House to House

by David Bellavia

  Sammy, a former Republican Guard weapons’ sergeant, felt especially close to what he considered his own commander, Sean Sims. As Barreto carried Seyford and helped Overbay out of the house, Sammy lifted heavy fuel drums so that the American soldiers could cross over the walls to be evacuated.

  As they evaluated their wounded, Sammy was an emotional wreck. Tears streaming down his cheeks, Sammy knew what none of the other soldiers giving aid to the two wounded soldiers had yet to realize. Captain Sims had died inside that house.

  Not since Vietnam had a unit lost so many leaders in one battle. Our immediate chain of command, Lieutenant Meno excepted, had fallen to enemy fire. Iwan. Sims. And our most senior enlisted man, Faulkenburg.

  Captain Walter, who was living in Sims’s room at the base to protect his stuff from roving pillagers, caught a Blackhawk and flew to Fallujah to take over Alpha Company. Sims was his best friend, and he grieved more than anyone.

  “Fuck the photos! Fuck shaving!” I hear First Sergeant Smith scream to Captain Walter. Sergeant Major Bohn is with them now. He nods his head. Smith is still livid, “All they want is fucking food, sir. Enough of the bullshit. They don’t know what these kids have been through.”

  Before Doug Walter arrived to lead A company, First Sergeant Peter Smith became the acting commander. During a time of great stress, with his company reeling from all the tragic losses, Smith became a steady presence and brought his company to fight only fifteen minutes after losing Sean Sims.

  General Batiste is not far away, talking with another engineer. Unless he’s as deaf as we are, he can’t possibly miss what’s going on. He ignores it.

  Wow. This is awesome. First Sergeant Smith is about to snap. Our leadership is fighting for us.

  But they lose. We are ordered to shave and try to clean up as best we can.

  I find a beat-up travel razor powered by a couple of AA batteries and go to work. My beard is so thick, it’s like hacking blackberry bushes with a stick. I twist and tear chunks of hair out. By the time I’m done, I’ve ripped open old cuts all over my face. New ones crisscross the old. I get to my feet with the rest of the platoon. Our faces are splotched with blood from dozens of nicks and cuts. Normally, this would be no cause for worry. But here in Fallujah, they’ll be infected before morning.

  I glance down at my body armor. It is still stained with the Boogeyman’s blood. After Lawson came up and found me on the rooftop, we checked the house and pulled the bodies out. Fitts and Lawson later found a sixth insurgent in a room upstairs behind the door I didn’t clear. They shotgunned him through a hole in the wall.

  In the kitchen, we found drugs and U.S. Army–issue autoinjectors. They had been full of atropine and epinephrine. The muj inside the house had shot the drug directly into their hearts. It acted like PCP—angel dust—and kept them going long after my bullets should have killed them.

  In another section of that house, I found a pouch with a Hezbollah insignia. At least some of the six men inside were Shia, not the radical Sunni we were told were so prevalent in the al Qaeda–dominated Anbar Province. Somebody else found documents from the Palestinian Authority amid the debris upstairs. Three flat stones called turbas were found under a Koran in a velvet cloth. Shiite Muslims place their foreheads on these stones when they prostrate themselves in prayer.

  As I stare at the bloodstains on my body armor, I think about how those men died. The young ones were committed and they fought hard, especially the one in the wife-beater T-shirt who ran from the Jersey barriers to the kitchen at the start of the fight. I shot him two separate times, and he still came after me when I was trapped in the bedroom.

  I find it ironic that the oldest of the bunch, the Boogeyman, hid in the armoire while his cell fought to the death. Then, when he felt trapped, he made a break for it and tried to run away. In the end, he pleaded for his life.

  The young ones were more committed. They’ve been indoctrinated since childhood and are radicalized beyond reason. They will go willingly when their leaders stay back and order them to their deaths.

  I wonder if this place is beyond hope.

  General Batiste is coming toward us now. His shiny major lackey hangs back over one shoulder. Photographers and army reporters cluster around him. At this moment, at this place, General Batiste is a rock star.

  I wish Mick Ware could see this. He and Yuri left us on the morning of the twelfth. Before going, Ware handed me his sat phone and told me to call my wife.

  “Let the men call their families first,” I replied.

  One by one, the men took turns talking to their loved ones. I went last. I took the phone and tried to dial with shaking hands.

  The phone rang back in New York. Deanna answered.

  She knew it was me. “David! Where are you?”

  “I’m safe,” I said. I wonder what she’s been doing as all this has gone on.

  “I’ve been watching the news. Are you in Fallujah?”

  I couldn’t tell her that without violating operational security. Yet I wanted to tell her everything. I didn’t have time and I didn’t know how. How do you tell the love of your life that you smelled a man’s breath as you drove the life from him?

  “My heart is killing me,” she exclaimed. “Every time I watch the news, I can’t stand it. Where are you? Tell me! You’re in Fallujah, right?”

  “No,” I manage. “I’m near it. We’re okay.”

  “I have had a horrible feeling. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  As I replay the conversation now, I marvel at how she could sense that.

  A minute later, my little boy took the phone, “Daddy, make sure you fight bad guys!”

  “Okay, buddy. I love you.”

  “Fight bad guys!”

  “Okay, Evan. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  And then, their voices were gone.

  General Batiste shakes Meno’s hand. The two men chat, and as I watch them, Evan’s words return to me again. Maybe it is time to stop being a soldier and go home to be a father. And a husband for Deanna.

  I’m not sure how.

  General Batiste turns to Pulley. He surreptitiously reads his name tape before shaking his hand. “Private Pulley, I’ve heard good things about you, son.”

  Cameras click and whir. We’re in the middle of a brass and grunt pony show.

  The major appears in front of me. Despite my stench, he leans forward and whispers, “Hey soldier, give me your email address, and I’ll send you photos of you with Danger Six.”

  “Sir, that would be david at eatabagofshit dot com.”

  Fitts starts smiling. I realize we’ve come full circle. I am just like him now, intolerant of bullshit.

  Anger flares across the major’s face. He sucks air, then says almost to himself, “We’re in Fallujah. I’m with the infantry. Just handle it.”

  An hour later, we’re sent back into the fight.

  EPILOGUE

  Broken Promises

  Summer 2006

  In the summer of 2005, I left the army and returned to civilian life. It was the toughest decision I ever had to make. I loved being an NCO, and I missed it every day.

  After I returned home, I witnessed another battle raging on the television over Iraq. From Washington, the rancor and defeatism over the war shocked me. As other veterans of the Global War on Terror started to trickle home, we shared the feelings of the disenfranchised. We who sacrificed were being ignored by the World War II and Vietnam generations now holding seats of power in our government. I joined Wade Zirkle in forming Vets for Freedom, a nonpartisan political action committee dedicated to supporting our troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I want to believe the war is a noble effort, but I fear it may end ignobly.

  Most Americans had no idea what was really going on in Iraq in 2004. Some didn’t want to know. For years we have been spoiled by one-sided, sterile air wars. That kind of warfare has more in common with PlayStation games than with Hue City or Seoul in
1950. Or Fallujah in 2004.

  Even those who read the paper or watched the evening news didn’t get it. The reason for that was clear: the type of reporting in Iraq left much to be desired. The Michael Wares of the war were few and far between. The majority of the journalists covering Iraq stayed in the Baghdad hotels, where Arab stringers with dubious motives fed them their raw material.

  In most mainstream news agencies today, we read stories and see images that stem from foreign national stringers without journalistic schooling. Rarely do these stringers get a prominent byline. The home-front audience has no idea of their ethnic, political, or religious bias. Oftentimes, the footage we see of IEDs blowing up is actually filmed by the insurgent cell that triggered the blast. Then the nightly news plays the video at six and eleven. The line between good and evil is now permanently smudged in Iraq.

  I refused to sit on the sidelines of this fight, not after all that had happened to my unit in Diyala and Fallujah. In June 2006, I returned to Iraq to bear witness to the fighting in Anbar Province. This time, I came to Iraq as a journalist, determined to tell the truth about what I’d seen. I was there as a correspondent for the Weekly Standard, which gave me the credentials to cover Iraq from the point of view of someone who had been there before.

  I spent most of my time in Ramadi, where I embedded with both American and Iraqi army units. There, I found what Ware and the other reporters who were with us in Fallujah discovered: soldiers don’t like journalists. After all the negative stories, after beating Abu Ghraib to death on the front page of every American newspaper, the average soldier does not trust anyone associated with the media. The warrior class, bleeding in Iraq, has been painted with two brushes: that of the victim and that of the felon. They appreciate neither.

  As I went out on patrol with these men, I realized how out of place I was. Despite having been a combat infantryman, in this context, without my own unit to lead, I was alone. If something were to happen to me, no one would really care. I was just a whore chasing a story.

  I didn’t belong. I never realized how much I missed Fitts and the boys until that moment. They had been the focal point of my life for so long that when I did go home in 2005, my departure from the army left a hole inside me. I tried to fill it with the trip back to Iraq, but instead I made it worse.

  I saw Fitts in Kuwait a few days before I returned to Iraq. In 2005, he volunteered to go to Baghdad and train Iraqi commandos. He went out on dozens of missions with them over ten months. As I got in theater in June 2006, his second tour was complete and he was ready to return to Germany. I found him in Kuwait, busily spitting dip into the sand while he sat with his peers and swapped stories of their exploits in Baghdad. I joined them, and for one brief moment I felt like I was one of them again. He and I talked about the old days. Of course, he had to show everyone his scars from April 9. But as we reminisced, I realized I’d probably never see Fitts again. He’s made the Army his home and career.

  It was a bittersweet thought. There are never happy endings in the Army. There is no closure, not with friends or enemies. I can’t say that I ever expected to see Captain Sims or Lieutenant Iwan or Command Sergeant Major Faulkenburg again after I left the service. But Fitts meant more to me, and now I had to realize that that part of my life was behind me forever. The comradeship we shared would never be experienced again.

  Several weeks later, with my reporter duties done, I made a lone journey to Fallujah. I moved through the morning sun and tried not to attract too much attention to myself.

  I started at the house overlooking Highway 10. It was here that Pratt was wounded. As I stared up at it, I wondered if there were still bloodstains on the roof. I couldn’t check; somebody was living in the house. Next door, the house that had been there was little more than rubble. I climbed inside it and the old memories started to flow back. Two years ago, we staked our lives in this fight.

  I turned and moved north, chomping on a Slim Jim as I traveled. I was heading for the breach site. Before I’d left New York, I had bought a few flowers from a vendor at JFK airport. They’d been with me on this entire trip, wilting in my backpack in the heat of the Middle East. They weren’t much, but they would have to serve as my homage to those we lost.

  I zigzagged through desolate neighborhoods full of ruined buildings. Hardly a soul graced the streets. The scars of battle were evident everywhere: broken houses, ruined buildings, and bullet-marked walls. The people who remained here lived with these reminders every day. They could not escape the lost families, lost loved ones. Just existing in this half–ghost town required facing these tragedies every day.

  I reached the area where Sergeant Major Faulkenburg died. I found no plaque, no memorial in his honor. Instead, I discovered a falafel stand. Its owner and his customers had no idea of the significance of this place. Even if they did know why this was hallowed soil for me, I wondered if they would care.

  I pulled one wizened carnation out of my backpack and laid it reverently on the ground. It was the best I could do for a man I loved and respected. Sick with grief and guilt, I tried to say a prayer.

  God and I still had much to work out. On that street corner I realized that before I asked for His blessing over this soil, I had to figure out how to ask for forgiveness.

  Heart reeling, I turned away from the breach. This trip had been a mistake. I should have never come back.

  Yet I continued. Quitting would have been cowardice.

  I hiked south to Highway 10 and pushed into the industrial district.

  I tried to find the locations where Lieutenant Edward Iwan and Sergeant J. C. Matteson died. When they fell on November 12, our platoon was several blocks away, already locked in a desperate battle on the second floor of that massive factory building, I didn’t see Iwan get hit. I learned of Iwan’s death from Fitts while we were pinned down by enemy fire. The news enraged me. In a fight, fury and hate are fuel for an infantryman. Iwan’s death was like that—fuel for us. After the word spread, we fought like banshees that morning. In a real sense, Iwan helped us one final time, and we were able to survive this ordeal because of the strength our love for him gave us.

  My thoughts turn to an article I read in the Jacksonville Times-Union after coming home from Iraq. The story focused on a forty-six-year-old Navy chaplain named Father Ron Camarda, who happened to be in the operating room when Major DeWitt convinced the Marine surgeons to try and save Lieutenant Iwan.

  Father Camarda assisted the doctors until hope was lost. Finally, they left Lieutenant Iwan in the chaplain’s care. Father Camarda gave my XO last rites. Then as his life slipped away, this Catholic priest stroked Lieutenant Iwan’s hair and softly sang “Oh Holy Night” to him. When he finished, Father Camarda kissed him and said, “Edward, I love you.” In that, he said what all of his fellow brothers of Alpha Company would have wanted to say but never got the chance.

  A single tear escaped from the LT; he died as it slipped down his cheek.

  In the midst of all the hatred, the killing, and the sheer evil we faced, Lieutenant Edward Iwan faced death surrounded by the last thing I could ever imagine existed in a combat zone. Grace.

  After reading the article back home, I could hardly breathe. Now its words returned to me and I thought about Father Camarda, a man of God and a savior to those of us, the the veterans of Fallujah.

  I wandered through the streets of this broken city. The industrial district was still little more than rubble even two years later. Not much had been rebuilt. In the end, I made my best guess and put two carnations on the sidewalk for Lieutenant Iwan and our fallen scout.

  Edward, I love you.

  Those were the last words my XO heard.

  I had one carnation left. This one was for Captain Sims.

  I walked west, deeper into the industrial district. I came to one intersection and paused to look around. It seemed familiar. I gazed up at the ruins of a building and recognized it as the one we defended during of our fierce battle on the twelfth. It was
here that our platoon made its last stand. We would have all been killed or wounded had it not been for Staff Sergeant Fitts that day.

  Withering small-arms fire scythed through our building from the west. All of us were hunkered down behind piles of brick, or an interior wall, or whatever we could find. We had more targets than we could handle. We were all killing insurgents, but more flooded toward us to take their places. We were getting overwhelmed. The enemy seemed to almost toy with our desperate situation. A sniper disabled one of our M240 Bravo machine guns, rather than taking the easier head shot on Specialist Joe Swanson.

  The volume of incoming fire swelled. Together Sergeant Charles Knapp and Swanson stuck their Kevlar helmets onto poles and raised them up into the open to draw fire. A sniper put three bullets millimeters away from Swanson’s in quick succession. His accuracy chilled us.

  And then rockets impacted amid our positions with equally expert aim. One streaked into our building and ping-ponged around. It almost killed Sergeant Jose Rodriguez, who braced himself for the impact by closing his eyes and turning away. The rocket was a dud and failed to explode.

  We had no choice but to keep firing. A few minutes later, an insurgent broke cover and shot at us from an adjacent alleyway. Sucholas launched two 40mm grenades toward the man, but both missed. He loaded a third grenade into his M203 and fired again. This time, a bright streak shot from his weapon and embedded itself in the insurgent’s chest. The sight left us all stunned. Sucholas had accidentally loaded a green star cluster 40mm grenade into his launcher. Composed largely of white phosphorus, the shell burned the frenzied insurgent from the inside out. He fizzled, popped, and screamed for what seemed like an eternity as his death agony was masked by wisps of green smoke.