It was as though there were two levels of asymmetric warfare being waged simultaneously. The first pitted the size and weight and technology of the Coalition forces against the relatively tiny number of underequipped insurgents. Lacking fighter jets and tanks and battalions of highly trained warriors, the insurgents fought back with suicide vests and car bombs, random mortar attacks and IEDs. They killed a lot of people and caused a great deal of damage but their greatest effect was political. They understood that a military victory was impossible, but that victory could be achieved by scaring the hell out of people and wearing them down and, finally, forcing them to question the viability of the course they were on.
The second asymmetric conflict was between the patriarchy of the Corps—with the traditional beliefs and practices that were embodied in many of the men who ruled the organization and that filtered down to the instructors who would too often set up females to fail. And eventually the word got down to the grunts in whom that message was reinforced. A small minority of the female Marines in their own small and random ways tried to mess with the system, thinking that maybe someone in power would notice or care or begin to make the changes that simple fairness and equity demanded. Or maybe they pushed back just to feel a little better for a short while. In either case, they did nothing so dramatic as blowing a seven ton into the air and making it and its occupants disappear. Instead, and individually, these few women may have changed a line in a marching cadence or named their Humvee Noodle and their weapon Pork Chop. Every now and then one committed suicide.
Mortuary Affairs bunker. Camp Al Taqaddum, Iraq, 2004. It was our platoon who filled sandbags and placed them on the roof. On one side the sandbags spelled: MA: NO ONE LEFT BEHIND and on the other side it read: HONOR RESPECT REVERENCE. (Author collection)
9
Fire and Rain
Marine commanders battling Moktada al-Sadr’s rebel militiamen in this Shiite holy city said Saturday that the fighting had cleared the rebels from the ancient cemetery in the heart of the old city …
The Marines described engaging in hand-to-hand fighting in the vast cemetery, which lies adjacent to the ancient Imam Ali mosque, a golden-domed shrine that is one of the holiest in Shiite Islam. The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which returned to Iraq recently after taking part in the American-led invasion last year, had endured the fiercest battle of all its engagements in Iraq, the commanders said.
“The engagements in the cemetery were done on foot, encountering numerous fighters at a range when you can smell a man, and it’s hand-to-hand combat,” said Col. John Mayer, who leads the battalion that took part in the fighting.
From: “Conflict in Iraq: Combat; Marines Pushing Deeper into City Held by Shiites,” by Alex Berenson and John F. Burns, The New York Times, August 8, 2004
Mortuary Affairs was fortunate enough to procure a television for the bunker, which we kept tuned to CNN all the time. Also, Cotnoir approached The Sir to ask if we could play music softly while we were processing remains. Thinking it would be disrespectful, The Sir refused initially, but once the exact nature and volume of our work became clear, he relented. We played James Taylor just about all of the time. I had always liked Taylor and hoped to continue to, so I tried not to listen to his music while we worked. I tried to block an association between the two, but that proved impossible. It turned out that on those occasions when processing was particularly difficult, lines from his Fire and Rain helped.
In Tent City, the preference among the younger Marines was for the loud, discordant music with repetitive lyrics that were frequently shouted, a style often found in rap and alternative heavy metal. It wasn’t unusual for a group of young men to gather around an X-box’s built in screen to listen to a song while watching the accompanying video. A favorite was Drowning Pool’s Let the Bodies Hit the Floor, in which scenes of soaring fighter planes, piercing missiles, and exploding tanks were accompanied by chants that nothing’s wrong with me and something’s gotta give, alternating with a count of, presumably, bodies hitting the floor.
Leaving Tent City for the bunker meant substituting the loud, raucous music that pumped up troops for battle, for the soft sound and gentle voice of James Taylor who was plaintively asking for the strength to get through another day, a day filled with loneliness, broken dreams, and flying machines in pieces on the ground.
One of our tougher days, the kind that the music helped us through, occurred after a platoon of Marines was on a security patrol. They were in a single file line with their packs and gear on, securing an area. When they finished they did a head count and realized that two Marines were missing. Marines don’t go missing. They don’t wander off. Marines do what they’re told. That’s who we are. It is good that two Marines are missing rather than only one. If there are two Marines unaccounted for, you know that both are somewhere together, which is better than if one were missing alone. The platoon sergeants alerted the men at the security posts stationed around the perimeter of the base. They were advised that if they saw two men with packs walking together, they were to hold fire. When nothing came back from the security posts, they called us.
An investigation charted the route the platoon had followed and we were sent out to find them. At one point the Marines were walking along the shore of a lake. Navy divers accompanied us, and soon enough they found the two. By the time they were pulled from the lake, they had been submerged for quite a while. The water made the remains swell. One man was so bloated and misshapen that we had difficulty carrying him properly in the litter. His neck was as wide as his bloated head and his stomach jutted out like a barrel. His testicles were the size of cantaloupes. His face was white and puffy and thick. Not fat, but thick. It was unreal. He looked like a movie prop, with thick, gray, waxy skin and thick purple lips. We couldn’t stop looking at these bodies because they were so out of proportion and so disfigured and because, still, they looked like us.
We didn’t usually look at the faces. Our minds would play tricks on us when we looked at the faces. We’d do minimal work on the face, only if there were a wound or a tattoo that had to be documented. Then we’d cover the face so we didn’t have to see it anymore, so we didn’t have to see the eyes. This time we couldn’t stop staring at the faces, especially the one that was so terribly distorted. We could tell from his face that he had struggled and had experienced extreme fright and anguish. He had a look of fear. His eyes were swollen and his mouth was pulled back in a look of shock. The other Marine’s face was calm. Calm as could be.
I interviewed their platoon members and documented their report but we still didn’t know what had happened. I wondered how the two men fell into the water. All Marines can swim. We are all trained to swim. We are trained to save others and ourselves from drowning. How did these two fall into that lake? We knew that one of them fell in and was momentarily unconscious when the second jumped in to save him.
That’s the thing about Marines: we completely put our lives in the hands of our fellow soldiers. I trust my life in the other Marine’s hands. Not only do I believe completely that he’s going to defend my life, I believe he’s going to save it. One hundred percent. I know with 100% certainty that he is going to save my life and that if he does not, he is going to die trying. The source of this belief goes all the way back to the beginning, all the way back to boot camp, where each Marine made the decision to die for the Marine next to him or her, and without thought. It has to be without thought because when the bullets are flying, you can’t be wondering about these things. This decision must already have been made. I know that the Marine, the calm one, didn’t even bat an eye. He immediately jumped into the lake, gear and all. I know that when Marines pack their gear and go out on patrol, they’re carrying at least 75 pounds. Our arms are through straps, our 782 gear is buckled around our waist, our flack is velcroed up. We are rocks. This man, without a thought, jumped in to save another Marine.
Processing these bodies was emotionally brutal, for too many reasons. There wa
s the shock and horror of the physical effects of the water on the bodies, the sadness of knowing we were sending some parents’ boys home looking the way they did. Yet, at the same time, there was pride in knowing that we were all a part of a group of human beings who were ready to give our lives for one another. And it’s not just pride. It’s accompanied by a crystal clear knowledge in our minds and a deep understanding in our hearts that our shared time here together is meaningful, and that meaning comes from our willingness to sacrifice for one another. This realization is something I wish I could have told the parents, spouses, and children of the Marines we sent home. I wish I could have said to the parents of one of them, “Your son died knowing that he was valuable enough for another to give up his life to save”; to the other set of parents, I would have said, “Your son gave his life trying to save another mother’s child.”
Some Iraqis seemed happy to see American soldiers, while others did not.(Photo courtesy of Bill Thompson)
10
Processing Iraqis
Four contractors working for the American-led coalition in Iraq have been killed and their bodies mutilated by a mob after their vehicles were ambushed in Fallujah.
Witnesses said the contractors’ two four-wheel-drive vehicles were forced to stop before the mob set them alight with some bodies still inside.
The 150-strong crowd chanted slogans such as “Long live Islam” and “God is greatest” as one member of the crowd kicked a badly burned body lying near the vehicles …
At least two bodies were tied to cars and pulled through the streets while another was doused in petrol and set on fire, witnesses said.
The mob then dismembered some of the bodies and hung the limbs from a pole. Two incinerated bodies were later hung from a bridge over the Euphrates.
From: “Iraqi Mob Kills Contractors in Ambush,” The London Telegraph, March 31, 2004
We processed the bodies of dead Iraqis too, as well as those of others who were fighting with us and against us and dying. It wasn’t possible to identify the nationality by the body itself, and there wasn’t always identification. After getting the remains, we tried our best to complete the paperwork, like we did with our own. We’d note distinguishing features, shade the missing parts black, describe the wounds, and so on. Often, the paperwork remained incomplete because there weren’t tattoos, there weren’t dog tags, there weren’t driver’s licenses.
Whenever we picked up Iraqis on convoys we showed respect, but on a couple of occasions we inadvertently stumbled. One time we arrived at a scene after a car bomb had exploded. Standing nearby was a mother and a father and their baby. I didn’t go but one of the Marines who did told me about it. We showed up to pick up or clean up or to help in any way we could. None of the victims was American or coalition forces. The woman, the mother, was screaming frantically, wailing, pointing at the Marines’ feet. A translator explained that the man was actually standing on the ashes of her baby. But there was no way he could possibly have known.
Another time we went out to pick up Marines and found a dead Iraqi man as well, and brought him back to the bunker. We notified the local towns that we had him and asked that the family come to get him, or, if the family preferred, we could bring him to them. We heard nothing. Nobody came for him. Days went by. We were getting other Marines to process and there was only so much room in the reefer. After twelve days during which no one came to claim him, we were told to bury him. The MA unit at Al Assad did the actual burying of Iraqis, following a specific procedure. The bodies were buried in long trenches, with at least 18 inches of soil between each body bag, and with each of the dead facing Mecca. After the grave was filled in, a Muslim military chaplain would recite the Islamic prayers for the dead. We would also mark the location of each body and keep a record of it in the event that family members eventually came to reclaim it.
In this case, that’s what happened. Days after the burial, the family came to Taqaddum looking for him. We sent them north to Al Assad. The Marines there dug up the body, which they then sent back to Taqaddum to ensure that the paperwork matched the man. When the body arrived, we had to open the body bag to identify the body. It was … terrible. This was a dead body. It had been dead for several weeks. It had been buried. We tried to do for the Iraqis what we did for the Americans we processed, especially when it wasn’t easy.
I remember hearing about a Marine who had an attitude about the Iraqi bodies we processed. He asked questions like, “Why are we processing these bodies when we are Americans and these are the people who we are fighting against? These might be the guys who are killing us!” Maybe we processed some insurgents but it’s hard to say. If the body was intact but missing an ID, it could have been an insurgent. If it remained unclaimed, it could have been an insurgent. To us it did not matter.
That sentiment wasn’t voiced again or by anyone else. For one thing, we knew plenty of Iraqis and, if they died, we felt responsible. For example, we had several Iraqis working on base, but slowly, after a couple of months, fewer and fewer of them came to work, then fewer and fewer still. One of the men from the restaurant who we had gotten to know wasn’t around anymore. We were told that other Iraqis warned him that if he continued to work on base, they’d kill his family. He explained that he didn’t have a choice, that he had to work, and he begged them not to follow through on their threat. When he returned home one night he found his entire family dead. He never came back to base. Other Iraqi employees were shot and killed by extremists for being associated with us. That tore at us.
We were all volunteers. We weren’t drafted. We weren’t forced to join. We all came to the Marines of our own accord. Mortuary Affairs itself was a volunteer platoon. If we didn’t want to be in MA we could have walked at any point. No consequences. We could have walked right out the door. If it were too hard to do the job the way it had to be done, we could leave.
We saw on CNN what was done to the American contractors in Fallujah. We couldn’t understand how someone could mutilate another human’s remains and drag them through the streets. The stereotype has many people believing otherwise, but most Marines didn’t go to Iraq to kill and maim. We volunteered to go to Iraq because we wanted to help, we went to change things for the better, to help make life better for the people of Iraq. It may sound self-serving, but that is the truth.
We processed enough Iraqis for us to build a room in the bunker dedicated to meeting the families who would come to pick up their relative’s remains. The Sir handled that responsibility and was helped out by Cotnoir who had similar experiences as a civilian mortician. After learning that the custom in Iraq during a tragic transaction like this was to sit with the family members and offer them tea, The Sir managed to buy an Iraqi tea set. The Sir would sit at a table with the deceased relatives, at least once with the parents of a young girl killed by an IED, and, as the custom required, say, “It is Allah’s will.” I don’t know where he found the strength, but he did, and we all admired him for it.
(Photo courtesy of David Leeson)
11
Toll
The Department of Defense announced today the death of three Marines who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Lance Cpl. Caleb J. Powers, 21, of Manfield, Wash., died Aug 17 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq….
Lance Cpl. Dustin R. Fitzgerald, 22, of Huber Heights, Ohio, died Aug 18, in a non-combat related vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq….
Sgt. Harvey E. Parkerson III, 27, Yuba City, Calif., died Aug 18 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq….
From: “DOD Identifies Marine Casualties,” www.defense.gov/releases, August 19, 2004
The Marines of Mortuary Affairs, as tough as any Marines anywhere, cried. Usually, the tears would come when they heard from home or were looking at the latest picture of their young daughter or heard that their girlfriend found another man. But I’m thinking the tears may have been caused more by what we were going through in the bunker and on
convoys. They also got physical. I think the Marine Corp attracts men who are physical. Most haven’t graduated from college. Many, when they are pushed, get angry rather than reflective, and tend to throw things rather than talk about them. It wasn’t uncommon for them to drop whatever they were doing and walk outside. They may wreck sandbags or throw their gear down to the ground. A civilian may throw his gear to the ground and a safe assumption is that he’s mad, but Marines don’t do that. Not only don’t we do that, we are trained not to do that. We’re taught that before our rifle hits the deck, we hit the deck. If a Marine deliberately throws his weapon to the ground, something is very wrong.
We lost two men from our original platoon who said that they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do it anymore, and left. Our jobs seemed to take a heavier toll on them. They ate less than the rest of us did, had difficulty sleeping, and cried more. One would take a box of Nyquil tablets every day and drink as much cold medicine as he could get his hands on but that only seemed to make matters worse. He had gone out on a particularly difficult convoy, to a tank that had been blown up, obliterated except for the tracks, leaving thousands of body parts—fingers and testicles and ears and pieces of tiny scraps of tissue to be collected. It was shortly after that when I heard that he was medevacked out.
Whenever the workload became too much for us to handle on our own, Marines from elsewhere were asked to help us out. Most couldn’t hack it and left after one or two shifts. A couple broke under the pressure and started doing what we all agreed was crazy shit, and they were “un-volunteered.” A Marine named Leslie stuck it out, even though we nicknamed him “Nancy,” seeing as how he already had a girl’s name. He didn’t mind. He was a very funny guy who tried to introduce a degree of levity into everything, even this heartbreaking and frightening work we were doing, and if calling him Nancy gave us a smile, he was happy to oblige. He would, in fact, respond to a name we had hoped would annoy him a little, with a dance. He’d rotate his hips rhythmically while swinging his arms around in circles.
Jessica Goodell & John Hearn Page 6