Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death

by Jim Frederick

  The whole brigade was aware that Bravo was depleted, and that it would be a challenge to fix it. “Having to reseed the leadership of virtually an entire rifle company while in combat is a very difficult thing to do,” commented battalion executive officer Fred Wintrich. The answer, battalion leadership decided, was not to rotate units but to rotate leaders. “Maybe we should have put a whole new company in there,” reflected Ebel. “But I don’t know—the model was that a company builds credibility with the populace by having some tenure there. Tom Kunk’s strategy was sound. He was rotating his leaders, his platoon sergeants, thinking that’s the catalyst.”

  In reality, everyone understood that there was no real issue with 2nd or 3rd Platoon. Sergeants First Class Gebhardt and Blaisdell and their men were performing exceptionally well even without lieutenants. The real focus of the leadership shake-up was 1st Platoon.

  Enough with the false starts and second chances, Kunk and Edwards decided. Miller had to go. They started lining up Rob Gallagher, the former 1st Platoon sergeant now on one of the MiTT teams, to take over the platoon immediately.

  “The exact words I received from the sergeant major were ‘You need to fix things quick, fast, and in a hurry,’” Gallagher said. Beyond that, he didn’t receive a lot of guidance on what was wrong or instructions on how to correct it. He knew that there were problems with morale, discipline, and coping with the loss of four comrades in a short amount of time. And, as Gallagher understood it, Miller would continue as platoon sergeant. He was being installed as platoon leader, in the same way that Blaisdell now ran 3rd Platoon and Gebhardt ran 2nd. He loved his old unit and he was immensely honored to be handed the task.

  Gallagher was a surprising choice for many in the battalion. Before this deployment, he had been Bravo’s platoon sergeant for nine months, and before that he had taken over as 3rd Platoon’s sergeant three months into OIF1. But Battalion moved him to the MiTT team, it is widely acknowledged, as a graceful way to reassign a platoon sergeant who was not jelling with his men. Before deployment, he’d had some close friends in 1st Platoon, including Nelson and Miller (“Nelson” is Gallagher’s son’s middle name), but his opinion of the junior soldiers in the platoon was low. Among the biggest complaints from peers and superiors about Gallagher in garrison was that he was too critical and dismissive of his own men. He was quick to declare them beyond hope. He would vent inappropriately at meetings that his men were a bunch of losers and dimwits who couldn’t do anything right. Both Blaisdell and Gebhardt liked Gallagher personally, and both resisted offering an opinion on whether he was the right man for the job, but they agreed on this: If the chain of command did not have confidence in him in garrison, which was no secret, they did not understand why they would bring him back now.

  Gallagher arrived on December 26. Although he was excited to be asked to take charge of his old platoon again, there was not exactly a receiving line waiting for him. “The company commander didn’t even know that I was coming,” Gallagher said. “The first sergeant didn’t even know who I was. So I don’t know at what level I was directed to go back to the unit, but I got the impression that no one really knew what the purpose of it was.” Nonetheless, after showing up and introducing himself around the TOC, he dropped his gear and headed out to the TCPs to be with the platoon.

  The men of 1st Platoon were not happy to see him. At best, he was tolerated. To a degree, this was the inevitable by-product of Gallagher’s conscious decisions. His friendships with Miller and Nelson notwithstanding, he rarely cultivated relationships, with either subordinates or superiors. He came to the job with an old-school mentality that being overly familiar clouded one’s judgment and ability to perform the tough tasks that both leading men and taking orders required. He was disdainful of “Joe lovers,” leaders who sought approval or friendship from those many ranks below them. He thought the informal and relaxed dealings between enlisted men and senior NCOs and junior officers that was increasingly becoming the standard in the Army was a disgrace. Nor did he develop mentors. “I am never the type to cultivate close relationships with a person regardless of their rank,” he said. “So I was never in Sergeant Major’s tight circle. I did not arbitrarily strike up a conversation with him just to have a conversation.” While principled, his taciturn, standoffish, and tetchy demeanor meant that he had few friends, no allies, and no base of support.

  Arriving at the TCPs, Gallagher was stunned by how 1st Platoon had changed in just three months. “I don’t think he was prepared for what he was walking into,” said one 1st Platoon soldier. They looked nothing like the happy, eager, optimistic troops he had said good-bye to. They were dirty, haggard, exhausted, pale, and dead-eyed. Many were alternately angry or despairing. Some of them would tear up on routine missions or cry into their lunches. “I have been in the Army a long time,” Gallagher said. “And I was overwhelmed by the amount of despair.” Asked about morale, he said, “On a scale of 1 to 10, it would probably be 1, the lowest possible.”

  Miller was among those hurting the worst. After losing four men so quickly, he was having doubts about himself, but he also knew, with the arrival of Gallagher, that Battalion had lost its faith in him as well. Although he still retained the title of platoon sergeant, the move felt to Miller like a demotion and he did not subordinate himself to Gallagher gracefully. His relationship with Gallagher, once strong, was now strained, and would soon break down completely. He undermined Gallagher’s authority. Squad leaders and soldiers exacerbated the power struggle. They would frequently look at Miller after Gallagher issued an order, as if to ask, “Is it okay to do what he says?”

  Gallagher spent his first few days trying to restore order and discipline to the unmoored platoon. He emphasized proper uniforms, grooming, and hygiene. The men were unimpressed. According to Lauzier, Gallagher’s fatal flaw, in their eyes, was his inability to filter out the pressures coming down from higher-ups, one of the widely acknowledged but unofficial jobs of a senior platoon NCO. Ideally, the men should have no idea how hard they are being leaned on. Gallagher would not just pass along the stress, Lauzier said, but magnify it. “He’d get the lash, and then he’d come back and explode on you,” explained Lauzier. “And you can’t do that. He put a lot of stress on everybody.”

  Unbeknownst to Gallagher or Miller, however, there was another leadership shake-up in the works. Kunk planned to bring in First Lieutenant Tim Norton, who was also serving on a MiTT team in Lutufiyah, as 1st Platoon’s platoon leader. Norton was the senior lieutenant in the battalion, he had received high praise from everyone he’d worked with, and he was considered one of First Strike’s most promising young officers. Kunk called Norton to his office shortly before the New Year to tell him of his new assignment. Norton got only the shortest of briefings on what to expect and what was expected of him. Kunk told him that the platoon was having some morale and discipline issues and that he wanted Norton to help get them on their feet.

  Kunk mentioned that Miller had declared the platoon combat ineffective, but added, “The platoon sergeant doesn’t get to do that. Only I get to do that.” Get them to work through their losses, focus on the basics, and start being soldiers again, Kunk said.

  Norton was wary, but willing. Bravo, and 1st Platoon especially, had developed a reputation throughout the battalion. Depending on how charitable the person relating the info was, around the battalion you could hear anything from “Bravo is in a fight to the death down there,” to “Bravo is having a tough time,” to “Bravo is seriously dicked up.” Norton was confident in his abilities, and excited to lead a platoon again, but he was well aware that he was not inheriting a custodial role. He was being brought in to fix something no one had been taught to fix. As he noted, “There is no manual that says, ‘Here’s how to take a war-torn platoon and train it back up to a fully operational level while still in combat.’”

  Norton caught a ride to Yusufiyah on New Year’s Day. He arrived at about 10:30 p.m. to report in to Goodwin, whom he had nev
er met. He found Goodwin sitting in the TOC, in flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt with a poncho liner over his head. He was asleep. Norton said hello to the rest of the TOC and headed out to meet the platoon. Not surprisingly, he got the cold shoulder from them. “Who the fuck are you?” some soldiers ranking as low as private challenged him. Others barely acknowledged his existence, hardly responding when he spoke to them, until he explained that he was not some cherry lieutenant straight from Officers’ Basic. He had been in Lutufiyah the whole time, and before that he was with Charlie, so it was not like he just fell off the turnip truck. That, at least, prevented outright insubordination, but it still took a while for him to be taken seriously because, as the soldiers never ceased to remind him, “Lutufiyah sure as shit ain’t Yusufiyah.”

  Norton’s leadership philosophy was based on a quote he picked up somewhere: “Leadership is 90 percent people skills and 20 percent motivation.” He didn’t see any point in being aloof, or in pretending that he wasn’t the same age as most of his soldiers. He thought it was possible to maintain a command separation, but the line could be drawn in chalk, it didn’t have to be etched in stone. “You have to feel people’s emotional states, their wants and needs,” he explained. “It’s not like I have to be their best friend. But if I know some dude likes fishing, then I’ll start the conversation with fishing.”

  Given how closed off 1st Platoon had become, Norton did break down their walls very quickly. Soldiers grew to like him because he had an infectiously upbeat attitude, even in that environment. He didn’t demand a salute and he insisted on being called not “Lieutenant Norton,” or even “Tim,” but “Timmy.” He was not happy unless other people were laughing and, unusual for a lieutenant, he was not afraid to make a fool of himself to do it. He did a wicked Harry Caray impression. He was also an enthusiastic soldier who always volunteered to patrol, who always offered to ride along into the field. Frequently, he wouldn’t wait for orders to come down, he’d just draft up a mission and go. “He merged with the platoon like he had been there the whole time,” remarked one soldier. “To take over a platoon that smoothly, never mind just join one? You’ve got to be doing something right. He fit right in with us, no problems whatsoever.”

  That’s not exactly true. Taken by surprise, Gallagher and Miller both had a big problem with Norton’s arrival. They both felt lied to. As Gallagher understood his initial brief, he was coming in as the platoon leader, so for Norton to arrive just a couple of days later, with no communication, no warning, no nothing, did not start things off well. And as Gallagher slotted back to platoon sergeant, that relegated Miller back to being a squad leader, which incensed him. If Miller had felt as if he was being demoted before, now he explicitly was.

  “At that point,” Miller said, “I was like, ‘You know what? You can fucking kiss my ass. I’m not going to be part of this bullshit anymore.’” He would have had no problem taking a squad with a different platoon or a different company—he was still a staff sergeant, after all—but to be relieved yet forced to remain in the platoon was a double humiliation. “I was bitter. And I was fucking pissed. To be lied to like that, to be told that I was staying on as platoon sergeant, and then moving me down to squad leader after I had run this shit for four months without a word to me? That’s when I started thinking, ‘I am not going to be a party to this abortion anymore.’”

  After the Britt and Lopez memorial, a general asked the 1-502nd’s executive officer, Major Wintrich, “Where are you getting your replacement lieutenants?”

  Wintrich told him, “We aren’t. We don’t have any infantry lieutenants sitting on their hands saying, ‘Put me in, Coach.’”

  Actually, there was one sitting on the bench up at Striker: twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Paul Fisher. And soon after that memorial, he started as Bravo Company’s 2nd Platoon leader. Fisher entered the Army on an officer candidate contract in February 2004. Basic Training, Officer Candidate School, Infantry Officer Basic Course, Airborne School, and Ranger School kept him in training until August 2005, when he got to Fort Campbell. He arrived just as the brigade was making its last push toward deployment. He was excited to get a platoon and “live the dream,” as infantry officers in on-the-ground leadership positions like to say. Then he received his assignment: in the Brigade Public Affairs Office. He was not happy. “So my first job as a lieutenant who did absolutely everything correctly, all the right schools, everything to a T? I got fucked.”

  He spent two and a half months up at Striker with Brigade Headquarters, and he was frustrated. “I was living on this little Fort Campbell in the desert,” he said, “where I could not have felt safer than in my own bed at home.” The sound of gunfire in the distance especially irritated him because that’s where he should be. The idleness of his job drove him crazy. Among his tasks was delivering the morning newspapers to brigade senior command. Desperate, he started pulling guard at the front desk of the TOC checking IDs—ordinarily an enlisted man’s job—hoping someone from an infantry unit would notice his lieutenant’s bar and his Ranger Tab. It worked. Lieutenant Colonel Rob Haycock, commander of the 2-502nd, passed him one day and asked him what the hell he was doing there, and told him to come work for him. Fisher was ready to head down to 2nd Battalion, but on December 29, he got the word: 1st Battalion needed him more. He was going to Yusufiyah. “You’re going down to the Wild West,” one of the brigade staff officers told him.

  Fisher caught a MiTT convoy down to Mahmudiyah carrying a ridiculous amount of equipment: two footlockers of stuff in addition to his rucksack. “Little did I know what a brigade puke I had turned into,” he admitted. “I didn’t even know how soft I had become.” He had a quick briefing with Kunk and Salome.

  “You need to get your shit together, Lieutenant,” they told him, “because you’re about to go where things are life or death. It ain’t DVD Night every night around here, so get your head screwed on straight and you might be okay.” He caught another convoy to Yusufiyah about an hour later.

  Halfway to Yusufiyah, at the exact same spot that Specialist Galloway and 2nd Platoon’s previous platoon leader, Jerry Eidson, had been hit ten days earlier, Fisher’s Humvee triggered a trip-wire IED, setting off three 120mm rounds strung together. The entire truck was lifted off the ground, and it landed with a thud. He heard screaming and checked himself. He was unhurt. Sitting in the rear left seat, he could tell the guy next to him, the gunner, and the driver were all wounded. He got out and started trying to treat the driver. The driver had a two-inch hole through his leg that was gushing blood, soaking Fisher’s uniform as he tried to stanch the bleeding. Other members of the convoy took over, started applying tourniquets, and managed to save all of the injured soldiers’ lives. The three other occupants of the Humvee were later evacuated back to the United States. But at that moment Fisher stood in disbelief at what he had just witnessed. Just hours earlier he was naively ensconced up at Striker and now he had narrowly escaped death his first time on the road.

  Once all the blast debris was cleaned up, the convoy completed its journey to Yusufiyah. Fisher headed to the TOC. He thought it odd to find Captain Goodwin asleep in the middle of the headquarters. First Sergeant Laskoski gave him the thirty-second tour, introduced him around, and pointed him toward his platoon sergeant, Jeremy Gebhardt, in the potato bays and told him to introduce himself.

  At no time did anyone at Yusufiyah seem to find it strange or feel the need to mention to Fisher that his uniform was covered with fresh, wet blood. “So I can only conclude that this is completely normal, to get blown up out there like this,” he said. “I was freaked.”

  He met Gebhardt and they had coffee while Gebhardt tried to bring Fisher up to speed. There was a midnight mission heading out soon, but Gebhardt suggested Fisher skip this one, grab some shut-eye, and get ready for tomorrow. Fisher noticed that 2nd Platoon’s bay had a wall where soldiers marked down each time they got hit by an IED or a mortar. They were running out of room for their hash marks and they
had only been there three months.

  JANUARY 2006

  15

  Gallagher

  WITHIN A COUPLE of days of his arrival, Sergeant First Class Rob Gallagher was deeply concerned about what he was seeing in 1st Platoon. The whole setup was insane, he thought. Bravo’s mission was clearly flawed by design. “There were three rotations,” Gallagher said. “There was the JSB rotation, there was the TCP rotation, and there was the mission rotation. But there are only three platoons. There was no downtime. Everything was a constant on. The guys lived outside the wire three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and in my eighteen and a half years of experience, I just didn’t envision a soldier being able to handle that tempo without some sort of consequence on the back end.”

  He considered FOB Yusufiyah outside the wire because, to him, it could not be called a forward operating base at all. A FOB, in his mind, provided a degree of comfort and rest, a measure of safety and security. But after eight months of that potato factory being occupied by U.S. forces, including three months by the 101st, Gallagher could not understand how the place had none of the basics that most people would consider essential to maintaining the long-term morale and welfare of combat soldiers. He could not believe that they were still living in the potato bays, with no more overhead protection than the building’s corrugated tin roofing.

  “I addressed that with First Sergeant Ski [Laskoski],” he said. “I explained to him that in my opinion morale is terrible and immediate steps needed to be taken to correct this, otherwise we were going to have major problems. Simple things in regard to the living conditions, which were abysmal in my mind.”