This was war. No rules, no judge, and no jury . . . only executioners.
At the next base, I met a huge Y2J fan who was so excited to meet me that he showed me around his barracks and invited me to be his roomie. We formed a makeshift improv comedy team called Coffee and Cream, since he is black and I am white (you are blind as a bat and I have sight), performing bits and spewing punch lines in front of the ever-present WWE cameras.
The next day, Team Cock ’n’ Ballz split up and my new group was made up of Dean Malenko, Carlito, JBL, Ron Simmons, and Mickie James. We flew into a town called Taji and once again were greeted by a friendly commander with a firm handshake, who told us how happy he was to have us there. He took us over to our meet-and-greet, where the majority of the guys (there were hardly ever any women this far outside the wire) were most excited to meet and greet Mickie. She was the star of the show, signing autographs and taking pictures for every soldier whether they knew who she was or not.
After another lively visit, we split up into two choppers and were whisked off toward Tarmiyah, the farthest city outside the wire that anybody in the WWE (or any entertainer, for that matter) had been to. Tarmiyah was a war-torn former Al-Qaeda stronghold that the U.S. Army had overtaken. We were told that even though it was under control, it was still classified as an “unsecured WAR ZONE,” which meant that they thought they had forced all of the terrorists out of the city but didn’t know for sure. It looked like something out of Platoon: half-standing bombed-out buildings with smoke drifting over the rooftops and wafting through the open windows of the burned-out husks of cars that sat unoccupied in the deserted streets.
We hovered over a dusty parking lot as the surrounding trees bent back from the force of the wind created by the chopper blades. Then just as we started to descend, I heard a loud bang, and smoke began to plume up from the ground.
This is it, I thought, we are being attacked! My heart raced like Jeff Gordon as we landed quickly in the lot, with smoke and dust rising all around us. We were still in one piece as we weren’t being attacked; rather, smoke bombs had been set off to camouflage our arrival and make it harder for any insurgents to target us as we landed. That was the second time in a day I’d been considered a target and I wasn’t down with that clown at all.
We hopped out of the chopper and this time, there was no smiling official waiting to shake our hands and tell us how great we were. Instead, there was a fully armored soldier waving his arms, shouting, “Go! This way! This way!” Dean and I started jogging confusedly in the direction the soldier was pointing and as we headed toward a dingy orange-colored building, I took stock of my surroundings. The smoke was dissipating and the dust was settling, which made it easier to make out the random fires burning and the dead dogs lying all around. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I was scared, and felt my heart fluttering like a spastic butterfly in my chest. They hustled us down the dusty path flanked by barbed wire fencing, as soldiers hid in the trees with machine guns held up to their faces, scouring the area for danger. I got the impression that if someone . . . anyone . . . off our beaten path moved too fast, they would be shot. We were all in a dead run at this point and as I was rounding a corner, a bigger bang (and I ain’t talking about Charlie Watts) went off beside me. I screamed, convinced my arm had been blown off and I’d have to carry it around with me for the rest of the tour like that guy in the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan. Thankfully, it was just another camouflaging smoke bomb, and even though we were all still in one piece, it had shaken us up pretty badly. Especially Ron Simmons, who growled, “All this for a meet-and-greet? I would have just mailed them a fuckin’ autograph.”
—
We finally made it to the command post, which was essentially a converted youth center, and were quickly ushered inside. We knew we were in uncharted waters when the first thing the commander said was, “What the hell are you guys doing here? Nobody comes out this far!”
It really hit home just how far into the danger zone we were, when even the soldiers thought we were crazy for being there.
We gathered in a communications center, which wasn’t the high-tech army installation I was expecting, but a total shithole. The dilapidated walls were streaked with rusty water stains, and cobwebs festooned (awesome word) every corner. The tiny control room was equipped with the type of old-school radio equipment you would see Radar O’Reilly using (I know it’s the second M*A*S*H reference of this book, but I loved that show when I was a kid, ya dig?) and might as well have been controlled by a crank. It was strange to me that while I could still text my wife, Jessica, in Florida with my smartphone, these guys seemed to be using equipment that came out when Pong was all the rage.
Once again, we were briefed on our situation, this time by the base leader who explained that Tarmiyah had been overrun by insurgents until our troops came in and secured it sector by sector over a six-month period with a total of seventy-five sectors. They had all the roads blocked in and out of the city, and the Al-Qaeda operatives were gone, or so they thought. They weren’t completely sure that there still weren’t a few renegades hiding within the ruins of the city, which is why they still classified it as an unsecured WAR ZONE.
The soldiers stayed for eighteen-day periods inside the control center, and since there was no running water or showers, they brushed their teeth with bottled water and stayed dirty. All they had to eat were MREs (meals ready to eat), which were nonperishable foods that came in thin silver tubes and were available in two flavors: tuna fish or chipped beef. I’d never tried an MRE before and decided to indulge, in spite of the warnings from soldiers who told me, “You’re not gonna like it!”
They were right.
The tuna fish and the chipped beef tasted exactly the same, like cowshit-flavored cardboard. I gagged and forced down the swill with some lukewarm water, desperately trying to cleanse my pallet. I grabbed a piece of chocolate, which tasted like sweetened cowshit-flavored cardboard, and promptly spit it out as a handful of soldiers stood around giggling. The only things they had that tasted normal were Pringles and orange Gatorade, the cornerstone of any balanced breakfast.
The sleeping area was a large open room with army-issue cots side by side, wall-to-wall. Each one had a personal item stashed underneath to distinguish it from the rest: a book, a picture frame, a guitar (I should’ve strummed a few chords since I was the best guitar player in the WWE). There was a small, primitive gym set up on the side, like the kind I had in my high school (Westwood Collegiate represent, yo): sand-filled plastic plates, a bench where the resting arms were too close together to get a proper pressing grip, larger weights made of poured concrete, whatever they could piece together to use for some kind of workout.
In the middle of the compound was a small concourse where the guys hung out, shooting baskets, smoking, talking about home, smoking, playing cards, and smoking. They gathered around a small campfire, sitting on lopsided cushioned backseats they’d ripped out of the deserted cars throughout the city.
We signed autographs and took pictures, and while some of the guys didn’t know who we were, all of them were very appreciative of our presence, excitedly telling us all about their home lives. When one corporal told us he was going home in a few days to get married, Simmons cracked me up again by saying, “Married? Damn, you’re going from one war zone to another, aren’t you?”
Luckily, my home life was the farthest thing from a WAR ZONE and since the moment I landed in Iraq, I’d constantly checked my pocket to make sure I had my phone. It was my security blanket, my lifeline back to the sanity of a peaceful world and my beautiful wife and family. And the fact I could still communicate with them via text made me feel a little better about my situation.
After ninety minutes of hanging out with the soldiers, we were getting ready to leave, when we were told that there was a problem. One of the choppers we had flown in on had landed on a steel girder that had punctured through
its floor, and since combat helicopters travel in pairs for safety, we had to wait until another one could arrive before we could go. To make matters worse, a serious dust storm was brewing, which was delaying the second chopper’s arrival. In other words, we were stranded in an “unsecured WAR ZONE” indefinitely, and for the first time since I got to Iraq, I wasn’t completely sure that I was gonna leave.
Left to die with only friend, alone I clenched my phone. . . .
Unsecured War Zone
With the uncertainty of when we were going to be able to leave the base setting in, we started getting restless. Some of us sat outside, trading war stories (literally) with the soldiers, some lifted weights, and others hung out in the control center trying to chart the second chopper’s progress. Lilian Garcia (who sings the best “Star-Spangled Banner” I’ve ever heard) got scolded after ignoring the warnings not to feed the scrawny mongrels that were wandering around outside the command center. It was a big no-no because the dogs carried parasites and fleas, and many of them were dangerously rabid, so feeding them caused them to hang around expecting more, which made them a safety and health risk to the soldiers. The dogs were promptly shot and Lilian (she wasn’t the only one) was devastated.
I didn’t kill any dogs, but I did kill some time by working out in the makeshift gym, curling tomato tins that had been filled with cement and had a metal handle embedded in the middle. I watched a couple soldiers jumping skateboards over a row of plastic gas cans and they were pretty damn good. Then again, if I was stuck in that hovel for eighteen days, I woulda been Jason Ellis too.
I started wondering what exactly it was that the soldiers were doing there. I mean, were there times when they came under fire or was their presence just a preventive measure at that point? I asked a few of them that question and one of them beckoned me over, pulling out his phone.
“Check this out,” he said.
He showed me an image of a weird soupy, sludgy mass, like someone had spilled a bowl of oatmeal and then drawn a face on it. It took me a few seconds to figure out that it really was a face belonging to a head that had been caved in by bullets.
Let me ask you this: Have you ever seen an actual dead person before? I hadn’t. I mean I’d seen them in the movies and on TV, but looking at this photo of a distorted head was making me feel queasy.
The soldier explained that the disfigured head belonged to an insurgent sniper who’d stationed himself on a rooftop three hundred yards away from the compound. He’d picked off a number of the soldiers around the command center, some of them dying in the arms of their friends. Finally they decided to eliminate the problem and stormed the apartment block where the sniper was holed up.
They busted through the front door of the barricaded building and the terrorist dashed up the stairs to escape, with the soldiers giving chase directly behind him. The insurgent ran through a rooftop door at the top of the stairs and tackled the first soldier who followed behind him, pinning him to the ground and trying to stab him with a hunting knife. The soldier threw his arm up and luckily was able to block the knife from plunging into his chest. The two of them were locked in a battle to the death, rolling back and forth, trying to gain control of the knife. Finally the other troops wrestled the terrorist off and shot him in the head, killing him instantly.
I was introduced to the soldier who had narrowly survived the attack, and the kid couldn’t have been more than nineteen years old. He described his brush with death and explained he was certain he was going to die, screaming for somebody to help him and expecting the knife to penetrate his chest any second. I looked into his oddly placed eyes (they were almost on the sides of his head) and realized he would be carrying the horror of that moment with him for the rest of his life. I’m sure he’s still having nightmares about it to this day.
Afterward, I was taken to the medical center, which was really nothing more than a few tables pushed together with some field dressing kits stacked in the corners. I noticed a chart on the wall with Wins, Losses, Ties written in black marker at the top. Under each column were four lines with a fifth crossing through, like the markings a prisoner would write on his wall to count down the number of days until his release. The wins had three full sets of lines plus two, the losses had one full set plus one, and the ties had two full sets plus two. Wins stood for the soldiers on the base who had been shot over the last year and had lived. Losses stood for the soldiers who had been shot on base and had died. And Ties stood for guys who had been shot on base, survived, and died elsewhere after being restationed.
As I was counting the number of losses, a private approached me, saying he was a big fan and wanted to say hi. I noticed he had a small angel tattooed on his trigger finger and asked him why. He explained that when he was in high school, he and his best friend decided to join the army. They enlisted together in Seattle, trained together, shipped out together, and ended up in the same company in Iraq. Two weeks after they arrived, the same sniper that had almost stabbed Wide Eyes shot his best friend in the head and killed him. The private got the angel tattoo as a tribute to his friend, who he felt would always be looking out for him from heaven, keeping his trigger finger true.
After hearing rumors that the dust storm was going to force us to spend the night in Tarmiyah, we were informed that a chopper was coming for us in ten minutes and we HAD to be ready. The window of time for us to take off and beat the storm was slim, so we threw on our flak jackets and helmets in preparation. Ten minutes later, the smoke bombs went off and our chopper landed in a giant cloud of dust. We scrambled aboard as the chopper’s blades sliced through the air, pelting us with rough sand.
With all of us onboard ready to take off to safety, a soldier came running across the open field, waving his arms in a Stop, Stop, Stop motion.
Don’t stop! I thought to myself. Lift off and let’s get the fuck out of here before it’s too late!
The guy continued to make a beeline toward us, and the pilot motioned he was going to have to wait to see what he wanted. I was freaking out at this point, yelling above the whirring blades to anybody who could hear (which was nobody), “SCREW THIS GUY! We have to get out of here now!”
He ran up to the open side of the chopper and yelled as loud as he could, “WHOSE PHONE IS THIS??”
Phone? You mean we weren’t taking off from this hellhole because some idiot forgot his cell phone? Which one of these morons forgot his phone? Simmons? JBL? Funaki?
It was mine.
I’d taken it out of my pocket while working out and this soldier found it in the nick of time. I thanked him sheepishly while nine sets of eyes bored holes in me as we lifted off the ground.
My bad.
Standing in front of a giant statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The detail is immaculate, even down to the war medals hanging around his neck and the crease of his tie.
The next day, the show at Camp Liberty was a huge success, as the troops packed the parking lot area and the makeshift bleachers set up around the ring. All of them were in full uniform, holding up signs proclaiming where they were from, their wives’ and kids’ names, and the names of their favorite wrestlers. It was the ultimate feel-good show, with all the good guys winning, highlighted by the surprise return of John Cena, who had suffered a shoulder injury a month before and was still in a sling. He came to the ring disguised as Santa and attacked a cranky Vince McMahon for being such a Scrooge. Santa’s voice was this horribly high-pitched, over-the-top campy whine, similar to the one Chris Farley used in the SNL skit when the waiters asked him if he would like some fresh ground pepper on his salad.
“Why, YES! I’d LOVE some fresh ground pepperrrrrr!” Farley replied, cracking up the cast and the audience.
Cena’s delivery was much more ridiculous and whammo . . . Fresh Ground Pepper Santa was born. To this day, any reference to that spicy St. Nick still makes the two of us laugh.
At the end of the s
how, the entire crew came out to the ring (save a recently Attitude Adjusted Vince McScrooge), and did a massive curtain call. We threw presents to the crowd, shook hands, took pictures, and signed more autographs. I even found the other half of the world-renowned wacky duo “Coffee and Cream” and got him some well-deserved screen time by giving him a huge high five and a hug.
The experience was honestly one of the best and most gratifying of my entire career. Despite my initial reservations about going, I was ecstatic that I went. So much so that I went straight to Vince after the curtain call and requested to return the following year. He obliged and I was booked on the tour the next year and the year after that too.
So I’d like to say thank you to every member of the United States Armed Forces who is reading this book right now. If I had the pleasure of meeting you in Iraq during my tours there in 2007–09, I hope I made your life a little brighter the same way you did mine.
Ask Him!
When I first started getting a push in World Championship Wrestling in early 1998, I figured out I needed a catchphrase if I wanted to stand out from the pack. Something that would instantly identify my fans the same way Hulkamaniacs defined Hulk Hogan’s. I came up with Jerichoholics (if you want to get the rundown on exactly how it was created, read the modern-day classic A Lion’s Tale, now available on Kindle) and since then, I’ve created many other catchphrases, some of them classic, some of them crappsic. So I thought it would be fun to go through them and explain their origins and if you don’t agree, then skip to the next chapter, ya Sourpuss!
The Best in the World Page 3