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.