Kaboom

by Matthew Gallagher

  And then there were the other field grades.

  For whatever reason, these other field grades always seemed to outnumber the quality ones. And they were seemingly everywhere in Iraq, intent on riding the bureaucratic beast in all its protectionist glory. As with any professional organization, the army taught me to respect the rank, if not the person. And so I did. Unlike other professional organizations though, the army mandated that I carry out these men’s orders successfully and without complaint, even when they directly assaulted all known logic and experience. And so I did, hiding my concerns from my subordinates as much as possible in a combat environment, because I was just a lieutenant and just a platoon leader and probably didn’t understand the bigger picture. While I was often frustrated, I was never defiant.

  None of that changed the truth, though, that inept careerists were as much a part of the military fabric as the camouflage pattern and liquid eggs for breakfast, and my experiences in Iraq in this regard were certainly nothing new in the annals of war. The players never changed, only their names.

  Major Moe was the most prevalent type of other field grade. Major Moe wasn’t so much a person as he was a trend; nicknamed after the character in the classic Three Stooges films, Major Moe could be found, in multitude, on any FOB in Iraq. If a field grade didn’t grasp the nuances of counterinsurgency doctrine, didn’t subscribe to the application of decentralized warfare, believed that all of the war’s issues could be quantified into a PowerPoint presentation, spoke vaguely of concepts like standards and discipline but never applied those same banalities personally, and consistently displayed a clueless obtuseness about day-to-day operations, he qualified as a Major Moe. In short, Major Moe made the war for line soldiers more difficult—the exact opposite of what qualified as purpose for a deployed army officer—by focusing on irrelevant regulations and out-of-date procedures. Did it really matter that some soldiers wore fleece caps during the day when they were cold, when the Iraqi police still weren’t hiring Sunnis in Saba al-Bor or anywhere else in the Taji region? It did to Major Moe and his noncommissioned officer (NCO) equivalent, Sergeant Major Curly. They didn’t know any better, though, because they rarely left the FOB. And when they did . . . it got ugly.

  One brisk winter afternoon, a certified Major Moe from our squadron visited Saba al-Bor. It was his first trip to our outpost, and our troop’s artillery lieutenant, Skerk, gave him the tour. Major Moe picked up a bundle of Baghdad Now newspapers stacked at the top of the staircase and asked what they were.

  “Those are copies of one of the Iraqi national papers, sir,” Skerk responded.

  Major Moe was confused and let it be known. “Why are they here? Why aren’t they being distributed?”

  “We do distribute them, sir. Every patrol that goes out picks up a stack and distributes them to the locals and to the Iraqi security checkpoints.”

  “That’s excellent to hear.” Major Moe responded in classic Major Moe fashion, lips puckered, chin protruded, arms crossed, nodding the all-knowing nod that was supposed to convey male dominance. He continued speaking. “I assume you’re gathering the atmospherics of this distribution?”

  Skerk replied like most well-informed individuals would in such a circumstance. “Huh?”

  Staff Sergeant Boondock and I were sitting nearby, at the computers, and could not help but openly eavesdrop at this point.

  “Why, yes, of course,” Major Moe continued. “Atmospherics. We need to check on the local-nationals and ensure that they are all reading the newspaper.”

  Staff Sergeant Boondock arched his eyebrows and turned to me. “Can most of these Iraqis read?” he whispered.

  “Fuck no,” I whispered back. “Not here.” There were many hot, dusty towns between the two rivers of the Euphrates and Tigris, and none of them contained a very educated populace anymore; most of the learned had escaped to the cities or fled the country entirely. The global media called it the Iraqi diaspora. Saba al-Bor was no exception. Unfortunately, the newspapers we distributed were intended for a very distinct minority.

  Skerk eventually sputtered out a reply. “Why would we . . . may I ask why, sir?”

  “Because it’s important to find out if they are reading them, that’s why. Like this article here—” Major Moe’s fingers slammed down onto the newspaper and pointed at Arabic words—“what is this article about? If we read it, then we can talk to the local-nationals about it when we’re on patrol. Then we can gather those atmospherics and send them up to brigade.”

  Skerk leaned over and looked at the newspaper. “Sir, that article is about dinosaurs evolving from birds.” An awkward pause followed. “And, sir, truthfully, I’m not sure that the papers we give out are really being read right now. I think most of the people use them to stay warm at night.”

  “What?” Major Moe was outraged. “That’s absurd! Like for blankets?”

  An even longer awkward pause followed, as Staff Sergeant Boondock tried in vain to stifle his laughter.

  “Uhh, no, sir. For their fires.”

  This caused Staff Sergeant Boondock’s snickering to turn into an all-out howl, while I slowly attempted to slide down my chair and out of Major Moe’s view from the top of the staircase.

  Our interactions with Major Moe weren’t always so harmless. As the months of our deployment passed, these incidents became less hilarious and more and more maddening.

  Just because a field grade wasn’t a Major Moe, though, didn’t mean he automatically qualified as the quintessential leader of men we all wanted to follow. As a generation of men raised by single women and without fathers—as most of the junior officers and enlisted soldiers were—we didn’t give our senior leaders much beyond the basic military courtesies demanded of us. Anything else they had to—and we wanted them to—earn. And we hoped they would, although it didn’t always turn out that way. Like with Lieutenant Colonel Larry.

  In all fairness, Lieutenant Colonel Larry was usually a hard worker and tactically competent. Though not as common as Major Moe, he still derived from an ideology and, thus, was embodied by multiple persons. All Lieutenant Colonel Larrys were bona fide Cold Warriors though—a derisive term used by junior officers of the global war on terrorism (GWOT) era to describe the senior officers and senior NCOs still hopelessly devoted to Cold War-era doctrine and techniques. Iraq, like most nonconventional counterinsurgencies that aimed for success, was fought on the ground level by small units, like squads and sections and platoons. Company and troop commanders became local gods who controlled civil works contracts and the electricity for entire townships; platoon leaders and squad leaders became their apostles, wandering the desert, spreading the good word, fighting battles for public perception one person at a time.

  Field grades and senior NCOs had grown up not in this environment but in a far more rigid, structured army whose mission was simply to act on and destroy the enemy. Some thrived on this change and embraced the fluidity of a counterinsurgency, others had spent their careers on the strategic level planning for just this sort of war, but still others on the operational level seemed to have a very difficult time adapting and struggled to find purpose in our current operating environment. In these situations, friction tended to arise between the respective layers of leadership.

  An incessant micromanager, our squadron’s Lieutenant Colonel Larry often led through intimidation. It seemed like there wasn’t a leader in his unit whose job he didn’t threaten over the course of our fifteen months in theater. He claimed throughout the summer and the fall that Bravo Troop was the most undisciplined outfit he’d ever seen, which might have had an effect if he hadn’t already said the same thing about the other reconnaissance troops in the squadron before and after that.

  Clinical misery ran rampant through our squadron commander’s staff, and some of his troop commanders had to take antianxiety medication in order to deal with his constant tirades. He routinely arrived unannounced at the squadron’s combat outposts—usually during banking hours, in the m
iddle of the day, staying just long enough to chastise us on uniform standards and a loose piece of trash, but arriving back on the FOB in time for dinner. The outpost was our home, where we lived twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It was more than natural for us to relax there when we weren’t on patrol or on security, it was a necessity.

  Behind his back, the Joes often whispered, “Do you always walk around in your full uniform back at your comfortable commander’s pod on Taji, sir?” But due to NCO intervention, any thoughts of mutiny were instantly crushed. Most of the enlisted soldiers never spoke to Lieutenant Colonel Larry, on a personal level or otherwise, unless they had gotten into trouble for something like negligently discharging a round into a clearing barrel. Needless to say, those conversations were not conducted as teaching points, no matter how young the soldier was or how extenuating the circumstances were. All of this led to recurring, hushed comparisons to Mussolini: True, he made the trains run on time, but at what cost? It wasn’t just his way or the highway; it was his way or the gallows.

  I swore to myself every day that if I stayed in the army, I would never lead like this. I also swore to myself every day that if I decided to get out of the army when my tour of duty was up, I would never treat people like this.

  A military unit is structured to mirror its commander and his leadership style and priorities. During my time as their platoon leader, the Gravediggers had a reputation for being tactically skilled and mission oriented, if a bit rough around the edges and (sometimes too) opinionated—certainly a reflection on both myself and SFC Big Country, for better and for worse. Concurrently, 2-14 Cavalry ultimately degenerated into a one-party fascist state. As one prominent senior NCO in the squadron often stated, “If this command were a marriage, that man would be in jail for abuse.” My eventually standing up to Lieutenant Colonel Larry after I was threatened, and then writing about it, would change nothing. Through words and actions, he made it clear that he viewed me as a rebellious punk lieutenant easily discarded for my unruliness—as I would eventually be, traded within the brigade to 1-27 Infantry Battalion and away from the platoon ten months into the deployment.

  But that was still many months and many passages through the wilds away.

  GRAVEYARD SHIFT

  I couldn’t see the makeshift dip cup Private Van Wilder spat into, but I heard his deposit splash into the pool of tobacco brown before he answered my question.

  “No worries, sir, we’re doing fine.”

  In the limp, ambiguous darkness of the hours between midnight and dawn, I could only discern the outline of my soldier’s shape three feet away. We were on the roof of the combat outpost, overwatching the slums of Saba al-Bor, making small talk to distract from the chill of the night. Due to his contagious good nature and quick wit, Private Van Wilder had become a leader for the Joes from the day he showed up at our unit onward. I had hurled the awkwardly vague blanket question of “How are things going in the platoon, from your perspective?” at him. His quick reply had been what I should’ve expected—brief and upbeat.

  “Would you tell me if it wasn’t?” I asked with a scoff, hoping to recover from my initial statement’s idiocy. Like most junior officers who didn’t drip with careerist aspirations, I always liked to project myself as a platoon leader who kept it real, and I was more than aware that my first question betrayed far too much self-awareness for an army man. Being a platoon leader was sometimes a very lonely position, as I was stuck between an immovable force (common sense) and an unstoppable power (Higher). Luckily, my soldiers laughed along with me as I learned to navigate this murky divide, rather than resenting their platoon leadership, as I saw happen in other line platoons.

  “Ehh, probably not, sir,” Private Van Wilder replied, in his terse Texan drawl. “It ain’t your fault though—I just think Staff Sergeant Boondock would kill us if we didn’t go through him first, you know?” I thought over his response and came to terms with the honest nature of it. After all, the bone marrow of the military was a rigid and clear chain of command that was only to be violated under the most extreme conditions. If my soldiers understood this, then I guessed I had found the answer to my initial question, however indirectly.

  The same conclusion was found on the other side of the roof with PFC Cold-Cuts, albeit in a much different and more forthcoming manner. This young Gravedigger motormouthed his way through a multitude of subjects in only thirty or so minutes, including, but not limited to, why he believed America was in Iraq; why he didn’t like being in his wife’s doghouse; which members of the platoon he thought missed their families the most; what he remembered from the Iraq history classes I had conducted for the platoon in the months leading up to our deployment; what he did not remember from those classes; how good his unborn son would be at high school football; how funny it was when Staff Sergeant Bulldog told him, “Damn it, Cold-Cuts, you ain’t allowed to call hajjis ‘hajjis’ no mor’”; why the Iraqi men were so interested in his blonde hair and blue eyes; how much he wanted to take Suge back to Hawaii with us when we redeployed; and why he could tell which Iraqi police were crooked just by looking at them. All the while he patted his crew-serve machine gun, which sat behind a drooping camo net, something that masked all the weapons’ positions on the four corners of the roof.

  I wasn’t sure whether I needed to hug him or drop him to the ground to do push-ups when, after I announced my intention to move elsewhere in our security posture, he patted me on the back and said, “You’re doing great, sir. Thanks for checking on us, but don’t worry so much. We’re all fine.” I managed a laugh and told PFC Cold-Cuts that I appreciated his endorsement, as I would now be able to sleep soundly at night. This unleashed a fresh set of giggles from him. I continued on with my rounds.

  Judging from the snapping of his body when I put my hand on his shoulder, I could tell I had startled Private Romeo when I walked up on him. He and Specialist Flashback stood together in a comfortable silence, one that I joined them in. They were providing security to the west, over the IP station that had been overrun by Sadrist militiamen in 2004, during the Mahdi Army’s initial rebellion, and again in 2006, during Saba al-Bor’s sectarian wars. The only activity in front of the police station on this night was a pair of humping dogs that three Iraqi policemen kept throwing rocks at.

  I thought about quizzing my soldiers on their sectors of fire but decided not to insult their intelligence—they had already pulled this shift enough times and been asked that same exact questions enough times to have their sectors memorized. Few things kill morale the way the Jerry’s Kids treatment does. Specialist Flashback eventually looked over at me and asked, “The TOC [tactical operations center] driving you crazy again, sir?”

  I nodded and uttered a simple, “Uh huh.” The TOC was technically my designated place of duty for the graveyard shift—a place where the telephone rang incessantly, the radios spouted like a broken water-sprinkler system, and the madness never ended. I had slipped out while three Headquarters platoon NCOs—one Puerto Rican, one Panamanian, and one Mexican—argued heatedly in Spanish about whose respective nation’s females deserved the title of “Hottest Latinas.” While certainly an appealing subject, it had lost its appeal when I couldn’t follow the various points and counterpoints being made. I had subsequently sought refuge up on the roof.

  “I hate going in there,” Private Romeo said. “SFC Big Country sent me in there last week to get a fresh battery for a walkie-talkie, and I almost ran over the sergeant major. He yelled at me for not shaving. I told him that we had just got back from an all-night OP and that I was going straight onto security, and then he told me, ‘Excuses are like assholes,’ and that a good soldier would bring a razor on his mission. What does that even mean?”

  “I think he meant, ‘Excuses are like assholes: Everyone has one,’” Specialist Flashback explained.

  “Oh.” If possible, Private Romeo was even more irritated with the sergeant major’s comment now. “I guess that makes sense.”


  “That’s the one good thing about night around here,” Specialist Flashback said. “At least it’s just us Bravo Troopers at night.” He turned to me and smiled. “Wouldn’t you agree, sir?”

  I bit my lip and smirked. It probably wasn’t too hard to discern how I felt about these matters, and with Specialist Flashback being my driver, thus privy to my more unplugged moments, he already knew the answer to his question. Now, though, I had a moment to collect my thoughts, and in the name of professionalism, I resisted the urge to be too honest with my guys. “I don’t know what you mean,” I eventually replied. “The best part about nighttime is talking to Staff Sergeant Bulldog when he’s trying to sleep.”

  A burst of automatic weapons fire rippled through the night in the distance, toward the northeast, somewhere in the Sunni sector. We all shifted instinctively toward that direction, waiting for a succeeding burst. None came. Private Van Wilder called across the update on the radio, boredom saturating every word of the report. This was Iraq. Gunfire happened at night. Gunfire happened every night.

  “And that,” I continued, “that’s the other best thing about nighttime.”

  Shortly thereafter, I ambled over to Sergeant Spade’s sergeant-of-the-guard position at the base of the entryway to the roof. Sergeant Spade demonstrated all the traits of a model scout—an aloof and serene temperament, a set of stabbing eyes, a casual naturalness with the rifle that hung at the low-ready like a third arm, and a big wad of dip tucked deeply into one of his cheek pouches.