First true «Generation Kill» text.
Meet the Marines of Bravo Company — proud, hardened professionals who deal in that most specialized of American exports: ultraviolence. The true story of bullets, bombs and a Marine platoon at war in Iraq
The invaders drive north through the Iraqi desert in a Humvee, eating candy, dipping tobacco and singing songs. Oil fires burn on the horizon, set during skirmishes between American forces and pockets of
The war began
«Get some!» is the unofficial Marine Corps cheer. It’s shouted when a brother Marine is struggling to beat his personal best in a fitness run. It punctuates stories told at night about getting laid in whorehouses in Thailand and Australia. It’s the cry of exhilaration after firing a burst from a.
Marines call exaggerated displays of enthusiasm — from shouting «Get some!» to waving American flags to covering their bodies with Marine Corps tattoos — «moto." You won’t ever catch Sgt. Brad Colbert, one of the most respected Marines in First Recon and the team leader I would spend the war with, engaging in any moto displays. They call Colbert the Iceman. Wiry and
The vast majority of the troops will get to Baghdad by swinging west onto a modern superhighway built by Hussein as a monument to himself and driving, largely unopposed, until they reach the outskirts of the Iraqi capital. Colbert’s team in First Recon will reach Baghdad by fighting its way through some of the crummiest, most treacherous parts of Iraq. Their job will be to screen the advance of a Marine battle force, the 7,
Reconnaissance Marines are considered among the best trained and toughest in the Corps. Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the Marine ground forces in Iraq, calls those in First Recon «cocky, arrogant bastards." They go through much of the same training as do Navy SEALS and Army Special Forces. They are physical prodigies who can run twelve miles loaded with
Colbert’s first impression of Iraq is that it looks like «fucking Tijuana." It’s a few hours after his team’s dawn crossing into Iraq. We are driving through a desert trash heap, periodically dotted with mud huts, small flocks of sheep and clusters of
«Hey, it’s ten in the morning!» says Person, yelling in the direction of one of the Iraqis we pass. «Don’t you think you ought to change out of your pajamas?»
Person has a squarish head and blue eyes so wide apart his Marine buddies call him Hammerhead or Goldfish. He’s from Nevada, Missouri, a small town where «NASCAR is sort of like a state religion." He speaks with an accent that’s not quite Southern, just rural, and he was proudly raised
Becoming a Marine was a
As the convoy charges north into the desert, Person sings A Flock of Seagulls' «I Ran (So Far Away)." He says, «When I get out» — he’s leaving the Marines in November — «I’m going to get a Flock of Seagulls haircut, then I’m going to become a rock star.»
«Shut up, Person," Colbert says, peering intently at the
Obtaining Colbert’s respect is no small feat. He maintains high standards of personal and professional conduct and expects the same from those around him. This year he was selected as team leader of the year in First Recon. Last year he was awarded a Navy Commendation for helping to take out an enemy missile battery in Afghanistan, where he led one of the first teams of Marines on the ground. Everything about him is neat, orderly and crisp. He grew up in an ultramodern house designed by his father, an architect. There was shag carpet in a conversation pit. One of his fondest memories, he tells me, was that before parties, his parents would let him prepare the carpet with a special rake. Colbert is a walking encyclopedia of radio frequencies and encryption protocols and can tell you the exact details of just about any weapon in the U.S. or Iraqi arsenal. He once nearly purchased a surplus British tank, even arranged a loan through his credit union, but backed out only when he realized just parking it might run afoul of zoning laws in his home state, the «communist republic of California.»
But there is another side to his personality. His back is a garish wash of
With Colbert located in the front passenger seat, providing security off the right side of the vehicle,
The other team member in the vehicle is Cpl. Gabriel Garza, a twenty-
Colbert’s team is part of a
«
«Lofty and kinglike," Colbert answers.
Garza considers this information. «Sure," he says. «I’m a nice guy." Colbert and Person mostly pass the time monitoring the sins committed by a Recon officer they nickname Captain America. Colbert and other Marines in the unit accuse Captain America of leading the men on
Before First Recon’s campaign is over, Captain America will lose control of his unit and be investigated for leading his men into committing war crimes against enemy prisoners of war. A battalion inquiry will clear him, but here in the field, some of his men fantasize about his death. «All it takes is one dumb guy in charge to ruin everything," says one. «Every time he steps out of the vehicle, I pray he gets shot.»
Aside from Captain America’s antics, there’s an inescapable sense among Colbert’s team that this is going to be a dull war. All that changes when they reach Nasiriyah on their third day in Iraq.
On March 23rd, Colbert’s team, in a convoy with the entire First Recon Battalion, cuts off from the backcountry desert trails and heads northwest to Nasiriyah, a city of about 300,000 on the Euphrates River.
By late afternoon, the battalion becomes mired in a massive traffic jam of Marine vehicles about thirty kilometers south of the city. The Marines are given no word about what’s happening ahead, though they get some clue when, before sundown, they begin to notice a steady flow of
During the past four days, no one on the team has slept for more than two hours a night, nor has anyone had a chance to remove his boots. Everyone wears bulky
Colbert constantly harps on his men to drink water and to take naps whenever there is a chance, even questioning them on whether their pee is yellow or clear. When he comes back from taking a shit, Trombley turns the tables on him.
«Have a good dump, Sergeant?» he asks.
«Excellent," Colbert answers. «Shit my brains out. Not too hard, not too runny.»
«That sucks when it’s runny and you have to wipe fifty times," Trombley says conversationally.
«I’m not talking about that." Colbert assumes his stern teacher’s voice. «If it’s too hard or too soft, something’s not right. You might have a problem.»
«It should be a little acid," Person says, offering his own medical observation. «And burn a little when it comes out.»
«Maybe on your little bitch asshole from all the cock that’s been stuffed up it," Colbert snaps.
Hearing this exchange, another Marine in the unit says, «Man, the Marines are so homoerotic. That’s all we talk about.»
Another big topic is music. Colbert attempts to ban any references to country music in his vehicle. He claims that the mere mention of country, which he deems «the Special Olympics of music," makes him physically ill.
The Marines mock the fact that many of the tanks and Humvees stopped along the road are emblazoned with American flags or moto slogans such as «Angry American» or «Get Some." Person spots a Humvee with the 9/11 catchphrase «Let’s Roll!» stenciled on the side.
«I hate that cheesy patriotic bullshit," Person says. He mentions Aaron Tippin’s «Where the Stars and Stripes and Eagles Fly." «Like how he sings those country
" «That song is straight homosexual country music, Special
Colbert’s team spends the night by the highway. Late in the night, we hear artillery booming up ahead in the direction of Nasiriyah. The ground trembles as a column of massive M1A1 tanks rolls past, a few feet from where the Marines are resting. Out of the darkness, someone shouts, «Hey, if you lay down with your cock on the ground, it feels good.»
A couple of hours after sunrise on the 24th, they tune in to the BBC on a shortwave radio that Colbert carries in the Humvee and hear the first word of fighting up the road in Nasiriyah. A while later, Colbert’s platoon commander, Lt. Nathan Fick, holds a briefing for the three other team leaders in the
Fick tells his men that the Marines have been taking heavy casualties in Nasiriyah. Yesterday, the town was declared secure. But then an Army supply unit traveling near the city came under attack from an Iraqi guerrilla unit of Saddam Hussein loyalists called fedayeen. These fighters, Fick says, wear civilian clothes and set up positions in the city among the general populace, firing mortars,
First Recon has been ordered to the bridge to support Task Force Tarawa, which barely controls its southern approach. Fick can’t tell his men exactly what they’re going to do when they get to the bridge, as the plans are still being drawn up at a higher level. What he does tell the men is that their rules of engagement have changed. Until now, they’ve let armed Iraqis pass, sometimes even handing them food rations. Now, Fick says, «Anyone with a weapon is declared hostile. If it’s a woman walking away from you with a weapon on her back, shoot her.»
At 1:30 p.m., the 374 Marines of First Recon form up on the road and start rolling north toward the city. Given the news of heavy casualties during the past
The air is heavy with a fine, powdery dust that hangs like dense fog. Cobras clatter directly overhead, swooping low with the grace of flying sledgehammers. They circle First Recon’s convoy, nosing down through the barren scrubland on either side of the road, hunting for enemy shooters. Before long, we are on our own. The helicopters are called off because fuel is short. The bulk of the Marine convoy is held back until the Iraqi forces ahead are put down. One of the last Marines we see standing by the road pumps his fist as Colbert’s vehicle drives past and shouts, «Get some!»
We drive into a no man’s land. A burning fuel depot spews fire and smoke. Garbage is strewn on either side of the road as far as the eye can see. The convoy slows to a crawl, and the Humvee fills with a black cloud of flies.
«Now, this looks like Tijuana," says Person.
«And this time I get to do what I’ve always wanted to do in T.J.," Colbert answers. «Burn it to the ground.»
There is a series of thunderous,
We pass a succession of desiccated farmsteads — crude, square huts made of mud, with starving livestock in front. The locals sit outside like spectators. A woman walks past with a basket on her head, oblivious to the explosions. No one has spoken for ten minutes, and Person cannot repress the urge to make a goofy remark. He turns to Colbert, smiling. «Hey, you think I have enough driving hours now to get my Humvee license?»
We reach the bridge over the Euphrates. It is a long, broad concrete structure. It spans nearly a kilometer and arches up gracefully toward the middle. On the opposite bank, we glimpse Nasiriyah. The front of the city is a jumble of irregularly shaped two- and
Nasiriyah is the gateway to ancient Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent lying between the Euphrates, just above us, and the Tigris, a hundred kilometers north. This land has been continuously inhabited for 5,000 years. It was here that humankind first invented the wheel, the written word and algebra. Scholars believe that Mesopotamia was the site of the Garden of Eden. After three days in the desert, the Marines are amazed to find themselves in this pocket of tropical vegetation. There are lush groves of palm trees all around, as well as fields where tall grasses are growing. As Marine artillery rounds explode around us, Colbert keeps repeating, «Look at these fucking trees.»
While two First Recon companies are instructed to set up positions on the banks of the Euphrates, Bravo Company waits at the foot of the bridge, about 200 meters away from the river’s edge. No sooner are we settled than
Marine helicopters fly low over a palm grove across the street, firing rockets and machine guns. It looks like we’ve driven into a Vietnam War movie. As if on cue, Person starts singing a Creedence Clearwater Revival song. This war will need its own theme music, he tells me. «That fag Justin Timberlake will make a soundtrack for it," he says, adding with disgust, «I just read that all these pussy faggot pop stars like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears were going to make an
While Person talks, there’s a massive explosion nearby. An errant Marine artillery round hits a power line and detonates overhead, sending shrapnel into a vehicle ahead of ours. A group of six Marines is also hit. Two are killed immediately; the four others are injured. Through the smoke, we can hear them screaming for a medic. Everyone takes cover in the dirt. I lie as flat on the ground as possible. I look up and see a Marine cursing and wiggling, trying to pull down his
The Marines took a
The guy on my other side is another Bravo team leader, Sgt. Larry Sean Patrick, 28, of Lincolntown, North Carolina, and he’s looked up to about as much as Colbert is. I ask him what the hell we’re doing just waiting around while the bombs fall. His response is sobering. He tells me the platoon is about to be sent on a suicide mission. «Our job is to kamikaze into the city and collect casualties," he says.
«How many casualties are there?» I ask.
«Casualties?» he says. «They’re not there yet. We’re the reaction force for an attack that’s coming across the bridge. We go in during the fight to pick up the wounded.»
I don’t know why, but the idea of waiting around for casualties that don’t exist yet strikes me as more macabre than the idea of actual casualties. Yet despite how much it sucks here — by this bridge, taking heavy fire — it’s kind of exciting, too. I had almost looked down on the Marines' shows of moto, the way they shouted «get some» and acted all excited about being in a fight. But the fact is, there’s a definite sense of exhilaration every time there’s an explosion and you’re still there afterward. There’s another kind of exhilaration, too. Everyone is side by side facing the same big fear: death. Usually, death is pushed to the fringes of things you do in the civilian world. Most people face their end pretty much alone, with a few family members if they are lucky. Here, the Marines face death together, in their youth. If anyone dies, he will do so surrounded by the very best friends he believes he will ever have.
As mortars continue to explode around us, I watch Garza pick through an MRE. He takes out a packet of Charms candies and hurls it into the gunfire. Marines view Charms as almost infernal talismans. A few days earlier, in the Humvee, Garza saw me pull Charms out of my MRE pack. His eyes lighted up and he offered me a highly prized bag of cheese pretzels for my candies. He didn’t explain why. I thought he just really liked Charms until he threw the pack he’d just traded me out the window. «We don’t allow Charms anywhere in our Humvee," Person said, in a rare show of absolute seriousness. «That’s right," Colbert said, cinching it. «They’re fucking bad luck.»
A fresh pair of Marine gunships flies overhead, firing rockets into a nearby grove of palm trees. Bravo Marines leap up after one of the helicopters fires a TOW missile that sends up a large orange fireball from the trees. «Get some!» the Marines shout.
For nearly six hours, we are pinned down, waiting, we think, to storm into Nasiriyah. But after sunset, plans are changed, and First Recon is called back from the bridge to a position four kilometers into the
It’s not just bragging. When Marines talk about the violence they wreak, there’s an almost giddy shame, an uneasy exultation in having committed society’s ultimate taboo, and doing it with state sanction.
«Well, good on you," Colbert says to his friend.
Person stands by the road pissing. «Man, I pulled my trousers down, and it smells like hot dick. That sweaty
Reyes doesn’t quite fit the image of the macho brute. He reads Oprah’s magazine and waxes his legs and chest. Other members of the unit call him «fruity Rudy» because he is so beautiful. «It doesn’t mean you’re gay if you think Rudy’s hot. He’s just so beautiful," Person tells me. «We all think he’s hot.»
The Recon Marines are told they will be pushing north through Nasiriyah at dawn, along a route they’ve deemed «sniper alley." At midnight, Espera and I share a last cigarette. We climb under a Humvee for cover and lie on our backs, passing it back and forth.
«I’ve been so up and down today," Espera says. «I guess this is how a woman feels." He’s extremely worried about driving through Nasiriyah in a few hours and even admits to having second thoughts about coming to Iraq at all. «I asked a priest if it’s OK to kill people in war," he tells me. «He said it’s OK as long as you don’t enjoy it. Before we crossed into Iraq, I fucking hated Arabs. I don’t know why. But as soon as we got here, it’s just gone. I just feel sorry for them. I miss my little girl. I don’t want to kill anybody’s children.»
Past midnight, Marine artillery booms into the city. Back in the Humvee, Trombley once again talks about his hopes of having a son with his new young bride when he returns home.
«Never have kids, Corporal," Colbert lectures. «One kid will cost you $300,000. You should never have gotten married. It’s always a mistake." Colbert often proclaims the futility of marriage. «Women will always cost you money, but marriage is the most expensive way to go. If you want to pay for it, Trombley, go to Australia. For a hundred bucks, you can order a whore over the phone. Half an hour later, she arrives at your door, fresh and hot, like a pizza.»
Despite his bitter proclamations about women, if you catch Colbert during an unguarded moment, he’ll admit that he once loved one girl who jilted him, a
Just after sunrise, First Recon’s
The convoy stops to pick up a Marine from another unit who is wounded in the leg. A few vehicles come under
We drive on, pausing a few kilometers ahead for the battalion to call in an airstrike on an Iraqi armored vehicle up the road. Next to me, Trombley opens up an MRE and furtively pulls out a pack of Charms. «Keep it a secret," he says. He unwraps the candies and stuffs them into his mouth.
At ten in the morning, first Recon is ordered off Highway 7, the main road heading north out of Nasiriyah, and onto a narrow dirt trail, to guard the main Marine fighting force’s flanks. There’s a dead man lying in a ditch where we turn off the highway. Two hundred meters past the corpse, there’s a farmhouse with a family out front, waving as we drive by. At the next house, two old ladies in black jump up and down, whooping and clapping. A bunch of bearded men shout, «Good! Good! Good!» The Marines wave back. In the span of a few minutes, they have gone from kill-anyone-
«Stay frosty, gents," Colbert warns. «No matter what you see, we’re in backcountry now, and we’re all alone.»
The road has dwindled down to a single narrow lane. We crawl along at a couple of miles per hour. There are farmhouses every few hundred meters. The Marines stop and toss
The demeanor of the civilians we pass has suddenly changed. They’ve stopped waving. Many avoid eye contact with us altogether. Over the radio, we hear that RCT 1 is in contact with enemy forces at a town a few kilometers to the north. As we continue along the road, we begin to notice that villagers on the other bank of the canal are fleeing in the opposite direction. Two villagers approach a Humvee behind Colbert’s and warn the Marines through hand gestures that something bad lies ahead.
The convoy stops. We are at a bend in the road, with a
«Damn it," says Colbert. «I have to take a shit.»
Instead, Colbert picks up a 203 round — an RPG — kisses the nose of it and slides it into the lower chamber of his gun. He opens the door and climbs up the embankment to observe a small cluster of homes on the other side. He signals for all the Marines to come out of the vehicle and join him on the berm. Marines from another platoon fire into the hamlet with rifles, machine guns and
The team gets back in the Humvee. Trombley sits in the back seat eating spaghetti directly out of a foil MRE pack, squeezing it into his mouth from a hole in the corner. «I almost shot that man," he says excitedly, referring to a farmer in the hamlet on the other side of the berm.
«Not yet," Colbert says. «Put your weapon on safety.»
Nobody speaks for a solid ten minutes. A vicious sandstorm is kicking up. Fifty- to sixty-
RCT 1 is now waiting outside a town about six kilometers ahead. Its commander has reported taking fire from the town, and First Recon plans to bypass it. Colbert explains the situation to his men.
«Why can’t we just go through the town?» Trombley asks.
«I think we’d get smoked," Colbert says.
Fifteen minutes later, we start moving north. Everyone in Colbert’s vehicle believes we are taking a route that bypasses the hostile town, Al Gharraf. Then word comes over the radio of a change in plan. We are driving straight through.
Colbert’s vehicle comes alongside the walls of the town, which looks like a smaller version of Nasiriyah. The street we are on, now paved, bears left. As Person makes the turn, the wall of a house directly to my right and no more than three meters from my window erupts with muzzle flashes and the clatter of
We have barely entered the city, and it’s a
The shooting continues on both sides. Less than half an hour before, Colbert had been talking about stress reactions in combat. In addition to the embarrassing losses of bodily control that
In my case, hearing and sight become almost disconnected. I see more muzzle flashes next to the vehicle but don’t hear them. In the seat beside me, Trombley fires 300 rounds from his machine gun. Ordinarily, if someone was firing a machine gun that close to you, it would be deafening. His gun seems to whisper.
The look on Colbert’s face is almost serene. He’s hunched over his weapon, leaning out the window, intently studying the walls of the buildings, firing bursts from his
I study Person’s face for signs of panic, fear or death. My fear is he’ll get shot or freak out, and we’ll get stuck on this street. But Person seems fine. He’s slouched over the wheel, looking through the windshield, an almost blank expression on his face. The only thing different about him is he’s not babbling his opinions on Justin Timberlake or some other pussy faggot retard who bothers him.
Trombley pauses from shooting out his window and turns around with a triumphant grin. «I got one, Sergeant!» he shouts.
Colbert ignores him. Trombley eagerly goes back to shooting at people out his window. A gray object zooms toward the windshield and smacks into the roof. The Humvee fills with a
Colbert calls out, «Walt, are you OK?» There’s silence. Person turns around, taking his foot off the gas pedal.
The vehicle slows and wanders slightly to the left. «Walt?» Person calls.
«I’m OK!» he says, sounding almost cheerful. Person has lost his focus on moving the vehicle forward. We slow to a crawl. Person later says that he was worried one of the cables dropped on the vehicle might have been caught on Hasser. He didn’t want to accelerate and somehow leave him hanging from a light pole by his neck in downtown Gharraf.
«Drive, Person!» Colbert shouts.
Person picks up the pace, and there is silence outside. We are still in the town, but no one seems to be shooting at us.
«Holy shit! Did you see that? We got fucking lit up!» Colbert is beside himself, laughing and shaking his head. «Holy shit!»
Trombley turns to Colbert, again seeking recognition. «I got one, Sergeant. His knee exploded, then I cut him in half!»
«You cut him in half?» Colbert asks. «That’s great, Trombley!»
«Before we start congratulating ourselves," Person says, «we’re not out of this yet.»
We pass a mangled, burned car on the right, then Person makes a left into more gunfire. Set back from the road are several squat
«I got another one!» Trombley shouts.
There’s a white haze in the distance: the end of the city. We fly out onto a sandy field that looks almost like a beach. There’s so much sand blowing in the air — winds are still at about sixty miles per hour — it’s tough to see anything. There’s gunfire all around. The Humvee drives about twenty meters into the sand, then sinks into it. Person floors the engine, and the wheels spin. The Humvee has sunk up to the door frames in tar. It’s a sobka field. Sobka is a geological phenomenon peculiar to the Middle East. It looks like desert on top, with a hard crust of sand an inch or so thick, which a man could possibly walk on, but break through the crust and beneath it’s the La Brea tar pits, quicksand made of tar.
Colbert jumps out and runs to the other Recon vehicles, lined up now, shooting into the city. He runs down the lines of guns, shouting, «Cease fire! Assess the situation!»
Back at Colbert’s Humvee, one of his superiors pounds on the roof and shouts, «Abandon the Humvee!» He adds, «Thermite the radios!» He is referring to a kind of
Colbert jumps up behind him. «Fuck, no! I’m not thermiting anything. We’re driving this out of here!»
He dives under the wheel wells with bolt cutters, slicing away the steel cables, a gift of the defenders of Gharraf, wrapped around the axle. A
The Bravo Marines spend half an hour recounting every moment of the ambush. Aside from the driver in the other platoon who was shot in the arm, no one was hit. They laugh uproariously about all the buildings they blew up. Privately, Colbert confesses to me that he had absolutely no feelings going through the city. He almost seems disturbed by this. «It was just like training," he says. «I just loaded and fired my weapon from muscle memory. I wasn’t even aware what my hands were doing.»
That night we are rewarded with the worst sandstorm we have experienced in Iraq. Under a
The next morning at dawn, Lt. Fick tells his Marines, «The good news is, we will be rolling with a lot of ass today. RCT 1 will be in front of us for most of the day. The bad news is, we’re going through four more towns like the one we hit yesterday.»
There are wild dogs everywhere along the highway. «We ought to shoot some of these dogs," Trombley says.
«We don’t shoot dogs," Colbert says.
«I’m afraid of dogs," Trombley mumbles.
I ask him if he was ever attacked by a dog when he was little.
«No," he answers. «My dad was once. The dog bit him, and my dad jammed his hand down his throat and ripped up his stomach. I did have a dog lunge at me once on the sidewalk. I just threw it on its side, knocked the wind out of him.»
«Where did we find this guy?» Person asks.
We drive on.
«I like cats," Trombley offers. «I had a cat that lived to be sixteen. One time he ripped a dog’s eye out with his claw.»
We pass dead bodies in the road again, men with weapons by their sides, then more than a dozen trucks and cars burned and smoking by the road. Many have a burned corpse or two of Iraqi soldiers who died after crawling five or ten meters away from the vehicle before they expired, hands still grasping forward on the pavement. Just north of here, at another stop, Marines in Fick’s vehicle
We stop next to a green field with a small house set back from the road. Marines from a different unit suspect that gunshots came from the house. A Bravo Marine sniper observes the house for
One of Recon’s own officers, whom the Marines have nicknamed Encino Man because of his apelike appearance, steps out of his command vehicle. He is so eager to get in the fight, it seems, he forgets to unplug his radio headset, which jerks his head back as the cord, still attached to the dash unit, tightens. Colbert, who believes the house contains only noncombatants, starts screaming, «Jesus Christ! There’s fucking civilians in that house! Cease fire!» Encino Man pops off a 203 grenade that falls wildly short of the house. Colbert, like other Marines in Bravo, is furious. Not only do they believe this Recon officer is firing on civilians, but the guy also doesn’t even know how to range his 203.
Colbert sits in the Humvee, trying to rationalize the events outside that have spiraled beyond his control: «Everyone’s just tense. Some Marine took a shot, and everyone has just followed suit.»
Before this event can be fully resolved — some Marines insist gunshots did come from the house — First Recon is sent several kilometers up the road to the edge of another town, Ar Rifa. Colbert’s team stops thirty meters from the town’s outer walls. The winds have died down, but dust is so thick in the air that it looks like twilight at noon. An electrical substation is on fire next to Colbert’s vehicle, adding its own acrid smoke. Shots come from the town, and Colbert’s team fires back.
But a different crisis is brewing a few vehicles down. Encino Man, who an hour ago attempted to fire on the house Colbert believed contained civilians, commits what his men believe is a more dangerous blunder. Operating under the belief that a team of fedayeen is nearby, Encino Man attempts to call in an artillery strike almost directly on top of Bravo’s position. A few enlisted Marines in Bravo confront the officer. One calls Encino Man a «dumb motherfucker» to his face.
Fick attempts to intervene on the side of the enlisted Marines, and the officer threatens him with disciplinary action. The artillery strike never occurs. But the incident aggravates growing tensions between First Recon’s officers and its enlisted men, who are beginning to fear that some of their leaders are dangerously incompetent.
After night falls outside of Rifa, another bad day in Iraq ends with a new twist: a
Later, we find out from Fick that we were shot up by Navy Reservist surgeons on their way to set up a mobile
A
The drive takes about three hours. On the way, the men are informed that they will be setting up an observation post on the field to prepare for a parachute assault that British forces are going to execute at dawn. But plans change again at sunrise. At 6:20, after the Bravo Marines have slept for about ninety minutes, Colbert is awakened and told his men have ten minutes to race onto the airfield, six kilometers away, and assault it.
At 6:28, Colbert’s team is in the Humvee driving with thirty other Recon vehicles down a road they’ve never even studied on a map. They’re told over the radio they will face enemy tanks.
«Everything and everyone on the airfield is hostile," Colbert says, passing on a direct order from his commander.
Next to me in the rear seat, Trombley says, «I see men running.»
«Are they armed?» Colbert asks.
«There’s something," Trombley says.
I look out Trombley’s window and see a bunch of camels.
«Everyone’s declared hostile," Colbert says. «Light them up.»
Trombley fires a burst or two from his SAW. «Shooting motherfuckers like it’s cool," he says, amused with himself.
The Humvees race onto the airfield and discover it’s abandoned, nothing but
«Gentlemen, we just seized an airfield," Colbert says. «That was pretty ninja.»
An hour later, the Marines have set up a camp off the edge of the airfield. They are told they will stay here for a day or longer. This morning, the sun shines and there’s no dust in the air. For the first time in a week, many of the Marines take their boots and socks off. They unfurl camo nets for shade and lounge beside their Humvees. A couple of Recon Marines walk over to Trombley and tease him about shooting camels.
«I think I got one of those Iraqis, too. I saw him go down.»
«Yeah, but you killed a camel, too, and wounded another one.»
The Marines seem to have touched a nerve.
«I didn’t mean to," Trombley says defensively. «They’re innocent.»
A couple of hours later, two Bedouin women arrive at the edge of Bravo’s perimeter. Bedouins are nomadic tribespeople who roam the desert, living in tents, herding sheep and camels. One of the women is dressed in a purple robe and appears to be in her thirties. She is pulling a heavy object wrapped in a blanket and is accompanied by an old woman with blue tribal tattoos on her wrinkled face. They stop on top of a berm about twenty meters away and start waving. Robert Timothy Bryan, a Navy Corpsman who functions as the platoon’s medic, walks over to them. Later, he’ll say that he’s not sure why he even walked up to the women. In recent days, Marines have grown weary of Iraqi civilians, who have begun accosting them, begging for food, cigarettes, sometimes even chanting the one English word they all seem to be learning: «Money, money, money." When he reaches them, he notices that the younger woman seems highly distraught, gesturing and moving her mouth, but no words come out. Her breasts are exposed, her robes having fallen open while she was dragging her bundle across the fields. As Bryan approaches, she frantically unrolls its contents, revealing what appears to be a youth’s bloody corpse. The boy looks about fourteen. Then he opens his eyes. Bryan kneels down. There are four small holes, two on each side of his stomach.
Bryan begins treating him immediately. In the field, several men appear walking a
The woman in purple, the mother, kneels, putting her hands in the air, still talking with no sounds coming out. The old lady, who turns out to be the grandmother, stands up, cigarette dangling from her lips, and covers her daughter’s breasts as more Marines walk up. None of the Bedouins — there are about eight sitting around watching Bryan examine the boy — seems the least bit angry. When I walk over, the grandmother offers me a cigarette.
The younger boy’s name is Naif. His brother, still hobbling around on his bloody shot leg, is Latif. The boys had gone out to the family’s herd of camels, which had been frightened by the Marine Humvees and started running. The boys were chasing after them when they were shot. One was carrying a stick.
Each of the four holes in Naif’s body is an entry wound, meaning the four bullets zoomed around inside his slender stomach and chest cavity, ripping apart his organs.
Bryan continues cursing his fellow Marines. «We’re Recon Marines," he says. «We’re paid to observe. We don’t shoot unarmed children." Bravo Marines are now milling around, trying to help. They hold up ponchos over the two wounded boys, shielding them from the sun. But there’s not much else to do. Bryan determines that the younger boy has hours to live unless he can be medevacked. But Lt. Col. Steve Ferrando, the battalion commander, has sent a Marine bearing news that the request has been denied. Just then, an unmanned spy plane flies low overhead. «We can afford to fly fucking Predators," Bryan says, «but we can’t take care of this kid?»
Just then, Colbert comes up the hill. He sees the mother, the kid, the brother with the bloody leg, the family, the Marines holding up the ponchos.
«This is what Trombley did," Bryan says. A Marine at the front of the convoy says he passed the same shepherds and it was obvious to him that they were not hostile. «Twenty Marines drove past those kids and didn’t shoot," he says.
«Don’t say that," Colbert says. «Don’t put this on Trombley. I’m responsible for this. It was my orders.»
Colbert kneels down over the kid and starts crying. He doesn’t lose control or anything dramatic. His eyes just water, and he says, «What can I do here?»
«Apparently fucking nothing," Bryan says.
Within a couple of minutes, the Recon Marines have come up with a plan. They load the boy onto a stretcher to carry him into the camp. With Colbert and Bryan carrying the front of the stretcher, they lead the entire entourage of Marines and Bedouin tribespeople underneath the camouflage nets of the battalion headquarters. «What the hell is going on here?» Sgt. Maj. John Sixta, First Recon’s
«We brought him here to die," Bryan says defiantly.
«Get him the fuck out of here," the sergeant major bellows.
Ten minutes after they carry the Bedouin boy off, Ferrando has a change of heart. He orders his men to bring the Bedouins to the
Colbert walks off, privately inconsolable. «I’m going to have to bring this home with me and live with it," he says. «Pilots don’t see what they do when they drop bombs. We do." He goes back to the Humvee, sits Trombley down and tells him he is not responsible for what happened: «You were following my orders." Already there are rumors spreading of a possible judicial inquiry into the shooting. «Is this going to be OK, I mean with the investigation?» Trombley asks Colbert.
«You’ll be fine, Trombley.»
«No. I mean for you, Sergeant." Trombley grins. «I don’t care what happens, really. I’m out in a couple of years. I mean for you. This is your career.»
«I’ll be fine." Colbert stares at him. «No worries.»
(After an inquiry, Trombley and Bravo Company are cleared of any wrongdoing.)
Something’s been bothering me about Trombley for a day or two, and I can’t help thinking about it now. I was never quite sure if I should believe his claim that he cut up those two Iraqis in Gharraf. But he hit those two shepherds, one of whom was extremely small, at more than 200 meters, from a Humvee bouncing down a rough road at forty miles per hour. However horrible the results, his work was textbook
[From Issue 925 — June 26, 2003]
The Killer Elite, Part Two: From Hell to Baghdad
One week into the war, the invaders have become the prey, the killing has become routine and the men of Bravo Company are beginning to wonder if they have sent me on a suicide mission
EVAN WRIGHTPosted Jul 10, 2003 12:00 AM
It’s not a good day for God in Iraq. Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Bodley, chaplain for the First Reconnaissance Battalion, is trying to minister to fighting Marines, now resting for the first time since the invasion of Iraq began more than a week ago. They have set up a defensive camp by the airfield they seized near Qal’at Sukkar, in central Iraq. After their initiation into
Bodley is new to First Recon, and he confesses that he finds these Marines tough to counsel. «The zeal these young men have for killing surprises me," he admits. «When I first heard them talk so easily about taking human lives, using such profane language, it instilled in me a sense of disbelief and rage. People here think Jesus is a doormat.»
Over by Sgt. Brad Colbert’s Humvee, the Marines lounge under the camouflage netting, enjoying a few idle hours on a hot afternoon. Cpl. Joshua Person, the team’s driver, lounges with his shirt off, trying to roast the «chacne» — chest zits — off his skin in the harsh Iraqi sun. Gunnery Sgt. Michael Wynn, the senior enlisted man in Bravo Company’s Second Platoon, stops by to pass the latest gossip. «Word is," he says in a mild Texas accent, «we might go to the Iranian border to interdict smugglers.»
«Fuck, no!» Person says. «I want to go to Baghdad and kill people.»
A couple of men pass the time naming illustrious former Marines — Oliver North, Captain Kangaroo and John Wayne Bobbit. «After they sewed his dick back on, didn’t he make porn movies where he fucked a midget?» someone asks.
Wynn, who’s
It took these Marines nearly a week to reach this airfield, and they are less than halfway to their destination: the city of Al Kut, sixty miles to the north and headquarters of a Republican Guard division. The Marines are also fighting their way into uncharted moral terrain, hunting an enemy that has remained hidden — dressed in civilian clothes, shooting at them from within populated areas. At times, the slaughter of unarmed civilians will almost seem to exceed that of actual combatants.
It’s an adage among officers that «a bitching Marine is a happy Marine." By this standard, no officer makes the Marines in First Recon happier than their commander, Lt. Col. Steve Ferrando. They blame Ferrando for staffing the officer corps with men they feel are incompetent, such as the platoon commander the Marines have derisively nicknamed Captain America — who will shortly come under suspicion for mistreating enemy prisoners of war. They blame Ferrando for leading them into the ambush two days ago at Al Gharraf, where one Marine was wounded and many others narrowly, even miraculously, escaped death. They blame Ferrando for sending them on the
In their most paranoid moments, a few Marines believe their commander is trying to get them killed. «In some morbid realm," says Sgt. Christopher Wasik, «it may be a possibility that the commander wants some of us to die, so when he sits around with other leaders, they don’t snicker at him and ask what kind of shit he got into. Yeah, that’s the suspicion around here." (Asked about these sentiments, Ferrando says, «It’s unfortunate some of them feel that way. When you sign up for war, you get shot at.«)
It often seems as if bitching about Ferrando serves as a release valve for all the frustrations the Marines don’t complain about. None of them has slept more than three hours straight since leaving Kuwait last week. Even worse, their diet has been reduced to about one and a half meals a day (following an incident in which one of their supply trucks carrying rations was blown up by Iraqis). Nor do they complain about their water, also in short supply, which smells and tastes, in the opinion of Colbert, like «dirty ass." Many Marines who took their boots off for the first time in a week when they set up the camp discovered the skin on their feet was rotting off in pale white strips like tapeworms as a result of fungal infections. They don’t complain about the flies that infest the camp; their constant coughing, runny noses and weeping, swollen eyes caused by continual dust storms; or the cases of vomiting and diarrhea that afflict about a quarter of them. Instead of bitching about these miseries, the Marines laugh.
A few of them will admit to deeper misgivings, not to mention outright fear. «This is all the
Espera, like a lot of others, joined the Marines to prove something. He grew up in a turbulent home in a sketchy area outside Los Angeles and scraped by for four years in his early twenties as a
At one point a few years ago, he claims, he deliberately avoided earning his
Espera was among the first Marines on the ground in Afghanistan and spent
The next night, a spy plane reports a potential Iraqi armored column moving toward First Recon’s perimeter, and Marines near Colbert’s position claim to have counted as many as 140 Iraqi vehicles, headlights inexplicably on. Colbert, who also observes the lights, scoffs at the report. «Those are the lights of a village," he tells his men.
His opinion is not shared by others. At high levels within the division, the alarm is sounded that First Recon is about to be hammered by a sizable Iraqi armored force. U.S. military doctrine is pretty straightforward in situations like this: If there even appears to be an imminent threat, bomb the shit out of it. One of First Recon’s officers, Capt. Stephen Kintzley, puts it this way: «We get a few random shots, and we fire back with such overwhelming force that we stomp them. I call it disciplining the Hajjis," he says, using a nickname for Iraqis common among U.S. military personnel.
In the next few hours, wave after wave of attack jets and bombers drop an estimated 8,000 pounds of ordnance around the camp. The next day, Recon sends out a foot patrol to do
On March 30th, First Recon pulls back from the airfield and joins up with the main Marine battle force in central Iraq, Regimental Combat Team One, camped out by Highway 7, the main road between An Nasiriyah and Al Kut. Comprising approximately 7,000 Marines, RCT 1 is about twenty times larger than First Recon and, with nearly 200 tanks and armored vehicles, much better armed. Evidently feeling secure with so much armor in the vicinity, battalion command allows the men to go to sleep without digging the usual holes that protect them from shrapnel in case of an attack.
At about midnight, I awaken as a series of explosions turns the field across the battalion’s row of Humvees into what looks like a sea of molten orange and blue liquid. In my effort to roll underneath the Humvee for protection, I slam into Person, sleeping next to me. «Don’t worry about that," he says over the roar. «That’s our artillery. It’s just
The next morning, the men are informed that they are lucky to be alive — they were nearly bombarded by Iraqi artillery, not «
Fick also tells the men that the battalion is resuming its drive north. «We’re following the Al Gharraf canal, doing a movement to contact." He offers another grimly amused smile. This means the battalion will be rolling in the open toward expected ambush points, trying to flush out the enemy. First Recon will take the west side of the canal and move ahead of RCT 1, which will be on the opposite bank. First Recon’s objective is Al Hayy, a town of about 40,000. It’s a Ba’ath Party headquarters and home to a large Republican Guard unit.
At about eight o’clock, I set out with Colbert’s team, back in the Humvee with Trombley on the SAW machine gun to my left, Cpl. Walt Hasser on the
By midmorning, the Marines stop a truck racing across a field. The truck carries about twenty Iraqi men who are dressed in civilian clothes but are armed. They insist they are farm laborers and have weapons because they are afraid of bandits. But while being chased, several threw bags out of the truck. When the Marines retrieve the bags, they find Republican Guard military documents and uniforms, still drenched in sweat. They take the Iraqis prisoner, binding their wrists with plastic zip cuffs and loading them into one of the battalion’s transport trucks.
Still taking occasional
After about six hours of searching for an elusive enemy, the men in Colbert’s Humvee are worn down, their nerves frayed. The chatter and profanity and inside jokes have ceased. Even Person — who started off the morning repeating the chorus of Country Joe McDonald’s
«Person, get out of the vehicle," Colbert orders.
Everybody dives out of the Humvee and takes cover behind a berm. Marines from the forty other vehicles follow suit. «That’s a goddamn ZPU!» Colbert says, referring to a type of powerful multibarreled Russian
«That’s cool," he says in a low voice as another salvo of ZPU rounds zings past. «I think I see it, Sergeant.»
Colbert and Person now rise over the berm, somewhat more cautiously than Trombley. Following his initial directions, they spot the
I later ask Trombley why he showed no signs of fear, seemed quite calm in fact, when he sat up on the berm and located the position of the gun that seemed to be terrorizing just about every other Marine in the battalion. «I know this might sound weird," Trombley says, «but deep down inside I want to know what it feels like to get shot. Not that I want to get shot, but the reality is, I feel more nervous watching a game show on TV at home than I do here in all this.»
He tears into his plastic
«All this stupidity is making me want to kill myself," Person counters grimly, one of his first displays of low spirits in Iraq.
Despite the triumph of taking out the ZPU, the
The twenty prisoners of war that First Recon picked up earlier in the day — suspected Republican Guard soldiers — are packed into the rear of a flatbed transport truck, sitting on benches. Marines are tying the Iraqis' wrists with parachute cord. Left in the truck during the attack from the ZPU while their Marine captors dived behind the nearby berms for cover, the prisoners had gnawed through their plastic wrist cuffs like rats. The Iraqis jostle in their seats, hands bound behind their backs. They are like a small
Sgt. Larry Sean Patrick, a team leader and sniper in Colbert’s platoon, has spotted an Iraqi several hundred meters away, parked in a white pickup. He seems to be an observer. The rules of evidence are somewhat looser in a combat zone than they are back home — which means that he earns himself a death sentence for the crime of appearing to be holding binoculars and a radio. Patrick fires one shot, watches for a few moments through his scope and says, «The man went down.»
This is Patrick’s second sniper kill in Iraq. Another sniper in First Recon, who calls his rifle Lila, short for Little Angel — the pet name for his daughter — can describe in vivid detail the gory circumstances of each kill he’s bagged. Patrick doesn’t say much about his kills. He doesn’t seem to take much pleasure in them. The sergeant says he’d eagerly leave the war if somehow magically given the chance, but adds, «Just the same, I want to be with these guys so I can do what I can to help them live.»
No more mortars are fired after Patrick’s shot. Evidently, he killed the right man. Fick says the battalion is now going to execute the final stage of today’s mission: to drive along the western side of Al Hayy, then cut across a bridge into the city, skirt its northern edge and seize the main highway bridge out of town. The whole point is to seal off the northern escape route from the city before RCT 1 assaults at dawn. Given the past eight hours of harassing fire south of the city, Fick is less than cheerful about the prospect of driving into Al Hayy — First Recon now has fewer than 300 Marines going into a city of 40,000. After briefing his men, he says privately to me, «This is Black Hawk Down shit we are doing.»
As the convoy starts rolling, Cobra escorts pour rockets and
Though almost no one ever talks religion, some Marines silently repeat prayers. Cpl. Jason Lilley, the driver of the Humvee just behind Colbert’s, clenches the wheel. He’s staring ahead, unblinking, lips moving. He later tells me that although he’s not a big Christian or anything, he was just saying, «Lord, see us through," over and over.
From an ambush standpoint, we drive through the worst terrain imaginable. The road sinks down and snakes between
Across from the building, a live Arab lies in the road. He’s in a dingy white robe, squeezed between piles of rubble. The man is only about five feet from where our wheels pass, on his back with both hands covering his eyes. After being subjected to hostile fire all day, there’s a kind of sick, triumphant rush in seeing another human being, perhaps an enemy fighter, now on his back, helplessly cowering. It’s empowering in a way that is also depressing. All the Marines who drive past the man train their guns on him but don’t shoot. He’s not a threat, childishly trying to protect his face with his hands.
A few minutes later, First Recon reaches its objective: the highway bridge that leads over a small canal and out of the city. The bridge presents another strange juxtaposition typical of Iraq. After moving all day through clusters of
Fick walks up, grinning. Even loaded down with his vest, flak jacket and bulky
But the one thing the Marines haven’t trained for, or really even thought through, is the operation of roadblocks. The basic idea is simple enough: Put an obstacle like concertina wire in the road and point guns at it. If a car approaches, fire warning shots. If it keeps coming, shoot it. The question is: Do the Iraqis understand what’s going on? When it gets dark, can Iraqi drivers actually see the concertina wire? Even Marines have been known to drive through concertina wire at night. The other problem is warning shots. In the dark, a warning shot is simply a series of loud bangs and orange flashes. It’s not like this is the international code for «Stop your vehicle and turn around." As it turns out, many Iraqis react to warning shots by speeding up. Maybe they just panic. Consequently, a lot of Iraqis die at roadblocks.
The first killings come just after dark. Several cars approach the bridge with their headlights on. Bravo’s.
At this point, no one is completely sure it’s a semi. It sounds like one, but it could also be Iraqi armor or fedayeen who have commandeered a civilian truck and loaded it with weapons and soldiers. What the men do know is that they are completely alone here in the dark. First Recon is the northernmost unit in central Iraq, and there is nothing between its position on this bridge and a mechanized division of 20,000 Iraqis based twenty kilometers north. Only later will it become clear that most regular Iraqi forces won’t fight; on the night of March 31st, that fact is an unknown. Even worse, through the result of a technical glitch, First Recon has lost communication with its air cover. If the battalion is attacked, it will have to fight on its own.
A few seconds after the truck fails to respond to the second warning burst, its headlights dip onto Bravo’s position, blinding the Marines. The truck sounds like it must be doing thirty or forty.
«Light it the fuck up!» someone shouts.
Under the rules of engagement, a vehicle that fails to stop at a roadblock is declared hostile, and everyone in it may justifiably be shot. Almost the entire platoon opens fire. But for some reason, these Marines who have put down enemy shooters with almost surgical precision are unable to take out even the truck’s headlights after several seconds of heavy fire. Red and white tracers and muzzle flashes stream toward the truck.
Just before reaching the concertina wire, the vehicle jackknifes and screeches. The driver’s head has been blown clean off. Meanwhile, three men jump from the cab. Espera, who is wearing
There’s no time to examine the scene of the shooting. The battalion pulls back a couple of kilometers to a more defensible position. Triumphal feelings that soared a
Colbert’s platoon falls back to defend the eastern edge of First Recon’s position, digging several sets of sleeping holes in hard, claylike earth that is nevertheless
Warning shots continually erupt at the roadblock manned by Recon’s Charlie Company a kilometer to the north. We hear one volley, then the sound of a car engine racing. Marines shout orders to fire, and a massive burst of weapons fire follows. The sound of the engine draws closer in the darkness. Guns fire, then there’s a protracted screeching of tires. In the immediate silence, someone says, «Well, that stopped him." For some reason, everyone bursts into laughter.
The Marines on the roadblock watch as men run from the car, waving their hands. They are unarmed. As Marines shout at them, they drop obediently to the side of the road.
Two Marines cautiously approach the car. It is shot up, its doors wide open, lights still on. Sgt. Charles Graves sees a small girl of about three curled up in the back seat. There’s a small amount of blood on the upholstery, but the girl’s eyes are open. Graves reaches in to pick her up — thinking about what medical supplies he might need to treat her, he later says — then the top of her head slides off and her brains drop out. When Graves steps back, he nearly falls over when his boot slips in the girl’s brains. It takes a full minute before Graves can actually talk. The situation is one he can only describe in elemental terms. «I could see her throat from the top of her skull," he says.
No weapons are found in the car. A translator asks the father, sitting by the side of the road, why he didn’t heed the warning shots and stop it. He simply repeats, «I’m sorry," then meekly asks permission to pick up his daughter’s body. The last the Marines see of him, he is walking down the road carrying her corpse in his arms.
Meanwhile, rounds from the artillery strike ordered by Bravo Company
The destruction continues after sunrise.
Civilians line up by the side of the road when First Recon’s convoy assembles that morning. The battalion is heading south, back to Al Hayy, then north on a different route to the next town, Al Muwaffaqiyah. Most of the crowd are boys, twelve to fifteen. The morning’s show of American air power has whipped them into a frenzy. They greet the Marines like they are rock stars. «Hello, my friend!» some of them shout. «I love you!» It doesn’t seem to matter that these young men have just witnessed portions of their city being destroyed. Or maybe this is the very appeal of the Marines. One of the promises made by the Bush administration before the war started was that the Iraqi populace would be pacified by a «shock and awe»
First Recon’s convoy pauses on the road by the bridge. Waving and jumping up and down, kids gathered by the
I stop by Espera’s vehicle, an
Espera turns away in disgust. «That’s why I fucking can’t stand Mexico. I hate Third World countries.»
Despite Espera’s harsh critique of the white man — he derides English as «the master’s language» — his worldview reflects his
Within a
Once the initial excitement wears off, invading a country becomes repetitive and stressful, like working on an
Half of Colbert’s team stretches out in the grass and dozes. It’s beautiful. There’s a stand of palm trees nearby with
The spell is broken when a Recon unit 500 meters down the line opens up on a truck leaving the city. In the distance, a man jumps out holding an AK. He jogs through a field on the other side of the canal. We watch lazily from the grass as he’s gunned down by other Marines.
The birds are singing again when the man across the canal reappears, limping and weaving like a drunk. Nobody shoots him. He’s not holding a gun anymore. The rules of engagement are scrupulously observed. Even so, they cannot mask the sheer brutality of the situation.
A few vehicles down from Colbert’s, another team in the platoon monitors the area where mortars had seemed to be fired from about an hour earlier. This team, led by Sgt. Steven Lovell, a sniper, has been watching the village through binoculars and sniper scopes. They have seen no signs of enemy activity, just a group of civilians — men, women and children — going about their business outside a cluster of three huts. But it’s possible that rounds were fired from there — the fedayeen often drive into a town, launch a few mortars and leave.
In any case, the place is quiet when, at about eleven o’clock, a lone 1,
By noon, First Recon is back on the move, heading toward Muwaffaqiyah, a town of about 5,000. Several kilometers south of the town, the convoy stops in an agricultural village, where locals warn that an ambush is being set up by the bridge into Muwaffaqiyah. It’s another confusing scene. Villagers greet the Marines enthusiastically — fathers hoist babies on their shoulders, teenage girls flout religious code by running out with their heads uncovered, giggling and waving. But only a short way up the road, their neighbors have just been wiped out by a 1,
First Recon sets up a camp four kilometers east of the bridge. Before sundown, a
At about eight o’clock that night, Fick holds a briefing for his platoon’s team leaders. «The bad news is, we won’t get much sleep tonight," he says. «The good news is, we get to kill people." It’s rare for Fick to sound so «moto» — regaling his men with enthusiastic talk of killing. He goes on to present the battalion commander’s ambitious
His men are skeptical. Sgt. Patrick repeatedly questions Fick about the enemy situation on the bridge. «It’s been pounded all day by artillery," Fick answers, waving off his objections, sounding almost glib, like a salesman. «I think the chances of a serious threat are low.»
Fick walks a delicate line with his men. A good officer should be eager to take calculated risks. Despite the men’s complaints against Col. Ferrando for ordering them into an ambush at Al Gharraf, the fact is, only one Marine was injured, and the enemy’s plans to halt the Marines' advance were thwarted. Fick privately admits that there have been times when he’s actually resisted sending his troops on missions, because, as he says, «I care a lot about these guys, and I don’t like the idea of sending them into something where somebody isn’t going to come back." While acting on these sentiments might make him a good person, they perhaps make him a
The men, who ultimately have no choice in the matter, reluctantly voice their support of Fick’s orders. After he goes off, Patrick says, «The people running this can fuck things up all they want. But as long as we keep getting lucky and making it through alive, they’ll just keep repeating the same mistakes.»
Confidence is not bolstered when an Iraqi artillery unit — thought to have been wiped out by this point — sends several rounds slamming into a nearby field. However beautiful artillery might look when it’s arcing across the sky onto enemy positions, when it’s aimed at you, it sounds like somebody hurling freight trains at your head. The Marines run for the nearest holes and take cover.
For tonight’s mission, Colbert’s team wins the honor of driving the lead vehicle onto the bridge. We roll out at about eleven, in total darkness. There’s almost no moon, which makes the operation of
We see the Cobras fire rockets across the bridge a few hundred meters in front of Colbert’s vehicle. The explosions light up the sky. But no one in the vehicle even knows what the Cobras are shooting at. Colbert orders Person to keep driving toward the bridge and the explosions.
Everyone’s life depends on Person. He hunches forward over the steering wheel, his face obscured by the
There’s a
Everyone in the Humvee — except me — has figured this out. They remain extremely calm. «Turn the vehicle around," Colbert says softly. The problem is the rest of the convoy has continued pushing into the kill zone. All five Humvees in the platoon are bunched together, with twenty more pressing from behind. Person gets the Humvee partially turned around; the eucalyptus trees are now on our immediate right. But the pipe prevents the Humvee from moving forward. We stop as Colbert radios to the rest of the platoon, telling them to back the fuck up.
He simultaneously peers out his window through his
There are between five and ten enemy fighters crouched beneath the trees. There are several more across the bridge, manning a machine gun, and still more on the other side of the road. They have the Marines surrounded on three sides. Why they did not start shooting first is a mystery. Colbert believes they simply didn’t understand the capabilities of American
But the Marines' advantage is precarious. As soon as Colbert opens up, the enemy sprays the kill zone with rifle and
They cannot fire indiscriminately with their Humvees so close together. Each carefully picks his targets. Robert Bryan, team medic, in a Humvee behind Colbert’s, takes out two men with head shots. When the.
In our vehicle, Colbert seems to have entered a realm of his own. He stares intently out the window, firing bursts from his weapon and, for some inexplicable reason, humming «Sundown," the depressing 1970s Gordon Lightfoot anthem. Meanwhile, Person, frustrated by the traffic jam, opens his door and, with shots crackling all around, shouts, «Would you back the fuck up!» In the heat of battle, his Missouri accent comes out extra hick. He repeats himself and climbs back in, his movements seeming almost lackadaisical.
It takes five to ten minutes for the platoon to extricate itself from the kill zone, leaving most of the
At sunrise, the marines seem to be in a near hypnotic state. After six hours of combat — their second straight night without sleep — they are given a couple of hours' rest before moving out. They park their Humvees in a dried mud field a few kilometers back from the bridge. Several gather around Colbert’s vehicle, drinking water, tearing into their food rations and cleaning and reloading the weapons they will likely be using again later in the day.
Everyone has radically different ways of dealing with the stress of combat. During lulls in the action, Colbert becomes excessively cheerful. This morning he’s pointing at birds flying overhead, exclaiming, «Look! How pretty!» It’s not like he’s maniacally energized from having escaped death. His satisfaction seems deeper and quieter, as if he’s elated to have been involved in something highly rewarding. It’s as though he’s just finished a difficult crossword puzzle or won at chess.
When Espera comes by to share one of his stinky cigars, he gestures to Colbert and says, «Look at that
Trombley seems interested in combat only during its intense moments — when the bullets are coming directly at us. After that, he often snaps into deep sleeps. During the team’s second assault on the bridge, while rolling toward the firefight, flanked by tanks and armored vehicles with weapons thundering, Trombley was slumped over his machine gun, snoring, and had to be jiggled awake.
I react to fear in a more traditional manner. After the most recent ambush, my entire body was trembling so badly when we rolled back from the bridge that my feet were bouncing off the floor of the Humvee, and my teeth were chattering. Bryan later tells me this was likely a physical reaction to excessive adrenalin, which cuts the flow of blood to the extremities, resulting in severe cold. Person affects no discernible change. «When I am in these ambushes," he asserts confidently, «I don’t feel like I’m going to die.»
Espera, who, after combat, always looks as though his eyes have sunk deeper into their sockets and the skin on his shaved skull has just tightened an extra notch, says, «We’ve been brainwashed and trained for combat. We must say 'Kill!' 3,000 times a day in boot camp. That’s why it’s easy." Then he adds, «That dude I saw crawling last night, I shot him in the grape. Saw the top of his head bust off. That didn’t feel good. It makes me sick." Bryan, with his two confirmed kills in the ambush, says he feels nothing about having taken human lives. «It’s a funny paradox," he says, bringing up his frantic effort a few days earlier to save the life of a civilian wounded by a Marine. «I would have done anything to save that kid. But I couldn’t give a fuck about those guys I just killed. It’s like, you’re supposed to feel fucked after killing people. I don’t.»
Fick, who saw Patrick
Captain America, the platoon commander who is almost universally disrespected by the enlisted men, seems to deal with the stress by rising to a state of jabbering incoherence. Up by the bridge there are four enemy dead scattered under the eucalyptus trees, along with piles of munitions — RPGs, AKs and hand grenades. Captain America runs back and forth, picking up their weapons, hurling them into the nearby canal and screaming at the top of his lungs. No one knows what he’s screaming about or why, but as another officer who came upon this scene later concluded, «Whatever he was doing, he was not being in command.»
The four killed are the first combatants the Marines in First Recon have ever seen up close. The dead wear pleated slacks, loafers and leather jackets. An officer leans down and picks up the hand of one. Between his thumb and index finger, there are words tattooed on his skin in English: I LOVE YOU. The officer reads it aloud for the benefit of the other Marines nearby and says, «These guys look like foreign university students in New York.»
The biggest revelation is the discovery of Syrian passports on the dead fighters. Not one of them is an Iraqi. Sgt. Eric Kocher, 23, a team leader in Captain America’s platoon, is one of the first Marines to notice a fifth enemy fighter, wounded but still alive, lifting his head up and watching the Americans.
Kocher kneels over him and pats him down for weapons. The man howls in pain. He’s shot in the right arm and has a
When news spreads of the foreign identities of the enemy combatants, the Marines are excited. «We just fought actual terrorists," Bryan says. After nearly two weeks of never knowing who was shooting at them, the Marines can finally put a face to the enemy. Intelligence officers in the Marine First Division later estimate that between fifty and
As it turns out, the war for the future of this country is largely being fought between two armies of interlopers.
Just before midnight on April 2nd, the battalion reaches the outskirts of Al Kut. Located 110 miles north of Nasiriyah, Al Kut is the largest city in
This entire campaign has been a feint — a false movement designed to convince the Iraqi leadership that the main U.S. invasion was coming through central Iraq. The strategy has been a success. The Iraqis left a key division and other forces in and around Al Kut in order to fight off a Marine advance that never actually came. With so many Iraqi forces tied down near there, Baghdad was left relatively undefended for the combined Army and Marine assault to come. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the First Marine Division, a key architect of this diversion, later boasts to me, «The Iraqis expected us to go all the way through Al Kut — that the 'dumb Marines' would fight their way through the worst terrain to Baghdad." While the plan worked brilliantly, Mattis adds, with characteristic modesty, «I’m not a great general. I was just up against other generals who don’t know shit.»
It takes two days to reach the outskirts of Baghdad. Hastily erected oil pipelines zigzag along the highway to the city, built by Saddam to flood adjacent trenches with oil that was then set on fire. As a result, smoke hangs everywhere. Saddam intended these flaming oil trenches to be some sort of
Person, however, has an entirely different reaction. Set back from the highway, gleaming like some sort of religious shrine, there is a
First Recon sets up in a field of tall grass next to some
On my first afternoon here, I sit down with Captain America. Back in Kuwait, when Captain America still had a mustache, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Matt Dillon’s goofy
When I bring up one of the complaints his men make against him — his proclivity for leading them on childish but also dangerous treasure hunts for Iraqi military souvenirs — he launches into a detailed description of the relative merits of Iraqi and U.S. arms, freely admitting to taking Iraqi AKs. He even boasts of killing an enemy fighter with one. «These are good,
Sgt. Kocher, one of Captain America’s men, spots me talking to him and later approaches to tell me something that’s troubling him. Kocher is a veteran of Afghanistan, where he served on the same team with Colbert. Like Colbert, Kocher prides himself on his extreme professionalism. He grew up «running around in the backwoods of Pennsylvania» and is powerfully built. When he gets out of the Marine Corps, he plans to become a professional bodybuilder. Where Captain America has a scattered presence, Kocher’s is one of pure focus. He now leads his own Recon team, and three nights ago while patrolling outside Al Kut, he claims Captain America attempted to stab an enemy prisoner of war with a bayonet. According to Kocher, his team was operating in total darkness with NVGs when it encountered an enemy fighter kneeling in a ditch, trying to hide from them. He and two Marines approached the Iraqi, weapons drawn. «The truth is," says Kocher, «We were all pissed because Sergeant Patrick had just been shot, and I wanted to shoot that guy. But that would have given away our position." Kocher and his two men disarmed the Iraqi, with Kocher grabbing him and putting him in a crushing armlock. Then, according to Kocher, Captain America came charging through the darkness with his bayonet drawn. (Long before this incident, I had heard enlisted men belittle Captain America for strutting around with a bayonet, something no other Marine in the battalion did regularly. «He just wants to overdramatize everything, so he feels like more of a hero," says one Marine.) Kocher says, «He jumps over me and jams him in chest with his bayonet. He turned the situation into chaos.»
According to Kocher, the prisoner had rifle magazines clipped to his chest that deflected Captain America’s bayonet. Kocher, Captain America and the man tumbled over. It took several moments of struggling to regain control of the prisoner. Kocher says that as soon as he restrained him, with his arms pinned behind his back, Captain America rushed forward again, this time to kick the enemy in the stomach. «He hits me in the stomach instead," Kocher says.
The sergeant keeps a written log. «I call it my 'bitter journal,' " he says. «If something happens to me, I want my wife to know the truth. Because of guys like Captain America, we’ve fought retarded.»
Captain America disputes Kocher’s version of events. He says the prisoner was not under control when he arrived. In his version, he brandished his bayonet when the man resisted being captured. «I jabbed him with my bayonet," Captain America says. «If I’d wanted to kill him, I would have shot him. By stabbing him, I saved his life.»
In this case, the details seem too murky to draw any firm conclusions. What will soon become clear, though, is that this incident ominously foreshadows one of the more controversial episodes of the campaign, when, a few days later, outside Baghdad, Captain America and his bayonet make another dramatic appearance during a prisoner capture. And this time, ironically, Kocher and another enlisted man critical of Captain America will be involved.
On this night, all is looking good. Ferrando visits Colbert’s team and offers rare praise. «I’ve heard they’re speaking pretty highly of First Recon at division headquarters," Ferrando says. «The general thinks we’re slaying dragons.»
After he leaves, Espera offers his own assessment. «Do you realize the shit we’ve done here, the people we’ve killed? Back home in the civilian world, if we did this, we would go to prison.»
[From Issue 926 — July 10, 2003]
The Killer Elite, Part Three: The Battle For Baghdad
While U.S. forces in the Iraqi capital celebrate the fall of Saddam Hussein, the exhausted Marines of First Recon grind toward their most desperate and bloody battle yet
Evan WrightPosted Jul 24, 2003 12:00 AM
Horsehead is dead. The beloved former First Sergeant in the Marine First Reconnaissance Battalion, a powerfully built
Now, a couple of days later, following a brief sundown memorial around an
It’s April 8th. Army and Marine units began their final assault on Baghdad several hours ago. First Recon, however, will not be heading into the Iraqi capital just yet. It’s feared that Iraqi Republican Guard units may be massing for a counterattack in a town called Ba’qubah, fifty kilometers north of Baghdad. First Recon receives orders to head north and attack these forces. Sgt. Brad Colbert, whose team I am riding with, and the rest of the Marines stop reminiscing about Horsehead and load their Humvees.
About two hundred Recon Marines are slated for this mission. If the
Taking the lead of First Recon’s
The bedlam continues until First Recon moves north of the city and links up with a
Despite the fact that Colbert’s team has been driving into ambushes on an almost daily basis for more than two weeks, this is the first time these Marines have started a mission with an armored escort. «Damn! That’s fucking awesome," Person says. «We’ve got the Great Destroyers with us.»
«No, the escort is not awesome," Colbert says. «This just tells us how bad they’re expecting this to be." As we pull out, Colbert’s mood shifts from darkly brooding to grimly cheerful. «Once more into the great good night," he says in a mock stage voice, then quotes a line from Julius Caesar. «Cry 'havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war.»
Hunched over the wheel, head weighted down with a
«Enemy contact," Colbert says, passing on word from his headset radio. «LAVs report enemy contact ahead.»
War Pig is spread out on the highway, with its closest vehicle about a hundred meters directly in front of Colbert’s and its farthest about three kilometers ahead. Automatic cannons send out tracer rounds that look like orange ropes. They stream out in all directions, orange lines bouncing and quivering over the landscape. Other, thinner orange lines, representing enemy machine guns, stream in toward the LAVs.
Iraqi Republican Guard troops have dug into trenches along both sides of the road. The enemy fighters are armed with every conceivable type of portable weapon — from machine guns to mortars to
«I have no targets! I have no targets!» Colbert repeats over the gunfire, but Cpl. Walt Hasser, the gunner in the turret who operates the
«Cease fire!» Colbert shouts. «Easy there, buddy. You’re shooting a village. We’ve got women and children there.»
The reservists behind us have already poured at least a hundred grenades onto the small clusters of houses by the side of the road. In the window of one dwelling, a lantern glows. Through his
«We’re not shooting the village, OK?» he says. In times like this, Colbert often assumes the tone of a schoolteacher calling a timeout during a frenzied playground scuffle. Mortars are exploding so close you feel the overpressure punching down on the Humvee. But Colbert will not allow his team to give in to the frenzy and shoot unless it finds clear targets or enemy muzzle flashes.
The voice of Captain America comes over the battalion radio, quavering and cracking as he excitedly calls in reports of more incoming fire. This Recon officer — who earned his derisive nickname because of what many of his men view as his overzealous antics — sounds over the radio like his voice is breaking. «Oh, my God!» Person says. «Is he crying?»
«No, he’s not," Colbert says, cutting off what will likely be a bitter tirade about Captain America. In recent days, Person has pretty much forgotten his old hatreds for pop stars such as Justin Timberlake — a former favorite subject of long, tedious rants about what’s wrong with the U.S. — and now he complains almost exclusively about Captain America. Lack of respect for this officer is so acute among enlisted ranks that some of his own men openly refer to him as «dumbass» — sometimes directly to his face.«He’s just nervous," Colbert says, not quite defending the officer. «Everyone’s nervous. Everyone’s just trying to do their job.»
For the next twenty sleepless hours, the Marines in First Recon and War Pig methodically advance up the highway, traveling barely fifteen kilometers, clearing villages on foot, blowing up enemy trucks and weapons caches, and wiping out pockets of Iraqi soldiers as they hide in trenches or take cover in civilian homes.
From a
When Lt. Fick reports the bombardment to his commander over the radio, he is told to remain in position. «Stand by to die, gents," says Sgt. Antonio Espera, a former Los Angeles repo man and
I look out and see Espera hunched over his weapon, his eyes darting beneath the brim of his helmet, watching for the next hit. Beside him, his twenty-
Nicknamed Space Ghost by his fellow Marines, Lilley is tall, gangly, with pale skin. He usually has a
Before leaving on this mission, many of the men in Colbert’s platoon had said goodbye to one another by shaking hands or even by hugging. The formal farewells seemed odd considering that everyone was going to be
In combat, the change seems physical at first. Adrenaline begins to flood your system the moment the first bullet is fired. But unlike adrenaline rushes in the civilian world — a car accident or bungee jump, where the surge lasts only a few minutes — in combat, the rush can go on for hours. In time, your body seems to burn out from it, or maybe the adrenaline just runs out. Whatever the case, after a while you begin to almost lose the physical capacity for fear. Explosions go off. You cease to jump or flinch. In this moment now, everyone sits still, numbly watching the mortars thump down nearby. The only things moving are the pupils of their eyes.
This is not to say the terror goes away. It simply moves out from the twitching muscles and nerves in your body and takes up residence in your mind. If you feed it with morbid thoughts of all the terrible ways you could be maimed or die, it gets worse. It also gets worse if you think about pleasant things. Good memories or plans for the future just remind you how much you don’t want to die or get hurt. It’s best to shut down, to block everything out. But to reach that state, you have to almost give up being yourself. This is why, I believe, everyone had said goodbye to each other. They would still be together, but they wouldn’t really be seeing one another for a while, since each man would in his own way be sort of gone.
After about twenty minutes, the mortar fire ceases for the rest of the day. Enemy resistance is beginning to wither under the combined effects of the Marine advance on the ground and violent airstrikes from above. Had the Iraqis massed their armor earlier in the day when heavy clouds inhibited airstrikes, they could have wreaked havoc. But for some reason, they missed their chance. Clouds have burned off, and waves of jets and Cobra helicopters simultaneously bomb, rocket and strafe targets in all directions. Trucks, armor, homes and entire hamlets are being bombed and set on fire. With the dramatic increase in firepower from the air, First Recon and War Pig rampage north, covering the final ten kilometers to Ba’qubah in a couple of hours. When the Iraqis finally send down a few armored vehicles, they are blown to smithereens by attack jets and Marines with
The Iraqis who had put up fierce resistance earlier have either fled or been slaughtered. Headless corpses — indicating
With each air assault, Recon teams advance into the flames and smoke, hunting for fleeing enemy fighters. The only people Colbert’s team encounters are terrified villagers — a
While this is going on, Sgt. Eric Kocher, leading a team in Bravo’s Third Platoon on a sweep of a nearby field, bumps up against another group of Marines from the reserve Recon unit. About six of the reservists surround a dead enemy fighter, a young man in a ditch, lying in a pool of his own gore, still clutching his AK. While they ponder the corpse, Kocher apparently is the only one alert enough to notice a live Iraqi — this one armed — hiding in a trench nearby.
When Kocher alerts the reservist Marines to the presence of a live Iraqi in their midst, everyone turns his weapon on the man and shouts at him to stand up and drop his weapon. Ever since the weeklong battle in An Nasiriyah, where Iraqis attacked and killed Marines by luring them into ambushes with false surrenders, enemy takedowns have become highly charged affairs. One of the reservist Marines at the scene, First Sgt. Robert Cottle, a thirty-
Cottle cuffs the enemy prisoner’s wrists so tightly that his arms later develop
Kocher marches the Iraqi about thirty meters up to the highway and knocks him to the ground again. But no red flags are raised until Captain America arrives on the scene. By most accounts, Captain America approached the prisoner — now lying facedown — shouting and brandishing his bayonet. The Iraqi began to cry and plead for his life. According to several of the Marines who were there, Captain America began to jab the prisoner with his bayonet and taunt him, threatening to cut his throat.
Captain America,
Kocher says he was worried that the situation was spiraling out of control. He ordered one of the Marines on his team, twenty-
The next day, Sgt. Cottle, the reservist who initially shook Kocher’s hand and thanked him, filed a report charging Kocher, Redman and Captain America with assaulting the prisoner. Cottle later tells me, «I feel bad for the enlisted guys. They weren’t really the problem. It was the officer." One of Cottle’s fellow reservists, a senior enlisted man who also witnessed the events, says, «From what I saw, that officer is sick. There’s something wrong with him.»
Captain America denies any misdeed. He simply thought his accusers were insufficiently acquainted with the realities of the battlefield. «They saw the beast that day, and they didn’t know how to handle it," Captain America says later. «The prisoner was handled properly, even though they didn’t like the way it looked.»
After a while, you begin to almost lose the physical capacity for fear.
My first encounter with the enemy prisoner takes place in the back of Lt. Fick’s Humvee, about an hour after the incident. It’s late in the afternoon, and Bravo’s Second Platoon is manning a roadblock just south of Ba’qubah. The prisoner is squirming on the truck bed, only now there’s a burlap sack tied over his head. A few Marines have gathered around and are taunting him. «What do you think you’d be doing to us if we were your prisoner?» says one
Fick walks over. «Hey, I don’t want any war crimes in the back of my truck." He says this lightly. He has no idea yet of the brewing controversy over the man’s capture. «Untie him and give him some water.»
The man’s arms are swollen and purple when the Marines cut off the zip cuffs. The angry
«Just 'cause we’re feeding you doesn’t mean I don’t hate you," the young Marine says. «I hate you. Do you hear me?»
By the time I speak to the prisoner, I’ve already heard the rumors of his mistreatment during his capture. He has no bayonet marks. The worst sign of mistreatment on his body are gruesome bruises on his arms from the zip cuffs. He speaks English reasonably well and tells me his name is Ahmed
«It is not true,"
The Marines, who were so angry with the man a moment ago, have now warmed up to him. One of them says, «We can’t put our weapons down, either. He was just doing his job." The Marines now smile at him and feed him more poundcake.
About half an hour earlier, the BBC reported that Baghdad has fallen. I pass this information on to him.
He begins to cry. «I am so happy!»
The news is only getting better. Fick walks up and tells
«For free?» he asks, as if unable to believe his good fortune.
Back in colbert’s humvee, we drive back to Baghdad in the darkness. Person begins to sing, «Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.»
«Hold on, buddy!» Colbert shouts.
After forty hours without sleep, more than half of this spent in combat, nerves are on edge, and Person has just violated Colbert’s cardinal rule as team leader: No country music is allowed in this war.
«It’s a cowboy song," Person says.
«I hate to break it to you, but there are no cowboys.»
«Yeah, there are," Person says, his face simultaneously blank and defiant. «There’s tons of cowboys.»
«A cowboy isn’t some dipshit with a
A report comes over the radio of enemy fire on the column. «Hold on," Colbert says, reluctantly putting the argument aside. «I’d like to hear about this firefight.»
War Pig and First Recon, driving south on the same highway they fought their way up during the previous thirty hours, are again taking fire. I spot an enemy muzzle flash no more than five meters from the right side of the vehicle — directly outside my window. Colbert opens up, his rifle clattering. If his past performance in this type of situation is any guide, there’s a strong likelihood he hit his target. I picture an enemy fighter bleeding in a cold, dark ditch and feel no remorse.
They drive the next ten kilometers in near silence, searching for more targets, until they leave the ambush zone. Colbert pulls his weapon back in from the window and resumes his discussion with Person. «The point is, Josh, people that sing about cowboys are annoying and stupid.»
Early the next day, first recon crosses a pontoon bridge over the Diala River and enters Baghdad proper. The greeting in Saddam City, First Recon’s destination on the north side of Baghdad, is a familiar blend of enthusiasm tinged with violence. Three million Iraqis live in Saddam City, a sprawl of
The convoy snakes through the streets again. Iraqis line the way, shouting «Bush! Bush! Bush!» The Marines turn into the gates of an industrial complex, sections of which are still burning from American bombings. Tonight’s camp is a gigantic cigarette factory that sits on the edge of Saddam City. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of burning cigarettes fill the air with what is likely the world’s
Within minutes of sundown, the Marines are rocked by a powerful explosion — a car bomb, about a hundred meters distant. Tracers shoot up from rooftops across the city. Fick walks up to me and smiles. «I was wrong," he says. A few moments later, a random bullet falls from the sky and skips onto the concrete, sparking behind Fick’s back. He laughs. «This is definitely not good.»
It’s factional fighting between Iraqis, and it goes on all night. During the lulls, ambulance sirens wail across the city. Most of the Marines sleep pretty soundly through it anyway. Sgt. Espera uses the free time to work on a letter he’s been writing to his wife back home in Los Angeles. She works at an engineering firm and raises their
By daylight, most of the gunfire stops in Baghdad. Colbert’s team is sent out with the rest of his company to patrol a neighborhood north of Saddam City.
The residents here seem pleased to see the Marines. It turns out that this is a
Aside from the complaints of the idle men, the most striking feature of the neighborhood is the hard labor performed by women. Covered by black robes, they squat in the
«If we’d have fought these women instead of men," another Marine observes, «we might have got our asses kicked.»
Within the first few days of their patrols, the Marines are quickly overwhelmed by the magnitude of Baghdad’s social breakdown. There’s no electricity or clean water. The streets are filled with raw sewage. Children are dying of disease. Bandits roam freely at night. Hospitals have been looted. The only items in plentiful supply are AK rifles. Locals claim that since armories and police stations were overrun at the end of the war, an AK now costs about the same as a couple of packs of cigarettes. Gun battles continue to rage every night among Shias, Sunnis, bandits,
Sadi Ali Hossein — a courtly man in his fifties who helped run one of the city’s main electric plants but now offers his services to the Marines as a translator — has a grim view of Iraq’s future. «This is a bomb," he says of the rift between Sunni and Shia religious factions. «If it explodes, it will be bigger than the war." Sgt. Espera has his own take on the situation. «Let a motherfucker use an American toilet for a week and they’ll forget all about this
Despite the general Iraqi enthusiasm for the American invaders, many of them also spout bizarre conspiracy theories. They believe Bush and Saddam are secretly in league with each other. Iraqis approach Marines and ask them if it’s true that Saddam is now living in Washington,
During the next few days, First Recon moves from the cigarette factory to a wrecked hospital to a looted power plant, all the while dogged by an increasingly bitter rift over the
After days of
I honestly can’t answer him. In the past four weeks, I have been on hand while this comparatively small unit of Marines has killed quite a few people. I personally saw three civilians shot, one of them fatally with a bullet in the eye. These were just the tip of the iceberg. The Marines killed dozens, if not hundreds, in combat through direct fire. And no one will probably ever know how many died from the approximately 30,000 pounds of bombs First Recon ordered dropped during airstnkes, or from the several hundred rounds of artillery the battalion called in on towns and highways, often at night. And of these perhaps hundreds of fatalities, how many others are without legs or eyes or other pieces of their bodies? I can’t imagine how the man ultimately responsible for all of these deaths — at least on the battalion level — sorts it all out and draws the line between what is wanton killing and what is civilised military conduct. I suppose if it were up to me, I might let Captain America keep his job, but I would take away his rifle and bayonet and give him a cap gun.
First recon’s final night in Baghdad, April 18th, is spent camped in the playing field of the soccer stadium that once belonged to Saddam’s son Uday. Tonight, the usual gun battles fought by locals start before sunset. Recon Marines keeping watch high up on the bleachers suddenly come under fire. As rounds zing past, one of the men, caught by surprise, stumbles as he tries to pull his machine gun off the fence and take cover. His arms flail while he tries to regain his balance. More gunshots ring out. Marines watching on the grass below burst into laughter. It’s almost as if the war has turned into a comedy.
Later on, several Marines in another unit gather in a dark corner of the stadium to drink toasts to a
At first light, the battalion leaves Baghdad on a deserted superhighway and sets up camp sixty kilometers south. On Easter Sunday, the chaplain holds a special service in a barren field. «I have good news," he begins, announcing to the crowd of about fifty that a Marine from Recon’s support unit has chosen this day to be baptized. When Colbert hears the good news, he cannot conceal his outrage. To him, religion is right up there with country music as an expression of collective idiocy. «Give me a break," he says. «Marines getting baptized? This used to be a place of men with pure warrior spirit. Chaplains are a goddamn waste.»
The next day, First Recon suffers its fourth and fifth casualties when Gunnery Sgt. David J. Dill, a combat engineer attached to the battalion, steps on a mine and blows his foot off. Flying shrapnel takes out the eye of another Marine nearby. There’s a bitter irony to the confusion that follows. The three Marines cleared in the prisoner incident work together on the rescue. Kocher runs into the minefield to assist Dill. After loading him into a Humvee, Captain America orders the Marines to take a shortcut, over their strenuous objections, and the vehicle becomes mired in a swamp. «Dude, it was awful," says Redman, «trying to rock that Humvee out, with Dill in the back seat, his foot blown off." They finally carried Dill to another Humvee and got him to medical treatment. His leg was amputated below the knee several hours
First recon moves to its final camp in Iraq, at a former Iraqi military base outside the city of Ad Diwaniyah, 180 kilometers south of Baghdad. Bravo Company winds up in one of the shittiest spots in the camp. They set up on an exposed concrete pad next to the latrine trenches and burn pits. Dust storms blow continually. Most Marines have only had one shower in the past forty days. The men are beset by flies and dysentery. Surveying this last infernal camp with an almost satisfied smile, Cpl. Michael Stinetorf, a Second Platoon
«I personally don’t believe we 'liberated' the Iraqis» says Doc Bryan.
The senior officers, set up in nicer quarters across the camp, are basking in the glow of victory. First Recon, one of the smallest, most lightly armed battalions in the Corps, led the way for much of the Marines' blitzkrieg to Baghdad. «No other military in the world can do what we do," Ferrando tells me. «We are America’s shock troops.'' Maj. Gen. James Mattis, whom I also interview at Ad Diwaniyah, heaps praise on the courage and initiative displayed by the men in First Recon, whom he credits with a large measure of success in winning the war. «They should be very proud," he says.
When I return to Second Platoon’s encampment and pass on the general’s praise, the men stand around in the dust considering his glowing remarks. Finally, Cpl. Gabriel Garza says, «Yeah? Well, we still did a lot of stupid shit.»
Despite their success in blasting their way through more than a dozen ambushes and firefights, the Recon Marines did not do the job they had been trained for: stealthy, undetected reconnaissance. «Normally, in our jobs," says Colbert, «if we get shot at, it means we failed. The enemy is never supposed to see us. We’re the most highly trained Marines in the Corps. The way they used us in this war, it’s like they took a Ferrari and put it in a demolition derby. We did OK, but we didn’t sign up for this.»
Even so, most Marines unabashedly love the action. «You really can’t top it," Cpl. Redman says. «Combat is the supreme adrenaline rush. You take rounds. Shoot back, shit starts blowing up. It’s sensory overload. It’s the one thing that’s not over rated in the military.»
Despite their misgivings and their discomfort, the mood is buoyant in this hellish camp. The Marines sleep through each night for the first time in weeks, boil coffee every morning on fires started with
Sgt: Espera composes more long letters to his wife and occasionally shares with younger Marines bits of wisdom he learned on the streets of
Many Marines I talk to are skeptical of the aims used to justify the
Colbert is one of the few Marines who continue to follow the war’s progress on the BBC each day. When the BBC runs a report of a
«Relax, Devil Dog," Espera says, calling him by the universal Marine nickname. «The only thing we have to worry about are the fucking
Published in "Rolling Stone" magazine (issues 925-927, 2003)