by Evan Wright
FOR THE MARINES at Camp Mathilda, the first tangible sign that the war might actually be happening soon comes in the form of Pizza Hut delivery cars that stream into the camp all the way from Kuwait City on the night of March 16. As the South Asian franchise workers haggle with Marines outside the cars, selling the pies for twenty or ten bucks apiece, Fick grimly observes, “I think we can take this as the clearest indication yet that we’re getting ready to roll out for the invasion. They don’t just feed Marines pizza for no reason.”
Just after dawn on the morning of March 17, the Marines are told they have four hours to load their Humvees and trucks to pull out for a forward staging area near the Iraqi border. The men in Second Platoon clear out the tent in near silence. By eight o’clock temperatures have already reached the upper eighties. The heat is compounded by the fact that everyone has been ordered into their bulky chemical-protection suits. They lug weapons, rucksacks and crates of ammunition with sweat pouring from their faces. Everyone moves about in a feverish dream state.
By nine o’clock, First Recon’s convoy of some seventy Humvees and trucks have been loaded and maneuvered into position in the sand. The 300 or so enlisted Marines line up for formation. A battalion master sergeant struts in front of the troops and shouts, “Anybody who doesn’t want to be here, raise your hand.”
Laughter swells from the ranks.
“Good,” the sergeant continues. “You are going to be in the biggest show on the planet.”
When formation ends, Marines jump up and down, laughing and throwing each other around in the dust. Two different men run past me, shouting exactly the same phrase, “This is like Christmas!”
Their enthusiasm for the rollout doesn’t necessarily mean everyone’s a warmonger. A Marine explains the peculiar logic of troops getting ready for combat. “The sooner the war starts,” he says, “the sooner we go home.”
I make my last call before turning in my satellite phone to the battalion commander. The phone was provided by my editor to keep him updated on my movements, but I decide to call my girlfriend in Los Angeles instead. I’m not allowed to tell her we’re leaving the camp. She says that everyone at home is expecting the war to start any day. People in Los Angeles are panicking. Her friends are driving to a cabin at Lake Arrowhead to wait out the war in safety. It seems unreal to me. I suppress the urge to ask her if J.Lo is dead.
THREE
°
FIRST RECON’S CONVOY pulls out from the gates of Camp Mathilda at noon on March 17 under an unusually clear, dust-free blue sky. The Marines’ objective is a staging area about twenty kilometers south of the Iraqi border, where they will be in position to punch into Iraq on a few hours’ notice. They have no orders yet to begin the invasion, but this is the last step. This maneuver is the battalion-wide equivalent of cocking a loaded pistol and aiming it at someone’s head.
Tens of thousands of other American and British troops are on the same path this afternoon. As soon as First Recon’s convoy pulls onto the “highway”—a narrow, rutted asphalt lane surrounded by open desert—we become snarled in traffic. Some 150,000 coalition troops are camped nearby, and it looks as if all of them have poured onto the same highway at once. Thousands of vehicles—Humvees, tanks and trucks—fill the road in a jam that snakes across the desert for thirty kilometers.
Traversing this portion of the Kuwait desert, you begin to get a sense of the scale of the undertaking. We crawl past fenced lots in which thousands of tanker trucks, tractor-trailers and pieces of construction machinery are parked, waiting to roll into Iraq on the heels of the combat units. There are supply depots covering acres of sand with mountains of munitions, oil drums and rations crates. Lying beside the road are steel pipe sections that military construction crews are welding together into a pipeline to supply fuel and water to the invasion force as it goes north. It all has the feel of a monumental industrial enterprise. Somehow all these pieces are being put together—the people and the equipment—to function as one large machine. Though at the small-unit level all I see is the friction among the moving parts—Marines shouting at other vehicles to get out of the way, guys jumping out to hurriedly piss by the road, people taking wrong turns—the machine works. It will roll across 580 kilometers to Baghdad. It will knock down buildings, smash cars and tanks, put holes in people, shred limbs, cut children apart. There’s no denying it. For certain tasks, the machine put together in this desert is a very good one.
Colbert’s team digs into its position in the staging area after midnight. The moon overhead is so bright it looks almost like someone is shining a flashlight on us. It’s taken nearly fourteen hours to reach this spot of open desert. The battalion’s seventy-odd vehicles fan out across a couple of kilometers, with the Humvees facing north, their guns oriented toward Iraq. Marines move through the moonlit gloom with pickaxes and shovels, digging “Ranger graves”—shallow, one-man sleeping holes designed to protect their occupants from shrapnel in the event of an Iraqi attack. Then the Marines stretch “cammie nets”—camouflage netting—over their vehicles to make them harder to spot.
Temperatures have plunged into the lower forties. In their haste to pack up in the morning, many Marines had buried fleece vests and other warming “snivel gear” in the bottoms of their rucksacks. Some left this behind altogether. While Colbert’s team digs into their position, Marines who’d been so jubilant in the morning start bitching, primarily to amuse themselves.
Jacks, the giant gunner in Second Platoon’s team whom everyone calls Manimal, walks over to Colbert, whining, “I’m sick of this war.”
“It hasn’t even started yet, you pussy,” Colbert says.
“It’s fucking cold out here,” Manimal says.
“You can’t be cold,” Colbert says. “You’re a killer.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t pack no snivel gear,” Manimal says. “You got a fleece I can borrow till the war’s over?”
A LOW-INTENSITY DUST STORM starts sometime before dawn on the first morning at the staging area. Sleeping in open holes, you wake up with your face covered in powder. The wind moans continually. By sunrise it looks like we are in a snowstorm. Marines gather underneath the cammie netting draped over their vehicles, repacking gear, cleaning weapons, waiting. Their commanders tell the men the war will probably start on the twenty-second or twenty-third.
Colbert sits upright in his Ranger grave, filling his rifle magazines with bullets, peering out at the opaqueness of the desert—the dusty winds blowing past the cammie nets—and says, “It almost feels like we’re at the bottom of the ocean.”
Colbert’s specialty within the platoon is deep-sea diving. He’s trained to lead his team through miles of ocean and penetrate coastal defenses. Despite the years he’s spent on training missions in the water, he confesses to me that the deep sea terrifies him. “The scariest thing for me is to open my eyes under the ocean, especially at night,” he says. “I’m scared every time I do it.” He adds, “That’s probably why I love diving.”
Colbert tells me his feelings about the upcoming venture are similar. As a professional warrior, politics and ideology don’t really enter into his thoughts about why he is here in the desert, waiting to invade a country. “I’m not so idealistic that I subscribe to good versus evil. We haven’t had a war like that since World War II. Why are we here now? I guess it’s to remove this guy from power. I’m not opposed to it, and I wasn’t going to miss it.” For him, it’s a grand personal challenge. “We’re going into the great unknown,” he says. “Scary, isn’t it?” he adds, smiling brightly. “I can’t wait.”
AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN on March 20, the Marines in the staging area are awakened by the thundering of distant artillery. It confuses everyone because the night before, commanders in First Recon told the men the invasion wouldn’t start for a couple more days. Colbert keeps a small shortwave radio in his Humvee, and I join him in the gray morning light while he tunes in the BBC. They announce that the Americans have bombed Baghdad—in what we
later learn was a failed attempt to hit Saddam. The explosions we hear in the desert are American strikes on Iraqi positions just over the border. Colbert clicks off the radio. He looks up with a grave expression. It’s probably how he looks when he opens his eyes under the ocean for the first time on a dive. “Well,” he says. “We kicked the hornet’s nest. Now we better kill all the fucking hornets.”
At about ten in the morning, Fick gathers the platoon for a briefing. This is held, as all future ones will be, around the hood of his Humvee. It’s one of those weird desert days, chilly in the shade, blazing hot in the sun. All Marines now wear full battle gear—bulky chemical-protection suits, Kevlar helmets and flak vests, which have ceramic plates in the front and back to stop AK-rifle rounds, and utility vests covered in hooks and straps for carrying rifle cartridges, grenades and radios. All of this weighs about sixty pounds and gives the Marines a puffed-out appearance, like partially inflated Michelin Men. They jostle together, leaning on each other’s shoulders, trying to get as close as possible to Fick.
“This is our forty-eighth day in the field,” Fick says. “And last night President Bush started the war. We can expect to roll out of here tonight.”
He allows a tense smile. He, like everyone else, seems to be wrestling with excitement and a profound awareness of the seriousness of this situation. “You’re being called on to kill,” he says. “You’re going to be shot at. The Iraqis will try to fuck you up. Don’t be a trusting American. Leave that at the border. Think like a devious motherfucker. Be suspicious. Be aggressive.”
The Marines have drilled for weeks, studying the Rules of Engagement (ROE). The ROE lay out all the conditions regarding when a Marine may or may not fire on Iraqis. The problem is, some Iraqi soldiers will presumably change out of their uniforms and fight in civilian clothes. Others will remain in uniform but surrender. There might be some in uniform surrendering, and others in uniform fighting. On top of this, large segments of the civilian populace are expected to be armed with AKs, so these armed but not hostile civilians will be mixed up with enemy fighters dressed in civilian clothes. Therefore, the usual battlefield rules—shoot guys wearing enemy uniforms; shoot guys with weapons—don’t apply. What the ROE boil down to is that if the Marines come across a bunch of armed Iraqis, they generally can’t shoot them unless the Iraqis shoot at them first.
Fick has two big concerns about the ROE, which he brought up to me earlier in private. “If we kill civilians, we’re going to turn the populace against us and lose the war. But I don’t want to lose Marines because the ROE have taken away their aggressiveness.”
Fick repeats a mantra, echoed by every commander throughout the Corps. “You will be held accountable for the facts not as they are in hindsight but as they appeared to you at the time. If, in your mind, you fire to protect yourself, you are doing the right thing. It doesn’t matter if later on we find out you wiped out a family of unarmed civilians. All we are accountable for are the facts as they appear to us at the time.”
Following Fick’s talk, Gunny Wynn addresses the men. Gunny Wynn serves as Fick’s loyal executive. He is thirty-five, making him the oldest man in the platoon. He’s also among the more experienced men in the platoon. In Somalia he headed a sniper team and scored numerous confirmed kills, a fact that alone gives him instant macho credibility with his Marines. He has a lean coyote’s physique and speaks with a rangy Texas accent.
Gunny Wynn describes himself as a “staunch conservative” who’s never smoked marijuana. With his chiseled face and Texas accent, he fits the image, yet he likes to point out, “I’m not one of those guys driving around waving Texas flags. It’s just the place I’m from.” He almost never barks at the men the way platoon sergeants do in movies. His conservatism boils down to a rigid adherence to his own personal code. “The most important part of my job,” he tells me, “is to care about my men.” His leadership philosophy is based on “building confidence in my men by respecting them.” He and Fick function not so much like autocrats but like parents. At times, Gunny Wynn almost seems like a worried den mother, whose role is to soften the more aggressive messages Fick gives the men.
His guidance for handling the ROE is almost the polar opposite of Fick’s. “I spent five months in Somalia, and we got a lot of good kills out there,” he says. He gazes at the men, not blinking, letting his credibility as a sniper-killer sink in. “But we let a lot more bad guys get away than we killed, and that’s okay. Don’t fucking waste a mother or some kid. Don’t fire into a crowd. Those people north of here have been oppressed for years. They’re just like us. Don’t hurt them, even if you can justify it later under our ROE.”
Gunny Wynn’s gentle talk is interrupted by the sound of Marines screaming across the desert, “Gas! Gas! Gas!”
Everyone freezes for an instant. In the distance we see Marines in gas masks flagging us. They stand with their arms extended out, bending their elbows and tapping their shoulders—universal sign language for a gas attack. In their bug-eyed, black masks, they resemble insects.
FOUR
°
WITH EXPLOSIONS BOOMING in the distance and now frenzied shouts of a gas attack, it’s the first time I feel like I’m in a war. While the nonexistence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction has almost become a bad joke in the wake of the invasion, on the morning of March 20, just south of the Iraqi border, with the bombing having begun, threat of a chemical attack is foremost on everyone’s mind. It’s one of the biggest fears among Marines.
The chemical-protection suits everyone wears are called MOPPs (which stands for Mission Oriented Protective Posture, but in military parlance, MOPP has become the name of the suit itself). On the outside they look like ordinary fatigues, though extra-bulky ones. Due to a supply fuckup, Marines have been issued MOPPs in dark forest-green camouflage, which makes them extra-conspicuous targets in the desert. MOPPs come in two pieces: pants, held up by suspenders, and a hooded jacket. They are fabric on the outside. On the inside they are lined with a plastic mesh that feels like the surface of a scouring sponge and is embedded with carbon powder, a barrier to most chemical agents. They are hot, stiff and scratchy, and have the bulk of wearing a ski suit after you have fallen into a lake.
They are always soaking wet on the inside, from sweat. Not only is the suit itself hot, but on top of it everyone wears the added sixty pounds of flak vests, ceramic plates and utility harnesses. One of the dumbest features of the MOPPs issued to Marines is that they don’t have flies, so to go to the bathroom, a Marine has to remove his utility harness, his flak vest and his MOPP jacket in order to pull down his suspenders and lower his pants. Obviously, in a chemical environment they would have to poop or piss in their pants. Marines tried to get Depends diapers to wear underneath the MOPPs, but most were unable to.
To try to cool things down, a lot of Marines are “free-balling” in their MOPPs, going buck naked in them, but the scouring-pad liners make this an extremely uncomfortable option.
MOPP boots are the coup de grâce to making the whole ensemble a torturous experience. These are rubber galoshes worn on top of Marine combat boots. The rubber boots must be worn with the rest of the MOPP at all times, even when Marines sleep at night. They are so clammy and sweaty and wobbly that at every step you take it feels like your boots are stuffed full of dead fish.
In a gas attack, there’s a specific order in which Marines are trained to seal up their MOPPs. The very first thing you’re supposed to do is shut your eyes and stop breathing. Then, with your eyes closed, within the next nine seconds, you’re supposed to dig your mask out of the carrying bag strapped to your leg and put it on your head, making sure you have a good seal around your face. Then you can open your eyes and start breathing.
The bag the mask comes in is loaded with all kinds of other vital junk, too. Squeezed up next to the mask are Cipro packets (for battling Anthrax), charcoal pads (for neutralizing those nasty skin-blistering agents) and seven autoinjector syringes, each about half t
he size of a turkey baster. Three of these contain nerve antidotes, three more contain antidotes to the antidotes (since they are themselves toxic) and the seventh contains Valium. Marines are trained to use the antidotes on themselves. The Valium is there to be used on a buddy, in case he’s already too far gone from a nerve-agent attack—it will prevent him from twitching and flopping around as badly while he dies. It won’t save him, but it will probably improve the morale of everyone else nearby.
The problem with gas-mask kits is that when you reach in and grab the mask—in a panic, not breathing and with your eyes squeezed shut—all the autoinjectors tend to fly out. In my spare time over the past two weeks I’ve been practicing putting my mask on and have gotten reasonably good at it.
Now, in this alert, I throw it on in under nine seconds. The first breath is scary. When I open my eyes, I imagine that I might see spastic Marines suffering from nerve-agent exposure, that my hands and ears and other parts of my body still exposed will start burning and my skin will start popping off. But it’s all good. I see the other Marines by Fick’s vehicle, with their masks on, now calmly sealing up their MOPPs, closing everything up with snaps, Velcro and drawstrings. Then everyone puts on giant rubber kitchen gloves.