Combat and Other Shenanigans Read online

  And waited.

  Finally, six tedious hours after we arrived, a lone car approached the checkpoint.

  “Okay, guys – just like we rehearsed,” I called out, uneasily. My heartbeat quickened.

  The car pulled in closer and stopped as directed, heavy weapons covering it from all angles. During training, my NCOs had correctly stressed the need for aggressive, authoritative behavior while running the checkpoint, in order to establish full control over the civilians being searched, and Staff Sergeant Peiper demonstrated this by bellowing at the guy to shut off the car and step outside. I’m sure he didn’t speak English, but he fully understood what was needed. He shut off and we waited with breath held, fingers near triggers, as our first Iraqi civilian stepped out of his car. He was piss-drunk.

  We were done searching the car in about two minutes, including checking the engine block and trunk, and passing the search mirror under the under-carriage as well. Meanwhile, our lush had tried to hug several soldiers, much to their amusement. Laughing, we pushed him back into his pickup, and he drove off in a more or less straight line after shaking several more soldiers’ hands. His was the only car we saw during the eight hour mission.

  * * *

  One afternoon, while the troop rested between “missions” in our assembly area, we got word that a Brigadier General from Division staff was coming to visit. In Iraq, Blackhawk helicopters serve two roles: as medical evacuation (medevac) birds for wounded soldiers, and as air-taxis for the exclusive use of “brass” (senior officers). The General would be flying in on his pair of choppers to observe what operations we were conducting, which was ironic, considering we weren’t doing anything useful and we knew it. More importantly, his impending arrival caused our troop leadership to rush to reinstate discipline measures which had slackened somewhat given the distinct lack of enemy presence in the area.

  On orders from the troop commander, and accompanied by much grumbling and eye-rolling, we all pulled back on our Kevlar vests and helmets, sleeping soldiers were kicked awake and hustled into the vehicles to nap out of sight, and trash bags were tucked away. Minutes later, the choppers thundered in overhead, hovered, and made a roaring landing amidst their swirling rotor wash.

  Our troop assembly area was a rough circle, several hundred meters in diameter, with each platoon’s vehicles arrayed in an arc covering a quadrant of the circle. There were, therefore, nine tanks and 13 Bradleys in a loose ring around the command vehicles in the center, no less than 40 medium and heavy machine guns all pointed outwards (at an empty grass plain), to say nothing of the vehicles’ main guns. If you had rounded up all the insurgents in Iraq and forced them to attack us at the same time, not one of them would have been able to make it alive into our perimeter. The White House isn’t as well protected as that small circle of grass was.

  Regardless, when the General stepped off his bird, six Military Policemen carrying submachine guns strode off the other chopper, and immediately formed a neat circle of bodyguards around the general, weapons at the ready, eyes scanning aggressively. I guess they were still getting used to operating in a combat zone. To show his disdain for these rear-echelon idiots – and authority in general – Sergeant First Class Nicholls walked off into the grass and proceeded to take a leisurely shit while reading a magazine, in plain view of the command vehicles.

  Amidst the boredom of watching nothing in the middle of nowhere all day out on the Jabal Hamrin, the arrival of our first set of care packages from home caused quite a stir. Between my fiancée and my mother, I managed to receive no less than 15 boxes in that first round, and the mail runs in the future never slackened much from that amazing pace. I had enlisted their help beforehand to send me packages for the platoon, knowing that not all of my soldiers would be lucky enough to call on such dedicated support, but they went above and beyond anything I had imagined.

  In a riot of cardboard and bubble wrap, we broke out bags of chips, cookies, gum, cigarettes, books, toiletries, magazines, even dental tools for cleaning those tough-to-reach nooks inside weapons. I don’t know what winning the lottery feels like, but I think I have a good idea. Throughout the rotation, I received countless packages, and a fair number from people I had never met before, who heard about my platoon secondhand and wanted to do something to support us. To all of them, and to anyone who has sent anything to troops in combat, even a simple letter of thanks, thank you. Knowing that he is appreciated is invaluable to a deployed soldier, and can be the difference between depression and determination.

  * * *

  The next day, Squadron headquarters raised us on the radio, and ordered us back to FOB Mackenzie. Bulldawg Troop’s primary mission in Iraq was to serve as the 1st Infantry Division reserve element, an armored “ace in the hole” that they could call on as necessary to assist units that found themselves the focus of too much insurgent attention. Frankly, we were a bit surprised: we had only been in theater for a handful of weeks … was Division already calling for its reserve? However, I was excited to be heading back to civilization – some guys love being in the field and living on the tanks, but I’ve always been a bigger fan of air conditioning, showers, and beds. I was less excited to be heading somewhere that would invariably be more dangerous than miles of grassland with a few drunken Iraqis, however.

  For the trip back, we split our convoy into two, and I had the good fortune to be in the first convoy, leaving immediately after we finished refueling. We made the journey back to Mackenzie in a little over an hour, skirting Samarra, with its sparkling golden-domed mosque, before going flat-out across the open desert and pulling into the FOB. Brian Pierce would be commanding the second convoy, which left after us – one of his tanks needed to undergo some maintenance first. The original plan was that he would stay behind overnight to give them time to get the maintenance done, but orders came down from Division to get moving, so they patched up the tank as best they could and hit the road.

  Brian’s epic convoy became something of a legend over the next few months. From the start, they were plagued with maintenance issues. The maintenance team’s tracked vehicle started hemorrhaging oil, which they remedied by collecting oil from the rest of the vehicles in the convoy, even borrowing some from another friendly unit on patrol that they passed en route. The leaking continued, however, and soon Sergeant First Class Peterson (our mortars platoon sergeant) had to take two of his Humvees and drive to a nearby base to stock up on more oil, then catch back up to the armored vehicles.

  Next to break down was a Red Platoon Bradley, which simply ground to a halt. After tinkering with it for a little while, the mechanics determined it had officially “shit the bed” and was not going to start again without a major overhaul. It was hooked up to another Bradley to be towed, and they continued on. Then Brian’s tank broke down. Again they halted for a short while to see if it could be easily fixed (it couldn’t), then they hooked it to another tank and continued on. They had barely covered 20 miles at this point.

  A few miles north of Samarra, the lead vehicle in the convoy then took a wrong turn, turning onto the first of two parallel roads. They soon realized they were on the wrong road, and what’s more, this was a dead-end road with no way to reach the correct road. Rather than turn everyone around (a laborious procedure for long convoys, especially when towing vehicles), Brian decided to see if an overland route between the two roads could be found, and he sent one of the Bradleys south to see if they could find such a route. The rest of the convoy halted in place. And then Brian’s tank caught fire.

  When you tow a tank with another tank there is one absolutely critical piece of equipment, other than a towbar or tow cables: a heat shield. This is a large iron box that sits over the towing tank’s exhaust and redirects that blazingly hot air harmlessly upwards, rather than blowing directly onto the tank being towed behind it. Unfortunately, this convoy had no heat shields, and so they had jury-rigged a piece of the tank’s armor in its place. The armor had slipped, however, and had spent the las
t half hour directing scalding hot exhaust into Brian’s bustle rack, the back of the turret where the crew stores their bags and personal gear. At a certain point, the heat reached spontaneous combustion levels, and the entire crew’s uniforms, underwear, spare equipment, CDs, books, food, and other personal items burst lustily into flame.

  They expended several fire extinguishers to no avail, and finally got the fire out with the help of a local farmer passing muddy irrigation water to them via a bucket. Around this time, the Bradley sent out on reconnaissance returned, having failed to find a route south – there were irrigation canals blocking the way. Wet and smoke-stained, Brian got the convoy turned around, nearly getting a vehicle stuck in the process, and they resumed their journey. At this point, they had been on the road for several hours already, and they were still barely a quarter of the way to Mackenzie. At his wit’s end, Brian got on the radio.

  “I’d like to meet the jackass that thought this would be a good idea.”

  One of the Privates in the troop, a tank driver who had been nicknamed “Skeeter,” seized this opportunity to twist the knife a little. He flipped his radio over to broadcast and answered right back, pretending to be Major General Batiste (the 1st Infantry Division commander):

  “This is Danger 6 on your troop net. I’m the jackass that thought it was a good idea, Lieutenant. Meet me on the ground when you reach FOB Mackenzie. Danger 6, out.”

  Normally, this would have been immediately discredited as bullshit and met with a good laugh all around, but at that exact moment, two Blackhawks flew past the convoy, heading roughly towards Mackenzie. Those choppers suddenly made it entirely plausible that the Division Commander had heard his outburst. Brian didn’t answer the radio, but he did sweat it out the rest of the ride back, wondering if his luck was so bad that General Batiste had been on one of those helicopters, and had randomly been eavesdropping on the Bulldawg Troop net, which some senior officers are known to do just to keep units on their toes. I’d like to be able to say they made it back without incident from there, but half a mile shy of the entrance to FOB Mackenzie, another of the tanks ran out of gas.

  Chapter Four

  “Fuck, it’s hot. I’m sweating more than a pregnant nun at Confession.”

  -Staff Sergeant Peiper

  Our urgent mission from Division was to relieve an infantry battalion at FOB Normandy in Muqdadiyah, who were in turn being sent south to help fight Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr and his rogue militia. On the way there, however, my tank broke down, so while the rest of the troop continued on, Staff Sergeant Peiper and I stopped at a large FOB to rest overnight and then try to repair my tank before continuing on to our final destination. In the morning, Peiper and I made our way to the chow hall for breakfast before seeing to the tanks.

  FOB Warhorse was not a “combat” FOB: at the time it was a brigade headquarters and logistical base, so most of the personnel there were service or support types, and they had the luxury of a civilian-run dining facility. We were just sitting down to eat a fantastically lavish breakfast spread worthy of the Ritz when the FOB started to take incoming enemy mortar fire, and a heavy explosion rattled the massive tent. Back at FOB Mackenzie, mortar attacks had been relatively frequent – an unpleasant experience, but we had quickly come to think of them as just another annoyance of Iraq. From time to time, insurgent mortar teams would lob a few rounds inside the perimeter; usually no one was hurt, so we generally ignored them. It was partly an acceptance of the grim reality that there was little we could have done to protect ourselves, and partly dumb Army machismo to pretend to be bored or indifferent in the face of fire. I soon learned to sleep through such attacks, but that was mainly due to lack of sleep in general.

  The soldiers at Warhorse, however, had not reached this stage of nonchalance. Like cockroaches when the kitchen light comes on, the tent erupted into frenzied activity, as people crouched under tables (news flash: plastic picnic tables do not stop mortar rounds) and dropped their trays in a dead sprint for the bunkers outside. Peiper and I were amused, to say the least, but as we continued our eggs and bacon a harried-looking Captain skidded to a halt next to us and, gasping, ordered us outside to the safety of one of the bunkers.

  “Seriously, sir?” I asked, without thinking. I was about to get a severe ass-chewing, but before he could respond, Peiper saved me with a quick redirect.

  “Can we bring our food, sir?”

  As it turns out, we could not. Luckily, though, that Captain was more worried about getting under cover than taking our names down and reporting us for being wise-asses and ignoring FOB rules. But the civilians running the dining facility, god bless those war-profiteering bastards, had plenty more hot eggs and bacon waiting when the “All Clear” siren sounded and we filed back inside.

  * * *

  We spent two days working on my tank at Warhorse, and then made the final trip on to Muqdadiyah, a large town on the eastern edge of Iraq, not far from the Iranian border. While all Forward Operating Bases share some similarities, each has its own distinct personality. FOB Normandy felt like a military ghost town. Scraggly trees lined the wide boulevards, dry grass poked through the paving stones of walkways, and shattered windows filled rundown barracks buildings. Normandy was a former Iraqi base for a large mechanized unit, and accordingly, it had a giant motor pool full of vintage armored vehicles of every size, type, and nationality imaginable. To tankers trained for hours on foreign vehicle recognition techniques, it was like a huge Trivial Pursuit game. One afternoon soon after we arrived, we explored the motor pool and identified Russian tanks and personnel carriers, French and German vehicles, even one or two British tanks. Some of them even looked to be nearly operational.

  Normandy also contained a shocking amount of serviceable weapons and ordnance stashed in hundreds of bunkers lining its perimeter. While there, our troop scavenged at least six or seven extra machine guns from the abandoned Iraqi armories, which we mounted on the extra Humvees we had been assigned in Iraq. While visiting our soldiers during one perimeter guard duty shift, Peiper, Kean and I also took the opportunity to poke around some of the ammunition bunkers.

  Each bunker was lined floor-to-ceiling with rack upon rack of 155mm artillery shells, each nearly a hundred pounds of steel and high explosive, tens of thousands of them filling a bunker. There was enough ordnance on that small base to level Manhattan. It was both awe-inspiring and terrifying to walk amongst the racks of dark green shells, stretching away in every direction in the dark like a grisly wine cellar. Peiper was inspecting a crate of anti-personnel mines when I noticed writing on the stack of rounds closest to me. I shone my flashlight on it. Beneath crudely painted Arabic figures the metal was clearly stamped:

  “ROUND, ARTILLERY: 155MM”

  Many of the IEDs we feared so much featured artillery rounds made in the U.S.A.

  Our living arrangements at Normandy were the worst we had so far experienced in Iraq. We settled into a series of ancient cement bungalows, formerly Iraqi army barracks. The windows and doors were all long gone, and until we got a generator about a week later, we were without lights and power as well. Thankfully, it was still early spring and the nights were cool, though we all realized the necessity of using our mosquito nets about an hour into the first bug-filled night. The showers in our area were all broken, too, so the stop-gap solution until something else could be arranged was the “water bottle method” – take three liters of bottled water, lay them in the sun for an hour or so, then hit the showers. Bottle one would get you partly damp, enough to work up something approaching a lather, at least, and then bottles two and three would get you mostly rinsed off. I’ll never take water pressure for granted again.

  Normandy was also our introduction to that most feared and loathed of all Iraqi institutions: the burn-shitter. There were three tiers of toilets in Iraq: you had your luxury model, exclusive to large, permanent posts, which consists of a trailer with stalls, porcelain toilets that actually flush, lights, air conditioning,
mirrors, and sinks. On the next rung down was the run-of-the-mill porta-john, which can be found at any construction site or rock concert in America. The Iraq versions were little different, except that 130° heat did not mix well with dark green, windowless plastic boxes filled with chemical fumes and raw sewage. At the very bottom of the scale was the burn-shitter. Burn-shitters were constructed from plywood in the traditional out-house style. Instead of being poised over a deep pit, however, you do your business into a 55-gallon steel drum that had been cut in half and filled with a few inches of diesel fuel.

  Putting a burn-shitter to use was extremely unpleasant. They smelled horrendous, because even diesel couldn’t nullify the stench of human waste that had accumulated over several days of use. They also attracted any fly in a three-mile radius, which meant that your butt, poking through the wooden seat hole, was exposed to the swarm of flies who had been feeding on the sewage below. Taking a sweaty, stinky crap with flies tickling your sphincter was almost as bad as it could get. I say “almost,” because the only thing worse than crapping in a burn-shitter was emptying one. If at all possible, this daily duty was reserved as a disciplinary punishment. The victim got hold of the thickest pair of gloves he could find, covered his nose and mouth with a scarf, t-shirt, or surgical mask, and literally burned the shit, stoking it with a long stick or rake. Because the waste was a mixture of fluids and solids, it didn’t burn well or quickly, and was notably smoky. The smell was indescribable, and permeated everything around it, especially the unlucky soldier tending the fire. Who then had to rinse off using only plastic water bottles.