Sal told me to stay in the ditch while he crawled across the road and stopped behind a small mound of dirt on the other side. Using my elbows and knees to push myself forward, I sloshed through the mud until I was across from him. He was scanning through his ACOG towards the tall grass but we received no return fire after Mac’s SAW had engaged.
“Hey Walter Guy, I don’t think they want us around here.” He was grinning. SFC Sal always found humor in the most inappropriate of situations.
“Uh...yea...I…uh...I agree.” The joke relaxed me a bit. My ass cheeks un-puckered and I lit a smoke. I began reasoning to myself that the muj probably just fired their rifle grenade, shot up their magazines and broke contact like they usually do. After all, they rarely stick around for a fight. In retrospect, I think I was selling myself this idea more than I actually believed in its logic. It was comforting to think that the bad guys were gone.
SFC Sal was talking to SSG J on the ICOM, trying to give him our grid location, but for whatever little reason the comm’s were cutting out and SSG J never copied our exact location. In the technological age of wonders that we live in, we were still relying on hand held walkie talkies that would rarely work past 50 meters. I mean c’mon, WTF? All SSG J knew was that we were about two or three hundred meters to his north. Somewhere. In that general direction. He could see the village just in front of us, but because of a few tall trees, he couldn’t see our spot next to the dirt road in the ditch. He was able to relay that no Air Weapons Teams would be available because another unit was in contact to our north in Baqubah. SFC Sal decided against calling for the quick reaction force to come from the DMC. This would turn out to be a mistake.
Call me worrisome, but I thought it would be a good idea to bring Lobban and Blair into the vineyard where they could better cover our move and watch our asses should any Hajji’s sneak around behind us. SFC Sal told me “Don’t worry about that shit guy.” Then he asked “Don’t you wanna keep going and kill that fucker?”
As I sank my cigarette butt into the mud, I pursed my lips and shook my head from side to side. I began hearing metal being dragged around in the village. I looked over to SFC Sal, “Hey – you hear that shit?”
He shook his head. Of course he didn’t hear it, he once asked me to switch seats with him during a hearing exam back at Ft. Hood. Too many grenades going off near his head back home in Bosnia.
“It sounds like somebody’s moving some shit around, like sheet metal or something.”
“Lemme see…” He started scanning into the village but saw no movement whatsoever. By this time, a fire that had started from the explosion was being blown onto SFC Sal. Burning leaves and grass were falling down on his legs so he jumped up and ran back across the road and hopped back into the ditch. He was 5 meters in front of me again and as he went to a kneeling position, the entire fucking village erupted in small arms fire. At least twice as many AKs and one PKC machine gun were raking our position from the village. SFC Sal immediately rolled to his left side, put his weapon on burst and began spraying. I followed suit, rolled over to my left, using the side of the ditch as a platform to steady my weapon, and started engaging every doorway, window and corner I could see.
SFC Sal reached for his ICOM that he kept on his left shoulder and was just about to call for support when a round skimmed his knuckle, passed through the ICOM and tore open the top of his shoulder.
“Arrghhh, Walter I’m hit!”
“Where at!?”
“My shoulder!”
“Call Mac--tell him to suppress the area !!!”
“Ugggghhhh….”
“Sargn’t SAL! Call Mac and tell him to suppress the area!!!”
“They shot the fucking ICOM dude!”
And with that, my heart sank. Instant tunnel vision took over, the way you see it in a movie when the protagonist learns something really terrible has just happened and all he can focus on is the one bad thing. My one bad thing was SFC Sal lying in front of me, wounded, with no fucking ICOM.
Rounds were impacting all around us. I held my M4 over my head and sprayed my weapon on burst, sweeping it from the village to the tall grass when I heard SFC Sal yell out again.
“Arrgghhh! Walter, I’m hit again!”
“Where at!!?”
“My other fucking shoulder!”
I was looking up at SFC Sal while changing the magazine in my weapon when I saw a third round hit his right bicep. The sleeve of his uniform popped up and blood sprayed out. This time when he yelled out, the pain and agony in his voice were much more prevalent.
“AAARRRGRGRGHHHH!!! I’m hit again!”
With that I turned my head to the side and started screaming for help. Lobban and Blair were only about 150 meters behind us, so it was them I called out to.
“LOBBAAANNNNN!!! LOBBAAAAAANNNN! SUPPRESIVE FIRE! SUPPRESIVE FIRE! LOBBBAANNNNN!!!!”
I didn’t know it at the time, but they were also being engaged. I found out later that Lobban had heard me screaming his name and had yelled back in response. I couldn’t hear him over all the small arms fire. Rounds were still kicking up dirt and mud all around us. The ditch gave us just enough cover in most spots, but the enemy was still able to get angle shots on us. We were on our own.
“Start moving back!!” SFC Sal yelled.
The smoke from the fire caused by the rifle grenade was providing us with some concealment as we slowly pushed ourselves back with our elbows. Low crawling backwards was something I’d never done before, not even in basic training. I found it to be significantly more difficult and despite all the chaos going on around me, I made a mental note to include it in any training exercises I may give one day in reacting to direct fire. But there was no lack of motivating factors to keep me from digging my elbows in the mud and pushing myself back to the relative safety of the vineyard we’d naively left behind.
Because of his wounds though, SFC Sal couldn’t move as fast as we both would have liked him to. I would have to crawl a few meters, wait, hold my M4 over my head and spray in hajji’s general direction, he would catch up, and we would keep moving. Every few meters he would say my name to make sure I was still with him, still alive, but the more we crawled, and the more blood he lost, I could hear his voice sounding weaker.
“Walter….” It was more of a loud sigh than a shout at this point. We’d only moved maybe 15 meters.
“I’m here! Just keep fucking moving, don’t fucking quit! Just keep fucking moving!”
The small arms coming from the village had fallen into a steady rhythm. It was like the enemy had trained on when to change magazines so everyone on their side wasn’t doing it all at once. It was effective and terrifying at the same time. I remember looking up at SFC Sal while lying stationary, waiting for him to catch up, when a single round slammed into the side of the ditch about 2 feet from my face, spraying mud and dirt into my eyes and mouth. I shook my head and wiped my eyes. Looking up towards the village I saw the same door on top of the southernmost building I’d mentioned earlier only this time the door was wide open. I still couldn’t see anything but darkness inside but I figured the angle for that round to have hit where it did meant the shooter must be somewhere in that general area. If nothing else, at least I had a target. So I emptied a magazine aiming it at the door, reloaded, and kept low crawling.
We’d crawled about 30 meters when I heard a burst of AK fire extremely close and off to our left. I looked up to the sky and expected to see some black clad muj standing on the road wearing a ski mask, pointing the barrel of an AK47 at my face.
“Jesus! Fuck! Shit! Fuck! That was fucking close!” I yelled out.
“What….?” He was pretty out of it at this point. He didn’t even notice the fire that was coming from directly across the road, on the other side of the canal just opposite us. The shooter was only 15 meters away at most. I held up my M4 and sprayed in his direction, not really expecting to hit shit but feeling better about shooting back. I kept crawling.
Another burst of fire came from across the road. I could actually feel the drop in the air pressure when he fired. I saw the rounds skipping off the road above SFC Sal. I held up my M4, emptied a magazine in the shooter’s direction, and pulled the frag from my vest.
As I looked at it, a brief memory flashed through my brain. I’m back at the DMC, I had just found the box of frag grenades in our ammo housing area when I turned to Schmidt and said “I wanna throw this bad boy. Just once in Iraq, I wanna throw a hand grenade.” Now that the time to actually throw that son of a bitch was here, all I could think was Fuck! I wish I didn’t have to do this!
In text book form, I raised my torso up, extending my right leg at an angle away from my body for balance, pointed my non-throwing hand towards the far side of the canal, threw the grenade and yelled “Frag out!!” as I dropped back into the muddy ditch. More rounds hissed and snapped past. I stayed low as the deep CRUMP of the grenade explosion showered us with dirt and rocks. I raised my M4 and fired an entire magazine, sweeping my weapon from left to right and back again. We didn’t take any more fire from that direction.
SFC Sal kept saying my name and I kept urging him on, telling him “Don’t quit! It’s not that bad! It’s only like 10 more meters!” But the truth was, we had a good 50 meters to go and we were still taking heavy small arms fire from the village.
All I could do was stay low and keep moving. I had a million things flash through my mind while crawling backwards, listening to the bullets fly by above. It’s truly amazing where your mind will wander in situations like these. There I was, in some muddy Iraqi ditch, convinced that I would not live to see the sun go down and I found myself wondering what my brothers and sisters were doing at that moment. I thought about an old girlfriend I hadn’t seen in years and wondered if she ever thought about me. I pictured what life could have been like if only I’d just gone to college instead of enlisting in the Army. Everything that was foremost in my mind was screaming “Survive!”, yet I could not suppress these memories. It was as if my subconscious had retreated into a safer place to live out the last few moments of my life in peace and was reaching out to my conscious mind and inviting it to join. I wasn’t about to let that happen.
I thought about jumping up and making a run for it. I actually entertained the notion of leaving SFC Sal behind and running for the vineyard by myself. I looked up at SFC Sal and saw him painfully crawling through the ditch, his face buried in the mud, grunting with every motion he made. There was no way I could leave him. He couldn't even hold his own weapon. I kept crawling.
When I first heard the shooting behind me, I’d thought Lobban and Blair had made their way into the vineyard and were now providing covering fire for our move back. I quickly recognized the distinct CRACK of an AK47 and realized we now had enemy behind us as well. I raised my head and tried to look over my shoulder to see if I could get eyes on the shooter. A burst of machine gun fire flew over my head and the SNAP of a single round passing within inches of my face forced my head back into the mud. I could tell whoever was behind me was closer than those to my front. I figured it’d be better to be shot in the head than the balls since it would kill me quicker and do so with less pain. So, while staying as low as I possibly could, I turned my body around in the ditch and could now crawl forwards. In the fraction of the second it took to turn around, I heard multiple AK47s start firing from the far side of Route Gold, off to our east. We were being surrounded. I didn’t bother relaying the news to SFC Sal since I didn’t think it would do him any good.
I remember thinking, just as long as I stay low, they can’t hit me. I’ve got enough cover here. The Bradleys will come. They’ll be here any minute now. But it would take the QRF an hour and a half to make their way to us. I was down to three magazines and I had no idea what had happened to the rest of our team. I knew I may need those three mags of ammo even if I made it back to the vineyard safely. Since my spraying and praying technique was proving highly ineffective, I decided to keep low crawling, save my ammunition, and make sure SFC Sal stayed close behind. I’d occasionally poke my head up to make sure no one was running up on our position, and each time a single round snapped pass my head.
We were about 30 meters from the vineyard when I first saw the Air Weapons Team circling high up and a good 3 or 4 klicks off to our west. I found out later, that somebody somewhere, while reporting the situation to higher headquarters, had told them that we were also taking RPG fire. With RPGs involved, the AWT was a lot more hesitant to come down too low during the daylight. At the time, while crawling through that ditch, I didn’t know this had been reported. To me, I saw two of the most lethal weapons in the American military’s arsenal circling above as if they were just there to watch. Why the fuck aren’t those assholes swooping down here and wasting everything within 1 kilometer of us!!!?? It was pretty disheartening. But, again, as I later found out, they weren’t even sure of our exact location so I guess I should be grateful that I wasn’t blown to pieces by friendly fire.
“Hey Walter Guy, I’m thinking about making a run for it.”
The small arms fire had died down a bit by now but there was still the sporadic spray of an AK here and there. I looked over my shoulder and saw SFC Sal’s face. He had managed to spin himself around in the ditch as well. His face was pale white and his eyes were glossed over making him look like he was nursing a really bad hangover. His entire upper body was soaked in blood. I finally told him about the “asshole shooting at us from behind” and informed him that the last bit of fire we took was from that direction.
He looked up at me, “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, just keep crawling, we’re right there, you’re the toughest son of a bitch I know, don’t quit now, keep crawling. And keep your head down, you don’t wanna get sniped on the home-stretch.”
And so, we crawled. We made our way into the vineyard and just like that, all the shooting ceased. The Air Weapons Team was now circling directly overhead. I had more cover behind the much larger embankment the ditch offered inside the vineyard and I held my head up and looked around. Nothing. The fire from the rifle grenade was right across the road from me. It had followed us the entire time. But I didn’t see a single soul anywhere. I tried looking through the trees to see through to the far side of Route Gold. I was trying to catch a glimpse of SSG J and the rest of our team on top of the house there. I could make out the tops of heads bobbing around but I couldn’t tell if they were ours or theirs. Since neither of us recalled hearing any of our guys shooting, we assumed they’d been rolled up and were now either dead or captured. I looked up at the sun. We had a good two hours left before it was dark enough for us to move on our own. I looked at my watch. It had taken us nearly an hour and a half to low crawl 100 meters.
We laid there and tried to figure out what to do next. SFC Sal handed me his M4 and had me use a twig to clean the mud out of his barrel. He then fished a VS-17 panel out of his pocket. I laid the bright orange square in the middle of the ditch and moments later an Apache flew directly overhead and shot off a few flares. It was an immediate relief to know that at least they knew where we were. Right about then, I began hearing that oh-so comforting sound of tracked vehicles squeaking along. Through the trees, I saw the turret of a Bradley about 600 meters to our south. Someone fired a red star cluster into the air.
“The Brad’s are about here.” I said with a little relief. I was still feeling very much alone and knew I wasn’t quite out of it yet.
“Man this ditch saved our lives” said SFC Sal.
“If it wasn’t for this tiny ass ditch we’d be dead!” I agreed.
I kept cautiously poking my head out of the ditch, but there were no more enemy around to shoot at us. I heard a couple Bradley’s come to a stop on the far side of Route Gold. They couldn’t make it across a bridge to get to us. Then I saw a group of American dismounts running up Gold towards us.
“We’re over here! Off your 10 o’clock! Heyyyyyy! Get the fuck off the road!!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
I saw Kelly stop on the side of the road and use his ACOG to get a better look. In doing so he pointed his weapon right at me.
“Don’t you fucking shoot me you fucking dick!!!!”
The dismount team, with SSG J and the rest of our guys mixed in moved into the vineyard before I yelled for them to “Stop moving! Get the fuck down!”
As far as I knew, there was still a large group of enemy in the area and I wasn’t taking any chances.
McElrath yelled out “Is Bushmaster 4 with you!?”
Before I could answer SFC Sal shouted “We got a pimp down!”
SGT Lawton, our troop’s senior medic started asking questions next. “Where’s he hit?”
“His shoulders. And his arm.”
“Did you get a tourniquet on?”
“Well I ain’t really had a fucking chance Doc.”
“Has he lost a lot of blood?”
SFC Sal piped in like a drunk at a party, “This pimp’s gonna be all right! Quit being a bunch of faggots!”
I started laughing at this one but I didn’t let the good feelings flow for too long. I took SFC Sal’s weapon and told him to move out first. We made our way to the Brads where the medics patched him up. It took a few bandages to stop the bleeding on each wound. I got a glance of his shoulder and it looked as if somebody and taken an axe and split the top of it wide open. The medics called it a “deep graze”. They injected him in his leg with a dose of morphine as we rode back to the DMC. On the way, Brawler Platoon hit an IED. I heard the contact report over the radio but no casualties or severe damage had been done to the vehicle. I’d had enough for one day. When we got back, the landing zone had already been set up and everyone was running around doing this and that to get the medevac underway. I was out of it. I wandered around, completely covered in mud on my front side. My hands were shaking when I bummed a smoke from SGT Harris. I’d never seen a weapon as dirty as mine was and I could not believe it never jammed on me the whole time.
SFC Sal was lying on a stretcher and he asked to see me before they flew him out. I ran over to him and was about to jokingly punch him in the shoulder before I stopped myself. I reminded him of what he’d told us that morning before we’d left; “If you wanna get off this dismount team, you gotta get shot!” I asked him “Why the hell are you trying to get off your own dismount team?” He laughed. I could tell the morphine was taking effect just as long as he wasn’t being moved. The birds came and he started his trip that would eventually bring him back to the states.
I was stopped by SFC Ramey on my way back to my room and was told to report to the CP after I’d gotten cleaned up to give a de-briefing to LT Guzman. As I got into my room, something just hit me. I collapsed on my bed and started shaking all over. Tears welled up but I didn’t cry. I wiped away the mud from my face and mouth and changed into PTs. People kept coming by asking “What the fuck happened out there? We heard you and SFC Sal got separated and lost or some shit. You all right?”
After my debriefing, I tried to lie down and get some sleep but I couldn’t stop shaking. I lay awake for hours going through everything that had just happened in my mind, over and over and over again. What a day.
----------------------------------------------------
While cleaning SFC Sal’s gear, we found two more rounds had hit his OTV, bringing the total number hit up to 5. One had been deflected by the Kevlar and the other had come to a stop in his NVGs. The round in his NVGs was a 7.62mm round that was used in Dragunov sniper rifles. This explained why there was always that single round snapping past whenever I poked my head up. How I never got shot, I do not know. Luck and chance I suppose. We later found out that the Air Weapons Team had seen us crawling through the ditch before we laid out our VS-17 panel but could not engage any hostiles because of their proximity to our location. They reported that at one point there were 15-20 enemy fighters circling the two of us in that ditch. SSG J’s team couldn’t engage with the SAW or their M203 grenade launcher because they couldn’t positively identify our location. They also couldn’t have crossed Route Gold to get into the vineyard because of they too were being engaged. It amazes me that SFC Sal and I are still alive. Hajj fucked up.

Mortars and Masturbation

2008-01-27T19:23:00.000-08:00

It’s 120 degrees and feels like a blow dryer is whipping sand into your face when the wind blows. I’m inside a port-a-shitter where it’s at least 15 degrees hotter but safe from the wind. I’m physically exerting myself, bringing my core temperature up even more. I’ve got my dick in one hand, and my Ipod in the other, holding it a few inches from my face playing “A Clockwork Orgy”. The sexy brunette just removed her bowler hat before mounting Billy Boy. She looks at the camera and tells me to “Viddy well” and calls me her “droog”. The sweat is pouring off my face as I eagerly try to finish the task at hand (literally, at hand). I hold my breath to block the smell of the dirty blue shit water beneath me and try hard to imagine that I’m somewhere else.
I’m no more than 3 seconds from finishing up when an explosion vibrates the hard plastic walls of my private sanctuary. My legs reflexively kick the door in front of me and my hands immediately grab at my trousers and pull them up while stuffing the Ipod into my pocket. I’m out the door in a flash when another explosion shakes the earth below my boots. I’m sprinting while bent over at the waist and the knees, running for the cover of our barracks. A third explosion hits somewhere behind me about 100 meters but it feels and sounds as if it is going off a few feet from me.
I burst into the open bay of the NCO’s room while tightening my belt at the same time. The ear phones of my Ipod are dangling out of my pocket. Everyone is frozen in whatever position they happened to be in before the mortars hit. Schmidt is sitting up halfway on his cot with a wide eyed, alarmed expression. SSG Watkins is in front of his TV wearing his big ass ear phones, his eyes glued to the ceiling as if he were trying to spot the incoming rounds before they hit. Three quick explosions, one after another, followed by peace and quiet. SFC Sal saw me burst into the room with my pants un-done. He laughs at me and makes a smart ass comment before rolling back over on his cot to resume watching porn. Unlike me, he doesn’t have the decency to go to the port-a-shitter to enjoy his skin flicks, he’ll do it on a cot right next to you.
Somebody from HQ platoon comes in and asks if we’re 100% (meaning, did any of your guys get blown up?). I check the Joe’s room and with the exception of a few dudes at the motor pool, we’re good. I send a couple guys down to get accountability of the others working on their vehicles. I don’t want to be the asshole that reports 100% accountability without actually checking only to find out later that I’m wrong and someone is lying in the dirt somewhere seriously wounded or dead.
I go back to the NCO bay and grab a bottle of water. I look around and everyone is back to doing what they do in their free time. A game of spades is going on, SFC Sal is watching porn, someone’s watching 300 on a portable DVD player, and someone else is reading a book called the Iraq Study Group Report or some such shit. No one notices as I slide back outside with my Ipod in hand and head back to the shitter to finish what I’d started before Hajj rudely interrupted. Toole steps out of another port-a-john wiping sweat from his forehead, an Ipod in his hand, and a big ass grin on his face. Apparently, he didn't let the mortars keep him from finishing.