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Just Another Soldier

Page 7

by Jason Christopher Hartley


  I am really excited about this drive north. It’s gonna take a few days, and I’m sure it will be miserable in several ways, but how often do you get to take a road trip through Iraq?

  I have no idea when I’ll get to write again. When I do, expect some good stories. After all, that’s the whole reason you join the Army is to get some good stories, right?

  Iraq

  March 12, 2004

  Our convoy left Camp Udairi, Kuwait, on March 10, and we arrived at our forward operating base in Iraq on March 12. The drive took the better part of three days, mostly due to the fact that convoys, by nature, are slow. The weather was perfect and the trip uneventful, other than the convoy coming across a dead dog thought to be disguised as an IED on the side of the road a few kilometers before the FOB. It was blown up by the explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) guys with several pounds of C4. There was no IED, and all the explosion did was launch the dog sky high.

  We now live in the middle of nowhere in what used to be an ammo bunker. Imagine a Lower Manhattan loft that would be to die for if only it had windows, set in the middle of the Old West. Anything we want we have to build ourselves, out of scavenged material, the Mad Max metaphor taken to a whole new level. We get a hot meal about every other day. There is no running water, and therefore no toilets, so we have to burn our own shit. Hearing massive explosions and random gunfire from everywhere is so commonplace we already ignore most of it.

  Since the convoy through Iraq was our first combat mission, we were given our combat load of ammo. I got 240 rounds of 5.56mm rifle ammo. I chose to load each 30-round magazine with the first, sixteenth, and last three rounds with tracer, my thinking behind the placement of the tracers being to show me where my first round hits (aiming adjustments can be done very easily once you see where the rounds are striking), to tell me when I’m into the second half of the magazine, and the final three to tell me when the mag is expended. I carry the M4/M203 rifle/grenade launcher combo, so I was also issued a bunch of 40mm grenades: seventeen rounds of HEDP (high-explosive dual-purpose), two green smoke, one red smoke (for marking and/or signaling), and one white star cluster (a fireworks-like round used for signaling). I carry on my person 210 rounds of 5.56, five HEDP, and one green smoke. The rest I carry in an assault pack (fancy name for a small backpack). The Interceptor Kevlar body armor we wear now has big ceramic armor plates in the front and back, making our everyday combat uniform remarkably heavy. Between the armor and the ammo, I feel like a human tank.

  Driving through Kuwait just below Iraq, we saw an incredible number of Bedouins. It was like driving through Nevada where there isn’t anything for hundreds of miles, and then incredibly there will be families just chillin’ off to the side of the road, usually with a herd of sheep or camels. As we approached the Iraq border, various messages could be found on concrete blocks beside the road. One read, IRAQ BORDER AHEAD 1000 M. BEWARE OF CHILDREN IN ROADWAY. I can’t tell you how exciting it was knowing we were moments away from crossing the berm into “The Raq.” Once we made it past the berm and through the one-kilometer buffer of no-man’s land, I distributed cigars to everyone in the truck. As soon as we hit the border town, we held our cigars in one hand and our digital cameras in the other. Not the most tactical way to enter the country—puffin’ and clickin’—but oh well.

  The entire drive through Iraq, stupid American soldier graffiti was everywhere. Like I give a shit that you were in the 367th Pogue Battalion. Idiots. It especially slays me how many white trash soldiers with cans of spray paint have proclaimed love to this or that girl on every overpass along Iraq Highway 1.

  The weather was perfect and warm, and aside from being in a combat zone, the trip through Iraq almost felt like a relaxing summer road trip. Except for when we took a wrong turn and drove through the heart of Baghdad at two in the morning, accidentally avoiding a huge daisy chain of IEDs, we later found out. I guess all those prayers for this godless heathen paid off.

  I hope god doesn’t throw lightning bolts at me for saying this, but for the record, I’m having a ball.

  March 17, 2004

  For a few days we had to guard a bridge. We got swamped with kids wanting food. “Mister! Mister! Gimme food!” It helped pass the time, playing with the kids. Once we finally gave them MREs, all they’d do was ratfuck the candy out of them and dump the rest.

  March 21, 2004

  Any vehicles that are parked on the side of the road we inspect to see if they are up to no good or if they just need help. Communicating with the Iraqis is nearly impossible, so we tend to stick to hand signals. To an Iraqi, the thumbs-up usually means “up your ass,” but now we have taught them that it means “A-okay.” This ambiguity is absolutely sublime. Kids all across Iraq (and soldiers) can now use an obscene hand gesture with impunity.

  March 27, 2004

  A little bit of all that money that our government is overpaying to Halliburton will be coming to us soon when Kellogg Brown & Root visits us to build us some stuff, including a “dining hall” and a gym. Running water will never happen, but we’d be stoked just to get some port-o-johns. I never thought I’d be looking forward to shitting in a fucking port-o-john.

  Today I burned shit. Have you ever burned shit? It sizzles. You pour diesel into it, mix it up into a gassy, shitty emulsion, then you burn it and stir it. And the processed food–laden turds that soldiers squeeze out take forever to burn. Strangely, I kinda had fun doing it. When I was done, I had shit-ashes in my teeth. And it smells funny, like funky grilled steak.

  I am writing this under the light of a hanging lamp I made from broken table fan parts. We even made a septic tank from ventilation tubing.

  April 4, 2004

  BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW?!

  Iraq right now is not unlike the early American Wild West, and all of my Indiana Jones–fueled boyhood fantasies have come true for the most part. We live a pretty primal existence. We have to be creative when it comes to everything. We build what we need by hand, from available materials. Even when it comes to combat readiness, we have to use a lot of ingenuity and elbow grease to make things work. Humvees are being held together with bubble gum and bailing wire half the time, weapons are covered in duct tape to keep pressure switches in place, and recently a slim jim was constructed out of a wire oven rack taken from a home we raided to open a car the owners could not seem to produce keys to. And despite all the high-tech bullshit we carry, personal defense is still the most primal act. Every time we leave our FOB, we lock and load. In the Old West, gunslingers went everywhere strapped, because they never knew when they’d be in their next gunfight. There is nothing different about being in Iraq. It’s an oddly exhilarating way to live.

  When something does happen, it’s exciting. If you are there for the event, there is a certain intensity and elation. If you weren’t there, you absorb every word of the recounted stories. I feel like I need to apologize constantly for enjoying myself here. They say that morale among soldiers is incredibly low in Iraq. That sucks for them. I’m having the time of my life.

  And I’m not enjoying myself just because of the GI Joe factor. The culture here is fascinating. I feel like I’m in one big Bible story. When I was four years old and living in Spanish Fork, the shittiest hick town in Utah, my recently adoptive father would read me these illustrated Bible stories. Add AK-47s and shabby cars to those stories, and you have Iraq 2004. As a child I didn’t understand Charlton “I Loves Me Some Rifles” Heston when he cried out to Pharaoh, “Bricks without straw?! How can we make bricks without straw?!” Bricks need straw? I had never seen bricks containing straw. Well, I have now. And the story about the temple that needed the exposed bricks of its exterior wall mended? That makes sense now, too. Men’s fashion hasn’t exactly improved over the last three millennia, either. They still wear man-dresses, just like the one Jesus wore as a teen hangin’ out at the local Hajji-mart, and later in his life, when people were touching the hem of it. I’ve seen kids on donkey-drawn carriages in place of bicycles,
and men wiping shit off their asses with their bare hands in place of toilet paper. I also was perplexed as a child by a Bible story where someone washed Jesus’s feet when he came to visit them. Never having worn sandals anywhere as dusty as Iraq, this seemed like a totally random thing to do. Now I understand that, too.

  This place is so harsh and backward and perpetually stuck in the fucking Stone Age in most ways, but you have to love it because of that. There are no shiny new strip malls or housing developments here, no Super Target, no Starbucks, no Jiffy Lube. It’s full of people who will die twenty years earlier than Americans and who can’t help but understand that life is survival first and owning a PlayStation a distant second. Although there’s nothing special about people who live in poverty and squalor, there’s something genuine about these people and their life that I can’t help but admire. I wish to god I spoke Arabic, because I have a thousand questions I want to ask them.

  The first firefight goes to Second Platoon, who went on a night raid in a small town near our FOB. An intel guy and an informant from Baghdad said an attack on a very large FOB in the area was going to be perpetrated by men from this village that night at such and such time. While they were approaching the town, and before they’d even made it to the house to be raided, they took fire. It was an ambush. Ray and John were both on the mission. Some guys returned fire immediately, some whaled away on the enemy with their SAWs, but mostly there were a lot of confused soldiers who took some prodding to kick into gear. Here’s a quick scorecard from the stories I heard:

  Friendly dead: 0

  Friendly wounded: 0

  Friendly shoulders dislocated from jumping behind cover: 1

  Friendly dislocated shoulders self-relocated: 1

  Enemy killed by Ray: 0 (maybe next time)

  Overall enemy dead: 0

  Enemy wounded: 0

  Number of directions in which fire was received: 3

  Soldiers’ pants pissed: 1

  Soldiers with pissed pants who pushed on with the fight: 1

  Soldiers who refused to fight and returned to the Humvees: 2

  Soldiers who fell asleep on the objective: 1 confirmed (most likely more)

  40mm high-explosive grenades John fired: 2

  40mm high-explosive grenades it took to convince the enemy to stop fighting: 1

  Three men of Arab descent and unknown allegiance drove by an ICDC (Iraqi Civil Defense Corps) building in our area and threw an explosive at its front gate, apparently in hopes of baiting them into a vehicular pursuit. The ICDC did what they do best: nothing. They’re totally untrained and almost useless. This time it probably paid off. The men in the car had an AK-47 and an RPK (a Russian machine gun). Frustrated that the ICDC did not give chase, the three hooligans drove alongside an up-armored Humvee with its window open and opened fire (probably impulsively) with the AK. The soldier behind the driver was killed and two others were wounded. Immediately a .50-cal and an M240 in the Humvee’s convoy showed the three men the flames of hell. Two of the men were shredded by the gunfire, and the third—the driver, as I understand it—ate a self-administered 9mm round. This put all three with rounds taken to the head. Two female bystanders were killed in the crossfire. One took a round to the back of the head, which removed most of her face. Not a good day for heads. I feel horrible about the women. However, I found myself fascinated by what the dead guys were wearing. It was very Western: jeans, Dickey-like blue pants, white T-shirt, blue plaid button-down shirt, black T-shirt, brown leather belt. All three had well-groomed hair and facial hair. It’s not that I expected to see them wearing traditional garb. You know when you’re driving and someone on the road does something stupid and you get pissed off and you have to see what they look like, as if you could collect a mental catalog of how assholes look? Well, it’s like that. I can’t help but want to know what my enemy looks like, how he dresses, how he does his hair.

  While on guard duty, I was sitting on a folding stool beside my Humvee, which was parked at a position on the berm that protects our FOB. We heard the unmistakable hollow report of a 40mm grenade being fired. Then, a second later, the even louder sound of the round slapping into the berm not forty meters from us. The sound of it hitting the soft dirt of the berm was loud, but not loud in the way a 40mm grenade exploding sounds. An MK19 on a Humvee, part of a convoy leaving our FOB, had an accidental discharge (now called a “negligent discharge” in military parlance). Had the round been fired about two seconds earlier, it probably would have hit my Humvee, and I’d probably be in a world of hurt right now, another one of those stupid fratricide statistics.

  A man on a scooter was trailing a convoy entering our FOB. He was repeatedly commanded to stop—in English, Arabic, and the universal language of an assault rifle being pointed at him. He was unarmed. It is uncertain what he was thinking. However, it is certain that the5.56mm round that he subsequently took to the chest killed him. His lover, who lived in the nearby town, killed himself the next day when he got word of his death.

  I’ve been on two raids now. The first was in response to three IEDs that exploded next to a Humvee as it drove down a road near our FOB. No one in the Humvee was hurt. My platoon, acting as the quick-reaction force, was called to the scene. We cleared about seven buildings in the area of the attack. The buildings were all chicken farms (ranches?) and the homes of the people who ran them. We turned up a lot of weapons, but all were legit. No bad guys or IED-type materials were found, just a bunch of terrified families. I ended up with Jeff, one of our squad leaders, a combat-loving insane former Ranger, and his squad—meaning much fun was had. We trudged through canals and swamps and covered a lot of ground on foot. It was incredibly physically exhausting. (Goddamned heavy-ass body armor. If it didn’t protect my vital organs so well, I’d pitch it in a canal.) The squalor these chicken ranchers lived in was sad. But I’ll tell you what, clearing a building and entering a room seventy-five meters long and full of thousands of chickens is really bizarre.

  The second raid was on a house of an apparent IED maker. The best part of this was how the location was recon’d. Kirk and Jeff were part of a foot patrol that passed by the home of the intended raid. They acted like stupid soldier-tourists and took pictures of themselves in front of everything: the approach to the house, the neighbors’ homes, the target house itself, and all its inhabitants, who were more than happy to come outside and pose with them. I guess if the enemy is brazen enough to just drive right up and plant IEDs on the side of the road, we can walk right up to their homes, photograph everything including them, then raid the home a few hours later at first light. The family looked so happy in the pictures, it kinda made me feel bad knowing that I’d be back later, in combat mode. It was good to know that the house was cram-packed full of little rugrats though. We counted four kids in the photos, but after the raid we discovered ten. These Iraqis don’t fuck around when it comes to makin’ kids. All ten kids slept through the entire ordeal. The raid went off without a hitch, the smoothest operation I’ve been on, even in training. We were supposed to send a breach team over the wall surrounding the property to open the metal gates from the inside, but once we got to the home, we found the front gate unlocked. It was kinda funny. The breach team and the raid team were lined up against the wall, waiting to go over the ladder. Mike, my platoon sergeant, tried the gate, and it opened. He looked back at us and shrugged and directed the raid team in. When they got to the door, the man of the house was already awake and he let them in. Once inside, they searched the place, and my platoon sergeant found hidden behind the home’s AK-47 a plastic bag containing women’s lingerie and some booze. There was booze stashed all over the house, actually. The man of the house was none too happy, and I’ll bet a big part of it was knowing what a world of shit he was going to be in, not so much for having to explain the IED materials to us but for having to explain to his wife the naughty items we had found. Willy’s platoon simultaneously raided another home in the town. They chained the front gate of their tar
get house to a Humvee and pulled it down, along with half the wall. Once again, no shots were fired at either house, no one was hurt, and everything was performed on time. A very successful operation. And for the concerned bleeding hearts out there: all damages are reimbursed.

  April 21, 2004

  I, JAILOR

  This morning our battalion conducted several simultaneous predawn raids. The first home my platoon hit went down in a fashion that’s becoming the norm for us—moments before the ram is to hit the door for the dynamic entry that turgid grunts salivate over, the door is unlocked and opened from the inside by a man who is probably already on his second cup of Turkish coffee. People here wake up stupid early to get a jump on the long day of chicken herding or dirt farming or whatever.

  Some of the intel was of dubious credibility, resulting in nothing but a lot of wide-eyed and confused detainees—as was the case with my platoon’s target building—and some intel was rock solid. There were RPGs and belts of machine-gun ammunition found at other target locations today—not a completely fruitless morning of raids.

  I missed out on this morning’s soiree, pulling a twelve-hour shift of gate and jail guard instead. Our FOB’s jail (detention center?) is right at the front gate, a messy configuration where detainees, local civilian contractors, and politicians, along with ICDC clowns, Iraqi police officers, and all the other random visitors we get, are corralled through the same small area. Anyway, everyone was back by 8:00 a.m., at which point they dumped off all the captured men to our reluctant jailor. This “facility” is smaller than my apartment in New Paltz and with twenty-some-odd Ali Baba (the locals’ term for evildoers) bound and blindfolded, it can be pretty cramped. One of the first detainees had three thousand dinars (like two bucks), an ID card, and a slip of paper with what looked like some sort of code handwritten on it. When the lieutenant in charge of performing ad hoc in-processing saw this, he thought he might have struck gold by stumbling upon some sort of encrypted message. There were two lines of alphanumeric text; each line was twenty-five characters, with hyphens between every fifth character. Scrawled underneath was what looked like the word “Word.” The code format looked incredibly familiar. Then it hit me. I kinda chuckled and told the lieutenant that at best this implicated our detainee in the crime of software piracy. It was a couple of CD keys, for Microsoft Word no doubt.

 

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