Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Prologue: Nightmare
Chapter 1 - Advisor Duty
Chapter 2 - Contractors
Chapter 3 - Training
Chapter 4 - Gear
Chapter 5 - Transit
Chapter 6 - COP South
Chapter 7 - Arrival
Chapter 8 - Humvees
Chapter 9 - Introductions
Chapter 10 - IAs
Chapter 11 - Growing Pains
Chapter 12 - Storms
Chapter 13 - Outside the Wire
Chapter 14 - Matters of Importance
Chapter 15 - Backing the Wrong Horse
Chapter 16 - Al Gab’aa
Chapter 17 - Mistakes and Mistrust
Chapter 18 - Eye-opening Reality
Chapter 19 - Jibab Peninsula
Chapter 20 - Personalities and Paradigms
Chapter 21 - Terps and Tensions
Chapter 22 - Uglat il Bushab
Chapter 23 - Fear and Paranoia
Chapter 24 - Gifts and Free Lunches
Chapter 25 - Abandonment Issues
Chapter 26 - Running Out of Patience
Chapter 27 - Holding Down the Spring
Chapter 28 - Critters
Chapter 29 - A Change of Plans
Chapter 30 - Leaving
Chapter 31 - Dogs
Chapter 32 - A Way Forward
Epilogue: Dream
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Index
About the Author
Copyright Page
An Association of the U.S. Army Book
For my girls:
I’ve been away too long.
I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
—Abraham Lincoln
Had he known nothing of what had gone on? In that case, he must be an idiot. Had he been part of it? In that case, he must be a criminal. Had he known, yet done nothing? In that case, he must be a coward. The choices—idiot, criminal, or coward—left him depressed.
—Joseph E. Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial
You sign on for the ride you probably think you got at least some notion of where the ride’s goin’. But you might not. Or you might of been lied to. Probably nobody would blame you then. If you quit. But if it’s just that it turned out to be a little roughern what you had in mind. Well. That’s some- thing else.
—Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Author’s Note
As with my first book, the principal source for this writing was the journal I began at my deployment’s beginning. I supplemented my writing with information gleaned from discussions with my Marines, photographs, after-action reports, and my team’s official command chronology. Where appropriate I have included information detailing events that occurred elsewhere in Iraq to give the reader a picture of what transpired in areas of operation other than my own.
I have once again chosen not to change names in this book. The reality of war is such that people make mistakes as often as they succeed, and to redact such information would sap the credibility of this writing. It is a memoir—an account as I remember it. My recollections of events and conversations are only as accurate as I could record them in my journal. As always, any mistakes or opinions contained in this writing are my own.
Prologue: Nightmare
I’m sitting in the rundown wooden prison of my hooch when Sergeant Frazier calls me on the radio. “There’s a commotion going on outside,” he tells me. “Over on the eastern side of the Iraqi compound.” I step outside from the comfort of my air-conditioned hut into the unseasonably warm spring day, and as I exit my team’s compound two Iraqi army gun trucks—Chevy “LUVs”—packed with soldiers speed past me. The young men are frantic, waving their arms wildly and jabbering to each other, attempting to don their body armor as the trucks turn the corner. They are driving so recklessly that they nearly collide with each other as they compete for the small opening in the tall sand berm encircling the camp.
I call for an interpreter, and as Mason shows up Lieutenant Davidoski also appears with Isaac. An IA—our common term for Iraqi army personnel—appears out of nowhere and tells us that a rifle has gone off in the Iraqi compound. A jundi (soldier) has been injured. Ski and Isaac race off to find out what has happened. I radio for Doc Rabor and tell him to come running with his medical bag, and then I call the team’s Combat Operations Center (COC). “Prep the reports for a CASEVAC [casualty evacuation],” I tell them. “We don’t know what’s going on yet, but get ready for the worst.” Together Mason and I make our way across camp. We aren’t prepared for what we’ll find.
By the time we arrive at the other edge of the compound a massive swarm of soldiers has already formed. They crowd each other, and they are electrified by what has happened. Ten junood (“soldiers”) struggle mightily to hold down one jundi who is going apeshit with grief. He wails and cries out, throwing his hands skyward as if pleading with Allah to deliver him. He is out of control, and his comrades can barely contain him. Lieutenant Ski walks up to me and tells me that a jundi has been shot in the head. The howling soldier is the cousin of the jundi who has been shot.
Staff Sergeant Leek and Doc Rabor arrive, panting and nearly out of breath. But their efforts go unrewarded; the soldiers have already rushed the wounded jundi to the hospital in Husaybah. I remember the two gun trucks and the way they sped uncontrollably out of the compound, and I wonder if they will make it to Husaybah without getting into a wreck.
We turn back to the crowd, and as we do we see four soldiers escorting a shocked jundi away from the melee and toward the camp detention facility. The shooter is limp, lifeless, as if all energy has been sapped from his small body. His head hangs low, the knowledge of what he has done sinking in, draining his spirit. He walks with the weight of the heavens crushing down upon his shoulders. He is placed in the camp’s “jundi jail” for his own protection; we think the frenzied soldiers may tear him apart if they get their hands on him.
Mason and I walk to the battalion commander’s hooch to discuss the incident. As I begin speaking through Mason, I quickly realize that Lieutenant Colonel Ayad does not know what has happened. A captain walks into the office and quickly briefs Ayad. “A jundi was joking around with his AK-47,” he says. “He didn’t realize it was loaded. He put the muzzle in his friend’s ear and pulled the trigger.”
I return to the scene of the accident with Ayad. He walks into the jundi’s room, then quickly exits, his dark complexion suddenly pale and featureless. As Ayad moves away shaking his head I enter the room. The smell of cordite still hangs in the air, competing with the rich odor rising up from a giant, glistening puddle of bright-red blood that canvases the floor. Arterial blood. It has not yet begun to congeal into the clotted, brown mass it will soon become, and I mind my footing to make sure I don’t step in the glossy mess. Bloody hand- and footprints decorate the floor and walls like a child’s grisly finger paintings, and a Kalashnikov rifle lies discarded off to one side, unconscious of what it has done. The crimson puddle and the bed next to it are riddled with tiny shards of white skull fragments and small gobs of grayish brain matter. I know immediately that the jundi will not survive his injury.
The soldiers lock the door behind me as I leave, making my way back to Ayad’s quarters. He is visibly shaken, and his eyes well up with tears. He tells me this is the first time anything like this has happened to one of his
junood. I too have lost a Marine before, and so I feel for Ayad and attempt to share his anguish. I offer my condolences and then take my leave; Ayad needs to grieve in peace. Tomorrow he will go to Karabilah to see the jundi’s family. The jundi will then be buried according to Muslim law.
The battalion commander launches an investigation, and the shooter remains isolated in jundi jail. A squad of soldiers safeguards him to protect him from tribal justice. The battalion mourns the jundi’s death, and life goes on.
I have not yet completed my first week as an advisor to the Iraqi army.
Chapter 1
Advisor Duty
Upon my return from Iraq after the 2003 invasion I reported to Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, to become a South Asian foreign area officer (FAO). After a year of master’s study and another year of language instruction at the State Department I prepared my wife and seven-month-old daughter for the biggest leap into the unknown our family had yet taken. In the summer of 2005 the three of us boarded a packed airliner for the seventeen-hour flight to New Delhi.
Our year in India was a special time for my family, and we shared unique experiences few Americans will ever know. Our home was a walledin residence in an upscale (by Indian standards) neighborhood called Vasant Vihar, and there was never a doubt in our minds that we were living the good life. At first, the notion of hiring “domestics” (the guilt-ridden American euphemism for servants) went against the grain of our sheltered upbringings. But after learning that we would be shunned in the local community if we did not share our wealth by hiring servants we embraced the idea, and the housekeeper and nanny who worked for us became treasured members of our family. Our daughter, Emery, thrived with the attention she received from Shireen and Sharmain, and the work both women performed around our household enabled Ashley and me to explore the disorganized, albeit harmonious insanity that is New Delhi and India. My family traveled throughout the country with me, and there were times during our travels when Ashley and I would look at each other and say, “I can’t believe the Marine Corps is paying us to do this.” I often wondered exactly what the catch was.
But my tour in India was not all exotic excursions and sightseeing. I spent countless hours locked in my study, absorbing the politics and history of that complex, multifaceted region, as well as attempting to refine my tenuous grasp of the Hindi and Urdu languages. Over the course of our stay there I also spent an inordinate amount of time closely following the war in Iraq. Monitoring troop deployments and redeployments, as well as the ever-dwindling public opinion and support for the war that was touted by the media, I often grew frustrated with my circumstances and distance—both physical and emotional—from the war. As during my two years of postgraduate and language school, I longed to be back in the fight with the Marines. My only hope was to return to the operating forces and somehow find my way to an infantry battalion to be an operations officer or executive officer (XO), the only billets worth having at that level for a major like myself.
My hopes brightened when I received orders to report to the 1st Marine Division staff, and in the summer of 2006 we bade farewell to the country that had mesmerized us and returned once again to Southern California. I was happy to be back with the division that I had fought with in 2003, and it seemed for once that things were going according to plan. I assumed the duties of the division’s training officer, and it was quickly evident that my work was cut out for me. The division staff had been sucked dry to support enduring personnel commitments in Iraq and elsewhere, and I had only a skeleton crew to support me in the training shop. It wasn’t the kind of job on which I had banked. Sensing this, my boss told me up front, “Give me one year of hard work, and we’ll get you down to an infantry battalion to be an XO.”
So I worked hard, harder than I probably ever had during the course of my career. Staff work was mundane, punctuated by stressful, exasperating days and frequent late hours. I repeatedly questioned whether my work would make any difference in the long run or if I was simply spinning my wheels into obscurity. But the carrot of being an infantry battalion XO was always there, dangling in front of me as the coveted reward for a job well done. For fifteen months I toiled away as opportunities arose for me that were subsequently quashed by my superiors. Offers from battalion and regimental commanders for me to join their units were overridden or discarded, my services making me far too valuable in my current position. I often wondered aloud if that carrot would ever be placed in my hands, or if it would end up inserted somewhere else.
Throughout all of this there was always the continuous chatter among the division staff about the increasing requirement for advisors and transition teams in Iraq. At the time I knew next to nothing about what the transition teams were doing. All I understood was that vast numbers of junior and midlevel officers were required to man the teams and that they lived with and trained the Iraqi army. And all I really knew about the Iraqi army came from my brief experience observing them in Ramadi and Fallujah in 2004: they had been a shoddy, ragtag force that was corrupt and more than likely penetrated at all levels by insurgents. Now the concept of working with and living in close quarters with the Iraqis seemed to me a suicide mission. I thought back to how the ill-fated Fallujah Brigade had cut and run in 2004 and how many of the Iraqi soldiers had gone over to the side of the insurgents once fighting started. I also poured over reports about an Army transition team that had been kidnapped and executed in Karbala in early 2007. I was not impressed.
And so it was with no small degree of surprise on my part when, one day out of the blue, my boss informed me that I had been selected to lead a battalion-level military transition team (MiTT). The promise of an XO slot vanished in the instant it took to pull my name from a personnel roster, and I knew there was no fighting the decision. The transition team mission had been touted as the main effort, an assignment so critical to American disengagement and ultimate success in Iraq that it had become one of the Commandant’s top priorities. In theory it demanded that the transition teams be manned by only the best the Marine Corps had to offer. But theory and the reality on the ground seldom match.
My position on the division staff afforded me visibility over the process by which Marines were being selected, and one thing was certain: the cream of the crop was not being picked to man the teams. Rather, the personnel officers of the division and other major subordinate commands within I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) were merely going down the list of their master personnel rosters, selecting to serve on the teams any and every available company and field-grade officer, staff noncommissioned officer (SNCO), and junior Marine not already spoken for within the force. It was a departure from the spirit and intent of the advisor team mission concept, wherein highly trained senior officers and SNCOs would be able to fuse their experience and technical know-how to assist the fledgling Iraqi military in getting back on its feet. Instead, the teams were often being staffed with the leftovers, officers and Marines like me who may or may not have already served in Iraq. But there was simply no other way to do it; priority for personnel manning was directed toward combat forces slated to deploy, and there just were not enough Marines to go around. The Marine Corps manpower pool was approaching rock bottom, and everyone knew it.
While I was more than aware of all this, at the time I was selfishly more concerned with my own future. I had reached a tipping point in my service where suddenly I had to be concerned about the potential impact any particular assignment might have on my career progression. It was widely believed among field-grade infantry officers aspiring for future command that failure to serve time in the fleet as an operations officer (S-3) or XO was tantamount to a flashing neon sign that blared, “Your career ends here.” My consignment to a MiTT team was, for me, just that: an indication that I had not passed muster. I was particularly concerned about the impact of my previous FAO training. During the three years I had been studying and traveling abroad, my peers had been performing in more visible, “critical�
� billets, jobs that often guaranteed them duty preferences and made them more competitive for selection to future command. A position in an infantry battalion was my last, best hope for serving in a billet that would similarly increase my own competitiveness for battalion command. But it was not just my ambition to become a battalion commander that had driven me to seek out a job as an XO or S-3. I missed being operational, being where the rubber met the road, being around the Marines who were slugging it out in the streets of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan.
Quietly stewing over the decision, I continued with my staff assignments, endeavoring not to let my emotions and feelings about the assignment betray me or affect my work. But as the weeks grew closer to the time when I would report for advisor training, I began to hear stories from officers who were returning from tours with transition teams. In most cases the reports were positive ones, and the common theme was how rewarding the duty had been. One lieutenant colonel I met cornered me, telling me in no uncertain terms that being on a MiTT team was the place to be, and that I absolutely had to get myself on one.
Another young lieutenant colonel with whom I had struck up an acquaintance in the previous months had likewise just returned from seven months as a battalion MiTT team leader. A bright, youthful officer, he had earned my immediate respect, and I quickly learned to trust his opinion. One day I informed him that I would be taking a MiTT to Iraq, and I asked him what he had thought about the assignment.
“Best job I have ever had in the Marine Corps. Hands down,” he said without pausing. “I would do it again and again if I had the chance.”
His words altered my perspective, and from that point forward I tried to forget my bitterness. I scoured through after-action reports from other MiTT teams, and I paid particular attention to the ever-changing roster of Marines who eventually would be assigned to my team. Thirteen Marines and one Navy corpsman would be joining me, and as far as I was concerned only the most outstanding would do. But there were gaping holes in the roster, billets that had yet to be filled. My questions about who would fill the gaps were answered by the division personnel officer, who simply told me to pick who I wanted on my team. Easier said than done. I began calling around, seeking out the services of the best and brightest of the men with whom I had served. In every attempt I failed. Marines who wanted to deploy with me and my crew were prevented by their commands from joining the team, and others were just not interested. I even went so far as to seek out my former XO from my time as a company commander. In the process of completing his service with the Marine Corps, he was on terminal leave when I sought to convince him to return to Iraq with me. That effort also ended in disappointment. Ultimately I accepted that I would have no say in who joined my team, and I patiently waited for the holes to fill before our training began. My inability to find anyone willing to join or any command willing to release its people was, for me, an inauspicious first step and not the optimal way to begin training. I wondered what it was about being on a transition team that seemed to chafe people at the very idea of it. But then I remembered my own vicious avoidance of the duty, and I again understood.
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