But now we were seeing the end of this peacetime legacy, with officers making it to one-star general rank who had, for example, commanded soldiers in Somalia in 1993 and battalions in East Timor, and were therefore less risk-averse and reactive than many of their superiors.
Luckily, both brigadiers who commanded during our six months in Iraq fitted this new mould. They were strong characters, who responded to bad news by embracing the problem and seeking to solve it. In this, they differed from many high-ranking officers, whose response was to fire a volley of questions at the commander on the ground, only adding to the friction.
*
A Hercules flew us into Baghdad International. After briefings at Camp Victory, we were herded onto a Chinook for the flight into the International Zone. We watched the city lights whirl by out the back of the open tail of the giant helicopter, where the loadmaster sat with his machine gun.
I was amazed by how much things had changed in eighteen months. During early 2005, the security detachment had suffered a further two significant IED strikes. The first was a suicide attack on a convoy on Route Irish that had badly damaged a vehicle and left several soldiers wounded. Some had the grisly affliction of bone fragments and flesh from the suicide bomber embedded in them.
Later, a second bomb detonated at the front of the Flats, laying waste to the Hesco baskets (the large dirt-filled mesh baskets used as protective barriers) that surrounded the Flats. Soldiers had been sent flying, with several requiring treatment and one being sent home with spinal injuries.
The Australians had then packed up and moved into the International Zone. I was thankful not to have been part of that shitfight. An entire embassy and its staff, all the soldiers and all the equipment that had been brought into Baghdad for SECDET had to be moved. They shifted 110 soldiers, rations, vehicle spare parts, beds, desks, radio equipment, satellite dishes, memorabilia, tools, paperwork, the ruggedised photocopier … everything.
SECDET’s new home was an old Republican Guard barrack. The area, renamed ‘the Cove’ after Anzac Cove, was a series of single-storey brick buildings ringed with a brick and T-wall fence. One long building, running almost the length of the area, was used as accommodation and a single larger building near the entrance was the headquarters and command post.
The toilet facilities in the headquarters were closed off, because the sewer was broken. One was turned into the armoury and the other had a desk and safe and was used to store sensitive information and communications equipment. The young female signals corporal who worked in this area, named ‘the vault’, was not happy about having her workspace positioned over a toilet in which Iraqi army soldiers had once defecated.
There was a workshop and garage for our vehicles. We had ASLAVs, up-armoured four-wheel drives, unarmoured or ‘soft’ SUVs, an enormous Ford F-350 up-armoured ute, and an old Nissan Pajero given to us by a private security force. The Pajero was a cheap up-armoured vehicle that the contractors had rolled while practising counter-ambush drills around the Crossed Swords. It had dented panels and the doors didn’t close properly, but it was a favourite with the team’s two snipers, as it was fairly inconspicuous when they drove around the International Zone. By contrast, most of the Coalition cars were shiny black humvees or big, white suburban SUVs with black tinted windows.
The Ba’ath Party headquarters, a monolith of a building, was located about 100 metres from the Cove. It had a massive hole through the middle where a rocket had struck but not detonated. Standing in the basement, you could look up and see daylight. During our time in Baghdad, the hole was patched, even though what appeared to be structural girders had been badly damaged. The area where the nose of the rocket must have lodged was turned into a small water feature and surrounded by a food court and trinket shops.
During our handover, I went to the US embassy to meet a few of the Australian ‘embeds’. Embeds were Australian staff officers performing roles within the Coalition headquarters. I heard it said many times that the embeds were Australia’s ‘main effort’ in Iraq. While we had 110 soldiers in SECDET, another 600 or so made up the Al Muthanna Task Group further south, the Australian Army Training Team Iraq, and the Australian headquarters at Camp Victory, to name a few of the larger groups. Out of all these, the individual staff officers holding key appointments within the multinational headquarters gained the most impact flying the flag for Australia, as they got the most exposure to our Coalition partners.
The US embassy was a beautiful old building, one of the oldest in the city. It had an outside pool that attracted all kinds. Walking past, I saw girls in bikinis sunbaking on deckchairs. Since this embassy was the target of most of the rockets that were fired into the International Zone, I had to wonder if they fully appreciated where they were and the danger they were in. The scene was quite surreal.
The new Australian embassy was positioned not far from the American one. I remembered walking through the shell of this building just after consular staff had acquired it in 2004. A lot of work had been done since then. There was a lawn to one side and the soldiers were accommodated out back, in demountables positioned under a concrete rocket screen.
On the other side of the embassy was the Coalition Support Hospital, where I had spent a blurry forty-eight hours in 2004, undergoing surgery and getting pumped full of painkillers. The staff rotated regularly, but I met with the commanding officer of the hospital and explained that I had been a patient eighteen months earlier. I thanked him for what his fellow countrymen had done to help me. He seemed very appreciative.
I had been planning to visit the hospital ever since I’d been told I was going back to Iraq. But when I finally got there, I was surprised how little I recognised. Nothing brought back memories. I even went into the emergency triage room where I had first been taken. Nothing. In hindsight, I should have expected this: while I was there, my face had been bloodied and swollen, and I had only been able to see when I prised open my eyes with my fingers.
*
SECDET, the combat team, was separated into two groups, with most of us at the Cove, and the second platoon and the military police at the new Australian embassy about 2 kilometres to the east. We were all within the International Zone, which gave us, at one level, an element of security. There was little chance of car bombs in the International Zone, but, as the Boss put it, it was ‘like having all your eggs in the one basket’. The majority of the rockets fired around the city were aimed at the International Zone. Chances were the insurgents would hit something important – an Iraqi government building, an embassy or a military headquarters building.
Although the media would report later that we lived and worked from a ‘barracks’, our little world in the Cove and the embassy was nothing like a barracks. We manned checkpoints there, we had overwatch positions with machine guns, we kept weapons on us at all times, and we lived under constant threat of rocket attack and random fire. While in some respects it was safer than living on the Karadah Peninsula, it was still a dangerous place and if you had to call it anything it was a ‘forward operating base’. But we quickly made it our home and got to know our new neighbourhood – the stretch on the north-western side of the Tigris that was the International Zone.
*
One of our first planned tasks was a trip out to the Flats. A ‘nursery run’, they called it, to familiarise the new blokes with the environment and to get some dirt in their teeth before we had any real tasks to complete.
I wanted to check on a couple of things. First, there was Mohammad, the caretaker of the building. When the Australians occupied the Flats, Mohammad lived in the style of a rich man. It was said that he owned the Flats, which, if true, would have made him very rich. In any case, his sale of cigarettes, Coke, pistol holsters – just about anything in fact – gave him a comfortable income.
But when the Flats were abandoned, so was Mohammad. It was common for people who worked for Coalition forces to be killed. I thought it likely he had been killed in reprisal for assisti
ng us. So when I got to the old gates at the ground floor of the Flats, I was happily surprised to find him still there. He was obviously struggling financially: the little empire he had built for himself had crumbled. He recognised me when I approached and greeted me warmly, shaking my hand vigorously and saying that he had not known what happened to me after that ‘big boom’.
He asked me who else was with me in Baghdad, and I mentioned a few men from earlier deployments whom he might know. He was very excited and asked me to pass on his regards. Clearly he thought there was a chance we might move back to the Flats. He kept asking me for a job in the embassy. I had to tell him I would look into it, but I knew I would not. If the embassy staff had not taken him when they left, they would not take him now.
Second, I was curious what had become of the building that so many Australians had called home. I took a look around. It was very eerie. The dusty rooms were empty and unlit. What had once been home was now a dilapidated warren of dark hallways. There was almost no sign that we had been here. In fact, I had to look very hard to find anything. Up on the third floor, through a couple of corridors, I came to the room that used to be the ‘Cav Room’, a common room with a TV for the cavalry soldiers, a place to relax and jaw off. I had given my nightly briefings there.
It would have been just a nondescript room, like tens of others in the building, except for the red wall. It had been painted red when the company sergeant major was looking for ways to entertain the soldiers, particularly the infantry men, who spent most of their time in static defence positions around the Flats and the embassy. One of his ideas was to have a competition for the best-decorated room. A couple of coats of red paint on the main wall in the room, a white frame and the addition of a gaudy tiered fish tank/waterfall, and the prize was theirs.
The red wall was the only sign I found that the Australians had been there.
*
I had been sure that I would be fine to drive past the site of the incident, but when it came down to it I wasn’t really. When we left the Flats, the patrol headed back towards the International Zone using the exact route that we had taken the day of the incident eighteen months earlier: east down the main road, then through the roundabout and north towards the 14 July Bridge and the International Zone checkpoint. I was in the commander’s position of an ASLAV, as I had been on the morning of 25 October 2004.
Suddenly, as we approached the depression in the cracked road that had been the seat of the blast, I had an overwhelming thought – or rather a question: what if it happens all over again? What if, at that moment, another bomber was sitting in a window looking down on the road. What if, at that moment, he was poised to press the button that detonated another carful of explosives? The road was full of parked cars, and it was near impossible to tell a vehicle bomb from any of the other cars parked by the road.
It was an irrational fear that welled in me, and I had to fight to stay standing in the turret. I knew that if I ducked down, I may as well have stayed at home, because at that moment I would have been no good to the patrol. Instead, I watched in a mild state of terror as we drove past the cracked footpath, the poor brickwork that had been erected to patch the damage done to the nearby houses, and the uneven space in the row of trees on the median strip where my vehicle had come to rest after hitting and uprooting the large tree.
As I watched, I had instantaneous recall of events. I imagine the same thing happens when a person’s life flashes before their eyes. But it was the aftermath of the incident I relived, that minute or so after we came to a stop. Not being able to breathe. Not being able to see. The pain in my legs. Forcing open my eyes and looking into the dusty floor of the turret.
My sergeant leaning into the turret and asking me how I was doing.
The dusty street and the crowds …
And with those flashes, my head cleared and I was back on the road, with the knowledge that maybe I was not as tough as I thought, and a sense of relief that nothing had happened in those few seconds, because if it had, I would not have been in the game.
The last stretch of the route back into the International Zone passed without incident. I got back to the compound a little shaky, but feeling that I had faced a few demons that day – demons I hadn’t been expecting. Maybe I was even a little stronger from the experience.
11
A JOURNEY AND A BOXING MATCH
IN 2006 WE HAD THE FEELING THAT WE WERE part of history in the making. The insurgency in Iraq was at its height; it dominated the Western media. The city was constantly abuzz with helicopters overhead. Car bombs thumped the city on a daily basis. Rockets regularly fizzed through the skies and cracked into buildings in the International Zone.
Every day, a procession of black SUVs and a large black bus trundled in from Camp Cropper, bringing Saddam Hussein to the trial being held, ironically, in the back of the old Ba’ath Party headquarters, just over our back fence.
The checkpoints to enter the International Zone still had lines of cars waiting to get cleared, and also much pedestrian traffic, creating long lines in the mornings.
In 2004 the checkpoints had been manned mainly by US soldiers. They were regularly cleaned up by suicide bombers, who had little trouble driving to a checkpoint and waiting in a queue. When a soldier approached their window to check ID, they would detonate the explosive load in the boot or on the back seat, taking with them the soldier, to meet God or Allah or whomever. I always felt extremely sorry for the nervous soldiers manning the checkpoints as we drove through; their fate was determined by the time they drew on the roster. Any vehicle that pulled up at the checkpoint could very well blow them to pieces, or maim them terribly in a fireball, peppering them with bits of vehicle and artillery casing.
In 2006 the checkpoints were still under constant attack by car bombs and snipers. But the tactics had changed somewhat, with several ‘tiers’ in place to process the cars. The outer tier was usually manned by Iraqi private security, who would do a cursory check of the vehicle and wave it through to the next tier, which was most likely manned by Iraqi army or police. After a more detailed check, the vehicle would either be waved through, past the Coalition soldier behind a machine gun pointed down the line of waiting cars, or directed to an adjacent area for a more detailed search.
At the checkpoints there were constant ‘escalation of force’ incidents, in which a person was shot if it looked as though they were a suicide bomber. On several occasions, checkpoints were the sites of ‘assisted suicides’. Once, an Iraqi man approached the 14 July checkpoint in a suit with a briefcase, which he opened, drawing a replica pistol and pointing it at the US soldiers on guard. I thought that in a gun culture like Iraq’s, a replica pistol would probably be harder to come by than a real one. He was shot dead.
*
Tasks outside the International Zone were called ‘Red Zone’ operations. They were usually either reconnaissance for an upcoming task or transportation of embassy staff to a ministry or embassy. Both involved significant planning by the command team, both officers and NCOs. We’d sit around the large conference-room table and methodically work through the threats and insurgent trends in the area we were about to enter, even to the point of breaking down schematics of the venues.
We would then assess what vehicles and men we had available while still maintaining enough for protection tasks around the International Zone. Following that, we came up with several plans – covering patrol configuration, timings, routes – in as much detail as necessary. The Boss (or I, in his absence) would weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of each plan and select the most appropriate one. We would ‘war-game’ the plan through each phase, considering what the enemy could do and how we would react. I would then develop written orders detailing all the coordination and timings to make sure no-one was confused.
Many tasks were extremely complex and synchronised down to five-minute intervals, with several vehicle patrols and sniper teams inserting early and feeding back real-time images of a ve
nue, and advance teams securing the venue before the diplomatic party arrived. Others were very simple, particularly if the venue was just outside the International Zone, which many were.
I laughed to myself about how much things had changed from 2004 to 2006. Back in 2004, we’d had two or three patrols on the road all day, every day. Rather than doing detailed planning, we’d worked off a matrix indicating which patrol needed to be where and when. It was very loose, and therefore dangerous. Back then, we naively ignored the intelligence sergeant’s warnings, and heard about all the strikes on Coalition patrols but assumed it would never happen to us. The opposite was true in 2006. We planned in detail, drawing greatly on the intelligence sergeant’s assessments and statistics. I was the only one in the combat team who really understood how differently we operated compared to eighteen months earlier. I was quietly reassured that the level of planning guaranteed that we operated in the safest way possible in such a dangerous city.
So much was going on these days that I didn’t get much sleep, but I loved the job. Life was busy, but also full of unforgettable situations. While I had told everyone back home, particularly Mum and Crystal, that I would be spending the entire six months behind a desk in the command post, sometimes I couldn’t help myself and had to get back out on the road. People believe what they want to believe, and I think Mum and Crystal were happy believing my lie.
One was a task to Kirkush, an old Iraqi army barracks and staging area used especially during the Iran–Iraq war, where two Australian warrant officers were helping to train an Iraqi army battalion. We had been tasked to deliver equipment to that remote little pocket in the desert, which had a range where we planned to fire off some of the vehicles’ older ammunition.
After the Blast Page 8
