Ryan Smithson Read online

  I’m an American, and I know these children and their parents don’t want me here. I know they hate me and burn my flag and drag soldiers’ bodies through the streets.

  Fuck ’em. I didn’t choose to come here. I’m here on orders.

  They want to throw rocks, I’ll give them a brain full of 5.56 rounds. Put my M16 on burst. Three rounds in rapid succession. The military took the automatic option out of M16s after so much ammo was wasted in Vietnam, but they’ll never take away that three-round burst. Aim low. Maybe I’ll get ’em in the stomach and they’ll suffer some before they bleed out. Right there on the side of the road. Right there in front of their stupid sheep.

  Suck it up. This is war we’re talking about, GI. This is your life we’re talking about, GI Joe Schmo.

  I have four men standing in the back of my dump truck. One has a mounted M60 machine gun. Another has a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) machine gun. The other two have M16s and hand grenades. Let’s see some blood, gunners.

  Throw rocks at you? You’re going to let haji rocks take you out of the game on your first convoy? You’re going to let haji rocks keep you from your family? That won’t happen on my truck. Let’s bathe the streets in blood, comrades.

  Dozens of children line the road. They raise their hands. Their hands are empty. The kids look at Munoz and me with dark round eyes and pull their hands to their mouths. Their sheep stand in huddled masses behind them, and the children motion their empty hands to their mouths over and over again. They are begging for food.

  Cold lightning drops down my spine. Tears leak into the corners of my eyes.

  This is Neil Munoz’s first time in Iraq, and he waves to the kids.

  “Jesus,” he says. “See that?”

  You don’t know what sadness looks like until you’ve seen children begging for food. Munoz rummages behind his seat, finds an open box of MREs. He tosses a few out of his window, and the kids rush to pick them up. In the side mirrors I can see the children devouring the salty, cardboard meals.

  This is the moment of my epiphany. When adults say, “Someday, you’ll understand,” this is what they’re talking about. When your parents yelled at you for not finishing dinner—“There are children starving in Africa.” This is why the drill sergeants told me I was stupid to be a hero. This is why we invaded Iraq.

  On the side of the road: Their faces are worn. Their bodies are scrawny. Their clothes are rags. To get around, they use their feet—dirty, farmland feet that have grown up walking on rocks, thick-skinned feet that have never worn designer shoes.

  The children look as if they should be in elementary school, but their eyes show wisdom I never would have understood in elementary school. These kids have wisdom I’m only beginning to grasp now. They are dirty and sweaty from working in the fields all day. They don’t work to make money. They don’t get allowance. They don’t have part-time jobs after school busing tables so they can buy their first cars or new clothes or TV/DVD player combos for their bedrooms. They work to live. They farm crops and livestock so their family can eat.

  How many kids in America can say their day-to-day efforts are a result of the struggle to survive?

  Conscious of the fact that the military sees them as more of a threat than their children, the parents stand farther away from the road. They wave or hold their thumbs up, but they don’t beg. In Middle Eastern culture giving is more valued than receiving. On their faces I see them watching our convoy intently, curious as to whether or not we will throw food. Because they are hungry too.

  They are not burning flags in large chaotic riots like I expected, like the evening news said. Their thumbs are up.

  After six hours of driving we arrive at Camp Scania in southern Iraq for a fuel-up.

  Moore is the first one to break the silence as we stand beside our long line of staged vehicles, some of us smoking cigarettes, some of us pissing behind wheel wells.

  “You see those kids?” Scott Moore says.

  “Yeah,” we say.

  “Didn’t expect that,” I say.

  “Me neither.”

  There’s no point in being tough about this war, this vile stomach of a country. Being tough, being bloodthirsty, no longer seems important.

  Moore adds, “It breaks your heart.”

  After fueling we drive, past Baghdad and over the Tigris River. We pass Balad and arrive at Camp Anaconda. According to the rumors, it’s not such a bad spot to end up. It’s an old air base that was built in the 1980s. This means that our housing should be pretty decent. The base has been established for a while, so the chances of occupying a hard building (i.e., not a tent) are pretty good. The air force is based here, and the air force treats its servicemen about a thousand times better than the army does. They wouldn’t be stationed anywhere without access to showers, and at the very least, housing trailers.

  We unload our gear into our temporary homes. They call it Tent City, and it’s similar to how we stayed in Kuwait. A bunch of tents dress, right, dressed as if standing in formation.

  It’s almost 2300 hours (eleven P.M.), and as we park the vehicles and unload our personal gear, Christmas is just around the corner. I’m standing in my tent when the clock strikes 0000.

  “Merry Christmas,” I say in the driest voice possible. Imagine if Christmas was a doctor’s appointment. That’s how much we feel like celebrating.

  After a couple hours of unloading and a short briefing by the commander we bunk down. A dozen or so fold-out army cots are squished into this tent on concrete floors. On the outside rocks cover the ground. The rocks cover the dirt. Because the dirt turns to mud when it rains. And in Iraq, during winter, it rains a lot.

  When we wake up in the morning, we rally between the four tents that EQ platoon occupies. LT Zeltwanger, platoon leader, stands in the middle.

  “Great job on the convoy,” he says. “You guys are released for the day. Go contact your families. Tell them you love them.”

  He gives us information about where the phone centers are, the internet cafés, the chow hall, and the shower trailers, and gives us our mailing address so our families can send packages.

  “Oh,” he says. “And Merry Christmas.”

  I think of Heather and my parents. Back home, eight hours behind, it’s about midnight. I can’t call them yet, this afternoon maybe. For the last three days we’ve been convoying. We haven’t been able to call or e-mail. Just like when we left for Kuwait, I didn’t discuss specifics when I talked to them.

  I know I’m safe, but I think of Heather and my parents and how hard it must be for them not to have that peace of mind. For the last few days they’ve been worrying, knowing that I’m driving into a war zone.

  I think of past wars. Soldiers who didn’t have phone access. Soldiers who didn’t even know something like the Internet could even exist. I can’t imagine how their families got by. Back home they’d wait weeks, months maybe, before they received word. And sometimes that word was a notification of death.

  But luckily, I’ll be able to call and e-mail today. Luckily, I’ll be able to tell them I’m okay.

  An alarm. A slow, loud alarm like a town fire alarm back home. It echoes across the huge air base. Everyone in my tent stops and looks at one another.

  “What the hell is that?” asks SGT Tim Folden.

  SSG (Staff Sergeant) Lee says, “I think that’s the mortar alarm.”

  A mortar is a flying bomb. It’s manually shot into the air from a tube.

  “I didn’t hear anything explode,” I say. But this camp is huge. It could have hit miles away or not even landed on post. It could have been a near miss. Or maybe it’s a drill.

  We throw on our body armor and Kevlar helmets. We don’t need our weapons to fight or anything. But in the military you never, ever leave a weapon unattended. So we grab them, too, and run out of the tent. There’s a nearby mortar bunker that we duck into. It’s a four-foot-high tunnel of concrete shaped like a box. The openings of the tunnel are protected by stacks
of sandbags.

  “I think we’re supposed to wait twenty minutes,” says Folden.

  So we wait, sitting on rocks under a box of concrete. All twelve soldiers from my tent wearing body armor and clutching M16s. Waiting to hear something explode, we GI Joe Schmos realize our war has begun.

  THE EIGHT-HOUR DELAY

  “We can do this one of two ways,” LT Zeltwanger says to his driver, SPC Greene.

  “Okay, sir,” says Greene.

  “There’s the right way, and there’s the fast way.”

  The lieutenant and his driver, a specialist like myself, sit in a cheaply armored Humvee. Its motor snores in neutral, staring at a large field of dirt, waiting for its driver to make a decision. This large field of dirt is to become EQ platoon’s first mission.

  Clearing is when a room, a service route, or a field of dirt, for example, is swept thoroughly for mines, forgotten artillery, the presence of evil doers. It’s a very crucial and lifesaving step. This hasn’t happened at all.

  It’s January 2005, and Iraq is a combat zone. In the middle of this combat zone, in an open dirt field, an entire platoon will be working, sleeping, eating, and digging shit holes for the next two weeks.

  When LT asks the battalion staff whether the field has been cleared of explosives, they have no idea what he’s talking about.

  LT sits in the haji armored Humvee with twenty-year-old Greene—both of them looking at this field of dirt, hoping it won’t be the last thing they ever see. They have to clear this field. The right way or the fast way.

  The right way: Hands and knees. A minesweeper maybe. One cubic meter at a time. Double-check.

  The fast way: No hesitation. Zigzag through the site. Turn around. Pray. Zigzag back the other way.

  The entire platoon is stretched out along the road behind LT’s Humvee. We’re in immediate danger of attack from car bombs or mounted insurgents. We need to pull our vehicles into the field and set up a defensive perimeter.

  Greene smiles at Zeltwanger.

  “Better go fast,” says LT. And Greene stomps the pedal to the floor.

  They make their first set of connected Zs. Right away it’s obvious how slow Humvees actually move when the gas is punched from a dead stop. And zigzagging through winter mud doesn’t make them any faster. If something explodes, they’re both so toasted. They’re growing to love the adrenaline.

  They zigzag back, turning their Zs into hourglasses, tied shoelaces. The field is cleared as best as it can be, and the rest of the platoon—army green 20-ton dump trucks and M916 tractor trailers carrying scoop loaders and bulldozers—pull in.

  In January in Iraq the air is chilly and the wind won’t stop. Our hands are chapped and red from it. It’s 70 degrees during the day and 30 at night. This 40 degree difference between day and night, it’s like being on another planet.

  In January it rains all the time. And the dust that covers this country doesn’t mix with water. Imagine walking in a twelve-inch blanket of chunky peanut butter. Every step sinks deeper, gets heavier. It cakes up around the sides of your boots, so you have to stop and wipe it off with your chapped hands. It doesn’t shake off like normal mud. Imagine boots, gear, and vehicles buried in this stuff.

  Your family is eight hours away. The family you’re sure won’t even recognize you when you get home. The eight-hour delay between Iraq and the United States is a lifetime away.

  Now you have a new family. The only family who understands you are the fifty soldiers you’ve grown to love. At first you just put up with their snoring, their smell. Then you get to like them, their knack for biting sarcasm. Before you know it, you’re one of them. It’s like being on a wrestling team, only you’re more pissed off and carrying munitions. That’s a platoon of American soldiers in Iraq.

  We unload the vehicles. An M16 for each of us. Some of us have SAWs. Or we have an M60, a machine gun like the SAW but with fatter bullets.

  Each of us shoulders a rucksack. These portable homes, efficiently packed without an inch of wasted space, contain everything we’ll need for Lord knows how long. A day? A month? Pack everything. Pack like you’re not coming back.

  Inside our rucksacks there are at least eight pairs of green socks and eight carbon copy brown T-shirts. There’s the wet weather gear, the poncho, and the roll of 550 cord. Utility equipment to make everything from dry shelter to cover from the enemy to shade in the sun. And of course, there are the two essentials: baby wipes and deodorant. Field showers.

  In our rucksacks we have the other necessities, like beef jerky, trail mix, and hand sanitizer. A deck of cards, a good book, and a flashlight with a red lens cap. The red light so haji can’t see us.

  Hanging off our rucksacks there’s the sleeping bag that smells like camping, that old, dusty smell that gets all over everything. There’s the E-tool (entrenching tool): a small black, collapsible shovel. We’ll be using it to create extra-portable toilets. Field expedient.

  Everyone unloads, fit with body armor and watchful eyes. Palm trees, orchards, and plenty of peanut butter mud for scenery. It’s nine o’clock in the morning and still chilly. Our words puff clouds of steam as we talk and drink coffee. We wear polypropylene undershirts, gunner’s gloves, fleece caps underneath our Kevlar helmets to keep warm.

  We execute LT’s plan. We unroll concertina wire and fix it to the ground. We establish fighting positions and lookout points all along our perimeter. We post guards, and they watch their “sectors of fire.” All the vehicles sit in the center of our newly established “camp,” all our gear scattered around them. The army look.

  An hour or so later, after everything is set up, LT rallies a briefing. We stand around him in a circle. We’re anxious, excited, and curious about our first mission.

  LT gives a detailed briefing:

  The military bridge that runs across the Tigris River, only half a mile from this point, has an entrance that isn’t wide enough. The army’s HEMTTs are too big to negotiate the last turn onto the bridge. The trucks keep taking out the concrete barriers that border the road there. Civilian vehicles have been hit because there is a civilian bridge that runs parallel to ours. It’s a bad situation: slow moving and full of distractions.

  LT explains the second part of the mission, the army’s deal with the local sheik. There’s a local family: mother, father, kids. They’re sustenance farmers who had a bad year due to erosion. New, freshly turned soil would be a great help to them and the local economy. In exchange for our efforts, the sheik has given us this large dirt field from which we can pull land.

  LT mentions our SOP about giving out food and water to civilians. He does this with a wink, because our SOP for giving out water and food is “under no circumstances,” and he knows that none of us will listen.

  This is not because the army doesn’t care about the civilians here. It’s just that there have been a few instances where kids have been run over trying to fetch a box of water or MREs from the road.

  Before we leave on a convoy mission, SGT Buckelew stands as the gunner on LT’s two-door Humvee. There’s no armor on this vehicle, nothing to protect Buckelew from haji’s bombs and bullets except for dust and sunlight. He leans down and tells LT that this particular army policy is complete bullshit.

  “This is a desert culture, sir,” he says. “How can we accomplish anything here if we can’t even share water?”

  LT nods and tells Buck to make sure the last cases of water in the Humvee are strapped down. The LT would just hate to have a couple of them “accidentally” fall from the vehicle as they pulled out…

  SSG Charles Selby is a driver and a gunner. He’s a gruff and otherwise unforgiving dude. He always volunteers for the lead vehicle, probably the most dangerous spot to be in a convoy, and never hesitates under fire. He personally trained all of the heavy weapons operators and machine gunners in the company. Selby is an expert at warfare and violence. Today, he rests his arm on a case of Girl Scout cookies he just received in the mail. And he has no intentions
of eating them.

  LT has also been in contact with the local Iraqi police chief. He controls this part of town and wants to know what we’re doing. The police chief nods at LT’s explanation. The men shake hands, and the police chief asks for a favor.

  Lay it on me, says LT.

  Radical extremists come in the cover of night to kidnap and kill local civilians in their homes. The town is too pro-American, and civilians suffer the consequences. On random nights, the extremists’ drive their Mercedes down a side road to get to the town. Conveniently enough, it runs right through our newly established camp.

  “We’ll take care of that right now,” LT says, turning to Renninger, my squad leader. “Won’t we?”

  “Yes, sir,” Renny replies with a satisfied grin.

  Renny tosses his Marb red on the ground and jumps on a bulldozer. In all of five minutes he’s built a dirt berm the size of a tank. It’s a wall right across the side road with our M60 machine gun fighting position sitting right on top. No radicals will be using this road to kidnap or kill civilians anytime soon.

  Later that night, sure enough, a black Mercedes, barrels down the side road. It flies by palm trees and bounces along the rough dirt road.

  SGT O’Brien is on the M60, his trigger finger ready for anything.

  LT Zeltwanger is next to him. “Watch this,” he says.

  The car’s brakes lock up. Tight. They skid to a stop only feet away from the berm. It’s eight o’clock, and the sun is almost down. But there’s still enough light for the radicals to see the silhouettes of O’Brien and LT on the hill and the machine gun poised between them. Both LT and O’Brien are praying. Just give us a reason to light you up, you cowardly shits.

  But they don’t. The car slams into reverse, and the radicals who kill families while they’re sleeping never return.

  The next day, the villagers, the ones we’re really fighting for, celebrate because no one was murdered the previous night. And the women of the village prepare fresh flat bread in a brick oven and bring it down to us.

  For the next two weeks, with the help of B Company, we move over 15,000 cubic yards of dirt to the bridge and the local family. We live out of our rucksacks. Baby wipe and deodorant showers. Security perimeter shifts at all times of the night. Eating MREs twice a day and digging holes for toilets.