The Good Soldiers

by David Finkel

  “Yeah,” Showman said.

  They decided to bypass Predators and take Berm Road, the only other route into Kamaliyah, which was the elevated dirt road that Cummings had been on the day he first went to see Bob. No road felt worse to travel than Berm Road. There were only so many points to climb onto it and drop off of it, and once up there, the feeling was of being utterly exposed and vulnerable, that the places to hide a bomb were limitless, including in the soft dirt underneath. The surrounding landscape didn’t help, either: pools of fetid water, dead animals, vast piles of trash being picked through by families and dogs, grotesque pieces of twisted metal that in the dust clouds kicked up by the convoy reminded some soldiers of pictures they’d seen of the wreckage of the World Trade Center after 9/11. On Berm Road, Iraq could seem not only lost, but irredeemable.

  But on this day it was the better way. As the convoy inched along, reports were coming in of yet another IED explosion on Predators; on Berm, meanwhile, the worst of it was some kids who paused in their trash-picking to throw rocks at the convoy as it passed by them and coated them in dust.

  Kauzlarich, looking out the window, was uncharacteristically quiet. He had slept badly and woken uneasily. Something about the day didn’t feel right, he’d said before getting in the Humvee. Once he saw the COP, though, his mood brightened. In a week’s time, it had gone from an abandoned building with nothing inside of it other than a family of squatters to a fully functioning outpost for a company of 120 soldiers. Cots stretched from one end to the other. Generators chugged away so there was electricity. There was a working kitchen, a row of new portable toilets, and gun nests on the roof behind camouflage netting. The whole thing was enclosed in a solid perimeter of high blast walls, and even when Jeff Jager mentioned the isolating effect this was having regarding their relationship with the adjacent neighborhood, it was clear that Kauzla-rich’s confidence about what he was accomplishing in Kamaliyah had returned.

  “I’d say about forty percent of the people who live around here are gone “Jager said.

  “Forty percent?” Kauzlarich said.

  Jager nodded.

  “They’ll be back,” Kauzlarich said.

  “Maybe,” Jager said.

  “Six weeks, they’ll be back,” Kauzlarich said, and soon after that he was again in his Humvee, now passing the spaghetti factory, now passing the little house that still showed no signs of life, now climbing back up onto Berm Road to leave Kamaliyah—and that’s when the EFP exploded.

  And was he in the midst of saying something when it happened? Was he looking at something specific? Was he thinking of something in particular? His wife? His children?The COP?The shitters? Was he singing to himself, as he had done earlier, when the convoy was leaving Rustamiyah and he sang, to no recognizable tune, just sang the words he had been thinking, “Oh, we’re gonna go to Kamaliyah, to see what kind of trouble we can get in today”?

  boom.

  It wasn’t that loud.

  It was the sound of something being ripped, as if the air were made of silk.

  It was so sudden that at first it was a series of questions, none of which made any sense: What was that flash? Why is it white out? What is that shudder moving through me? What is that sound? Why is there an echo inside of me? Why is it gray out? Why is it brown out?

  And then the answer:

  “Fuck,” said Kauzlarich.

  “Fuck,” said the gunner.

  “Fuck,” said the driver.

  “Fuck,” said Showman.

  The smoke cleared. The dirt finished falling. Thoughts slowed. Breathing returned. Shaking began. Eyes focused on arms: there. Hands: there. Legs: there. Feet: there.

  All there.

  “We’re okay,” Kauzlarich said.

  “We’re good,” Showman said.

  It had come from the left.

  “Stay put,” Kauzlarich said.

  It had come from the left, where someone had stood watching while holding a trigger.

  “Look for secondary,” Kauzlarich said.

  It had come from the left, where someone had stood watching while holding a trigger and had pressed it a tenth of a second too early or a tenth of a second too late, because the main charge of the EFP passed through the small gap in between Kauzlarich’s Humvee and the one in front of it. And though there were flat tires and cracked windows and a few holes here and there from secondary effects of the explosion, all of the soldiers were okay, except for the shaking, and blinking, and headaches, and anger that began to rise in their throats.

  “Fucking dirty cocksucker,” one soldier said as the convoy moved off of Berm Road and into a place safe enough for the medic to check eyes for signs of concussions and ears for hearing loss.

  “When it blew up, everything turned black,” another soldier said.

  “I just saw a bunch of dust.”

  “Everything was like fucking crazy.”

  “I was shaking like a fucking . . .”

  “We’re alive, guys. That’s the name of the fucking game.”

  “. . . like a fucking . . .”

  “Trust me. The situation could be a lot fucking worse.”

  “It’s luck. It’s fucking luck. That’s all it is.”

  “I can tell you I’ll be glad when these days are done for me. Fuck this shit.”

  “All right. We’re going to stay focused. We’re in a war,” Kauzlarich said, but he was shaken, too, and now, as the convoy limped away from Kamaliyah through a maze of dirt trails and more trash mounds, everything was anger, everything was fucking, everything was fuck.

  The fucking dirt.

  The fucking wind.

  The fucking stink.

  They passed a fucking water buffalo.

  They passed a fucking goat.

  They passed a fucking man on a fucking bicycle and didn’t give a fuck when he began coughing from the fucking dust.

  This fucking country.

  They neared a child who stood by herself waving. She had filthy hair and a filthy face and was wearing a filthy red dress, the only bit of color visible at the moment in this entire place, and as she kept waving at the convoy, and now at Kauzlarich himself, he had a decision to make.

  He stared out his window.

  He raised his hand slowly.

  He waved at the fucking child.

  4

  JUNE 30, 2007

  So America has sent reinforcements to help the Iraqis secure their population,

  go after the terrorists, insurgents, and militias that are inciting sectarian violence,

  and get the capital under control. The last of these reinforcements arrived in

  Iraq earlier this month, and the full surge has begun . . . We’re still at the

  beginning of this offensive, but we’re seeing some hopeful signs.

  —GEORGE W. BUSH, June 30, 2007

  On June 5, at 10:55 at night, a $150,000 Humvee with five soldiers inside rolled into a sewage trench, turned upside down, and sank.

  It happened in Kamaliyah, where uncovered, unlined trenches ran along every street and passed in front of every house. At some point after the war began, the United States had decided to show its good intentions by fixing this, appropriating $30 million to bring sewers to Kamaliyah. It was an ambitious project involving Turkish subcontractors and Iraqi sub-subcontractors that by the time Kauzlarich arrived had come to a dead halt because of corruption and incompetence. Kauzlarich was given the task of resuscitating the project, which, in keeping with his character, he had taken on enthusiastically. The great leaders of previous wars may not have had to do sewers, but Kauzlarich did in his version, and in mid-May, at a meeting with a few of Kamaliyah’s leaders, he’d made clear his desire to succeed. “I know about half the workers working on the sewage project are militants, and they’ve got a choice. They can either work with me or against me. If they work against me, I will arrest them. If they sabotage the sewage project, I will hunt them down and kill them,” he’d said.

 
; Michael and Maria Emory

  Point made, the project resumed. Still, on June 5, Kamaliyah was a long way from having sewers, which meant that the trenches were filled to their rims as a convoy pulled out of the COP on a lights-out mission to rendezvous with an informant.

  “Go right! Go right!” one of the soldiers in the last Humvee yelled to the driver, who was fiddling with his night-vision goggles, or NODs, as they rounded a corner, but it was too late.

  The Humvee began to slide into the trench. Then it flipped. Then it sank. Then it began filling up.

  Four of the soldiers scrambled out a door and got out of the trench relatively dry, but the gunner was trapped inside. “He was yelling,” Staff Sergeant Arthur Enriquez would remember afterward, and if there was any hesitation about what to do next, it was only because, “I didn’t want to jump in the poo water.”

  And then?

  “I jumped into the damn poo water.”

  Down he went, into the crew compartment, where the gunner was stuck in his harness straps, his head partly in the sewage water, which continued to seep in. Enriquez got one arm around the gunner and lifted his head higher, and with his other hand began cutting away the straps. Now he and the gunner were nearly submerged as he pushed the straps away and began pulling at the gunner’s body armor. Now they were completely submerged as he pulled the gunner’s armor away. He squeezed his eyes shut. He wondered how long he could hold his breath. He felt for the gunner’s waist and began pulling. Everything was slippery. He tried again. He got the gunner to the door. He kept pulling, and slipping, and pulling, and now they were out the door, out of the Humvee, out of the sewage, and up on the bank, and that’s how this month of hopeful signs began for the 2-16, with two soldiers wiping raw Iraqi sewage out of their eyes and ears and spitting it out of their mouths.

  On June 6, at 10:49 a.m., Private First Class Shawn Gajdos, twenty-five years old, became the second soldier in the battalion to die when an EFP exploded on Route Pluto as the convoy he was in headed toward the Kamaliyah COP. Soon after, as Gajdos’s body was on its way back home to a grieving mother, who would say, “I’m just very proud of my son, doing what he felt he wanted to do,” four other soldiers in the convoy wrote down their recollections of what had happened for a report that would become the official narrative of his death. In his office, Kauzlarich read it carefully as he prepared to write his second memorial ceremony speech.

  From the sworn statement of Lieutenant Matthew Cardellino: “Concerning the IED attack on my platoon 061049JUN07, in which PFC Shawn Gajdos was killed and CPL Jeffery Barkdull and PV2 Jordan Brack-ett were injured; the platoon was traveling in the northbound lane of RTE Pluto enroute to Bushmaster COP to deliver a generator and two mechanics and retrieve a downed vehicle.”

  From the sworn statement of Sergeant First Class Jay Howell: “We had already passed the site a few minutes prior to the attack, but were told to turn around to pick up the two mechanics back at FOB Rustami-yah. It was the second time we passed the site when the IED went off, hitting the lead truck, in which CPL Barkdull was the TC.”

  From the sworn statement of Corporal Jeffery Barkdull: “Being the Truck Commander in the attack I don’t remember too much of what happened due to the fact that when the EFP hit the truck I was knocked out for a few minutes and plus memory loss of what went on that day. When the truck was hit I remember waking up not knowing what to do so I did what my driver did, if he used the radio so did I when he checked on the gunner, I checked on the gunner. After I checked the gunner I saw the engine of the truck catch fire and I saw my driver exit the truck so I also exit the truck.”

  From Sergeant Howell’s statement: “Cpl Barkdull called across the radio to Lt Cardellino that the gunner had been hit and there were injuries.”

  From Lieutenant Cardellino’s statement: “Over the radio I was told that there were injuries, but it was unclear at first who it was. After I and my driver dismounted from the truck, we ran over to the disabled truck and I began directing immediate security and looked in the truck to see the damage and injuries. I saw that PFC Gajdos was slumped in his gun turret sling unresponsive and bleeding. I do not know offhand whether he was standing or sitting at the time of the blast. I then tasted and smelled an oily smoke and saw that the engine compartment had caught on fire. PV2 Brackett and my driver, PV2 Gomez, grabbed their fire extinguishers and tried to put out the fire. It was at that point that I saw SSG John Jones run up from behind me with his fire extinguisher and helped to put out the fire. I screamed for the medic, SPC Walden.”

  From the sworn statement of Specialist William Walden: “We were driving down Plutos, I heard a loud explosion. When I look in front of the driver I could see a giant black cloud surrounded by gray smoke. I heard over the radio, ‘There is blood everywhere,’ and I could hear moaning in the back ground. My truck drove over there to the lead vehicle, I grabbed my Aide Bag and ran over, I saw CPL Barkdull with blood on his face and left arm. He told me not to worry about him he told me to get PFC Gajdos, that Gajdos is unresponsive. I ran over to the lead trucks right rear door, the door was hanging. I got inside I yelled at PFC Gajdos to get out and asking if he was alright. I saw blood coming out of his nose and mouth.”

  From Sergeant Howell’s statement: “Once he was out of the vehicle SPC Walden began treating injuries to PFC Gajdos head while I notice a large area of blood in the groin area. I cut his pants to see if his femoral artery was severed.”

  From Specialist Walden’s statement: “While he was doing that, I removed his IBA to see any chest injuries that could cause the blood coming from the mouth and nose. I saw he had two wounds to the right side of neck, that was not bleeding. I removed his ACH and a piece of brain matter fell on his ACU, I could see his eyes bulging and blood coming from his ears. He had a wound size of a quarter to the right side of head. PFC Gajdos’s brain was protruding out of the wound. PFC Gajdos was having agonal breathing with a radial pulse. I sat him up so the blood would not compromise his airway, I started blind finger swipes, all I got was blood clots and more blood. I wrapped the wound to his head and neck with a Kerlix.”

  From Sergeant Howell’s statement: “I asked SPC Walden if he was ready to move him he said yes so we loaded Gajdos into the LT’s vehicle which was the nearest . . .”

  From Specialist Walden’s statement: “I started CPR. I tried two rescue breaths, but the air would not go in . . .”

  From Lieutenant Cardellino’s statement: “. . . and the three trucks sped northwest to FOB Loyalty, where we dropped him off at the Aid Station. It was shortly after that I was informed he was dead. Nothing follows.”

  From Sergeant Howell’s statement: “Nothing follows.”

  From Specialist Walden’s statement: “Nothing follows.”

  From Corporal Barkdull’s statement: “That is all I can remember of the incedent. Nothing follows.”

  “On the morning of 6 June, 2007, Ranger Gajdos volunteered to replace one of his previously wounded Brothers to serve as the top gunner in the lead vehicle on a mission that would deliver supplies and a generator to the Bushmaster COP in Kamaliyah,” Kauzlarich decided to write in his memorial speech. “Super G, as I called him, always had a kind word and positive attitude each and every time I ran into him. He will be forever missed.”

  On June 8, an EFP exploded in the area called al-Amin, and even before the smoke finished clearing, Sergeant Frank Gietz, who before leaving Fort Riley had spoken of the “dark place,” was running after a man who had come out of a building just after the explosion to stare at the Humvee that had been hit.

  “He had run back inside a building and threw himself on the carpet and went down to his knees and started praying,” Gietz would remember later, sitting on his cot, his hands folded, his eyes down, his voice low so none of the other soldiers would overhear, his tone troubled. “So maybe out of anger, I don’t know, I don’t know if he was the triggerman or not, I just ran up to him and tackled him on the ground, and he turned combative on
me. He tried to wrestle with me. I remember hitting him in the face, and he kind of started screaming and kind of went limp, and I threw him over on his stomach, and Cooper”—a medic—“ran up and threw his knee in his back and started holding his arms, and I heard Cooper yelling, ‘I think you broke his fucking jaw.’ And I just said, ‘Fuck it,’ and ran out to the street.”

  Out on the street, he would remember next, people on rooftops had begun firing at the soldiers.

  “I could hear the crack of the rounds, and for some reason or other I just stood there and brought my weapon up and shot, and I remember seeing one individual’s head just, it was weird, like a pink mist come out the back of his head when I shot, and inside my head I was like, ‘Great. One down.’”

  He would remember looking over at a gunner named Lucas Sassman, who was up in the turret of a Humvee, firing away.

  “I saw his head snap back. And the kid stayed in the turret, that’s what amazed me, so I didn’t really think anything of it, and I came back up and engaged again and when I turned back around to look at the truck, he wasn’t in the turret anymore.”

  He would remember running over to Sassman’s Humvee.

  “Sassman was laying in the middle of the truck, and I said, ‘What happened?’ and they said, ‘He’s been hit, he’s been hit.’”

  He would remember running through gunfire toward another Humvee, the one that had been struck, and a soldier named Joshua Atchley. Atchley was on his second tour in Iraq. The first time he’d been a cook and had gone home wanting to be in the infantry.

  “I went straight to Atchley, because Atchley was just, I mean, covered in blood, and he was quiet, just sitting there, and I walked up to him and said, ‘What’s up, buddy, are you doing okay?’ And he just looked at me and he said, ‘They got my fucking eye.’ At the time I didn’t know his eye had been blown out, so I said, ‘You’re going to be all right, you’re going to be all right.’”

  He would remember that next to Atchley was a motionless soldier named Johnson.