Any argument that anyone made to Kunk that there were other factors at play was met with a fusillade of abuse about making excuses, being a whiner, or not coming to terms with the reality of the situation.
He lectured the men of 1st Platoon directly, booming, “When are you going to face up to why Staff Sergeant Nelson and Sergeant Casica are dead? Because they weren’t doing the right things, the harder right. Leaders were not enforcing standards and discipline.”
The more Kunk pounded this message home, the more the soldiers resented it. “If you are the battalion commander, you don’t have to tell every last Joe, ‘The reason that your team leader and your squad leader died is because they were pieces of shit,’” observed Yribe. “And that’s what we were getting from him.”
Nelson and Casica’s memorial was held a few days after their deaths. During the memorial, Green spoke simply but movingly about both men: “Staff Sergeant Nelson, Old Man River, was a fine leader with an outstanding career behind him. We all knew no matter how much he yelled, or how many packs of cigarettes he took from us, or how many times he smoked us, that he would do anything for any of us,” he said. “Sergeant Casica was probably the kindest man in Bravo Company and one of the best people I have ever known.”
A lieutenant from another company who attended the memorial wrote in his journal, “I could see the pain of the loss on every soldier’s face in Bulldog Company. Their commander, CPT Goodwin, looked worn, wounded, emotionally tired. The service was the same as the others. The toughest part is the roll call. The gunfire from the salute caught me even though I was anticipating it. The platoon sergeant, SSG Miller, broke down as people started to go up to the tributes of the two. As I was watching all of the soldiers begin to file up to the tribute by twos, 1LT Britt, the platoon leader of the two soldiers, moved to the back corner of the maintenance bay behind me. His eyes were already welled up before he tried to move out of sight. I felt very sorry for him. I imagine it’s a huge burden that you will carry around for the rest of your life. He’s the one who’s responsible for those men, in good times and bad. I walked back to him and shook his hand. I stood there for a moment and just looked at him. He looked back, tears running down his face. I wanted to say something but I couldn’t, I just didn’t know what to say. I gripped his hand tightly and nodded my head in consolation.”
Already displeased with Miller’s performance and convinced these deaths were more evidence of lax leadership, Lieutenant Colonel Kunk had written Captain Goodwin a performance warning the day after the shooting, and now he and Sergeant Major Edwards decided to remove Miller. They had already talked about reinstating Sergeant First Class Rob Gallagher, the previous platoon sergeant who was currently on a MiTT team in Lutufiyah, and now they decided to act. Miller heard about the move from a back channel as Kunk and Edwards drove to Yusufiyah to fire him, and he was furious. He felt he was being unfairly punished for the deaths of Nelson and Casica. No matter how often you tell a grown adult squad leader and a grown adult team leader to put on their helmets, he maintained, they are ultimately going to make their own decisions. He didn’t see what more he could have done. He went to the potato bays and began packing his stuff. Lieutenant Britt stopped by and asked what was going on.
“I’m out of here, man,” Miller said. “They are coming to get me.” Word spread, and 1st Platoon rallied. The squad leaders and Lieutenant Britt asked to talk to Kunk. They lobbied for Miller to stay. Britt spoke with Kunk and acknowledged that he, and Miller, and all of 1st Platoon, were having some trouble, but he assured Kunk that they could turn things around and that Miller was the right man for the job. Kunk relented and gave Britt some more time to get Miller and the rest of his platoon squared away. Britt returned to tell Miller that he and the squad leaders had been successful. Miller was staying. But, Britt said, they were on a short leash and they needed to work some things out. Battalion thought that 1st Platoon’s standards were low.
“Shaving, uniforms, discipline. We need to improve those things,” Britt said, “or they are going to make this change.”
12
“It Is Fucking Pointless”
ISOLATED PHYSICALLY AND with limited links to the outside world, Bravo soldiers frequently had no knowledge of how their efforts were fitting into the broader strategy of the war, let alone what that strategy might be. Indeed, the very notion of strategy, and whether America’s strategy was sound, was simply not a concern for many of them. All that mattered was what was happening in and around the ground they were occupying.
News of anything occurring beyond the FOB, the traffic control points, and the JS Bridge was hard to come by, and even major events about Iraq making headlines around the world seemed to have little impact on their lives. In the two and a half months since their arrival, for example, Iraq had ratified its constitution, the trial of Saddam Hussein had gotten under way, and Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania John Murtha had begun calling for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. None of these got much notice from men on the ground. Far more important to them was staying alive until the next morning and whether there would be hot food for dinner that night.
One exception to the company’s odd remove from national affairs was its activities in support of Iraq’s December 15 nationwide parliamentary elections. Polling-day safety became a priority for American forces throughout Iraq, and, hoping to entice Sunnis (who had largely boycotted a round of elections in January), U.S. commanders put particular emphasis on safeguarding Sunni areas such as Yusufiyah.
Shortly after coming off of a full day of patrolling on December 13, Eric Lauzier was ordered to take a 3rd Squad fire team out for an overnight ambush at a site where mortars had been launched at Yusufiyah several times before. He protested, because his squad was supposed to be off. They had just put in an eighteen-hour day. His guys hadn’t slept that day. They needed some rack time, he insisted.
Arguing was futile. He was ordered to move out. So he and five other men walked about three or four miles into the bush and settled into their overwatch positions, on the inclined banks of a canal. Winter nights in Iraq can get cold, with temperatures plunging to the 40s, and the guys were freezing. Soldiers got an hour or two of sleep when they could, but most of them were up at any given time pulling 360-degree security. When the sun rose, they expected to stay in position and, if they made no contact, they’d return after nightfall. About 4:00 p.m., they got a radio call. Their mission was changing.
“Uh, you know we’re in an ambush right now, over?” Lauzier asked. Roger, came the response. Scratch that mission. Do the new one. They were now to walk another five miles to do a battle damage assessment on some mortars that an element of 2nd Brigade had fired. Lauzier was pissed. Things come up, yes, but to be forced to abort an ambush for a nonessential mission, to have nobody else to send, is either bad planning or bad priorities. They got the grid coordinates, popped up from their hiding position, and started walking. The coordinates were off, however, so they spent another several hours crisscrossing the fields trying to find the impact site. They were starting to run low on water. Trying to keep his men’s morale up, Lauzier told them that when they got back, he guaranteed they would get some hot chow and several hours of uninterrupted rack. He would make sure nobody messed with them. They were doing a hell of a job, he told them, and they’d be rewarded for sucking it up and driving on.
A few hours later, they found the place. There was nothing there except a few large smears of blood, like someone had been dragged, and a child-sized bloody flip-flop. Now Lauzier was pissed and disgusted. He called it in.
“Hey, you wanna know what you hit? You fucking blew up a kid. Good job, over.” Night fell as they humped the several miles back to the FOB. Third Squad had just started to unload their equipment when Miller called Lauzier over.
“Sorry to dump this on you, but you need to go out and patrol Fat Boy overnight,” Miller said.
“What do you mean ‘patrol Fat Boy overnight’?” Lauzier asked.<
br />
“I need you to go out with two Humvees, and drive up and down the road.”
“Drive up and down the road?”
“Yeah.”
“In two trucks?”
“Yup.”
“Just us, driving up and down the road, all night.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
“That is fucking retarded.”
“I know. I tried to tell them that, but that’s the mission.”
“Bullshit. No. We’re not doing it. Get someone else.”
“There is no one else. Everybody else is out. ’Cause of the elections, doing the same stuff.”
“So our mission is to drive up and down Fat Boy drawing out IEDs—with no medic and no QRF and no air support—so they don’t bomb the civilians tomorrow? Our mission is to get blown up?”
“Yup, pretty much.”
“But my guys haven’t slept. They haven’t eaten. I promised them.”
“Dude, I’m sorry, but you know how it is.”
Lauzier could not bear going back to his men and telling them what they had to do after he had promised them they would get a break. He knew what got soldiers through the nights, the hard times, the exhaustion, or the stone-cold conviction that the commanders either were incompetent or didn’t give a damn about them. What got them through the night was the next moderately pleasant experience: the next hot meal, the next time they could sleep for five or six hours, the next time they could just be left alone, for just an hour or two with an iPod, a movie on the laptop, or a book. He had just dangled that in front of them, and now he was going to snatch it away. He went back to look at them, exhausted, dirty, hollow-eyed. They knew bad news was coming, and he delivered it. They all sat silent for several seconds as the mission sank in.
“Fuck it,” said Private First Class Chris Barnes, raising his hand. “Let’s do it. This sounds like a great fucking idea. Who wants to get blown up?” They started laughing. Watt, Barker, Cortez, and Private First Class Shane Hoeck all raised their hands. They did not give a damn anymore. It was all so absurd to them, that they were going to drive up and down a road for the next eight hours as bomb magnets. The only thing that they could do was laugh. “Hooray! We’re going out to get blown up!” they sang. “Who’s on board? Hey, who wants to come get blown up? Woohoo! Yeah, dude, I am ready to go fucking die! We are all going to fucking die!” Lauzier, at that moment, was prouder of them than he ever had been, and he loved them more than he ever thought possible.
The six men went out, and until well past sunrise they zipped up and down Fat Boy, dozens of times. They did not, in fact, get blown up, although one of the trucks did hit a dog, which scared the hell out of them. Once they returned to the FOB, fifty-six hours since their last downtime, their mission was still not over. They had to turn around and escort Captain Goodwin for ten more hours to all the polling locations so he could shake the hands of voters and meet with local officials. By late afternoon of the third day, there was no one who could drive the Humvee longer than a minute or two without falling asleep. The man in the passenger seat had to hit the driver in the arm every twenty or thirty seconds. As they walked back into the FOB, dirty, delirious, strung out, and aching for sleep, First Sergeant Andrew Laskoski took a hard look at them and asked, “Did you men shave today?”
On that election day, about 70 percent of Iraq’s eligible voters, including a broad turnout from Sunnis, went to the polls on a generally peaceful day. The Sunnis’ strong participation indicated that rifts between the native Sunni tribes and Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which had started small, were widening. To Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, cooperation with the U.S. and Iraqi governments, or voting in the elections, was intolerable. But the Sunni sheikhs were becoming disillusioned by the barbarity of Zarqawi’s extreme and violent policies, and they had begun to explore other alliances, including with the Americans and the Iraqi government. Al Qaeda, some Arab papers said, was starting to get expelled from Sunni strongholds in Anbar. This trend would very slowly build nationwide throughout the rest of the winter and the following year. Zarqawi would find himself in far smaller regions to operate with far fewer allies. But while the west and north of Iraq led the turning away from Zarqawi, the Triangle of Death remained a holdout area of support.
Al Qaeda’s senior leadership was concerned about this rift and thought Zarqawi’s heavy hand was threatening the entire movement in the country. In December, a senior Al Qaeda leader sent Zarqawi a blunt and rebuke-filled letter. It exhorted Zarqawi to spend more time on winning over the people and to be more compassionate and tolerant of other Muslims, even those with whom he disagreed. A month after the elections, in a move widely interpreted as an attempt by Al Qaeda to combat the impression that it was an anti-Iraqi hyperviolent nihilistic band of exterminators, it actively sought allies among Iraqi insurgent groups and declared itself subservient to this coalition of its own making, which it called the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC). Along with the creation of this new group was a purported shift away from wanton attacks on civilians. AQI stopped taking credit for some of the most violent strikes against Shi’ites. Even so, many of the most prominent native insurgencies, such as the Islamic Army in Iraq, Ansar Al-Sunnah, and the Mujahideen Army, refused to join, leaving the MSC open to the charge that it was really just AQI by another name.
On December 19, Bravo’s 2nd Platoon was operating in two different sectors. Platoon Sergeant Jeremy Gebhardt had one squad up in Mahmudiyah, assisting with the much-loathed gravel runs from Camp Striker to FOB Mahmudiyah. Platoon Leader Jerry Eidson and the rest of the platoon were chasing the J-Lens. Upon Eidson’s return to Yusufiyah, he was sent out to Mahmudiyah to pick up Gebhardt. Gebhardt had only two trucks. He had hopped a larger convoy out there, but because higher command was enforcing a regulation they didn’t enforce, for example, on election night, and enforced only selectively—that all convoys must be at least three vehicles—he was now stuck. Cursing the inefficiency of it all, Eidson grabbed eight volunteers to form a three-vehicle task force and headed out to retrieve their platoon mates.
Eidson was in the lead truck when the convoy left Yusufiyah just after 9:00 p.m., Specialist Noah Galloway drove, and Private First Class Ryan Davis was in the gun. They left the wire and turned the corner, heading north on Fat Boy. A minute or two down this road, they hit a tripwire-triggered IED that struck the truck’s front-right quadrant, tossing it like a matchbox onto its right side and into a canal. The bright blast kicked up a cloud of dirt, dust, and debris that blocked out the night-vision goggles of the drivers of the two trailing vehicles, so they gunned their engines to get past the kill zone. The occupants of one of the trucks thought they saw the taillights of the lead Humvee ahead, so they kept rolling, trying to catch up to it, until they realized they were mistaken. They started calling Eidson on the radio, but there was no response.
“Hey,” said one of the soldiers, “we need to turn around, we need to go back.” When Eidson came to, sideways in a truck filled with water, he asked if everybody was all right. Davis said he was fine, just that his leg hurt. Galloway did not respond.
“Noah, Noah, are you okay?” No response. Eidson could not open his door, so he followed Davis out of the gunner’s hatch, jumped out, and landed in chest-deep water. He made his way back over to Galloway, who was mangled. His limbs were going in the wrong direction, and he was not responding to Eidson’s yells and slaps. But he was breathing and he had a pulse. Eidson pulled himself out of the ditch and stood in the middle of the road. He had no weapon or helmet, his other trucks were gone, Davis was limping around, and Galloway was unconscious. He did not notice that his arm was broken and the bone was sticking out of his flesh until he tried to pick up the shredded remnants of Galloway’s helmet. It was at that moment that Eidson expected to die.
Insurgents frequently followed an IED strike with small-arms fire, so they should be opening fire any second, Eidson thought. He was scared, terrified of death. He waited a beat or two
for the shots to come, but they didn’t. And then a few more seconds. Still not really believing that he was getting this reprieve, he headed back to check on Galloway. He jumped back into the canal, assessed Galloway’s condition, evaluated his weight versus the steepness of the canal banks, and concluded there was no way he could pull him out.
He heard two trucks coming from the north and he signaled with his flashlight. His men had arrived.
Tearful and shell-shocked, Eidson approached Staff Sergeant Les Fuller and said, “We have to get Noah out.”
Fuller, a devout Christian who tried never to swear, looked down, saw what had become of the Humvee and Galloway, and exclaimed, “Oh, fuck!” The entire engine block and driver-side door had been blown off. Fuller and another soldier jumped down and started trying to pull Galloway out of the seat. Fuller grabbed him by the body armor while the other soldier hugged his torso. Fuller noticed that Galloway’s left leg was pinned under the seat. He grabbed it to try to free it, and the leg twisted loose in his hand. They decided that Galloway would be easier to pull out if they took off his body armor. But as Fuller grabbed Galloway’s left arm to pull it through his body armor’s armhole, that limb came off in his hands as well.
Eidson was now thinking clearly enough that he was doing platoon leader math. He had nine guys and two operating trucks. He had one critical case stuck in a Humvee with two severed limbs who needed to be extracted from a ten-foot-deep ditch with muddy, slippery, steep-angled walls. He needed at least two men on the guns to pull security. Two men, including himself, were too badly hurt to help with the rescue. That left four men to try to lift Galloway out of the ditch, practically straight up. It was not going to happen. He called up to FOB Yusufiyah requesting more manpower. Goodwin told him there was no one at the FOB to send. There was no Quick Reaction Force, there were no extra men on the entire base whatsoever, and the medevac was not responding yet. Goodwin told Eidson that he had to get himself to the FOB.
Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death Page 17