by Evan Wright
But then Gunny Wynn seems to almost reverse himself. “I’m not saying don’t protect yourselves. If it’s a case of losing one Marine versus one hundred civilians, I will save the Marine. You’ve just got to be goddamn careful.”
However admirable the military’s attempts are to create ROE, they basically create an illusion of moral order where there is none. The Marines operate in chaos. It doesn’t matter if a Marine is following orders and ROE, or disregarding them. The fact is, as soon as a Marine pulls the trigger on his rifle, he’s on his own. He’s entered a game of moral chance. When it’s over, he’s as likely to go down as a hero or as a baby killer. The only difference between Trombley and any number of other Marines who’ve shot or killed people they shouldn’t have is that he got caught. And this only happened because the battalion stopped moving long enough for the innocent victims to catch up with it.
Before leaving, Fick and Gunny Wynn raise the possibility of there being a formal inquiry into the shooting. After they walk off, Trombley turns to Colbert and asks, “Is this going to be okay, I mean with the investigation?”
“You’ll be fine, Trombley.”
“No. I mean for you, Sergeant.” Trombley grins. “I don’t care what happens, really. I’m out in a couple of years. I mean for you. This is your career.”
“I’ll be fine.” Colbert stares at him. “No worries.”
Something’s been bothering me about Trombley for a day or two, and I can’t help thinking about it now. I was never quite sure if I should believe his claim that he cut up those Iraqis in Al Gharraf. But he hit those two shepherds, one of whom was extremely small, at more than 200 meters, from a Humvee bouncing down a rough road at forty miles per hour. However horrible the results, his work was textbook machine-gun shooting, and the fact is, from now on, every time I ride with Colbert’s team, I feel a lot better when Trombley is by my side with the SAW.
SEVENTEEN
°
SUNSET ON THE NIGHT of March 27 turns the surrounding fields red. First Recon’s camp by the airfield is spread across three kilometers, with the Humvees on the outer perimeter spaced about seventy-five meters apart, hidden under cammie nets. Looking out, all you see are dried mudflats, rippled with berms and sliced with dry canals. It looks like a 1950s sci-fi fantasy Martian landscape.
They tell us to dig our holes extra deep tonight. The battalion remains cut off, deep in “bad-guy country,” as Fick says. To prevent hordes of RPG teams or enemy tanks from overrunning the perimeter, the Marine Division, about twenty kilometers southwest of here, has pretargeted its artillery to land within “danger-close” range of the camp should it be requested. If the enemy appears in the nearby fields, a quick SOS to division headquarters will bring dozens or hundreds of artillery rounds splashing down near where we are sleeping.
For the first time in several days, the night sky is clear. I watch shooting stars from my hole. There are more stars than you would typically see in North America because there are no streetlights. Clear skies also mean U.S. military aircraft, hampered by dust storms the past several days, now have free rein. It’s a busy night in the sky. Past sunset we hear unmanned drones crisscrossing overhead, then the buzzing of propeller-driven P-3 observation planes. Antimissile flares, thrown out by unseen jets, make the whole sky blink. Bombs flash on the horizon. Iraqi AAA guns send up tracer rounds, which look like strings of pearls. I see the enemy AAA batteries firing north, east and west of us, a graphic reminder that there are hostile forces all around.
Near midnight, a team on Alpha Company’s sector of the perimeter observes lights that appear to be moving about six kilometers away. The Marines count somewhere between 120 and 140 different lights. Lights could be produced by all sorts of things—a small town with electricity (south of here a few days ago we did see some towns that still had power), a bunch of civilian vehicles or an Iraqi military convoy. Since these lights seem to be moving, the Marines rule out the town option. The men on the team aren’t sure what’s producing the lights, but their nervous platoon commander believes they represent a possible threat. He radios the battalion that a convoy of “one hundred forty vehicles” is on the move about six kilometers from First Recon’s position.
The battalion contacts First Marine Division and reports a possible enemy column moving nearby. One hundred forty Iraqi military vehicles—be they tanks or even trucks filled with men—would be enough to hammer First Recon in its remote position. The division takes this threat extremely seriously. Earlier, the crew of a P-3 observation plane had spotted what they thought might be a column of twenty-five vehicles in the same area. With two independent reports, the division immediately sends all available aircraft toward the “convoy.”
When the alarm reaches Colbert’s team, everyone not on watch is woken up and told to load the Humvee and get ready to move or to fight. I made the mistake tonight of stripping out of my MOPP suit and trying to sleep in my underpants. I hadn’t removed the MOPP in ten days. It’s a near-freezing night, and sliding back into the cold, plastic-lined MOPP is a torture all its own. But just as continual hunger makes MRE food rations taste better, your own petty physical discomforts obliterate grander fears. Sitting in the darkened Humvee, shivering in my icy MOPP, I’m much more concerned about the cold than reports now popping over battalion radios of enemy tanks, or RPG teams moving in to attack. Adding to my misery is the prevailing mood of cheerfulness in the Humvee.
Colbert and his Marines are wide awake, eagerly passing around optics, peering into them, debating about what they see. The prospect of an enemy column moving their way excites them. Besides, Recon Marines like Colbert are in their hearts almost like bird-watchers. They have a passion for observing things that exists all by itself, separate from whatever thrills they get out of guns and blowing things up. They seem truly happy whenever a chance comes to puzzle out the nature of small (but potentially lethal) mysteries on the horizon. This time, in the case of these enigmatic lights, Colbert concludes, “Those are the lights of a village.” He sounds almost disappointed.
Waves of F-18s and A-10s fly over the location of the suspected enemy column. Initially there’s confusion. When Alpha’s platoon commander called in the location of the “convoy,” he used incorrect protocols in giving its location (making the same error Encino Man had committed when he’d tried to call in artillery on top of his company outside Ar Rifa). “This mistake created an entire chain of error up to the division,” Capt. Patterson later says. After the aircraft finally figure out what their pilots think are the correct coordinates of the suspected convoy, they attack the area by dropping bombs and firing Maverick air-to-ground missiles.
U.S. military doctrine is pretty straightforward in situations like this: If there even appears to be an imminent threat, bomb the shit out of it. One of First Recon’s officers, Captain Stephen Kintzley, puts it this way: “We get a few random shots, and we fire back with such overwhelming force that we stomp them. I call it disciplining the Hajjis.”
During the next few hours, attack jets drop nearly 10,000 pounds of bombs on the suspected position of the alleged enemy convoy. It’s a spectacular show. From Colbert’s vehicle we watch numerous smaller bombs flash and count two huge mushroom clouds roiling up in the night sky.
Planes flying over the target areas in daylight give conflicting reports of what they hit. Some report seeing wrecked armored vehicles; others see nothing. First Recon punches out foot patrols. They observe craters outside one village, but no sign of any bombed armor. Some villagers venture out and offer to roast the Marines a goat, apparently with the hope that an offering will propitiate them into calling off further bombing.
Maj. Shoup, who was in communication with some of the pilots during the bombing, later tells me, “I don’t think there was any armor there in the first place. Maybe the first P-3 picked up an abandoned piece of armor or some poor farmer’s tractor, and it spiraled from there.” As the bombing continued, some of the pilots reported that their optics were pi
cking up heat signatures on the ground, indicating there was armor or vehicles of some sort down there. But Shoup believes their thermal optics were actually picking up hot shrapnel from previously dropped bombs. “As soon as you drop a bomb it creates its own heat signature on the ground, which later pilots were reading as armor.”
As for the lights that the Marines saw six kilometers away, Shoup believes they were actually seeing lights from a town seventeen kilometers distant. They had misread the lights of a distant city as headlamps from a much closer convoy. Shoup attributes the perception that these headlamps appeared to be moving to a phenomenon called “autokinesis.” He explains, “When you stare at lights long enough in the dark, it looks like they are moving. That’s autokinesis.”
What it boils down to is that under clear skies, in open terrain with almost no vegetation, the Marines don’t have a clue what’s out there beyond the perimeter. Even with the best optics and surveillance assets in the world, no one knows what happened to nearly 10,000 pounds of bombs and missiles dropped a few kilometers outside the encampment. They may as well have been dropping them in the Bermuda Triangle. It’s not that the technology is bad or its operators incompetent, but the fog of war persists on even the clearest of nights.
EIGHTEEN
°
MARCH 28, the day after the bombing, First Recon Battalion remains at its encampment outside the airfield, with no orders for its next mission. A little more than a week into the invasion, the U.S. military has called an “operational pause.” The Army, moving up a western highway, met fierce resistance outside Al Najaf, where nearly twenty of its most technologically advanced Apache helicopters were shot down or severely damaged, with two American pilots captured by the Iraqis. According to Marine commanders, the unexpected stiffening of opposition caught the Army off guard, and it has now gone into resupply mode, steeling itself for tougher engagements ahead. For their part, the Marines are continuing to encounter guerrilla tactics—snipers and RPG ambushes—along Route 7. According to Lt. Col. Ferrando, 90 percent of RCT-1’s supply chain is being used to haul artillery rounds to feed the big guns as they pummel towns and suspected Fedayeen hideouts around the clock.
The Marines in First Recon, the northernmost unit in central Iraq, have had their rations reduced, a result of both supply problems across the First Marine Division and the fact that the battalion truck with MREs on it was destroyed outside of Ar Rifa. The Marines’ water, also in short supply, smells, in the opinion of Colbert, like “dirty ass.” The camp is infested with flies from all the camel dung.
Many Marines who have taken their boots off for the first time in a week discover the skin on their feet is rotting off in pale white strips like tapeworms, as a result of fungal infections. The green T-shirts they’ve worn for eleven days straight underneath their MOPPs are so impregnated with salt from their sweat that they’ve turned white. Some Marines attempt to wash their crusty T-shirts and socks, but there’s not enough water to adequately clean them.
Everyone is coughing and has runny noses and weeping, swollen eyes caused by the dust storms. About a quarter of the Marines in Colbert’s platoon have come down with vomiting and diarrhea. Now, with the time to dig through packs and retrieve mirrors, many are amazed by the gaunt reflections staring back at them. In just a short time in the field, most have already shed five to ten pounds. Colbert finds what he thinks is an enormous blackhead on his ear. When he digs it out, he discovers it’s a bullet fragment.
It’s not a good day for God in Iraq. The battalion chaplain, Navy Lieutenant Commander Bodley, takes advantage of the downtime by circulating among his flock. He finds ministering to Recon Marines a daunting task. “I’ve been around other Marines and sailors before,” he says. “But I’d never heard such profanity—the offensive put-downs—so commonly used until I came to First Recon.”
The chaplain was attached to the unit shortly before the invasion. He never swears, seldom drinks. He grew up on Chicago’s South Side, and from a young age he felt called to do the work of the Lord. He was ordained a Lutheran minister after attending Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and shortly after became a chaplain in the Navy Reserves. (The Navy provides the Marines with chaplains.) Married with three children, and a minister in a church in Orlando, Florida, his first immersion in Marine culture didn’t occur until he was called up before the war and attached to First Recon at Camp Mathilda. He has labored to open his heart to the profane young men in First Recon. “I’ve come to understand that they use the language to harden themselves,” he says. “But my question is, once they’ve turned it on, can they turn it off?”
Today, circulating among the Marines, he has only grown more disturbed. “Many of them have sought my counsel because they feel guilty,” he tells me. “But when I ask them why, they say they feel bad because they haven’t had a chance to fire their weapons. They worry that they haven’t done their jobs as Marines. I’ve had to counsel them that if you don’t have to shoot somebody, that’s a good thing. The zeal these young men have for killing surprises me,” Bodley admits. “It instills in me a sense of disbelief and rage. People here think Jesus is a doormat.”
THE CHAPLAIN has no takers in Colbert’s team when he approaches to offer his counselling. After being up all night dealing with the phantom enemy convoy, Colbert’s Marines loll under the cammie nets, attempting to nap. Person lounges outside on a poncho, naked but for skivvies and a pair of golden Elvis-impersonator sunglasses. He’s trying to roast the “chacne”—chest zits—off in the harsh Iraqi sun, while busting bass beats with his lips, chanting Ice Cube’s lyrics, “Today I didn’t even have to use my AK/I gotta say it was a good day.”
Gunny Wynn stops by to pass on the latest gossip. “Word is we might go to the Iranian border to interdict smugglers.”
“Fuck, no!” Person shouts from beneath his Elvis glasses. “I want to go to Baghdad and kill people.”
A couple of Marines nearby pass the time naming illustrious former jarheads—Oliver North, Captain Kangaroo, Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wayne Bobbit. “After they sewed his dick back on, didn’t he make porn movies where he fucked a midget?” one of them asks.
Gunny Wynn chuckles, beaming with a sort of fatherly pride. “Yeah, he probably did. A Marine will fuck anything.”
Gunny Wynn, along with Fick, is still facing threat of disciplinary action for his role in trying to stop Encino Man from dropping danger-close artillery by the platoon’s position the other day outside Ar Rifa. Casey Kasem has told me he is attempting to have Gunny Wynn removed from his job. “It’s wrong to question the commander,” Casey Kasem says. “Lieutenant Fick and Gunny Wynn don’t understand that. Their job is to execute whatever the commander tells them to do. By questioning his orders or his actions, they risk their men’s lives by slowing down the commander. Discipline is instinct, a willingness and obedience to orders. What Fick and Gunny Wynn have is the opposite of discipline.”
When I ask Gunny Wynn if he’s worried about the action brewing against him—Casey Kasem and Encino Man are drafting a memo detailing his “disobedience to orders”—he laughs. “Some guys care about advancing in the Marine Corps. Me, I don’t give a fuck. I care about my men being happy, shielding them from the bullshit, and keeping them alive.” He adds, “Guys that believe no orders ever should be questioned are usually the same ones who are too dumb to explain them. They just don’t want to look stupid in front of their men. I encourage my men to question orders.”
This morning, looking out at the expanse beyond the perimeter, Gunny Wynn says he has only one fear in his mind. “Man, I hope this doesn’t turn into another Somalia.”
DESPITE THE CHAPLAIN’S DESPAIR over the Marines’ seeming insensitivity to the suffering brought on by war, discussing it among themselves, Marines express deep misgivings. I join Espera’s team, dug in by his Humvee several meters down from Colbert’s. He’s enjoying his first cup of hot coffee in more than a week, brewed on a fire made from dried cam
el dung mixed with C-4 plastic explosive (which, when ignited, blazes intensely).
“This is all the tough-guy shit I need,” he says. “I don’t like nothing about combat. I don’t like the shooting. I don’t like the action.”
Espera believes the whole war is being fought for the same reason all others have for the past several hundred years. “White man’s gotta rule the world,” he says.
Though Espera is one quarter Caucasian, he grew up mistrusting “the white man.” A few years ago, he deliberately avoided earning his community-college degree, though he was just a couple of credits short of receiving it, because, he says, “I didn’t want some piece of paper from the white master saying I was qualified to function in his world.”
Before joining the Marines, Espera worked as a car repo man in South Central Los Angeles. While in a job he hated, he watched his friends and one close family member go to prison for violent crimes, which were fairly routine in his world. Then one day, after four years of repoing cars in L.A.’s poorest neighborhoods, Espera had an epiphany: “I was getting shot at, making chump change, so I could protect the assets of a bunch of rich white bankers. The whole time I’m hating on these motherfuckers, and I realized I’m their slave, doing their bidding. I thought, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
So he enlisted in the Marines. Espera reasoned that as a Marine he might still be serving the white man, but he’d be doing so with “purity and honor.”
As he’s gotten older, Espera’s begun to accept that maybe the white man’s system isn’t all that bad. Travelling the world as a Marine has opened his eyes to stark differences between the way Americans and those in less fortunate parts of the planet live. “All these countries around the world, nobody’s fat,” he says. “Back home, fat motherfuckers are everywhere. Seventy-five percent of all Americans are fat. Do you know how hard it is to put on thirty pounds? A motherfucker has to sit on the couch and do nothing but eat all day. In America, white trash and poor Mexicans are all fat as motherfuckers. The white man created a system with so much excess, even the poor motherfuckers are fat.”