None Left Behind: The 10th Mountain Division and the Triangle of Death

by Charles W. Sasser

  The wire project would take months to complete since the plan was to lay wire from the JSB all the way down Malibu through the S-curves. Theoretically, each new roll of wire unstrung in the ditches left the Jihadists less access to the road and therefore fewer places for the platoons to cover. But just because the platoon toiled each night with wire didn’t exempt it from its other duties. It still had patrols to run, raids to execute, craters to guard.

  At first, Command wanted the assignment carried out during daylight hours. Lieutenant Dudish argued that working in the sun would subject his men to being picked off by snipers. He used Sergeant Montgomery’s incident as an example.

  “You tell me what to do,” he said. “I’ll come up with the plan.”

  That was how Second Platoon’s Joes began moonlighting. Wearing night vision goggles, they resembled a voracious swarm of giant bug-eyed insects. It was tough laboring like that in the dark, even with NVs, but it was better than working exposed to the world and every Ali Baba with an urge to shoot Americans and access to a rifle. Security could see bad guys sneaking up, but the bad guys couldn’t see them. Hopefully.

  “Maybe if we’re lucky,” someone suggested, “Crazy Legs will come along, stumble over his feet, fall into the wire and bleed to death.”

  “Better yet. We could rig up a grenade booby trap and give the asshole a little thrill of his own medicine.”

  The Joes were always devising new schemes to get rid of him, each more outlandish than the last.

  “That’s fine, if you want to spend the rest of your life in Leavenworth for murdering civilians,” Montgomery cautioned.

  “Hell, Sarge. Ain’t they all civilians?”

  “Better take a look at what’s happening to the Marines at Haditha.”

  “This, Sarge, is one fucked-up war.”

  “It’s not much of a war, but it’s the only one we got.”

  Sergeant John Herne blamed concertina for finally ending his long streak of luck as the only member of Second Platoon not to have been blown up by an IED. According to the way he told it, what the openings in the wire did was channel the saboteurs into placing more IEDs in fewer places, therefore increasing his chances of hitting one.

  One night after the beds of the utility trucks were empty, Second Platoon headed toward Company HQ at Inchon to pull a rotation with Lieutenant Vargo’s First Platoon. Except for sentries, most of First Platoon was on downtime. An explosion down the road jarred everyone awake. Joe Anzak, Brandon Gray, and a few other guys jumped out of their bunks to follow the new platoon sergeant, SFC James Connell, outside to see what was going on.

  Assured by radio that everyone in Second Platoon was all right, Lieutenant Vargo’s boys were smoking, joking, grabassing and teasing Brenda the Bitch when Lieutenant Dudish’s convoy swept through the gates and unassed their vehicles at the motor pool. John Herne, Chiva Lares, and Dar-rell Whitney staggered through the door into the common area with their faces powder-stained and their hair all frizzed out like they had stuck their collective fingers into an electrical outlet. Their ears were still ringing and they were seeing white flashes before their eyes.

  Big Anzak, who was gabbing with some of the others about their favorite subject, feaky-feaky, and the girls they had seduced, each of whom became hotter and wilder with each retelling, looked up and couldn’t help bursting into laughter. He ran over to encircle the three unfortunates in his big arms.

  “Let ol’ Joe kiss your boo-boos and make them better,” he offered.

  That night forever ended Sergeant Herne’s standing in the community of charmed lives and initiated him into The Malibu IED Club. Everyone wanted to hear the story, which the little sergeant was obliged to tell with suitable exaggerations.

  Lares had been behind the wheel, Whitney in the turret with his head stuck up, and Sergeant Herne in the TC seat on the right dismount when Lares spotted a suspicious freshly dug spot in the road. He swerved to avoid it. Too late. The blast blew off the rear axle, one rear door, and sent Whitney’s nitch flying out the top of the turret and all the way across the road.

  “Anzak, you light off one of your farts in a helmet,” Herne challenged, “and I’ll bet it goes further than Dar-rell’s helmet.”

  “Put your money where your mouth is, Sar-jent.”

  That prompted a round of laughing speculation about which was more powerful—an Anzak fart or a medium IED. No longer feeling blessed, Herne let out a deep, weary sigh. Sanchez offered him a canteen cup of coffee and an MRE cake. Cookie Urbina came in, trailed by the ugly brown dog that the Joes had taken in and started feeding scraps. He offered to serve up soup. Captain Jamoles stood back and let his young soldiers burn off their energy and relief, thankful not to have lost another man.

  Herne pushed Brenda out of the way and plopped down on the sofa. “We’re gonna need more wire,” he said.

  FORTY-ONE

  What most civilians failed to realize when they thought of soldiers was that many of them were kids only a year or two out of high school. High-spirited, rowdy, energetic, optimistic, with all the quirks and charms of eighteen-or nineteen-year-old boys all over America. Downtime members of First and Fourth Platoons not on patrol, security, or crater watch were having a Saturday night dance at Inchon. Brenda the Bitch was the guest of honor. The Joes would have preferred real girls, but an Iraqi female caught so much as smiling at an American ruined her reputation for life. Besides, as far as the GIs could tell, Iraqi women didn’t dance or do much of anything else except take care of the men and children.

  Someone mysteriously produced a stylish black burka for Brenda to wear to the dance. She quickly shed it in favor of a pair of lace panties open at the crotch. Hard rock music blasted from a CD player. The Joes were having a hell of a good time forgetting about the war. Dancing exaggeratedly and obscenely with the blow-up doll, passing her around, tossing her, jerking her about until it seemed she must surely burst at the seams or rupture like a balloon and fly all over the common room before landing deflated and spent in the coffee.

  PFC Byron Fouty, nineteen, smiling bashfully the way he did, watched from a corner of the room where he had retreated with a copy of Stephen King’s It. A sensitive, introspective kid who liked Jolly Rancher candy, Stephen King, and W. E. B. Griffin novels, he had impressed teachers in high school with his acting and improvisation talents, the one area where he seemed to overcome his innate shyness. A troubled home life, his parents’ divorce, and being kicked out of the house by his father had left him rootless. He dropped out of school to get his GED and enlist in the army.

  Almost the first thing he discovered about himself in the army was that he didn’t belong there either. The army was such a testosterone-driven organization. Some of the other guys in First Platoon, such as Alex Jimenez and Joe Anzak, were true warriors who thrived in a combat environment. In contrast, Fouty seemed to fade into the background most of the time, like now, the kind of kid who just went along to get along, never saying much, scared to death most of the time, a kid who should not have gone to war.

  Sometimes he thought that the politician’s quote about “C students with their stupid finger on the trigger in Iraq” applied to him. Except he wasn’t even a C student. He was a dropout with a GED.

  “How did you end up in the army?” Sergeant James Connell asked when he took over as platoon sergeant.

  “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Sergeant Connell was the decided opposite of hard-nosed Sergeant Burke, the previous platoon daddy. If possible, Connell seemed even more unsuited to warfare than Fouty. He was a gentle man with a kind voice who treated all the Joes in the platoon as though they were his sons. When they went out on patrols, Connell always carried a pocket full of candy for the local kids, his honest contention being that extending kindness to people paid off in the long run. He never referred to the Iraqis as hajjis or Baghdads or dune coons or ragheads as most of the other soldiers did. He truly embraced the view that Americans were here to win frie
nds and influence people. That was how to win the war.

  Fouty found it easy to talk to Sergeant Connell. He was almost like having a real father.

  The dance was becoming a bit too loud. Captain Jamoles would be shutting it down soon. Fouty closed his book and slipped out to go to the roof. No one noticed when he left.

  The night guards were in the watch towers, which left the roof to him. He leaned both elbows on the lip of the roof and gazed reflectively out above the date palms toward the Euphrates River, catching only a glimpse of silver moon on water through the trees. There was something romantically soothing and deceptively peaceful about the Iraqi countryside under a full moon. Something out of Arabian Nights or Lawrence of Arabia.

  Nights on the roof this time of year were cold, as most desert nights were. He pulled his neck gaiter up over his ears. He liked it up here alone, working through his thoughts and feelings.

  The people here, the Iraqis, both confused and annoyed him. First of all, he had never seen such poverty. Being poor, however, didn’t mean they couldn’t at least pick up their own garbage. It didn’t cost anything and it would improve their lives overnight. You would think that cell phones spreading all over the country and satellite dishes sprouting from even the most humble mud hovel would bring improvements to their wretched lives. Sergeant Connell said they lived this way because they didn’t know how to do things for themselves, having existed for so long under a tyranny that told them what to do and when to do it.

  They were so damned demanding.

  “How soon are you going to repair my house?”

  “We need more money.”

  “Are you going to build us a school?”

  “Who will pay for my wheat field that the soldiers crossed?”

  “Our roads must be repaired.”

  Yeah! Then why do you keep blowing ’em up?

  Iraqis swarmed humvees begging for food or attempting to peddle Blue Death cigarettes at five bucks a pack. Knots of young children ran out and pleaded for new soccer balls in front of a house where there were two craters left by previous roadside bombs. Is that why the Americans were here, to be ripped off by the people during the day and shot at by wacko Jihadists night and day?

  Fouty’s nerves were always strung to the snapping point. He had been startled more than once by automatic weapons fire outside a mosque, only to realize that it was a wedding celebration and not an attack. Now this was a gun culture. Every once in awhile some hajji guzzled too much Turkish whiskey and worked up the courage to show up in front of a U.S. battle position somewhere in the AO to shoot at it. “Fuck you, America!”

  Sometimes the Americans shot back and killed him—after which the U.S. Government paid reparations to his family.

  None of it made sense. Couldn’t these people understand that Americans were here to bring democracy, freedom, and peace? Why were they so ungrateful?

  A U.S. soldier was ambushed and killed while trying to do good in delivering a donation of classroom supplies to a school. Sergeant Messer and PFC Given were murdered, and for what? These people would never appreciate the sacrifices American soldiers were making for them.

  Shops in the villages sold fruit and kabobs of goat, peppers, and only God knew what else. Jewelry, fans, satellite dishes, live chickens, and dead goats were on display next to large posters of masked Muslim Jihadists and racks of anti-American, anti-Western CDs with titles like Heroes of Chechnya, Jihad Warriors, Fallujah Resistance, and Allah Will Destroy the Jews.

  Fouty stirred, startled, when somebody walked up beside him. Sergeant Connell leaned on the roof lip next to him.

  “You seem tired, Sergeant,” Fouty said.

  “All the patrols day and night are beating us to death. I’m due for leave in April. When I get home, I’m going to sleep for days. When’s the last time you were home, son?”

  “I think my dad’s in Mississippi. Mom’s in Texas. I haven’t seen them for a while.”

  “Your folks know you’re in Iraq?”

  “I guess they do, I don’t know.”

  He knew the sound of an AK-47 bullet when it zipped past his head, the deafening blasts of exploding IEDs and mortar shells—but he hardly knew where his home was. He knew the screams of the wounded and had seen the tears of soldiers grieving over their dead—but he wasn’t sure he remembered his father’s face.

  A chill breeze gusting up from fog along the river made him shiver. The awful truth he had discovered in Iraq was that war was horrible and to be avoided. Yet, if you were a soldier, the only way you could measure your worth, test it, was by going through it. Soldiers left their families, those who had families, and rushed off to war because that was what they were supposed to do.

  He doubted he would ever measure up as a soldier.

  FORTY-TWO

  The deaths of Messer and Given had rocked Delta Company to the core. Rather than making the infantrymen timid and fearful, however, it turned them hard-core and more aggressive. The change became apparent the same day they died. Delta Company and a QRF from Alpha Company kicked in a score of doors and rounded up some dozen men with control or influence in the area for questioning. Intelligence acquired from these detainees led to a series of midnight-to-dawn raids that netted two important insurgents implicated in the bombing.

  The aggressiveness continued under Delta’s new young company commander, Captain John Gilbreath, who relieved Captain Jamoles. Hard-charging and as stubborn as a pit bull terrier, he was determined that when the enemy struck his men he was going to strike back. What followed were 24/7 days of ceaseless, nerve-wracking patrolling of streets and roads; hunting, fighting, and sometimes killing insurgents; making a presence and demonstrating a willingness to maintain order.

  In Iraq and other Arab cultures, men derived respect through displays of powers and sometimes violence, a concept foreign to most Western countries but one the common Iraqis understood at a fundamental gut level. Anything less was interpreted as weakness—and weakness, even perceived weakness, could never hope to secure and stabilize the country. Pacifying Iraq without shedding blood was virtually impossible. The trick came in maintaining the delicate balance between protecting the population from the insurgents and showing over-aggressiveness that might drive traditional Muslim families into the radical camp.

  The more Delta Company pressed the outlaws, the more they pressed back, as though desperate to stop American influence and maintain and increase their own. Insurgent mortar fire that had slacked off some began once more to rain down on all three Malibu battle positions on a regular basis. Typically, they came in just before daylight or just after dark. Three or four rounds, then the shooters hauled ass under cover of darkness and before battalion mortars or 105mm howitzers could home in on them.

  No attack, however ineffective, was left unanswered. Delta’s QRF responded by searching homes, corralling likely suspects, and questioning witnesses with a new no-bullshit intensity. Locals gradually began to accord the American soldiers more respect.

  “Winning hearts and minds means never having to say you’re sorry,” Specialist Jimenez joked.

  War was always chaotic, unpredictable, and in many ways incomprehensible, even to those involved. Crank it all up a few notches and what you had was guerrilla warfare. The enemy’s presence in The Triangle was all around, always there, but blending into the surroundings and rarely recognized until it was too late. Infantrymen became people-watchers as a matter of self-defense and survival. They could generally tell if it was going to be a good day or a bad day by observing the behavior of the people.

  Things were probably going to be all right if the kids came out chattering and waving and running alongside, and if the adults were going about their normal business. But watch out if the adults slipped furtively into their houses and the kids started throwing rocks and running away.

  As a general rule, women were more opposed to war and disorder than men, thus more receptive to efforts to restore peace to the land and save their teenagers
from being conscripted into the ranks of the fanatics. This didn’t mean they were used as sources or even that they were the objects of any direct psychological operations to win them over. To do so would be against the culture’s moral code. Besides, no Arab woman would dare speak out against her men. Daughters, sisters, and wives had been “honor killed” for less. Bringing in a woman for interrogation or using her to obtain information would have sparked an international incident.

  Women in Iraq had few rights and even fewer privileges. They served specific purposes as cooks, cleaners, and breeders. Otherwise, they seemed to have less value than goats or sheep. November through January were raw winter months in Iraq, with lots of rain and wind. Often on a winter’s day, the Joes marveled at seeing an old truck rumbling through with the women and girls in the back of the truck exposed to the elements, and the men and boys crowded into the cab.

  While the Americans watched the people, the insurgents watched them back. All the observers were not as obvious as Crazy Legs, whom the GIs permitted to continue about because he could be useful to them as a barometer—and because he would be replaced by someone less visible and therefore more harmful. And so in the winter when many of the dusty roads of summer that intersected with Malibu became muddy trails and travel became treacherous, hostile eyes watched and waited and charted the Americans’ habits—when they ate, slept, patrolled; when resupply trucks arrived and departed; when the soldiers were at their peak and when they were ebbing. The U.S. Army was good at forming patterns and establishing predictable routines. That made life more comfortable for everyone involved. Including the enemy.

  Rumors persisted about something “big” the insurgents might be planning. Things apparently hadn’t panned out so well for them in their attempt to cut the road at 152 and leave the outpost isolated and vulnerable. That didn’t mean they had given up.

  Lieutenant Joe Tomasello’s Fourth Platoon was patrolling on a cloudy, rain-spitting morning through a nameless settlement not far from al Taqa. A group of young men loitering in front of a market glared at the convoy. One of them drew a knife hand across his throat, as if to indicate an impending beheading.