Generation Kill

by Evan Wright

  The reservist unit is called Delta Company, and it has three platoons with a total of about ninety Marines and commanders. It’s made up of guys who work regular jobs in civilian life, some as software engineers or teachers, but the majority in law enforcement—from LAPD cops to DEA agents to air marshals. In Swarr’s opinion, “Delta was the most unorganized thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  The reservists’ problems weren’t necessarily caused through any fault of their own. Due to its low standing in the pecking order as a reserve unit, Delta Company was short on trucks, guns, food, flak vests, radios. Nevertheless, the reservists crossed into Iraq nearly a week after the war started. “It was madness from day one,” Swarr says. They had no idea where the battalion was and no ability to reach it on comms. Their navigation gear was so poor they nearly bumbled into Nasiriyah at the height of the fighting there. Many of the reservists in Delta had never fired the heavy weapons on their Humvees prior to entering Iraq.

  Wandering around highways in southern Iraq, unable to find out where the battalion was, the reservists began running low on food. They were assigned convoy escort duty by the division and, according to Swarr, they turned this into a gold mine. At the time, lightly armed supply convoys were rolling through the area, their drivers terrified of being ambushed. So, Swarr says, “We put a sign out: ‘Need Convoy Security? Stop Here.’ As soon as they’d stop, we’d bullshit the drivers, tell ’em, ‘Hey, two hours ago a convoy passing through here got ambushed.’ Then we’d ask ’em, ‘What do you got for us? Any MREs, flak vests, water? Hand it over, and we’ll escort you.’”

  According to Swarr, Delta Company made out pretty well for a while. Then, in his opinion, the company started going out of control. “Some of the cops in Delta started doing this cowboy stuff. They put cattle horns on their Humvees. They’d roll into these hamlets, doing shows of force—kicking down doors, doing sweeps—just for the fuck of it. There was this little clique of them. Their ringleader was this beat cop, who’s like a corporal back home and a commander out here. He’s like five feet tall, talks like Joe Friday and everyone calls him ‘Napoleon.’ We started to get the idea these guys didn’t want to find the battalion. They knew they’d get their balls stepped on. They were having too much fun being cowboys.

  “Some of the other reservists were coming up to us, saying, ‘You’ve got to help us find the battalion. These guys are going to get us killed.’ But there was nothing we could do.”

  Finally, it all came to a head a couple of days ago. “We’re guarding an airfield for chow and water,” Swarr says. “These kids come up selling soda and cigarettes. The ringleaders in Delta decide it would be funny to trade them some porn magazines, which these Iraqi kids had never seen. About an hour later, this elder comes out of a hamlet 400 meters away, yelling and shaking his fist. The kids all scatter. One of them tells us the old man is pissed. He didn’t like kids having porn magazines. The kid says he’s going to get an RPG. Sure enough, the old man comes out of this hut with an RPG, just kind of waving it around.”

  Swarr takes a deep breath. “Delta fucking freaks! They lob like twenty-six Mark-19 rounds at the guy. He’s two hundred meters away, and they all miss him. Instead, they light up this friendly village behind him that’s been passing us information.

  “I’m just watching this. I didn’t have nothing to shoot at, and I see this old dude dressed like a Marine running past with a flak vest and camera, huffing and puffing. ‘What are they lighting up?’ he asks. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Just some pissed-off Iraqi with an RPG.’ Then I look at the guy I’m talking to, and it’s Ollie North.” (North served as a correspondent for Fox News in Iraq.)

  “I’m like, ‘Ollie, how you doing?’” Swarrs continues.

  “‘Fucking great.’ He takes a dip and says, ‘This war’s going to be over in seventy-two hours. Saddam’s dead.’

  “I’m like, ‘Good to go, Ollie.’

  “He huffs off, and this colonel comes out who’s in charge of the airfield, and he’s mad. He’s like, ‘You guys just lit up a friendly village.’

  “I don’t think Delta killed any of the villagers, but they blew up a few of their huts. We gave ’em a few cases of humrats and got out of there.”

  When Colbert hears the story, he just shakes his head. “This is so colossally retarded I can’t even say anything about it.”

  I’m not convinced that Gunny Swarr is the most reliable source. I set out to find other people who were there. One of the men from First Recon who was with him is a captain in the battalion, with a reputation for being levelheaded and forthright. He tells me Gunny Swarr’s tale is “on the money.” Later, I talk to Ferrando, who admits, “There was a comm problem for about a week with Delta.” I go over to Delta’s position in the camp and talk to more than a half dozen of the reservists, including the Mark-19 gunner, Lance Corporal Bryan Andrews, twenty-two, who fired on the village. They corroborate essential details of Swarr’s story. Andrews adds, “I guess it worked out okay. I scared off the old man. He ran away.”

  KOCHER SPENDS his free day outside Baghdad, sitting in the shade of his vehicle’s cammie nets, writing a journal intended for his wife, who’s also in the Marines. He doesn’t indulge in the open vilification of his commander, Captain America, the way some of the men do, but he tells me when I stop by that he is disturbed by Captain America’s behavior, especially his attempted bayoneting of the Iraqi prisoner the other night. “I could be a lot more personal about my feelings toward the Iraqis,” Kocher says. “My wife is here. Her civil affairs unit is in Nasiriyah. I think about her every day and the things that could happen to her. But I don’t lose control over it.”

  Against his powerful forearms, the pen Kocher holds looks puny. The log he writes in is an account of the war he calls his “Bitter Journal.”

  “If something happens to me, I want my wife to know the truth,” he says. “If they say we fought valiantly here, I want her to know we fought retarded. They haven’t used us right—sending us into these towns, onto the airfield, with no observation.”

  Captain America approaches. One of the men by Kocher’s vehicle shouts a warning: “Here comes Dumbass.”

  Captain America’s within easy earshot of their comment, but he sticks his head under the cammie netting and greets the men with a forced, though somewhat wobbly, smile. “Everyone enjoying the day off?” he asks.

  The Marines freeze him out with blank stares.

  “We’re fine, sir,” Kocher says.

  The truth is, I feel sort of bad for Captain America. The way his men treat him reminds me of seeing a kid hazed and picked on on the playground. I sit down with him in the grass a few meters from Kocher’s vehicle. One on one, he seems likable but possesses an unfocused intensity that’s both charismatic and draining. When he stares at you, he doesn’t blink; his pupils almost vibrate.

  I ask him about complaints voiced by his men that he’s been a little too zealous in his shooting from the vehicle and in his treatment the other night of the EPW (it’s technically a war crime to strike, threaten or bayonet a man once he’s been captured). Captain America denies any wrongdoing. He asserts to me that in each instance where he’s employed violence, it’s always been in response to a threat, which perhaps his Marines didn’t perceive. “Each man sees things differently in combat,” he says.

  Then Captain America veers into Nietzschean speculation on the deadly nature of battle. “Some of us are not going to make it out of here. Each of us has to test the limits of his will to survive in this reality.” He leans forward and speaks in grave tones. “Right now, at any time, we could die. It almost makes you lose your sanity.” His pupils quiver with increased intensity. “The fear of dying will make you lose your sanity. But to remain calm and stay in a place where you think you will die, that is the definition of insane, too. You must become insane to survive in combat.”

  LATE IN THE DAY, Marines are told to expect warning orders for their mission in the assault on Baghdad. Fer
rando has figured out a way to get into the game. But other news circulating among the Marines has taken priority.

  Horsehead is dead. The beloved former first sergeant in First Recon, a powerfully built 230-pound African American named Edward Smith, was felled by an enemy mortar or artillery blast while riding atop an armored vehicle outside Baghdad on April 4. He died in a military hospital the next day. Horsehead, thirty-eight, had transferred out of First Recon to an infantry unit before the war started. News of his death hits the battalion hard.

  Marines in Bravo Company gather under the cammie nets, trading Horsehead stories. Reyes repeats a phrase Horsehead always used back home at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. Before loaning anyone his truck, which had an extensive sound-equalizer system, Horsehead would always say, “You can drive my truck. But don’t fuck with my volumes.” For some reason, repeating the phrase makes Reyes laugh almost to the verge of tears.

  Just before sundown, the Marines hold a memorial for Horsehead in their camp. About fifteen of them gather in the grass, next to an M-4 rifle planted upright in the dirt with a helmet on it. It’s drizzling in a gray, humid twilight. One of them reads a brief eulogy.

  Then they put their hands together, and their voices scream in unison as they chant the First Recon cheer in Horsehead’s memory: “Kill!”

  TWENTY-NINE

  °

  BY EARLY MORNING on April 8, Army and Marine armored units have maneuvered into Baghdad’s suburbs to the west, south and east. Under a ceaseless American artillery and aerial bombardment, they are getting ready for the final assault into the city center, set to begin after dark. Maj. Gen. Mattis is deeply concerned about the lack of American forces to the north of Baghdad. With his Marines oriented toward the center of the city, their northern flanks are exposed. His fear is that Iraqi Republican Guard units may be massing for a counterattack in a town called Baqubah, fifty kilometers north of Baghdad, getting ready to roll down and hit the Marines’ northern flanks.

  The problem is, Mattis doesn’t know what the Iraqis are doing north of Baghdad. For the past thirty-six hours, a low cover of dust and rain clouds has hampered American surveillance efforts. The farthest Marine checkpoint north of Baghdad sits about ten kilometers outside the city on the road to Baqubah. Marines have dubbed the checkpoint the “magic line.” Every time they’ve sent units to probe above the magic line in the past few days, the Marines have been hit by heavy fire. Recently, a platoon of about forty-five Iraqis attacked the Marine checkpoint and were repulsed after a short gun battle. After that, Iraqis tried to drive a car bomb into the checkpoint. It seems the Iraqis are up to something above the magic line, though it’s uncertain exactly what it might be.

  The weakness in the Marines’ northern flanks gives Lt. Col. Ferrando his opening to get First Recon back into the game. After consulting with Mattis, Ferrando has volunteered to take First Recon north of the magic line, assault through the enemy ambushes and push on to Baqubah.

  If the worst-case fears of Mattis are true, the Marines in First Recon will be confronting several thousand Iraqis in tanks. Baqubah is home to a Republican Division with a strength, on paper at least, of 20,000 soldiers equipped with 600 armored vehicles. Mattis knows that if the Iraqis come down in tanks, First Recon will be unable to stop them, but as he later tells me, “I knew that at least the Marines could slow them down for a few hours.”

  Even in the best-case scenario—if the Iraqi tanks aren’t active—First Recon will be dashing through forty kilometers of known ambush positions. They will be the only Americans operating in the region, and by the time they reach Baqubah, they will have gone beyond the range of Marine artillery.

  When Fick briefs his men on the mission early in the afternoon of the eighth, he tells them, “Once again, we will be at the absolute tippity-tip of the spear, going into the unknown. As soon as we step off, be prepared to engage and destroy targets of opportunity.”

  First Recon assembles a mixed force for the mission. Some 120 Marines in its best-equipped platoons will be joined by the ninety reservist Marines in Delta Company. In addition, First Recon will be accompanied by an LAR unit of some 100 Marines in twenty-four vehicles. This unit’s call sign is “War Pig.”

  Even though it’s clear to the Marines that on this mission they might be serving more or less as human speed bumps—to slow down a much larger Iraqi advance—the men are quietly excited. After a couple of days of rest, most are sick of being in the camp. It’s a hot, muggy afternoon, nearly 100 degrees in the shade. Flies breeding in Marine latrine trenches inside the camp, as well as on the dead livestock and human corpses outside the perimeter, infest the air. Several Marines in the platoon are suffering from the fever and dysentery that has plagued the unit since leaving Nasiriyah. But spirits are high as they load their vehicles. “I’m scared as fuck,” Lilley tells me. “But I started getting anxious here in this camp. It’s weird. I feel better knowing we’re going to go shoot things again and fuck shit up again.”

  “Fuck, yeah!” Person says. “It beats sitting around doing nothing while everybody else gets to have fun attacking Baghdad.”

  One thing the Marine Corps can bank on is the low tolerance for boredom among American youth. They need constant stimulation, more than late-night bull sessions, ravioli fiestas and Colbert’s now shredded, dog-eared copy of Juggs can provide. They need more war.

  COLBERT’S HUMVEE is ordered into the lead of First Recon’s convoy of about fifty vehicles as we leave the camp near five p.m. on April 8. Colbert stares out his window at the fading light, then mumbles something I can’t quite make out. I ask him to repeat it. “It was nothing,” he says. “I was just thinking about Horsehead. He was one hell of a man. Takes shrapnel to the head and winks out.”

  We enter the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, an industrial district of factories and warehouses. The streets are filled with newly liberated Iraqis in the throes of celebration. Though the city center will not fall for another twenty-four hours, freedom fills the air, along with the stench of rotting corpses, uncollected garbage and overflowing sewers. Trash piles and pools of fetid water line the edges of the road. Old women in black kneel in the puddles, gathering in jugs water that their families will boil and drink later.

  Smoke pours from bombed, burning buildings on both sides of the road. Ashes fall like snowflakes. Iraqis stream through the haze, hauling random looted goods—ceiling fans, pieces of machinery, fluorescent lights, mismatched filing-cabinet drawers. As we pass by, the looters wave and give us the thumbs-up—thanking the Marines for making all this possible. Some stand in clusters, chanting the words everyone in Iraq now uses to hail the American liberators, “Bush! Bush! Bush!”

  The bedlam continues for about ten kilometers. Explosions from the American assault now under way in the city center boom steadily. Kids crawl around twisted, blown-up Iraqi tanks by the road, playing on them or gathering scrap.

  Hundreds, if not thousands, of American military vehicles stream past us going south. First Recon’s convoy is about the only unit headed north.

  We roll into open mudflats and link up with the twenty-four LAVs of First LAR Battalion’s Charlie Company, call sign War Pig. With their eight wheels and upside-down bathtub shape, LAVs are among the strangest-looking war machines in the American arsenal. Designed to swim on the surface of the ocean as well as cruise on land, they have small propellers protruding from their rears, punctuating the oddness of their appearance. Because of their advanced optics and the devastating firepower, derived from the Bushmaster rapid-fire cannon each has mounted on its turret, Iraqis have nicknamed LAVs “the Great Destroyers.”

  For the Marines in First Recon, this is the first time they’ve started a mission with an armored escort. “Damn! That’s fucking awesome,” Person says. “We’ve got the Great Destroyers with us.”

  “No, the escort is not ‘awesome,’” Colbert says. “This just tells us how bad they’re expecting this to be.”

  As we pull out, following War
Pig toward the magic line, Colbert’s mood shifts from darkly brooding to grimly cheerful. “Once more into the great good night,” he says in a mock stage voice, then quotes a line from Julius Caesar. “Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

  Hunched over the wheel, his helmet weighted down with his NVGs, Person says, “Man, when I get home, I’m gonna eat the fuck out of my girlfriend’s pussy.”

  “Enemy contact,” Colbert says, passing on word from radio. “LAVs report enemy contact ahead.”

  JUST AFTER DARKNESS FALLS, War Pig’s lead LAV reaches the magic line and the Marine checkpoint, where coils of concertina wire block the narrow, asphalt highway. War Pig’s twenty-four LAVs are spaced about fifty meters apart in a single-file line stretching for more than a kilometer. Colbert’s Humvee is directly behind the rear LAV, with First Recon’s vehicles stretched behind his in a line that extends for another two kilometers.

  Minutes after the guards at the checkpoint pull the concertina wire aside to let the convoy through, a white pickup truck speeds toward the lead LAV in War Pig. Its crew observes the truck through thermal nightscopes as it comes to within a couple hundred meters of them, executes a screeching 180-degree turn and hauls ass north. Iraqis in the back of the truck open up on the LAVs with AKs. It’s nothing but harassing fire. The Marines guess the truck is acting as a “rabbit vehicle,” trying to entice them into a chase and, they expect, an ambush.

  The LAVs hesitate to cross the magic line. According to War Pig’s executive officer, twenty-seven-year-old First Lieutenant William Wennberg, thus far in the war when working with other units they’ve occasionally had to go through red tape in order to get cleared hot to engage enemy forces. They’ve never worked with First Recon’s Ferrando before, whom they refer to by his call sign, Godfather, and are uncertain how he will respond to the appearance of the rabbit vehicle shooting at them on the road.