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

by Jim Frederick

  HHC commander Shawn Umbrell had been dismayed that the Bravo relief group had not arrived with as much weaponry and supplies as he would have expected. Now he was downright alarmed and frustrated. “I was thinking we were not ready for a fight here,” he said. “We needed to get the hell out of there.” The officers and NCOs conferred. This is a fight we’re dying to have, they told each other, but we’re just not prepared for it.

  “Where are the birds?” they asked the higher command.

  “Still an hour, hour and a half out.”

  “That is not doable,” Norton said. “We cannot stay here any longer. We have multiple Bongos cordoning the town, women and children fleeing, and we are taking fire. We need to get out of here.”

  “The order is to hold your position” came the response. Norton just about lost it. He threw the mic to his radioman, because he did not trust himself to remain civil on the radio.

  “You tell those motherfuckers, if they want to goddamn identify these people, I will gladly cut off their fucking heads, put them in my bag, and fucking throw them right on top of Ebel and Kunk’s desks.”

  The radioman translated like a pro: “Uh, Bulldog 1-6 says it is getting pretty hairy out here, and he is in favor of, uh, alternative means of identifying these bodies. And, uh, I don’t think anyone is going to be thrilled with what he’s come up with, over.”

  Umbrell got on the radio. Laskoski got on the radio. Minutes of heated discussion ensued. Finally, word came down. Kunk was putting an end to this, regardless of what Brigade or Division wanted.

  “You’re good to go,” they were told. “You’re cleared to walk out. Just leave the bodies there.”

  * Strobino would undergo dozens of reconstructive surgeries over the next year, but he would retain both limbs and make an almost 100 percent recovery. He would also receive the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest award for valor.

  17

  Fenlason Arrives

  IN THE AFTERMATH of the February 1 firefight, Rushdi Mullah took on a new importance in the battalion’s battle plan. While First Strike always knew that the area was an insurgent stronghold, they were now slowly mapping that terrain, piecing together the intelligence. As Alpha and Delta Companies were having measurable success in Mahmudiyah itself, the battalion was able to focus more on pushing farther and farther west. Air assaults and patrols to the town became more frequent, with platoons being sent out there for three or four days to set up a hasty patrol base, make some trouble for insurgents, and then withdraw as another platoon arrived either immediately or a few days later. Any trip up there, soldiers knew, guaranteed a firefight.

  On February 4, Goodwin headed to Mahmudiyah for the memorial for Specialist Owens and the three other soldiers from Delta who had died in the IED strike. Sergeant First Class Jeff Fenlason had just arrived, so Goodwin met his new platoon sergeant. Over an hour-and-a-half conversation, Goodwin gave him as full a brief as he could.

  “Second and Third Platoons are running on cruise control at this point,” Goodwin told Fenlason. “They have firm leadership in place and have been running smoothly for some time. But First Platoon has been beaten up pretty bad. They need some tough love, but don’t be afraid to hug them once in a while. In the morning, we’ll get out after it.”

  Before dawn the next day, someone shook Goodwin awake.

  “Hey, sir, are you awake?”

  “I am now. What’s up?”

  “Hey, sir, your TOC’s on fire.”

  “What?”

  “Sir, your TOC is on fire.”

  “They’re in contact?”

  “No, sir, not taking fire. On fire. In flames. Your TOC is on fire.”

  “Okay.” Goodwin paused to take it all in.

  “Sir, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Sir, your TOC’s on fire.”

  “Right. I got it. Roger.”

  Goodwin threw his top on and hustled up to the Battalion TOC. He went over to the J-Lens that was focusing in on Yusufiyah, and sure enough, there was a big cloud of black smoke. Goodwin called over and tried to figure out what was happening, but he could get only bits and pieces. After a couple of minutes, he realized this was futile. He sent someone to get Fenlason and everybody from Bravo to get a convoy together as soon as possible.

  First Platoon’s 3rd Squad was at TCP5. Specialist James Barker had just woken up for an early morning guard shift. He got his gear on and went to the roof. The sun was not completely up yet, just enough for him to be able to see without night-vision goggles. He asked the guy he was relieving if there was anything going on. The guy said he wasn’t sure, but he thought FOB Yusufiyah might be on fire. Over to the north there was a dark column of smoke that looked about where the FOB would be. Calls were passed over the radio. Yes, Yusufiyah confirmed, we are on fire. Barker called everybody out to the roof to take a look. All they could do at this point was laugh.

  “Look, there goes my laptop.”

  “Do iPods go to heaven?”

  “Which is worse? Losing all my photos of my family, or my porn? Family, porn? Porn, family?”

  Everybody had known the FOB was a firetrap, that something like this was not a matter of if but of when. A short had caused an overloaded set of outlets in the MiTT team bay to catch fire and the blaze quickly spread throughout the barn. The structure was engulfed in flames in thirty minutes. Battalion had requested a full complement of fire extinguishers at FOBs Lutufiyah and Yusufiyah and the JS Bridge in December, but defense contractor KBR responded that it was obligated to provide such support only on Camp Striker. Battalion repeatedly sought assistance from both KBR and Army engineers on Striker, but they got little attention. Two KBR electricians had come down to FOB Yusufiyah to inspect the wiring a few weeks before, but their repairs were minimal. Just nine days earlier, soldiers fighting a fire in the Iraqi area of the FOB had nearly expended all twenty-nine of the FOB’s extinguishers. First Sergeant Laskoski sent most of them to Mahmudiyah for an emergency refill, and on January 30 he filed a dire written assessment of the FOB’s fire-readiness, plaintively requesting fire extinguishers, fire axes, and crowbars.

  Six days later, the inevitable happened. No one was killed, or even injured, as Laskoski walked through the nascent inferno yelling, “Get up, get up, get up! We are on fire. Out, out, out. Just take what you are wearing. Don’t grab anything, don’t stop. Out, out, out. Move, move, move.” In the MiTT bay itself, some of the men barely escaped with their lives, gulping down large swallows of acrid smoke as the fire spread fast. Others directed what few sputtering extinguishers were left on the FOB at the flames. One soldier said it was less than a minute from the time he was awakened by the blaze to the time he was pushed out of the room by the spreading smoke and heat.

  The loss was devastating to morale. Men snatched what handfuls of personal stuff they could as they left, but almost everything the men owned was gone: clothing, equipment, weapons, pictures, letters, journals, photos, movies, DVDs, music, laptops. Goodwin lost his wedding ring. Goodwin’s wife had sent every man in the company a Valentine’s Day present, but those were burned before they could be distributed. Norton lost a rosary given to him by his favorite, and recently deceased, uncle.

  Most of 2nd Platoon and Bravo Company’s headquarters staff were milling around. Some were wearing T-shirts and ACU bottoms, others had their PT uniforms on, and a couple of guys were wearing just towels and flip-flops. Almost nobody had their vests or helmets. Goodwin thought to himself, “I have a platoon that is not mission capable with a new platoon sergeant, I have thirty-five guys without equipment or weapons, and two more platoons who just lost all of their personal possessions. At least no one is dead, but what else could go wrong?”

  That’s when the mortars started coming in. A column of smoke makes a great target beacon for long-range weapons, and insurgents took advantage of it. In addition, the company’s own ammunition stores started to cook off. First the small-caliber rounds began to go. They
sound like popcorn, but then the .50-cals started to discharge, and their sound was deafening. Finally, all the big stuff—white phosphorus rounds, grenades, and AT-4 rockets—ignited in big thunderous booms and showers of sparks.

  Battalion Operations Officer Rob Salome arrived on one of the many convoys the battalion started sending in to ferry whatever supplies they could scrape together on short notice, though the complete refitting of the company would be a months-long process. Brigade and division headquarters tried to push down as much new equipment and clothing as they could, but shortages lasted for weeks, if not months. A box of socks would come in, for example, but they would all be size small. One soldier says he wore the same uniform for seventy days in a row before he got issued a spare. Until housing tents showed up a few weeks later, Bravo lived with the IAs in their barn “hot bunking”—sleeping in whatever cot was open, when it was open, regardless of who supposedly owned it.

  Blaisdell had been out on an overnight patrol with most of 3rd Platoon. He walked into the FOB midmorning.

  “Hey, sir,” he said to Salome. “Looks like our building burned down.”

  “Yep,” said Salome.

  “Anything we can do?”

  “Nope, not really. I think we got it all covered.”

  “No help at all?”

  “Really, I’d tell you. There’s nothing to do at the moment.”

  “Well, in that case, we’ll just go back out on patrol.” Third Platoon turned around and headed back into Yusufiyah.

  After the immediate emergency of the fire was taken care of, Fenlason headed to TCP6 and made that the staging area for 1st Platoon to sift through what they did and did not have. It did not take him long to formulate an opinion of his men. “My initial impression of that platoon was that they were a joke,” he said. The first time he got the whole platoon in one place, he addressed them as a group. “The first words out of my mouth when I addressed this platoon that night, I said, ‘Okay, I’m Sergeant Fenlason. I’m the new platoon sergeant. There are no more victims in this platoon.’”

  He found 1st Platoon to be undisciplined, disrespectful, and defiant. They were wallowing in self-pity. They were unprofessional. They talked back. When he first arrived and began issuing orders, they would frequently buck against them, saying, “We don’t do it that way.”

  “Excuse me, soldier?” he would reply. “This ain’t a democracy, bud.” The platoon had gotten the impression that they could run things by committee, that they were a voting body, a notion Fenlason intended to curtail immediately. He instituted boot camp–style routine and discipline. “We started with basic stuff, like first call is at five-thirty a.m.,” Fenlason said. “Shaved and dressed by six-fifteen.” They had morning formations and uniform inspections, which the men thought was idiotic: one mortar round hits right now, they said, looking around nervously, and the whole platoon is dead.

  Fenlason told Blaisdell, “You gotta break them down before you build them back up.” To Blaisdell, talk about breaking guys down in the middle of a combat zone sounded insane.

  The men pushed back immediately. In their eyes, Fenlason may have had rank, but he had no authority. He may have had a Ranger Tab, but he had zero combat experience. To them, no combat experience meant he didn’t know anything. “So, who the fuck is this asshole?” said medic Specialist Collin Sharpness. “This is his first combat tour? He’s been in staff the whole time? And he’s coming in here fucking pumping his chest?”

  Fenlason knew that the men did not hold his career in high esteem, but he didn’t care, because he was none too impressed with their supposed battle-hardening either. “I’m not going to pay a whole hell of a lot of attention to that anyway,” he rejoined. “You know, Private Snuffle-upagus, who has been in a firefight, that doesn’t necessarily make him Johnny Rambo. So his experience level is still somewhat small.”

  Fenlason knew that it would take a while for 1st Platoon to come around, but that was okay. Unlike the other platoon sergeants, he wasn’t going anywhere. Early on, he hit upon the idea of the immovable object—he was the immovable object. “The resentments were already beginning,” he said. “The men didn’t like the idea of being told when they were going to do certain things and when they weren’t.”

  Since Fenlason knew 2nd Squad’s squad leader, Chris Payne, from Fort Campbell in 2003, he drew him close to help him get up to speed on the platoon. Payne tried to preemptively play the peacemaker, advising Fenlason on how to talk to Lauzier. “I tried to say, ‘Look, he’s wild and he’s unpredictable and he shoots a lot, but he’s a good leader,’” recalled Payne. Payne saw the clash coming. Lauzier was tempermental and very particular about the kinds of leaders he esteemed, while Fenlason was blunt to the point of being tactless and convinced there was his way to do something, or the wrong way. “I said, ‘You need to be careful with Lauzier or you’ll lose him,’” Payne remembered. “And he did. It didn’t take long.”

  “I heard you like to shoot a lot,” were the first words Fenlason spoke to Lauzier. The relationship went downhill from there. Fenlason came to see Lauzier as a loud, immature bully who constantly abused, needled, and micromanaged his men and overcompensated for battlefield risk with excessive force and firepower. Lauzier thought Fenlason was a tactically incompetent desk jockey who hid out in his office at TCP1 all day long. Lauzier took offense at Fenlason’s insinuation that he was some sort of loose cannon. How could Fenlason assess battlefield risk, Lauzier wanted to know, if Fenlason never put himself on the battlefield? “I would say, ‘Hey, you’re out of touch here, pal,’ but he wouldn’t listen to me,” Lauzier lamented. “He thought I was a cowboy.”

  Lauzier was not the only soldier Fenlason formulated a quick opinion on. It wasn’t long before he’d identified several soldiers he felt were particularly problematic cases. He was the one who had put Barker in anger management classes back in 2003, and he didn’t see anything in Barker out here to change his opinion that he was a punk. Cortez, he concluded, was a pout and a borderline malingerer who routinely declared he wanted out of the platoon whenever anything didn’t go his way. And he quickly learned all about Green and his extreme hatred of Iraqis. Green had recently rejoined the platoon after a few well-behaved weeks working at the FOB following his altercation with Gallagher. But of all the soldiers who dwelled on the past, who simply could not get over the deaths of Nelson and Casica, Green was, in Fenlason’s estimation, the worst. All day long from Green, it was Nelson and Casica this, Nelson and Casica that.

  Throughout the rest of the deployment, Payne tried to be the translator and peacemaker between Fenlason and the rest of the platoon; he felt that he understood both parties better than anyone else. It was a role he thought was important even if it made him less popular. “Everybody hated Fenlason,” said Payne, “and I don’t think that the guys can understand why I always defended him. But the way I saw it, I needed to be able to go to Lauzier and Yribe and say, ‘This is what he said. This is what he wants,’ as opposed to them having to hear it from Fenlason, who didn’t know how to talk to everybody. He has a condescending way of talking, like, ‘I know more than everybody in this whole company. I know more than everybody in this platoon. You guys are fucked up, and I’m here to fix it.’”

  Staff Sergeant Chaz Allen, who replaced Phil Miller, joined 1st Platoon the same time Fenlason did. He was surprised not just at how divorced the platoon was from the rest of the company, but even at how disorganized it was from within. There was very little cooperation between squads. “There was no distribution plan for water and chow,” he said. “It was every dog for himself. Each squad, in their own little TCP, they would get in their vehicles and drive up to Yusufiyah, get what they needed, and come back.” And combat credibility for the new guy, regardless of rank, was always an issue. “I received so much flak, like borderline mutiny,” Allen recalled. Men would throw down their weapons, refusing to take orders from him because, they declared, he had never been in combat before. But he had been shot at, he
had been blown up before. “So it was them not understanding who I am, and me not understanding who they are.”

  Allen tried to undo the bad habits the squad had acquired. The men, for example, did not keep guard rotation schedules, telling Allen that whoever was able to stay awake took guard. Once, when he asked who was going to relieve a soldier who’d been on guard for six hours, several troopers shouted, “Not it!” as if they were in grade school.

  During one of his first days on the job, Fenlason was at TCP1. Some of the men were giving him a tour of the house. They were on the roof when an insurgent shot a rocket at the TCP from a broad field to the southeast. It did not reach the TCP, and did not even detonate. But the gunner on the roof thought he spotted a puff of smoke, so he began banging away on the machine gun. Before long, several soldiers had joined him at the walled edge of the roof, shooting at the field with their M4s. Within a few seconds, almost the entire checkpoint was up there, eleven or twelve guys and several IAs, slamming rounds into the field. Fenlason couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He yelled for them to stop shooting.

  “What the fuck are you shooting at?” he yelled. “Stop shooting!”

  “No, Sergeant, no!”

  “Yeah, stop! I’m telling you to fucking stop now. Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” He threw a soda can at one soldier who wasn’t stopping.

  “What?” One by one, the soldiers ceased firing and turned toward Fenlason.

  “What in the fuck are you shooting at? Do you have a target?”

  “It’s a suspected enemy location.”

  “The whole frigging country is a suspected enemy location. What are you shooting at?”

  “There’s a probable …” someone started. Fenlason was livid.

  “No. I will tell you what you are shooting at. You are shooting at nothing. When you just go up here and start shooting at everything in sight, that’s not doctrine. It is not correct. It never has been the answer. You got a target, you got a sector of fire. In that target area, you engage your sector of fire. You control the rate and distribution of fire. But you don’t just shoot just for shits and grins. You are wasting ammunition. You want to put a patrol together and go try to find the bad guy? Let’s do that. Let’s go find evidence of the launch. Let’s do something. But you just wasted five minutes and hundreds of rounds of ammunition up here fucking around shooting at nothing.”