Combat and Other Shenanigans Read online

  “Are you Captain Black?” he asked, as I walked up.

  “No, sir – Lieutenant Platt. Captain Black sent me, though.”

  “Okay,” he said, shaking my hand, “Watkins, from 1-77 Armor. What’s happened so far?”

  “A lot,” I told him, grinning as I spread my map on the hood of his truck. I gave him a brief summary of our operation, detailing the types of contact we had observed and their rough locations.

  “Are there more in there, you think?”

  I nodded. “Probably. I’m sure we didn’t get them all, but we put a big hurt on them, and they’re definitely not going to be able to organize as stiff a resistance as they could have before. I don’t think they’ll be able to organize much of anything, anymore.”

  “Good,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Good luck, sir,” I said, and meant it. We might have taken the brunt of the enemy contact of Operation Baton Rouge, but this next phase would still be extremely dangerous, tedious, and exhausting. Now that the adrenaline rush was wearing off and my fatigue was setting in heavily, I was glad to have the worst behind us. I headed back to my track, climbed up into my hatch, and picked up my hand mike.

  “Anvil 6, Bulldawg Red 1.”

  “This is Anvil 5, 6 is on the ground, over.”

  “Roger, Anvil 5: briefing of 1-77 complete. Since we’re at the next phase of the operation, I’d like to switch to Bulldawg Troop control and move to my traffic control point position, over.”

  “This is Anvil 5, roger: execute. I’ll advise Anvil 6.”

  “Bulldawg Red 1, roger, out.”

  Wasser had heard the conversation and was already tweaking the radio knobs, switching me to the Bulldawg Troop frequency. I reminded the rest of the platoon to do the same, then gave a radio check on the Bulldawg Troop frequency.

  Sergeant First Class Peterson, who was manning the improvised troop command post at the retrans site, answered.

  “This is Bulldawg X-Ray, roger – good to have you back, Red 1.”

  “Roger, X-Ray – good to be back.”

  After a short drive, we stopped at the predetermined location, and keeping four of my Bradleys zig-zagged across the road to act as a blocking position, I sent Staff Sergeant Barnes north to link up with Blue Platoon’s Bradleys, who were already set in a screen line stretching north to south. While they picked their positions and ensured that the off-road section of the screen line was without gaps, we set up razor wire across the road and hung chemical lights off it to make it visible to drivers in the pre-dawn darkness. Bill Oberfeld’s platoon was responsible for the terrain south of my roadblock, between the road and the Tigris, and I checked in with him early on to coordinate between our platoons, just as we had with Blue Platoon to the north, to ensure we had an unbroken line of vehicles cordoning off the entire city.

  By dawn we were set, and the sun rose on a dramatic scene that morning. The roofs of Samarra were visible in the distance, and the night’s fighting had started several massive fires, grey-black plumes of smoke rising in thick columns over the city. We didn’t hear any evidence of ongoing battle, however – as it turned out, we saw all of the intense combat of the operation, and though the clearing of the city would continue for several days while we manned our screen line, the units in the city went about their business with only sporadic enemy contact. They turned up a prolific amount of weapons and ammunition, all of which was driven to the perimeter of the city and destroyed in several spectacular controlled demolitions. But they didn’t catch any of the high priority targets – as they had before, when faced with a full-scale clearing operation, the insurgents merely tossed away their weapons and blended into the population, waiting to fight another day.

  At the time, we thought of the mission as a historic and overwhelming success: my platoon alone killed more than 20 insurgents during the night, and across the city, between ground forces and air strikes the full tally was estimated at 150 or more killed, with no coalition casualties. That was a good night’s work in anyone’s book, and we were proud of our contribution regardless of the clearing operation’s outcome. It’s hard to get a feeling for how the people of Samarra felt (especially when you’re holding a rifle while asking them); on the whole, the ones we talked to later that day at our checkpoint were pretty enthusiastic about the operation – much as with the Taliban in Afghanistan, life under insurgent rule had not been all sunshine and rainbows. In addition to forcing their radical Islamist values on the mainly Sunni population (banning TV, music, and dancing, among other things), the insurgents in Samarra had made it a practice to take what they wanted without asking, up to and including houses and women.

  Not long after dawn, the cars began arriving at our checkpoint. Samarra is a relatively large city of several hundred thousand people, and besides hosting a major battle that night, the citizens discovered several thousand troops still in the city at daybreak, industriously kicking down doors and tossing rooms. This had naturally given the locals plenty of incentive to leave town for the weekend.

  My orders were clear, however: no military age males could leave or enter the city. This is standard operating procedure on such a mission – we needed to prevent insurgents from escaping, and prevent more insurgents from entering the city to attack friendly forces from areas they had already cleared. The reality of selectively sealing off the city, however, was in stark contrast to the simplicity of our mission statement. One at a time, we would let a car into the search area, thoroughly check it for contraband, turn the males back towards Samarra, and let the females and children continue. By 9 a.m. we had at least 200 cars stacked up outside our roadblock, stretching most of the way back to Samarra. With only 15 soldiers at the checkpoint, it was going to be a long day of searching.

  As the morning progressed, however, the cars continued to stack up, until we lost sight of the end of the line. Out of concern that insurgents might sneak either a car bomb or a sniper team out to target us from one of the cars, Staff Sergeant Neathery asked to take a team outside our blocking position to patrol along the line of cars. They returned 15 or 20 minutes later looking shaken. Neathery found me quickly.

  “It’s bad out there, sir.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, for starters, the line goes way back. We’re not going to get to even a quarter of those cars today.”

  I nodded: that was unfortunate, but there wasn’t much we could do about it.

  “But there’s a lot of people hurt, too – I saw a woman with a gunshot wound in the back, and a kid with some bad shrapnel wounds.”

  I frowned. “Why aren’t they going to the hospital in Samarra?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Martin wandered up, having overheard some of Neathery’s concerns. Between the three of us, we worked out a plan to triage the cars in line, using Neathery’s advance team to move the wounded to the front of the line. Under my orders, we sped up our search process on those cars carrying injured civilians, too – I was willing to accept a bit more risk to get them on their way faster. I found our platoon’s interpreter, a hard-working Iraqi named Mohammed, as the first cars of wounded people began arriving.

  “Mohammed!”

  “Yes?”

  I gestured to a woman standing by her car as it was searched, her young son’s arm bandaged heavily. “Can you ask this woman why they are leaving the city – why didn’t she go to the hospital in Samarra?”

  He echoed my words. She shook her head, fear in her eyes, and replied quietly, avoiding eye contact with me.

  “She says the fighters have taken over the hospital – they made everyone leave,” Mohammed told me.

  “American fighters?”

  He relayed my question. She shook her head – no. I swore.

  “That’s fucked up,” Sergeant First Class Martin, standing next to me, agreed.

  In addition to Mohammed, our platoon had two medics assigned to us for the mission, in recognition of the danger of manning such a checkpoint. Though
their main job was to treat us if anything happened, Sergeant Chambers had been helping out the search teams as the cars moved through the checkpoint, but as the wounded began to arrive, he jogged over to me and asked permission to treat those he could.

  “Yeah, you bet, Doc. Do you have enough supplies?”

  “For now, sir, but if we keep getting people through at this rate …” he left the sentence unfinished.

  “Okay, I’ll see what I can do to get some more out here. Keep an eye on your supplies, and make sure you have some set aside in case we take contact.”

  “Roger – I can’t treat ‘em all, sir.” It was clear that he would have liked to.

  “Okay,” I told him. “Do what you can.”

  The day dragged on, a seemingly endless train of human suffering passing by our eyes under the hot sun. We searched so many cars that it all became a giant blur. We actually kept count, and though I’ve forgotten the exact figure, it was close to five hundred that day alone.

  We saw families crying as we split them, husbands sending their wives and children on alone, and turning away to walk back to Samarra on foot. There was a ten-year-old boy grinning as he drove his father’s old Mercedes through the checkpoint, standing on the floor to be able to see over the wheel, his mother and sisters modestly covering their faces as they passed my soldiers. Another car held a boy with a chemical burn on his arm, who didn’t make a sound as Doc Chambers wrapped his arm in gauze and gave his grandmother a small bottle of ointment for him. By evening, we had all been awake for close to 40 hours straight, during which time we had fought in the longest and most dangerous battle of our tour in Iraq, and then spent a long, sweaty day manning the checkpoint.

  Blue Platoon scored the first and only success of the screen line. As they took their positions, they spotted a red pickup truck moving towards them off-road at high speed. When the driver disregarded their signals to stop, they fired a warning shot, which had the intended effect. A very rattled 14-year-old boy was at the wheel, and after patting him down, they were about to let him go with a stern warning when one of the dismounted scouts flipped the tarp off the back of his truck for a quick peek. He found a veritable arms bazaar underneath: grenades of every type imaginable, RPG launchers, AK-47s, the whole shebang. When they laid all the weapons out for inventory, they took up over 50 square feet of ground.

  After sunset, we had Mohammed tell the cars remaining in line that they would have to come back the following day – our orders were to close the checkpoint at night. Once the line of cars had cleared the area and full dark had set in, we let out a collective sigh of relief. The effects of sleep deprivation were starting to show heavily in all of us – slurred speech, slow reactions and thought processes; it was like being fairly drunk, with none of the buzz. I should have been hungry, but was literally too tired to eat – my body was overriding the hunger mechanism in favor of rest. I worked out the guard rotation for the night with my crew and then crashed.

  * * *

  The original operational plan called for us to man the checkpoint for three days, but we ended up manning that screen line for nine. 2nd Brigade took longer than expected to clear Samarra fully, but after they finished, 1st Infantry Division decided to maintain the screen line, presumably to deter insurgents from returning. Nine days straight is a long time to do anything, but if those nine days include prolonged activity in 100° heat, not showering, and only having a few days’ worth of clothing, things start to get ugly. Or rather, smell ugly. We had baby wipes, which we used both as toilet paper and as a way to clean ourselves, but they can only do so much.

  As a result of living in such close proximity with limited hygiene options, almost all of us got sick quickly. I came down with a nasty cold, which made life pretty miserable in the afternoon heat, but I downed Tylenol and kept myself hydrated and got over it in a couple days. Sergeant First Class Martin’s gunner, Sergeant Tremont, had it worse, catching a nasty stomach virus which hit him with the dreaded one-two punch of diarrhea and vomiting. He refused treatment for a while, stoically manning his position on the checkpoint, hurrying off into the bushes to do his business when necessary, until Sergeant First Class Martin had had enough and ordered him over to the medics. They gave him three IV bags full of fluid, and we put him on the next convoy back to FOB Mackenzie to get full treatment. He was right back out on the checkpoint as soon as he was cleared for duty by the Squadron Medical Officer.

  They brought us out hot food, occasionally, and managed to bring out some of our spare clothes when the situation got dire enough. Given the number of nicotine addicts in our troop, dwindling tobacco supplies quickly became the biggest problem, however. One night, as Sergeant First Class Peterson was collecting the platoon sergeants’ resupply requests over the radio, it became clear that each platoon was getting down to its last cigarette and pinch of dip – he had spent five minutes compiling the list of food and water requests, and a solid 20 minutes writing down tobacco products requested.

  “Okay,” Peterson said, “I’ve got the list here, but I just want to let you guys know that I don’t think anyone is planning on making another re-supply run for another couple days.”

  There followed several curse-laden transmissions from the platoons. A pair of Kiowas from Eagle Troop happened to be giving our screen line air support that night, and they were listening in on our troop net so that they could coordinate tactically with us if needed.

  “Bulldawg X-Ray, Eagle 19.”

  “Eagle 19, this is X-Ray.”

  “Roger, I’ve been monitoring your net about the tobacco requests – got an idea. If you have someone meet me at the landing pad back at Mackenzie on our next trip back to refuel, we can drop that stuff off at your location when we return to sector.”

  “Eagle 19, Bulldawg X-Ray: I think that would be extremely appreciated, over.”

  “Well, Eagle 19 has been there himself.”

  We got a huge kick out of it – a special airlift of smokes.

  One of the small blessings about the whole operation was that First Lieutenant O’Brien was in charge still, with Captain Hoffman on leave, and since O’Brien trusted Sergeant First Class Peterson and First Lieutenant Thomas implicitly and was often called away for staff meetings, the two of them largely ran the troop themselves from the temporary command post out at FOB Rex. Peterson knew just how bored we all were in the evenings – the checkpoints were closed, our DVD and mp3 players were out of batteries, and we had nothing to do but sit around in the dark. One evening, he decided to hold a talk-show over the tactical net, reading us a “bedtime story” out of Penthouse, complete with background sound effects added by First Lieutenant Thomas. It was wildly popular, and the following day, he was back by overwhelming popular demand.

  That afternoon, Peterson gave himself a quick “plug” in between tactical reports: “Jim and I had been happily married for four years, and on our fifth anniversary he decided to give me something special. He knew I’d always wanted to try a threesome … these stories and more, coming to you live at 2230, courtesy of Penthouse Forum letters and your friendly operations center crew.”

  Later that evening, while Peterson was reading us the final Penthouse story of the night, a pair of Darkhorse Troop helicopters checked in over the net, interrupting the story to let us know they were on station. After they finished their check-in report, Peterson acknowledged, and then remained silent. I figured he must have finished for the night, but one of the section sergeants over in Blue Platoon wasn’t satisfied.

  “X-Ray, Blue 5. Are you gonna continue the story, or should we just go to sleep?”

  “Blue 5, this is X-Ray, roger … I really don’t think Darkhorse 32 wants to hear the rest of the story.”

  Darkhorse 32 was quick to jump in: “Hey, uh, X-Ray … we’d like to know what happens.”

  “… so does Darkhorse 5,” the other aircraft added.

  “Oh … well, okay then.” He cleared his throat. “We now return to the conclusion of our st
ory, here on Love Phones at Night on 99.3 KVHL: ‘Cav Hell.’ When we left off, Vanessa had gone in for a sensual massage with Rick …”

  The bedtime stories got so famous, the Kiowa pilots were known to have rearranged their flight schedule to ensure they were within our airspace at the proper time each night. Some nights, just to shake things up, the show took callers:

  “This is Dr. Love, here to answer all your pressing questions … let’s take another call. This one’s from Mike, in Utica. What’s up, Mike?”

  Over in his track, I heard Staff Sergeant Barnes key the net.

  “Hey, Dr. Love – longtime listener, first-time caller, I just love your show, over.”

  “Well, thanks, Mike,” Peterson replied. “What can I help you with?”

  “Well, Dr. Love, I’ve got this, problem, see. My wife’s 6 months pregnant, but I’ve been in Iraq for the last 9 months. Do you think I should be worried?”

  The radio nets in general provided a great deal of amusement to us all, throughout the rotation. Everything is funnier when broadcast over a tactical net for some reason, perhaps because we place so much emphasis on net discipline and concise, accurate reports. Peterson in particular loved using the nets for social purposes when his convoys passed other friendly units:

  “Hey, shout out to my man P-Squared, looking sexy out there, looking good!”

  Everyone would turn up their radios when it sounded like someone was about to get in trouble with headquarters, just to snicker as the drama played out over the airwaves. During one stint at FOB Rex back with my tank platoon, I had forgotten to bring some maintenance equipment out with me to test the quality of our engine oil, and as a result, First Lieutenant O’Brien had gotten in hot water with Squadron headquarters for missing an important deadline. He called me up that evening, but skirted around the issue for a few minutes, asking pointed questions.