Spare Parts

by Buzz Williams

  “. . . armed infantry in the open . . .”

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  “. . . troops hiding in a bunker . . .”

  “. . . manned fighting holes to our front . . .”

  As the sound of LAVs started firing around us, Sgt. Moss took the initiative to issue his fire commands.

  “Gunner! HE! Troops in a trench! One hundred meters! On my position!”

  Sgt. Moss, looking above the turret, reached down to his gun control and slewed the barrel to the general area of the trench. I ducked down into the hull and stared through the vision blocks.

  Dougherty’s voice followed. “Identified!”

  “Fire!”

  The first three-round burst thumped into the center of the trench. Three bright explosions lit the earth on impact, sending Iraqi soldiers running for their lives. Then Sgt. Moss ordered machine-gun fire.

  “Gunner! Coax [denoting machine-gun rounds]! Troops in the open!” he said.

  “Identified!” Dougherty called back.

  “Fire!”

  The spray zigzagged, blasting holes into the desert floor way short of the trenches. Dougherty adjusted and sprayed again, this time chasing the soldiers back into the trench to take cover. The main gun forced them out of the trench, and the machine gun forced them back in. Other crews in the company were experiencing the same frustration, but some had actually managed to take prisoners—

  and the prisoners talked. The Iraqis told how they had wanted to surrender, but had feared being shot if they came out of hiding.

  When we heard that over the radio, it changed our strategy completely. We still fired into the trenches with our main gun, but we did so at one end of the trench. Once the Iraqis exited the trench, we stopped firing, and sent our scouts to intercept them.

  The strategy worked. Iraqi soldiers poured from their underground hiding places in droves. In a matter of hours our entire position was overrun with surrendering Iraqis. They walked right up to our vehicle with their hands on their heads, rifles slung upside S P A R E P A R T S

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  down, and giant smiles on their faces. Haley, our lone Arab speaker, was invaluable in securing the prisoners. Many spoke English.

  “We love George Bush!”

  “USA! USA! USA!”

  “America is great!”

  When a wave of surrendering Iraqis moved past us, we fired on the trenches to clear them of any remaining Iraqis, and then moved on. God help the soldiers that had remained in hiding. Our firepower was devastating, and if they had not left when the others did, they would never get the chance.

  I wanted them to live. With their famished frames, bloody feet, tattered uniforms, weathered skin, and pitiful expressions—they were pathetic. After looking into their eyes it was difficult to hate them. They were no longer evil, soulless killers. They were sons, and brothers, and husbands, and fathers. They didn’t want to kill us any more than we wanted to kill them.

  That was how most of our sweep into Kuwait City went until the next afternoon. Until then our rounds had been lost in the hulls of abandoned tanks, sandy trenches, and plywood bunkers. Until then any killing had been masked by steel, earth, and wood.

  Until then I had never seen death.

  25 FEBRUARY

  All four LAV platoons were on-line and stationary in our usual convex arc formation when the radio report came in.

  “Truck approaching from ten o’clock!”

  Then a flurry of radio banter from second platoon followed.

  “Black Six . . . this is Blue One. . . . We have a civilian truck headed our way. . . . Advise, over. . . .”

  “Blue One . . . this is Black Six. . . . confirm or deny surrender, over.”

  Through my left vision block I could see it moving toward our 232

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  column. A brown truck, filled with people, but no white flag. Blue One saw the same.

  “Black Six . . . this is Blue One. . . . No surrender, over. . . . I say again . . . no surrender, over!”

  “Blue One . . . this is Black Six. . . . Are you taking fire?”

  That was the last radio call I heard before gunfire erupted.

  My forehead was pressed into the glass vision block, so I could see what was happening. The truck had veered away and headed parallel to our column. Then there was more fire, and bright flashes coming from the side of the truck.

  They were firing on us!

  I flipped the switch on my helmet to key the radio. “Black Six . . .

  this is Red Two. . . . Muzzle flashes from the truck. . . . Muzzle flashes from the truck. . . . They’re firing on us, over!”

  Sgt. Moss called the fire commands like the eight other crews in First and Second platoons.

  “Gunner! HE! Truck in the open!”

  “Identified!”

  “Fire!”

  What I should have heard was a burst of thumps from the main gun. Instead I heard ka-chink . . . ka-chink . . . ka-chink . . . and then Dougherty yelling, “Fuck!”

  A jam!

  My eyes were glued to the vision blocks, focused on the truck, and the men inside. Blue One wasn’t jammed. Its gun blasted burst after burst into the truck. The first rounds stopped the truck in its tracks, exploding on impact, and blowing the two near passengers out into the sand. The next burst incinerated the truck into a ball of flames and flying shrapnel. The explosion was followed by silence.

  The two bodies in the sand rolled and writhed for a few moments, maybe by reflex, but I doubt it. More likely it was their last gasps at life, a feeble attempt to escape the rounds that pierced them, the shrapnel that ripped them, and the flames that melted their flesh.

  Eventually they lay still. It was a horrific end.

  My eyes were still fixed on the gruesome scene as our officers S P A R E P A R T S

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  rushed to investigate. They combed the area, compared notes, and interviewed crewmen.

  It would take hours before they figured out what had happened—

  hours of sitting, and staring, and reliving the massacre over and over again, hours of flashbacks to the bus ride on our first day in the desert. All the while the words of the song “War Pigs” haunted me: Now in darkness world stops turning Ashes where the bodies burning

  No more war pigs have the power

  Hand of God has struck the hour . . . ©

  Eventually Capt. Bounds returned to his vehicle and reported the official findings to us over the radio. The news was unsettling.

  The occupants wore Iraqi uniforms, and in fact were officers—officers delivering pay and mail to their troops. That was all the truck had been carrying . . . bags of money and mail. They had pistols, but all were in their holsters. And even if they had been stupid enough to fire at a company of armored vehicles with pistols, their guns would not have registered muzzle flashes like I had seen.

  That was because what I had seen had not been muzzle flashes.

  They were rounds ricocheting from the body of the vehicle. Rounds fired at the truck . . . not from the truck.

  In the fog of war some things are left to interpretation. In the case of the mail truck Uncle Sam would exonerate us. That did little to ease my guilt. Maybe no one had heard the report I called in, and maybe there were so many others who saw the flashes that the order to fire was inevitable. But maybe Blue One was undecided, and my call had made the difference. That burden weighed on my conscience, as I sat solemn and still. I’ve carried it ever since that day, when the fog of war crept in, clouded my judgment, and claimed four lives.

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  As the call to mount up came across the radio I fired the engines and looked back once more at the smoking truck, and the charred bodies. And as we rolled on toward Kuwait City, I knew there would be more.

  The song played on in my head.

  Day of judgement, God is calling

  On their knees the war pigs crawl
ing Begging mercies for their sins

  Satan, laughing, spreads his wings. . . .

  NINE

  28 FEBRUARY 1991

  THEY HID INSIDE BURNED-OUT buildings, behind abandoned vehicles, and even underground, within giant craters carved by our B-52

  bombers. They waited until our convoy was close, stopped, and vulnerable. Then they rushed from every direction, yelling, banging, and climbing onto our vehicles.

  They were not enemy soldiers. They were children. Children desperate for water, food, attention, and assurance that the bad guys were gone.

  We welcomed the rush. As soon as we stopped rolling, our hatches flew open and Marines poured out to assure them the good guys had arrived. As driver I was supposed to remain ready for the call to mount up and resume our road march. But the call to comfort the kids was too much.

  “Sgt. Moss, can I go?” I asked.

  “I wondered what took you so long to ask,” he said. “Go ahead . . . but stay close!”

  The children swarmed to get my water, MREs, and sunflower seeds. The tall ones hugged my arms and the short ones clung to my legs. An older boy, maybe ten years old, rescued me from the siege. He organized the children into a group and distributed the water and food. They ripped the packages open and smashed the food into their faces like wild animals. My visit was brief.

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  “Back inside!” Sgt. Moss called. “Mount up!”

  Before I left, the older boy handed me a paper Kuwaiti flag.

  “Thank you. . . . Thank you, jundee (soldier). Come back. . . .”

  I told him I would. It was a promise I couldn’t keep.

  They stood along the side of the road smiling, waving, and cheering as I climbed into the driver’s hatch.

  “Good luck!” I yelled to them.

  My words were lost in the pandemonium that followed as a car broke through our column, headed for the children, still eating, drinking, and frolicking. They scattered just in time as the car raced over the spot where they’d been sitting. Had the car lost control?

  No. It was no accident. We watched in horror as the car reversed, then accelerated again, intentionally aiming for the children. The older boy called for them to run for cover, guiding them through a break in the fence and over a guardrail separating the highway from their hiding places. One by one he pushed them through as the car circled around for a third pass. He barely made it through before it rammed the guardrail, the only thing stopping it from crushing him and the others. Then the car pulled back and, surprisingly, double-parked next to our column. Two civilian Arabs, carrying AK-47 rifles, got out and started yelling.

  Haley interpreted. “They want our leader. They want to speak with the CO.”

  The vehicle in front had already deployed its scouts, holding the Arabs at gunpoint until Capt. Cruz arrived.

  After a brief exchange, Capt. Cruz shook hands with them, sent them on their way, and called all VCs to his vehicle.

  It wasn’t what they did or said that earned the handshake. It was who they were. They were Kuwaitis—the good guys. The children were Palestinians—the bad guys.

  Dougherty filled us in on the political implications over the intercom as we drove to our next position. He explained the historical hostility between the Palestinians and other established Arab groups. During peacetime Palestinians were outcasts among the people of Kuwait, second-class citizens who were little better than S P A R E P A R T S

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  slave laborers. As retribution many provided aid and comfort to the Iraqi invaders terrorizing the people of Kuwait, and Yassir Arafat had spoken out in favor of Saddam Hussein’s invasion. Although we had forced the Iraqi soldiers out of the city, many Palestinians remained behind. The conflict between returning Kuwaitis and traitorous Palestinians made the city a hotbed of civil unrest. And we were rolling right into the middle of it.

  4 MARCH 1991

  At the sound of rifle fire I woke enough to check my wristwatch.

  It was only 0300, an hour before my fire-watch shift. Poking my head from our makeshift tent I looked around for trouble. The LAV

  was thirty meters away. Sgt. Moss was calmly checking with Wells, in the turret on radio watch.

  “Any word about those rounds?” he asked.

  “Nope. Radios are quiet.”

  The sound of distant rifle fire was commonplace, so I lay down and began to drift off. Until the sudden snap and pop of rounds grew too close to ignore. Now these rounds were slapping the wall behind our position, and thumping the dirt beside Sgt. Moss’s feet. The only time rounds had ever whizzed that close to my head before had been while I was pulling targets on the rifle range at Parris Island.

  “Wake up, boys!” Sgt. Moss called. “Those rounds have our names on them!”

  Stepping into my boots, I reached over blindly to shake Cpl.

  Shane awake. He screamed as my index finger jabbed his eye.

  “Cpl. Shane! Wake up! We’re taking fire!”

  Outside the tent the rounds were louder than ever, zinging past my ears, peppering the landscape. Dropping for cover, I surveyed the situation. Most of my gear was inside the LAV—my helmet, flak, and gas mask. Grabbing my rifle, I crawled toward the rear of the LAV. Sgt. Moss opened the rear hatches.

  “Let’s go!” he wailed. “Mount up! Get the fuck inside!”

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  That was easier said than done. There was a lot of ground, churning from bullet impacts, between the LAV and me. I took another quick survey. There were steel construction pipes stacked off to my right . . . farther than the LAV, but away from the bullets. Five seconds later I was tucked inside one of the tubes, rifle pointed out, finger on the trigger.

  Cpl. Shane ran for the LAV in between bursts of fire, and made it in safely. That made me last. Every time I saw an opportunity to run, though, more rounds would hit. There were no muzzle flashes, troops, or vehicles. Only ricochets zipping all around. My fuse ran short after a few minutes trapped inside the tube.

  “Fire those motherfuckers up! How about some fucking cover fire?”

  Sgt. Moss was in the back of the LAV. Wells was in the gunner’s seat. No one was in the VC seat, or on the pintle-mounted machine gun atop the turret. That infuriated me.

  “Wells! Get on the pintle mount!” I called. “Sgt. Moss! Get some-body on the machine gun!”

  Wells transferred to the VC position and pulled rounds into the feeder of the machine gun.

  “Yeah, Wells! Yeah! Get some! Get some!”

  Nothing. Not a single round fired. Not one.

  Thinking no one knew how to operate the weapons, I made a mad dash and dived headfirst into the troop compartment of the LAV. My momentum carried me into the steel cage that separated the troop compartment from the turret, gashing my left brow. The adrenaline masked the pain but didn’t stop the blood. It ran through my left eye, into my mouth, and down my neck. My sleeve served as a pressure bandage while I got the word from Sgt. Moss.

  “Dougherty’s on the main gun . . . he doesn’t see muzzle flashes.

  Neither does Wells!”

  “Fuck the muzzle flashes! Just start firing! Sweep the whole fucking front!”

  That was shit talk and Sgt. Moss knew it, but Dougherty and Wells could hear me shouting in the hull. Moss wasn’t taking any chances on botching this one.

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  “At ease! We’re not firing until we see who the fuck is firing at us.

  Got it?”

  More questions from me.

  “Who’s on the radio? Does Black Six know? And where is Red Four?”

  Dougherty had tried repeatedly to raise them on the radio, but they had yet to respond.

  Sgt. Moss raised his head through the troop hatch and quickly lowered it.

  We were still taking fire.

  “Dougherty!” he called. “How about those muzzle flash
es?”

  “Nothing!”

  “How about Red Four?”

  “No answer!”

  What was going on around us? Our radio signals didn’t travel as far in the city, but we had had contact with Red Four all day. Maybe that was it. Shit was going down at their post too. Maybe Red Four was under fire! But they would be on the radio, unless there was no one to call . . . or no radio . . . or no Red Four. Sgt. Moss made a command decision.

  “Who’s in the driver’s seat?”

  “Bennett!”

  “Fire in the hole, Bennett! Get us to Red Four!”

  Dougherty spun the turret back and forth with his finger on the trigger. Sgt. Moss stood in the VC hatch, scanning with his night vision goggles, his finger also ready on the pintle-mount machine gun.

  Cpl. Shane and Haley stood upright through the rear troop hatches, sighting in with their M16s. An entire city block was one flicker of light from being decimated.

  Sitting idly in the darkness of the hull I waited and wondered, a bloody sleeve to my head. After five minutes of bobbing and weav-ing our way along the dirt mounds that lined the route to Red Four, we finally arrived. Sgt. Moss ordered Cpl. Shane and the scouts to secure the area around Red Four. While the scouts took positions outside, I climbed back into the driver’s seat and waited. Through the sight I could tell Red Four’s hatches were closed. There was no 240

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  one outside either. Cpl. Shane gave the all-clear signal and rapped the hull with his rifle butt. Nothing. Then a second rap, and third.

  Finally the VC hatch opened, and out came Sgt. Krause, groggy.

  Rat bastard! He was asleep!

  “Sgt. Moss!” I said. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  He was already on his way to confront Krause.

  “Your fucking radios up?” Moss said, angrily.

  Krause knew he was caught. “What are you doing here? Why did you leave your post?”

  Sgt. Moss stood for a moment, stared at the ground, and shook his head in disbelief.