Combat and Other Shenanigans Read online

  * * *

  Later that week Nicholls found another chance to incorporate the range fans into a prank. We were running dry-fire gunnery practice at night – going through all the motions, but not actually shooting real rounds – and Brian Pierce (Nicholls’ platoon leader) was about halfway through his run when the Range Control guys showed up. They headed over to the medic vehicle, asked to see their map to the hospital, and then promptly shut the range down and decertified the Range Officer because the map was in the wrong scale. The U.S. Army standard map scale is 50,000:1, so it’s practically impossible to get hold of maps in the Army at a different scale – but the Range Control handbook specified that all maps to local hospitals must be no larger than 25,000:1 scale. So the range was shut down while they took down names and started the paperwork shuffle to recertify and get the range running again. In the meanwhile, everyone had forgotten to let Brian Pierce and his crew know what the hell was going on, and why they hadn’t been given any targets for ten minutes. His first mistake was to radio the tower and let them hear how annoyed he was. Nicholls jumped on it.

  “Roger, White One, this is Bulldawg X-Ray. We’ve been given a 30-minute safety stand-down, cease-fire on the range. They’re claiming a tank lased outside the range fans, over.”

  It’s a big no-no to fire any weapons outside the range fans, since your tank round might land on another range and kill someone. Doing so results in an immediate safety disqualification for the crew; rumor has it that platoon leaders have been fired for it. But “lasing” (using the tank’s laser range-finder to “paint” a target and find its range) is not only totally invisible and impossible to verify, it’s also completely harmless – regardless of whether it happens inside or outside the range fans. Brian and his gunner should have realized this and laughed Nicholls off, but it was pretty late at night, and instead they got all riled up and started arguing with him, then arguing with themselves over which of them had lased last, and therefore was responsible. For a solid ten minutes, they were tearing into each other, and every word of it was being broadcast live over the radio to the rest of us up in the tower. Nicholls had them thinking there was some sort of satellite tracking system that had picked them up, and that the squadron commander was on his way down to see what the hell was going on. Brian was livid when they finally let him know it was all a joke.

  * * *

  You would think that the tremendous noise and pressure of tank main guns firing would make the shooting ranges in Germany unlikely places to find animals, but you’d be wrong. Not only do the ranges have a large population of deer, but after years of constant exposure to it, those deer have become totally indifferent to live fire training, somewhat in defiance of the rules of natural selection. In an enclosed space – such as between buildings in a city – the shock wave alone from the tank main gun can kill a man, yet these deer wander all over live ranges without a care in the world.

  The tank gun sight has a day and night mode, and the gunner may switch between the two as he chooses during the day time (at night, looking through the day sight is useless). In day mode, it is a simple telescopic sight, magnifying objects at distance for greater resolution: it’s exactly like looking through powerful binoculars. In night mode, the sight uses infrared thermal imagery, and also magnifies objects at long range. Unlike night-vision goggles, which merely amplify the existing ambient light to create a monochromatic version of what you would see during the daytime, thermal sights actually see in the infrared spectrum, so things can look a bit odd, like a photo negative with really high contrast. Things that give off heat (people, vehicle engines) stick out like sore thumbs, and appear whiter and brighter than cooler background objects like buildings or trees, so we call them “hot spots.”

  However, as good as our thermal sights are, at 1,000 yards at night, a small herd of deer chewing grass can look exactly like the row of heated torso-shaped targets that we use as enemy infantry targets for our machine guns. Accordingly, my gunner and I destroyed six moving tanks, ten stationary tanks, three sets of troops, and four or five deer one evening, much to the delight of the German civilians responsible for operating the range. While my crew and I got an ass-chewing and a 20-minute safety violation stand-down, they grabbed their Tupperware and headed downrange to stock up on some fresh venison. Later that week a particularly tightly-clumped herd looked enough like a vehicle target to fool one tank crew, who sent a main gun round into their midst, with predictably messy results.

  * * *

  The whole purpose of our live-fire training was to qualify each tank crew on gunnery, in the same way that each individual soldier must qualify with his rifle each year by hitting a minimum number of targets at various ranges. The final exam of tank gunnery is called “Tank Table VIII,” and it includes ten engagements, with four taking place at night.

  On our Table VIII run, our crew started strong: my gunner, Sergeant Cleary, and I really clicked for the day runs, shooting a near-perfect first six runs. For some reason, we were just a little off on the night runs – we missed a couple crucial targets, and all I could think of as the targets dropped unscathed back out of sight was that goddamn dog from Duck Hunt on the old Nintendo, laughing at me. We thought it was close enough that we might not have qualified on our first run (a big deal among tankers), but we actually scored “Superior.” It was a tremendous relief – Sergeant Cleary and I had spent countless hours together over the last two months, shooting engagement after engagement on the ranges and simulators, and it felt great to be a fully qualified tank commander after all that work. Cleary had the cigars ready, as was tradition, and he and I lit up outside the range tower after our performance review, ignoring the chill of the Bavarian night.

  “Hey, sir.”

  “Mmm?” I was still messing with the lighter, trying to get my cigar fully lit and hoping Cleary didn’t notice my ineptitude.

  “Why are you wearing your helmet?”

  “Well, I couldn’t find my soft cap in the dark. I dunno, I thought I had it in my ruck-sack, but it wasn’t there.”

  I always preferred the baseball-style soft cap over my heavy, uncomfortable Kevlar helmet. Cleary savored his cigar for another long moment, then addressed me again in his Carolina drawl.

  “I know where your soft cap is, sir.”

  I could see his eyes twinkling in the dark now. My face fell, figuring I had lost it somewhere, like an idiot.

  “Where?”

  He grinned. “About 2,000 meters downrange, sir. You shot it out the gun tube at your long-range moving target.”

  Though new officers don’t know it, shooting the new platoon leader’s cap out the main gun during Table VIII is one of the oldest traditions in the armored world. Along with every other platoon leader’s gunner, Cleary had taken pains to locate my cap during the smoke break he took before we started our run, had stuffed it into his pocket, and then handed it off to our loader to cram into the gun tube while I was peering into the gunsight. Being new to the tradition, I was still a bit confused.

  “You’re shitting me, right?”

  Cleary laughed. “I wouldn’t shit you sir: you’re my favorite turd.”

  Chapter Three

  “Warning: due to severe backsplash, all turds longer than 6 inches should be hand-lowered.”

  -Graffiti in a porta-john in Kuwait

  By early 2004, the situation in Iraq was deteriorating rapidly. The chimera that had been Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction had fully evaporated, and many of us in the military felt betrayed by our civilian leadership, though our professional pride prevented us from complaining about it. Although Saddam had been unceremoniously dragged from his hole just a few months before, his capture did nothing to stem the growing sectarian violence, and the winter was marked by increasingly more vicious and deadly bombings across the country. We knew we would be in for a hostile reception wherever 1-4 CAV ended up being stationed. Ostensibly, our mission was to train the new Iraqi Army so that they could secure the country
themselves, but we knew that a year was not enough time to build an army from scratch. We were more worried about getting everyone home in one piece.

  The final weeks before deployment were consumed with last minute preparations – wills were made out and signed, powers of attorney drawn up for spouses, emergency contact numbers and life insurance forms filled out time and again. As part of our pre-deployment processing, each soldier underwent a thorough physical, which was then topped off with a battery of immunizations. The Army is notorious for losing soldiers’ shot records, which they fix by simply repeating any immunizations that aren’t on your record, just in case. Thankfully, I had been warned about this, and kept my own copy of my immunization records, so I avoided the double-dose a number of other guys received.

  In preparation for living in Iraq for a year, we were injected with a smorgasbord of the usual immunizations for people traveling to developing countries. In addition, the Army also gave us the anthrax and smallpox vaccines, both to protect against possible biological attacks, and because both organisms occur naturally in Iraq as well. The anthrax vaccine is actually a battery of shots given over intervals. In contrast to other vaccines, which usually just sting a little bit and leave you with a small bruise for a day, the anthrax vaccine burns going in, and leaves your arm feeling like it was clubbed with a baseball bat. A small number of people also suffer the unpleasant side effect of having a gland in their armpit swell dramatically for a few days, which gives them the appearance of having a tennis ball under their arm. When we started getting the anthrax battery, there was a major news story about soldiers filing a lawsuit against the Army, alleging that the anthrax vaccine had made them sterile. I don’t know what the outcome was, but I decided that a long, sterile life was far preferable to dying from a horrible disease.

  For married soldiers looking to maximize their last few intimate moments with their families, the smallpox vaccine is even worse. First, it invariably gives the patient flu-like symptoms for a few days: nausea, weakness, runny nose, fever, the whole deal. Worse, however, it’s not a shot – the needle is simply dipped in a petri dish of vaccine, and then stabbed rapidly into your shoulder ten or fifteen times in a row. The resulting wound develops into a pus blister about the size of a dime, which is full of real, live, totally infectious smallpox until it heals. It really turns the ladies on.

  * * *

  We got the call to deploy in early February. The squadron assembled on post, our new desert tan uniforms looking oddly out of place in the frosty German winter. Each of us was absurdly overloaded – on top of our uniform, we wore a Kevlar vest equipped with inch-thick ceramic inserts or “plates” for both the chest and back, and an assortment of modular pouches for ammunition, grenades, and first aid kits. Each man had slung across his chest an M4 or M16 rifle, and most NCOs and officers carried a pistol as well. We wore helmets, assorted gloves, and ballistic eye protection – specially designed safety glasses. This collection tipped the scales at about 30-45 pounds, and added a considerable degree of bulk to one’s frame, which took a long time to get used to.

  In addition, to bring everything on the required packing list, each man was expected to carry a 50-pound duffle bag full of extra uniforms and miscellaneous equipment, and a 30-pound rucksack filled with more of the same. Each man had at least one other backpack for any other personal items that wouldn’t fit into our other bags. Finally, all officers were carrying their laptops (not even combat eliminates the need for paperwork), and certain soldiers were carrying specialty equipment like our new sniper rifles or a medic bag. All told, my gear very nearly outweighed me. After some experimentation, I figured out a way to carry everything at once, though it was a hell of a workout.

  Once they had taken accountability of everyone, they marched us over to the squadron hangars, where we would be loading onto buses later that night. There we sat in neat rows on the floor for several hours, while the men with wives and children were able to stay with their families until the buses were near. Then all troopers were told to say goodbye and move into the hangars for good. It was a surprisingly subdued scene – a testament to the courage and strength of the Army wives and children. Goodbyes were said, quietly and tearfully, children hugged one last time, most a little bleary-eyed at the increasingly late hour. It was easier for the younger children, who could not yet comprehend what a 12-month deployment really meant. I avoided the “farewell” area, not wishing to intrude on those private moments, and not at all eager to relive my own farewell experience with my fiancée, who had flown back to the States several weeks earlier.

  Buses took us to Nüremberg airport, where our plane waited. Because it would be impossible for the Air Force alone to ferry the masses of troops shuttling in and out of the Iraq, the Army contracts private carriers to handle the overflow. In the Gulf War, they even had to resort to forcing major airline companies to cough up planes to make ends meet, under a compulsive federal system known as the Civilian Reserve Airfleet Program (my favorite government acronym of all time). We would be flying to Kuwait on a rather battered jumbo jet whose paint scheme indicated it was from “World Airways,” which seemed to us a bit like getting heart surgery done at WalMart. Our misgivings turned out to be completely justified.

  After carefully weighing each of us and our equipment (which quickly devolved into a good-natured competition to see just who had brought the most crap), and after several more hours of waiting, they finally gave us the call to board and began shuttling us to the runway. We boarded the plane via a staircase at the rear, at the foot of which stood a Brigadier General shaking our hands and wishing us luck. On top of the usual nerves, I was starting to get excited: I was about to experience things that might change me forever. If nothing else, I would come back a different person, one who had seen and done things other people only read or dreamed about.

  In the post-9/11 world, it was also a particularly odd sensation to carry an assault rifle onto an airliner, the stewardesses smiling while they graciously helped us stow our weapons “in the overhead compartments, or under the seat in front of us.” If you think coach seats are cramped, try sitting in them wearing a flak vest. At last we were all crammed aboard and ready for takeoff just before dawn. The plane’s captain came on the intercom and gave a little speech, which most of us missed: we were already falling asleep after being up the entire night. We taxied, revved the engines, and hurtled up into the night sky.

  I happened to be sitting close to a window, so when one of the port-side engines burst into flame, I saw it immediately, though in my sleep-deprived state, it didn’t worry me nearly as much as it should have. The general reaction on board was one of exhausted bemusement:

  “Dude, check that shit out!”

  “Huh. That’s not so good.”

  “Looks like we’re not going to Iraq after all.”

  “Good – better to die now, I’d hate to get killed eleven months in.”

  Someone back at Nüremberg had done the math wrong, and the plane was severely overweight. The pilot had been able to get us off the ground in time to avoid clear-cutting the forest at the end of the runway, but only barely, and the stress of generating the necessary thrust had destroyed one of the aging engines, which emitted a 20-foot-long gout of bright orange flame for half a minute, until the pilot shut it down. The decision was made to land immediately, but for safety reasons (to shed more weight, I suppose), they needed to get rid of most of our fuel first. We spent the next ten minutes dumping fuel over Bavaria, and most of us were back to sleep by the time we touched down again without incident. It was not the proud, heroic march to war I had envisioned, drums pounding and trumpets blaring.

  * * *

  They found us another plane the next day, and we were soon stepping off the plane in sunny, sandy Kuwait. A few days after we arrived in Kuwait, they piled us all into two large buses and drove for several hours into the middle of the desert. The buses stopped next to what initially looked like a Bedouin camp: a cluster of small c
anvas tents, a handful of rifle ranges and plywood houses, and nothing else in sight for miles. To be fair, though, “nothing in sight for miles” describes most of Kuwait. As we stepped off the buses, a couple of civilians emerged from the tents and gestured for us to take a knee around them. Up close, I revised my assessment – though they were wearing civilian clothes, both men had a quiet intensity and self-confidence that were unmistakable: they were former special operations forces. Characteristically, their welcome brief was short and to the point.

  “I’m Bob, and this is Jim. We understand you’ve all been working on CQB – Close Quarters Battle. We’re here to train you on some of the more advanced techniques. Marksmanship first, then we hit the live-fire shoothouses. Everyone grab a can of ammo and let’s get going.”

  We fired more rounds in those three days than I did in the rest of my career combined. Generally, the Army trains soldiers to fire at long ranges, with slow-paced, single shots. Under their expert tutelage, we learned “close quarters marksmanship” – the art of rapidly firing a pair of shots into the center of a target less than 50 yards away, an essential pre-requisite to operations in the tight spaces found inside cities and buildings, where most of our operations would be taking place. In addition, we refined our “room-clearing” skills on mock-up plywood buildings, running scenarios of varied complexities again and again until they became second nature.