Combat and Other Shenanigans Page 7

  “Woah, what are you guys doing?”

  Peterson had to think fast. “Hm? Oh, I talked to your NCO inside and he said to take them.”

  “Sergeant First Class Johnson?”

  Peterson smiled. “That’s the guy.”

  “Oh, okay,” the soldier said. “Lemme give you a hand.”

  Charlie Troop was similarly short on spare tires on another occasion, so they found a massive pile of them at their nearest support FOB. Their Executive Officer, Dan Cho, argued for a while with the depot personnel, begging and pleading to get even a few of them released, to no avail – they were all reserved for other units who hadn’t shown up to get them yet. Being a resourceful, adaptive individual, he thanked them and left. Then he took his cargo truck to the opposite side of the depot, well out of sight of the depot offices, sent two scouts scrambling over the fence, and used his cargo truck’s crane to hoist the spare tires over the fence.

  We reached a critical point in Muqdadiyah where almost all of our vehicles were broken and still no parts were coming in. As interim Executive Officer, Joey had tried for several weeks to get our parts sent on to us, with no luck. The system having failed, he grabbed some soldiers and ran a logistical convoy back to the nearest support FOB, which had a large parts depot. Knowing he was going to get stonewalled from the start without the proper paperwork, he just sauntered into the depot and started loading the stuff we needed onto his truck. When you look like you know what you’re doing in the Army, you can get away with a lot. About halfway through his spree, however, a warrant officer who knew better caught sight of them and accosted Joey.

  “What’s going on here, sir?”

  There was no sense bullshitting him, so Joey handed him the list of parts he needed and truthfully told him we were about to be combat ineffective if we didn’t get them. The warrant officer flipped through a couple pages worth of notes.

  “Woah … this is a couple million dollars’ worth of parts here, sir.”

  Joey laughed, “I know!”

  If he had been an asshole, the guy could have gotten Joey in some serious hot water at that point.

  “Well, fuck … let’s see what we can do for you, sir.”

  It’s hit or miss with supply guys – sometimes you get everything you need and more, other times, nothing.

  Chapter Five

  “Bulldawg X-Ray, Red 1: negative enemy contact, continuing to conduct checkpoint operations. Current ambient air temperature is 117 degrees, current take in enemy weapons, vehicles, contraband, and personnel – zero.”

  -Lieutenant Vince Taylor

  May rolled around, and with it, orders to report to FOB Summerall, a post manned by a battalion of artillerymen outside of Baiji, a small city north of Tikrit. They were delighted to see us, but they had nowhere to put us, so we camped out in their newly built basketball gym for a few weeks. They soon procured several large canvas tents for our use – but we would have to build the wooden floors for them, because they couldn’t scrape together enough Iraqi contractors to do so. They did hire a few local carpenters to help out, with whom Staff Sergeant Peiper quickly bonded, trying to teach them some useful English phrases. He started them easy, with simple, one-word profanities, before moving on to some more complex ones. They loved every minute of it.

  “… okay, okay, good. Now try this one: ‘Dip my balls in milk and put me in a room full of kittens.’”

  “What this mean?” The Iraqi asked, innocently.

  Peiper scratched his head, and decided charades was the best way to proceed.

  “Okay: ‘dip my balls,’ like this …”

  Army NCOs are famous for their extensively vulgar vocabulary – with great justification – and it rubs off on everyone else quickly. When I went back home for R&R leave months later, I found I had to work hard to tone down my own language, it had become so much a part of my everyday vernacular. I dropped a noticeable F-bomb in the middle of a polite dinner conversation at my fiancée’s house, which pretty much silenced everyone.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m probably going to be doing that a lot.”

  Luckily, they had a good sense of humor about it. But my language skills paled in comparison to the NCOs. Peiper liked to say that certain activities were: “more fun than kicking over blind people’s walking sticks.” One of Nicholls’ favorite phrases went like this:

  “What’s up, Sergeant First Class Nicholls?”

  “Dicks and choppers, sir – which are you going down on?”

  Nicknames are fairly common throughout units, too – before we left Schweinfurt, the older officers dubbed me “The Kid,” being both the junior officer in the troop, and appearing younger than my 23 years as well. The older NCOs used to love asking me: “Does your mommy know you’re playing Army today?” It stuck, to a certain degree, and Sergeant Cleary painted it onto the back of my tank hatch along with the Playboy bunny logo (for no reason other than that he wanted to get our picture in the magazine, but that never panned out). Vince Taylor earned the nickname “Frodo” for being short, and Brian Pierce got the unfortunate title “Mongo,” after the dim-witted strong guy in Blazing Saddles. Later, Staff Sergeant Barnes would give me a new nickname: “Dex,” after the title character in the cartoon Dexter’s Laboratory, a dig at my habit of using SAT words and generally being a nerd. We learned to put ego aside and embrace the names.

  The soldiers had it far worse, however. Between Peiper and Kean, our platoon members had been christened with the following nicknames: Bitchass, Shithead, Cum-dumpster, Dickhole, and Butt-stain. They used these often enough that people actually knew who they were referring to:

  “Hey, Steve, where’s Dickhole?”

  “Uh, I think he went to get some chow with Shithead, Sergeant.”

  * * *

  At FOB Summerall, our primary mission – as it had been throughout Iraq so far – was to secure the routes leading to and from the FOB. The Army’s overall objective in Iraq was still to train the nascent Iraqi Army, but Bulldawg Troop rarely collaborated with them on missions, even after the Iraqi government took over authority in June. For those of us stuck in the drudgery of daily route clearance missions, it felt frustratingly like treading water, just waiting for our time in country to be up. My section of tanks would often spend the night parked a mile or so off one of the main roads, overwatching the road in an attempt to catch insurgents in the act of placing IEDs. One or two of us on each tank would be alert and watching our assigned areas, usually for an hour at a time, while the others rested. The first fifteen minutes of guard duty go quickly – you’re still adjusting to the dark, identifying shadows and planning responses to different scenarios in your mind. Then time stands still. You check your watch and wait. A car passes, a dog barks. You wait some more. You send in a radio report, and then you wait. You stand up and stretch, you take a leak off the side of the tank, you take another peek through the thermal sights, and then you check your watch … and just three minutes have passed. And in an hour or two, you’ll be back on watch, doing it all again.

  On one night, while Sergeant Cleary napped down in his gunner’s seat, I took up my customary position seated atop our ice chest on the turret, and scanned the road for several minutes. Seeing nothing, I decided to cool off a bottle of water in the ice, knowing I would want it later. I usually kept one tucked inside the tank at my station. In the dark, I groped for it, leaning down through my hatch. It was half-empty, but I’m not one to waste unnecessarily, so I stuffed it in the ice and let it chill for a half hour or so. When I judged it had cooled enough, I pulled it out and took a long, swig, chugging thirstily. About two seconds into drinking, I thought I smelled cigarette smoke, and figured that Cleary must have woken up for a smoke. I stopped drinking, however, when I realized I hadn’t smelled smoke, but tasted it. Cleary had found my bottle earlier, mistaken it for trash, and used it to dispose of a couple butts he had smoked. I had some harsh words for him after that, but I had to laugh with him, after I gargled a few sodas an
d got some of the awful taste out of my mouth.

  * * *

  FOB Summerall was a big post, and it was a hefty 15-minute walk from our tents over to the chow hall for breakfast or dinner. In the midsummer Iraqi heat, wearing 30 plus pounds of gear, this simple stroll turned into a panting, sweat-soaked ordeal, so that many guys chose to eat MREs or forgo a meal altogether, rather than make the trek for some mediocre Army food. The scout platoons had Humvees and could shuttle their guys back and forth fairly easily, but for the tank platoons without Humvees, making the trip by tank was more trouble than it was worth. There were several other Humvees floating around the troop, however, in particular the Executive Officer’s Humvee, which First Lieutenant O’Brien used to drive to and from the FOB headquarters building when he was needed there for meetings or to be given orders.

  He let us borrow it a few times, but after he was summoned by headquarters one evening only to find his Humvee had been “borrowed” without his permission for a chow run, his patience ran out and he locked the wheel with a chain and padlock. It was a legitimate move, but he was also somewhat patronizing about the whole affair, so naturally we took exception. Staff Sergeant Peiper had an urgent mission to pick up spare parts from another area of the post one afternoon, and succeeded in obtaining O’Brien’s permission to use his Humvee one last time.

  “Just so long as it’s not for a chow run, and you’ll be right back.”

  “Yes, sir – no chow.”

  Peiper made his trip, and also took that opportunity to switch the padlock with another identical one, for which he had two sets of keys. He dutifully handed one key to First Lieutenant O’Brien when he got back to our motor pool, locking the wheel as ordered. And for the next several nights, after O’Brien had gone to sleep, Peiper would send someone in our platoon out to the motor pool to unlock the Humvee and park it someplace else. O’Brien, who was dead certain he had the only key for the lock, would come out in the morning to find his Humvee parked drunkenly, out of alignment with the rest of the neatly parked trucks, or parked behind the showers, or at the very far end of our large motor pool. He was pretty pissed, but was smart enough not to let us see it, partly because he had no idea who had done it or how they had pulled it off.

  * * *

  One day a route clearance mission took us out past the Baiji oil refinery, which was the terminus for a large pipeline coming in from the northeast of the country. The pipeline itself crossed the Tigris underwater, and the crossing point now featured a small civilian FOB, home to the contractors working on rebuilding the underwater pipeline. Apparently, at some point during the initial invasion, some crafty bastard in the air operations targeting team had correctly guessed that if we bombed the bridge that ran across the river at the same point, the falling debris would cut the underwater pipeline as well, and now our tax dollars were hard at work rebuilding that same pipe. We discovered that the civilians’ FOB had an excellent chow hall which happily served soldiers, so Peiper and I rearranged the mission schedule a bit so that we were coincidentally right by the FOB around lunchtime.

  We pulled up to the gate, which was guarded by several Kurdish soldiers. Unsure of the entry procedures, Peiper pulled off his helmet in order to talk to the closest Kurd, who sauntered over, smiling.

  “Hey, you got somewhere in here we can park?”

  The guard smiled and nodded, clearly not understanding a word of what Peiper had said.

  “Okay, is the whorehouse up there, too?”

  Nodding.

  “With all the chicks? The ones we can fuck?”

  More smiles and nods.

  “Okay, ‘cause I want to go fuck some chicks, man. Rock on, thanks, man.”

  Lunch was excellent, and well worth the trip. The closest we had come to fresh fruit in months was apple sauce or canned peaches, but they had a huge bowl of fresh fruit on ice, which we helped ourselves to liberally. Peiper was a big fan of kiwis, and grabbed one for our newest soldier, a Private named Jeffries who had recently joined our platoon. He was a quiet, unassuming kid, fresh out of basic training and still used to treating his superiors with a fearful respect bordering on awe. Peiper and Kean had taken him under their collective wing to make sure he was “raised” with the proper 4th Platoon spirit instilled in him.

  “Eat your kiwi, Jeffries,” Peiper ordered.

  “Yes, Sergeant.” Jeffries picked up the kiwi and started peeling it.

  “You know why we eat kiwis, right, Jeffries?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Why’s that, Jeffries?”

  “Because they make your dick grow, Sergeant.”

  “Fuckin’ A, Jeffries. And I’ve seen your dick, dude: you could use some help.”

  Over lunch, we chatted with a few of the contractors, who explained the work they were doing on the pipeline. Several months after we left Baiji, some insurgents with a keen sense of humor waited until the contractors completely fixed the underwater pipeline, and then blew the bridge up again, dropping tons of concrete into the water and cutting the line once more.

  They targeted the pipeline aboveground while we were in Baiji, too. Two or three paid Iraqi security guards lived in small tents at regular intervals along the entire pipeline, basically just sitting there all day and night, and watching their few yards of pipeline. The tents were located several miles apart, however, and definitely not within sight of each other, so they were largely ineffective. One night while we were back at FOB Summerall, one of our troopers rushed into our tent, grabbing his video camera and pausing to shout, “The pipeline’s been hit!” as he ran back outside.

  We dutifully piled out to rubberneck, and sure enough, several miles away there was an enormous geyser of flame erupting on the horizon. It was bright enough to read the paper by, even at that distance. The insurgents had simply walked up to the pipe, strapped some explosives to it, and detonated them, cutting the pipeline and setting the gushing oil aflame. The only way they could put it out was by stopping the flow entirely, but miles of oil were still in the system, and it burned for quite a while. Not that the local firefighters would have been much help, had they tried to put it out themselves: I’ve got an utterly priceless photograph of the Baiji fire station, showing three brand new fire engines all parked in their garage … facing in. To respond to an emergency, they would have had to slowly back each one out.

  Chapter Six

  “It’s hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock.”

  -Staff Sergeant Kean

  In August, we received fantastic news: a civilian-run dining hall at FOB Summerall would be opening soon. Army-run chow halls all have the same cooking process: take previously prepared meals that have been frozen in plastic bags, heat them in boiling water, cut open the bags, and serve. When they got fresh food (rarely), it was generally limited to a few bananas or a side salad, and there were only about ten different meals available, which got old fast. So we were pretty stoked that the civilians were opening up: that meant fresh, hot meals, prepared from scratch four times a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and “midnight chow” for folks with night operations), with a wide variety of options at each meal, and even ridiculous luxuries like Surf-and-Turf Night and make-your-own ice cream sundae stations. The new chow hall was open for exactly one week before we received our orders to head back to 1-4 CAV headquarters at FOB Mackenzie. Where our Army-run chow hall was waiting for us.

  When I first took command of my platoon back in Germany, I learned two things immediately from Vince Taylor, the outgoing platoon leader. First, I was lucky enough to have two of the best section sergeants in the squadron in Staff Sergeants Kean and Peiper, whose strengths complemented each other perfectly. Unfortunately, I was also getting the squadron’s worst platoon sergeant in the form of Sergeant First Class Gilman, whose slovenly appearance and lack of leadership instincts earned him the nickname of “Dude,” after the protagonist in Big Lebowski. The name fit him to a tee.

  “Dude” had been fired in his first attempt
at being a platoon sergeant, for numerous displays of incompetence that culminated in his refusal to take his crew out for gunnery training one night, claiming their lack of sleep would make it too dangerous to do the training. I guess he expected every combat mission to be preceded by a good night’s rest, too. He was now being given a second shot, following the Army’s ironclad logic that a guy who had failed miserably in training should be given more responsibility – for instance, a platoon heading into combat. He had been mostly napping his way through Iraq, but he hadn’t fucked up badly enough that I could try firing him again.

  I later learned from his crew that Dude would often force his gunner out of the turret to help him command the tank, since he was incapable of giving his driver clear commands when maneuvering the tank. Staff Sergeant Kean – his subordinate – basically commanded their section while they were out on mission together, so Dude was essentially a fifth wheel in the platoon: a lousy tank commander that everyone else had to pick up the slack for. His duties boiled down to attending meetings with the First Sergeant when back at base, and passing that info down to Kean and Peiper to execute, which they usually had to double-check for accuracy because Dude was notoriously bad at taking notes. Nine times out of ten, after Dude and I came out of a meeting together, Peiper and Kean would have to find me after Dude had given them his guidance, and I would have to explain what had really happened at the meeting, and what their tasks were. Most of our interactions back at base consisted of him complaining to me about how tough the platoon had it, and me reminding him that I wasn’t going to go bitch to the commander without a recommendation for how to fix it.