by Joshua Key
I coasted along knowing that I would eventually get home, but then I found out that it wouldn’t be anytime soon. After two weeks in the green zone, Skillings told us all to pack up our things. We would be leaving the next day for a “red zone”—by which Skillings meant another dangerous assignment—on the Syrian border.
We all groaned. The guys in my platoon had been hoping to be sent home together for a break. We all felt we had earned it after months of hard duty and countless mortar attacks.
“Nobody is going home yet,” Skillings said. “They need us for a tour of duty on the border. It’s rough up there,” he added. He told us that Americans had been meeting a lot of resistance near Syria. It would fall to us to stop terrorists from slipping over the border and into Iraq.
We loaded our armored personnel carriers onto fifteen flatbed trucks and spent two days crossing the desert. When you crawl at twenty miles an hour with all your hardware tied down on trucks, you feel a bit exposed—like a line of ants on a beach. Although our army helicopters occasionally swept by for protection, we didn’t stop for a moment. When I had to pee, I did like the others and aimed off the side of the truck. When other needs arose, I just had to wait. A military convoy doesn’t stop for bathroom breaks. At night, I sat on top of the APC, stretched out my legs, and looked up at the stars. Never had I seen constellations as bright as in the desert. Shooting stars made me think of falling mortars. Even looking at the most peaceful sight in the world, I could not get my mind off war.
I didn’t know we were going to al-Qa’im until I saw a sign in English. It was a large but poor and dilapidated town of 150,000 people on the banks of the Euphrates. It seems the waters of that seventeen-hundred-mile river flowed everywhere I went in the country. Perhaps, I sometimes felt, the river was keeping an eye out for me. With all the dangers we faced, something must have helped keep me alive.
There had once been a uranium extraction plant in al-Qa’im, but our American army had bombed it to smithereens in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. The main thing now, I was told, was to keep an eye on the border traffic and to shoot anybody who tried to slip into Iraq at night.
The entire 43rd Combat Engineer Company bunked in a warehouse by an old railroad station, a fifteen-minute drive east of town. The senior officers had their own rooms, but the rest of us—more than one hundred soldiers—slept together in one big room. Apart from our two-week break in the green zone, it was the first and the only time in Iraq that my platoon mates and I slept in a building that had not already been destroyed by American bombs. It was loud, having a hundred men snoring all at once, but at least I didn’t have to worry about the roof caving in.
After temperatures of around 120 degrees Fahrenheit in southern Iraq, the nights in al-Qa’im—perhaps 60 degrees or so—seemed bitterly cold. Gloves kept my fingers warm, and I wore a stocking cap on my head to keep off the chill and to ward off the sand. Storms blew in every few days, driving sand over me and all my possessions, even inside the warehouses. In the morning I would shake the layers of sand off my clothes and clean all the grit from my weapon.
In town, when I stood up on guard towers, I could see tanks blazing, jets racing, houses burning, and explosions in every direction. It looked like World War III out there.
Border duty took up most of our time in al-Qa’im, but we kept raiding houses as well. We took mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenades almost every day we worked at the border. They tended to fall on us in the late morning or early afternoon. As before, we could never see who was behind the attacks, but our men would shoot in what they hoped was the direction of the enemy. My weapon had stopped working and, failing to see the sense of it, I made no more efforts to have it fixed.
We often responded to mortar fire by raiding a house—any house—that seemed to be near the source of the attack. I was standing on a guard tower early one afternoon when another mortar attack erupted, followed by our own gunfire. When the battle ended our commander ordered us all into our armored personnel carriers so we could respond by raiding a house. Our three squads left the border, each in its own APC, made a quick turn, and came upon a middle-aged, gray-haired man walking at the side of the road. His hands were empty and nothing hung from his shoulders but a plain white robe.
From the first APC, a sergeant radioed to our vehicle, which was at the back. “Stop and apprehend that man,” he called out to us. “He’s in the area of enemy fire, so he’s got to be guilty.”
Specialist Barrigan, another squad mate, and I jumped out of our vehicle, grabbed the man, pulled him inside, and zipcuffed him.
Barrigan grabbed a billy club and started whacking the man on the head. When the man fell to his knees Barrigan continued to beat him in the ribs.
“I’ll keep his mouth shut,” Barrigan said as he pounded away; the man remained totally silent. He gave no indication that he could speak English.
I felt terrible for him, having to lie down and submit to that beating while soldiers kept their guns trained on him. When the man was dazed and motionless, Barrigan halted the beating. We returned to the border, dragged the man out of the vehicle, and brought him into an interrogation room.
He remained zipcuffed and silent. He sat on the floor bleeding from the back of the head. I felt sorry for the fellow and saw no reason for us to detain him. After an hour or so, while I stood outside guarding the door, an English-speaking Iraqi who worked at the border came into the room and spoke with Sergeant Padilla. When he addressed our victim in Arabic, the detainee spoke back angrily.
“Release this man,” our interpreter said.
“Why?” Padilla asked.
“He works here at the border. He just finished his shift. He was walking home when you grabbed him.”
Our men cut off the man’s zipcuffs, opened the door, and sent him walking back home for the second time that day. He received no explanation or apology.
A few days later our young interpreter Sayeed left us just as quickly as he had joined our company months earlier. He came to say good-bye.
“Why are you leaving us?” I asked.
“Captain Bower told me that I can’t go to America,” he said.
I shook my head. I was not going to repeat now what I had been telling him all along. Sayeed said it wasn’t worth staying any longer. Not for $20 a week. Not with the fact that Iraqis were threatening him for serving the Americans. And not after learning that all the promises made to him had been built out of thin air.
He extended his hand and I shook it warmly.
I thanked him for all the things he had brought us. I knew that a number of Iraqis had threatened to kill him for helping the American army, and I hoped that he managed to escape from Iraq before it was too late. I would never see him again, but I went on hoping that he and his relatives were safe.
My days at the border were long but straightforward. When the daily mortars fell on us, I took cover in a concrete shelter. As an American soldier, I could run into any building or shelter within reach when the attacks came our way. Although the mortars and grenades were aimed at us, they often fell near the drivers and passengers lined up in cars and semitrailer trucks waiting to cross over into Syria. Sooner or later, I was sure, travelers at the border would die—not because we killed them directly but because we drew fire in the very spot where they were trapped in their cars.
One of my jobs on the border was to inspect the cars and trucks leaving Iraq. People were allowed to take only five gallons of gas and five cartons of cigarettes out of Iraq and into Syria. My chief job was to find their extra stashes and confiscate them. Sometimes, when nobody was looking, I let the people go even when they were over the limit. I suspected that they were in desperate need of the gas and saw no good reason to deprive them of it.
Although my buddies and I worked as quickly as possible, we could do nothing about it when the Syrians decided to shut down their border. Sometimes, the
Syrian border closed for hours or even an entire day. This created a massive buildup of vehicles. The drivers and passengers could do nothing but wait for the Syrians to open their gates again.
When the border shut down unexpectedly, I sometimes passed the time by smoking and chatting with men who climbed down from their trucks.
One man asked where I came from.
“Oklahoma,” I said.
“Where is that?” he asked.
“In the south.”
“The south?” he repeated, still confused.
I was going to explain where it was located, but the
man raised his finger. He had something more pressing to ask.
“Your President Bush,” he began. “Is he a good
man?”
I turned to look in all directions. No American soldier was watching or was within earshot.
“He is a terrible president,” I said. “If it was up to me, I’d be with my wife and kids back home.”
The truck driver seemed shocked. I guess he had never thought that an American soldier would criticize his own leader.
“How long are the Americans going to be here?” he asked.
“Probably forever,” I said.
“We’ve got nothing to eat and no money to buy anything,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say to the man, so all I could do was give him a cigarette. He looked at it and raised his eyebrows.
“Mikado?” he said. “Don’t you have American cigarettes?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Can’t afford ‘em on soldier’s pay.”
He shook my hand and returned to his truck. As I watched him close the door, it struck me that if he made it through the day and got across the border, he’d probably be back a week later to wait again in the very same place. The only way truck drivers could make a living was to keep carrying goods back and forth across the border, no matter how dangerous the task.
Not long after a mortar attack on the border, I saw a man open his truck door and stumble outside. He had a hand over a gaping wound in his stomach. I feared that his guts would spill out of him. I asked one of our medics to help him.
“I don’t touch Iraqi blood,” the medic said.
I ran to the man and gave him some of my bandages, but I have no way of knowing if he survived that accident or if he managed to get the shrapnel extracted.
During my six weeks of duty in al-Qa’im, I was sent four times after mortar attacks to check on truck drivers who had been caught in their vehicles. On two of these occasions, dead men fell out from behind the wheel when I opened the truck door. The other two times I had to pull the dead drivers out myself and lay them out on the ground. True, the Iraqis were killing their own people with those mortars. Still, I felt responsible. We had drawn the fire, and innocent people had caught it. Each time I pulled a dead man from his truck, I wondered whom he had last hugged on his way out the door and if his loved ones would ever find out what had happened to him.
One day Sergeant Skillings received a care package from his wife. Inside was one of the most treasured gifts of all—a two-pound tin of ground coffee. Skillings let us all share in the proceeds.
Sergeant Fadinetz and I frequently stood guard together on a tower at the border. The coffee sent by Skillings’s wife helped us get through the all-night shifts on the tower. Fadinetz and I lugged a miniature, one-burner gas camping stove to the top of the tower, along with a percolator, the coffee, powdered cream, and packets of sugar. One night, while we stood sipping coffee, I heard a zing zing zing sound.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Dunno,” Fadinetz said. “Good coffee, though.” I heard it again. Zing zing zing.
“Sounds like mosquitoes,” I said.
I heard it again, looked behind me, and just a few feet away saw little explosions against the concrete wall. “Get down,” I shouted.
The next bullet grazed Fadinetz’s helmet. We dove to the floor. The sergeant and I both had functional weapons on the tower—another soldier had lent me his for the night—but when we radioed our commanders we were told to hold our fire. That ticked me off. I thought of all the times our men had beaten, shot at, and even killed Iraqi civilians. But now, in a firefight with bullets whizzing around me, I had to crouch low and hold my fire. Perhaps it was just as well that I was made to lie low and stay out of the firefight. Although the shooting went on for an hour, we escaped without injury. I don’t quite know how we managed to get through that night, but it didn’t hurt to have had the coffee sent by the wife of a platoon mate. We had good coffee, which was a rare treat in Iraq, but I had paid with yet another of my nine lives.
I worked at the border along with Iraqi officials and police officers. I checked the dates on passports while the officials read the details. I was supposed to teach the Iraqis the finer arts of ripping apart a car to look for hidden weapons and other forbidden materials. To protect the infrastructure of Iraq, no one was allowed to take windows, lumber, or building supplies out of the country. I became pretty good at ferreting out hiding spots—under boards in trunks, behind false walls, and even inside spare tires and jacks—but all I found hidden was gasoline and cigarettes. I found no sign of weapons and arrested no terrorists. One friendly police officer invited me home to have a meal with his family. I had to refuse, but he would sometimes bring me bread, cooked slices of lamb, and fruit. Once in a while drivers at the border gave me dates, and I usually passed them along to the police officer.
We had clear instructions about what to do if we saw people trying to sneak into Iraq at night when the border was officially closed.
Nobody was allowed to cross into Iraq at that time, and if I happened to see someone trying to do so I was to shoot to kill.
One morning at about one a.m., while I stood guard on a tower at the border, I spotted a man sneaking into Iraq. He was about two hundred yards from the gates that opened during the day for traffic.
I didn’t shoot at him myself; it was hardly necessary. The men in my platoon were stationed on various other towers at the border and they opened up with a barrage of fire. Some of the men climbed onto a Humvee, swung into place on a mounted, belt-fed, antiaircraft weapon consisting of two linked .50-caliber machine guns, and drilled hundreds of rounds at the trespasser. He somehow escaped the first blast of bullets and turned to run back into Syria. Still the men kept firing away and, after a blast of a weapon that normally would have been used against aircraft, the man’s head exploded.
We were sent out to find the body. All I saw was blood and guts, and I turned away from the carnage. I had already seen enough of it in Iraq to last me for a lifetime.
In the photograph on page 233 of this book I am standing next to an Iraqi man. He wears the traditional white robe. His wrists have been zipcuffed, and a burlap sack covers his head. I am expelling smoke from a cigarette. This photo was taken in al-Qa’im, and I cannot say exactly what motivated me to pose for it. One of my squad mates took the photo. I don’t think that any other soldiers posed with the prisoner, but most American soldiers did take photos when they had the opportunity. I did not beat the man, touch him, or threaten him. I never even saw his face. We picked him up from a little bungalow—serving as a miniature detention center—located at the headquarters of the second squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Two soldiers guarded the front door of the bungalow and another stood ready at the gate, where the prisoner was given over to my squad.
We were told to wait with him, just outside our armored personnel carrier, until we had authorization to take him to yet another location. There, I imagined, he would be held until he was driven somewhere else yet again, eventually arriving at some sort of major detention center.
I had no idea who he was, where he had come from, why he had been detained, or where he was being sent. This was typical of the few experiences I had with detainees. Except for the
ones I helped grab and zipcuff during house raids, I never saw where the men had been first taken into custody or where they were going. And rarely was I in a position to witness how they were kept. One morning in Ramadi, while I was sitting on top of my armored personnel carrier outside a little house controlled by men from another platoon in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, I saw soldiers open the door and push a naked prisoner outside. The prisoner looked like he was about forty years old. One soldier kicked him as he stumbled out the door and into the light, and another soldier kicked him as he passed through the gate. The detainee was sent to stand in the middle of the street, and for an instant I wondered why he had been brought out like that. And then, in full view of passersby, the naked man defecated in the street. I turned my head guiltily, but not before I had witnessed his humiliation. He stood up and was kicked on his way back inside the building. I never saw him again, and I don’t know what happened to him.
It would not be until much later, after I had deserted the army, that I heard of Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, or about the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of Americans, or about human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. While I was at war, I wondered where all the men that I helped arrest were taken, but at no time was I given any details or sent to any of the centers where they were held in large numbers. I only knew that we arrested every male over five feet tall that we found in our house raids and that I never saw one of them again in the neighborhoods we patrolled day in and day out.
In al-Qa’im, the detainee who was taken out of the bungalow and given over to my squad wore nothing but white boxer shorts and a rough sack over his head. We received no explanation as to why he was unclothed. Our orders were to wait with him at our armored personnel carrier until given authorization to drop him off with other soldiers. We gave him a white gown to put on, zipcuffed him, and kept him for thirty minutes until we were told to drive him a few miles to the drop-off point.
He didn’t say anything during the time we held him. I don’t even know if he spoke or understood English. Sergeant Fadinetz held a baseball bat ready, in case the man moved or attempted to resist, but he didn’t use it, and I didn’t see anybody lay a hand on the man or threaten. him. Finally, we dropped him off with soldiers from a different company.