by Piers Platt
“Green 1, Bulldawg 5: do you remember when I told you to bring that equipment out to the Retrans site yesterday?”
“This is Green 1, roger.”
“And you do realize how important tank maintenance is, Green 1?”
It was entirely my fault, but I felt like he was patronizing me, so, like a wise-ass, I suggested he just get the ass-chewing over with, since there was nothing either of us could do about the issue at that point. He obliged, and let me have it for a while, finishing with a threat to fire me:
“… and if you can’t meet basic mission requirements, Lieutenant, I’ll send someone else out there who can!”
Staff Sergeant Peiper, clearly enjoying the rant, quickly chimed in: “When he comes out, can you tell the new guy to bring that maintenance equipment we forgot?”
* * *
On the checkpoint outside Samarra, our orders changed soon after 2nd Brigade finished clearing the city: military age males were now permitted to pass through the checkpoint, in addition to women and children. To ensure no insurgents were entering or exiting the city, we started checking every man’s name, with Mohammed’s help, against a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) list of known insurgents provided by Division. This list was without photos, however, so it was child’s play for any insurgent to get through the checkpoint without being caught – they just had to say they had no ID, and give a false name. It was a poor system, to be sure, but I suppose it was better than nothing – we did catch one man whose name was on the list, and detained him before sending him on for processing back at Mackenzie.
We had a fair amount of people pass through the checkpoint on foot – for security’s sake, we didn’t let them just wander through unescorted; once we had a small group of them together, one soldier would take them through the position to the far side. Back from his bout with the flu, Sergeant Tremont drew this duty one day, and I had to laugh as I noticed that he was marching a group of five Iraqi men across the checkpoint, calling cadence.
“Hey la-dee-dah-day! [pause for response] Hey la-dee-dah-dee-ay! I used to wear blue jeans! Now I’m wearing Army greens!”
The Iraqis figured it out, of course, and started to laugh and play along, goose-stepping in time to his singing. About our only significant find of the mission came from the trunk of a Baghdad University psychology professor’s car. He raised suspicions by having a ton of CDs in his car, which was unusual for Iraq – not many people there own a PC, though we had noticed internet cafes starting to spring up in larger towns. We popped a CD into Sergeant First Class Martin’s laptop to see what it contained, but the disc drive wouldn’t read it.
“Maybe it’s a DVD?” I asked.
“Hold on,” Barnes told me. He returned a few seconds later with his portable DVD player. I popped the disc in, the screen flickered on, and we were greeted by a grainy video showing two men enjoying a woman.
“Woah!”
“Hey, guys, check this out!”
Things slowed down for a bit on the checkpoint, as more of the soldiers drifted toward the commotion. I had to laugh as I watched the guys work their way through half a dozen DVDs, looking for the better quality stuff. They ended up buying most of the guy’s collection, who thought this was all pretty funny. Eventually Neathery wandered over from the front entrance to the checkpoint, clearly annoyed that everyone had abandoned their positions, although there were no cars in sight at the time.
“What the hell are you guys doing?” He asked.
“Uh … verifying contraband,” someone piped up. The professor spoke up then, in broken English.
“You want see good movie?”
“Yeah, man,” Barnes told him. “Break out the good shit.”
The older man sifted through his stack for a bit, then pulled out a disc, which they eagerly loaded up. The video quality was terrible, so it took us a couple seconds to make it out, and we were sorry we did: it prominently featured a hermaphrodite.
There was a chorus of loud groans.
“Aw, dude!”
“Shit! Turn it off!”
The doctor was confused – he genuinely thought this was the cream of his crop. It wasn’t our last run-in with sexual deviance in Iraq: while conducting a routine air patrol one night, two Darkhorse Kiowas caught a local farmer working over one of his sheep in the middle of a field. They even managed to snap some thermal video footage of the act before the man heard them and ran off. To be fair, I’m sure that if you flew missions all over rural America for a year, you’d probably come across someone doing the same thing.
Mohammed the interpreter got a huge kick out of the fact that we bought the man’s porn collection, and stood there laughing as the money was exchanged.
“What are you laughing at, Mohammed?” Staff Sergeant Barnes asked him.
“Naughty, naughty!” he said, and shook his head patronizingly.
“I don’t know why you’re on your high horse, Mohammed,” I told him. “You’re the 45-year-old who’s working as an interpreter so he can afford a new 18-year-old wife.”
“16 years old,” he corrected me, grinning broadly. “And it’s expensive to have three wives.”
* * *
On our ninth consecutive day manning the checkpoint, we finally got orders to pack it up and head back to FOB Mackenzie. I’ve never seen soldiers break down a checkpoint so quickly or enthusiastically: grins a mile wide, we policed up the last of our trash and loaded everyone into the Bradleys. Just feeling the rushing wind of driving again was a welcome change, and though we stayed alert as we moved back, everyone’s mind was on a well-deserved shower and a full night’s uninterrupted sleep on a luxurious cot. As we pulled in on the main road of FOB Mackenzie, we stopped briefly and I jumped out to check in at the troop operations center to see how long we had to recover.
“24 hours,” First Lieutenant O’Brien informed me. “Division has decided to maintain that checkpoint indefinitely, so you guys get to go do it all over again.”
“Roger,” I said tiredly, “I’m going to go check email.”
“Oh,” he said, “You guys haven’t heard? Squadron shut down the internet café – an Anvil trooper had their rifle stolen while they were checking email.”
“Stolen … by who?” I said. “That’s absurd.”
“I know. The rumor is it fell off their tank while they were out on mission, and he just came up with the internet café story to cover his ass. Anyway, café is closed until further notice, I believe the official statement was: ‘If you have time to check email, you have time to go out and help try to find the missing weapon.’”
I shook my head in disgust. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
I knew my fiancée would be worried about me – it had been nine days since we had last spoke. I left the troop bunker and crunched across the gravel to the phone trailer next door. There was a note taped to the door: “Phones down – satellite uplink broken. Part on order from States.” I was about to start looking for a carrier pigeon, when I realized official email should still be working, so I begged my way onto First Lieutenant O’Brien’s work computer and sent off a quick note to everyone letting them know I was okay.
Next I headed to the motor pool to give the guys an update on our mission for the following day. Recovery operations were proceeding well on the vehicles, the men sweating in the afternoon heat as they checked fluid levels, reloaded ammunition boxes, and replaced broken parts on the vehicles. We cleaned our weapons in the afternoon, switched out batteries on our flashlights and night-vision goggles, and dropped our laundry off at the laundry site. I had a bunch of care packages waiting for me, which I opened and dropped by my soldiers’ rooms for them to rifle through. Finally, after dinner, we had a chance to relax for a few hours – it would be an early start in the morning.
Relishing the moment, I peeled off my combat gear and headed to the showers in my flip-flops and flak vest, stumbling tiredly in the rocks and sand before climbing the stairs to the well-lit trailer. It was strangely e
mpty, which I failed to notice, hanging up my towel and stripping before turning on the water. The water dribbled out in a lazy gurgle from the bottom of the showerhead – our water purification unit was busted. It was a poetic ending to the day, but the humor was entirely lost on me as I stood under the gentle drip and tried to wash the grime of nine days off. At least my cot wasn’t broken.
Chapter Nine
“I flew through Dallas on R&R Leave, and it was crazy, man. There were people everywhere cheering and yelling, hugging everyone. This little girl ran right up to me, so I picked her up and planted a kiss on that little fucker, and then I guess she realized I wasn’t her daddy, and she looked a little scared. Her mom thought it was funny, though.”
-First Lieutenant Joey Thomas
I was finishing a crossword in my room one afternoon a few weeks later, killing time between patrols and chatting with my roommate, Brian Pierce, when Dave Williams banged on our door. Dave was a Kiowa pilot in Darkhorse Troop who had arrived at Squadron at the same time I had, so we had become good friends during in-processing back in Germany.
“Okay, boys,” he said. “Flip for it! Who wants to ride a Kiowa?”
Brian had to man a shift in the operations center in an hour, but I was all for it, so I grabbed my gear and Dave and I hopped in his Humvee, heading for the air troop bunkers. Kiowas break down from time to time, and once repairs are completed, they have to be taken up for a rigorous test flight by a pilot certified as a maintenance tester before they can be cleared for missions. Kiowas are small aircraft designed for scouting, so they don’t carry passengers – just a pilot and co-pilot. Maintenance test flights are usually done by a lone pilot, but that leaves an open seat in the cockpit, so it’s the only time a “passenger” can see what riding in a Kiowa is like. Unfortunately, it’s also the most dangerous time, since the helicopter was in pieces a few hours prior. Still, I wasn’t going to miss my opportunity to take a ride.
At the hangars, Dave suited me up in his flight vest and helmet before taking me out to the flight pad to meet Chief Beauregard, the test pilot. Beauregard was giving the bird a thorough visual inspection, but when he saw us walking up, he stopped and pointed into the open engine maintenance hatch, addressing Dave.
“Hey, what does this thing do?”
I laughed, and we shook hands.
“Okay, sir,” he told me. “Obviously, don’t touch anything inside the cockpit I don’t ask you to touch. I’m going to hand you the flight checklist so you can read it to me while I do the tests.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Other than that, sit back and enjoy the ride,” he grinned.
“… and don’t puke,” Dave added.
“Shouldn’t you be getting your crew rest?” I shot back.
By regulation, pilots must have a certain amount of rest time between flights to ensure that they are fully alert and capable for each mission, called “crew rest.” Those of us who enjoyed no such mandatory down-time privileges liked to call it their “beauty sleep.”
Beauregard and I climbed aboard, and Dave pointed out some of the cockpit controls to me while the Chief got settled. I noticed that this aircraft had its cockpit doors installed, for which I was secretly grateful: most Kiowa crews take the cockpit doors off for better visibility and to allow them to fire their rifles at ground targets.
“This is the stick,” Dave explained, jostling the joystick between my knees. “In addition to ‘steering’ the aircraft, the stick lets you control all of the targeting and weapons systems with these buttons.” I watched the green computer display in front of me as Dave flicked a few switches and buttons, expertly scrolling through menus and controlling the Mast-Mounted Sight, a bulbous ball mounted directly above the rotors, which contained sophisticated thermal imaging and laser designation systems.
“On the left side, here, is your throttle – which you twist just like on a motorcycle. You always fly with one hand on the stick, and the other on the throttle, and then your feet work those two pedals to control yaw.”
“Yaw?”
“So you can turn while hovering, or keep the aircraft in ‘trim’ while flying – that way the nose stays aligned with the tail, it keeps everything aerodynamic.”
I whistled. “Complex.”
“Yeah,” he said, “But when you’ve flown enough, it all gets to be second nature.”
“So the guy in the left seat is helping to fly?” I asked.
“No,” Dave corrected me, “not usually. They’ll switch out during missions, but it would be too difficult for the two pilots to cooperate that closely to fly the bird at the same time. The ‘left-seater’ handles the tactical stuff – weapons, the Mast-Mounted Sight, radio reporting, coordinating with ground units, etc.”
“Ah – gotcha.”
“While you’re up there, keep an eye out for birds,” Dave advised.
“Birds? Like crows, sea gulls?” I asked.
“Yeah. We’ve got a competition going in the air troops to see who can kill the most,” he told me. “It started as an accident, someone hit one and we all laughed about it, but guys are starting to take it pretty seriously now – we’ve got a whiteboard up in the bunker listing kills right now.”
I laughed. “Doesn’t that fuck up the Kiowa at all?”
“Yeah, actually – it can jack up the airframe pretty bad. It’s kind of like Russian roulette, now that I think about it.”
“Okay,” Chief Beauregard said, looking up from his station as he buckled himself in, “Let’s do this.”
“Have fun!” Dave told me, punching my shoulder.
“I will,” I said, grinning.
We started with the pre-flight checklist, which ended with lighting the engine. As the rotors reached full speed, Chief Beauregard scratched his chin and played with a few switches, throttling the engine up and down a few times.
“Hmmmm,” he said, in a contemplative, less-than-reassuring way. “I think they put the rotors on wrong.”
I figured he was messing with me again.
“Well, maybe ‘wrong’ is kind of a bad way of putting it,” he told me, his voice sounding tinny over the noise-reducing intercom system. “There are two ways of putting them on, and I don’t think they did it the best way.”
I was beginning to realize how utterly stupid it had been for me to have gotten into a recently broken helicopter. I said, “Is that it, then?”
“Naw,” he shook his head. “We can still fly. It’s just a little pet peeve of mine. What’s next on the checklist?”
“Hover tests,” I told him, after consulting the book.
“Okay,” he craned his neck to see all around the aircraft, then throttled up again, the bird rising about ten feet in the air under his deft control. “We’re gonna want a little more room.”
We scooted across the hangar area, setting down a couple hundred yards away on the main runway of the FOB. First we did a straight hover test, rising six feet up and remaining in place for several seconds. Next, Chief Beauregard slid the bird forwards, backwards, and side-to-side, checking that the aircraft responded correctly to his commands in each case. Finally, we spun in a slow circle, rotating the chopper around the axis of its rotor.
“Okay, everything working fine there – let’s have a little fun.” Before I could respond, Beauregard gave the engine full throttle, pushing the aircraft to about 80 mph as we tore down the runway a mere eight feet off the ground. As we neared the end of the runway, he pulled back on the stick, and the scout helicopter responded immediately, roaring into a steep climb that made me grunt out loud from the g-forces.
As we gained height, Chief Beauregard pushed the stick over, banking hard right until the bird was practically on its side. I let out a “whoo!” from the sheer excitement of it. Beauregard chuckled.
“Best roller coaster you’ll ever ride, sir.”
“I can’t argue with that!”
As he leveled the aircraft, we heard a pair of Kiowas check in with Darkhorse X-
Ray over the net, requesting permission to take off and use the test fire range.
“Oh, good deal,” the Chief told me, “We’ll ride with them when they do their test runs so you can see a little gunnery.”
As we wheeled in a wide circle, I watched as the two birds lifted off from the pad below us and made their way towards the test-fire range, a collection of several burned-out Iraqi armored vehicles north of the FOB. Chief Beauregard dropped in behind the two aircraft as they approached the range, alerting us that they were going “weapons hot.” Kiowas aim their .50 caliber machine gun by pointing the entire aircraft at the target, and the aircraft is so light that the .50 cal shakes the whole airframe when it fires.
Both Kiowas made excellent back-to-back runs, raining tracers down onto the armored hulks before peeling off for a quick rearm prior to their mission. Not to be outdone, Chief Beauregard decided he would test fire our own .50 cal, and he pushed us into a shallow dive. He pulled the trigger on his stick, and the .50 cal beside me roared into action, thumping out a 15-round burst that landed short initially, but Beauregard expertly walked the rounds forward and onto the target, tracers ricocheting off the steel plating.
Before we “overflew” the target, Chief Beauregard threw us into a tight bank, juking through a complex series of maneuvers which made my stomach flip several times. Somehow, we ended up at altitude again and pointed back toward the target, though I couldn’t for the life of me remember how.
“That’s what we call the ‘Return to Target’ maneuver,” Beauregard told me.
“Nice,” I lied, trying to regain some of my equilibrium.
We continued through a few more checks back on the ground, then I reached the “Engine Idle Check.”
“Okay, don’t read it to me yet,” Beauregard told me, “We’ve got to be at altitude.”
He made the bird rise straight up, which – along with hovering – is probably the most unusual sensation of helicopter flight, when compared to fixed-wing aircraft; it just feels unnatural. I watched the ground drop away through the Plexiglas bubble at my feet, my unease growing as the air temperature dropped noticeably.
