365 and a Wakeup

The Roadblock

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"
                                      - Edmund Burke

     As our vehicles came around the sharp corner we ran into something wholly unexpected, a neat row of rock and brick that sprawled across the road. The impromptu roadblock had a strange castaway symmetry to it; it brought to mind long summer days spent building little dams in the local streams. As the vehicles lurched to a halt I could feel a wave of frustration flare - we were on our way back to the FOB after an extended mission and everyone wanted to get back.

    I looked around for a long minute, taking in this sudden change in circumstance. The HMMWVs could hurdle these barriers with ease, but there was something slightly ominous about this thin string of material laced across the road. Any doubts that this was a warning were extinguished when we traced the snaking asphalt street to the horizon. The road itself was just a black strip bordered by tottering one room huts made of loosely stacked brick, the swaths of dilapidated homes bordered by wide fields of debris and high clumps of burnt weeds. But it wasn’t the terrain that set our nerves on edge, it was the utter lack of life. No cars were driving down the road, no children were playing in the fields, the homes sat as vacant as dead and lidless eyes. This strip of land was completely and utterly deserted. Instead of pushing through the thin line of rubble the lead HMMWV heeded the warning and pulled back to a safe position with the other vehicles. As we set up security all eyes scanned the area for anything out of the ordinary, but on this side of the roadblock everything seemed tranquil. The roads still hummed with traffic and old men lounged under dusty straw porches. As the dismounts moved into position a middle aged gentleman working on the corner started to smile and then slowly walked towards our cordon. As he approached he started chatting with our interpreter, and for a few moments we impatiently waited to here what was transpiring. When he had finished the terp turned to us and said “this man’s family put up the roadblock to protect you from the insurgents, they planted a large bomb on the road ahead”. After several rounds of question and answer the full story started to emerge.

     Sometime that morning the AIF had planted a large IED on the road and scuttled off to watch the aftermath from afar. In that moment the locals had a choice to make, let the Americans stumble into a trap and watch the carnage from their front doorsteps, or risk the wrath of the AIF and try to warn us. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for these people to turn their backs on us and watch while our patrol spilled its blood on this sullen stretch of road. But to these people we weren’t strangers or occupiers, we were allies. They remembered all the times their children would run out to catch handfuls of candy as our patrols passed. They remembered our vehicles stopping to pass out supplies, and staying to talk with the sheiks. And because of that they refused to leave us to die like stray dogs in the street. As soon as the IED was in place the neighbors set to work to foil the AIF. Fathers and grandfathers on both sides of the street labored to set up roadblocks to warn us of the danger, while their families moved away from the lethal IED. Once the walls of stone were in place to ward off traffic they made an anonymous call to our headquarters to let us know there was a grave danger to our soldiers.

     A few minutes after they finished their labors my patrol turned onto their road, and finding it blocked we set up a security position. Had they done nothing our patrol would have been gutted. Instead we were able to screech to a halt out of the kill zone.

     An hour later as I watched the EOD robot defuse the giant IED I felt a cold shudder run down my spine. Brave soldiers, myself among them, had almost lost their lives on this empty stretch of road. The only reason we didn’t was because equally brave Iraqi citizens refused to bear witness to our destruction. Thank God .

Bile

"He knows so little and knows it so fluently."                                   
                          - Ellen Glasgow    

Dear “John Travolta” (and no, I'm not referring to the actor)

   We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting, but since you felt the need to perturb my wife with your myopic, sub-literate rantings about my service here in Iraq I figured I’d address them in an equally public forum.   So here goes…

how many kids did you rape today, son of a bitch?     

     Today that number was a whopping zero.  Just like yesterday, and the day before.  And every other day we’ve been out here.  I know you probably have difficulty with something as complex as “numbers”  so maybe I have to explain the concept of zero.  Zero indicates the absence of any or all units under consideration.  So if I were to use the word “zero” in a sentence it might read like this.

“John Travolta has zero dignity”

or perhaps

“John Travolta has zero functioning neurons in his cerebral cortex”

    That should make it easy enough to understand my foreign friend!  On to the next illuminating question…

can you sleep good, f****n' murderer?     

     Sadly no, I don’t sleep all that well.  Maybe it’s the heat, or just the stacatto missions, but I just haven’t been able to get a solid five hours of rest in the last few weeks.  I’m sure you have been in the same situation once or twice.  You know the whole “laying in a sleeping bag in a combat zone, staring at the ceiling, half sick with the thought that there was something else you might have fit into your 20 hour day” thing.  Oh, wait a second I forgot – you aren’t a soldier.  I'd try to compare the stress of my job with the stress inherent to your job, but I really don't know all that much about operating rides at a carnival..

    Your next comment wasn’t really a question as much as it was a proclamation, but I’ll respond to it anyway.

nobody wants you in this world, bitch     

     Really?  I’m stunned.  All this time I have been fooling myself!  All I needed was your brilliant insight to reveal the truth before my very eyes! It all makes sense now – that is why my wife and family have been so supportive!  Thank you for helping me uncover their secret plot to destroy me with care packages, prayers, and letters!       

      John, I gotta hand it to you - your last line was a real piece of work.  You wouldn't know reality if it walked up to you, bit you on the ass, and announced “I AM REALITY”.  Seriously, was that a conclusion or simply the place where you got tired of thinking?

Do you know, you kill kids and women, but, who f****n with your wife?, yes a latin lover.     

     Wow - have you ever considered a career as a journalist?  A wordsmith like you could really be useful in an interview – you could just answer all the questions yourself instead of waiting for a pesky response.  Although you already attempted to provide your own answers, let me give you a slightly more accurate account.  I don’t make it a practice to kill women or children.  I am a soldier, not a butcher.  In your ideological world those two may seem synonymous, but that only shows your complete and utter lack of good sense.      As for my wife…  all I will say is your knowledge about women is about as accurate as your understanding of our mission here in Iraq.

     Now that we have taken care of your postings let me give you a little advice.  Read.  Learn.  Stop spouting empty Marxist dogma and take the time to find out what Iraq is really like.  And if that is too difficult for you to grasp then remember, there is nothing wrong with having nothing worthwhile to say - unless you insist on saying it.  If you need a reminder I'll post your email address again just in case anyone else want to drop you a line.   editorinferno@hotmail.com

Scorch Marks

     This morning Killer Company was sitting down for a round table meeting when the flat, low crunch of a distant explosion rumbled over the command post. The ugly sound stripped the air of any sonic rival - leaving a grim stillness in its wake. There followed a pregnant pause, as if some stranger had intruded into a private conversation between friends and suddenly silenced the group. The conversation finally sputtered back to life like a doddering car lurching into gear. And not a word was spoken about our ill favored guest.

      But just a few kilometers away, on the molten rivers of asphalt that bisect our Battalions AO there was no ignoring that crushing wave of concussion. To the soldiers of our sister company the bone cracking sound wasn’t simply an uninvited guest – it was a murderous intruder bent on rending muscle and bone. But I am getting a little ahead of myself, let me start at the beginning.

     This morning about the same time my company was gathering in the CP (command post) our brothers in arms, Demon Company, was setting up blocking positions around an IED. As the EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) worked to disable the IED the Demon soldiers manning the positions kept a watchful eye on the area.  Their mission was to provide security for the EOD team and to keep curious Iraqis from wandering into the kill zone.

     Blocking positions aren’t exciting missions, they are as monotonous as they are important. The danger with these positions is fighting complacency; it takes a great deal of discipline to remain in one place watching a patch of real estate while you melt under thick layers of body armor. But the Demons aren’t a complacent bunch, and when a car whirled around a corner and started to accelerate towards their position they proved just how alert they really were.

     The moment the car turned its nose towards the patrol and started to pick up speed the troops recognized that this wasn’t a confused driver trying to find a shortcut to work. This was a VBIED.  Weapons slewed into position and as the car continued to pick up speed the soldiers engaged with their rifles. A split second later the harsh crack of rifle fire was eclipsed by the unholy thump of a heavy machine gun engaging the target. The windshield blossomed into a spider web of broken glass, and the driver slumped over from the impact of a dozen rounds. Unfortunately there was no stopping the ironclad laws of inertia, the vehicle continued to lurch forward until it fluoresced into a shrieking high explosive fireball. The hard wave of concussion slammed into the troops like a sledgehammer, a welter of metal and meat following an instant behind. The vehicles engine block rocketed forward and slammed into the armored HMMWV, glancing off the thick steel with a metallic hiss. The soldiers who had dismounted the vehicle managed to take a knee a split second before the powerful explosion, leaving them mercifully free of almost all of the screeching fragments.

     We didn’t know it at the time, but the sound we heard in the CP wasn’t a mournful cry - it was the sound of victory. Thanks to the alert soldiers in Demon Company the only life that ended that day was the suicide bombers. All that will mark the bombers bitter existence is a scorch mark on a worthless piece of road. A scorch mark that will forever recount his dismal failure.

The Endgame

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

                        - George Santayana

     I was looking at the spattered dust outside my room today when it hit me.  Someday our soldiers will leave this ugly, barren FOB.  The high guard towers will lay empty, their glowering profile softened by unruly nests of squawking birds.  The sandbags will rot away from dusty windows and the shimmering light of day will finally dance in cloistered rooms.  Warehouses full of supplies will lay barren.  Motorpools thick with the low, lethal silhouettes of armored vehicles will sit empty save for wretched and twisted weeds.  Sections of the high perimeter wall will crumble and fall into chaotic piles of masonry.  And the only sound will be the tortured screech of broken sheet metal roofs banging in the desert wind.  The FOB will be dead – drained of the throbbing pulse of men and machinery that make her so powerful and fell.

     When that inevitable day comes I will have long since rotated home.  But I can’t help but wonder what Iraq will be like when the door closes on this chapter in our military history.  Will the new democratic Iraq survive its tempestuous infancy and serve its people with justice and mercy?  Will fathers and mothers be able to raise their children to be strong and proud? Will we have left the cradle of civilization a better and brighter place for having been here?  Every fiber of my being wants this to be true, it would justify the price we have paid in blood and anguish. 

     But I have another selfish reason for hoping this all comes to pass. Someday I hope to raise a son… and I don’t want him to have to fight another war in this burning land. And if we cut and run before giving Iraq a chance to become a free society that is exactly what will happen.  I have managed to read a couple articles from the mainstream press where impassioned editors have screeched about the incredible cost in lives and treasure this war has cost our country. They perform their dark calculus, tallying lives lost and money spent, and use to justify cutting and running. But they aren’t out here sweating and bleeding and dying. They don’t stay awake nights wondering if they did everything in their power to get their men back home safely. They don’t cry bitter tears over lost friends.  And they don’t see the enemy for who they really are.

     Have you ever stopped to think about who the insurgents really are? Or about what their final goal really is?  Do you think for a moment that they are fighting for freedom? For their people?  Have you ever wondered why foreign jihadists are trickling into Iraq to attack our forces? In case you have been living under a rock for the last several years I will spell it out for you in as clear a fashion as I am able. The insurgents are composed of two primary groups. The first is composed of former Baath Party member who long to once again crush their populace for their own personal gain.  The second group is inhabited by jihadists whose malignant form of Islam calls for the destruction of anything counter to their backwards ideology.  Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not bashing the whole of Islam.  I’m referring to a small but virulent subset of the religion that is bent on imposing their draconian will on others.  That is the face of our enemy, and you would be a fool to think that leaving that plague unchecked would bring anything except disaster.

     Our country has drawn a line in the sand, and committed her forces to allowing Iraq to choose her own destiny. If we turn our back on that solemn pledge we not only dishonor the memory of the troops that sealed this promise with their very lifeblood, we embolden the jihadists bent on destroying everything we stand for.   Do I want to melt under the blistering sun day in and day out? No.  Do I want to shuffle off this mortal coil in a foreign land? Again no. Did I want to leave my beautiful bride?  A thousand times no. But in the end it comes down to this.  I would rather see this through to the end and spend the rest of my days in peace - then leave this country before the mission is through and have these same jihadists attack the fertile soil of home. 

The Highway

     My cell phone bleated out its digital alarm and I opened my eyes to the inky blackness of another morning.  I clumsily reached towards the plaintative electronic wail, blind fingers attempting to find the little banshee and choke it into silence.   As my hand wrapped around the little monster my thumb started mashing keys – forcing the phone back into a mute stupor. As I sat up I focused through tired eyes at the tiny screen. 0500.  I wanted to lay back down on my lumpy little bed and go back to sleep.  To just close my eyes and pretend the alarm never went off at all.  But today was a mission day.  A day outside the wire.  A day that had started two minutes before when my alarm first pulled me from my dreams of home. With that thought spurring me on I walked across the mausoleum darkness of my room and flipped on the lights.

     Ahhhh, another morning in Baghdad.

      I started pulling on my DCUs and by time I was cinching my boots enough dexterity had returned to my fingers to tie big looping knots in the laces.  As I tucked the laces into my boots I noticed the bold black letters on my boots that read “B NEG” and smiled, noticing for the first time that my blood type seemed like pessimistic shorthand for “Be Negative”. As I walked out the door I kissed my gloved hand and pressed it against a picture of my wife before shutting off the lights and softly closing the door.  As I walked to the TOC I kept thinking of my rapidly approaching leave and how wonderful it would be to just bask in my wife’s presence.

     I was so caught up in daydreams that I didn’t notice that the PSD (personal security detail) soldiers were lined up until I was at the doors of the TOC.  I snapped back to reality and walked over to 1LT Cisco, the platoon leader of the mortarmen who were going to be the PSD. Seeing that nearly everyone looked decidedly unhappy I asked him if his soldiers had a chance to eat breakfast. He gave me a perplexed look and said that they didn’t get the chance because they thought they were leaving at 0600.  I told LT Cisco to release his soldiers so they could grab a quick breakfast and then gave a quick brief on the mission in case there had been any other breaks in the flow of information.

     We started some coffee and covered the finer points of the mission, by time the pot was brewed the soldiers were filtering back to their vehicles. We downed steaming cups of coffee, hit the porta-johns and linked back up with the rest of the mortar platoon. LT Cisco briefed up his troops, finished last minute checks and then we all mounted our vehicles.  As I clambered into the hulking cab of the uparmored LMTV next to my driver, SPC Ghost, I had a flashback to my trip north in its unarmored twin.  This metallic Frankenstein shared little with that wretched truck – it carried the same predatory bloodline as our lethal M1114s.  It might be a bigger target, but this vehicle could more then hold its own.

     A few minutes later we were outside the wire, accelerators pushed to the floorboard as our small convoy greedily swallowed lengths of broken road in shuddering leaps.  Our destination was only a few short miles away, but to get there we had to take the worst road in all of Iraq, if not the world. I’ve been down the route a dozen odd times, but from my high perch the road took on a new malignancy.  Everywhere you looked there was a reminder of the grim lethality of this tiny stretch of road. The wide median was an arboreal massacre, lined with hundreds of ugly stumps standing like wooden tombstones. The scarred strip of asphalt was little better.  Every dozen odd meters we bumped through patched craters – ebony blossoms that marked the impact point of VBIED.  Even the bridges carried scorched reminders of the insurgents suicidal attacks, stalactites of debris hanging from their high abutments.  If there was a highway to hell it probably looked a lot like this.

     Our vehicles roared through the morning traffic, drivers weaving down the road to keep civilian cars from nearing our convoy.  As we made our way down the road I started telling lame jokes to ease the tension.  Halfway through one of my jokes I looked over at SPC Ghost and caught a fleeting glimpse of something that sent a shudder down my spine.  For a split second I tried to repaint the image in my minds eye – fighting to catch the details.  I could see the ugly lines of the old sedan, the glimmering, almost painful white of the drivers shirt and his thick black beard. But that was all.  It was too late to turn around but my mind whirled around that singular image trying to resolve details that I failed to capture. Were the springs loaded down?  Was the vehicle idling?  Was the driver chanting?  Had I just seen a VBIED? I raged at myself for riding in a vehicle without a radio. I was still groping for answers when we pulled safely into our destination. 

      As I clambered down from the cab to clear my weapons LT Cisco ran up. Through hurried breaths he told me that a radio call had just put an APB for a vehicle along our route. Before he finished I already knew the next words that would come out of his mouth.  But I was wrong – LT Cisco had seen the vehicle too and passed the details to the Battalion.  His message wasn’t one of missed opportunities, but one of scarcely contained pride.  When he finished I exhaled a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

Later, as the TCNs (Third Country Nationals) loaded the LMTV with cargo we gathered in a hard, tight huddle and compared notes on the vehicle. By time we finished the cargo was tied down so we loaded up and started off on the return leg of our trip.

     As we made our way off base we ran into a glitch. Unlike our FOB there was only one exit – and to get there you had to pass through a long, low tunnel.  A tunnel that the LMTV could easily pass under despite its considerable height.  That is… if the cargo bed wasn’t piled high with equipment.  As we approached the tunnel it became clear to everyone in the convoy that there was no way we were going to make it through withour ripping away our supplies.  With no room to turn around we tried using the automatic inflation system to lower the broad tires, the vehicle settled a little but we weren’t even close to making it. With few options left I jumped on the back of the LMTV along with one of the other troops and started using good old fashioned muscle to unstack the cargo.  In a few minutes we were able to creep under the bridge with inches to spare, the bed of the LMTV littered with poorly stacked and unsecured cargo. When we emerged from the other side we pulled off the road to let the logjam of vehicles pass by and too secure the cargo. As we worked to lash everything down I told myself that someday I would look back at this mess and laugh. 

     The return home was as chilling as the ride up, the only difference being the burned asphalt carried a different pattern of welts. I felt myself tensing up as we approached the area where I had seen the possible VBIED but to my relief there was no trace of that accursed vehicle.  We pressed on, occasionally swinging into the dirt median to pass stalled clusters of vehicles and in a few short minutes we were home. The cargo was intact, the vehicles still worked, and everyone was safe.  Not a bad day’s work.  Let me rephrase that, not bad for a morning of work. After all it was only 1000 hours.

The 3 "P's"

     When I was a kid I remember watching an Army commercial that said "We do more before 9 am then most people do all day". The commerical was right,technically today started yesterday morning and today has been a 40 hour work day. The hours we keep here never ceases to amuse me. I did manage to finish most of my in box - it is amazing how much you can do when you compress a workweek into two days of frenzied activity.
     But I can't really complain because today was a special day - today was the day I found out I was selected for Captain. Promotions in the Army aren't always the linear path you might expect from such a regimented organization, the byzantine path through the promotions systems relies as heavily on paperwork and luck as it does on ability. Although I knew I was up for consideration I wasn't sure that I would be promoted because of misfiled paperwork . Apparently the few files that made it before the selection board were enough to convince them I was eligible for Captain.
     Tonight was a busy night, our sector of Baghdad is really heating up. The insurgents aren't fools, they know we are just assuming the mission and they are methodically testing our abilities to look for weaknesses. Tonight they found none, and as they limp back to their hovels it will be with far fewer then when they decided to test us. In one of the engagments the IPs managed to arrest two of the insurgents and they were brought in for questioning. Since I was up working I watched as the insurgents were brought in. What struck me was how poorly equipped and desperate they looked.
     I have spent countless hours reading about everything from the Arab psyche to the cultural undercurrents of modern Islam to better understand the insurgents, but it was only today that I realized that not everyone who takes us arms against us has an ideological stake in the matter. Take last night for example, where there were clearly two types of battles. In the first type of "battle" insurgents tried their best to set up an ambush that would maximize their ability to cause us harm while utilizing the terrain to ameliorate many of our technical advantages. These fights were quick and brutal and invariably ended with the insurgents dragging away their casualties - our ability to manuever exceeds the enemies ability to contain us in a kill zone. In the second kind of engagment ideology nevers enters the picture. In those situations some poor individuals decided to try to kill an American for the $3000 bonus and fired off poorly aimed shots from a decrepit AK-47. I don't know who is worse - those who try to end a human life for little more then cold hard cash, or those killing in the name of a flawed ideology.
     In the end the insurgents motivations are little more then an intellectual exercise, the immediate question is how we can reduce the cultural and economic factors that allow an insurgency. Our stopgap solution is what we call the three "p's". Be Professional.  Be Polite.  Be Prepared.

Run for the Guns

     Today we were sitting down for a meeting when the entire TOC shook like an angry dog. There was no mistaking the dull thump created by a wall of air accelerated by high explosives. Without missing a beat we all sat down and started our meeting. I guess we are starting to get used to the blasts, although this one was much closer then usual. I'm not implying we are fearless men of iron, if the blast was close we would have surely moved into safer accomodations. But what we have learned in these last few days is how to gauge what instrument of death caused the blasts, and how far away the blast site was.      

     In this case we could tell the blast was pretty large and at least several hundred meters away from our little corner of Baghdad. By time we wrapped up our planning the report confirmed what we all knew, a VBIED had struck in close proximity to the FOB. As the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together we found that four Iraqi Police had been killed in the blast and that the suicide bomber set it off when they stopped him at one of our outer checkpoints.
Or chaplain was returning from a mission shortly after the blast and he told me a little about the scene of the blast. The angry little fireball scorched the majority of the road surface and crumpled several vehicles in its fury. When one of these blasts go off there usually isn't a crater, the explosions tend to choose the path of least resistence, and this case was no exception. I won't say anything about the disposition of the IPs, suffice it to say they did not survive.  Which brings me to the topic of the IP's.  When we were preparing to deploy all the newspapers were carrying stories about the incompetence of the Iraqi Police.  They still have a long way to go, but the arguement that they aren't committed to their country sounds hollow when you see firsthand the risks they are taking to stabilize their country.
     As the night sky enveloped the land I heard the first direct fire engagment of our deployment. From a distance the sharp bursts of gunfire sound like firecrackers, and for a moment I almost thought I was listening to fireworks. But as I tracked the sound it became clear that one of our guard towers was in a long distance shoot out with some insurgents. It just so happened that an old friend of mine was in the tower and when I realized it was him I had to wonder if the insurgents knew what they had brought down on themselves. The exchange went on for several minutes before the insurgents fled the scene, dragging their wounded with them.

Like A Bolt From The Blue

                                   "Explosions are not comfortable"

                                                  - Yevgeny Zamyatin

     The last two days have been... interesting. The first inkling that the veil of silence that had settled over most of Baghdad was ripping came when one of our troops was struck by an IED. Then there was spurts of avctivity, but nothing that seemed too out of the ordinary. And then as I was walking to the TOC this morning I felt the dull thump of a shockwave slide across my back. Shockwaves are strange things, they are quite literallyt the poltergeists of Iraq. Much like those legendary spirits the shockwaves are invisible, but they can wreak havoc depending on their force and direction. In larger blasts the shockwaves don't so much pass over you as they push through you. As the distance decreases the effect becomes less pronounced. At a distance of several hundred meters it can still shock you, the effect is similar to sitting on a quiet street only to hear a kid with gigantic speakers throwing out a bass line. That deep seated rumble is as close as you would ever want to get to a shockwave. So getting back on track I managed to hit the deck in a vain attempt to avoid the shrapnel. And then lying there in the dirt I realized there was no debris, no roar, and most importantly - I was uninjured. I sheepishly dusted off and quickly moved out for the TOC. It ended up that the shockwave was little more then the sonic boom as a insurgent rocket screamed down into the International Zone nearby. Instead of slewing its fat belly full of shrapnel across the landscape this rocket plowed deep into the earth, never to release its deadly payload. I would say we were unusually lucky, but the fact of the matter is the insurgents have to bury their weapons to keep us from finding them. And when you abuse a sensitive piece of military equipment you get exactly what we saw today... a bunch of duds.

     As the day wore on the dull thump washed over the FOB several times. The windows would shudder and the building would heave like a startled animal, only to be replaced by silence. As the reports filtered in it became apparent that there had been several large IEDs and VBIEDs in the local vicinity. None of these posed any threat to our soldiers, and the passing rumbles left nary a scratch on our collective consciousness.