I turned back to the hadjis.
“You go around, go to Foxtrot Gate,” I gestured around, pointing toward the southwest edge of the FOB.
“We have in-formation,” the one said again.
“Yeah, I know. You have to go around.”
“Go round?”
“Yeah, Foxtrot gate. The other bob.”
“You help? Ali Baba?”
“No, go around. You gotta go to the other bob.”
“We have in-formation. Koom-ballah.”
“Yeah, I understand, but you gotta go around. Salaam,” I said, grabbing the gate and yanking on it. “Sit’l bob,” I shouted at the ICDC.
The hadjis started shouting in Arabic, but we closed the gate and latched it and went back and sat down.
We got off shift. Daytime, nighttime. I slept about five hours. When I got up, I worked out, cleaned my rifle and watched Malcolm in the Middle. Reading slept.
We lost track of the other guys, the daily patrols, what the fuck was happening. We started talking all the time in pidgin English. The big news was that one patrol got attacked by a retarded kid throwing rocks. He threw a rock and hit Bullwinkle in the face, knocking out one of his teeth. The patrol stopped and Lieutenant Krauss and Nash covered the kid.
The kid picked up another rock.
“Put the rock down,” Nash shouted, but the kid lifted it up like he was gonna throw, so Nash shot him in the chest.
Healds was with them, so he patched the kid up, then they drove him to the hospital in the Green Zone.
A week or so later they got me and Reading up in the middle of the day, when we were trying to sleep, and made us go down to formation. They had a little ceremony and awarded Nash a Bronze Star for valor. Captain Yarrow talked about what a great job he’d done defending the patrol.
“The only thing Nash did wrong was forget his training,” the captain said. “We trained and trained, two rounds center mass! Maybe next time you’ll get it right!” Yarrow chuckled.
Nash stared straight ahead.
Reading sat watching Friends. I read Chomsky’s For Reasons of State. Headlights flashed at us from down the road and I shouted at Reading to hide his DVD player. I put on my Kevlar and stood and grabbed my rifle. A big black SUV rolled up and a sergeant got out.
“At ease,” he said. “You on guard here?”
“Roger.”
“Listen, there’s a suspected VBIED attack tonight. We’ve got jammers in here but you gotta shut down your radios while they work.”
“Uh, alright. Let me call up higher and let them know.”
I called up Red Steel and Staff Sergeant Gooley and let them know we were gonna be out of radio contact. Red Steel verified the jammers had priority. I shut off the radios and the sergeant said thanks then climbed back in his truck.
Reading went back to Friends. I went back to my book. They stayed there for about two hours, then the sergeant opened his window and told us we could turn our radios back on. After that they left.
Ali Dudeki came by and asked for ficky-ficky magazine. I offered him the Michael Jackson Vanity Fair but he didn’t want it.
“You bring ne ficky-ficky tomorrow, any o’clock?” he asked. “Tomorrow and tomorrow?”
“No ficky,” I told him. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”
i can’t tell you if the use of force
in iraq today will last five days,
five weeks, or five months,
but it won’t last any longer than that
Seven days and a wake-up, then I’m on the first chalk out, with Sergeant Chandler, the newly promoted Sergeant Nash, and Bullwinkle. The rest of the battery would stage at BIAP, then drive to Kuwait, where they’d fly out as Chalks 2 and 3, leaving behind a small rear-detachment to port-load the equipment. Seven days, then freedom.
We got up and went to the gym, then Sergeant Chandler, Sergeant Nash, Bullwinkle, and I went to breakfast, then to the internet café. We checked our email. I read the news. Four American contractors had been killed in Fallujah and lit on fire, their burned bodies strung up over a bridge.
We went back to the tents we’d moved into and relaxed until lunch. At around three we went to the gym again and lifted. Then dinner, then we came back and showered, then we went to the hadji coffee shop for cappuccinos and ice cream. Then we came back to the tents and played volleyball till the sun set.
That night there was a mortar attack, three rounds. We sat in the dark in our battle rattle, waiting.
Slept in and after a late start, Sergant Chandler, Sergeant Nash, Bullwinkle, and I went to breakfast, then to the internet café. We checked our email. I read the news. There were protests and riots in Sadr City. Baghdad was in flames. I googled airline tickets from Frankfurt to Athens. Since Sunday was our rest day, me and Sergeant Chandler skipped the gym but Sergeant Nash went anyway, and around 1630 we met him at the chow hall for dinner.
“You read about this fucking Moqtada militia shit?”
“The protests?”
“Fucking Moqtada al-Sadr and his goddamned Mahdi Army. Shit’s going crazy. Najaf, Karbala, Basra. Everywhere. Even here in Sadr City.”
“Fallujah, too.”
“Yeah, but that’s fucking Sunnis.”
“Man, I can’t wait to get back to Germany,” Sergeant Chandler said. “I got this girl there, we’re emailing—she just emailed me some fucking naked pictures of herself. I don’t even hardly know her.”
After dinner we went to the hadji coffee shop for cappuccinos, then went back to the tents.
Staff Sergeant Gooley stood waiting. “Where the fuck were you guys?”
“Same place we go every day, Sergeant.”
“We got a platoon briefing in two mikes.”
So we went over and Staff Sergeant Smith and Lieutenant Krauss sat on MRE boxes and told us we needed to sign out with our chief whenever we left the tents, and also we had to get all our ammo together to be collected. They told us the nearest shower trailer was off-limits because it was broken. They said Second BCT had been extended and deployed to Najaf to assist putting down the Mahdi uprising, but as of yet nothing had changed about our redeployment. We were also told a convoy was going to BIAP tomorrow and they asked for volunteers. Sergeant Chandler and I looked at each other, then away. Sergeant Nash raised his hand. Four days.
Got up and did PT. Read the news. Moqtada al-Sadr had called for a general uprising against the CPA.
That night, as I was coming back from the showers, I could see the guys returning from the convoy. I ran into Sergeant Nash, strung out and sweaty, carrying a load of ammo into our tent.
“’Sup, Sergeant. What happened?”
“We got fucking ambushed is what the fuck happened.”
“Shit. Everyone okay?”
“Yeah, it’s a fucking wonder.”
“Get anybody?”
“They ambushed us and fucking ran. Two RPGs and then small arms. We had the fucking colonel with us and the stupid fucker stops the convoy in the middle of the kill zone and gets out and starts directing traffic. Like we’re a fucking I don’t know what. I almost shot the fucker myself.”
Lieutenant Juarez gave the briefing that night. He told us about adjustments to the ROE. The Mahdi Army could be identified by a green armband or a green flag. They were considered combatants, and we were to engage them with deadly force.
That night we woke to another mortar attack. One explosion, then one more. I looked at Sergeant Chandler in the bunk opposite. He looked sideways at all the other guys slowly getting up and putting on their gear, then rolled over and went back to sleep. There was another explosion, then I went back to sleep, too.