April 10, 2003
I woke up at 4 a.m. to a horrendous amount of gunfire across the river. I got up and walked over to Capt. Carter.
“What’s going on over there?”
“Same thing as here yesterday, just dealing with pockets of stuff,” he said.
“It sounds like the end of the world over there,” I said.
“That’s the Marines. They like to shoot a lot,” Carter said.
After the sun came up, Pasto went over to the concertina wire to talk to some Iraqis who were emerging out of the slums in greater numbers to talk, gawk and importune. When he came back, he reported, “One of those guys just asked, ‘Does this mean we’re all going to be American citizens?’”
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Pasto said.
Howison got permission to leave Shuhada Square and drive the 113 down to hook up with Pasto’s Psyops pals and his own unit, now in the palaces. The LT had already been told to return to A Company and had left in another vehicle that morning, but I opted to stay with the Psyops guys for the moment, seeing as they seemed likely to be called forward to broadcast their messages if there was any trouble.
We drove south down Haifa Street through the now-familiar squares, Pasto and I riding up on top of the track. It was different today, all threat of attack apparently gone. The avenues swarming with gleeful Iraqis, looting in crowds now, impeding our progress. I kept watching mong them for the one who didn’t look happy or might have a weapon. But they were all smiles, waving and shouting to us as they trundled along refrigerators, TVs and computers balanced on office chairs or anything with wheels they could find. We waved back.
“It feels like a parade, like I should be throwing candy,” said Pasto. He didn’t mind the looting.
“They deserve it,” he said.
Howison, in his track commander’s hatch, said, “I just heard over the net, Tusker Six says the war is over. Victory Six is coming up. They want everyone in full uniform, Kevlars, top and bottom, no American trash lying around, no graffiti, no American flags flying.”
Victory Six was the commanding general. Clean up, get dressed, behave. It was definitely over.
We drove under the arch into the palace district. Out in front of the palaces and the government buildings, all along the boulevard and under the hedges, were the bodies of the Iraqi soldiers and irregulars that A Company had mowed down during the assault Monday and the counterattack Tuesday morning. It was Thursday now. Their corpses were several days old, the faces and hands swollen and grayish green, shirts and pants filling out unnaturally. We drove through one nauseating waft of air after another. I wondered out loud whether their families would ever know what happened to them.
“Hell, it was them or us. I don’t feel bad about it,” Howison said. “The fuckers were shooting at us.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. I looked again for the place where we had killed the three Iraqis. It shouldn’t have been so hard to spot, but one section of hedge and ditch looks a lot like another.
We pulled into a palace complex witha vast yard full of vehicles and small encampments, where the 113 crew linked up with their Psyops unit. The big talk there was that some GIs had discovered a bungalow full of liquor and cigarettes. After an initial free-for-all, everyone was kicked out, and the ranking NCOs had conducted a “health and welfare” check, going through everyone’s stuff to make sure they didn’t have any booze. They let them keep the cigarettes.
I went looking for the broken Bradley, which was still out of commission and had been towed up from the assembly area down south. I found it in a maintenance area nearby. Baxter and Smitty and Sgt. Will were sitting in the Bradley’s shade, using one of the folding cots as a couch. It had only been three days since I had seen them, but seemed a lot longer.
There had been a big fight back at the assembly area south of Baghdad after we left Monday morning, they said, and more fighting on the way into Baghdad two days later.
“I got me a captain,” said Baxter. He showed me the camouflaged epaulet with some yellow insignia embroidered from the uniform of the Iraqi officer he shot through the lungs.
“The morning y’all left, the Brigade TOC got hit . . . Four killed,” said Sgt. Will. He was talking about the German and Spanish reporters who didn’t want to make the ride into Baghdad because it was too dangerous, and two soldiers who were killed with them. A wounded soldier died later. This was the first I was hearing about this.
“Then they said dismounts were coming. We formed a perimeter,” Sgt. Will said.
Baxter shot a fast-moving pickup truck, with the captain inside. The captain got out and ran, but they found him lying nearby, still alive.
“Sucking chest wound,” Baxter said, pronouncing the words slowly and deliberately, for effect.
Two days later, the maintenance and command vehicles formed their own column for the move into Baghdad. Smitty was taken off the towed Bradley and placed behind the .50-caliber machine gun in a hatch on top of a large supply truck’s cab. The column was attacked repeatedly on the way in.
“They waited until the armor rolled past and opened up on the soft vehicles,” Smitty said. “They were lighting us up. I shot a dude in a car hauling ass. I shot about seven dudes in the street. They were armed, but they were in civvies. I mowed them down.”
I rummaged around inside the Bradley, collecting my gear. I climbed up on top for the rest of my gear, the familiar old routine of placing a boot on a steel-cable rung, a hand on the bustle rack, lifting the other boot up onto the rear edge of the Bradley’s armored skirt plate, hefting myself up.
The Bradley was like an old friend, like home; a familiar set of handholds, bustle racks full of our gear, the heavy hatch I cranked open and shut a dozen times a day, a rumbling steel cave in which I crossed Iraq, slept, pissed in bottles and rode into combat. We were both still encrusted with the same dust.
There were three stubby M203 grenade rounds lined up on the edge of the armor plate, the little shelf where I used to set my canteen cup and Sgt. Will’s mirror when I was shaving, out in the desert. I planted a boot next to them to climb up. Baxter told me to watch I didn’t knock over any of those grenades.
“One of them fuckers fall off, boom, we’re all dead,” said Baxter, who was sitting next to Smitty on the cot down below, right next to where they would hit the concrete. He was probably messing with me. But I don’t know anything about what it takes to set off a 40 mm grenade, so I kept my foot a good three inches away or so on the remaining space on that armor plate as I climbed down. I sensed that Baxter was bored and unhappy. I said goodbye to those guys, shaking hands all around, unsure if I’d see them again. We didn’t make a big deal out of it.
The 113 crew was going to settle down in the palaces now, so I asked for a ride back to A Company. We rolled back up to the Jumhuriyah intersection where the rest of the company was camped. On the boulevard, some engineers were now at work getting rid of bodies before the general showed up. They had rubber gloves on and their olive drab cravats were tied over their faces bandit-style against the smell. Two of them were lifting a dead mujahideen by the arms and legs. He looked familiar from our ride down this boulevard a couple of hours earlier, when these bodies were still crumpled on the pavement, but I was seeing him from a different angle this time. The top of his head was gone, and for a moment I had a clear view into his empty cranium, ringed by curly black hair, the interior blackened by congealed blood. His puffy greenish face looked like the primitive decoration on the front of a horrible bowl. The engineers were getting ready to heft him up and over, into the bucket of a large front-end loader that had a lot of hands and feet sticking out of it. We stared.
“It sucks to be you,” our stares told the engineers.
“Yeah. We know. Fuck you,” their stares said back, over the top of their OD cravats. I don’t think I’d ever seen eyes quite like that. Maybe the hate in the eyes of the women who had thrown their bodies over their children at Hindiyah, when we were blowing the hell out of their farm and trying to make nice with them.
Pasto, Howison and Leal dropped me off at the northern gate, where the Assassins had fought back the counterattack and now were trying to keep a growing throng of Iraqis at bay. I moved into the A Company 113 occupied by First Sgt. Ortiz, Sgt. Archer the company clerk and Pvt. Coleman.
A crowd had formed up by the wire on the Jumhuriyah Bridge, wanting to cross from East Baghdad. A retired Iraqi colonel who said he had been busted to major by Saddam because he wasn’t a Baath Party member volunteered to serve as an interpreter. He was in a chatty mood.
“This is what they say in Baghdad. One thousand Americans is better than one from Tikrit,” said Col. Naji Alawan, 70. “They are so happy, because you will help us and assist us to finish this government. He is nothing, but he took everything.”
The Iraqis were only being let through in small numbers after being patted down, to prevent any numbers from massing in the square in front of the palace complex. It was getting a little tense up there. When one Iraqi slipped under the tape that held them back, a harried Wolford, who already had his pistol out as a crowd control measure, put him down on the ground and had a soldier zip-tie him. A few minutes later, another impatient Iraqi began looking like he was getting ready to try it, too. Wolford told Col. Alawan, “Tell him he needs to back off or he’ll end up like this guy.”
The guy on the ground was released after about 20 minutes of sitting and looking miserable.
Ortiz had some business he needed to conduct down at the palaces, so we rolled back down there in his 113.
Someone said there was running water in the Arabesque guesthouse where the Forward Aid Station was. I pulled my kit together. A nurse showed me the way to an ornate bathroom with fine gold and porcelain fixtures and left me alone. I stripped out of my filthy clothes. It was weird to be naked, and I could see that I had lost a lot of weight. Pale, skinny and grimy. It looked like someone else’s body.
I got out my dirty bar of soap, climbed in the tub and turned the faucet. Nothing. Shower stall. Nothing. Sink. Nothing.
I grabbed the package of baby wipes someone had left by the clogged toilet and began a wipedown. I threw on the somewhat cleaner underwear, socks and pants from my pack, replacing the salt-encrusted, grease-stained ones. I threw the old underwear and socks away. On the way out, the nurses and medics remarked on how quick my shower was. I told them it wasn’t running, and they said try the other bathroom in front. Maybe next time, I said. I was done for now. I walked back to where the track was parked in the maintenance area and dropped on Saddam’s front lawn, propping my back up against the tire of a deuce-and-a-half truck. I was in a foul mood and suddenly felt overwhelmed by the accumulated exhaustion of the past month. I thought, it may be time to think about getting out of here.
Topics: Iraq
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:17 am Comments (11) on Tuesday, April 10, 2007
11 Responses to “April 10, 2003”
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April 10th, 2007 at 1:11 am
April 10, 2003
April 10, 2003 Jules Crittenden I woke up at 4 a.m. to a horrendous amount of gunfire across the river. I got up and walked over to Capt. Carter. “What’s going on over there?” “Same thing as here yesterday, just
April 10th, 2007 at 1:13 am
Bill’s Nibbles // Open Post — 2007.04.10
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April 10th, 2007 at 2:29 am
Damn.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:04 am
It’s interesting that in the early days, you can already see the seeds of the coming disaster:
———————-
“One of those guys just asked, ‘Does this mean we’re all going to be American citizens?’”
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Pasto said.
—————-
The avenues swarming with gleeful Iraqis, looting in crowds now, impeding our progress….He didn’t mind the looting.
“They deserve it,” he said.
———————————
April 10th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
corndog,
What sort of “coming disaster” are you refering to? I haven’t seen any sort of thing in Iraq that could termed ‘disaster” apart, of course, from the years of Living under Saddam.
Now, giving in to the demands of certain leftists that America abandon the Iraqies would qualify as a literal disaster, inthat it would be a virtual repeat of the disaster those same leftists caused in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, etc. You remember, the killing fields? THAT was a disaster, and pretty much what will happen again if the current Congress and Senate leadership has it’s way in Iraq.
Respects,
April 10th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
AW1 Tim,
I do, indeed, remember the killing fields. That was caused when the king of cambodia opposed Nixon crossing into Cambodia to go after the Vietcong. Nixon’s reaction was to stage a coup d’etat, installing a right wing dictatorship. The only opposition to that dictatorship was a bizarre, far, far leftwing outfit called the Khmer Rouge, which managed to unite opposition to the dictatorship while drawing support from Mao, who wanted a country that could oppose the Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge ousted the dictatorship, came to power and started the Killing Fields. They didn’t stop the genocide until the Vietnamese invaded and threw the Khmer Rouge out.
As to current events, they speak for themselves.
April 10th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
One other thing, AW! Tim,
You say: “giving in to the demands of certain leftists that America abandon the Iraqies would qualify as a literal disaster”
I’m not saying I disagree with you about that. But not giving into these demands would also qualify as a literal disaster. Leave? It’s a disaster. Stay? Disaster. Half-stay, half-leave? Disaster. That’s why this is a disaster – no matter what we do, something bad is going to happen.
That’s why George W. Bush was right on when he said in the 2000 campaign that he would never send troops in without an exit strategy. Wish he’d listened to himself.
Much respect back to you,
April 10th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Corndog-staying in Iraq and seeing things through is tough, but I don’t think it is a disaster (in fact I would say that it is the only course that stands a chance of ending in non-disaster).
Look, it’s impossible for me to tell you what my experiences in Iraq were like in a couple of blog posts, but I have to say that it was possible to see some improvement. Now it is also true that the new government has been a disappointment and that our own efforts have also suffered from their fair share of mistakes, but no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.
It may be that “…no matter what we do, something bad is going to happen”, but it seems to me that that is not really the point and that we ought to be weighing the potential for both success and failure against potential courses of action. As I see it, the only way we can succeed is to keep up the fight. Very few things worth doing ever come easily.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
CavMedic,
I could point in the direction of all kinds of DoD, CIA, Interational Crisis Group and other memos, and you could probably point me in the direction of other sources and we’d both end up going our own ways.
I will say, though, that I think Gen. Petraeus has exactly the right strategy in mind. The problem is, he has nowhere near the kind of resources he would need to carry it out, as he well knows. While well-intentioned, it doesn’t look to me like what we’re doing has anything like the potential for the kind of success that you have in mind. Very few things worth doing ever come easily, you say, and you know what? We’re not doing it the hard way.
Instead, what we’re doing now has all the earmarks of a plan by a president who doesn’t want to make the tough decision – either do what needs to be done to commit very serious resources to getting the job done (if it’s not already too late), or do what needs to be done to get out very soon. It looks to me like he’s going to leave that for the next president to do, and, thus, take the blame.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Well, I can’t really argue that the President has done everything to my satisfaction since we went into Iraq. Failing to expand the Army in the aftermath of 9/11 was a great disappointment to me. However, it is too late in the game to expand the force enough for it to matter. The decisions made in Iraq probably were made with the experiences of Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan in mind (the trend in military thinking over the decade preceding the invasion was that smaller more technological forces and airpower were war winners-big mistake).
Right now we’re giving it our best shot. If that doesn’t work and the next President decides to pull the plug (and I’m not sure that he or she will) I don’t think they will have to pay much of a price politically. But he or she will have to have an alternative strategy for how to proceed against our enemies, and right now I’m just not hearing it.
April 11th, 2007 at 8:16 am
CavMedic,
I dont disagree with any of your points, except that I do think the president who pulls the plug will have to pay a price politically. As you said earlier, if we leave, chaos will follow, and the person responsible for having us leave will have to answer for it.