As we raced back through the advancing Humvees, my head swiveled back and forth. The streets were empty. Only the swirling dust from the speeding Humvees challenged us for sole possession of the road. As we neared the last intersection before the FOB, I glanced over at the Yazeen Mosque. There I saw the imam coolly standing outside the wall with a cell phone and pointing in the general direction of the fighting. I had seen enough senior officers in combat to recognize field leadership when I saw it. He was giving orders to his fighters farther down the street. In a moment of forgetfulness, I turned to yell for Babbitt to kill him. The imam was on the road adjacent to the driver’s side, and I could not shoot him from the passenger’s seat.
A quick glance over my shoulder reset my priorities. The CPR was almost impossible at this speed. Screams of frustration came from the bed of the truck, where the captain battled against jarring from the road at our breakneck speed. I radioed the FOB telling them that we were coming in “hot”—there would be no gate entry ritual. I urged them to do what they could to clear the road, because we were not slowing down. The medical facility was right next to our headquarters building. We blasted through the gate, blowing the horn and swerving around groups of soldiers who were completely unaware of what we were dealing with.
We skidded to a stop beside our headquarters, and staff officers and soldiers came pouring out. Before I had even swung myself from the truck, they had lifted Babbitt out. Several pairs of hands were completely removing Babbitt’s body armor, so he could better go onto the stretcher. The doctors were here now as well. They cut off his top, letting loose a torrent of blood. My knees buckled. Each labored breath from Babbitt sent sprays of blood in several directions. The rattling sound of death chased each spurt, and I knew this was the end. Even as they ran him inside for emergency surgery, I knew he would not survive. I had seen a lot of deaths, but this one was the most personal.
Meanwhile, the battle still raged on, with several more soldiers getting hurt badly, and my commander calling for reinforcements. A group of soldiers asked whether I wanted to link up with them and go out, but I could not just yet. I wanted to stay close by and see what happened to Babbitt. I could not face going back out at the moment. A few hours later, during which time I monitored radio reports of casualties, I received word that Babbitt was dead.
Shortly thereafter, the Misfits returned from the battle, having spent the previous hour searching for an enemy who had disappeared and combing through the battlefield for clues as to what had happened. I gathered them together. They told me how just beyond where the trucks had stopped they found a dead sniper, killed by machine-gun fire and still clutching a Dragunov SVDK sniper rifle. It was significant because as they produced the rifle and we took a look at its 7.62x54R bullets, it was clear that this was the type of bullet that had hit Babbitt. Only a bullet this size could penetrate both sides of body armor, as the bullet had done to Babbitt’s. There had been an entry and an exit hole much larger than one would expect from an AK-47.
That Babbitt had been killed by a sniper was a tragedy, but the rest of the story inspired us all. It was obvious that the sniper had hit Babbitt almost immediately after we pulled up, but Babbitt must have returned fire into the sniper’s nest after he was mortally wounded. The burst of machine-gun fire that killed the sniper and the original angle of our truck meant that Babbitt had saved at least a few other Misfits, by holding back death and successfully challenging his attacker.
I asked everyone to join me in a vacant office. I think they all knew what news was coming—that I would confirm that Babbitt had not made it. As I turned to walk in, one of the members of the BBC crew asked whether they could film this impromptu eulogy. I conferred with the noncommissioned officers. All of us felt that it would be fine. We hoped that Babbitt’s family could watch and know how much we respected him and how well he had performed his job. There are not many comforts in losing a loved one, but we hoped that it would be of some solace for them to know he died well—fighting a soldier’s battle, while saving the lives of others.
Everyone huddled together, and I broke the news that Babbitt was dead. I trailed into some story about staying strong and carrying on, but even then my voice was breaking and the tears were flowing. This was no stoic army speech on the inevitably of death, for we were a group of friends and colleagues who trusted and respected one another. There was no shame or loss of respect in the showing of emotion; in fact, the opposite was probably true. A callous delivery of the facts would have been disrespectful. Not a man in the room had a dry eye when we walked out, and no one walked out less of a man. We would still fight as hard and sacrifice as much as we had done previously, but we did so knowing that we had lost a loved one, and it was okay to grieve for that loss.
I needed some air. I walked out into the late evening with the words from Babbitt’s eulogy still clinging to the back of my throat. I stood out on the veranda of the headquarters, looking at the night sky, lost in my own thoughts, rerunning that afternoon and replaying everything in slow motion. People moved past and around me, but I could not hear them or barely even see them. The tears still stung my eyes, and the sadness stripped me of every pretense of manhood. I needed someone to tell me it would be all right. I wanted to run home like a scared boy who had been bullied at school and needed his mom to comfort him. There was no solace to be found here, though. In fact, the thought of my family only made me think of Babbitt’s. I barely even knew of his personal life. I think he had two kids. What did his tattoo look like again? My mind spiraled into an obsessive rut, trying to remember every word he had ever said. I tried to bring him back in my mind to have those conversations again. The finality of his loss left me without a plan. I quit. I wanted no more to do with this war.
More people gathered on the porch now. The guys from the BBC, soldiers, even a few interpreters hung around glassy-eyed and quiet. Everyone reflected on the absolute irrationality of it all. I distractedly swirled some cold army coffee around a Styrofoam cup and sipped it through gritted teeth. The bitterness of the coffee matched my mood and left me staring blankly into the cheap cup. Objects—my uniform, my boots, even the coffee—seemed at once imminently familiar and strangely foreign. Maybe it was from seeing Babbitt’s gear leaning against a nearby wall, only feet away from the blood that a soldier was washing out of the Humvee.
After losses like this, the book says you should move on quickly. I am not sure you can do that when an identical copy of everything you wear, everything you own, is being folded into a pile and placed into storage. The only difference is that the name stenciled on the sand-colored belongings says “Babbitt,” not “Whiteley.” How long would it be until we all ended up like that—a pile of military-issued camouflage, crumpled in a corner, utterly spent and waiting to be sent home? Looking around again at my listless comrades, I felt that in a way, we were already “dead.” This war had killed us all, crumpled us and set us aside to wait for our trip home. We were merely shells of our former selves, empty uniforms, waiting to be shipped back to our families.
A hand on my shoulder shook me back into reality. I looked up to see my commander. His eyes met mine, and I could tell immediately that he knew how much I was hurting. I am sure he wanted to say something comforting or consoling for everything that had just transpired, but instead he just handed me a note, slapped me on the shoulder, and walked away. I unfolded the white piece of crumpled paper with two lines of writing. The one line of scrawling Arabic script I could not make out, but below it, printed and tagged with an evidence number, was the translation: “Car bomb for Captain Whiteley is ready. Will use immediately.” A picture of one of my former council members was attached to the message, identifying him as the person on whom the note had been found during a raid on an insurgent cell.
Slowly, I began to shake off the weariness and the sorrow that had anchored me to the floor. As I held the note, I felt my spirit soar and dip like a tethered balloon that had broken free on a breezy day. Part of me want
ed to stay in the FOB. Who could blame me? I had been personally targeted. It would be irrational and irresponsible to go back out, especially to take the Misfits into harm’s way, knowing that the odds of a targeted attack were extremely high. Yet another part of me felt a more primal response of rage and defiance.
My thoughts formed into an aggressive montage of confrontation and condemnation. For a few moments I daydreamed my way back through the ambush. This time I would kill everyone, even people who had not been there, such as this former council member. If he had phoned me before I received the note, I would have gone to see what he needed. This was the fundamental flaw of my entire philosophy. Through my creative financing and fearless influence peddling, I thought I had gained the upper hand in this fight for loyalty. I was wrong. My Shi’a alliances were cowering in their homes, afraid of the Fallujah fighters, and at least one Sunni council member had taken out a hit on me. Maybe it was always meant to be this way, but I had believed that it would be different. In any event, I was no longer protected by my reputation or by any Iraqi friends.
I gathered the Misfits to tell them that the danger had gone up a few levels. I read them the note, gauging their reactions. Each soldier remained stoic and unimpressed. In their minds, we had been stalked by this omnipresent and invisible danger since our first day in sector. The fact that Death had sent us a note did not change the fact that it had always been there, prepared to make an impromptu visit. At the end of the meeting, I asked everyone to think closely about whether they wanted to stay on the team, and I gave each of them a free out to change assignments. There were no takers. The enemy had hit us hard, but everyone wanted a chance to hit back. We would do so as a team, and we would do it soon. I wanted to thank them, to hug them and encourage them, but nothing needed to be said or done, except to get ready to go back out. We were not going home yet, and we would not lie around waiting to be sent home in a box. Tonight we would sleep and recover, but tomorrow we would fight back, for ourselves and for Babbitt.
Eleven
BALLOTS AND BANALITY
“ONE KIA.”
It was not even breakfast, and the three most dreaded letters had come across the radio for the second time in two days. KIA—killed in action. Like firemen, we had been on alert and soon streamed out of the FOB toward the ambush. The long drive on a dangerous road would take us all the way south into the rural area, which was crisscrossed by canals. The Misfits tucked our three trucks in behind my commander’s trucks, and we joined about twenty more trucks answering the distress call. Babbitt had not even been dead twenty-four hours and we were racing toward another ambush.
Devastating attacks on a patrol, followed by the entire battalion pouring in to assist it, were suddenly becoming too routine. By the time we arrived, the medical evacuation helicopter was gone. The remaining soldiers, covered in blood, smoked cigarettes with shaking hands and recounted a devastatingly sophisticated ambush that had destroyed three American Humvees, killed one soldier, and injured three others. We swept through the area, but, as usual, there were no signs of any insurgents. Right then and there, we gathered the leadership together and crafted a plan to retake the initiative in this sector. We would counterattack decisively and forcefully by raiding every house in the vicinity of each of these attacks and forcing the population to take sides. A low-level string of houses and vehicle-repair shops was across the street and would be our first target.
Like wolves, we fanned out and walked toward the garages where dozens of men watched us warily. We easily outnumbered them, three to one. We did not say a word as we approached. Most of the mechanics walked a few steps to meet us in front of their garages, probably thinking that we were coming to talk. But they were sadly mistaken. As soon as we came face-to-face with them, our fists flew and the sounds of crunching bones and howls of pain echoed up and down the line. I handed off my rifle to a soldier, clenched my gloved hand, and drove it into the face of the nearest mechanic. This was no longer an army bound by rules of engagement and serving a higher purpose. This was a gang of men sending a message to the people who had watched a deadly ambush take place just meters from their homes. Their surprise was obvious. With frantic, scared bloody faces, they stared back at us and into the rage-infused vengeance that swept down upon them.
My commander sent word for a bulldozer to demolish the house closest to the attack. Within half an hour, only rubble and ruined lives stood adjacent to an open field that was still marked with an orange panel for the medical evacuation helicopter. Further inspection led us to a walled palace where spent shells and empty food containers showed it to have been one of the attack points. The commander ordered a company of soldiers into the house. We would use it as our own base while we conducted our counterattack. The bulldozers churned through the destroyed houses and began pushing over the palm groves that had hidden the enemy only hours earlier. Gallons of diesel fuel were sprayed on all vegetation, followed by incendiary grenades to light it on fire. The inferno devoured acres of date palms and cast an eerie glow of orange smoke throughout the area. This was hell now, and it was spreading rapidly.
From the well-appointed confines of our new makeshift base, we laid out a second objective. It was being described as a sweep of the area, but to everyone in the room, it was a hopeful opportunity to exact some revenge for the previous days. We breezed through the tactical update, because there was not much to say that we did not already know. We would return to the area of yesterday’s ambush, where Babbitt was killed. We would be looking for any signs of insurgents’ presence, including more bedding than normal, large quantities of food, or anything that might suggest that a lot of people were staying over as guests.
Using a cell phone left on one of the dead insurgents, one of our interpreters had faked a phone call to the last dialed number and requested directions to a safe house. Although the directions had not been very helpful, the interpreter concluded that the insurgents were not from this area and had not been here long. He attempted to ask questions based on well-known streets and landmarks, but the insurgent on the other end of the line was not familiar with those places. From this, we surmised that they would not go far from where they had fought us. We needed to find them before they left.
We loaded up in the Humvees with a sense of reluctance and hatred that made it difficult to concentrate. There were the obvious reasons to be afraid. The bullet holes in the doors and the spent shell casings still bouncing around reminded me of every shot of that fateful first ambush—and of the fact that the gunner standing above me was not Babbitt. All of this created a surreal sense of unease as we drove back through the ambush site. Yet what enraged me the most was the nonchalance in the neighborhood. People strolled down the sides of the streets where men had just died—both Iraqi and American. There were no flowers and no signs of remembrance here. I am not sure what I expected, but in the United States, I always noticed the white crosses that dotted the highways to mark the tragic loss of lives that occurred on those spots. I guess I expected there to be some homage, at least, to the battle that had raged here and to the lives that were lost. Yet the hardscrabble lives of the people in this area continued unchanged.
That last thought was foremost in my mind as the Humvees stopped in front of the target houses. I looked back to where Babbitt had taken his mortal wound. It had been a perfect vantage point for an ambush. The insurgents had been able to see us clearly from the minute we drove back. How they must have waited for the ideal moment when they could unleash their barrage.
As we jogged toward the nearest house, my vision became blurry. My heart raced with the possibility that there would be another ferocious shootout waiting behind the door. This time, though, we would not be surprised. We would be the ones on the attack. Without any hesitation, I gave the order on the run to kick in the door. We streamed into the house, yelling and motioning for everyone to get on the floor.
I ran up the stairs, shoving aside the women and the children who poured from the upstairs r
ooms screaming and pleading. At the top of the stairs, turning into an open room, I felt the warm rush of homicide. Normally, I prided myself on being cool and calculating, but seeing this room devoid of furniture, with row after row of mattresses on the floor, confirmed that we were in the right place. This is where the insurgents had slept and planned their attack. Over the radio, we heard that the raid in the house next door had discovered no people but room after room of stockpiled weapons and medical equipment.
Farther down the corridor from me, commotion and shouting drew me from the empty room and into an overwhelming scene. Wounded men lay on makeshift beds, while several self-proclaimed doctors attempted to treat them. Soldiers grabbed these doctors and their patients and began roughly binding their hands and forcing them against the walls. I felt an animalistic instinct that scared me. I grabbed one of the doctors, who described himself to an interpreter as a surgeon, and began a barrage of questions. With each denial he made, I pushed the doctor more firmly against the wall, using the full weight of my body armor to force the air from his lungs in a long, low sigh. I reached for his fingers, standing like a bunch of carrots behind his back. Then I smiled as I pulled his thumbs backward until they almost started to crack. “Tough to treat insurgents without opposable thumbs,” I thought. As the doctor began to cry out, I continued to ask questions that went unanswered.
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