Lieutenant Krauss radioed that the MPs had secured the site but still needed help. They were undermanned and unable to handle security, processing prisoners, and chasing down fleeing targets all at once. Captain Yarrow told Krauss we were on our way.
The road rose onto a wide berm running along a canal. We drove down one side until it stopped, then doubled back to a bridge we’d passed and crossed to the other. We followed the berms, a maze in bas-relief, not sure where we were going but definitely headed the right general direction.
Eventually we came to a dip where the road led off the berm and through a depression. We followed it down then up around a low hill onto another berm, lined on one side with concertina wire, running northeast by southwest along an even larger canal. This was the canal we had to cross. There was no way across. We stopped.
“That’s the house right there,” the BC said, pointing out a low, distant building surrounded by trucks. I looked with my NVGs: Martians making the green scene, maybe six hundred meters away.
We mounted up and drove until we came to a Bradley parked across the berm. Beyond the Bradley rose a wire-topped wall, BIAP’s outer perimeter. Captain Yarrow scowled. He got out to talk with the Bradley commander, who didn’t think there was any way across the canal from this side.
“You’ve gotta go around north,” he said, “through Gate 7.”
Captain Yarrow came back to the truck. “Head back to the CP,” he said. It was nearly midnight.
He radioed Lieutenant Krauss and told him find another route. Lieutenant Krauss said he thought he had one that went through Abu Ghraib, west along the highway, but that he had to show him on the map.
As we pulled through Gate 2, Lieutenant Krauss radioed and said the MPs had called off the request. We pulled up to the CP and Captain Yarrow ordered senior leadership into the hooch for an After-Action Review. Everyone else was dismissed.
I unloaded my rifle, stripped my battle rattle, and bummed a smoke from Healds. We had little to say. The whole thing was too dumb. All I could think about was how soon I’d take off my boots, crack open my cot, and rack out.
Halfway through our smoke, Lieutenant Krauss came out and started digging in the humvee, at first leisurely then with growing panic.
“Wilson, you see the BC’s sidearm?”
“No, sir,” I said. “Why?”
“You sure?”
“Not since we rolled out. Why?”
“You might wanna get your gear back on.”
He ran back into the CP. Healds and I put our gear back on. A few minutes later the BC, Lieutenant Krauss, and some other soldiers mounted up and we took two trucks, C6 and C5, out the gate.
“Lock and load,” the BC said flatly, his empty white hands in his lap.
He decided we’d start at the last place we’d been, so we drove all the way back through Checkpoint 7 out to the berm, going the whole way at walking speed so we could search the road with flashlights.
My helmet bit into my temples. Next to me, Yarrow’s neck was tight with tension, his mouth set in a grimace.
We drove up to the Bradley, inching across the sand, then came back. We stopped so Lieutenant Krauss could kick at shrubs and poke in shadows. We drove back to the field outside Checkpoint 7 and parked in the furrows, policing them on foot. Please, I prayed, somebody please attack us.
We drove back to the other side of BADW, back among the houses, scanning the ground at a creep. The moon had set. It was after three. I was too tired to care anymore. We stopped in the cul-de-sac and searched the ditch on foot. The Iraqi men came out to watch us again.
We drove back down the alley with the wall on the left and the vegetation on the right, the first place we’d gone, and there, next to the donkey cart, was the Battery Commander’s pistol, its lanyard splayed in the dust. It still had a round chambered.
The BC smiled as he holstered his sidearm. “Good work, men. Let’s head home.”
Prerecorded bugles pierced the dark. “Crusader Rock!” Mondays and Wednesdays out the kaserne gate, running up past the Edelsteinminen into the wooded hills or down through the cobbled streets of Idar-Oberstein. Muscle-failure Tuesdays, push-ups, sit-ups. Thursdays training. Fridays the “fun run,” the whole battery, straight down the hill to the Bahnhof then suffer back up.
Mondays were Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services, Tuesdays and Wednesdays Army business, Thursdays Sergeants’ Time Training, and Fridays motor-pool closeout. Clockwork.
Omens foretold action, if not an invasion at least serious bombing. Global drama, weapons inspections, secret reports.
Good. Yes. We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
Meanwhile, we grunted through the week, waiting for Freitag, aching for pilsner. We’d start a little on Wednesday night and sometimes Thursday too, and by the weekend hit full swing: hefeweizen, fräuleins, döner and schnitzel, jäger and techno, hazy days, hazier nights. There was Café Carré down the hill, our informal battalion pub, and there were The Matrix and the Q and a dozen others, and oh, the herman girls. If you got sick of the barracks sluts at The Matrix, the ones who knew more guys in the unit than you did, you could always take the train to Köln or Saarbrucken or a cheap flight to Prague or Berlin. There was the Savoy, too, where for eighty euros you could relieve your tensions with a Thai girl, and Rot Frankfurt, only an hour away, a red-lit sex bazaar of six-story whorehouses, titty bars, and erotik-shops, jam-packed with Japanese businessmen. Or, like my roommate Villaguerrero, whose girlfriend was back home in Queens, kill the weekend with Grand Theft Auto.
Rumors said we’re deploying, rumors said we’re not. Ultimatums were issued. Bullwinkle said there’s no fucking way we’re going. Sergeant First Class Perry shrugged.
Briefly, after settling into the routine but before we knew we were going, I came back to myself. After the shocks of Basic Training and moving overseas, months of pure action, I began to see myself again and wonder who was this strange and stronger man in camouflage. The past clung fragile, like dying moss, barely felt. I kept in touch with my old ex-girlfriend but didn’t tell her about Julia and Sabine, didn’t tell her much—what was there to say?
What was I now, a soldier?
Fuck no. All a sham. I’d tricked them, and I’d ride these four years till I got out and made a new plan. I’d drink the pilsner, salute the butterbars, and hop to it, pretending I cared. I’d wear the stars and stripes on my shoulder and intone the soldier’s creed. Too easy.
We’re not going, Bullwinkle sneered. Of course we’re not going. That’s fucking retarded.
The president made a speech. Captain Yarrow told us be ready. That Friday we had battalion formation. The colonel said we’d be in the second wave, relieving the units currently moving in, either to finish the war or more likely for SASO. We had a tentative ship date at the beginning of May. Things’d be hopping and popping till then, but the colonel insisted we’d all get a week’s leave.
We spent that weekend drunk—calls home to tearful mothers—tense discussions with wives and kids—and Monday started the paperwork, packing, predeployment logistics clusterfuck. We got issued new gear. We got ceramic SAPI plates for the vests, but only two sets per battery. There weren’t enough desert boots. The DCUs were all the wrong sizes.
We watched the war on TV. We tracked Fox News, Nasiriyah and Basra, the Old Breed, Rock of the Marne, the Screaming Eagles. A few days later, we were told we’d have the next week for block leave. I called my ex-girlfriend and asked her if she wanted to come to Paris. I said I’d pay for everything.