“It had a blue sticker and a red square,” the lieutenant said, in what he hoped was an encouraging tone, when they determined for the thousandth time their box was not in the predetermined and agreed upon location.
“Blue sticker, red square,” Turtle repeated, but the ability to recognize their own among thousands of virtually identical boxes waned as night drew near.
Before leaving, Hula had been reassured that the boxes had tracking devices on them should they be routed in the wrong direction. However, these only had a battery life that lasted a few days, so the signal unsurprisingly blinked out just days into its voyage from the United States to the Middle East.
The actions and failures of politicians in power have consequences: It is an idea we accept in principle. After all, it’s why we vote. But the average civilian has only a vague awareness of such consequences. Numbers and statistics broadcast to the American people weren’t vague political conjectures; they were real-life problems for men and women on the front line.
One of these problems was that a bunch of rapidly dehydrating Mainers wasted a day staggering around the sandbox outside Kuwait, seeking what Turtle insisted on calling their “lost luggage,” which was still floating somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.
Years of experience provides generals with what becomes common knowledge: If you’re going to send Platoon X to the Middle East on an airplane, you have to make sure that an airplane of the appropriate size is ready to take off when the platoon arrives at the airport (with a contingency plan for mechanical failures or other glitches), and when the plane lands, there will have to be something for the members of that platoon to eat, wear, shoot, and poop in.
There are so many moving parts to account for: How many battalions, brigades, platoons, and units are available, and which will be activated and when? Where and by whom will they be trained, when will they be deployed to Iraq and by what means of transportation?
It is a monumental task organizing and transporting such massive quantities of Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), bottled water, water purifiers, rifles, grenade launchers, tents, trailers, helicopters, tanks, trucks, spare parts, hammers, nails, porta-potties, bullets, helmets, body armor, socks, bottles of insect repellent, toilet paper, medical kits, maps, gasoline, soap, ballpoint pens, night vision goggles, anti-malaria medications, batteries, extension cords, sunscreen, and more.
Every item has to be either sourced in-country or purchased. It has to be inventoried, packed, accounted and signed for, loaded into cargo vessels, and shipped across the ocean where it must be unloaded and matched specifically with units as they arrive. If this gets screwed up, you can have a lot of guys without gear and gear without guys.
To be sure, planning a war is incredibly complicated and it only gets worse when, for instance, the Office of the Secretary of Defense insists on overruling plans that have been months in the making.
It is common knowledge among troops in the field that when politicians untrained in the ways of war get involved, things have the potential to (at best) become a bigger headache, and at worst cost the lives of their brothers-in-arms. The men who send boys off to war often have no concept of the potentially lethal consequences of ignoring such ancient advice as “Plan according to the fight, fight according to the plan.”
Of course, finding the conex box wouldn’t have made much difference to the Mainers since, as Dizl explained, they packed for the wrong trip anyhow. Their box mostly contained equipment suited to the original mission for which they had been trained and prepared: kicking in doors in Kabul. Abu Ghraib presented a new and unexpected challenge, one which would call for another bit of ancient military wisdom: Adapt, improvise, and overcome.
They had no communications gear, very little medical gear, some chemical warfare boots, and a “dandy” set of weapons racks. They also took possession of old-fashioned flak jackets, which they planned to use to reinforce the doors of the soft-sided trucks that would be their transportation to Abu Ghraib to provide a modicum of protection from shrapnel and small-arms fire.
Eventually, they would be issued Kevlar vests supplemented by two ceramic plates, one for the back and one for the chest. Some of the vests arrived with only a single plate, however, so the soldier wearing it was forced to ponder whether he was more likely to face fire from in front or behind.
They did have a large supply of ammunition, which raised another question among some of the men: how smart would it be to load all this explosive ordnance into a bunch of trucks with canvas doors and convoy them down a highway known as “IED Alley”?
Lieutenant Murray, who would later receive the unfortunate nickname “Lunch Lady” owing to his agreeable habit of bringing food with him when checking on his soldiers standing duty at Abu Ghraib, decided it wouldn’t be quite smart enough.
“Let’s find a place to leave it instead,” he said. “This is stuff that needs to be transported in secure vehicles. I’ll find a depot we can leave it with.”
They had three Humvees assigned to them for the task. The ammunition had been loaded, but they had not yet received the keys to unlock the steering columns to drive them. The liaison kept promising that we would get the keys day after day with no results.
Lunch Lady got fed up waiting; the time had come to move their ammo. “Technically we were stealing the trucks,” he recalled, “but the mission required it so we cut the locks.” Lunch Lady didn’t expect any reprimand for the “theft”; besides, he planned to be out of the area long before anyone found out.
Now informed of an appropriate spot to store their ordnance and hijacked vehicles, Lunch Lady and a few intrepid Mainers set off for a military depot somewhere on the far side of Kuwait City. Within minutes, they had become hopelessly entangled in the spaghetti of freeways woven amid the urban sprawl. Everywhere they looked were people who, from a perspective warped by months of training and the dehumanization of the enemy, looked an awful lot like terrorists.
Back at Fort Dix, they had been given laminated pocket cards printed with various useful phrases to use when communicating with Middle Eastern civilians, and Skeletor and Turtle had conscientiously studied these. Maybe if they were ambushed and kidnapped they could converse their way out of trouble?
Night fell. They were still lost. At one point, Turtle looked through the windscreen at the monster high-tension wires choking the sky and channeling power all the way to Europe. Turtle announced that if they were attacked by jihadists hell-bent on stealing their truckload of ammo, he planned to fire a grenade at the nearest electrical tower.
“I bet it would turn all the lights out in France,” he said. “That would get some attention.”
It was a cheering thought. They pressed on.
Had they been forced to stop and ask directions, the Kuwaitis would probably have been as kind and helpful as possible. Some might even have spoken English, as Kuwait is a wealthy country and part of a world community in which English is the common coin. Besides, however exotic men in kaffiyehs and women in headscarves might have looked to the Mainers, military trucks full of uniformed Americans were old news to Kuwaitis.
As it turns out, it was probably a fortunate thing that Lunch Lady at last figured out how to find the US ammunitions depot without stopping to ask. Unbeknownst to Dizl and the other soldiers, the army had issued the wrong language cards. The phrases Turtle and Skeletor had so carefully memorized (“Who dwells in this house?” “Please place your hands above your head.” “Thank you.”) were in Farsi. Farsi is the language of Iran, Iraq’s oldest enemy.
“Packed for the wrong trip,” as Dizl would say.
Nothing exciting happened while the small group was gone, except for an incident involving Private King, whom the lieutenant had left behind on gear security. “I suppose he did pretty well for the day,” Lunch Lady said. “Other than the fact that I noticed that he convinced himself it was OK to use my electric shaver. I was in shock. His reasoning was that he had never used one and that he didn’t think I would m
ind. He was counseled [a euphemism for a disciplinary ass-chewing], but luckily he was moved from my platoon shortly after.”
It is common practice for commanders near the end of their unit’s deployment cycle to cut back on the riskier endeavors they’d been sending their troops out on up to that point; casualties do not look good on FitReps—fitness reports that determine whether or not a promotion or commendation is waiting upon their return. Neither troops packing for departure nor those unpacking on arrival are likely to be out on patrol, engaging the enemy in firefights or making forays into hostile territory along roadways mined with IEDs. So the reduction in the number of casualties, however welcome, promoted a sense of progress that would prove illusory.
The Iraqis who’d challenged the American occupation in the summer and fall of 2003 and survived gained valuable and lethal combat experience. The Americans were thinking the fight was over; the insurgents were gearing up for round two, taking their defeats of the previous months and turning them into learning opportunities.
Even given the relative quiet, commanders decided it was too dangerous to send the whole of the 152nd up IED Alley by unarmored trucks. So the majority of the men would travel from Kuwait to Baghdad by plane, with a small group left behind to convoy the equipment a few days later.
As they prepared to board the transport that would fly them from Kuwait to the Baghdad International Airport, known as BIAP (pronounced Buy-Yap), the Mainers met some guys on their trip home. One was limping along on a shattered foot, his shaved head engraved with an enormous, livid scar.
“How was it?” the newcomers asked.
The man shook his head, his eyes giving a textbook demonstration of the “thousand-yard stare” they had heard so much about.
“It’s not what you think,” he said. “It’s not what they’ve been saying. It’s a shit storm.”
4 Ricks, Fiasco, 321.
FIVE
WELCOME TO THE MORTAR CAFÉ
“Following their arrest [by Coalition Forces], the nine men were made to kneel, face and hands against the ground, as if in prayer position. The soldiers stamped on the back of the necks of those raising their head. They confiscated money without issuing a receipt.”
—International Red Cross report, February 2004
ABU GHRAIB WAS hot, filthy, smelly, overcrowded, ugly, infested with vermin, teeming with bacteria and viruses, strewn with garbage and raw sewage, lacking in basic medical facilities, and prone to dust storms, mud baths, drought, and flooding.
It was hot; the average daytime temperature was 133 degrees Fahrenheit, which was miserable for a group of people used to the mild, pleasant Maine summer where temperatures exceeding 80 degrees were a rarity to be endured rather than the norm. Like any other combat deployment, it was dreary and boring. The initial excitement of arrival quickly receded and breaks from the monotony came in the form of anything that was even remotely out of the normal.
The 152nd would be serving with four other companies: the 301st MP Company from Puerto Rico, the 428th MP Company from Indiana, Marine Corps K CO, Third Battalion Twenty-Fourth Marines from Missouri, and 391 Headquarters Company from Columbus, Ohio. Each unit would be assigned various duties in Abu Ghraib. The Marines guarded and patrolled the main perimeter, the MPs would control and guard the detainees, and Headquarters Company took care of logistical operations such as mail, food, and supplies.
As if all the heat, disease, and garbage didn’t make life there hellish enough, Abu Ghraib would be the focus of some of the most frequent and intense insurgent attacks in the entire Iraq theater. Despite the Marines guarding the perimeter and patrolling the town of Abu Ghraib, everyone at the prison complex was vulnerable to mortar rounds, VBIEDs (car bombs), and snipers. To make matters worse, their gear was not only inappropriate for their mission, the 152nd was completely missing equipment vital to the safety of both the soldiers and their prisoners.
Among the tools the newly minted MPs from Maine lacked were radios. They had a few sets of old hand-crank radios that relied on wires for transmission, which were vulnerable to sabotage. Astonishing as it seems, the spotters surrounding the complex could be calling in the firing coordinates by cell phone, probably texting their wives at the same time, but there was no way for soldiers working in Ganci to communicate with any other soldier beyond the range of his voice.
Turtle’s dad, back in Maine, heard about this. Restraining any impulse he might have had to drive to Washington, DC, and personally ream out Donald Rumsfeld, he drove instead to LL Bean in Freeport, where he purchased four crayon-colored Motorola walkie-talkies (the kind marketed to parents who want to keep track of their kids on the ski slope) and mailed them to Iraq.
These had disadvantages. The relative importance of communication, observation, and self-defense had to be continuously and literally juggled given that the radio took one hand to operate. They also weren’t as sturdy as they might have been. After Dizl got blasted during the major insurgent assault of April 20, his radio never worked properly again. Nor did the binoculars Dizl’s brother had sent him. Or his right eye. Still, the Motorolas were a whole lot better than nothing at all.
FRAGO: You know those malaria pills we gave you three weeks ago and required you to take every day? They’ll make you sick. Stop taking them.
On his first morning at Forward Operating Base, Abu Ghraib (FOBAG), Dizl went for a walk around camp. He’d slept fitfully the night before. Which was no surprise given that his platoon had been told to live in a building known as the Mortar Café. Originally it had served as the cafeteria for Saddam’s prison, then as the dining facility for the American contingent originally charged with refurbishing the vandalized property for use in detainee operations. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (now KBR, Inc.) had established a new and presumably more modern kitchen and dining facility, so the Mortar Café was free for use as living quarters.
When the remnants of the 800th MPs had finished clearing out, Dizl’s platoon (First Platoon) would move into their quarters, known as an LSA (short for “living facility”), and set about trying to make it feel a little like a home away from home.
So Dizl slept the first night behind concrete walls tastefully decorated with a large mural of Saddam on the outside of the building and the legendary “Welcome to the Mortar Café” scrawled on the inside. Their quarters were filled with a number of permanently installed concrete picnic tables, so there was no need—or space—for setting up cots.
It was a bluebird day, unusually clear and relatively cool by Iraq’s standards, and Dizl was inclined to be optimistic as he wandered out across the helo pad, noticing the sparrows, the spiders, the crows. He gazed with interest at the rows of wire fencing surrounding and enclosing the detainee compounds, and at the makeshift soccer pitches and the tall tower of the mosque in the nearby village.
The detainees’ tents looked a little like downscale circus tents, he thought, or maybe like the tents caterers provide for the reception after an outdoor wedding, if you subtracted the dirt, the trash, and the stench of raw sewage. The detainees seemed calm enough, although he had to admit, the range of ages was disconcerting. A very old man hobbled by, supported by an awfully young boy.
Is this a prison, or a refugee camp?
Chain-link fences and piles of glittering razor wire lined his path once he left the trash-strewn area in front of their new sleeping quarters. Some of the guard towers looked almost like children’s forts cobbled together from material scavenged from a scrap yard.
He spotted Lunch Lady coming along the lanes between the enclosures, finishing up his own little walking tour. We can compare notes back at the Mortar Café, Dizl thought, and gave Lunch Lady a wave.
He spent a little time gazing meditatively at the open area known as Mortar Field, which someone had told him once served as a mass grave during Saddam’s regime. He thought idly about the soccer pitches, wondering if and where Americans might play. He thought about his breakfast, which hadn’t been too bad
(except for the powdered eggs) and wondered what his next meal might look like. He also noted, in passing, that an awful lot of things at Abu Ghraib seemed to be named “Mortar-something.”
Krump
Dizl didn’t recognize the sound right away, perhaps because movies have made clichés of the sound and sight of explosions, their representations of hand grenades and mortar rounds exploding in fiery conflagrations the hero can leap away from at the last second. There was a microsecond’s lag time between the noise and his reaction.
The first boom stunned Lunch Lady, catching him completely unprepared. “It stopped me in my tracks,” he said. The sound came from in front of him; he figured the round probably landed outside of the base near the apartments outside the west wall. At the time he had no idea how to gauge how close the blast was and still had expectations of balls of fire billowing into the sky à la Hollywood. An instant later he witnessed the second blast. It all felt like slow motion; it looked as if the mortar had hit the top of the western wall. While the lieutenant did not see the anticipated fireball, he did see debris fly outwards and upward from the wall. The sight finally triggered his motion.
Oh right! That’s a mortar, Dizl thought and began to run too.
The only available direction was back to where he had started from, so he hauled ass that way. He could hear the hiss as the rockets passed overhead and the sound of more explosions in the direction of the helo pad. He had arrived at a wall made of cement blocks standing perhaps twelve feet high, and Dizl recognized it after a moment as the one he’d passed on his way to breakfast. Just on the other side of the wall was the Mortar Café, the guys from Maine, his new home.
Packed for the Wrong Trip Page 5