The Good Soldiers

by David Finkel

  It had been difficult getting everyone ready to go. Muqtada al-Sadr had reinstated his cease-fire as April began, but the attackers kept attacking anyway, which meant that even though full combat operations were over, the soldiers still out of the wire at COPs and checkpoints had to fight their way back to the FOB. At one point, in the operations center, where the movements were being coordinated, several soldiers watched incredulously on a video monitor as an Iraqi with an AK-47 jumped out from behind a building and began firing Rambo-style on a convoy. “Die, monkey, die!” Brent Cummings hollered for some reason, and the others began hollering it, too, laughing and chanting right up until the moment an Apache helicopter swooped in and blasted the monkey to smithereens, at which point they broke into cheers. At another point, they were monitoring a route-clearance team from another battalion that was moving up Predators toward some 2-16 soldiers at an abandoned Iraqi checkpoint. All of a sudden the screen went black, and when it cleared, the lead vehicle was curving off the road and accelerating through a field, the result of an EFP explosion that had decapitated the driver but left his foot in place on the gas pedal. All night long, Cummings continued to see that vehicle curving ever so gracefully into the field, and meanwhile Kauzla-rich had his own images to contend with in the form of another dream. This one had been about mortars. They were exploding everywhere. In front of him. Behind him. They kept coming, the bracketing bringing them closer and closer until the entire world was only noise and rising fire, at which point he had awakened and realized he was fine. He was absolutely fine.

  “You are happy? Because you are leaving?” an interpreter asked Kauzla-rich now as she placed a call for him on a cell phone. She was substituting for Izzy, who had gone home to see if his family was safe.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Okay. Qasim. Ringing.You want to talk to him?” she said.

  Kauzlarich took the phone. “Shlonek?” he said (“How are you?”). And so it was that a few days later, Colonel Qasim and Mr. Timimi came to Rustamiyah to say goodbye to Muqaddam K.

  “Kamaliyah?” Qasim said as they waited for an interpreter.

  “No problem,” Kauzlarich said.

  Qasim made a whooshing sound. Maybe he was trying to say missile. Maybe he was trying to say RPG. Maybe it was the sound of 420 of his 550 men deserting.

  “Marfood. Fucking guys,” Kauzlarich said.

  “Hut hut hut hut hut,” Qasim said, imitating one of the expressions he had learned from Kauzlarich.

  The interpreter arrived, giving Timimi the chance to tell Kauzlarich what had happened when Kauzlarich didn’t come to his rescue. “They burned everything,” he said. “Like savages, the things they did.” He was a humble man with a wife and two daughters, he said, and now he and his wife and daughters had nothing other than the clothes they were wearing. No house. No car. No furniture. Not even a pair of slippers, he said. He leaned closer to Kauzlarich. “I want just one thing from you,” he said in English. “If you can help me with money.” Then, moving away, as if being too close would make him seem like a beggar rather than a powerful administrator with an ornate desk and a cuckoo clock on a wall, he switched back to Arabic and asked for something else. “A letter saying he was working with you,” the interpreter said. “In case he goes anywhere for political asylum.”

  Qasim’s turn. He, too, leaned toward Kauzlarich, but before he could ask for anything, Kauzlarich said he had something to give him and handed him a box. It didn’t say “Crispy” on top. There was no pizza inside. Instead, there was an old, polished pistol.

  “From World War One,” Kauzlarich said.

  “Thank you,” Qasim said.

  He then handed Qasim another gift: a new switchblade knife.

  “Thank you,” Qasim said again.

  And a third gift: a photograph in a frame. It was of the two of them.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Qasim said, ducking his head and hiding his eyes. He excused himself, went to a bathroom and splashed water onto his face, and on the way out of the FOB, he reached for Kauzlarich’s hand and held it as they walked. Kauzlarich held onto Qasim’s hand, too. “Anything you need, I will be only seven thousand miles away,” he said to Qasim when they reached the main gate, and Qasim laughed for a moment, and then he stopped laughing, and then he and Timimi disappeared down a long corridor of blast walls and concertina wire.

  It was the same a few days later, when Izzy returned to say goodbye. Kauzlarich gave him a watch as a gift and also handed him a letter saying that if Izzy were ever to make it to the United States as a refugee, he would be willing to be Izzy’s sponsor. “It would be my honor,” he had written.

  “Thank you very much, sir,” Izzy said.

  “And do you smoke cigars?” Kauzlarich asked.

  “Sometimes,” Izzy said.

  “My brother,” Kauzlarich said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Izzy said.

  “Forever,” Kauzlarich said, and away Izzy went with a letter and a watch and a cigar. Outside, he paused to light it, but the wind was up, blowing flour into the thorn bushes, and so he lit a cigarette instead and walked by himself past the soldiers he had become friends with, who were now busy packing to leave.

  It was an astonishing amount of work, leaving a war. Everything had to go somewhere, either back to Fort Riley, over to another battalion, or into the trash. Every unused bullet had to be inventoried. Every grenade had to be accounted for. Every weapon. Every gas mask. Every atropine injector. Every pressure bandage. Every tourniquet.

  The dusty counterinsurgency manual on Cummings’s desk had to be packed, as did the battalion flag, and the American flag, and the poster of Muqtada al-Sadr that hung upside down outside Kauzlarich’s office.

  The fly swatters would go in the trash. So would any leftover junk food that had been sent by Americans who wanted to support the troops, as well as the toothpaste they had sent, the deodorant, and the odd stack of Glamour magazines that had come from an Arkansas middle school, along with a hand-drawn card that read, “Show Dem Arabs Who’s Boss. Nuke em. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  The photographs of twelve dead soldiers nailed to a plywood wall— there hadn’t been time to include Bennett and Miller—had to be packed, as did the other thing nailed to a wall, a sign intended to remind anyone who remembered to look at it why they were there, MISSION: to CREATE A BALANCED, SECURE, AND SELF-SUFFICIENT ENVIRONMENT FOR THE IRAQI PEOPLE, it read.

  All of it had to go. Every soccer ball that hadn’t been pushed out of a Humvee window to neutralize the insurgency. All of the pencils that hadn’t been handed out to keep a five-year-old with a rock in his hand from becoming a future EFP emplacer. Everything in every corner, down to the football that Brent Cummings’s high school class had sent to him when they realized why he’d be missing their twentieth reunion. “You’re my hero!” someone had written on the football. “Kill some towell heads,” someone else had written. So that had to go, along with the good-luck charms soldiers carried, the love letters they had received, the divorce papers they had been sent, the photographs of family and cars and undressed women they had taped to walls, the books they had read, the video games they had played, and finally their computers, on one of which Cummings now scanned the last of his e-mails before shutting it down.

  “Subject: Human Remains Pouches. Please send me your on hand quantities of human remains pouches. In addition, I need to know if you need more and quantities. Thanks.”

  Human remains pouches. They had to be packed, too. At least they were already folded.

  April 4 now. Two hundred and thirty-five soldiers headed home.

  April 5. One hundred and eighty more headed home.

  April 6. The one-year anniversary of the death of Jay Cajimat, and here came the mortar attack Kauzlarich had dreamed of. Fourteen soldiers on the FOB were injured. Five had to be evacuated. One died. But none was Kauzlarich’s, and none was Kauzlarich himself. The closest call was to Brent Cummings, who was standing in line o
utside of the laundry when the explosions began. He flung himself to the ground. The mortars came closer and closer, and finally were so close that the concussions felt like they were lifting him into the air, scaring him as much as he’d ever been scared in his life, but he was fine. He was fine.

  April 7. Another death—this one a soldier in the battalion replacing the 2-16 who was out on his first patrol and was shot through the mouth. He was the battalion’s first KIA, their Jay Cajimat. “A heart the size of the entire state,” was how he was going to be remembered in his hometown paper, and meanwhile, Kauzlarich was in his office staring at a photograph he had just received. It was of the inside of the Humvee in which Bennett and Miller had died, and even though he needed to pack, he kept staring at the photograph.

  April 8. Almost everything was packed now. One of the TVs was still working, though, and on it was General Petraeus, back in Washington, once again testifying before Congress about the success of the surge. “I’m not suggesting that we yank all our troops out all the way,” a senator was saying to him. “I’m trying to get to an end point. That’s what all of us have been trying to get to.” This was Barack Obama, but the soldiers were more interested in a report, just coming in over the radio, that the COP they had built in Kamaliyah had been mortared and was at that moment on fire and burning to the ground.

  April 9. Most of the remaining soldiers headed home. Only eighty or so were left. Late at night, Kauzlarich finished his work, realized he had nothing more to do, and walked down the dark road to the trailer where a year and three days before he had been awakened by a knock on his door. “What the fuck?” he had said then, opening his eyes.

  April 10 now.

  Time to go.

  Past the operations center, which was back to being an empty building with cracked walls.

  Past the DFAC, where during their last meal they’d heard a whistle, followed by a massive explosion, which sent them diving to the floor.

  Past the road to the hospital, with the little room at the top of a chipped stone stairway where Kauzlarich had gone for the final time the other night, just before Bennett and Miller’s memorial service, to say into the microphone of PEACE 106 FM, “Thank you, Mohammed. This will probably be my last show, so to all your listeners, I would just like to say, shukran jazilan.”

  Through a small gate and into an open field, where, with the help of the dim light of arising dented moon, eighty soldiers scanned a very dark sky for the final rocket that would kill them, or the final mortar that would kill them, or the helicopters that would take them away.

  They were in the wide, unprotected open. There were some old bleachers to take cover beneath, and a bomb shelter that would hold five or six of them, but that was it. The helicopters would come when they could. There was no telling when. That was the best the war could do for them, so they waited. They wore their body armor and eye protection and gloves. They smoked cigarettes and ground them out into the cracked, weedy asphalt where the helicopters would land. An hour went by. Another hour went by. They calculated the odds of a rocket attack. It had been two days, one of them said. No, there was the one the night before, by the DFAC. But that wasn’t a rocket. Yes, it was. No, it wasn’t. Well, whatever it was, it roared down and shook the building. Okay, a day, then. It had been a day. Yeah, but so what? So it had been a day! Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything if a rocket comes right now! They talked of home and the first thing they wanted to do, and the second thing they wanted to do, and they kept searching the sky, and standing among them, Kauzlarich kept searching the sky, too.

  Two months from now, in early June, he would gather them as a battalion for the final time at an event called the Ranger Ball. It would be held in a hotel banquet hall on the outskirts of Fort Riley, and it would be the last chance for the soldiers to get together before they went away to new battalions and new assignments.

  Not all of them would come to the ball. Adam Schumann, for instance, who lived just up the street from the hotel, would stay home that night. He had flown away from the war in a medical helicopter, and when he came home he had been loaded up with antidepressant medication, and anti-anxiety medication, and anti-panic medication, and narcotics for back pain, and something else to help him stop smoking, and something else for the impotence that had developed from all of the medications, until finally his wife mentioned that he was turning into a zombie and their marriage was dying. On his own, he had stopped taking most of the medications after that, and only reluctantly continued to see the social worker he’d been assigned to, who had listened to him describe his dreams and had said that bad dreams in returning soldiers were quite normal. The key was to relax, the social worker had said, and so Schumann would try to relax. He would go fishing. He would walk around a golf course and think it might be a good place to work after the army discharged him. He would grill up some fresh walleye in his backyard, where he had planted some rosebushes. But the war seemed to want to continue. On the day of the Ranger Ball, he would cut some roses to bring inside for his wife, and when a thorn pricked his finger he would think of the firefights, and when he tasted the blood, as he licked it away, he would think of Sergeant Emory, and by the time of the ball he would decide it would be best to stay home.

  Hundreds of soldiers would go, though, including Nate Showman, who by then would no longer be trying to see through every trash pile as he drove around Kansas, but at the Ranger Ball would jump from his chair when a waiter dropped a tray of dishes on the far side of the room. Jay March would be there, too, pleased that he would soon be a sergeant, disappointed that the girl who said she’d be at the airport waiting for him when he came home hadn’t been there, and wishing that he was one of the soldiers this night who would be receiving a medal. Sergeant Gietz, who would be receiving a medal, and who would soon be diagnosed with PTSD, and a second condition called traumatic brain injury from being around so many explosions, and a third condition that he would refer to as “survivor guilt, whatever the hell that is,” would also be there. “I feel dirty about all of this. I ask myself, am I going to be forgiven?” he would say beforehand, and then he would receive a Bronze Star Medal with Valor for all of the soldiers he had helped rescue in June. Joshua Atchley, one of those rescued soldiers, would be there, too, and upon hearing his name being called and the applause of hundreds of soldiers, would pop out his fake eye and thrust it high in the air. Eight seriously wounded soldiers in all would be there, including Sergeant Emory, who upon hearing his name called would gather every bit of strength he had gained since being shot in Kamaliyah in order to push himself out of his wheelchair and up onto his feet. Trembling, up he would go. His posture would be lopsided. His left arm would be quivering. His head would still be misshapen. His speech would still be slurred. His memory would still be hazy. His thoughts would still be the thoughts of a man who had once decided to bring his wrists to his teeth and bite. But for one minute he would stand on his own and try not to lose his balance as the rest of the soldiers, one after another, rose to their feet, too.

  It would be that kind of night. There would be some speeches, some food, some music, and a lot of drinking, and at its craziest, Joe Mixson, the only survivor from the explosion of September 4, would roll in his wheelchair onto the dance floor and start spinning around. The wheelchair would have a large American flag on a pole attached to the back, but even more noticeable would be Mixson himself: stripped of all clothing except for his underwear and a bow tie and clean bandages over his stumps. Back among his fellow soldiers, he would be the real deal this night, no fake legs, no bionics, no microchips, no Wounded Warrior, just a wounded warrior with two stumps, up high, spinning faster and faster in underpants and a bow tie until the American flag was swinging around behind him as he screamed at the top of his lungs in the 2-16’s very last hours:

  “Thank you, Colonel K!

  “Thank you, Colonel K!

  “Thank you, Colonel K!”

  “They’re coming,” Brent Cummings said now on
the tarmac.

  Everyone looked where he was looking, toward the horizon well beyond Rustamiyah, until they saw them, too. Two shadows. They came in fast, and as they settled with spinning rotors onto the tarmac and dropped open their rear hatches, they gave the soldiers a final coating of foul-smelling Rustamiyah dust.

  This place.

  The fucking dust.

  The fucking stink.

  The fucking all of it.

  This fucking place.

  “Well, here are the differences,” George W. Bush had said on January 10, 2007. Fifteen months later to the day, the differences were done. Up rose the helicopters with their hatches still open, allowing Kauzlarich a last perfect view of the surge. Instead of opening his eyes, though, he closed them. They had won. He was sure of it. They were the difference. It was all good. But he had seen enough.

  APPENDIX

  The 2-16 Roster of Soldiers

  LIBORIO ACOSTA, JR.

  BRYAN AGOSTOORTIZ

  TAUSOLO AIETI*

  HOSEA AILOLO

  TORRI KAAHA AKUNA

  ROBERT ALANIZ

  CASEY ALEXANDER

  COSTA ALLEN

  NICHOLAS AMANN

  TYLER ANDERSEN

  CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON

  DARRELL ANDERSON

  DEANE ANDERSON, JR.

  MICHAEL ANDERSON

  PATRICK ANDERSON

  RICHARD ANDRUS

  SHANNON ANTONIO

  CHRISTOPHER APPIAH

  DANIEL AQUINO

  ROGER ARNOLD III

  JESSE ARRIOLA

  APOLLO ARTSON

  ZACHERY ASH

  CHRISTOPHER ASHWELL

  JOSHUA ATCHLEY*

  COSTEL BACIU

  YONATHAN BAEZ*

  ERIC BAGGETT

  JOHN BAILEY

  JUSTIN BAILEY

  MICHAEL BAILEY, JR.

  TIMOTHY BAINTER

  ALPHANSO BANTON*

  JEFFERY BARKDULL*