Reporter
War.com
Every day in Iraq I conduct house-to-house searches, hunt down insurgents, get shot at— and then return to base and blog about it. Here are some of my posts from the front lines.
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It’s around 1600, and the polls are all but closed. Three reports of suspected IEDs have come over the net. I stare at my map, pondering the safest way to return to the FOB, when a distant boom echoes across the desert. A frenzy of voices fights through the speaker: Charlie Company has hit a land mine and requests an immediate medevac. The initial report states that there are two priority, one ambulatory, and one urgent surgical. The truck has been destroyed. We await our instructions. We head back south into the city, where we’re to wait at the IP building until all polling stations have brought in and consolidated the ballots.
Waiting in the dark, I’m standing in the middle of the street in front of the IP station. The distant sound of gunfire pierces the quiet night, probably celebratory. The Iraqis made history today, and I was here for it. God, I hope there’s no runoff.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Pitfalls
• “They got us good today,” groaned my platoon sergeant.
Five killed in two separate attacks, if you want to call them attacks. Anti-tank mines and one thousand pounds of explosives buried next to the road. The casualties came from Bravo Company; I knew them only by face. We were immediately stood up as the QRF platoon, anxiously awaiting a chance for retribution. Fear ran coarsely through our blood, intoxicating us with anger.
“Stop by the aid station. Pick up as many body bags as you can. We’ve been tasked for the recovery mission.”
“Roger, Six.”
But in the end, we’re spared from the recovery mission. Five a.m. and I’m anxiously waiting by the quiet radio to be called for an operations order I hope comes. I can see it now: Operation Holiday Cheer. Clean out the city. Kill them all. Static. A voice cracks through the green plastic speaker box.
“Net call, net call, net call. This is Leader X-ray. All maneuver elements return to your normal patrol schedules for the next twelve hours. Respond in sequence.”
I guess we’re not in the holiday spirit.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Christmas Eve
• Christmas Eve, and we’ve drawn the worst patrol; everyone is feeling a bit homesick, and our stoicism is plummeting like a certain German dirigible. It’s cold and wet, and I’m trying to remember how I spent the last four Christmas holidays: Korea, Iraq, hospital, now Iraq again.
2230, and we’re overseeing an NAI [named area of interest] infamous for IED emplacements. My truck is roughly fifty meters off the road, sandwiched between two piles of dirt, giving us good concealment from the shiny stretch of highway, the quiet city lying dark behind us. Pop, crack, snap. The pile of dirt next to my door moves slightly.
“Shooter Six, this is Shooter Five. We have a shot fired to our southwest. Sounds close, about two hundred meters.”
“Roger. I heard it. Did anyone see exactly where it came from?”
Negative. We quickly reconsolidate and move through the neighborhood. The streets encompass lots filled with half-built mansions and gloomy shanties. I assemble a handful of soldiers, and we move into one of the homes.
“Get down! Get down!”
A young teen falls to his stomach; his sisters and mother cry and cover their faces, their eyes blinded by our tact lights. We clear the house and search it, finding a pistol and some suspicious electrical equipment commonly used to detonate IEDs. The boy tells us his father is a colonel with the IP and is at the home of his second wife. We keep a guard on the family and move back outside. Pop, crack, snap. A round ricochets off the street just feet from my truck again.
“Six, this is Five. Another shot fired. Location unknown, but it sounded close and to the west.”
“I’m right next to you!” Another soldier is hunkered low, kneeling behind the tire of my truck, his head bouncing around like a pinball. I look down at him, bewildered by his reaction and muddled by my lack thereof.
“Get down. Goddam! Someone is shooting at us. Everyone get down!”
I ignore him and search rooftops and windows through my night-vision goggles. Nothing.
“It came from one of those houses to our west.” I point.
“No, it didn’t! It came from over there. That house right there!” He points east to a two-story house.
“Are you sure?”
“Take your men and clear that house! I’m staying here to link up with the IP patrol. Now!!”
You’re wrong. You’re so f—ing wrong. I’m wrong too. No one knows where he is.
“Roger.”
We sprint quietly through an empty lot and reach the wall encircling the house. There’s only one entrance gate, and it’s locked. I kneel as low as I can, making myself a stepladder for my squad leader to ascend the wall. We link back up at the gate and rush through as he opens it. The house is empty. I report it to Six, and we set up an OP [observation point] on the roof, marking our location with strobes.
The roof is comforting. The city is conquerable from here. Mosque towers hovering over the city glow soft-green through our night-vision devices. I smile. Where are you? Shoot again. I’m daring you. The third shot never comes, but I welcome our new friend and the element of excitement he’s brought us tonight.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Thomas and Clark*
• 1300. A perfect blue day. We’re halfway through an uneventful patrol with our IA sisters, sitting in front of a restaurant on the northeast side of town. I sit still in my seat, staring innocuously through an impenetrable windshield at the back of Little’s truck thirty meters in front of me. Garcia’s truck is twenty meters off the road, waiting to pick up the rear of the convoy. In my peripheral I can see his gunner, Hernandez, waving at the IA to move their ass. Little’s gunner, Thomas, pops up too …
Boom!
The ground just meters from Little’s truck explodes, sending shrapnel, smoke, and dirt into and on top of our trucks like a nuclear hailstorm.
“Everyone okay? Matty?”
“Good, Sergeant.”
“Doc?”
“I’m good.”
The speaker is exploding with situation reports. “IED! IED!”
“Anyone see a triggerman!?”
“Find the f—er!!!”
“Six, this is Five. I’m up.”
“Two, this is Five. You guys okay?”
“Negative. Thomas is hit.”
“Roger. Four, this is Five. You guys okay?”
“Clark’s hit.”
Son of a bitch. I stop to check myself. I’m fine … Don’t get out of your trucks … We have to … There might be a secondary … We need a medevac. I don’t know how bad they are. Request urgent surgical anyway. …
We sprint to Little’s truck and pull Thomas out as gently as we can. He lies motionless on the ground, a pool of blood forming under his fleshy neck. Hernandez is back up in the turret, scanning with his M240B. With the exception of a known few who hurried to assist us, the IA remained in their trucks, cowardly, conspiratorial benchmarks in a bloody topographic survey.
“Six, this is Five. We need you back over here now. My truck has a flat, and Two’s truck can’t roll.”
“Okay. Roger. We’re on our way back. We’ll have to go split section. I’ll call in the nine line. Get them ready to move.”
“Roger. And tell Baker to get the IA out of their trucks and pull some security for us.”
“Five, this is Two. Thomas is gone.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“Roger.” Eternity.
“Six, this is Five. Report one Eagle KIA, one wounded.”
We position our remaining guys behind some defilade inside the IA’s lazy perimeter and listen for the QRF on the radio. Little hands me some Copenhagen and paces around. His uniform is covered in blood; the stains will never wash out. Back home, in my mother’s house, under old sweaters in a dresser drawer I used in my youth, rests a similar uniform. It’s stained with the blood of two friends we lost in Operation Iraqi Freedom 1. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about them, feel my blood-soaked hands slip into their insides when we pulled them out of the trucks two and half years ago.
Later that night, I attended a meeting with my battalion commander at the aid station. He’s a genuine person and an excellent leader whom I hold in the utmost respect. We were joined by my company commander, battalion sergeant major, platoon leader, and platoon sergeant. We hesitantly leaned down and unzipped Thomas’s black body bag. It was packed in ice and contained another black bag enclosing the body. We unzipped the second and pushed the sides away, revealing his still body. We stood quietly for a minute. We spoke about what we could’ve done differently, external indications of danger we might have missed, standards, and complacency. Underneath our words lay the inadequacies we feel as leaders, the blame we put on ourselves for the unfortunate events simply out of our control. Thomas died because that’s the nature of combat. He did what he was trained to do. We zipped the bags back up and saluted him.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Progress
• I’ve been here almost five months—a rough five months at that—and the patrols seem to blend together. We’ve done a lot of good things here, but tragedies often make it difficult to see the forest for the trees. I think I speak for many when I say that my biggest fear is leaving this place in no better condition than we found it. But whether we say it or not, in between our bitching and bellyaching lies a purpose and a promise to each other. When we leave, this place will be better than we found it.
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