by Evan Wright
When War Pig contacts Godfather and tells him about the harassing fire, he immediately clears them hot to pursue. “Godfather was awesome,” Wennberg later says. “Some commanders get so caught up worrying about the politics of being too aggressive—destroying too much property, hurting innocent civilians—that they put your own forces at risk. Godfather told us to do what we needed to do, and it was good to go.”
The LAVs lunge across the magic line in pursuit. Colbert’s vehicle follows directly behind the rear LAV, as reports flow over the radio of the initial enemy contact. Everyone is quiet, waiting for the ambush. It’s so dark inside Colbert’s Humvee I can barely see my hands. I can’t see the LAV through the front windshield ahead of us. I can’t see what’s out my window to the right, other than dim outlines of farm huts along the road in the flat landscape. A strong wind is starting to whip against the side of the vehicle. Above it, all I hear is the rumbling of the Humvee’s diesel.
Colbert calls out to Hasser, who stands in the turret wearing NVGs. “See anything, Walt?”
“Nope,” he shouts down.
“Look alert!” Colbert shouts, his voice cracking slightly.
Sitting to my left, Trombley says, his voice barely audible, “I hope I get to use her tonight.” He’s referring to his SAW machine gun. Though I can’t see him, I can picture him caressing the top of his SAW as he sometimes does during tender moments before a firefight.
We drive this way for about ten minutes.
Then, after proceeding five kilometers north of the magic line, machine guns, rockets and mortars flash ahead of us in the darkness. The enemy has opened fire on the LAVs in front of us. Now I can see their outlines in the strobe-light effect of bombs and tracers going off around them. The blasts sound like hammers beating on the sides of Colbert’s Humvee.
In the first moments, enemy ambushers who are entrenched alongside the road launch approximately forty RPGs at War Pig’s column. In Wennberg’s LAV, shrapnel from the RPGs immediately shreds four of his vehicle’s tires. He estimates about 120 Iraqis are attacking from the west. Their ambush was coordinated enough that they held their fire until all of the LAVs had rolled into their kill box. As the enemy fire from the west intensifies, more Iraqis dug in to the east start to open up. They “bracket” the convoy by dropping heavy 82mm mortars on both ends of it, north and south (where Colbert’s Humvee is positioned). These Iraqis have apparently figured out that the LAVs use thermal sights, and many of them are concealed beneath blankets to minimize their heat signatures.
The convoy halts. Through the windshield in Colbert’s vehicle we can see the outlines of the LAVs as bombs flash all around. The LAVs open up with everything they have. Their cannons stutter explosively, spewing out tracer lines like red ropes that lash the ground for hundreds of meters on either side of the convoy. Pom-poms of fire bounce up from their targets. Iraqi tracers stream in toward them. The opposing lines of tracer fire tangle around one other, making it look almost like the two sides are dueling each other with glow-in-the-dark Silly String.
“I have no targets, no targets,” Colbert shouts. The fire just ahead of us makes a steady roar. We could be standing at the edge of Niagara Falls.
Hasser shouts down from the turret. “I don’t see nothing!”
There’s nothing close enough for the team to engage. We watch the gun battle go on in front of us several minutes. Then the Iraqi fire into the LAV column drops precipitously. A lone Iraqi machine gun continues to spit tracers toward the LAVs. A half dozen of them pour fire onto it, but every time it looks like they’ve silenced it, the enemy machine gun starts up again. This duel continues on and off for another five minutes.
In the relative quiet that follows, Colbert leans out his window, using his nightscope to observe a small hamlet of four to eight mud huts perhaps twenty-five meters to our immediate right. In the window of the closest hut there’s an amber light from a lantern or a candle.
“There’s nothing there,” Colbert says after studying the hamlet for a long time. “Just civilians behind a wall in back.”
“Small-arms fire to our rear,” Person says, passing on a report from the radio.
Then we hear AKs—they make a sharper, more substantial cracking sound than Marine M-4s—directly behind our vehicle. Fick reports over the radio that enemy fire is coming directly in on his Humvee about 100 meters behind us. Several rounds snap close to his head.
Recon Marines behind us return fire. It’s not heavy yet, just intermittent crackling, like branches snapping in the woods.
“I have no targets, no targets!” Colbert repeats.
All at once, Marines in vehicles far to the rear of Fick’s seemingly open up with every weapon they possess. Their gunfire sounds like a torrential rain. It’s Delta Company, the reservist Marines. They’re blazing away with machine guns and Mark-19s.
“Jesus Christ,” Colbert shouts, laughing. “Those guys are putting down FPF.” FPF—or final protective fire, shooting every weapon you have—is what Marines are trained to do only as a last-ditch measure. “They must think they’ve got the Chinese coming at them across the frozen Chosin,” Colbert says, referring to the epic Korean War battle.
The village to our immediate right now comes under heavy machine-gun and Mark-19 fire from the Marines in Delta. As dozens of their grenades bounce off the huts and flash, exploding just thirty meters from us, a few Marines in Bravo open up. They mistake the sparkling Mark-19 bursts for enemy muzzle flashes—a common problem.
“I have no targets! No targets!” Colbert repeats. But our vehicle rocks as Hasser begins lobbing rounds from the Mark-19.
“Cease fire!” Colbert shouts.
“I got muzzle flashes, for sure,” Hasser shouts.
“Easy there, buddy,” Colbert yells. “You’re shooting a goddamn village. We’ve got women and children there.”
The reservists behind us have already poured at least a hundred grenades into the village. Colbert continues scanning it through his scope. “We’re not shooting the village, okay?” he says. In times like these, Colbert often assumes the tone of a schoolteacher calling a timeout during a frenzied playground scuffle. Mortars explode so close we feel the overpressure punching down on the Humvee. But Colbert will not allow his team to give in to the frenzy and shoot unless the men finds clear targets.
The fire from Delta Company continues unabated. One of First Recon’s air officers riding near them looks back and sees a Mark-19 gunner in Delta standing at his weapon, burning through cans of ammunition, and he’s not wearing NVGs, meaning he can’t even see what he’s shooting at. The reservists now make another classic mistake of nervous, undisciplined Marines: They fire down the axis of the convoy, their rounds skipping and exploding next to the friendly vehicles in front of them. A platoon commandeer in Alpha gets on the comms, shouting, “Get those assholes to cease fire. They’re shooting at us!”
Their wild fire continues. Then the voice of Captain America comes over the radio, quavering and cracking. “Enemy, enemy! They’ve got us on both sides!”
“Oh, my God!” Person says. “Is he crying?”
“No, he’s not,” Colbert replies, cutting off what will likely be a bitter tirade about Captain America. In recent days, Person has pretty much forgotten his old hatreds for pop stars such as Justin Timberlake—a former favorite subject of long, tedious rants about everything that’s wrong with the United States—and now he complains almost exclusively about Captain America.
“He’s just nervous,” Colbert says. “Everyone’s nervous. Everyone’s just trying to do their job.”
“We’re going to die if we don’t get out of here!” Captain America screams over the radio. “They’ve sent us to die here!”
“Okay,” Colbert says. “Fuck it. He is crying.”
The firing drops off behind us. In front, LAVs pop off quick bursts. We hear their diesels grinding as they maneuver.
“LAVs are breaking contact,” Person reports from the radio. It�
��s a relief. It means we’re turning around, pulling back. Mortars are still bursting steadily, while AKs crackle intermittently.
“Person, move forward,” Colbert says. “We’re covering the LAVs while they pull back.”
“Is that right?” Person asks, startled.
“They want us to envelop them,” Colbert says. “Just move up the road.”
The wisdom of driving into a column of twenty-four LAVs while they pull beside us, some still firing their weapons, escapes the Marines. Colbert’s team has no radio contact with the LAVs, nor much experience practicing an enveloping maneuver.
Person deals with the order by simply flooring it. We speed up alongside the LAVs as their guns pop off rounds in front and behind us. Their diesels growl past us as they retreat. Soon all of War Pig and First Recon are behind us. Second Platoon sits out alone on the highway for several minutes.
“Turn around,” Colbert says.
“Roger that!” Person says, evidently relieved.
“We’re moving three clicks south and punching out patrols,” Colbert says.
We draw past the hamlet lit up so heavily by Delta. “That was a civilian target,” Colbert says. “I saw them.”
He sounds tired. I think this war has lost its allure for him. It’s not that he can’t take it. During the past hour or so of shooting, he still seemed excited by the action. But I think after mourning the loss of his friend Horsehead, trying to care for dehydrated, sick babies among the refugees the other day, the shot-up kids by the airfield before that, and having seen so many civilians blown apart, he’s connected the dots between the pleasure he takes in participating in this invasion and its consequences. He hasn’t turned against the aims of this war; he still supports the idea of regime change. But the side of him that loves war—his inner warrior—keeps bumping against the part of him that is basically a decent, average suburban guy who likes bad eighties music and Barry Manilow and believes in the American Way.
THIRTY
°
THE BATTALION spends the night of April 8 in a bermed field by the road just two kilometers north of the magic line. Because of the low cloud cover, it’s an especially dark night. On the horizon, lightning competes with bomb bursts from mortars War Pig is dropping on suspected enemy positions. The rolling berms we occupy are rock-hard. Walking around in the darkness, unable to see my own feet, I feel like I’m in a curved, concrete skateboard park. The Marines were ordered out of their MOPP suits a couple of days ago—the military no longer believes there is any chance of WMDs being used. But I put mine on tonight. I’ve reached a point where I feel calm during shooting, but afterward I tend to get a little spun. I’m convinced there’s going to be a chemical attack tonight. Even though my MOPP suit has a hole in it and wouldn’t do me much good, I wear it along with my rubber boots—eliciting amused laughter from Fick. I find a ditch to lie in for the night and wrap myself up in a poncho.
F-18s make repeated low passes. It’s too cloudy for them to bomb anything, but according to Fick, it’s hoped they’ll scare off any tanks from approaching. Some of the passes the F-18s make are so low, the sonic forces they exert feel like a crushing weight on your skull.
Marines on the perimeter talk among themselves, as they observe for enemy movement. They pass around different optical devices, debating whether different shapes they see in the surrounding fields might be weapons or enemy positions. Their voices are quietly excited, cheerful. They like this part of war, being a small band out here alone in enemy territory, everyone focused on the common purpose of staying alive and killing, if necessary.
The high winds pick up. But instead of dust, they carry rain. It pours for about twenty minutes, and two hours later the sun comes up.
Standing in the early-morning mist, Fick gives his team leaders the order for the day. “We are clearing and killing enemy, moving north through hostile areas. We made two kilometers yesterday. We have thirty-eight to go.”
THE BATTALION devotes the morning of April 9 to creeping up the road to Baqubah at a walking pace. Marines on foot clear the surrounding fields, with War Pig’s LAVs sometimes joining them, sporadically firing into huts and ditches. The enemy drops mortars continuously, but with the Marine lines stretched across several kilometers, they present a diffuse target. In Colbert’s vehicle, we sometimes get a flurry of mortars falling within a few hundred meters, then nothing for twenty minutes.
The Iraqis’ tactics today seem clear: They let off some harassing fire with AKs and light machine guns, then retreat while dropping mortars. None of their fire is particularly accurate. While the Marine advance is dangerous, tedium sets in.
Colbert and Person are beginning to have personal problems. There’s no particular reason for the strain; it’s more like they’re two rock stars who have been touring a little bit too long together.
About noon, when a salvo of six to eight enemy mortars lands a few hundred meters from the Humvee, Colbert begins harping on Person’s driving. The platoon is ordered to scatter into a berm by the road and wait out further mortar strikes. The idea is for Person to pull between two high berms for cover, but Colbert is not satisfied. As the next salvo begins to blow up in the vicinity, Colbert starts giving Person a driving lesson, ordering him to back up and maneuver the Humvee repeatedly.
“You see that pile of dirt by the trail we’re on?” Colbert says, his voice cracking. “That is a berm, Person. Berms make me feel warm and fuzzy inside because they protect me from shrapnel. So when I say, ‘Pull up next to the goddamn berm,’ I mean pull the fucking Humvee up next to the fucking berm. Don’t leave it sitting in the middle of the fucking field.”
Person responds by alternately pumping the gas and brakes. We slam into the berm. Cans of ammo and AT-4 rockets piled in the rear shoot forward through the compartment. “Sorry about that,” Person mumbles, not sounding very sorry.
A Hellfire missile blows up something 500 meters across the field. Mortars boom. Person begins belting out his latest song, one he and Hasser have been composing. It’s a country song, which he sings in flagrant violation of Colbert’s ban. Colbert doesn’t even try to shut him up anymore. It’s tough to reach Person these days. He’s had a severe allergic reaction to Iraq. His eyes have swollen to red slits. They ooze tears constantly, which mix with the snot pouring from his nose. Doc Bryan has put him on a regimen of antihistamines and other medications to combat the allergies. God only knows how these medications interact with the Ripped Fuel and other stimulants Person uses. The whole morning, Person has been babbling about his latest scheme. He and Hasser are going to change their last names to “Wheaten” and “Fields,” respectively, in order to put out a country music album, eponymously titled Wheaten Fields.
Now, as the explosions continue, he shares their first song, much of which they composed last night on watch. It’s called “Som’ Bitch,” and its aim, according to Person, is to hit every theme of the country-music lifestyle. Person sings:
Som’ bitch an’ goddamn and fuck
All I ever seem to do is cuss
About how life’s a’ fuckin’ treatin’ me
To save my one last shred of sanity.
Som’ bitch and goddamn an’ fuck
The price of Copenhagen just went up
My NASCAR won’t come in on rabbit ears
My broken fridge won’t even chill my beer.
When he finishes, he turns to Colbert. “You like that?”
“Why don’t you just quit while you’re ahead,” Colbert says.
MINUTES AFTER Person’s performance, we drive back onto the road. Colbert stays behind, leading Garza and other Marines in a foot patrol of fields edging the highway. Several minutes later, they come under fire from Marines in Alpha Company, who rake their position with .50-cal machine-gun rounds. The Marines in Alpha are specifically trying to hit Garza. With his brown Mexican skin, they’ve mistaken him for an Arab.
Person floors the Humvee toward Alpha’s truck while screaming out the window
, “You’re shooting Marines!”
The men on the truck continue firing for another thirty seconds, until Capt. Patterson catches their error and orders them to stop. Colbert and Garza emerge from the field unscathed. Garza approaches the Humvee, shaking his head. “I figured it was those LAPD cops from Delta lighting us up. They love shooting Mexicans.”
“Mistakes happen,” Colbert says, climbing into the Humvee. Despite his attempt to slough it off, his face appears almost silver from the perspiration drenching it.
BY EARLY AFTERNOON the Marines have advanced more than twenty-five kilometers past the magic line and are fifteen kilometers south of their destination, Baqubah. In keeping with the poor judgment the Iraqis have shown in other situations, they only start to move their armor down to attack toward the middle of the day. But by now the clouds have burned off, and waves of British and American jets and Marine Cobras simultaneously bomb, rocket and strafe targets in all directions. Trucks, armor, homes and entire hamlets are being attacked from the air, blown up and set on fire. The Iraqis’ one chance to wipe out the Marines with a mass formation of armor evaporated with the vanishing cloud cover.
Right now, the world’s attention is focused on televised pictures of American Marines in the center of Baghdad, pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, where we are, enemy mortars start exploding within fifty meters of Bravo Company’s position. From a raw-fear standpoint, this is among the worst moments for the platoon.
The Marines in Second Platoon have been ordered to hold a position in a barren field by the highway. Their five Humvees are bunched within a few meters of one another when the mortars begin to land.
“We are receiving accurate mortar fire,” Fick informs his commander over the radio.
“Remain in position,” his commander, Encino Man, radios back.
