The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  Call it reality TV. Call it counterpropaganda. Call it, as many did, propaganda.

  The Last Centurions sort of defies description. Sure, I was the real producer and maybe I shouldn't talk about my show. But I'm not the one to say that, I think it was first said by Murdoch at a stockholder's meeting where people were starting to smile for the first time in a year. And it was repeated on news shows, talk-shows and every other medium of communications over the years.

  We didn't send them video and then let them edit to choice. We sent them a complete show and told them to air it as is or else. As time went on, we got support from Skynet. And Fox and even the Beeb at one point. But at first, it was all a few overworked people in a bouncing commo trailer, often under fire.

  It always started the same. A shot of some sort of horror that had perhaps become banal in 2019. A dead man Arab in what looked like a looted shop. A man blown apart by heavy machine-gun fire with no apparent weapon. A woman battered to death. A voice-over giving the impression that some evil had occurred, probably because of the evil Americans.

  Then it would back up in time.

  Every show was different, but they all had the same theme, the opening lines in that great voice of Graham's:

  "This is a picture. All it tells you is what you see. If you don't know the context you know nothing."

  Sure, it was exciting. Violence sells, as does pathos and sex. Last Centurions had it all. It was entertaining as hell. Hell, I lived through it, loved it, hated it, sweated blood. And I still watch some of the segments. Especially the one where Samad is sliding down the hill completely out of control. I laugh my ass off at that every time even though at the time it looked like a tragedy in the making.

  And in the middle of it, we'd slip in context. History. Geography. Ethnology. History of propaganda. How news is made and manipulated. Military affairs. Diplomacy. How the two often interact badly.

  Putting it together was a nightmare. Not my nightmare, generally, but a nightmare. Oh, I'd input on the basic script and some suggestions on the video we'd gotten. Also some stuff on background.

  The scripts were usually, but not always, written by a pimply faced private in Mortars. The kid had . . . oh, a flare for storytelling and he was pretty knowledgeable for being all of nineteen. We'd find a particularly horrible shot and he'd back it up.

  We were attempting to, and sort of did, undo decades of propaganda. We'd show the picture at the beginning then do a standard voice-over for the scene. That was usually done by a female announcer at Skynet.

  "Stones." That's the one with the picture of the young woman who's obviously been beaten to death.

  "American forces in the vicinity of the Iraqi town of Al-Kami were accused today of the rape and murder of Shayida al-Farut, daughter of a local tribal leader. According to local sources (young guy screaming and shaking his fist at the camera) she was seen in the company of American soldiers shortly before her death." Cut.

  Back up.

  Where in the hell is Al-Kami? Why were American forces there? Who was the guy? HOW DID SHE DIE?

  (Go see the episode. For those of you who've never watched it, remember that thing about "honor rapes"? We tried to stop it, she chose to go back. For the honor of her family. That's it in a fucked up nutshell.)

  The last shot would always be what happened to create the shot that led in. In that case, a beautiful young woman, dead and battered to a pulp on the ground. Back up and you see the heavy stones scattered around her. Back up further you see the men who had done it, in some cases members of her own family, walking away.

  "We are . . . The Last Centurions."

  In a way, this whole . . . huge fucking time-waster I've been writing is a written version of The Last Centurions.

  It was also a living record of our time of suckage.

  It spawned a whole fucking industry. Everybody tried to copy us. "Realer reality TV" whatever that means. But a story like the Ten Thousand, or The Last Centurions, is hard to beat. That's why it's been so popular over the centuries in the first place.

  And everybody tried to figure out what the picture meant.

  Understand, we'd send Skynews the picture and the "false" voice-over as soon as we had the script. And they'd tend to play it over and over. There wasn't much else new in programming at the time. After the first few, it got picked up by Fox News then Fox Network then a couple of minor networks that were holding on and finally it was even on ABC.

  And it became, like, the standard water-cooler (actually, food line at the time) conversation.

  "I think he was a terrorist . . ."

  "I think . . ." "I think . . ."

  Every week it was a mystery how we were going to fool people. What the "real" story was.

  Oh, there was plenty of human interest. We had interviews and clips of just about everyone in the unit pretty quick and kept them up. There was a hard-hearted reason for that. When it involved the death of one of the troops, having file footage helped.

  We could never go back and reshoot. The takes that we had were everything there was. Going back was rarely an option.

  Of course, we had cameras in the Strykers and helmet cameras and gun-cameras hooked up to both the commander's sight in the Gun Strykers and to the gunner's sight. And both the regular cameraman (for as long as he lasted) and the SAS guy were running around all the time.

  We also had the helmet mikes. Those and the gun cameras all could be fed to the commo trailers and recorded. Even if they weren't switched there. So we just continuously recorded everything.

  Which was why so much of it was sucky. Reviewers used the term "edgy." I would have preferred better production values, but it wasn't an option.

  Oh, and then there was the intro. The "new" intro that was introduced in episode three, "Stones." (The one described above.) I didn't like it. I didn't like the title of the show. I wanted to just call it "Truths" and I liked the simple intro. Graham talked me into it.

  Centurions were the guardians of Rome. At the height of the Roman Republic there were over five thousand qualified Roman Centurions in the Legions. To be a Centurion required that, in a mostly illiterate society, one be able to read and write clearly, to be able to convey and create orders, to be capable of not only performing every skill of a Roman soldier but teach every skill of a Roman soldier. Becoming a Centurion required intense physical ability, courage beyond the norm, years of sacrifice and a total devotion to the philosophy which was Rome.

  When Rome fell to barbarian invaders, there were fewer than five hundred qualified Centurions. Not because Rome had fewer people but because it had fewer willing to make the sacrifices. And the last Centurions left their shields in the heather and took a barbarian bride . . .

  We are . . . The Last Centurions.

  And this Rome SHALL NOT FALL!

  Shot of a Stryker crashing through a house, (trying to avoid Javelin fire, by the way) intro of various characters. (Yeah, that's me on the radio with the mortar round exploding in the background. What we left out of the context was the camerman hitting the ground right afterwards. Funny as hell. It wasn't as close as it looked, or I'd have already been down, trust me.) Samad and Fillup and Bouncer (the first sergeant) and whoever was featured in that week's episode.

  I didn't like it. I wanted to keep the original intro. Graham talked me around.

  I still don't like it. I skip it when I watch the DVDs.

  "Lancers," "Stones," "Division" about the battle for Mosul, "Hurrians" about the Kurds, "Loot" about scrounging vs. looting and how we ended up saving centuries' worth of cultural treasures in Turkey and finally, I thought, the three-parter "Caliphate" about taking down Istanbul.

  My favorite, hands down, is "CAM(P)ing." Now, at the time I thought I was going to burst a blood vessel and wanted to kill every damned Nepo in the camp. As I watched one of our precious HERCULES burn because that fucking CAMP(P) was being used by the Nepos to cook food . . . And to see Samad walking up with it in his hands right after we'd
set off the charges. Oh, GOD was I angry.

  But I got over it. It was laugh or cry. And it was a very funny episode. The show needed humor and it was usually something between us and the Nepos that provided it.

  "Battery" was probably the most poignant. I'm not sure what it was about the death of a minor shopkeeper in a minor town that was so fucked up. But when the batteries turned out to be dead . . . It was just so stupid and so random and so futile. And, yes, after I saw the episode I released some of our precious store of batteries to Goomber for his fucking iPod. Come on, I've got a heart.

  Then came "Elephant."

  Okay, "Elephant" was a) the only show we did that was pure "activist journalism" and b) the only one that was driven entirely by me. But go back to my point about media and government. The media exists in a democracy so that people can make informed choices about their representatives.

  We were going into the first winter of an ice age and everyone was still talking about global warming!

  Picture of a flower with baked mud behind it.

  "Despite record cold and snow across the northern climes, global warming continues to be a looming disaster . . ."

  By then we had permission to let the Skynet guys do interviews using our commo. And we managed to scrounge up one of the climatologists who had been screaming about the situation, and getting ignored, for months.

  Remember, I'd gotten the first word back in January. It was November and people were still talking about "global warming." It was insane. We were trekking through road-wheel deep snow in mountains where it usually started to snow in ernest in late December and people were still beating the "global warming" drum.

  And we beat them to death with their own drumstick.

  The Brit climatologist was almost pathetically glad someone would listen. And he gave us a list of other experts who were trying to get the word out.

  We were the first people to break the news that we were entering an ice age and get world-wide notice. We turned the tide. After that episode, even journalists started asking the right questions.

  (By the way, I was the "producer" of most of the interviews. What does a producer do? He or she tells the ventriloquist's dummy what questions to ask. I knew what questions to ask. Graham, who before the episode had no clue, just asked them.)

  I'm probably most proud of anything that I've ever done in my life with that episode. Well, that and my kids.

  Were there "issues"? Oh my fucking GOD.

  The Bitch was not pleased. She wanted us off the TV. And she hated Murdoch and all his networks. But, on the surface, it was all Skynet. Us? We're just trying to survive, what do you want us to do, censor them?

  And from the first episode it was taking the networks by storm. Murdoch, who knew good entertainment when he saw it, had "Lancers" playing on four different time slots on Skynet and two on Fox News. By the time the Bitch reacted to it, we had another episode canned and a third in production. She screamed that she wanted it stopped. The Brass got passive aggressive.

  We aired "Stones" and we were suddenly on Fox Network and one of the minor ones. (UPN?) After "Division" episode one, ABC bought the rebroadcast rights and did all three shows as a "miniseries" as a lead in. Then came "Division" episode two and all the guys people had grown to know just suddenly gone . . .

  "Division" was the one that had everyone talking. There was no stopping us after that. She couldn't shut us down because she'd done too many obvious power-grabs and even her closest supporters were glued to the TV every Sunday night at eight.

  And Thursday at seven. And various late-night spots and . . .

  Hey, there wasn't much entertainment in those days. We were it.

  Oh, people ask me, a lot, about "Centurion."

  I did not produce the last show of the series. I didn't even know it was in production. I didn't know much about it until about a week beforehand, when I was kind of busy figuring out how to break the Caliphate. So when I was informed that Graham and Fillup were working on the last show, they had it, it's all good, I just let them do it. I trusted Fillup not to screw it up. Hell, by then I trusted Graham. You have good subordinates and you let them do their job. Like I said, I'm lazy.

  Fuckers.

  And that scene that everybody talks about where we come under fire and I stop telling a story for a second, snap out a string of orders then go back to telling the story?

  Look, it's not that hard, okay? I mean, I don't suggest it for nonprofessionals but I'd been doing the job a long time. It wasn't rocket science whatever the episode made it out to be.

  (Wife edit: Now you see what I mean? He drives me nuts sometimes. Watch the episode. Yeah, it's that hard to figure out in your head how to maneuver four different units over several kilometers of terrain while taking artillery fire. And he did it in, what? A half a second? Faster than most people can figure out what coffee to order? Will he ever admit it? Hell, no. Drives me nuts.)

  So that's the story of how The Last Centurions came about and how things went from bad to good to very very bad. Because we weren't going to be getting many episodes out unless we made it to the filling station. And there was, in fact, a division in our way.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There Has

  Been A Good Killing

  The Sunni Triangle is a bit of a misnomer. But I'll work with it. The "triangle" is elongated north and comprised of Baghdad and Al Ramadi, which are more or less on the same line in the south, and Tikrit, which is a few hundred miles north of that line.

  The whole area is fairly built up. Which meant more potential threats and given the population it was unlikely we were going to be greeted with open arms. Yeah, the population had crashed compared to the last time I was in Iraq, but it was still populated.

  We were to the east of the Tigris. Looking at the map of village after village we were going to have to pass through, I was less than thrilled. Any of them could have a Javelin team in it. If I'd been the local Sunni commander, whoever he was, I'd have sent out a couple of Jav teams to every one of those villages. Or, at least, scout teams to figure out our route of advance and Jav teams to respond.

  I was not interested in dodging Javelins all the way to Mosul then fighting an armored force.

  I looked at our fuel consumption, looked at our available, did some calculations on the back of a napkin then dodged.

  Right through the Sunni Triangle.

  It's twenty-five marches to Narbo,

  It's forty-five more up the Rhone,

  And the end may be death in the heather

  Or life on an Emperor's throne.

  I didn't want an emperor's throne but I did want to see Blue Earth some day, even if it was going to be freaking cold. And it was going to be quite a few marches until we'd be free to run like the wind.

  The thing is, to the east of the Tigris it was little fucking villages almost the whole way to Tikrit. To the west they drop off fast until you hit the Syrian Desert.

  I wasn't afraid of desert. I'd have loved a nice open, nobody around, desert. What I didn't like was little fucking villages and farms and water courses and all the rest of that shit. It stopped us continuously making us sitting ducks.

  I needed to be west of the Tigris.

  Only one problem. There were, like, no fucking bridges across the Tigris. They were only at major cities. Notably, the first one north of Baghdad was at Zaydan where the villages had already fallen off. We were past the ones south of Baghdad. And all of those were in cities that were considered "hostile."

  Presumably, Baghdad was where the core of the enemy would be hanging out.

  Keep poking slowly north as the enemy closed in? We'd get surrounded and then ground to hamburger. We had to speed up. Speed was life. The quick and the dead.

  We hadn't gotten that far north when I ordered an abrupt change in direction.

  "Fillup, tell the Scouts to get on the Baghdad road and hammer west."

  "West? Are you nuts?"

  We were going downt
own.

  Commander's intent was what is called a "thunder run."

  The commanders in Iraq in the "insertion phase" thought they'd invented it. They hadn't. Neither had the Black Horse in Vietnam which used it in Cambodia during our brief "intervention." Probably the first was performed by a Wehrmacht Panzer unit in Russia. Hell, the very first was probably by the Sarmatians.

  Simply put, you put your pedal to the metal, you go balls to the wall and you fire at everything that even vaguely looks like a target. You don't stop for anything you don't absolutely have to.

  It required some rearranging. And I did not want anyone running out of gas or ammo on the drive. We did a log on the way in. Then the Scouts went back out and we thundered.

  A thunder run is significantly improved with tanks. Tanks have a psychological effect it's hard to describe. Especially at short range, and urban fighting tends to be very short range, they just look unstoppable. We didn't have tanks. We were going to have to hope that the gun Strykers were good enough.

  We were saved by serendipity. (Which is a term meaning "I fucked up but things came out better than if I hadn't.") Okay, and active stupidness on the part of the local commander.

  The local commander had gotten the word that we were out there and it was obvious we were heading for a link-up with the Kurds. He, therefore, did much what I thought he might. He sent out small units to "attrit" us while he gathered his main force to hunt us down.

  All smart. Problem being that I "got inside his decision making cycle." What that means is, I wasn't doing what he thought was the obvious thing to do, keep pressing north, and I was reacting faster than he and his forces could react.

  We were almost due east of Baghdad, a bit south of the line near Ajrab, when I made the decision.