Category: Cause I love my kids

10 August 2009
Sangin, Afghanistan

Daily dramas unfolded, including the bangs, booms and small-arms fire that punctuated the times.  At 1800, I was preparing to go to orders with 1 Platoon, A Company of 2 Rifles, when shots from a large-caliber rifle began cracking low over base.  I passed by sniper, Kris Griffith, and said, “Hey Kris, why don’t you grab your rifle and go shoot that guy?”  Kris replied that two other sniper teams were on it.  “He’s close,” I said, and Kris answered, “About 600 meters.” Then we went our separate ways.

Orders were given and then the soldiers performed final checks on their gear and tried to fall to sleep in the sweltering evening heat.  Some nights I would go to sleep using the sleeping bag as a pillow, only to wake up with it drenched in sweat.

The alarm was set for 0213 hours, but at 0211 I sat up and turned it off before it could wake the soldiers who were not going on the mission.  I had nineteen minutes to pull on my boots, body armor, and small rucksack, before I had to get to breakfast, engage in final conversations, and then show up for the mission at 0310.

The following series of photos were taken during the early morning hours of August 2nd .  The conditions were “red illume,” meaning there was less than 10 millilux of ambient light and it was too dark for most helicopters to fly, even while using night vision gear.  It was plenty dark.

Soldiers and section leaders did “final check” after “final check” of their gear, and talked quietly among themselves while last-minute updates came over the radio.

In red illume, the soldiers used dim red lights that were harder for the enemy to see.  Red light also preserved our night vision.  By showing up a half-hour before departure and sitting quietly, our eyes and senses had time to adjust and tune in to the battlefield.  The battlefield was a thirty-second walk away.

Some soldiers smoked cigarettes before stepping out into the wild zone.  Most were quiet.  There was little talking during the last ten minutes.

My section assembled…

…While another section waited.

The first section moved out nine minutes before the mission for my section began.

Six minutes to departure.

Final red lights were out.   Our mission started three minutes early.

Despite low ambient light, the market in Sangin was dangerously lighted.

By 0357 hrs, some shops were already open, including this shoe store.  The Taliban in this area did not seem to wear running shoes as did some of the enemy groups elsewhere in Afghanistan.  Here, the enemy mostly wore sandals or went barefoot.  (Many often ran right out of their sandals, especially during combat.)

Shops on this very street sold fertilizer used to make bombs.  They might as well have sold dynamite.  (The fertilizer also happened to be good for growing opium.)  The bombs regularly blow the limbs off troops around Afghanistan.  Soldiers may lose their legs, or their legs and an arm and their eyesight, or worse.  But what can we do, really?  Gasoline, like fertilizer, can be an incredible weapon.  Are we to ban gasoline and attack gas shipments while trying to build a country from scratch?  We talk about weapons flowing in from Pakistan, while in reality most of the casualties in this area come from bombs made from fertilizer sold in the open markets.  We talk about Pakistani Taliban flowing in, while the local ANA Commander, Colonel Wadood, tells me that some of the fighters are Tajiks from places like Ghor Province.  Tajiks generally hate the Taliban but they come to make money, he says.

The crux of the mission was a raid, but the task of our section was to provide security and fire support for the raiders.  If the enemy were to try to hit our guys during the raid, our job was to kill the enemy, and so our objective was a farmhouse that overlooked the target.

British soldiers moved into an occupied farmhouse as the man willingly opened the gate to let us in.  Several cute children were sleeping under the stars. The soldiers were so quiet the kids were not disturbed.  I thought to myself, “What would the kids think if they woke up and saw the soldiers?”  About fifteen minutes later, one of the children woke up, and his voice could be heard through the silence of the night.  The man with the turban stepped over and spoke quietly to the child who immediately zonked out again, as if it were all part of a dream.

After the compound was quietly and respectfully searched, some of the soldiers sat down while others pushed into security positions.

The soldiers were perfectly early: not so early that they risked tipping their hand too soon, but early enough that they had time to collect thoughts and tune-in after the movement and get into good positions while the raiders skulked in on the nearby target, only 150 meters away.

Instead of pushing everyone into position immediately—increasing the chance of compromise—most of the team waited down in the compound until just before first light.

This man seemed unconcerned. The British soldiers respected the locals while the Taliban acted out on a whim, murdering innocents or splashing acid in the faces of schoolgirls.  Within hours of the time this photo was taken, we felt the rumble as the Taliban blew up a local bridge and killed two ANA soldiers.  In addition to the killing, the bridge was important to the locals.  This was not a fight for terrain, but for the sentiments of the people.

As with al Qaeda, the Taliban is our best weapon against themselves.  The Taliban issued a code of conduct, which likely was a blunder on their part.  Why?  Because the Taliban are undisciplined savages, and every time they violate their own code of conduct—which happens every day and night—the good guys have a chance to broadcast the transgression.

More soldiers moved to the roof at 0442 while the raiders got into final position. At 0500 the raid began, but only two air rifles were found.  At 0510 “dickers” (watchers) were spotted on motorcycles and on a roof, as the FST plots potential enemy positions.

Though it might seem like a simple raid, it would take many long dispatches for the untrained reader to develop a reasonable understanding of this three-dimensional battlefield and what the soldiers were doing.   There was more going on than just “1 Platoon, A Company, 2 Rifles, with guns on a roof in Afghanistan.”  1 Platoon was a small part of a larger package.

Embedded within 1 Platoon was a handful of specialists from 636 (Arcot 1751 Battery), 40 Regiment Royal Artillery, “The Lowland Gunners,” simply called the “Fire Support Team.”  Most soldiers just say FST.

The primary function of 1 Platoon was to provide security for the raiders, and to deliver the FST, whose primary function also was to provide security for the raiders.

The FST controls air assets, mortars, cannons, howitzers, and remote rocket systems known as GMLRS, (which Americans pronounce “Gimmlers” while the British say each letter: G-M-L-R-S).

GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) scares the heck out of the enemy; GMLRS can be launched from dozens of miles away and reliably kill a man—or a lot of men—without warning.  GMLRS are like the ultimate sniper rifle, only the bullet is a large explosive warhead. The system is so reliable and accurate that during operation Arrowhead Ripper during the summer of 2007 in Iraq, our people were hitting IEDs from dozens of miles away.  Whereas the enemy can see or hear most aircraft, they get no warning with GMLRS.  Even with the invisible and silent Predators and Reapers firing the small Hellfire missiles, the enemy has a few seconds warning.  Hellfires are like gigantic hand grenades with a homing system.  A Hellfire can hit a car and not necessarily kill everyone.  But if GMLRS hits a sturdy two-story house, the house is gone.  The Taliban hate it.

The FST had an array of tricks up their camouflaged sleeves; the primary weapons of this mission were the devastating 81mm mortars, the even more devastating 105mm howitzers, and the GMLRS many miles away.  Overhead were two American A-10s; British Apaches attack helicopter; and a supersonic American B-1B bomber that was designed to deliver hydrogen bombs into the heart of the Soviet Union.  The call sign for the B-1B might as well have been “Strangelove” and it’s not difficult to imagine Slim Pickens at the controls.  (A message came that a B-1B crew who had covered us on a recent mission, had read the dispatch and sent a message to me.  The Brits relayed the message; thank you B-1B!  During upcoming missions, I’ll be the one waving up at you in the stratosphere.  The enemy has IEDs, but the riflemen are monkey-stomping these guys.  Thank you for the top cover.)

FST soldiers plotted all suspected enemy firing points and listed the coordinates while other soldiers were ready near the mortars and howitzers and would fire into the target mere moments after a “FIRE MISSION…” radio call came in.  At 0521 a man was spotted in a dark dishdasha moving through a woodline.  Sergeant Wotherspoon, a Scottish soldier who sounds very much like the Scotsman on the Simpsons, pulled out his laser range finder, checked the distance and plotted a fire mission.  The “dicking screen” seemed to be increasing so the FST stayed busy plotting potential targets.  At 0544 the first raid was over and the raiders moved to hit a second compound.  Amazingly, some people in the United States believe that the raiders should take time to gather forensic evidence for later court cases.  This would spell many death sentences for us, and prove a potent disincentive to soldiers who risk their lives to capture suspects alive.  If soldiers at war are held to the same evidence collection standards as law enforcement officers at home, we need to end the war before we sink further into the quicksand.  If the judiciary enforces unbearable standards in this ugly war, a fair-minded, informed person likely would say that we need to conclude our attempts to raise up Afghanistan, and we should bring home the troops.

At 0546 there was a large caliber rifle shot that kicked up dust about a hundred meters from us.  A minute later there was another shot but we saw no splash.  Wotherspoon said, “That’s how it started last time; single shots trying to find us.”  (Wotherspoon really does sound like the Scotsman on the Simpsons but I didn’t dare say it.)  They had gotten into a serious firefight here before and expected another.  I fell asleep when shots woke me up at 0633. There were sounds of motorbikes and sporadic shots being fired as I fell back to sleep. While most soldiers worked some were switching watch and a few slept.  An infantryman’s rule of thumb: never miss a chance to fill canteens or sleep.

Modern battlefields bring countless strange sounds.  What does a bomb sound like when it slices overhead through the dark to a target?  An RPG launch?  How about a Javelin or Hellfire or 81 or 105 or 107 or 155 or A-10 or Shadow?  Everyone reading this likely knows the sound a train rumbling by, or a car horn, yet out here on the battlefields there are probably hundreds of new sounds to learn.  While falling back to sleep, an incident came to mind from my first day or two at FOB Jackson.  The mess tent was crowded and we all heard a THUMP, which sounded remarkably like an incoming mortar launch.  This base – despite all the combat – does not take mortar and rocket fire (touch wood), so nobody hit the deck.  But in the seconds after the THUMP, the loud mess tent went completely silent as all ears strained to hear.  And then came a slight whistle and at least fifty people were on the ground in a second or two.  But one soldier, Corporal Ryan Hone, just sat there and said “What?”  Corporal Hone was temporarily deaf because he had been flat-blasted by an enemy bomb some days back, and so he didn’t hear the whistle.  And there was no incoming mortar.  I’ve never heard one whistle, anyway.  The whistle came from Serjeant Rob Grimes from 2 Platoon!

In addition to plotting potential enemy FPs (Firing Points), any potential enemy group who came within our reach was also immediately plotted.  The machine guns, rifles and grenades the soldiers carried were the least things the enemy should have been concerned about.  Fine training and attention to detail are crucial in this job.  All targets were “danger close” to us, and often to the other elements on the ground.

“Danger close” means that even if everything goes just right, friendly troops are so close to our fires (such as bombs, mortars or the guns), that we might take casualties from our own fires.  Any fire missions that the FST would have called from the position we were in would have been danger close, to us and probably to the raiders.  Most fire missions in the Green Zone are danger close.

So if one of these soldiers made a mistake—even one digit off—the mistake could have wiped out an innocent family, us, or both.  To safeguard, they train constantly, and during missions two FST members plot each target separately then compare answers.

FST soldiers must be able to pass the tests during firefights and when bombs are exploding or when people are screaming with horrible injuries.   They must reliably call fire missions during all conditions, such as fitful, dark nights when the men are tired, hungry, and in need of rest.

While the soldiers on the roof worked radios on different nets, plotted their own solutions and shared information, the family below offered bread and tea to the soldiers.

From the roof, the FST can call a fire mission from scratch and have rounds landing in — let’s not give the enemy a clue, and just say “very fast.”  Since the FST had already plotted all likely enemy positions, the fire mission would be accelerated Time Of Flight (TOF) for the 105mm Howitzer shots would be 22 seconds while the 81mm mortar bombs will fly for about 33 seconds before detonating.  All fuses are dialed to “proximity low” to reduce structural damage and increase damage to Taliban fighters.

On the roof, Gunner Jake Beale mentioned that he turned 19 in May, and later Corporal Mark Foley recounted how he saw Gunner Beale shoulder his 40mm grenade launcher and take aim at a Taliban who was about 200m away.  Beale launched the grenade, which arced lazily to apogee and fell straight into the Taliban and detonated.  While shots were being fired in the distance, the soldiers joked that it takes eight washings to get the smell of Afghanistan out of your gear.  Beale said that if you iron your uniform, the smells take you on a tour around Afghanistan with smells from fields, compounds, markets, irrigation ditches and shit.

There were various shots as the morning unfolded and at 0743 there were two explosions that we thought were an RPG attack. Actually it was an IED attack with two bombs on the ANA.  The sun was rising and the morning was already hot when we heard random scattered shots and a short but brisk firefight.  The soldiers were in good spirits.  I said, “Those guys out there with guns are not very friendly,” and they laughed and told jokes of their own.

Bones the B-1B had flown over a couple times, and at 0759 the two A-10s flew over and popped flares nearly over our heads.  The ANA, some hundreds of meters away, had been ambushed by a bridge and the bridge was destroyed.  One soldier was dead and another dying.  We could hear bullets flying but could not see the action other than some dust.  A British rescue helicopter carrying a MERT (Medical Emergency Response Team) was dispatched from Camp Bastion and headed straight into the danger.

The raids were over and the raiders had pulled back, so we departed the roof.  I saw a couple soldiers say goodbye to the turbaned man who was waving his farewell.

As we entered the first funnel between two compounds which ended at an open area, we were in the perfect position to sustain a hit.  When we entered the open area we saw a half dozen men watching us from a mud building that had been melting through time.  We seemed to have surprised them.   No weapons were visible but my danger alarms kicked to red-alert, and the same happened with the soldiers who immediately prepared for combat.  It seemed to me that soldiers were clicking rifle selector switches to FIRE, but I am not certain.  Some kids were also watching from another position.  Everything seemed wrong.

One man, among the group of men in the melting building, pushed a small child in front of him and at least two British soldiers told all the men to “Get out of here right now!”  I could sense that British trigger-fingers were a glance away from pulling into action.  No shots were fired and we moved on.

Were those men and the children part of something bigger, or just onlookers?  A European or American likely would have taken cover if they saw a firefight brewing, but that doesn’t mean these people would.  Combat veterans of the Iraq war might remember seeing women and children walking down the streets during the middle of firefights.  Hundreds or thousands of bullets might be snapping by, yet some woman with a couple kids would appear and leisurely cross the street like nothing was going on, as if protected by a force field.

Some people say the Taliban are cowardly for planting bombs, but I do not believe this makes them any more cowardly than the A-10s, Apaches, B-1Bs and Reapers make us cowardly.  We didn’t come here for a fair fight.  We came to win.  Some troops even say that if you show up to a battle and find it’s evenly matched, you didn’t plan well.  What most of us find cowardly and despicable are the enemies who hide behind children.  The bombs they plant for us are fair play.  But males who hide behind children are not worthy of respect.

It’s difficult to move unpredictably in tight areas.  There are choke points and only so many ways to travel in the limited battle space.  And so we were bottlenecked, and the point man detected something suspicious.

Most of the bombs here are command detonated, requiring only that someone push the button or connect the battery.  Despite the danger, the point man crawled on his belly to the suspected bomb.  If what he saw was a command detonated bomb, he likely would die suddenly and we would be pelted by the blast.  If what he saw was a pressure plate, he might save the life or limbs of one or more of those behind him.

A cow was munching green just to my right.  The soldiers were quiet, as they scanned the danger areas.  Everyone was quiet: If you’ve got nothing to say, now is a good time to not say it.  Should the point man have been killed we would likely have been in a firefight right there.  By this time the British helicopter is just minutes out from picking up the dying ANA soldier who had been blown up earlier, while his buddies loaded up the dead soldier.

Point man said quietly back, “Barbed wire,” and it was relayed back to me and I said, “barbed wire” to the man behind, who said, “command wire” and the file behind immediately started to pull back. I said, “No, no, barbed wire, not command wire,” and he understood then, so we all moved forward.  The point man found no bomb.

We pushed farther into another fatal funnel.

The enemy often plants bombs in the walls, or they can easily dig under a wall and put a bomb under the path without leaving visible disturbance.  These are normal tactics.  They also shoot through small holes in the walls.  At this range, the A-10s and Bones the B-1B could do little more than watch.

The soldiers cleared through the funnels and moved back onto the market street.

The suicide bomber threat was high, and unfortunately we had become an irritant to the people.  We could not let motorcycles and cars just roll by or it would be just a matter of time until a bunch of guys would get flattened.

Back in May, a motorcycle rammed a patrol and when soldiers got out to help, he detonated, killing two British soldiers.  This happened in nearby Gereshk.  One of the soldiers had been a Gurkha.  Word came to Brunei where I was training with Gurkhas.   The soldiers halted the exercise briefly and held a moment of thought, then returned to training for a return to Afghanistan.  That attack had occurred in Gereshk.  There had been four suicide attacks in Sangin.

When we stopped traffic the people would become irritated; most of them were just going about their lives.  I saw a letter wherein one American officer said that he did not see people irritated when he stopped traffic in Kabul, but he must not have been paying attention.  The people do get upset, and so it was important to smile, wave and act as non-threatening as possible.  Sometimes there was little else you could do.

Typical transport on the main road in the district capital of Sangin.

There are many tractors in Sangin.  Diesel fuel can be mixed with the fertilizer to make bombs (ANFO: Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil), but here the bomb-makers had been mixing the fertilizer with fine aluminum powder used in spray paints.

Apparently this ANP is not accustomed to shoes or boots with laces.  The golden sacks on the right are fertilizer that can be used in bombs.

We made our way through the market and one motorcycle looked like he would crash the patrol and a soldier immediately shouldered his rifle, aimed at the man and yelled, “STOP!”  The man skidded to a stop.  I waved and he actually waved back.

Nobody liked doing this, pointing a rifle at someone who was probably in his hometown.

Some of the soldiers out here might seem young, but there are no young soldiers here.  Not even one.
 

The British MERT helicopter had landed on the battlefield and picked up the severely wounded Afghan soldier.   He was delivered to Camp Bastion where he died that day.

While the helicopter had evacuated the soldier who died shortly thereafter, the Afghan soldiers loaded up the dead soldier, the one who was killed in the initial attack, and brought him to our base despite the fact that he obviously was dead.  Maybe they thought the British could do something but he was dead and nothing could be done, so the Afghan soldiers kept guard on the body and for a time at least two of them cried for their comrade. I brought them water.  They wanted a British helicopter to come take the body somewhere, but this was not going to happen.

It’s a bad idea to land helicopters here in broad daylight other than for casualty extractions, and the ANA has helicopters; their own commander could request the same.  FOB Jackson is a busy little base where Afghan soldiers also live, so most people probably had no idea why the Afghan soldiers were even sitting there—but the medics had told me.

Later that afternoon the two Afghan soldiers were still there, but had lightened up and wanted their photo taken. That day like every day kept unfolding, and ended just as it had begun.

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A One-Year Mortgage Holiday.  Congress should declare a national mortgage holiday for one year.  During such year there would be a moratorium on the monthly or other periodic mortgage payments on all residential, commercial, industrial and farm loans.  All foreclosures would stop.  Borrowers who do not need relief could elect to opt out.  This one-year “Time Out” from mortgage payments… Read more →

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Be Not Afraid

You shall cross the barren desert, but you shall not die of thirst. You shall wander far in safety though you do not know the way. You shall speak your words in foreign lands and all will understand. You shall see the face of God and live.

Be not afraid.
I go before you always;
Come follow me, and I will give you rest.

[From a prayer card I found on a base in Anbar Province, Iraq.]

Thoughts flow on the eve of a great battle. By the time these words are released, we will be in combat. Few ears have heard even rumors of this battle, and fewer still are the eyes that will see its full scope. Even now—the battle has already begun for some—practically no news about it is flowing home. I’ve known of the secret plans for about a month, but have remained silent.

This campaign is actually a series of carefully orchestrated battalion- and brigade-sized battles. Collectively, it is probably the largest battle since “major hostilities” ended more than four years ago. Even the media here on the ground do not seem to have sensed its scale.

Al Qaeda and associates had little or no presence in Iraq before the current war. But we made huge mistakes early on and are pumping blood and gold into the region to pay for those blunders. When we failed to secure the streets and to restore the stability needed to get Iraq on its feet, we sowed doubt and mistrust. When we disbanded the government and the army, and tolerated corruption and ineptitude in reconstruction, we created a vacuum and filled the ranks of an insurgency-hydra with mostly local talent. But when we flattened parts of Fallujah not once, but twice, primarily in response to the murders of four of our people, we helped create a spectacle of injustice and chaos, the very conditions in which Al Qaeda thrives.

There is no particular spark, no single bolt of lightning, errant campfire or careless cigarette flicked out a window that caused this conflagration. We walked into a dry, cracked land, where the two arteries of Mesopotamia have long pulsed water and blood through scorched lands into the sea. In a place where everything that is not already desert is tinder, sparks tend to catch fire.

When we eviscerated Fallujah, Al Qaeda, who had not been here before, swarmed in and grew like a tumor. There were many insurgent groups already infecting Iraq with many conflicting ideologies and goals, and just as many opportunistic thugs, and some that only needed the band-aids and aspirin of open markets and electricity and a feeling of normality. But Al Qaeda has been trying to start a civil war here for several years; chaos speeds the decay they feed on.

During about the first three months of 2005, when I was in Diyala Province (whose capital is Baquba), I first wrote that Iraq was in Civil War. I felt the backlash from that throughout 2005-2006, and worse, we all watched the sad unfolding of greater and greater lies until now, in 2007, when the civil war is systemically toxic.

Today Al Qaeda (AQ) is strong, but their welcome is tenuous in some regions as many Iraqis grow weary enough of the violence that trails them to forcibly evict AQ from some areas they’d begun to feel at home in. Meanwhile, our military, having adapted from eager fire-starting to more measured firefighting, after coming in so ham-fisted early on, has found agility in the new face of this war. Not lost on the locals was the fact that the Coalition wasn’t alone in failing to keep the faith of its promises to Iraqis.

Whereas we failed with the restoration of services and government, AQ has raped too many women and boys in Anbar Province, and cut off too many heads everywhere else for anyone here to believe their claims of moral superiority. And they don’t even try to get the power going or keep the markets open or build schools, playgrounds and clinics for the children. In addition to destroying all of these resources, and murdering the Iraqis who work at or patronize them, AQ attacks people in mosques and churches, too. Thus, to those listening into the wind, an otherwise imperceptible tang in the atmosphere signals the time for change is at hand.

We can dissect our Civil War, or World War II or Vietnam, but there is no way to dissect the current war. Only the residue of those prior wars remains with us today—the scars and headstones, memorial statues, history books, and national boundaries. We only dissect that which is dead. Pathologists who autopsy those wars can no longer affect the outcomes. There is little left to the corpse of a war, but the sculptors of history take the clay and give it shape and substance. But even the most masterful among the artisans—Michelangelo himself—chipping and slicing at marble from Carrara, could not breathe life into the statue of David. Twice I stood in Florence, staring up at David, clad only in his slingshot, the rock with which he would change history cupped in his hand.

But as I write these words, the explosions—cannon fire reverberating day and night, rockets exploding on base, the rumbling and crumpling sounds of car bombs—are the very pulse of this war. This war cannot yet be dissected because it still lives—wounded, angry, thrashing on the table, but alive. We can only hack into it, diagnose it, treat it, knowing each attempt at a cure affects the pulse. Doing nothing causes tachycardia. Much of what afflicts Iraq was here before America was born. But when we elected to perform surgery on this sick land, we used hacksaws and sledgehammers, and took an already sick patient and hacked off some parts while pulverizing others.

Meanwhile, there are stadiums full of people shouting at the doctors, threatening to fire them or revoke their licenses, or at the very least to cut off the lights mid-surgery. In the din of the mob, few seem to notice that the patient, screaming to be healed, is much more alive than dead. The patient roils in agony with every new cut, slashing at doctors and self. Some say we’ve done enough and it’s time for the patient to heal itself. Others are saying we should put it out of its misery, but surely this thing will live, and drag its mutilated self out of the hospital and follow us home, no longer seeking a cure but intent on revenge.

For far too long our media and government have failed to fully inform us—even to the point of lying—about Iraq. I came to this ill-begotten war searching for people who knew the truth and would tell it. After those early embeds in places such as Diyala Province, back when I first began a five-month embed in Mosul, I attempted to trace what had gone right and wrong with Nineveh Province during 2003, 2004, and 2005. Nineveh is a reasonable microcosm of an ethnically, religiously and culturally divergent Iraq—clearly affected by the whole, and affecting the whole—and I got in with one of America’s best fighting battalions, the 1-24th Infantry Regiment. They were at war. Out of the battalion of about 700, the soldiers were awarded about 181 Purple Hearts. And they were winning, clearly winning, in their tough battle space. I traveled around to many units in different provinces, but nowhere was the pulse of this war as palpable as it was with the 1-24th, also called the “Deuce Four.” Importantly, even perhaps presciently, feeling that pulse with my own fingers in 2005 led me to a specific person: David Petraeus, the first Coalition military leader in Nineveh, a general whose many successes in Iraq were at that time already behind him.

I finally reached General Petraeus after following the Deuce Four back home. He was stationed in Kansas, though why he was in Kansas was beyond me. Having just spent most of 2005 in Iraq, I thought he should be back in Iraq where he was needed. During a phone call to his home early in 2006 we must have talked for about two hours. He was honest, almost blunt and always cogent, and the conversation added to my growing belief that Petraeus was the doctor who might be able to save this place.

Throughout 2006, my belief grew that Petraeus should be running this war. And though I had reached my own conclusions, others thought the same. I had seen and written about much progress during 2005, but had repeatedly written that the Civil War could undermine the effort. During 2006, people finally began to admit that there was Civil War in Iraq, and that it was growing, but as 2006 drifted into 2007 without any measurable response to increasingly untenable conditions on the ground, my confidence was eroding rapidly. At the rate things were going, I figured I might soon be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with deeply and richly experienced people like Joe Galloway, who thinks we should be out of Iraq yesterday.

Some folks attack Joe for his opinion, saying he was never a soldier, what can he know? But that argument is facile at best. There are deep reservoirs of wisdom from people who never wore uniforms; in fact, most people never were soldiers. And there are few journalists who know more about the American military in the last four decades than Joe Galloway, who’s been on enough frontlines to know things usually only combat soldiers know. Furthermore, this is not a “soldiers only” matter. Most of the people who will be affected by the outcome will never wear a uniform.

But today, based on what I know firsthand about this war, I respectfully disagree with Joe and the crowd of people who share his view that this war cannot be won. On this one point, because I just happen to be a person who has seen this doctor operate on a part of this patient, and I was able to see firsthand that the work he did in 2003/4 is still holding today, I think we don’t call the code unless and until Petraeus says so.

In the short time since Petraeus took charge here, Anbar Province—“Anbar the Impossible”—seems to have made a remarkable turnaround. I just spent about a month out there and saw no combat. I have never gone that long in Iraq without seeing combat. Clearly, some areas of Anbar remain dangerous—there is fighting in Fallujah today—but there is also something in Anbar today that hasn’t been seen in recent memory: possibilities. There are also larger realities lurking up on the Turkish borders, but the reality today is that the patient called Iraq will die and become a home for Al Qaeda if we leave now.

But now the AQ cancer is spreading into Diyala Province, straight along the Diyala River into Baghdad and other places. “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” (AQM) apparently now a subgroup of ISI (the Islamic State of Iraq), has staked Baquba as the capital of their Caliphate. Whatever the nom de jour of their nom de guerre, Baquba has been claimed for their capital. I was in Diyala again this year, where there is a serious state of Civil War, making Baquba an unpopular destination for writers or reporters. (A writer was killed in the area about a month ago, in fact.) News coming from the city and surrounds most often would say things like, “near Baghdad,” or “Northeast of Baghdad,” and so many people have never even heard of Baquba.

Baquba has been an important city in this fight for several years, and for various reasons. It’s critical to keep in mind that AQM and others had the specific goal of starting a civil war, and this was plainly clear by early 2005. When the Golden Dome was obliterated in Samarra in 2006, and blood gushed into the streets, the politically inconvenient truth about the malignant potency of Al Qaeda was undeniable. In a perverse anniversary commemorated earlier this month, the two lone minarets left standing in Samarra after the 2006 bombing, were unceremoniously flattened in attacks that resulted in reprisals nearby in Babil Province and as far removed as Basra.

At least part of the reason we are not seeing even wider-spread open-necked reprisals for the recent bombings (though the reprisals have been serious) is because our current leadership under Petraeus is adroitly pushing political buttons behind the curtains. Based on things I saw, heard, and even videotaped while out among Iraqi tribal leaders in Anbar, unseen hands are reaching out and finding peace with tribes where others found war. Based on what I see all around Iraq, and not just in Anbar, I believe intuitively that most of this war can be ended through smart politics.

Smart politics is not transparent. The best politician leaves no traces of his handiwork in the resolution of complex issues, because if the resolution is to hold, the local parties must be able to claim responsibility with confidence, even to the extent of believing they did it themselves. Further, success in complex negotiations involves compromise, which (after open hostilities) can be perceived as caving and taken as an indication of undue influence from outsiders. That kind of perception gets people killed over here.

Smart politics leaves more people standing with their heads, and so discretion has to be seen as vital to the war effort. Reports claiming that no political progress is happening here because the Iraqi parliament seems stalled are tantamount to claiming that when the US Senate bogs down the stop lights don’t work on Main Street USA. At the same time, no one is interested in going for the broomstick once they’ve seen the man behind the curtain, so smart politicians don’t let that happen, especially when the stakes are this high.

Al Qaeda was never at this table and no one is planning to set a place for them now. They are mass murderers anywhere they can be: Bali, Kandahar, London, Madrid, New York and now, Iraq. This enemy is smart, resourceful and tough, and our early missteps created perfect conditions for the spread of their disease in Iraq.

Political solutions only work with people interested in a resolution where all parties can move forward. Al Qaeda is more interested in an outcome where they dominate through anachronistic anarchy. Our philosophies are so fundamentally different that fighting is inevitable. They want to go backwards and are willing to kill us to do so. We are unwilling to go backwards, and so they started killing us. Finally, we started killing back, but only seriously so after they rammed jets into our buildings, by which they hoped to cause the same chaos and collapse in America (where they failed) that they are fomenting in Iraq (where they are succeeding).

The doctor has made a decision: Al Qaeda must be excised. That means a large-scale attack, and what appears to be the most widespread combat operations since the end of the ground war are now unfolding. A small part of that larger battle will be the Battle for Baquba. For those involved, it will be a very large battle, but in context, it will be only one of numerous similar battles now unfolding. Just as this sentence was written, we began dropping bombs south of Baghdad and our troops are in contact.

Northeast of Baghdad, innocent civilians are being asked to leave Baquba. More than 1,000 AQI fighters are there, with perhaps another thousand adjuncts. Baquba alone might be as intense as Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah in late 2004. They are ready for us. Giant bombs are buried in the roads. Snipers—real snipers—have chiseled holes in walls so that they can shoot not from roofs or windows, but from deep inside buildings, where we cannot see the flash or hear the shots. They will shoot for our faces and necks. Car bombs are already assembled. Suicide vests are prepared.

The enemy will try to herd us into their traps, and likely many of us will be killed before it ends. Already, they have been blowing up bridges, apparently to restrict our movements. Entire buildings are rigged with explosives. They have rockets, mortars, and bombs hidden in places they know we are likely to cross, or places we might seek cover. They will use human shields and force people to drive bombs at us. They will use cameras and make it look like we are ravaging the city and that they are defeating us. By the time you read this, we will be inside Baquba, and we will be killing them. No secrets are spilling here.

Our jets will drop bombs and we will use rockets. Helicopters will cover us, and medevac our wounded and killed. By the time you read this, our artillery will be firing, and our tanks moving in. And Humvees. And Strykers. And other vehicles. Our people will capture key terrain and cut off escape routes. The idea this time is not to chase Al Qaeda out, but to trap and kill them head-on, or in ambushes, or while they sleep. When they are wounded, they will be unable to go to hospitals without being captured, and so their wounds will fester and they will die painfully sometimes. It will be horrible for Al Qaeda. Horror and terrorism is what they sow, and tonight they will reap their harvest. They will get no rest. They can only fight and die, or run and try to get away. Nobody is asking for surrender, but if they surrender, they will be taken.

We will go in on foot and fight from house to house if needed. We will shoot rockets into their hiding spaces, and our snipers will shoot them in their heads and chests. This is where all that talk of cancer and big ideas of what should be or could be done will smash head-on against the searing reality of combat.

These words flow on the eve of a great battle, but are on hold until the attack is well underway. Nothing is certain. I am here and have been all year. We are in trouble, but we have a great general. The only one, I have long believed, who can lead the way out of this morass. Iraq is not hopeless. Iraq can stand again but first it must cast off these demons. And some of the demons must be killed.

And while the battle rages, that prayer card will be in my pocket:

Be Not Afraid

You shall cross the barren desert, but you shall not die of thirst. You shall wander far in safety though you do not know the way. You shall speak your words in foreign lands and all will understand. You shall see the face of God and live.

Be not afraid.
I go before you always;
Come follow me, and I will give you rest.

 

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Mosul, Iraq

Combat comes unexpectedly, even in war.

On Monday, while conducting operations in west Mosul, a voice came over the radio saying troops from our brother unit, the 3-21, were fighting with the enemy in east Mosul on the opposite side of the Tigris River. Moments later, SSG Will Shockley relayed word to us that an American soldier was dead. We began searching for the shooters near one of the bridges on our side of the Tigris, but they got away. Jose L. Ruiz was killed in action.

Although the situation in Mosul is better, our troops still fight here every day. This may not be the war some folks had in mind a few years ago. But once the shooting starts, a plan is just a guess in a party dress.

August 31, 2005

Click here for MP3 audio file of Gates Of Fire as Read by Chris Future of ThinkFuture.com.

Mosul, Iraq

Combat comes unexpectedly, even in war.

On Monday, while conducting operations in west Mosul, a voice came over the radio saying troops from our brother unit, the 3-21, were fighting with the enemy in east Mosul on the opposite side of the Tigris River. Moments later, SSG Will Shockley relayed word to us that an American soldier was dead. We began searching for the shooters near one of the bridges on our side of the Tigris, but they got away. Jose L. Ruiz was killed in action.

Although the situation in Mosul is better, our troops still fight here every day. This may not be the war some folks had in mind a few years ago. But once the shooting starts, a plan is just a guess in a party dress.

The only mission I’ve seen unfold close to what was planned was a B Company raid a few months back. It actually went so close to perfect that we could hardly believe it. The sole glitch occurred when a Stryker hit an IED, but since nobody was hurt, we just continued the mission. In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine why I didn’t write about it. But times are busy, and, apart from it going nearly perfectly according to plan, it just seemed like any other old raid.

I had been talking with Captain Matt McGrew about the “The Battle for Mosul IV” dispatch, intending to spend the night with him and some Iraqi troops at one of their combat outposts, to glean additional insight, but the on-going battles in Mosul kept getting in the way. On the night before the planned ride-along, the obstacle was a big and sudden push of operations and tasks bundled in a “surge operation.” Operation Lancer Fury was launched without notice even to the unit commanders here.

When I’d sat in on the “warning order” (notice of impending operations) for Lancer Fury last week, the plan was so cleverly contrived that the leadership at Deuce Four had to grudgingly acknowledge its excellence, even though the idea had originated from higher-up. In every military unit I have seen, there is a prevailing perception that good ideas trickle down from the top about as often as water flows uphill, so Lancer Fury apparently was a wunder-plan.

As a “surge” operation, Lancer Fury is sort of a crocodile hunt, where our people do things to make the crocodiles come out, trying to flush them into predictable directions, or make them take certain actions. And when they do, we nail them. The combat portion of the Surge amounted to a sophisticated “area ambush” that would unfold over the period of about one week.

This Surge is a complicated piece of work, with multidimensional variables and multifarious moving parts. Those parts range literally from boots on our feet to satellites zipping overhead. So, of course, glitches and snags started occurring the first day. Among other things, key gear failed; but overall, the Surge was going well. A few terrorists had already been caught in the first 24 hours.

Thursday night, a revised plan had me following some Deuce Four soldiers on a midnight raid. They had night vision gear, so they moved quickly. I had only moonlight, so I nearly broke my leg keeping up. Sleeking around Mosul under moonlight, we prowled through the pale glow until we came upon a pond near a farmhouse. Recon platoon had already raided one house and snagged some suspects, then crept away in the darkness to another target close by.

Five soldiers from Recon—Holt, Ferguson, Yates, Welch and Ross—were moving through moon-cast shadows when an Iraqi man came out from a farmhouse, his AK-47 rifle hanging by his side. Suddenly encircled by the rifles, lights and lasers of four soldiers, the man was quickly disarmed. A fifth soldier radioed for the interpreter and together they sorted out that he was a farmer who thought the soldiers were thieves skulking around his property. Recon returned the man his rifle, and started making their way back, umbral and silent across the ploughed fields.

During a halt in some trees at the edge of the field, I overheard the voice of LTC Kurilla, the commander of the Deuce Four battalion, quietly praising one of the soldiers for showing discipline in not shooting the farmer. After loading the other suspects onto Strykers, we returned to base, where I fell, exhausted, at about 3 AM Friday morning.

The Surge continued while I slept.

Alpha Company had deployed during the early hours and was conducting operations around Yarmook Traffic Circle. SGT Daniel Lama, who is as much respected as he is liked, was pulling security in an air guard position of his Stryker, when a bullet flew straight at his neck, striking him. As he collapsed into the Stryker, his body clenched in seizure, fingers frozen, arms and legs rigid.

I seldom get letters in Iraq, but waiting for me in the mailroom while I slept was a card. The return address sticker, an American flag on it, was from Jefferson, Pennsylvania. The postage stamp had an American flag waving. The card inside had a picture of an American flag for its cover. The sweet and heartfelt message inside ended with-

Please tell our soldiers we care so much for them. -Dan and Connie Lama.

I was still asleep when medics brought their son Daniel to the Combat Support Hospital, or “Cash.” It’s a familiar place for Deuce Four soldiers, who’ve seen some of the most sustained and intense urban combat of this war, receiving over 150 Purple Hearts in the process.

Bap bap bap! on my door. I jumped up and there was CSM Robert Prosser, the top enlisted soldier at Deuce Four. Prosser is always professional, always direct: “Sergeant Lama’s been shot. We’re rolling in ten minutes,” he said.

“I’ll be there in ten,” I answered, instantly awake.

Within minutes, I was running out my room, still pulling zips and fastening buttons, when I came sweating into the TOC. LTC Kurilla was there asking a soldier for the latest report on Sergeant Lama, now in surgery.

When a soldier is killed or wounded, the Department of Army calls the loved ones, and despite their attempts to be sympathetic, the nature of the calls has a way of shocking the families. There is just no easy way to say, “Your son got shot today.” And so, according to men here, the calls sound something like this: “We are sorry to inform you that your son has been shot in Mosul. He’s stable, but that’s all we know at this time.”

LTC Kurilla likes to call before the Army gets a chance, to tell parents and loved ones the true circumstances. Kurilla is direct, but at least people know they are getting an accurate account.

We loaded the Strykers and drove down to the Cash, and there was Chaplain Wilson, who might be the most popular man on base. Everybody loves him. Often when Chaplain Wilson sees me, he will say, “Good morning Michael. How are you today?” But sometimes he asks me, “Are you okay?” and I think, Do I look stressed?

“Of course I feel okay Chaplain Wilson! Don’t I look okay?”

He just laughs, “Yes, Michael, you look fine. Just checking.” But secretly, every time he asks, I feel a notch better.

Chaplain Wilson came out from the hospital smiling and explained that Daniel (Sergeant Lama) was fine. The seizure was just a natural reaction to getting shot in the neck. It was just a flesh wound. As if offering proof, Chaplain Wilson said: “When they rolled Daniel over, the doctor stuck his finger in Daniel’s butt to check his prostate, and Daniel said, ‘Hey! What are you doing?!’” Everybody laughed.

I changed the subject by snapping a photo of CSM Prosser while LTC Kurilla got Mrs. Lama on the Iridium satellite phone. I heard the commander telling this soldier’s mother that her son was fine. Daniel just had some soft tissue damage, nothing major. Kurilla told her that he and some other soldiers were at the hospital now with Daniel, who was still too groggy to talk. “Really, Daniel’s okay, and don’t worry about it when the Army calls you.”

We loaded the Strykers and headed downtown.

Some Strykers were scouting for the shooters, while others were working details at Yarmook Traffic Circle. Major Craig Triscari from the 1-17th Infantry from Alaska was with Major Mike Lawrence, “Q,” and other soldiers, when he noticed a car with its hood up. The 1-17th will relieve the 1-24th soon, so Triscari has been conducting operations with Deuce Four. The vehicle struck Triscari as odd: it hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier.

Automatic weapons fire started coming from at least two places. Bullets were kicking up the dust, and we got a radio call that troops were in contact at Yarmook Traffic Circle. Sitting inside the Stryker with LTC Kurilla and me were two new faces. A young 2nd lieutenant who had only been in Iraq three weeks, and hadn’t seen any real combat; and a young specialist, who, per chance, is one of the few Deuce Four soldiers who is not a seasoned veteran, though he has seen some combat. Also in the Stryker was “AH,” the interpreter, whose courage under fire I had seen before. But the more battle weathered fighters were not there.

Chris Espindola, the Commander’s radio operator, a respected and experienced fighter, was down in Baghdad at the Iraqi Criminal Court testifying against two terrorists caught by Deuce Four months earlier. Like the card in the mailroom, the circumstances behind their capture were more germane to the events about to unfold than anyone might have guessed at the time.

Kurilla’s reluctance to allow anyone outside Deuce Four ride with his soldiers – including writers – is well known. Partly because of writers, people hearing about Deuce Four in the news might think of Mosul as some kind of thrill ride where everything will end okay after a few hairpin turns. This is not true.

Newcomers, even soldiers, unaccustomed to this level of hostility, can only burden the men with added danger. So Kurilla makes sure they can be trusted by mentoring new officers and having them spend three weeks with him before they are allowed to lead men in this unit.

Some months back, a new lieutenant named Brian Flynn was riding with the Kurilla for his first three weeks, when Kurilla spotted three men walking adjacent to where Major Mark Bieger and his Stryker had been hit with a car bomb a week prior. The three men looked suspicious to Kurilla, whose legendary sense about people is so keen that his soldiers call it the “Deuce Sixth-Sense.” His read on people and situations is so uncanny it borders the bizarre.

That day, Kurilla sensed “wrong” and told his soldiers to check the three men. As the Stryker dropped its ramp, one of the terrorists pulled a pistol from under his shirt. Mark Bieger was overwatching from another Stryker and shot the man with the first two bullets, dropping him to his knees.

LT Flynn was first out of the Stryker, and both he and the airguard CPT Westphal, saw the pistol at the same time and also shot the man. The other suspects started running. But all Kurilla saw was LT Flynn stepping off the ramp, and then there was a lot of shooting. Kurilla yelled FLYNNNNNNNNNNN!!!! and was nearly diving to stop Flynn from shooting, thinking the new lieutenant had lost his mind and was shooting a man just for running from Coalition forces. Soldiers can’t just shoot anyone who runs.

Chris Espindola also shot the man. Amazingly, despite being hit by four M4’s from multiple directions, the man still lived a few minutes. Soldiers outran and tackled his two associates when they made a run.

During their interrogation on base, both admitted to being Jihadists. One was training to be a sniper, while the other was training for different combat missions. They also admitted that the terrorist who was shot down was their cell leader, who had been training them for three months. They were on a recon of American forces when Kurilla sensed their intent.

The cell leader had a blood-stained “death note” in his pocket stating he was a true Mujahadeen and wanted to die fighting the Americans. He got his wish; and now, Chris Espindola, Kurilla’s radio man, was down in Baghdad testifying against the two surviving co-conspirators. Despite their sworn confessions, Kurilla was left with a young radio operator with little trigger-time.

Flynn had now been a platoon leader for six months, but today Kurilla had another 2nd lieutenant who was being mentored before he became a platoon leader. Our Stryker did not contain the normal fighters that I saw with LTC Kurilla, but we also had a section (two squads) of infantrymen in Strykers from Alpha Company. This section was led by SSG Konkol.

We were searching the area for the source of that automatic weapons fire when Kurilla spotted three men in a black Opel and his sixth sense kicked. When Kurilla keyed in on them, he pointed his rifle at the car and signaled them to get out. The driver tucked his head and gunned the gas. The chase was on.

Strykers are fast, but Opels are faster. We were roaring through little streets and along roads, horn blaring, cars zipping off the sides, the steady chatter of multiple radio channels colliding inside the Stryker. A Kiowa helicopter pilot radioed that he spotted the car. As the chase continued, the Kiowa pilot said, “It’s going about 105 mph.”

How can the pilot know it’s going 105 mph? I thought.

As if in reply, the pilot radioed that the Opel was outrunning his helicopter. Captain Jeff VanAntwerp came on the radio net saying he was moving his section into position to intercept the Opel.

“Watch out for that kid!” yelled Kurilla over the intercom to our driver as we made a hard turn, managing to avoid hitting the child.

Opels may be faster than Kiowas on straight-a-ways, but when the car made turns, the helicopter quickly caught up. Kurilla ordered the Kiowa to fire a warning shot, then quickly authorized the Kiowa to disable the vehicle.

Kiowas are small, carrying just two people; they fly so low the two flying soldiers are practically infantrymen. The pilot swooped low and the “co-pilot” aimed his rifle at the Opel, firing three shots and blowing out the back window. The Kiowa swooped and banked hard in front of the car, firing three more shots through the front hood, the universal sign for “stop.”

The car chase ended, but the men fled on foot up an alley. We approached in the Strykers and I heard Kurilla say on the radio, “Shots fired!” as he ducked for a moment then popped back up in the hatch. Kurilla continued, “Trail section clear the car and clear south to north! I’m going to block the back door on the north side!”

About fifteen seconds later our ramp dropped. We ran into combat.

Folks who haven’t done much urban fighting might take issue with the wild chases, and they might say that people should always “stack up” and do things this or that way, but men in Delta Force, SEALs and the like, all know that when chasing wild men into the labyrinth, soldiers enter the land of confusion. If soldiers don’t go fast, the bad guys simply get away. Just a few minutes ago, these three guys were going “105 miles per hour,” and outrunning a helicopter.

There were shops, alleys, doorways, windows.

The soldiers with LTC Kurilla were searching fast, weapons at the ready, and they quickly flex-cuffed two men. But these were not the right guys. Meanwhile, SSG Konkol’s men were clearing toward us, leaving the three bad guys boxed, but free.

Shots were fired behind us but around a corner to the left.

Both the young 2nd lieutenant and the young specialist were inside a shop when a close-quarters firefight broke out, and they ran outside. Not knowing how many men they were fighting, they wanted backup. LTC Kurilla began running in the direction of the shooting. He passed by me and I chased, Kurilla leading the way.

There was a quick and heavy volume of fire. And then LTC Kurilla was shot.

Kurilla was running when he was shot, but he didn’t seem to miss a stride; he did a crazy judo roll and came up shooting.

BamBamBamBam! Bullets were hitting all around Kurilla. The young 2nd lieutenant and specialist were the only two soldiers near. Neither had real combat experience. “AH” had no weapon. I had a camera.

Seconds count.

Kurilla, though down and unable to move, was fighting and firing, yelling at the two young soldiers to get in there; but they hesitated. BamBamBamBam!

Kurilla was in the open, but his judo roll had left him slightly to the side of the shop. I screamed to the young soldiers, “Throw a grenade in there!” but they were not attacking.

“Throw a grenade in there!” They did not attack.

“Give me a grenade!” They didn’t have grenades.

“Erik! Do you need me to come get you!” I shouted. But he said “No.” (Thank God; running in front of the shop might have proved fatal.)

“What’s wrong with you!?” I yelled above the shooting.

“I’m hit three times! I’m shot three times!”

Amazingly, he was right. One bullet smashed through his femur, snapping his leg. His other leg was hit and so was an arm.

With his leg mangled, Kurilla pointed and fired his rifle into the doorway, yelling instructions to the soldiers about how to get in there. But they were not attacking. This was not the Deuce Four I know. The other Deuce Four soldiers would have killed every man in that room in about five seconds. But these two soldiers didn’t have the combat experience to grasp the power of momentum.

This was happening in seconds. Several times I nearly ran over to Kurilla, but hesitated every time. Kurilla was, after all, still fighting. And I was afraid to run in front of the shop, especially so unarmed.

And then help arrived in the form of one man: CSM Prosser.

Prosser ran around the corner, passed the two young soldiers who were crouched low, then by me and right to the shop, where he started firing at men inside.

A man came forward, trying to shoot Kurilla with a pistol, apparently realizing his only escape was by fighting his way out, or dying in the process. Kurilla was aiming at the doorway waiting for him to come out. Had Prosser not come at that precise moment, who knows what the outcome might have been.

Prosser shot the man at least four times with his M4 rifle. But the American M4 rifles are weak – after Prosser landed three nearly point blank shots in the man’s abdomen, splattering a testicle with a fourth, the man just staggered back, regrouped and tried to shoot Prosser.

Then Prosser’s M4 went “black” (no more bullets). A shooter inside was also having problems with his pistol, but there was no time to reload. Prosser threw down his empty M4, ran into the shop and tackled the man.

Though I have the photo, I do not remember the moment that Prosser went “black” and ran into the shop. Apparently I turned my head, but kept my finger on the shutter button. When I looked back again, I saw the very bloody leg of CSM Prosser inside the shop. It was not moving. He appeared to be shot down and dead.

I looked back at the two soldiers who were with me outside, and screamed what amounted to “Attack Attack Attack!” I stood up and was yelling at them. Actually, what I shouted was an unprintable string of curses, while Kurilla was also yelling at them to get in there, his M4 trained on the entrance. But the guys were not attacking.

I saw Prosser’s M4 on the ground, Where did that come from?

I picked up Prosser’s M4. It was empty. I saw only Prosser’s bloody leg lying still, just inside the darkened doorway, because most of his body was hidden behind a stack of sheet metal.

“Give me some ammo! Give me a magazine!” I yelled, and the young 2nd lieutenant handed over a full 30-round magazine. I jacked it in, released the bolt and hit the forward assist. I had only one magazine, so checked that the selector was on semi-automatic.

I ran back to the corner of the shop and looked at LTC Kurilla who was bleeding, and saw CSM Prosser’s extremely bloody leg inside the shop, the rest of him was still obscured from view. I was going to run into the shop and shoot every man with a gun. And I was scared to death.

What I didn’t realize was at that same moment four soldiers from Alpha Company 2nd Platoon were arriving on scene, just in time to see me about to go into the store. SSG Gregory Konkol, SGT Jim Lewis, and specialists Niccola DeVereaux and Christopher Muse where right there, behind me, but I didn’t see them.

Reaching around the corner, I fired three shots into the shop. The third bullet pierced a propane canister, which jumped up in the air and began spinning violently. It came straight at my head but somehow missed, flying out of the shop as a high-pressure jet of propane hit me in the face. The goggles saved my eyes. I gulped in deeply.

In the tiniest fraction of a second, somehow my mind actually registered Propane . . . FIREBALL! as it bounced on the ground where it spun furiously, creating an explosive cloud of gas and dust, just waiting for someone to fire a weapon.

I scrambled back, got up and ran a few yards, afraid that Kurilla was going to burn up if there was a fire. The soldiers from Alpha Company were heading toward him when LTC Kurilla yelled out that he was okay, but that CSM Prosser was still in the shop. The Alpha Company soldiers ran through the propane and dust cloud and swarmed the shop.

When the bullet hit that canister, Prosser—who I thought might be dead because of all the blood on his leg—was actually fighting hand-to-hand on the ground. Wrapped in a ground fight, Prosser could not pull out his service pistol strapped on his right leg, or get to his knife on his left, because the terrorist—who turned out to be a serious terrorist—had grabbed Prosser’s helmet and pulled it over his eyes and twisted it.

Prosser had beaten the terrorist in the head three times with his fist and was gripping his throat, choking him. But Prosser’s gloves were slippery with blood so he couldn’t hold on well. At the same time, the terrorist was trying to bite Prosser’s wrist, but instead he bit onto the face of Prosser’s watch. (Prosser wears his watch with the face turned inward.) The terrorist had a mouthful of watch but he somehow also managed to punch Prosser in the face. When I shot the propane canister, Prosser had nearly strangled the guy, but my shots made Prosser think bad guys were coming, so he released the terrorist’s throat and snatched out the pistol from his holster, just as SSG Konkol, Lewis, DeVereaux and Muse swarmed the shop. But the shots and the propane fiasco also had brought the terrorist back to life, so Prosser quickly reholstered his pistol and subdued him by smashing his face into the concrete.

The combat drama was ended, so I started snapping photos again.

When Recon platoon showed up about a minute later, SFC Bowman asked LTC Kurilla to lie down. But Kurilla was ordering people to put out security, and directing action this way and that. When the very experienced medic, Specialist Munoz, put morphine into Kurilla, the commander still kept giving orders, even telling Munoz how to do his job. So SFC Bowman told Munoz to give Kurilla another morphine, and finally Kurilla settled down, and stopped giving orders long enough for them to haul him and the terrorist away to the Combat Support Hospital. The same facility where Daniel Lama was recovering from the earlier gunshot wound to the neck.

Combat Support Hospital

The Surge operation continued as we returned to base. The Commander and the terrorist were both being prepped for surgery, when LTC Kurilla said, “Tell Major Bieger to call my wife so she doesn’t get a call from the Army first.” But someone gave the Commander a cell phone, and I heard Kurilla talking to his wife, Mary Paige, saying something like, “Honey, there has been a little shooting here. I got hit and there was some minor soft tissue damage.” The X-ray on the board nearby showed his femur snapped in half. “I’ll be fine. Just some minor stuff.” That poor woman.

The doctors rolled LTC Kurilla and the terrorist into OR and our surgeons operated on both at the same time. The terrorist turned out to be one Khalid Jasim Nohe, who had first been captured by US forces (2-8 FA) on 21 December, the same day a large bomb exploded in the dining facility on this base and killed 22 people.

That December day, Khalid Jasim Nohe and two compatriots tried to evade US soldiers from 2-8 FA, but the soldiers managed to stop the fleeing car. Then one of the suspects tried to wrestle a weapon from a soldier before all three were detained. They were armed with a sniper rifle, an AK, pistols, a silencer, explosives and other weapons, and had in their possession photographs of US bases, including a map of this base.

That was in December.

About two weeks ago, word came that Nohe’s case had been dismissed by a judge on 7 August. The Coalition was livid. According to American officers, solid cases are continually dismissed without apparent cause. Whatever the reason, the result was that less than two weeks after his release from Abu Ghraib, Nohe was back in Mosul shooting at American soldiers.

LTC Kurilla repeatedly told me of – and I repeatedly wrote about – terrorists who get released only to cause more trouble. Kurilla talked about it almost daily. Apparently, the vigor of his protests had made him an opponent of some in the Army’s Detention Facilities chain of command, but had otherwise not changed the policy. And now Kurilla lay shot and in surgery in the same operating room with one of the catch-and-release-terrorists he and other soldiers had been warning everyone about.

When Kurilla woke in recovery a few hours after surgery, he called CSM Prosser and asked for a Bible and the book: Gates of Fire. Kurilla gives a copy of Gates of Fire to every new officer and orders them to read it. He had given me a copy and told me to read it. In my book, there is a marked passage, which I thought rather flowery. But I have it beside me on the table by the map of Iraq.

“I would be the one. The one to go back and speak. A pain beyond all previous now seized me. Sweet life itself, even the desperately sought chance to tell the tale, suddenly seemed unendurable alongside the pain of having to take leave of these whom I had come so to love.”

A short time after Kurilla gave me the book, following the death of one of his soldiers, he said to me, “I want you to write about my men. You are the only one who might understand,” the passage registered in my mind.

I asked CSM Prosser if I could go with him to see the Commander. Carrying both books, we drove to the Cash. Major Mark Bieger arrived alongside Kurilla’s hospital bed, paying respect. After spending some time with the Commander, CSM Prosser and I drove back to the unit.

The Deuce Four

The truest test of leadership happens when the Commander is no longer there. Kurilla’s men were taking down and boxing up his photos of his wife and children, and his Minnesota Vikings flag, when they decided to keep the flag so everyone could autograph it. It wasn’t long before there was no room left to sign, but I found a place to scratch. I wanted my name on that flag.

The place suddenly felt hollowed-out.

When I came back into the TOC, Major Michael Lawrence – who I often challenge to pull-up contests, and who so far has beat me (barely) every time – looked me square and professionally, in the direct way of a military leader and asked, “Mike, did you pick up a weapon today?”
“I did.”
“Did you fire that weapon?”
“I did.”
“If you pick up another weapon, you are out of here the next day. Understood?”
“Understand.”
“We still have to discuss what happened today.”

Writers are not permitted to fight. I asked SFC Bowman to look at the photos and hear what happened. Erik Kurilla and CSM Prosser were witness, but I did not want the men of Deuce Four who were not there to think I had picked up a weapon without just cause. I approached SFC Bowman specifically, because he is fair, and is respected by the officers and men. Bowman would listen with an open mind. While looking at the photos, Bowman said, “Mike, it’s simple. Were you in fear for your life or the lives of others?”

“Thank you Sergeant Bowman,” I said.

I walked back to the TOC and on the way, Chaplain Wilson said, “Hello Michael. Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes Chaplain Wilson!” Why does he always ask that? Do I look stressed? But suddenly, I felt much better. Chaplain Wilson might be the only man in the universe with a chance of getting me into the chapel of my own free will, but I have resisted so far.

Only a few hours had passed since Daniel Lama and the Commander were shot. It was around 9 PM when I heard Captain Matt McGrew was going to see Kurilla. I asked to come along. We entered the hospital, and saw that Erik Kurilla’s bed was beside Daniel Lama’s. Kurilla went from asleep to wide awake in about a quarter-second, said “hello” and asked us to sit down. After some conversation, the Commander looked over at the next bed and asked, “How are you doing SGT Lama?”

“Great, sir.”

“Good,” the Commander said, “You are my new PSD.” [Personal Security Detachment: Bodyguard.]

Daniel Lama smiled, got out of bed and I shot a photo of him reporting for his “new duty.”

It was near 10 PM when the airplane that would start their journey back to America landed outside, its engines rumbling the hospital floor. The terrorist who shot Kurilla, and who was now a eunuch in a nearby bed, might well have been the same terrorist who, after being released, shot Lama and Thompson and others. Kurilla could see Khalid Jasim Nohe, but made no comment.

As Captain McGrew and I drove through the dusty darkness back to the Deuce Four, the Commander and SGT Lama, along with other wounded and dead soldiers from around Iraq, began their journey home.

The next day, Iraqi Army and Police commanders were in a fury that LTC Kurilla had been shot. Some blamed his men, while others blamed the terrorists, although blame alone could not compete with disbelief. Kurilla had gone on missions every single day for almost a year. Talking with people downtown. Interfacing with shop owners. Conferencing with doctors. Drinking tea with Iraqi citizens in their homes. Meeting proud mothers with new babies. It’s important to interact and take the pulse of a city in a war where there is no “behind the lines,” no safe areas. It’s even dangerous on the bases here.

In order for leaders of Kurilla’s rank to know the pulse of the Iraqi people, they must make direct contact. There’s a risk in that. But it’s men like Kurilla who can make this work. Even and especially in places like Mosul, where it takes a special penchant for fighting. A passion for the cause of freedom. A true and abiding understanding of both its value and its costs. An unwavering conviction that, in the end, we will win.

Make no mistake about Kurilla – he’s a warrior, always at the front of the charge. But it’s that battle-hardened bravery that makes him the kind of leader that Americans admire and Iraqis respect. Like the soldiers of Deuce Four, Iraqis have seen too much war to believe in fairy tales. They know true warriors bleed.

Iraqi Army and Police officers see many Americans as too soft, especially when it comes to dealing with terrorists. The Iraqis who seethe over the shooting of Kurilla know that the cunning fury of Jihadists is congenite. Three months of air-conditioned reflection will not transform terrorists into citizens.

Over lunch with Chaplain Wilson and our two battalion surgeons, Major Brown and Captain Warr, there was much discussion about the “ethics” of war, and contention about why we afford top-notch medical treatment to terrorists. The treatment terrorists get here is better and more expensive than what many Americans or Europeans can get.

“That’s the difference between the terrorists and us,” Chaplain Wilson kept saying. “Don’t you understand? That’s the difference.”

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Mosul, Iraq
The first person to use a shield might have been a hairy man who, days earlier, barely survived a barrage from the stone-throwing man in the cave next door. As the use of weaponized sticks and stones spread, improved shields probably were not far behind. Throughout recorded history, bigger and better shields always play catch-up to their bigger and better ballistic brethren. Common wisdom posits that defense systems are preventative measures, but in fact, they are reactive. Every castle wall can be defeated. Somewhere along the line people realized, “the best defense is a good offense.” Adherence to this maxim provided at least one of the philosophical rubicons to our landing in Iraq.

August 10, 2005

Combat Physics

Mosul, Iraq

The first person to use a shield might have been a hairy man who, days earlier, barely survived a barrage from the stone-throwing man in the cave next door. As the use of weaponized sticks and stones spread, improved shields probably were not far behind. Throughout recorded history, bigger and better shields always play catch-up to their bigger and better ballistic brethren. Common wisdom posits that defense systems are preventative measures, but in fact, they are reactive. Every castle wall can be defeated. Somewhere along the line people realized, “the best defense is a good offense.” Adherence to this maxim provided at least one of the philosophical rubicons to our landing in Iraq.

The best modern armors, which can include everything from sandbags to special alloys and “reactive armors,” are simple to use and can work well for short periods. Sandbags are good and cheap, but are cumbersome and blow apart easily. As for the reactive armors, modern explosives are more powerful than modern alloys and their associated engineering can withstand. Pound for pound–and volume for volume–explosives are miles ahead of metallurgy and engineering. No matter how sophisticated the science behind the shield, someone can make a bomb to beat it.

During the first phase of this war, many of our troops were riding in unarmored Humvees and other vehicles. Soon they were being torn to pieces. Once the vehicles were up-armored, the enemy was unable to defeat much of that defense. For a time. But today–although armored Humvees are great and can defeat many threats–the latest generations of IEDs can effortlessly swat them away, spreading their parts over city blocks. The enemy has destroyed our most powerful armored tanks with underground bombs that leave craters in the roads large enough to make swimming pools.

Troops in Mosul face a spectrum of explosive threats. At the low end are IEDs like the “double-bangers,” fashioned from a couple of artillery rounds. Double-bangers easily kill soldiers on foot, or even in Humvees, and sometimes even kill exposed persons in Stryker vehicles. Five-bangers start the next stage of lethality, and can obliterate Humvees if the timing is right.

Timing is critical, and the enemy is getting better at it.

Giant charges are next; car bombs in Mosul usually contain 20-25 artillery rounds, weighting the car so that it practically drags on the ground and is hard to steer. More recently, the enemy has learned to make special shaped charges specifically designed to defeat alloy armors.

The attack last week that killed 15 people, including 14 Marines, catapulted this topic to the front pages. A massive explosion completely destroyed their 28-ton armored personnel carrier. Traveling almost as fast as that news was speculation that our armor is insufficient. But the news that never flashed is that no amount of armor can completely protect us. Armor is extremely important, but given time, the enemy will defeat it.

Jungle Law

Every day, the Deuce Four launches dozens of combat missions in Mosul. Recently, a patrol was heading downtown, and its tasks included meeting with Iraqi police. I asked to go along. The Battalion Commander led the patrol, which also included two Strykers led by LT Sean Keneally from Charlie Company.

As the ramp on our Stryker began to close, I inserted earplugs, pulled a fire-retardant hood over my head, put on my helmet and buckled the chin strap, then pulled the ballistic goggles over my eyes.

Flash burns from bombs are deadly. I’ve seen it many times: anything exposed is fried in an instant. Skin and flesh just peel off. The super-hot flashes also melt contact lenses to eyeballs before people can blink. Years ago, when I was a jumpmaster, I remember sticking my face outside the aircraft to check surroundings, and my eyelids slapped and flopped in the torrent. That was only about hurricane force winds. The blast in an explosion opens the eyelids, fusing the melted contacts to the eyeballs. Smart soldiers don’t wear contacts in combat, but others often do.

I’m wearing fire-retardant pants and a long-sleeved shirt, over which I wear a fire-retardant jumpsuit. I take a long drink of cold water, and pull the hood back up over my mouth and nose, then pull the black, fire-retardant gloves over my hands. The outside temperature is roughly 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sitting to my left is Major David Brown, MD, the Battalion surgeon. I hope Major Brown doesn’t get severely injured or killed; we’ll definitely need him again. Plus, I like him; he’s probably the only soldier who hasn’t laughed at all the fire-gear I wear. We both know that the law of averages catches people at the worst times, and survival favors the protected.

A couple minutes later, we leave the base and begin the drive downtown, passing spots where so many car bombs and IEDs have exploded. Within a few blocks, we are 15 seconds from rolling over a large bomb buried under the road.

15 Seconds…

At least two terrorists are watching our approach, pretending to talk to a taxi driver. One holds a Motorola radio transmitter in his pants pocket.

14 Seconds…13 Seconds…

The bombs are buried under the road ahead of us, on a route to the police station.

12 Seconds…11 Seconds…

We are in a big Stryker. Usually the IEDs just make the ears ring–I wear earplugs–or maybe knock an air-guard or two unconscious, filling the cabin with so much fine dust that it looks like smoke. I’ve often wondered if this fine dust sometimes ignites when the armor ruptures, adding to the flashover that burns so many soldiers inside.

10 Seconds…9 Seconds…

Sometimes IEDs blow through the Stryker, launching it into the air, and critically or fatally injuring the people inside. Odd body parts will often be left unscathed, such as a severed hand in a black glove on the road. About 43 Americans have died here during the past ten days.

8 Seconds…7 Seconds…The men are cautiously watching us, still talking among themselves. The transmitter is armed. A push of the button might make the final dispatch.

6 Seconds…

A terrorist is preparing to push the button, but the timing’s got to be just right . . . not yet . . . not yet . . . we are almost there. . . .

5 Seconds…

One of the terrorists does a double take at the lead Stryker, blowing his cover. The call instantly goes out to “Block left! Lock ‘em down! Two pax!”

Deuce Four Strykers: movement to contact

When we turn toward them, one man spooks and bolts. I’m watching on the screen [RWS] inside, as SSG Munch, our machine gunner, tracks this man who runs like an antelope. I follow along on the RWS, and think, Why is he running? How is he running that fast?

He’s running so fast that it’s freaky to watch. The only other person I’ve seen run that fast was a track star during practice at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Now, watching the machine gun track him was like a video game. Except this video had real men, real bullets, and when your team hits a bomb, you really die. If Munch fires his real .50 caliber machine gun, the guy who is running like the Bionic Man will atomize into a bloody mist, and the wall behind him will be knocked down. Munch doesn’t shoot.

The Bionic Terrorist runs into a neighborhood. We take a couple of sharp turns chasing him, driving over a few curbs. Of course, I am thinking, this guy is leading us into a massive ambush.

LT Keneally and his two Strykers are just behind us. The Commander radios Keneally to grab the stripe-shirted guy that was left standing in the traffic circle when the Bionic Terrorist bolted. I looked behind me and said over my shoulder to Dr. Brown: “I bet this is an ambush.”

As we follow him into the neighborhood, he turns around mid-stride to see our Stryker with weapons pointing at him, and he caves to the ground. The ramp drops and we all run out. The man is just a cowering heap on the sidewalk. Chris Espindola flex-cuffs him. Meanwhile, I’m wondering what this is really all about, and waiting for the ambush to start. SSG Contrares is scanning rooftops, ready for action.

The Bionic Terrorist seems mentally disturbed. He’s poxied with panic, his face contorted by abject terror. Clearly, he is deranged, possibly explaining his prodigious running ability. The enemy is known to use and discard mentally-challenged persons. The poor guy probably doesn’t even know what language we speak.

LT Keneally’s voice calls over the radio that when they caught the stripe-shirted man they found an IED radio transmitter in his pocket. Before the message is completed, we’ve started running, leaving our Stryker behind with a few soldiers to watch over the not-so-bionic terrorist. We cover the few hundred yards to the Yarmuk traffic circle, reaching the spot where the two men were standing when the commotion started.

One of the Charlie Company soldiers looks at me and asks, “Isn’t all that shit hot?”
“Not really,” I say. They all laugh at me for dressing like a fireman. But each layer squeezes ten more seconds between searing heat and my skin.

Running to Yarmuk Traffic Circle

The Yarmuk traffic circle is fantastically dangerous. On the first mission I ran in Mosul, we lost two soldiers and an interpreter, all killed by a car bomb. Others were horribly burned, scarred for life. Many of our wounded and killed soldiers got it right here, or in the immediate vicinity. The ISF takes serious losses in this part of town. But it’s not entirely one-sided–the Deuce Four has killed well over 150 terrorists in this neighborhood in the past 10 months. But almost none of those made the news, and those that did had a few key details missing.

Like the time when some ISF were driving and got blasted by an IED, causing numerous casualties and preventing them from recovering the vehicle. The terrorists came out and did their rifle-pumping-in-the-air thing, shooting AKs, dancing around like monkeys. Videos went ’round the world, making it appear the terrorists were running Mosul, which was pretty much what was being reported at the time.

But that wasn’t the whole story. In the Yarmuk neighborhood, only terrorists openly carry AK-47s. The lawyers call this Hostile Intent. The soldiers call this Dead Man Walking.

Deuce Four is an overwhelmingly aggressive and effective unit, and they believe the best defense is a dead enemy. They are constantly thinking up innovative, unique, and effective ways to kill or capture the enemy; proactive not reactive. They planned an operation with snipers, making it appear that an ISF vehicle had been attacked, complete with explosives and flash-bang grenades to simulate the IED. The simulated casualty evacuation of sand dummies completed the ruse.

The Deuce Four soldiers left quickly with the “casualties,” “abandoning” the burning truck in the traffic circle. The enemy took the bait. Terrorists came out and started with the AK-rifle-monkey-pump, shooting into the truck, their own video crews capturing the moment of glory. That’s when the American snipers opened fire and killed everybody with a weapon. Until now, only insiders knew about the AK-monkey-pumpers smack-down.

And there we were, in the Yarmuk traffic circle, where so many people die so violently. LT Keneally and SSG Eric Richardson had cuffed the guy with the striped shirt and the transmitter. LTC Kurilla started interrogating the terrorist, asking where the bombs are, stopping only for the interpreter.

Meanwhile, Strykers took up blocking positions, and began scanning the area for enemy. Everyone knew that other terrorists were out there, somewhere, watching us. After all, we were standing in what might be the most dangerous traffic circle in the universe.

I was thinking, of course: IEDs. Snipers. RPGs. Car bombs. Mortars. And then, after scanning the area and reflecting, I rethought and came up with: IEDs. Snipers. RPGs. Car bombs. Mortars. But we hadn’t been shot at by snipers in days, and Kurilla managed to make the terrorist point to where the IEDs were buried. That’s when automatic weapons started firing at us.

Bullets flying by, and enemy weapons firing: PaPaPaPaPaPaPaPaPaPow . . . zinnggg . . . GawGawGawGawPaPaGawGaw. . . . different types of weapons were shooting.
One of our big machine guns started boomboomboom . . . boomboomboom . . . boomboom boom, and then our guys with those little rifles they carry, poppop . . . poppoppoppop. . . . to my left . . . poppoppoppoppoppoppopp to my right, and then, boomboomboom PaPaPaPaPaPpoppoppoppopp GawGawGaw BOOM PaPaPpoppopGawGaw GawGawGawPaPaPpop popboom boom boom.

This was an appropriate time to run for cover. Enemy bullets snapping by. I saw at least two soldiers smiling–authors are not allowed to carry weapons PaPaPGawGaw
BOOM PaPaPpop zinnggg–dust clouding the air–sure would be nice to have a gun instead of a camera right now boompop Gawsnapsnap boom boompoppboomGawGawGaw.

I looked back to where we had been because the prisoner [the American soldiers always remind me that I should call prisoners “detainees”] was still there, handcuffed, and on his knees, with the radio transmitter lying beside him on the ground.

We had left the prisoner in the open. Bullets are snapping, and I’m crouched on a knee behind a Stryker. When I look back again, I see Kurilla standing out there, alone, next to the terrorist on the sidewalk. Bullets are kicking up dirt and Kurilla gives us a look: What the hell! You left the prisoner!

For a moment, I nearly ran back out to drag the terrorist behind the Stryker, but then I thought, Nope, he’s a terrorist! If Kurilla gets shot, I’m definitely going to get him. But the terrorist can get shot to pieces and I don’t care.

Instead of doing something useful–and I feel marginally guilty about this, but not too much–I start snapping photos as the Commander drags the guy by the collar to get him to the cover of the Stryker. I can’t believe Kurilla is still alive after nearly a year of doing this.

BoomboomboomPaPaPaPaPaP pop pop

Soon we cleared the area south of the circle where we were taking fire. It was over within about 20 minutes; the enemy broke contact for a short time. Maybe we killed some. Before it could start up again, more American platoons arrived, as well as our Warmonger air support. Soldiers love those helicopter pilots. With back-up on site, we made security positions, and waited for the Army Explosives Ordinance Disposal [EOD] team to arrive.

All the while we were parked at the traffic circle, I expected mortars or car bombs at any moment. The longer we sat there, still and waiting, the greater the risk. We had recently uncovered a giant cache of IEDs, and some were pre-fabbed into concrete to look like road curbs. Sections of the road underneath us might very well be bombs. One EOD soldier didn’t seem happy to be there. “Nice Fun Meter!” I said and snapped a photo.

The EOD soldiers loaded their little Talon robot with a claw-full of C-4 plastic explosives. The robot rolled down the road and put the explosives where we thought the IEDs were. The robot scampered back a short distance:

Fire in the hole, fire in the hole, fire in the hole!
BOOM!
Nothing. Just the C-4 exploded.

One soldier said, “You’re not going to write about this are you? That wasn’t anything. Don’t make it sound like a big deal, okay? My mom reads your stuff, and every time you write about something dangerous she freaks out.”

“No problem,” I said, “I’ll water it down from here out.” There was some minor shooting going on around us, and an EOD lieutenant came up and said, “I loved that dispatch called the Devil’s Foyer.”

“Thank you,” I replied, then asked, “What was that green sub-munition I photographed for that dispatch? A thousand people wrote me asking about it.”

The Lieutenant answered, “Could have been different things. Like chemical, but probably was just high explosives. When those sub-munitions deploy, they spin and arm. Probably that one was not armed,” he answered.

The sounds of shooting between Deuce Four platoons and terrorists kept wafting in, but it wasn’t very close. I still expected mortars, a car bomb, maybe a sniper.

The robot scampered out and laid down another claw-full of plastic explosives. BOOM!
Nothing.

The robot scampered back.

“Isn’t all that shit pretty hot?” asked an EOD soldier.
“Not really,” I said.

Should be some mortars landing on us any moment now.

The EOD guys stuck more explosives in the robot’s claw. It was like a dog trained to fetch, but the only treat this robot needs is a charged battery-pack. It scampered back out. BOOM!
Nothing.

That’s three strikes. Time for the EOD guys to pull out and leave. This irritates and angers the soldiers immensely, but I’ve run with EOD guys before, and their work is exceptionally dangerous. The enemy specifically tries to kill them, making it important that EOD be used only when absolutely needed. This EOD team said that if we find the bomb, please call. They drove home.

And so we sat there, with the two damn terrorists. Couldn’t get the bombs to explode. There might be other bombs close by, and there might be other terrorists with other radio transmitters. Just because we had the one transmitter and the two bad guys did not mean we could just walk around the center ring of the bull’s eye and poke around looking for trouble. Trouble would definitely find us in Yarmuk circle. Time was working against us.

LTC Kurilla didn’t want to leave the bombs buried in the road, so he pulled the Strykers further back, and tried to use the terrorist’s radio control to detonate them. He dropped down inside the hatch and asked the terrorist how to use the transmitter. In the most shocking admission of guilt imaginable, the terrorist walked the Commander through the steps: 1) Re-install the AA batteries in the back, 2) Connect the 9-volt battery on the side. 3) Flip the black switch on the side. 4) Press #1 on the weird keypad. 5) Press #7.

When you press 7, the bomb explodes.

Despite trying all kinds of permutations, even standing up in the hatch for better transmission, nothing happened. Kurilla came back down and asked for more instructions, but the thing would not work. The receiver might have been damaged by the three EOD blasts.

After ordering that the street be made “black,” meaning closed to traffic, Kurilla then asked the terrorist where he lived. Without hesitation, he told us. Some soldiers stayed to watch the IED area while we drove to and raided the man’s house.

He lived with his mother. She was the only one home when we arrived. It was as if she knew we were coming. Many people saw us capture him; someone must have called on a cell phone to warn her that trouble was brewing. We searched everywhere.

She smiled the whole time, as if to say, That’s my boy! The translator heard her say to her son, “Don’t worry. You will be released soon.” She smiled at me.

The most serious terrorists do not fear prison here. Captain Jeff VanAntwerp, who commands Alpha Company, recently told me that Iraqis joke among themselves that they would pay 5,000 dinar per night to stay at Abu Ghraib prison. It’s air-conditioned, the showers are good, the food is good, and the water is good. The mother seemed to know this and it curled in contempt behind her smile.

Our guys back at the Yarmuk traffic circle called saying they were in a little firefight and were taking mortar fire. But on the block where the terrorist lived, with his proud smiling mother, soldiers knocked on the neighbors’ doors. The children clearly recognized the man, but everyone disavowed knowledge of him, despite that his mother encouraged him in front of us.

When the soldiers talked with other neighbors, they showed the transmitter and the terrorist. But clearly this was not diminishing his stature: We were making a local hero. And his neighbors were coalescing to shield him. This wasn’t getting us anywhere useful, so we changed course and headed for our meeting with the police.

We finally arrived at the police station where they had prepared lunch for us, though we were running late due to the inconveniences. The smell quickened my growing hunger; Iraqi Police food in Mosul is much better than the American Army chow on base. But before we could eat, the soldiers walked the blindfolded prisoner in to see if police could identify him.

The Chief wanted the prisoner. “Please leave him with me.”

During lunch, the Chief persisted in his entreaties to LTC Kurilla, saying his police would find all the bombs, break the cell, and give the prisoner back tomorrow at the latest. And they could. The Iraqi Police could break the cell because they can break the man.

Terrorists often target Iraqi police–especially this station–so the Chief was becoming frustrated, and he continued to angle for the opportunity to interrogate the prisoner, suggesting creative ways to circumvent the inconvenient rules, like, “Let him go and we will catch him again.” But LTC Kurilla kept reiterating, “You know I can’t give him to you. I might not agree with all the rules, but I must enforce them.”

“Give him to me, just for the night,” the Chief said. “You can have him back tomorrow.”

“That I cannot do,” Kurilla replied firmly. “If your police had been with us when we captured him, you could have him. But these are the rules.”

Driving back to base with both prisoners, we knew that the unexploded bomb (or bombs) were still under a main road. But later that night the 73rd Engineers found two bombs buried in the exact spot described by the terrorist. Even with these devices eliminated, we thought more bombs were hidden there. Something was not right. But a hunch, even one so collective, can’t justify digging up a main road in Mosul.

And the missions can’t be put on hold. Timing is everything. An enemy fighting a guerilla war has limited resources; whoever controls the pace owns the day.

Next day, we drove back to the same police station using a different route, and met with the Chief to discuss security for the upcoming elections. Minutes after we left the meeting, a terrorist sniper shot and killed PFC Nils Thompson.

There was no time to stop and grieve. The missions continued. They had to. Hitting the enemy. More than I can ever write. Too much happens here too fast. Despite the brisk pace, as the distance of days unfurled, conversations went back to that IED. Then, finally, I woke up early one morning, waiting by my cell phone for a scheduled radio interview, when a gigantic explosion rocked the morning darkness. That was more than a five-banger.

I walked to the TOC and asked what exploded. Blasts that large can defeat Strkyer armor, but no patrols called in to say they had been hit. I asked “Q,” who was manning the counter-battery radar, if he saw anything; maybe flying parts were tracked by radar, but Q showed me the blank screen. No radar acquisitions. Just another giant explosion in the night without explanation; there have been many.

I walked back through the dark and did the radio interview by cell phone. During such interviews, I get the impression that people at home are losing faith in the effort, though we are winning. But at home they cannot see it, and when I said goodbye that time, I sat in the dark.

The birds began singing and twilight broke to sunrise; another day was born. I watched Strykers coming in, and Strykers going out: the missions rolled on and I wanted to go. But I was falling behind on the writing.

It happens that the explosion was an accidental detonation of the large bomb we suspected had been left under the road by Yarmuk Traffic Circle. Apparently the terrorists had gone back to hook it up, but it had detonated, scattering some car parts, but no human parts were found. Our hunch left a crater eight feet in diameter, and took out an entire lane. Three artillery rounds also had been blown from the hole and lay unexploded nearby. Had Kurilla not spotted that nervous double-take seconds before the stripe-shirted terrorist could hit the #7 key, that bomb might have hit us.

Now Kurilla was rolling out again, planning to check election security, and the area by the hole that might have been our grave. Soldiers were suiting up and as they passed me, several asked if I was going. I kept saying, “I want to, but I promised to finish a dispatch.” They rolled without me. Again, a powerful IED lay in their path, several miles from the previous bomb. BOOM! A soldier was lightly wounded in the face, the Stryker was damaged, but the timing was a tad off, so everyone survived.

That night, there was an important memorial for Nils Thompson, the soldier who had been killed by a sniper. Soldiers had labored for days, and into the nights, to make a fitting ceremony for young Nils Thompson. Top officers, a General among them, came to the ceremony. Though he’d just turned 19, Thompson already had earned respect from officers and men in the unit. Many quiet tears marked the true pain of the loss. A few soldiers wondered, Do people at home even care?

After the memorial, I finally came back, ready to finish a dispatch that was now days late. But when I walked into the TOC, the Shadow unmanned “spy plane” was beaming down live feed of a target house. Captain VanAntwerp, Alpha Company Commander, was there, talking with LTC Kurilla and others. They were hastily planning a mission after hot intelligence arrived about two car bombs that were being assembled. Captain V was loaded for battle.

Captain V is one of the most respected officers here. When things go wrong, soldiers love to hear his voice on the other end of the radio. They know that things are getting better fast when Captian V is on the way. A couple months ago, I rolled out with his section, and soon we were sleeking on foot down the darkened streets and warrens of Mosul, far away from the Strykers. We got into contact and there was some minor shooting drama, and I ended up separated with only two soldiers. We were alone in Mosul. Guns were hot. There was a sergeant and a young soldier, and the sergeant’s radio could not reach out. “Let’s stay here and Captain V will find us,” I suggested. But the sergeant was having none of that sit-tight stuff. He wanted to keep moving, and so we did.

Before long, a Stryker came creeping down a dark road and stopped in front of our latest position in a dark alcove. The ramp dropped and Captain V walked out. “Hey, guys,” he said. “How’s it going?” Much better, I thought. We re-grouped and continued the mission.

And now tonight, the enemy was up to something, but our guys were on to them.

“Is this a real raid,” I asked a soldier quietly, “or are they just going out to roll up some little cell leader?”

“Sounds like they’re going in hard,” answered a soldier.

“Can I go?” I asked LTC Kurilla. The answer has never been “No.”

“Get your gear. They’re leaving.”

“I’m on it.” The dispatch would have to wait.

After midnight, the ramps dropped and we slipped silently into the dark spaces of Mosul. Creeping through stinking alleys, we took cover in darkness, sometimes illuminating briefly under shop lights, then disappearing back into the shadows.

No sound, no sight, just soldiers prowling through the murk of war, bringing worry to men who should be worried. The soldiers found the right house, and silently slipped inside.

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