Ryan Smithson

by Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-Year-Old GI

  The hardest part of a lengthy mission like this is not becoming complacent. A month without attacks can really alter your perception of danger. That’s just what the enemy wants. So we have to keep him guessing. We have to keep ourselves guessing. Every day we’re out there the danger increases.

  A medic from the sister engineer company nearly loses his foot on the mission. His Humvee moves off the road to the side of the job site. He finds a great spot to pull security. The enemy is counting on this great spot. By the time they see the IED sitting in the nearby bushes, it’s too late. The medic is sent to Germany, where the doctors save his foot. The IED is small, and he is lucky.

  Moments like this shatter us from our complacency. There are four vehicles, all Humvees. An all-Humvee convoy is a great way to travel because you can fly down the road without worrying about M916s or bulky concrete mixers having to keep up. The faster we go, the better the chances of throwing off the triggerman’s timing.

  We receive an additional mission outside of the route we are working on. It’s a giant IED crater on some side road. I am driving the third Humvee. Renninger is my A-driver, and Skavenski is our gunner. Ludwin, one of the concrete guys in third squad, doesn’t come. Our small convoy drives to the recon site, and LT takes photos and notes. On the way back to camp LT, who’s in the first Humvee, comes over the radio and says we’re going to take a quick detour to the route we are currently working on. He just wants to check it out and find out whatever extra details he can.

  We fly down the road, jumping on and off the large patches of concrete we poured. We spray-paint the pads, the canvas, while they are still wet. This is to ensure that after we leave and the concrete is still drying, no one can come and slip in an IED. We cruise over these random spray patterns.

  Someone played tic-tac-toe on one part, and the Xs won. Someone else signed his name. I see the ’shroom platoon, our self-proclaimed nickname. The ’Shroom Platoon because we’re shit on all day and then left in the dark. It’s a joke, but not really.

  We travel sixty miles per hour down the unimproved road. The roar of the diesel engine is the only thing I can hear. I watch the vehicle ahead of me, the second one in the convoy. I continuously vary my distance, trying to throw off any timing a potential triggerman may have. The second Humvee, call sign Hunter Two, swerves drastically to the left side of the road. On the right edge of the road, clear as day, there’s a short black cylinder.

  The adrenaline releases, and my mind focuses.

  From the cylinder, across the hard tan earth, run two wires. One is black and the other is red.

  We are too close to stop, and I slam the pedal to the floor.

  The wires run for about a meter until they hit tall weeds that grow along an irrigation ditch. No one is around, but there’s no way of knowing how far those wires run.

  The handheld radio crackles to life.

  “Did you see that, One?” the vehicle ahead of me asks LT.

  Now we are almost on top of the small black cylinder. It’s a land mine, and there’s no time to stop.

  “Get the fuck down, Ski!” Ken Renninger yells to our gunner.

  If I stop now, we’ll land somewhere directly before or directly after the IED, so I keep my foot to the floor and pray. I pull the Humvee as far to the left as I can, and we roar past the land mine.

  That split second is an eternity. I anticipate the pop of point-blank thunder. I anticipate red pieces of Renninger flying into me. Think of zombies. There are three pictures hanging from the windshield. Two are school pictures of Renninger’s daughter and son. The other is of the Blessed Mary. She holds her son and a wide, sunburst halo shines from behind her head. The pictures swing to the right as I swerve the Humvee, bumper number H-105, to the left. Skavenski ducks inside the turret, the left side of his lip bulging with Copenhagen. Both my hands grip the wheel, and I teeter on the left edge of the road. The speedometer on the Humvee goes only to sixty. The needle is buried.

  No pop.

  One more vehicle, one more target, left in this convoy.

  Arthur Dodds, who’s a trucker back home, Pickleman’s dad, is the A-driver. I struggle to see Hunter Four in my side mirror. I can’t. The small armored window doesn’t allow enough room for me to see the whole mirror. Renninger has his Kevlar pressed against his window. I wait for the popping of thunder.

  “You past it yet, Four?” asks LT over the radio.

  A couple seconds pass, an eternity, before Dodds responds.

  “Yeah,” the radio crackles.

  “All Hunter elements, this is Hunter One,” LT says. “Halt. Herringbone, over.”

  A herringbone is a staggered formation we use when stopping a convoy on the road. The first vehicle, which is always a gun truck, parks sideways across the middle of the road; its gunner faces twelve o’clock. The second vehicle, which doesn’t have to be a gun truck but is today parks behind the first to the right side of the road; its gunner faces three o’clock. The third vehicle, which doesn’t have to be a gun truck but is today parks behind the second vehicle to the left side of the road; its gunner faces nine o’clock. The last vehicle, which is always a gun truck, parks behind the third vehicle sideways across the middle of the road; its gunner faces six o’clock.

  We immediately check the surroundings for a second set of IEDs. The enemy knows our tactics well enough to know that a four-Humvee convoy will usually blow past an IED and park a certain distance away. They’ll sometimes set up a conspicuous IED like say, a land mine trailing with wires, and plant more inconspicuous explosives a certain distance away.

  All is clear in our twenty-five meter sweep, and LT radios the EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) team over the SINCGARS (Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System), the secure radio we use outside the wire to contact post command. Then he comes over the handheld radio and gives us direction on where to go in order to secure the site. He knows this route like the back of his hand. He’s sure that if we take a farming trail located off to our right and follow the irrigation ditch, it will come out on the road to a location well before the black land mine lying on the ground.

  “Hunter Three, this is Hunter One, over,” he says.

  “One this is Three, over,” Renninger responds.

  “You follow me on this dirt trail to our right. Two and Four, secure this side. Nobody passes. Not even civilians. Over.”

  “Roger, One,” Renninger says from our Humvee.

  “Roger, One,” says the A-driver of the second Humvee.

  “Roger,” says Dodds from the fourth Humvee.

  Renninger lights a Marb Red and turns to Skavenski’s legs. “Be ready, Ski.”

  “All right, Sarge,” he says. Tom Skavenski is always ready.

  We follow LT out and around the weed-enriched irrigation system. We try to drive fast here, but it’s difficult on the bumpy dirt road. Nonetheless, we need to move as quickly as possible. Being on a paved road is one thing, but there’s no telling what’s hiding back here.

  LT’s Humvee throws up a cloud of dirt. The brown dirt has a brick red tint to it resembling rust. The tall weeds that outline the irrigation ditch whiz by. Their healthy green color also seems shadowed with rust. We follow the tall weeds. They remind me of a lengthy row of grapes in a vineyard. The dried clay thrown up by LT’s Humvee now blocks my view. Skavenski chokes on the dust, and I have to back off.

  “Still back there, Three?” LT asks over the radio.

  “Yeah, we’re here,” says Renninger into the handheld, a puff of cigarette smoke blending with the dust in the air. “We’ll follow your trail, over.”

  “Roger.”

  We pull around the first turn. A family of sustenance farmers stands off to the side. They’re not used to seeing military convoys back here, and they give us a confused look. The children run to the edge and give us a thumbs-up. One of them motions for a bottle of water. We fly past them. There’s no time for sentiment.

  We get around the second corner and fly to the pa
ved road. Once there we set up a small box formation. We pull sideways across the road so both drivers are facing toward the inside. Tom Skavenski points his turret toward six o’clock and Jason Demarco, LT’s gunner, points his toward twelve o’clock.

  We wait about thirty minutes, which is exceptionally short for this type of situation, until EOD shows up. They park in between our two box formations and break out the bomb-inspecting robot. They shortly conclude that the IED is a dud. It’s a fake, conspicuous land mine and was set up only to watch our reaction.

  The whole time there is a man standing three hundred meters away. He has a pair of binoculars and is watching our every move. We can’t shoot him because of the Geneva convention. The Geneva convention is a series of agreements about the rules of war, and they say we can’t shoot anyone who isn’t holding a weapon and isn’t posing an immediate threat to our convoy. Despite hours of self-debate we understand that it has to be this way.

  Imagine if soldiers started shooting civilians without weapons in their hands. Imagine what the news media back home would do with our excuse: he was watching us with binoculars. Abu Ghraib prison torture would be a fairy tale by comparison.

  This is how the enemy knows our tactics.

  This is how we avoid remaining complacent.

  We come back out for another month to paint our canvas with haji concrete and green spray paint. The days are long and hard, but the mission is important. It isn’t immediately gratifying. We are sweaty and tired and the ripped-up road ahead of us seems much longer than the patched road behind us. Nonetheless, we are no doubt saving people’s lives by accomplishing this mission. It’s not direct, but if our efforts stop even one insurgent from reusing a crater to kill another soldier or civilian, the mission is worth it.

  The local sheik even comes out to thank us when, with the help of the sister unit, we replace an irrigation pipe that ran under the road we were repairing. It had been broken for years. Even though we couldn’t give the locals water when we flew past them after the fake IED, we provided them with irrigation water they hadn’t seen in years.

  This isn’t a weapons cache-search mission during which we kick down doors looking for suspects. We pour concrete. No news reporters followed us around, because soldiers saving lives aren’t as interesting as soldiers taking lives. America’s not aware of the honor of war unless it involves POWs or medals of valor. Sometimes it’s frustrating the way our efforts seem left on the ground in Iraq: spray paint on haji concrete.

  The hard canvas we paint in Iraq is one of scar tissue. It’s a bunch of holes crudely patched with cheap concrete. It’s a stretch of road that was previously unmanageable. It’s a makeshift job, but it works. It doesn’t match the rest of the road, but The ’Shroom Platoon has done its part.

  PETS

  “What should we name him?” I ask.

  “Jerkface,” says Jesse Smith around the wad of Copenhagen that is packed behind his bottom lip.

  “Let’s see what kind of tricks he can do.”

  Jerkface is a small grayish brown bird. He is the color of rocks and dust, the color of Iraq. He is one of the several birds who live in the palm trees outside our barracks. Few birds are brave enough to come near us, but Jerkface often flies down for a visit.

  Austin Rhodes and Justin Greene live in the lower-enlisted bay in which we built rooms before we moved in. And since we had control over the matter, they decided to combine their rooms to have a little extra space. They take Jerkface into their room where he sits on our hands like a trained parrot.

  We play with the little bird, spread his legs apart, bob him up and down. We play “Rockin’ Robin” from Greene’s laptop and make Jerkface dance to it. We pass him from hand to hand, finger to finger, testing his patience.

  We play with him like children play with stuffed animals. The whole time, he looks at us with dumb eyes. As he sits perched on my finger, dancing because I am making him, I study the content little bird. He is the size of any little robin or finch back home. He sits on my finger calm and collected, breathing casually, wondering about this new experience. I look at Jerkface and wonder if he knows how lucky he is to be dumb.

  I think of looking at myself in the bathroom mirror at Fort Bragg. About nine months ago, as I was training for the Sandbox, I had the same dumb look on my face. I looked around at my new environment and wondered what it was all about. I took it all in, darted my head from side to side, and pecked at my food as some great, unseen force took me by the legs and forced me to dance.

  Let’s see what kind of tricks he can do.

  In Iraq I sit in my barracks at night. On missions I lie on a cot or in the back of a Humvee. With each passing day I grow more desensitized and dumb. A mortar can come crashing through the barracks ceiling at any second. The side of the road can blow up anytime during a convoy—an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) or AK-47 or friendly fire. But what’s the point in worrying? So I sit calm and collected, breathing casually, wondering about this new experience.

  When I want to eat, I go to the chow hall. Jerkface goes to the palm tree. When I want to play, I go to our makeshift volleyball court. Jerkface goes to the palm tree. When I want to talk to my family, I go to the Internet café. Jerkface goes to the palm tree.

  I am occupying Jerkface’s home, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe he thinks my Joe Schmo friends and I can make his home better. After all, we give him treats from the mountain of packages sitting on the shelf in the common room. Jerkface likes crackers. Even the ones from the MREs.

  We eat MREs often enough to pity those soldiers who eat them every day. If you’re wondering what it’s like to eat an MRE in Iraq, try this:

  First, disperse fifty pounds of gear between your head, shoulders, and chest. Then find your favorite piece of cardboard, smother it with cheese-flavored grease, and you have the pre-meal snack of cheese and crackers. For the MRE meal take another piece of cardboard and cut it into bite-sized pieces. Soak the cardboard pieces overnight in a mixture of coagulated gravy, Tabasco sauce, and old sticky tomatoes. Make sure you do this at room temperature. Preheat your oven to 140 degrees, but instead of cooking your meal, sit on the floor directly in front of the oven. Open the oven door, and place a fan inside so it blows in your face. Now tip your garbage can over to simulate any given Iraqi street and you have created the typical dining experience.

  The kids in Iraq love MREs. Their eyes light up like Christmas candles when they see a box of MREs. They even know the acronym. They grab the bulging brown package out of our hands and sit criss-crossed with it in their lap. Ripping it open, they toss the spoon and utility pack full of napkins, salt, and matches over their shoulder. They always toss the spoon. They eat MREs with their hands, tearing into the “entrée” first, exposing the brown sludge that is supposed to pass for beefsteak and mushrooms. Not that it isn’t beefsteak and mushrooms. It most certainly is. After all, turkey, cranberry sauce, croissants, and sweet potatoes are still a fine Thanksgiving meal even if they’re pureed together and vacuum packed for three years, right?

  When I think of elementary schoolkids in America peeling the crusts off their sandwiches, complaining that their parents won’t buy them Lunchables, I pity them more than the Iraqi kids.

  Even the dogs are weary of the MREs. Once, on the IED crater-filling mission, a skinny little mutt comes up to us with a friendly grin. His hair is short and the color of Iraq, dusty red-brown. He flexes his nostrils at us as we spoon MRE slush into our mouths. We pet him on the head and name him Haji. He is a rather friendly pup, and we look for his collar. Yeah, right. There’s a culturally based functional fixation if I ever saw one: expecting a wandering Iraqi dog to have proper identification.

  My name is “Haji.” I belong to Malhabar Azwiki at 666 North Ambush Drive, Balad, Iraq.

  Haji the Dog looks like he hasn’t eaten in weeks. He reminds me of those dogs they pick up on those animal cop shows, the ones that come from a 20x15 chain-link fenced backyard where twelve mangy mutts liv
e in their own feces. We can see his ribs and feel his spine when we pet his back. But he looks happy and hopeful, like any other hungry dog.

  Jesse Smith has ravioli, and he tosses a few pieces on the ground in front of Haji. He approaches the ravioli and gives it a sniff. I remember a little boy who tore into a similar MRE with such speed that he had no time for a spoon. Haji the Dog is starving. And he’s a dog. Surely he’ll swallow the ravioli without chewing and then beg us for more. He sniffs it once, pulls back, and sniffs it again. Then he turns and walks away. Haji seems insulted.

  We throw our heads back in laughter. Haji the Dog trots away, off to find some food worthy of his time and energy, and we finish our MREs. Maybe Haji is already too stuffed to enjoy the ravioli, but I doubt it.

  There are two kinds of animals in war. There are the animals that live here. These animals, like Jerkface and Haji, give us perspective. They show us resilience and understanding. They show us reality, that we have no control over our situation. That MREs are disgusting.

  But the other kind of animals in war, they break your heart. They’re the animals you left back home. The ones you abandoned.

  One night a letter lies on my bunk. The address on the front is in my father’s handwriting: all capital letters that slant to the right. The handwriting from many of my childhood memories. Growing up, I looked up to that handwriting. It represented the man I was to become. I write in all capital letters now, too.

  I love getting letters from my father. It is our own special time together, a time for regret, denial, and pride. My father is very articulate. He doesn’t have a master’s degree in English. He doesn’t spit out six-syllable words in every sentence. But he has the truly rare ability to tell a story, to use language uniquely. Without conscious knowledge or intent, it’s my dad who taught me to write.

  I love reading his letters. I love hearing his stories.

  I also admire my father’s ability to chat. My father loves talking to people, figuring them out, cluing in and finding out how innately similar we human beings are. My mother often says, “Your father would talk to a lamppost if he thought it would listen.” My father has the gift of gab, and it has served him well. It even helps me while I sit on a slumped army bunk in the middle of Iraq wondering about tomorrow, if I should face a new mission with fear or faith.