In the Gray Area

by Seth W. B. Folsom

  Chapter 31

  Dogs

  Some of the inhabitants of COP South walk on four legs. But the dogs that roam our camp are not a nuisance; instead, they are our guardians. And, in time, they become our friends.

  When we arrive we find four dogs that are holdovers from the previous team, and although initially I am not pleased with their being there it is not long before I realize the benefit their presence brings: they hate Iraqis. The junood have mistreated the animals, throwing rocks at them and teasing them and tying them up, and now the dogs go apeshit whenever an Iraqi soldier comes near the American compound. They become my alarm system at night, alerting me and the team whenever a jundi attempts to sneak inside the wire to steal cases of water or soda. We hope they’ll warn us if the insurgents attempt to infiltrate our compound and cut our throats in the dark of night.

  Three of the dogs have names. Snowflake, Mama, and Louie wander in and out of our compound, seeking food and attention. The fourth dog is referred to as “the mean one,” or simply “that big, black bitch,” and she stays hidden deep inside an abandoned HESCO structure on the far edge of camp. She has had a litter of puppies, and any attempt to get near her or her babies brings with it the risk of losing a hand. Before long the puppies have grown, and they too join their mother and determinedly guard their empire on the far edge of the camp. They want nothing to do with us, and so we in turn want nothing to do with them. Their mother disappears, and we never hear from her again. Eventually her pups join her, wandering the wasteland that surrounds COP South.

  Mama has also gotten herself pregnant, though we are unsure who the father is. We think it might be Louie. As the weeks pass her belly swells and we see less and less of her as she searches for a nesting spot to deliver her litter. When the puppies finally come she won’t let us near them, but the Marines line up anyway to catch a peek of the seven runts that have survived the birthing process. Sure enough, several of them look like Louie.

  Snowflake also appears randomly, happily taking handouts when he is not blackened and filthy from scavenging food in the charred hole of the camp’s garbage pit. He prefers our leftovers, not the bags of dried dog food that one team member has convinced friends to send to us. When our convoys leave the camp, Snowflake often follows us outside the wire, bidding the Outlanders farewell when our vehicles leave the dirt trail and turn north onto the hardball.

  Louie is a big, dumb puppy, and his dirty gray and black coat and rawboned enthusiasm remind me of the stray puppy I once adopted as a child in Italy. Louie is the dog that the team loves to hate, and he is a nuisance. Piles of Louie droppings litter the area like twisted land mines, and I threaten to banish him from the camp if the Marines don’t clean up after him. One morning I find three gifts Louie has left by the door to my hut. In a fit of rage I grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him outside the concertina wire, yelling at him not to come back. But he twists his way back inside the coiled wire and moments later is vying for my attention.

  I am livid, yet in my anger I remember how I handed over my Italian puppy to an uncaring master, and how the dog met his horrible end at the hands of an insidious canine illness. The last time I remember seeing the dog he was lying in a putrid swirl of his own blood, feces, and urine, and he stared up at me with big, sad eyes as if to ask me why I had abandoned him, why I had consigned him to such a hideous fate.

  And then I forget my anger with Louie, and I remember that a lance corporal temporarily assigned to our team has convinced some humanitarian organization to pay $3,000 to ferry Louie back to the United States. The young Marine has tended to Louie since he was born, and he has decided that he cannot live without the mutt. One day a team of contractors shows up at the camp and whisks Louie away to America and a future rendezvous with his Marine savior. Two of the team members sink into a depression after Louie’s departure. One of them, Sgt. Mark Hoffmier, abandons his gruff exterior and shifts his attention from Louie’s disappearance to the new litter of puppies being reared by Mama. Hoffmier, the team’s resident firearms enthusiast, is often brooding and unhappy. But beneath his acerbic exterior lies a conscientious, compassionate young man who demonstrates this by caring for the litter of puppies.

  Hoffmier counts them daily, retrieving errant puppies that have wandered away from the concrete bunker in which Mama has nested them. Eventually the sergeant builds a tiny doghouse outside his hooch, and then he builds a dog run next to the hut. One by one he moves the puppies from the bunker into the dog run and the waiting doghouse, and he spends his free time watching over the mutts as if they are his own children. He picks out one puppy that closely resembles Louie, and he begins making arrangements for the dog to be spirited away to America the same way Louie was. But our premature departure from COP South means that Hoffmier will not have the time to coordinate his puppy’s salvation, and he sadly accepts the fact that the dog will have to remain behind to fend for itself.

  At first I am irritated at the time and attention Sergeant Hoffmier and all of the Marines have expended looking after the mangy pack of animals that roam our camp, but then I become conscious of the silent impact these dogs have had on all of us. They remind us of home, and they allow the Outlanders to be human in a place where it is easy to lose one’s humanity. The Marines hate the critters, but they love the dogs, and it is only after I realize this that I finally understand how we will win this Long War. The Marines are not robots. They are not mindless. They are capable of killing, yes, but they are capable of something much more powerful. They are capable of loving—loving their country, loving each other, and, yes, even loving the pack of ratty mongrel dogs that, like us, have made COP South their home.

  It is that ability to love that makes my Marines invincible. But will our Iraqi counterparts learn the same thing? Will they be able to set aside their petty squabbles, their tribal infighting, their allegiances to the past, and instead embrace each other as brothers? Will they choose the lighted path toward progress, or will they veer blindly into the darkened corridor toward regression? We don’t know; all we can do is watch the dogs.

  And wait.

  Chapter 32

  A Way Forward

  In the long, sweltering weeks following our hasty exodus from COP South and 3rd Battalion the Outlanders languished at various FOBs, suffering the miserable existence of transients waiting patiently for an early flight back home to their families and their lives. As I wandered the Coalition outposts and marveled again and again at the bloated logistical footprint the Americans had imprinted in the Iraqi sands, I reflected on what my team had done there and what we had ultimately accomplished. I kept thinking that perhaps I should feel proud that 3rd Battalion was now on its own.

  But I didn’t feel that way. All jobs come with daily frustrations—that had certainly been true of our time as advisors. Marines by their very nature are results-oriented beings, and I had to look inward deep within myself to find any positive, tangible effects from our efforts with the Iraqis. I wondered constantly if our presence had made a difference, if we had truly made an impact on the soldiers and officers of 3rd Battalion. Ronald Reagan had once said, “Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem.” In my experience as an advisor I wasn’t so sure that had been the case. Would the Iraqis in 3rd Battalion do the things we had showed them? More important, would they be able to stand on their own after we left? For the last question I knew the answer had to be yes. Somehow they would make it. It wouldn’t be the solution we would choose, but somehow they would make it work. They had no choice. The Americans would be gone soon. It was up to them now.

  The Iraqi army has a character flaw. It lives in a constant state of denial, seeking ways to blame others for their problems in life. Whether it is the junior officers blaming the army’s leadership or the senior officers blaming their higher headquarters and the Iraqi government, Iraqi soldiers will never solve their internal dilemmas until they accept responsibility
for themselves, their problems, and their own destiny. To a certain extent it is the same in the Marine Corps. One day the junior Marine officers and NCOs—the young men and women who have grown up in the uncertain shadow of the Long War that began on 11 September 2001—who choose to stick it out will progress through the ranks, and eventually the face of the Corps will change into something different than what it is today. So too can it be in the Iraqi army. If the young Iraqi officers stick to their guns—if they don’t throw in the towel and return to civilian life—one day they will run the organization, and the challenges they face today will become a distant memory.

  The Americans also have a character flaw. We are naive and shortsighted. We thought we could invade Iraq and liberate the people from tyranny, and once that was accomplished everything else would work itself out. We thought we could force change on the Iraqi military and perhaps make it into something it is not: a modern, American-style force with American ideals and determination. We now think we can pull out of the country prematurely and turn it over to the Iraqi Security Forces, and they in turn will be able to assume control of their country and their own future. But the Americans can’t achieve these feats on their own. Change must come from within; it must come from the Iraqis themselves. They have to want it to happen.

  Naive and shortsighted though we are, we also possess the ability to recognize our mistakes and seek ways to amend them. Winston Churchill once said, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing . . . after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” So too has it been in Iraq. We made errors while planning the invasion and during the subsequent occupation. Of that there can be no doubt, and only the most stubborn and uninformed people will challenge that assertion. But gradually we realized our miscalculations and committed ourselves and our national treasure to correcting them. The cost has been extreme, and like thousands of others my thoughts frequently churn in sad, hopeless circles at the memories of my friends and other fellow Marines who sacrificed their lives serving their country. But while I often sit alone and ponder what is and what could have been in this war, I will never dishonor the memory of so many who fought and died—who fought and lost themselves—by claiming that what we did as a whole in Iraq was a mistake. My conscience will not permit it.

  Will Iraq ever be truly free? Will it ever be stable? Will I ever be able to visit it again, not as a Marine but instead as a tourist? Whenever I think of that possibility I think about the dogs.

  And wait.

  Epilogue: Dream

  My daughters are grown, much older now. I cross the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, and I tell them, This is where it all began. Years have passed for me, and sometimes I forget just how long it has been since I was an impetuous young captain, a company commander leading 130 Marines and sailors and a fleet of light armored vehicles. My daughters’ journey begins, and in a way it is a new journey for me too.

  They begin to ask questions, probing at first with innocent yet at the same time broad inquiries. They ask things such as What was it like over here? I ponder it momentarily, unsure if I will even be able to answer them, and if so, where I will begin. But time has dulled the jagged edges of memory, making it somehow easier for me, and suddenly the words come and I find myself telling them everything. With the landscape of Iraq as my backdrop I begin to tell them the story.

  This is where we crossed the Euphrates, I tell them, remembering the pontoon bridge and the unfinished dirt trail that served as a road. Only now the span is an actual engineered bridge, and the dirt road is now a bustling, modern highway that stretches deep into Mesopotamia. What were once parched, alkali-saturated marshes poisoned by Saddam Hussein’s campaign of drought against the Shiite Marsh Arabs now flow wet and bristle with exotic, nameless flora and fauna. My daughters casually comment on the beauty of the marshes that skirt the highway, and I say to them over and over again, No, this wasn’t here. None of it. It was nothing but mudflats, crisscrossing levees, and shallow canals. And I explain how I couldn’t take my vehicles off the road for fear of getting them stuck in the mud or rolling them over into a canal.

  I explain how the artillery—both friendly and enemy—fell in sheets, and as we approach Ad Diwaniyah I point to an inconspicuous patch of earth a hundred meters off the highway. To my daughters it is just another tilled field, no different from countless others they have seen so far inside the breadbasket of Iraq sandwiched between the Tigris and the Euphrates. But I am pointing to the spot where I lost my first Marine, and my words catch in my throat as I explain how I tried to save him, and how he died. They don’t understand when I tell them that it was friendly artillery that killed him, because they don’t understand the nature of war. They don’t understand the fog that hovers over the battlefield, the mistakes that are made, and the consequences that follow.

  Farther up the highway I come to a sharp bend in the road, and I kneel in the dirt and draw them a picture of where my vehicles were along this elbow when I drove into my first ambush. The skies are a brilliant sapphire, just as they were that day, and I point to the west and describe the glorious sight of the gunship helicopters that came to my company’s rescue. I describe the brilliant flash of exhaust heat on my face as the gunships fired their rockets fifty feet above our vehicles, and the way the dirt seemed to splash like towering geysers of black water as friendly artillery rounds plummeted into the enemy positions. My daughters are puzzled as I crawl in the reeds next to the Tigris River, and their eyes suddenly light up when I return, filthy and covered in tiny cuts, with spent shell casings from that day. They are not difficult to find, because my company fired so many, and it will be years before the earth swallows their rusting forms and there is no longer any trace of the exploding hell that flourished that day at the elbow. My younger daughter turns a shell casing over and over in her hands, and she announces that she is going to make a necklace out of it. Youth, I muse to myself. Only kids can manage to find beauty in anything. Even war.

  Baghdad looms on the horizon, and I enter the city expecting anarchy, because that is what I bore witness to the last time I was there. But there is no chaos, no looting. No mobs fill the streets, hauling away everything they can get their hands on. A bizarre sense of order seems to reign, and as the city dwellers go about their business in the markets and shops my daughters don’t believe that this city could have ever been anything but the peaceful, cosmopolitan community that it is now. But it was, I tell them. There was a time when these streets ran red with the blood of Americans and Iraqis alike. They shake their heads, unable to understand, and so we continue north.

  The sun breaks on the horizon behind me as I approach Tikrit, just as it did that day. The tunnel is not difficult to find, because I remember the map northing by heart, and as I check my GPS I realize I am standing right on top of it. I take my daughters down the highway’s embankment, and the darkened culvert tunnel yawns at me like a sleeping dragon. And when I realize that the dragon is about to rise from its slumber I go silent, suddenly unable to speak. My daughters know what happened to me here even without me telling them because they see it in my eyes, and it frightens them. The cold concrete walls of the tunnel magnify the thunder of gunfire, and I feel my ears ringing even though I haven’t fired a weapon in years. The gunfire I hear is the memory of this fetid hole in the ground discharging in my mind. My daughters seem to understand, and then they realize that this is the place where my life changed irreparably, irreversibly.

  I don’t speak much as my daughters and I travel west. The radiant greens and blues of Mesopotamia fade back into the dull beige of desert as we approach Al Qa’im, and we turn south away from the Euphrates, past the crowded streets of Karabilah and Husaybah. Our trip from Tikrit has been long and uneventful, and in my stillness I think of the towns I have passed through—Ramadi, Ubaydi, Husaybah—and I remember my friends and colleagues and Marines I lost there so long ago, and I think back in quiet shame to a period when I thought the war was lost, that it was unwinnable. A
nd when one of my daughters comments that she is tired of driving, that she is bored, I explain to her that there was once a time when driving along this road was the closest thing possible to suicide. I tell her how IEDs seemed to line the road like hidden mile markers, how thousands of Marines and soldiers—American and Iraqi—lost limbs, lost lives, lost minds to the roadside bombs that littered this country. Once again it is difficult for my daughters to comprehend such a thing, because no blackened craters scar the roads now, no blood gathers and congeals in lumpy gobs in the gutters.

  In the open desert I point out the barren spot that used to be COP South, and the corners of my mouth begin to curl into a grin at the recollection that comes to mind of my time as an advisor. My daughters ask why I am smiling, and I try to explain the black humor and the sense of futility that comes with advising a foreign army—an army whose language and culture are so different from your own that nothing seems to make sense, an army in which up is down, wrong is right, and forward is backward. I explain how, in my transition team’s attempt to revitalize the Iraqi army and help it bring security to this country, the only way to make it through the days was to laugh—at the Iraqis, at my fellow Outlanders, at myself.

  I pause to tell my daughters stories about my teammates—who they were, where they came from, and why they were there in Iraq with me, so far away from their own families. The Outlanders were my brothers, I tell them. As near and close to my heart as my own flesh and blood. And as I describe their professionalism I remember how, in the end, they wanted the same thing I did: to accomplish the mission and go home. I think about how, faced with an impossible task, they carried out their responsibilities with the same energy and determination for which Marines are universally known. It was an honor and a privilege to serve with them, I tell my daughters. I was truly blessed.