A Paid Vacation to Baghdad

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.

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“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.”

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“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.

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“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.

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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."

“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

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.