House to House

by David Bellavia

  Ware and Yuri eat like us, too. They don’t bother with silverware, napkins, or table manners. They just dig in with their hands, soaking up gravy with swift swipes of bread across their plates, as if they don’t know how long they will have to eat or when they’ll get another meal. They devour everything. In any restaurant back home, they’d be asked to leave, but I’m warming up to them. Their manners are strangely appropriate for this room that formerly hosted autopsies.

  I’ve heard of Michael Ware. He’s a Time magazine journalist who developed deep ties to the insurgents in Baghdad. He embedded with the Mahdi militia during the summer 2004 offensive in An Najaf. On several occasions, he was nearly killed by American tank fire. Al Qaeda passed him beheading videos until he stopped accepting them in September. He also wrote a heart-stopping piece about a pitched firefight in Samarra. He is the face of Western journalism to the jihadists. He’s also an Aussie, a fact that he periodically plays up by emphasizing his accent.

  Around us in the chow hall, two worlds collide. Infantrymen suck their dinner-soiled fingers clean while elitist journalists fastidiously wield silverware and dab the corners of their mouths with napkins. It is too much for me. I dump my tray and flee into the safety of the night.

  In the darkness, I light a smoke and take a long drag. I pass a small courtyard and spot Chaplain Ric Brown with a halo of soldiers around him. They’re praying.

  At first, I can’t tell who is in the group. But as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I make out a few faces. One soldier has his head bowed, with a copy of the New Testament tucked under one arm.

  I find a wall and perch on it. The night swallows most of Chaplain Brown’s prayer, but I do catch a snippet or two. He is earnest, a good man who seems to rise above all the depravity we face outside the wire. We all respect him. Once, a couple of Georgian (former Soviet republic) soldiers started to rough him up after he ordered them to remove pornography from their computers. Every American in the area charged over to Chaplain Brown’s rescue.

  The prayer ends, and the men begin to drift away. I smoke in silence, thinking about my own faith, or what’s left of it. I have three brothers, two of whom graduated from seminary. One became a minister. When I was five, my two oldest brothers got into a wrestling match and one suffered a neck injury. I remember seeing him lying on the floor, choking and gagging as foam flecked his lips. I fell to my knees and prayed for him with everything I had. I didn’t know what else to do.

  A few minutes later, he opened his eyes. After that, throughout my childhood, I actually believed that I could save people with the power of my prayers. Later, when a family friend I prayed for died, I blamed myself for not praying hard enough. I had nightmares about those I had failed to save by somehow not praying with complete devotion. The guilt assailed me for months each time this happened.

  I take another drag from the cigarette and begin to walk again. I make a detour and head for the latrines. Just as I get there, a hand reaches out of the night and grabs my arm.

  “Sergeant Bellavia,” says the gentle voice of Chaplain Brown, “would you like to pray with me?”

  I am a Christian, but my time in Iraq has convinced me that God doesn’t want to hear from me anymore. I’ve done things that even He can never forgive. I’ve done them consciously; I’ve made decisions I must live with for years to come. I am not a victim. In each instance, I heard my conscience call for restraint. I told it to shut the fuck up and let me handle my business.

  All the sins I’ve committed, I’ve done them with one objective: to keep my men alive. Those kids in my squad, those kids of mine, they are everything. My wife doesn’t understand this job or why I do it. My son is too young. My dad wouldn’t get it if I tried to explain. My mom would have a heart attack. The need to keep my men alive makes everything else negotiable, and everyone and everything a potential threat.

  My mind flashes to April 9 again, when we burst into a house full of men, women, and children. I separated the men. The children screamed. The women sobbed hysterically. My squad found AKs and an RPK machine gun in closets around the house. They were still warm, and the men reeked of gunpowder. They laughed at our situation as our Bradleys fired and rockets boomed outside.

  One man waved his finger and mockingly lectured me, “Geneva conventions. You must do good, Amreekee. You good Amreekee.”

  I couldn’t leave them in the house with one of my soldiers as a guard, as we were already short of men. I couldn’t leave them alone either. They would have shot us in the back as we left. I decided to flex-cuff them to their front gate, and return for them after the fight ended. But as we left the house and advanced up the street, a wave of machine-gun fire ripped over us. I looked back. The four men had somehow broken loose from the gate and were running for it in all directions. A Bradley cut one down, and as the 25mm shells hit him, he exploded. His flex-cuffed arms spun across the street and smacked to the pavement.

  One bound insurgent started to crawl back to his compound. A bearded man from another house ran out to cut his flex-cuffs loose with large pruning shears. I moved into the open danger area and shot the rescuer repeatedly. My rounds sparked off his shears as they shattered into pieces.

  Machine-gun fire raked the ground around us. The flex-cuffed insurgent doubled over, hit by an errant enemy bullet. Writhing in pain, he began to scream only feet away from his own house. His family heard him, and two sobbing children came out to see what had become of their father. I tossed a smoke grenade that scattered the children back to the safety of their home. I did it to keep the kids from getting harmed, but also to deny their father a chance to say good-bye. My brothers who died in the field got no such opportunity to say good-bye to those they loved, and I will afford none to this man. I wanted him to die alone, shrouded in smoke, choking on his own blood.

  Their father, utterly despondent, stared at me with pleading eyes as the white smoke filled the air around him. He died without another chance to see his children. I robbed him of his final earthly joy. I delighted as I watched his life ebb away. It felt just.

  What have I become?

  As the youngest of four boys in our devout family, I was once considered the weakest link. Every son had at least a master’s degree, some had two. I struggled through most of college but failed to graduate. I was the son who had to be sheltered and protected.

  That came to a boiling point shortly after my twenty-third birthday when I moved back home. I was out in my parents’ backyard when I heard a commotion inside the house. When I went to investigate, I ran right into a pair of crack-addled burglars ransacking the living room. My mother had just returned home after a serious surgery and was unable to move out of bed. My father stayed in the doorway to the bedroom, ready to protect her.

  The hoods jeered and laughed, seeing me as no threat at all. I fled downstairs to the basement and found my father’s shotgun. I held the weapon, but realized I was not prepared to use it. I didn’t even know how. I stood there, shotgun in hand, unable to move from the basement as the two hopheads terrorized my parents and robbed us. Slowly, I put the weapon away. I didn’t know how to use it, and I would probably be a danger to my own family with it. Instead, I found a baseball bat.

  When I reappeared, the hopheads howled with derision as they carried off our valuables. One of them held a knife in his hand. He cut cables from the back of the entertainment center and picked up equipment to take to his car. I couldn’t intimidate them, and I could not find the strength to attack them. As they made one more circuit through the house to look for valuables, they ignored me completely. I stood paralyzed with fright and watched them.

  As they got into their car outside, my father came out of the bedroom and stared at me with a mixture of disgust and pity. I was still the timid little boy he and my mother had had to shelter from the real world. I was not yet a man, even at twenty-three.

  I tried to rally. My legs broke free of their paralysis and I found myself in the front yard, chasing the burglars as they bega
n to drive away. I took one swing with the bat and splintered their windshield. But then they were gone, their stoned laughter lingering behind them.

  I could hardly face my family. I was a coward that day. I had let everyone down and proved that I couldn’t take care of myself, let alone protect the ones I loved the most.

  I joked that Steven Sondheim was the reason why I joined the army. In my most honest moments, I have to confess that it was the look on my dad’s face that day. That look shamed me, and the humiliation drove me to join the army in search of the heart and spirit I so desperately lacked. I needed to understand courage. I needed to become a man.

  Six years later, the boy who failed his family that day is long dead. The man who replaced him is at ease with fear. It is his motivation. Anger, aggression, hate—they have smothered that timid disposition. In a matter of days, I will be the home invader this time, only those I find inside Fallujah’s houses will not be high-strung boys paralyzed by fear. They will be cold-hearted killers stoked by religious fervor, soaked in adrenaline and dope.

  That’s fine.

  I am a killer now, too. I want to kill. I yearn to kill my enemies.

  Am I beyond redemption?

  “Sergeant Bellavia?” Chaplain Brown now prompts again.

  I don’t know what to say. He moves closer to me, and I see the sincerity on his face. It rattles me. I start to laugh to break his focus, but he stares right back at me. My faith is being tested, and I know I do not measure up to what He wants from me. That is hard to face.

  I want to ask Chaplain Brown how God will forgive such things. But he is too good of a man to burden with a replay of the horrors I’ve perpetrated—my arrogance and lack of mercy. I want to tell him that I am not like those other scared kids. I do have faith, but I don’t want to talk to God after the things I’ve done. I don’t know how.

  Chaplain Brown, there have got to be other people who need you more. Go talk with those who can be saved.

  I cannot verbalize any of these thoughts. All I can do is bow my head as Chaplain Brown takes my hand.

  “Lord, give this young man the strength and wisdom to protect his soldiers. Give him the courage and conviction to deliver them from the unknown. Give him the faith and guidance to know your path, Lord. Give him the perseverance to stay on it. In Jesus’s name, we pray. Amen.”

  I know, when I return home, I will be an alien amid tranquility.

  Chaplain Brown’s prayer makes me think of my future. It leaves me cold with fear. I feel alone. The chaplain stands beside me, his hand in my hand. The silence is a gulf between us.

  Chaplain Brown squeezes my arm and departs, unaware of his impact on me.

  Give him the courage and conviction to deliver them from the unknown.

  An hour later, I meet with Sims, Iwan, and Fitts for a final briefing. We’ll roll out in the morning, and our mission is now defined. Sims details the assault plan, and explains our job with step-by-step precision. Each platoon will play a different part in the initial attack.

  Fallujah is a city designed for siege warfare. From the studs to the minarets, every goddamned building is a fortress. The houses are minibunkers with ramparts and firing slits cut into every rooftop. The mosques are latter-day Persian castles with concrete walls three feet thick. Within those walls, the courtyards offer perfect ambush points from every window. Even the shops and the local markets are fortified. Block after block, Fallujah is a sophisticated deathtrap.

  Architecture aside, the insurgents have had months to prepare for this battle. They’ve dug fighting positions, mined the streets, booby-trapped the houses, built bunkers, and cleared fields of fire. Every road into the city is strong-pointed, mined, and blocked with captured Texas barriers. Fallujah is shaping up to be the Verdun of the War on Terror. We face a battle of attrition fought within a maze of interlocking fortresses. Attrition is such a sterile word. We’ll be trading our lives for theirs.

  Sims makes it clear that our initial objectives will be heavily defended. The insurgents have deployed foreign fighters on the city’s approaches. They form the outer crust of their defense-in-depth, so we will face them first. Intelligence reports tell us we’ll face Syrians, Iranians, Saudis, Filipinos, even Italians and Chechnyans. They’re well trained, ideologically motivated, and armed with ample ammunition and equipment. They’ve trained for years to kill us infidels. Some have cut their teeth in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Somalia. They are veterans just like us—a regular Islamist all-star team.

  “We can expect possibly thirty-percent attrition at an urban breach like this,” Sims tells us.

  I’ve been writing down everything Sims has said. Now I pause and stare at the initial casualty estimate.

  Thirty percent just to get into the city? There is no way we can keep everyone alive.

  “Once inside the city, obviously we will not use the main roads. They are all heavily IED’d. Our lead tracks must create their own paths with the help of the engineers. Look over the maps; we’ll have to improvise most of these routes.”

  Captain Sims flicks open a nearby laptop and shows us a gun-camera video shot by an Air Force F-16C.

  “This is the neighborhood we’ll be in. The Askari or Soldier’s District,” he says as he runs the video.

  The F-16 drops a 500-pound satellite-guided bomb. It falls onto one of the main roads into Fallujah—a street we will have to use during our advance. A cloud of smoke and flames mushrooms from the impact point. A split-second later, a series of flashes bloom along the street.

  The bomb set off almost twenty improvised explosive devices just on that one road alone. We watch in silence. Soon, the entire street is obscured by smoke. It is a sobering sight. Had a dismounted platoon been in the middle of something like that, there’d be nothing left to identify.

  “I am not going to rattle off what the acceptable attrition is according to command, gentlemen. We will seize Highway 10 and push into the industrial district. Expect some of the heaviest fighting in this area. Foreign jihadists will use hit-and-run tactics, but there are enough fighters in the city for them to have a mobile reserve. We could face counterattacks during the first day. The enemy has the forces to mass against us.”

  “Just like in Muqdadiyah, there will be no calling in a medevac chopper once you’re in the city. It’ll be too hot for the Blackhawks. We’ll ground-evac our casualties to this cloverleaf east of the city.”

  The bad news continues as Captain Sims closes the laptop and turns to us. “We expect the insurgents have stockpiled drugs. We’ll be facing fighters hopped up on dope again.”

  I look over at Fitts, and I know what he’s thinking. If this is true, these guys are going to be hard to kill. In Muqdadiyah, my squad watched a drug-crazed Mahdi militiaman charge Cory Brown’s Bradley. He climbed up the front glacis plate, screaming like a lunatic. The gunner blasted him with coax machine-gun fire, shredding his legs. He tumbled off the Bradley and flopped faceup onto the street. As we approached him, he started to laugh. The laughter grew into a hysteria-tinged cackle, then ended with a bone-chilling keen. That froze us cold. Watching us with wild eyes, he then pulled a bottle of pills out of a blood-soaked pocket and drained its contents into his mouth. Then he went for something under his jacket. Thinking he was about to detonate a bomb vest, three of us opened fire and riddled him with bullets. We shot and shot until he finally stopped moving.

  Leaving my men behind, I went to investigate the corpse. His right arm was torn off. His legs were nothing but punctured meat. Most of his face was gone, and only a bloody lump remained of his nose. Both eyes had been shot out. I put a boot on his chest. The Mahdi militiaman didn’t move. I kicked him. No movement. Given how many times he had been shot, I didn’t expect anything else, but just to be sure, I shot him twice in the stomach. Then I marked him with a chem light so the body disposal teams could find him later that night.

  A few minutes later, a Blackhawk landed and we started loading wounded insurgents into it. While we worked,
two men carried the shattered husk of that Mahdi militiaman to the helicopter. To our astonishment, he was still alive. Blood bubbles burbled up through his mangled nose and mouth. Blind, in agony, he still managed to scream through broken teeth and punctured lungs. We loaded him on the helicopter and never saw him again.

  We later discovered the Mahdi militia had gained access to American epinephrine—pure adrenaline that will keep a heart pumping even after its owner has been exposed to nerve gas or chemical weapons. A dude with that in his system is almost superhuman. Short of being blown to pieces with our biggest guns, he’ll keep fighting until his limbs are severed or he bleeds out.

  At the end of the briefing, Captain Sims brings in visitors: reporters who are going with us into Fallujah. The battalion has already determined who goes with what unit. Lieutenant Colonel Newell and the battalion staff have cornered the network TV types, leaving us with the apparently less desirable print and cable journalists. A New York Times reporter is slotted to go in with First Platoon, Alpha. Third Platoon receives Michael Ware and his Russian photographer.

  We have to decide which squad gets to babysit these two. I don’t want them. Fitts doesn’t either. We already have a pair of outsiders to take care of. Two Air Force forward air controllers, Senior Airman Michael Smyre and Staff Sergeant Greg Overbay, have joined us for the operation. They know nothing about infantry combat, and I suspect they’ll be a liability once the shooting starts.

  Earlier in the week, one of the Air Force guys had asked me to give him some room-clearing lessons. It was far too late in the game for that, so I told him, “Don’t worry about that. Worry about calling in the bombs. I swear nothing will happen to you. The only thing that will bleed will be your hemorrhoids from sitting too long on a Bradley’s bench.”