Just Another Soldier

by Jason Christopher Hartley

  Know Your Place

  As a corollary to knowing that you are not special, you must also know your place. Unlike the private kindergarten you attended in Woodstock, where everyone was special and equal—even Timmy in his wheelchair and Tyrone the black kid—in the military there is a hierarchy because it is the easiest way to get things done. I spent an enormous amount of my military career as a private. I took out the trash and mopped the floor. Now that I’m a sergeant, I want you to shut the fuck up and continue sweeping, is that clear? Everyone has a job and a role, and by staying in your lane, work can be accomplished more efficiently. Imagine if your car’s fuel injection system decided it wanted to start managing the antilock braking functions. The compartmentalization of tasks exists so you can be free to concentrate on your own set of tasks. When I raid a building, I know how I’m going to breach the door, I know how to clear the rooms, I know how to handle detainees. While I’m doing this, there are Apaches circling overhead. I don’t know how to do their job, and that’s okay. I need air support, and they provide it. The intelligence guys interrogate the detainees and come up with more targets for my platoon to raid. Remember, you are Soldier Nobody, not General Patton. Concentrate on your job and you will be able to perform it well. As an infantryman, your job is to shoot people. Don’t worry about Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, or Michael Moore. If your target is moving, remember to lead your point of aim a bit.

  Release Your Attachments

  Attachments cause suffering. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you will learn how to overcome suffering. As Americans and Westerners, we love our stuff. How much did you love Christmas as a kid? I remember thinking that the entire purpose of life was Christmas. That’s when I got a whole new batch of toys. As a kid, all that mattered to me were toys. To this day, the feeling Christmas gave me is one without parallel. But toys break, they get lost, and eventually you lose interest in them. As an adult, what is more of a pain in the ass than your car? Or the upkeep of your house? You can get a lot of satisfaction from stuff. I won’t deny how much I love going to Barnes and Noble or to the music store. But you don’t get real happiness from material possessions.

  And attachments go well beyond the things you can own. Relationships you have with people can be attachments. There are more relationships in the world based on insecurity and attachment than on love. And the ultimate attachment is your own ego. Your sense of “self” is something you cling to. The linchpin to the tao of soldiering is freeing yourself from your attachments. The less you own, the better. The more stuff you own is more stuff to worry about while you’re deployed. The girl you were dating isn’t going to wait for you for eighteen months, so just get over her and move on. Even if you are in a healthy and strong relationship with your wife, your marriage will not be the same when you get back. It won’t necessarily go bad, but it will certainly be different. There are several guys in my platoon who missed the births of their children. This affected them, and I’m sure it affected their wives. And in turn it will affect their marriage. Crappy marriages don’t handle this sort of thing well, and they will end. Good marriages will weather it but will evolve into something different. Either way, guys who are attached to the way things were will be miserable. And whatever you thought about yourself, ideas you cling to that you consider part of your identity may very well change after you’ve been around some good ol’-fashioned death and destruction.

  I like being a soldier and I love being an infantryman. There are a lot of things that truly suck about being in Iraq, but none of it’s really all that bad. This is the most interesting and exciting thing I’ve ever done. War is a horrible thing, and I hope that as a human culture we can find a way to completely put an end to it, but I have to admit I like combat. I’m not sure how this is possible, but it’s how I feel. When guys discuss when we will be sent home, I get sort of depressed. I don’t want it to end yet.

  October 27, 2004

  THOUGHTS ON IRAQ

  Last night three IEDs were detonated next to a small convoy, disabling two Humvees and injuring six soldiers from my company, one seriously. The explosives in this case, as in most, were 155mm artillery rounds, munitions that seem to grow on trees in Iraq. In the case of last night’s IEDs, the wires used to detonate them ran over a cement irrigation canal, an obstacle that is virtually impossible for dismounted infantry to traverse on foot. In addition to being on the other side of the obstacle of the canal and concealed by foliage and vineyards, in typical fashion the firing point was outside the maximum effective range of most of our weapons systems.

  This attack took place at the same location as last month’s ambush, where we engaged the men with the RPG. What is especially frustrating for us now is knowing that the men responsible for last night’s IEDs are most likely the same we couldn’t seem to kill a month ago.

  I like combat. Most of my life has been a suburban daydream where I’ve floated along the peaks and valleys of minor triumphs and minor failures. Now I’m beginning to see things in hues more saturated as my time in Iraq quietly reveals how life is precious and sublime. I’m not a warmonger, I’m not blood-thirsty or trigger-happy. I am not anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, or anti-Iraqi (although the temptation to slip into these ways of thinking is seductive). I am not hateful. I make it a point anytime we’ve detained someone to share a cigarette with him. I suppose it’s just a way of saying, “We are enemies and it happens I won this round—now let’s enjoy a moment of repose together the only way we can.” But know this: As an infantryman in Iraq, everything that I am and everything that I hope to accomplish is concentrated on killing the people who behead contractors and film it, who execute their fellow Arab Iraqi Police and Iraqi National Guard en masse, and who injured friends of mine last night.

  Thirteen years ago, as a junior in high school, when I enlisted in the Army, I decided in advance that going into Iraq, or any conflict, would be a superb idea. I have renewed that decision every time I’ve reenlisted. Before I reenlist is the only time for me to ponder the overall politics of my job. After I enlist, it’s my job. Command-detonated 155mm artillery rounds, clearing the kill zone and establishing a casualty collection point, maneuvering on likely enemy egress routes—as a soldier, these are the things that concern me. For you, a concerned citizen of the Earth trying to better your understanding of the big picture, you do what you can to expand your thoughts and actions on the matter outward, like a blanket of empathy, as it should be. If this describes you, I commend you; you are what is good about this world. For me, the “big picture” doesn’t go beyond the tactical environment I am in. From there, my thoughts on Iraq continue inward, a contemplative introspection, as it should be.

  October 28, 2004

  FREDERICK SEGUN AKINTADE

  A large hidden cache of weapons and explosives had been found in a remote desert area in the western part of our area of operations. Rather than immediately seize the items, snipers from our battalion were put in an overwatch position at the cache site to see if anyone would come to it. The following morning, two men and a boy came to the site and were detained.

  Guys from my platoon were the QRF on this day and they were called to retrieve the detainees and bring them back to our base. The road back from the cache site was long and unpaved, rife with mogul-like potholes and large mounds of gravel. The five-vehicle convoy was only a few hundred meters away from the main highway when an IED detonated on the left side of the third vehicle. Jeff was the TC of this vehicle and said that the explosion filled the inside of the Humvee with sparks and smoke. He called over the radio that his vehicle had been hit. Yanko was behind the wheel and continued to drive another hundred meters or so until the Humvee died and came to a stop. The explosion and the shrapnel had rocked the vehicle hard enough to cause the transmission to fall out.

  The convoy stopped, and soldiers began to dismount. Our battalion commander was out of his vehicle and firing at something to the south. Sean was in the turret of the lead vehicle behind the .50-cal and fire
d in the same direction as the battalion commander’s tracers. The IED was on the north side of the street, and bursts of automatic fire were coming from the same direction. Other soldiers returned fire to the north as well. Jeff quickly checked the guys in his vehicle to see if everyone was all right. Jimmy was in the seat behind Yanko and his door took the brunt of the explosion, but the armor of the Humvee left him unscathed, if a bit shaken. One of the detainees was in his vehicle, and Jeff yanked him out and pushed him flat to the ground off to the side of the road. Pressing his knee into the detainee’s side, Jeff yelled at him, “If you move, I’ll fucking kill you!” Everyone was out now except Akintade, who was still in the turret. When Jeff looked back into the vehicle, he saw a waterfall of blood coming from the ceiling under the turret and covering the radio. With the help of Yanko and Jimmy, Jeff pulled Akintade out of the Humvee and off to the side of the road, where they began assessing him. Their vehicle had all the possible armor available. It was an uparmored Humvee with a second layer of armor on all the doors, and there were additional armor plates that surrounded the turret to protect the gunner. Despite all the extra armor, a piece of shrapnel struck Akintade in the back of the head, just below his helmet, entering at the base of his skull.

  Yanko and Jimmy administered an IV and began CPR. Johnny-O was in the vehicle behind theirs and ran up with his combat lifesaver bag to help while they waited for the medevac chopper to arrive. Yanko found a pulse for Akintade, but it quickly faded. A breathing tube was inserted into his airway, and for twenty minutes they continued CPR until the chopper arrived.

  Akintade was put on a stretcher and moved to the awaiting Blackhawk, which had landed on the road. As they were preparing to load him in, the medic on the chopper said, “Is this guy dead? We don’t fly dead guys. We only fly wounded guys.” There was a short and heated argument that Jeff ended by shouting, “YOU’RE FUCKING TAKING THIS GUY!” Moments later, the chopper took off with Akintade.

  While the QRF from my platoon was retrieving the detainees from the weapons cache site, I was on a mission to recon a building for a raid later that night. Another platoon from my company had a few tasks to perform in the town, and I was tagging along to get photographs of the raid site and to get a feel for the streets in the area. It was late in the morning as we drove into town when the call came in about the QRF being hit.

  We temporarily abandoned the mission we were on and sped to the site of the attack. As we flew down the highway, blowing by traffic with our horns blaring, details of the attack began to come in. We were told the convoy had been disabled by an IED and there were sporadic bursts of small arms fire. Then word came that there was a U.S. casualty.

  Another unit from our battalion had also responded to the attack and had already secured the immediate area. Since the vehicles were now relatively safe and the small arms fire had ceased, the group I was with seized a nearby building and put a sniper team on the roof. There were four Iraqi men at this house, probably in their early twenties, three of whom sported typical Western clothes and haircuts. One of them had an ID card from a U.S. base for some sort of security force I wasn’t familiar with. The men seemed nonchalant and glib, chuckling to each other as if they were sharing an inside joke. We took them out of the building, separated them, and made them sit against the outside wall of the property.

  I helped search the property, and in the backyard I found a bucketful of clothes. Underneath the clothes were pipe fittings and other miscellaneous garbage. There was a white plastic box with a metal dial that looked like some sort of timer, a cell phone faceplate, a large 12-volt battery, and the battery tube handle of a flashlight. These were all items related to IED triggers. I went back to the front of the house, where the men were being watched, and told another sergeant about the trigger materials. I didn’t want the guys we were watching to know what I had discovered yet, so I left the bucket in the yard where I’d found it.

  John was also there, and we briefly discussed the attack. He told me he had heard they were doing CPR on Akintade. This was a really bad sign. If someone is receiving CPR on the battlefield, it usually means they’re a goner. I tried to put this out of my mind.

  There was a lot going on and I hadn’t had a chance yet to tell anyone in command about the trigger materials I’d found. After a short wait, all the guys who could be spared were gathered together to begin a sweep of the field where it was believed the men who had detonated the IED had been located. There was a lieutenant from another platoon who was part of this sweep, so I informed him about what I had found.

  As we searched the field, we found a location concealed from the road by tall rushes growing out of a muddy canal, with what looked like a map drawn in the dirt. The map seemed to depict the road with the IED, the highway where the road connected, and the power lines that were directly over where the blast occurred. IEDs are remotely detonated, usually from a great distance, and it’s believed that the tall poles of high-tension power lines are often used as reference points by the insurgents for them to know when to trigger an explosion. Beside the map were footprints and tire tracks over recently trampled weeds. We continued to comb through the field but found nothing else.

  We came out of the field and back to the road. I saw the spot where Akintade had been worked on. There was a small puddle of blood, and the ground was littered with latex gloves, IV bags and needles, field dressings, and other spent medical supplies. We were letting traffic through now, and I noticed that people were slowing down to gawk at the medical garbage and the blood. Before going back to my vehicle, I quickly picked up as much of the garbage as I could and threw it out of sight into the weeds and kicked dirt over the blood.

  For the rest of the afternoon we raided house after house in the area behind the field. We believed the men who had detonated the IED must have fled in the direction of the houses we were searching. The raids were tedious and fruitless. Every house seemed to have an improbable number of women—no telling who were the wives and who were the daughters—and there were always scores of children. It felt good to be doing something, to be making some sort of effort to find the attacker, but I knew the chances of our stumbling onto a wild-eyed man hiding out in a barn, sweaty and breathing heavily with a red-and-white shemagh wrapped around his face, still clutching a metal box with an antenna and a big red button with “Acme Remote IED Detonator” emblazoned on it, was highly unlikely.

  I kept thinking about Akintade, hoping at any minute we would hear that he had been stabilized and would be all right. I was eager to hear news of him, but at the same time I was afraid of bad news.

  After Akintade was medevac’d, the QRF convoy continued back to the base. The disabled Humvee was in bad shape, but it could still roll, so it was towed by another Humvee. One of the rear tires was torn apart from the explosion and had quickly begun to deteriorate. After a few miles on the highway, the rim was scraping the road, gouging a crease into the asphalt. I don’t know if it was the sparks flying from the scraping rim or the friction from the destroyed transmission, but the back of the Humvee being towed suddenly burst into flames. Orlando was in the vehicle right behind the burning Humvee, so once they stopped the convoy, he took the fire extinguisher from his Humvee and began putting out the flames. Everyone was eager to get back to the base and could ignore the damage being done to the road, and the further damage being done to the disabled Humvee, but a Humvee engulfed in flames was enough to make them decide that maybe it was time to get a proper tow vehicle out to do the recovery. There was another unit from our base on the highway at the time, and they stopped to help. After the fire was put out, the charred Humvee and the one towing it were left with the other unit to wait for the tow truck. As the convoy with the detainees was about to leave, someone from the other unit asked, “Hey, are you gonna take that guy with you?” There was still a detainee in the burned Humvee everyone had completely forgotten about.

  It was almost sunset, and the group I was with needed to continue our original missio
n. We came up empty-handed from the houses we had raided, and we were exhausted. Everyone returned to their vehicles, and we made our way back to the town. We were about a mile away from town, on a quiet road without any buildings, when our commander ordered that everyone stop and get out of their vehicles. Everyone except the gunners got out of their Humvees and gathered around the commander, who said he wanted to speak to us. Once the group was silent, he looked around at everyone, then said, “Akintade is dead.”

  I don’t remember much else of what he said except that Akintade had been pronounced dead on the medevac helicopter and that we should direct our anger constructively, not destructively. As he spoke I couldn’t stop thinking about the word he chose: “dead.” Not passed away, not lost, just dead. I was so uncomfortable. How are you supposed to act when you’ve just been told someone you’ve known for years has been killed? Was I supposed to keep my eyes on our commander while he spoke? Was I supposed to look at the ground as if in deep contemplation? Do I look around at the other guys to see how they are acting? Was I supposed to be thinking about revenge? I didn’t feel hate, but I thought maybe I should. I was having trouble comprehending that I’d never get to see him again.

  After our commander was done speaking, we got back in our Humvees and continued the mission. The kids in town were just as annoying as they always were, and I had absolutely no patience for them whatsoever. I was afraid that if any of them pushed me hard enough, I’d end up beating him senseless. Thankfully, none of them bothered us that much. While I was standing in the street, I looked over at John, who was standing by his vehicle. Our eyes met, and I was wondering what he was feeling. I imagine he was probably thinking the same thing about me. I couldn’t even look at him, and I certainly didn’t want to talk to anyone. I felt drained and listless. I got the photographs of the house I needed and we returned to our base.