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March 14, 2003

The mechanics had the power, and I needed to sort out some power issues. On the first full day with the company, between Sgt. Lustig’s preparing of the drunk soldier’s statement and his delivery of ass-chewing, I had gone over to the section of desert that was designated as the company’s maintenance area. Staff Sgt. Melvin Jacobson, known as Sgt. Jake, examined my power pack and the  inverters I had jury-rigged with jumper cables and cigarette lighter outlets. He said no problem. I could plug into their generator-powered outlets or clip onto their batteries anytime.

Jake, Georgia good old boy, looked like a perpetually irritated, red-faced leprechaun. He had stubble on the sides of his head like everyone else, but said the Army regs allowed up to three inches of hair on top, and he had all three inches flying wildly off the top, usually with some sand and dust in it. He was gruff and demanding, throwing barbs at his men constantly, but with a sentimental core. I liked him immediately. Jake seemed to like the idea of having his own pet reporter, a curiosity and someone to lounge around with who wasn’t part of the chain of command. I could come around anytime for the coffee the mechanics always had going in a deuce and a half truck with a plywood work shed built on it. He even had his guys set me up with a desk, a plywood board laid across a couple of ammo cans, and yelled at them when they invariably stumbled over the cables leading from my laptop to the sat phone on its little tripod out in the sand. He showed me the tanks lined up in two rows in his sandy motor pool, with the names their crews had stenciled on the main gun tubes.

Staff Sgt. Randall Smith’s ANTHRAX. Lustig’s ACHTUNG BABY. Staff Sgt. Shawn Gibson’s ANGUISH. Wolford’s AMERICAN-MADE. APOTHEOSIS. ATOMIC DOG. ARSONIST. ANNIHILATOR. All “A” names chosen by their crews to designate them as A Company tanks. Jake explained the true nature of this company’s vehicle ownership to me.

“Every one of them tanks, every one of them vehicles you see belongs to me. They don’t belong to the tankers. They belong to me,” Jake said. “If they break down or the gun don’t shoot straight, they come to me.”

Jake’s personal vehicle was the 115. It was an old boxy M113 armored personnel carrier, where Jake could sometimes be found getting his beauty sleep on one of the stretchers hanging inside. But, Jake explained, this was no ordinary 113. He had personally jacked up the engine, and it ran 5 miles per hour faster than any other 113 out there, which made it a 115. Jake’s folding camp chairs were set up in the sand around its lowered ramp, and this was the most accommodating place in Camp Assassins.

Sgt. Jake, Stubby, Sprocket, Little Brown Dude, Too-Tall and Easy. Everybody had a name. Stubby, a.k.a. Sgt. Raymond Barrett from Missouri, got his from the stump on his left hand where his ring finger used to be. He held it up to show me. 

“I was holding onto the pre-cleaner door on the back deck of a tank. As I jumped down, the door closed,” Stubby explained. He heard the pure little “ding” of 14 karat gold hitting pavement and looked down. “I saw my finger fall on the ground in front of me and saw my ring rolling away. I looked at my hand, and the bone was sticking out.”

On the second day, Sgt. Jake decided I also needed a new name, because “Jules” sounded, “no offense, kind of queer,” and Crittenden was way too long.

“Y’all mind if we call you Critter?”

Then Stubby, as a ritual of maintenance adoption, got a white ceramic coffee mug and used a red paint marker to personalize it with a scrawled “CRITTER.” I was in with maintenance.

March 13, 2003

March 12, 2003

March 11, 2003

Topics: Iraq, military

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:08 am on Wednesday, March 14, 2007

8 Responses to “March 14, 2003”

1. saltydog Says:
   March 14th, 2007 at 1:11 am

   Critter. I like it. It fits.

2. bdfaith Says:
   March 14th, 2007 at 2:48 am

   “Critter” would make a damned fine name for a book with chapters titled “March 11,” … and maybe a dedication to Ernie Pyle. It’d sell.

3. Sierra Faith Says:
   March 14th, 2007 at 3:12 am

   March 14, 2003

   Jules Crittenden.

4. bdfaith Says:
   March 14th, 2007 at 4:24 am

   Any idea why my trackbacks aren’t taking? I excerpted and linked from
   Old War Dogs and from
   Bill’s Bites.

5. bdfaith Says:
   March 14th, 2007 at 4:26 am

   Just tried to leave a comment complaining about your trackbacks not working and the comment didn’t make it either. Was it because it contained a link? (This is a test.)

6. bdfaith Says:
   March 14th, 2007 at 4:27 am

   Can I leave one link at a time? I linked from
   Bill’s Bites.

7. bdfaith Says:
   March 14th, 2007 at 4:27 am

   I’ll figure this out eventually.

8. TBinSTL Says:
   March 14th, 2007 at 6:06 am

   Sing along with me….They called him …Critter, Critter….faster that something,
   No one you see…is cuter than he,
   and we know Critter, lives in a world full of wonder,
   ………something something…..
   you get the idea…….

   Can you catch fish in your mouth?

   Sorry about all that, I really want to say that I like how you’re approaching this and urge you to get more of it out to us!

   Hope the formating doesn’t go to crap on me.

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