The War I Always Wanted

by Brandon Friedman

  I am groggy. I think that I must have dozed for nearly an hour because the night’s events are already beginning to seem like a dream. I hear movement around me as guys who aren’t pulling security start to wake from their short naps. As the sky begins to lighten, my heart sinks as I realize mountains buttress us to the east—mountains that will block our only source of heat for hours.

  Sergeant Collins is next to me. We make some small talk as I scan our surroundings for the first time in the early morning light. Being in the low ground, I can’t see much. The platoon is facing southwest, stretched in a defensive line spanning a hundred yards. They are on the reverse slope of a rise in the earth. I look for Charlie Company, but can’t see them anywhere. In the night it had come across the net that they had been engaged in a firefight the day prior and are now somewhere on the high ground to our east.

  I can see several guys changing their socks, while others brush off their weapons. Objective Ginger looms above them to the south. I have removed my set of equipment and it lies on the ground next to me. Sergeant Collins has taken off his helmet despite the cold. Having worn mine for over twelve straight hours, I decide to do the same, setting it gently on the ground by my ruck. My weapon lies in my lap. I can hear other quiet voices speak to each other in the growing light.

  An inbound bullet is always felt before it is heard.

  I twitch involuntarily as the first round streaks through the air above me, cutting a path through the thin mountain air. Breaking the silence, the crack is loud and nearly instantaneous. Later I find that this sensation is caused by the tiny sonic boomlet that accompanies whizzing bullets. I have never before been on the receiving end of any projectile other than baseballs or paint-balls. At worst, those leave bruises, not holes. This is serious. This is a new thing for me.

  I am awake.

  I’m on a stage. The spotlight has just found me. Blinded, I try to cover my eyes. I look into the crowd. They are waiting. I am unprepared.

  My brain clicks back on. I yell the obvious. “Sniiiiiiiper!” The call is echoed throughout the platoon. I hit the ground. On the way down, I snag my helmet. As I lie on my stomach shivering, I put it on and try to snap on the chinstrap with my nearly numb fingers. I can feel rocks digging into the palms of my hands as well as my knees. I try to flatten myself as much as possible. As a kid, I’d seen surprised squirrels do something similar to this in my neighborhood. Now I am doing my best imitation. It seems like the thing to do.

  Complete thoughts slowly begin forming. That round came from behind us. What the fuck? Everyone else realizes the same thing and they are instinctively repositioning themselves to face the northwest.

  Silence.

  Then: “Who sees him?” I yell it. Another voice asks if anyone has been hit. Suddenly there is a jumble of “Who sees . . . I don’t . . . anything . . . do you . . . what?” Words and sentences become tangled. As the squad leaders desperately try to glean from their men if anyone has seen anything, I look for Taylor. He has the radio.

  I see him twenty feet away, but he may as well be on the moon. Sergeant Divona is with him. I start to crawl toward them, but I only get a few feet before I realize I don’t have my load-bearing vest with my extra ammo magazines. I move quickly in reverse and grab it. I drag it behind me, knowing full well that sitting up on a knee to don it can mean a bullet in the head.

  As I crawl, I become aware that my teeth are chattering—literally knocking together—in my head. I notice that I am still freezing. For some odd reason, I feel cheated. I had hoped that if I had to fight, I’d least have enough adrenaline pumping through me to ward off the cold. I feel that this isn’t fair. It never happens like this on TV. On TV no one ever has to fight with teeth clanging and hands so cold they can barely operate the trigger on a gun. I had hoped a shootout would at least warm me up.

  I am almost there when the second round pierces the air. I dig my face into the ground. Then I look up. I glance behind me, at most of the platoon. “Did anybody see an impact?” I shout. Suddenly Rito Diaz, one of Sergeant Beville’s machine gunners, calls out: “I just saw it hit behind me!”

  Sergeant Collins is scrambling on all fours toward Taylor and me. He looks at Diaz and asks, “Are you sure?”

  “I . . . I think so, Sergeant,” Diaz responds.

  Fuck. Finally, I make it to Taylor and Sergeant Divona. All right. Think, think, think, goddammit. Okay. “Taylor, call it in to the CP. Tell ’em we’re gonna engage the sniper. Sergeant Divona . . .” I stop, wheels turning furiously in my head. I look at him. “Hold up.” I want to get a better look before I make another move. CRACK!!! Another round passes directly over my head. As with the others, I can feel it.

  The call goes out from the platoon, “Is anybody hit?!” Nothing. No one has been hit. I am beginning to think that this is the world’s worst sniper. Three shots have been fired at a stationary platoon with no hits. My next thought is a bit more cynical. If we’ve been so lucky on the first three, then it is only a matter of seconds before our luck will run out. Then someone calls out, “Can we shoot?!” This strikes me as an utterly stupid question. I yell as loud as I can, “Yes, goddammit! Light the motherfucker up!” Collins screams something similar at the same time.

  He is next to me. “Come on, let’s flank around to the left. Let’s get up the hill and waste this motherfucker!” he urges me. It is the moment for which Collins has been waiting his entire life. He is actually going to get to close with and destroy an enemy. In his mind, I think, he has already charged up the hill, pulled out his bayonet, jammed it between the sniper’s ribs, and watched his lifeblood run out.

  “Hold . . . Hold up, man!” I say, worriedly. He has a look in his eyes that says if I hesitate, he will take the platoon and go on without me. He is serious. At once I am concerned that the age-old power struggle between platoon leaders and platoon sergeants is about to reach a breaking point. In the six months we’ve known each other, we’ve never had a conflict over what is best for the platoon. It looks like that is about to change now. “NoNoNo! Wait,” I plead. I am thinking again. I want to prop myself up on all fours to get a clearer look up the hill. For a second I think about the sense in that.

  I do it anyway. I have to do something. I can’t see anything. As I lower myself back into the prone position, I suddenly feel that aliveness—that by propping myself up to see, I’ve somehow cheated death by surviving. I can hear Sergeant Collins, “Sir, let’s go!”

  A fourth round cuts through the cold morning air, the loud crack echoing around in my brain. We try to get as close to the ground as we can. “I see him, I see him!” It is Pfc. Smerbeck. The next sound I hear is his M4. Smerbeck doesn’t hesitate for a second in returning fire. “He just dropped out of sight!” Smerbeck calls out. The machine gunner next to him, Kamauf, turns to Sergeant Beville and asks, “Can I shoot?” Kamauf wants to unleash his heavy machine gun. No answer from Sergeant Beville. He is at a terrible vantage point and can’t see anything. Then Beville, deliberately disregarding the danger, cracks a joke about Smerbeck screwing up the round count. After he says it, he looks at me, wide-eyed and grinning. Somebody asks Smerbeck if he’s hit him, and Smerbeck answers in the negative, saying he doesn’t think so.

  I look at Sergeant Collins. “Wait. Let’s prep it first.” I shift my hips and turn to Sergeant Divona, my forward observer. “Hey man, call it in and have ’em drop some mortar rounds on the sniper.” I realize we’re way too close for mortars, but I don’t care. I don’t know if I have the stomach for an uphill assault. I pause for a second, waiting for Divona’s retort. For the first time in four months, however, Sergeant Divona doesn’t complain about the mission. He doesn’t question it and he doesn’t give me the usual look like I’ve just killed his dog. Relieved by his reaction, I watch as he goes to work on his radio. He is now calling in a strike with literally no margin for error.

  It has been about a minute since Smerbeck returned fire and the sniper’s rifle has fallen silent. This is g
ood at least. Divona finishes with the radio call. For a few more moments we wait. It grows quiet again. I’m not breathing. Suddenly Taylor’s radio comes to life. “Sir, it’s for you. It’s First Sergeant.”

  I take the handset from him and put it to my ear. First Sergeant wants to know the direction of the sniper and his distance from us. Have I not called that in to the CP already? Wasn’t that the first thing I did? It is the first thing I should have done, anyway. I must have forgotten. “Roger,” I answer, “it’s a hundred meters at, uhh, fifty-five degrees, over.” He repeats it back to me in confirmation and then there is silence.

  I look at Divona, concerned. I ask him what the holdup is. He just frowns and shrugs. I glance back at the platoon. Everyone is still down, but their eyes are still trained intently on the sniper’s position. No one speaks as we wait for the mortars to fall.

  The radio crackles again. Taylor answers it and I see his eyes widen. I can’t make out much, but I distinctly hear, “Cease fire! Cease fire!” come across. Taylor drops the handset to his side. “Sir,” he says, “they’re telling us to stop shooting immediately.”

  Perplexed, I ask him why. This makes no sense at all.

  “Sir, they said it’s a friendly grid. They said we just called in a mortar strike on our own scouts.”

  I am stunned momentarily. How can the scouts be that close to the sniper? That can’t be. Wait a second . . . . A new thought begins to materialize in my rattled brain. “No. No,” I shake my head. “Those rounds were close . . . . Diaz saw one impact behind him,” I stammer. Jaw-dropping surprise does not begin to describe what I am feeling. If it’s true . . . Words like “friendly fire” and “fratricide” begin to dance behind my eyes.

  “No sir,” Taylor says. “Battalion says that scout snipers are behind us and that they were engaging targets in the valley and they just reported being fired at.”

  I have now fumbled my platoon through our first combat action. I have ordered my soldiers to fire on their own scouts and asked my forward observer to drop mortars on these same soldiers. This is not my fault, but I can see that this type of work is not as easy as it looks on TV.

  The F-16 missile that struck the Patriot battery at FARP Shell was a high-speed anti-radiation missile. The plane had been on its way to Baghdad when the Patriot site locked onto the jet, causing the pilot to fire on the battery. With the whipping wind and dust now obscuring visibility, he probably never saw the target at which he was firing.

  After the mistaken attack, the strong winds started becoming more troublesome by the minute. By midafter-noon we were in a full-blown dust storm. Visibility was rapidly dropping, and our latrine that consisted of four walls made of ponchos strung up to shovels was slowly being blown apart.

  The whole platoon was buttoned up inside of the trucks. The humvees didn’t really keep the dust out, but they did prevent you from being slapped in the face by little rocks zipping through the air. Listening to the chatter on the Division net, I started thinking of the rifle companies sitting in holes in the ground, out in the open desert. However miserable my platoon was, Collins and his guys were considerably worse off. It was then that the weather changed drastically.

  The sky, the air, and the land all at once became orange. Within seconds it changed again, this time to a deep ruby red. Suddenly we were on an alien planet. Sand began buffeting the windows of the truck. I looked at my driver and asked, “What the fuck is this?” Then, without warning, we were swallowed completely by a wall of darkness.

  It was a devouring blackness. I could feel a low vibration in everything around me. Day became night and I could no longer see my own hand in front of my face. I was only conscious of two senses—those of taste and touch. I could taste the sand, feel it in my mouth, between my teeth, in my throat. We were being buried alive.

  Then it started to rain. But not real rain. Spheres of mud began falling from the still darkened sky, landing with thumps on the hood and windshield of my truck. They fell irregularly, as if the sky wanted to rain, but couldn’t muster the strength to do so. The sand had consumed even the rain. At this moment, on a field of battle consisting of hundreds of square miles, armies, steeled for battle, ground to a halt.

  It was as if the land knew what was happening. It knew our intentions, and it knew that this war, as with all wars, would end badly. It was as if the sky had opened, pouring sand into the gears of the war machines on both sides. It was the land’s final, desperate attempt to stop the war from taking place. And if it couldn’t, it would at least serve as a warning. A warning that darkness was coming—for Americans and Iraqis alike.

  From left to right: Sgt. 1st Class Jim Collins, 1st Lt. Sam Edwards, and me in Jacobabad, Pakistan.

  Months of waiting around in Pakistan for a mission, coupled with long hours on radio watch, eventually took its toll on Specialist Taylor.

  Taking up positions on the east side of the Shah-e-Kot Valley shortly after sunrise on our first day in Operation Anaconda. The cloud on the left is a bomb exploding half a mile away.

  Takhur Gar—also known as Objective Ginger during Operation Anaconda—loomed over us. During our time in the Valley, al Qaeda fighters remained dug in on the mountain.

  Two soldiers from my platoon stay low as the bombs fall on the Shah-e-Kot Valley. An al Qaeda truck—caught in the previous day’s fighting—lies burned out in the low ground.

  Shortly before our extraction from the Shah-e-Kot Valley. Clockwise from left to right: Spc. Jose Limon, Sgt. Joseph Pascoe, Spc. Michael “Doc” Rojas, Sgt. Josh Nantz, me, Staff Sgt. David Reid, Spc. Jason Boudreau, and Pfc. Kyle Walter.

  Flying into the Zhawar Kili area near the Afghan/Pakistan border. Two weeks after Operation Anaconda we went there to clear a cave complex. Photo courtesy T. Kamauf

  Always the social one, Specialist Kamauf practiced unit-level diplomacy with a serious-looking Afghan fighter who wore a borrowed American helmet for the photo. Photo courtesy T. Kamauf

  At Zhawar Kili, we had the privilege of working closely with Afghan anti-Taliban fighters. I am standing at the top left, while Sgt. Joe Pascoe is squatting in the middle.

  A ruined, thousand year-old caravanserai lies in the open desert some 30 miles southwest of Najaf, on the old road between Baghdad and Mecca. We found it while operating a defensive screen on the southern edge of FARP Shell.

  From left, Phil Dickinson and me. Sheltering a “caravan” for the first time in hundreds of years, the Delta Company command post and radio antenna can be seen outside of what remained of the northern wall of the caravanserai (roadside inn).

  Three Chinooks flying low over the desert, twelve miles southwest of Baghdad. We staged there for half a day before moving on the city.

  Sitting on the south bank of the Tigris in Baghdad’s Daura neighborhood, this crumbling Baath Party mansion sustained two bomb strikes in the early stages of the invasion. By the time we entered it, nothing was left inside but rubble and debris. Everything else had been looted.

  After clearing the Daura oil refinery, Delta Company set up its command post inside the perimeter. Distant explosions continued to rock the city, but we were safely out of range.

  Me on the left, standing with Sgt. 1st Class Steve Croom in Baghdad.

  Having dinner at Ammar’s family’s house in Baghdad during the lull between the invasion and the insurgency. Clockwise from left: Ammar, Spc. Brandon Moose, Mohamed, Pfc. Eric Poling, Spc. Trent Wykoff, and Pvt. James Worley.

  The peppered Volkswagen Passat from which the insurgents tried and failed to launch their attack.

  Bravo Company’s 3rd Platoon failed miserably in their attempts at covert action. Though garbed in dishdashas, they were pegged immediately as Americans and photographed. Comedians from left, Spc. Adam Sines, Lt. Jim W., and Spc. Zachary Wyant. Photo courtesy J.W.

  7

  Hillah, Iraq

  April 2003

  The familiar thud of a bomb detonating had been unmistakable—as had the sound of fighter jets off
in the distance. The morning was hazy and humid as I sat in the front seat of my truck, listening to a Matchbox 20 song on the satellite radio and eating a warm peach cobbler. We had left the desert, moving around Najaf, and were now within eight miles of the ruins of Babylon. I put the brown plastic spoon back into my snack and looked at it. One package of peaches, two large crackers, four packets of sugar, two packets of cream, some extra water, and a water-activated MRE heater—dessert. I had learned the recipe from Sergeant Croom somewhere between Kuwait and here. Just then I heard another explosion off to the east, but this one sounded different. Swallowing some of the cobbler, I figured it was probably a mortar.

  The afternoon prior we had inched ever closer to the fighting. Before stopping, we came to within two miles of the Euphrates River. It surprised me that the Fertile Crescent would begin and end so abruptly. We had been on a desert highway, and after a right turn, had entered into an area full of ditches, tall green grass, and huge palm trees. I could smell the water.

  Ancient Babylon is now called Hillah. Sitting along the banks of what is now a Euphrates offshoot, it is a site that has been continuously inhabited for over four thousand years. It has been conquered, liberated, and conquered again. It has been ruled by men known worldwide—men with names like Sargon, Hammurabi, and Nebuchadnezzar.