This is Chris with Melissa, perched atop the Humvee known as Malibu Barbie, providing overwatch for the morning’s raid.

The family of the house we raided. The woman in the foreground is cryinq/praying while rocking back and forth.

One of the gas mask canisters we found at the place we dubbed the “chemical plant”.

The man in the passenger seat lay slumped against the dashboard, a massive wound to his head. Kirk pulled the body upright and cut his pockets open looking for ID. When he was done and let the body fall back against the dashboard, he said what was left of the man’s brain fell out of the opening in the back of his head and onto the ground. He could handle the guy with the brain and both the dead women, but it was the three-year-old-girl, he said, that got to him.

Roughly an hour earlier a convoy of fuel tankers and Humvees came to a halt a little north of our forward operations base when what looked like an improvised explosive device was spotted on the side of the road. Since the suspected IED was spotted mid-convoy, the vehicles were split, part to the north and part to the south, leaving the area around it open to avoid any of the trucks being destroyed. Our explosive ordinance disposal team was being called in and our quick reaction force (QRF) was going to escort them. I was in the QRF staging area that day, but I wasn’t on the mission. We were listening to the radio in a Humvee as one of the officers in the convoy was communicating with our headquarters about the IED when they started to take small arms fire. They took contact from multiple directions. Then the mortar rounds started to fall. The people that attack convoys and FOBs seem to have no end to their supply of mortar rounds, a common means of attack and the primary charge of the IEDs they leave for us like Easter eggs. Thankfully they don’t know how to aim them any better than they do their rifles.
       When our QRF made it to the scene, shots were still being fired, so they laid down suppressive fire the best they could. Even though this attack took place in daylight, there was much difficulty pinpointing the location of the enemy assailants. There was a building and a parked vehicle in the distance and the guy on the ground calling everything up on the radio was unsure if fire was being taken from these locations. Restraint was exercised and fire was directed toward less collateral damage-inducing areas.
       But to the north, another QRF also responded to this ambush, an active duty unit newly in-country. This was their first mission.
       Since the other QRF was on a separate communications net, the response attacks were not coordinated. This isn’t particularly important other than it’s anyone guess what the communication was like between them and their battalion leadership. They also spotted a vehicle, this one on the move apparently, but less restraint and less positive target identification was exercised.
       The vehicle was a white pickup, a small Toyota, one like most Iraqis stack their families into the back of, just as this family was. Everyone has these trucks in Iraq, it’s like the national vehicle It’s also the preferred vehicle of the ICDC and insurgents alike. I can imagine that the man driving it, most likely the father of those on-board, just wanted to get his family out of the area of the fighting as quickly as possible. I can also imagine that the other QRF got word that a fast moving vehicle was our attackers’ likely means of attack and escape, a completely plausible and reasonable possibility.
       From what could be gathered afterward, the Humvee gunships engaged the pickup with a SAW, M240B and a M2 .50 cal., or in other words, a shitload of machine gun fire. The truck contained six people. Two men, two women, and two young girls. As is the custom in Iraq, the men were in the cab as the females huddled together in the bed of the truck. Among the dead were one of the men, both women, and a three-year-old girl, apparently smothered to death by the two women’s bullet-riddled bodies, trying to shield the girl from the fusillade of gunfire, the tragic irony being that this ultimate protective act was the very thing that killed the girl. The man driving was still alive when CASEVAC (comprised mostly of members from my squad) got there, but he was probably on his way out. Matt, our platoon medic, a member of my team and a paramedic out of Poughkeepsie in real life, said the man had numerous wounds to his legs and a gunshot wound to the scrotum, an entry wound for a bullet that had no visible exit and was most likely lodged in his pelvis or abdomen. As Matt held a pressure dressing to the man’s bleeding thigh, he felt the shattered pieces of femur grind against each other. The only one who seemed certain to survive was an eight-year-old girl who had gunshot wounds in both of her upper arms. The man and the girl were medevac’d via Blackhawk, along with another girl from a separate location nearby who took a round through her cheek and leg. Stan and Kirk had the grisly duty of stacking the bodies in the back of a truck to be moved to the aid station at the FOB.
       As I try to fathom what it must feel like to be a poverty-stricken eight-year-old girl and experience the epic pain of having your family suddenly and violently killed in front of you, I have to pause and ask myself, Now what am I doing here again? I know this kind of thing happens in combat and I kind of expected to see it, but Jesus, the record is pretty bad so far. Since I’ve been in Iraq, in situations that my platoon has responded to, there have been three dead bad guys, two wounded civilians (one critically), and seven dead civilians, including four women, one three-year-old girl and one mentally-unstable homosexual man on a moped. Hell, if you count the suicide of the latter’s lover– an excellent two-for-one dead civilian deal– and the de-familied guy who got his balls blown off, who even if he lived, will wish to Allah that he was dead, that makes the tally 3 to 9, a 1:3 ratio of dead evildoers to innocent and ridiculously poor Iraqis who couldn’t care less who leads their country just so long as they are able to feed themselves. Now that I think about it, there have actually been more civilian casualties in our area, but these are the only ones that I remember right now. Thank god none of this carnage has been carried out by anyone in my platoon or even my company for that matter. My battalion has sustained only one casualty of its own so far, and there has been at least one engagement by another company that netted a few dozen dead bad guys, so the numbers are at least decent in that regard, but still, I’m having a hard time being okay with all the dead civilians. But it happens so often. It’s like we should have bumper stickers that read, “I ♥ Dead Civilians”.
       But let’s get back to the family in the truck who were killed. Like I said, I wasn’t with the QRF that day and didn’t see any of this first-hand and all the information I got was gleaned from the guys in my squad who were. Even though Matt said it was better that I didn’t see any of it, I wish I had been there, to bear witness I suppose. So tell me, why would I wish for this?

I’ve been stewing over this dead family thing for a couple weeks now. I’ve been painstakingly mulling over in my mind the things these insurgents do and the things we, the US Army do and the unintuitive peculiarity of how the drive to be violent seems to precede the purpose to be violent and how rampant it is to meaninglessly develop one’s identity through injury, but frankly I don’t think I’ve figured it all out well enough yet to even kludge together a coherent line of thought. Introspectively, I’m blindly trying to sew together the absurd lateral progression one unwittingly goes through when pulling legs off grasshoppers as a child and how it is a precursor to compulsive sexual infidelity as a young-adult, among a million other uncoalesced thoughts. I’m unprepared at this time to write the Gödel Escher Bach of my own self-loathing.
       But what does any of this have to do with the dead family you ask? Well, nothing directly. It’s just another one of those things I’m having difficulty reconciling in my mind, I guess.

There were several occasions during April where we escorted EOD so they could destroy suspected IEDs. The process is pretty simple. You put a few bricks of C4 on the IED and remotely detonate it. To safely get the C4 to the site, the EOD guys use robots like this one. The control device for these robots are really cool in a geeky kind of way. The future of warfare is owned by the geeks, mark my words.

What do you do when you’re driving back from a mission and you see trucks driving down the road full of bombs? You pull them over and ask them what in the name of fuck they think they’re doing. We made these guys drive to our base and spend the night. Once we were convinced that the bombs they had were in fact inert that they just wanted to use for scrap metal, we let them go. The whole thing was slightly unnerving.

The not uncommon way for kids to get around. Photo by Matt.

The three dead hooligans and their car. In the ditch is a long-abandoned armored vehicle. Photo by Jeff.

The IED craters near the chicken ranches. Second photo by Matt.

When clearing buildings, this is a startlingly bizarre thing to come upon.

The house and its occupants, hours before our raid of it. Photo by Kirk.

To any kids out there thinking about becoming infantrymen, here is one of the meat and potatoes elements of being a grunt: scanning your sector. My team’s job was to pull outer security on the building while another team searched it. My platoon sergeant and platoon leader came up with the plan for the raid and left to me the task of security. As a team leader, my job was to determine how to break the perimeter up into what are called sectors of fire. The above photo was my sector. If any lookyloos started poking their heads out, you’d tell them to get inside. If anyone got on a roof with a rifle, you’d shoot them. Establishing sectors of fire is not hard, you just place soldiers in locations where collectively the team has eyes on everything and some degree of cover, such as a wall or a corner of a building, and if any threats present themselves in your sector, you engage that threat.

Dan, with his M14, a.k.a. “The Long Gun”, scanning his sector.

Matt, scanning his sector. As you can see, this town is a tactical nightmare. All the roofs are open with a rampart-style small wall around them with arrow loop-like slots that a rifle could easily fire through; narrow alleys; six-foot walls surrounding the property; every single fucking household is allowed one weapon, usually an AK-47; and just to make it especially tricky, I’d guess that sixty percent of the town is under the age of twelve.

Never tell a group of New Yorkers raiding your home that you can’t find the keys to your car because they will open your car in a way you may not like.

Ivan, proud of his work

One of our standard duties is to drive up and down a major road in our AO to look for IEDs, hopefully without getting blown up by them first.

Today we were going to document the locations of all the dead vehicles on the road for eventual removal, such as this tank.

Another dead armored vehicle, probably once amphibious.

Since dead animals are a common place to hide explosives, we have to dispose of them as soon as we find them. Jeff, in the foreground, waits for a light for his cigarette and for his dog.

The dog being disposed of. Jeff got his light.

We recently found a dead cow, bloated as hell with all four legs in the air, but before we could get back to it, some other unit burned it. Damn them.

Any vehicles that are stopped on the side of the road, we stop and inspect to see if they are up to no good or if they just need help. Communicating with the Iraqis is nearly impossible, so we tend to stick to hand signals. To an Iraqi, the “thumbs up” used to mean “up your ass”, but now we have taught them that it means “A-Okay”. This ambiguity is absolutely sublime. Kids all across Iraq (and soldiers) can now use an obscene hand gesture with impunity. Here Jeff gives an apparent, “The bus doesn’t seem to contain any weapons or terrorists. It’s A-Okay.”, but in reality what he means is, “Don’t give me this ‘broken down Iraq fantasy tour bus’ shit! Where are you hiding the fucking RPGs??!! Oh, what, you don’t speak English like the rest of the world does? Fine. You know what guy, just shove it up your ass.”

Okay, so we’ve been in Iraq for a little over two weeks now and have performed a lot of different missions. Here are a few photos from a few fairly typical days:

On one of our first days, we did a little FOB (forward operating base) guarding. This is the view from a front gate guard post, protecting incoming convoys like this one.

During a patrol down a rural road, Matt says, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Oh my god, you aren’t kidding me.” Yes, we drove through a flock of sheep, but that’s okay because from our dashboard, plastic Jesus watches over his flock. Which brings to mind a song.
Feel free to sing along:

Oh, I don’t care if it rains and freezes,
long as I got my plastic Jesus,
ridin’ on the dashboard of my car.

I can go ninety-five miles per hour,
long as I got almighty power,
ridin’ on the dashboard of my car.

Hit a car, hit a truck,
plastic Jesus don’t give a fuck,
ridin’ on the dashboard of my car…

For a few days we had to guard a bridge. We got swamped with kids wanting food. “Mister! Mister! Gimme food!” It helped pass the time, playing with the kids. Once we finally gave them MREs, all they’d do was ratfuck the candy out of them and dump the rest. (Santo with Wazina in the background)

One of the kids had a can of dip. Sean showed him how to pack it. Remember, education is the key.

While exploring the area around the bridge, we came across this mystery thing, across a canal and behind a locked fence. Some kids were pointing at it. I seriously don’t know what this is but am curious. Any ideas?

While guarding the bridge, we would stay at a nearby FOB that now is home to all the dead Iraqi tanks.

Our beautiful accommodations at the visited FOB. I slept on the concrete floor the first night, later upgrading to an inflatable sleeping mat with a slow leak.

Does this photo really need a caption? Shitters set up next to a missile. Photo by Matt.

The field showers were actually really awesome. They had hot water and good water pressure. They were run by an unattractive overweight female specialist that many guys concluded they would have sex with if given the chance. You’ve heard of “beer goggles”, well this phenomenon is known as “field goggles” and is even more severe.

Me and Willy the day before my platoon would make the drive up through Iraq.

This is what soldiers do when they are made to help out around the motor pool area– they hide out behind shady cover and catch some Z’s.

Since the convoy through Iraq would be our first combat mission, we were given our combat load of ammo. This is my load. Two-hundred forty rounds of 5.56mm rifle ammo (one mag of thirty not shown). I chose to load each magazine with the first, sixteenth, and last three rounds with tracer. My thinking behind the placement of the tracers being that I can see where my first round hits (aiming adjustments can be done very easily once you see where the rounds are striking), when I’m into the second half the magazine, and the final three to tell me when the mag is expended. I carry the M4/M203 rifle/grenade launcher combo so I was also issued a bunch of 40mm grenades: seventeen rounds of HEDP (high explosive daul purpose), two green smoke, one red smoke (for marking and/or signaling), and one white star cluster (a fireworks-like round used for signaling). I carry on my person 210 round of 5.56, five HEDP and one green smoke. The rest I carry in an assault pack (fancy name for a small backpack). The Interceptor kevlar body armor we wear now have in them the big ceramic armor plates in the front and back, making our everyday combat uniform remarkably heavy. Between the armor and the ammo, I feel like a human tank.

I suspect that there is a secret cult within the Army dedicated to subjugating soldiers into homosexuals. For example, every single icecream freezer in the chow hall at Camp Udairi was one day inexplicably filled with nothing but “Princess” icecream bars, flavored with rose oil. They tasted like your grandmother’s perfume. They were fucking disgusting.

John, our commander’s driver and RTO (radio guy) in their Humvee. Although my commander hates my writing, like John and myself he’s a big fan of Repo Man, one of the coolest 80’s cult films ever. In homage to the film, John put a (patriotic) pine tree air freshening where the rear view mirror should be. “You’ll find one in every car. You’ll see.” If you haven’t seen this film, your homework assignment is to rent it, watch it, and love it. Just like Burt Reynolds is an unremarkable actor with a cool as hell performance in Deliverance, Emelio Estevez is also an unremarkable actor with a cool as hell performance in Repo Man. My favorite line is at the end when girlfriend says, “But what about our relationship?”, and Emelio responds after a short pause of incredulity with, “What? Fuck that.” Emelio’s character in Repo Man has had as much an influence on John’s personality as this film had on Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

Driving through Kuwait just below Iraq, we saw an incredible number of Bedouins. The drive is literally like driving through Nevada where there isn’t ANYTHING for hundreds of miles, yet incredibly there would be families just chillin’ off the side of the road, usually with a herd of sheep or camels. As we approached the Iraq border, various messages could be found on concrete block beside the road. This one reads, “Iraq border ahead 1000m. Beware of children in roadway.” I can’t tell you how exciting it was knowing we were moments away from crossing the berm into “The Raq”. Once we made it past the berm and through the one kilometer buffer of no-man’s land, I distributed cigars to everyone in the truck. As soon as we kit the border town, we held our cigars in one hand and our digital cameras in the other. Not the most tactical way to enter the country, puffin’ and clickin’, but oh well.

Some Iraqi kids in front of the average home in the town bordering Kuwait.

A young girl runs along side the convoy. Photo by Anthony.

A kid leans against the remains of past conflict. Photo by Anthony.

Another Iraqi kid rides his bike alongside the convoy. Photo by Anthony.

My photo of the same kid, this time in front of another typical border home.

The entire drive through Iraq, stupid American soldier graffiti was everywhere. Like I give a shit that you were in the 367th Pogue Battalion. Idiots. It especially slays me how many white trash soldiers with cans of spray paint have proclaimed love to this girl and that girl on every overpass along Iraq highway 1.

The Iraq tour of homes. Another random house along the highway.

As we got closer to Baghdad, the dwellings didn’t improve much, but things became increasingly more green and included palm trees.

The weather was perfect and warm and aside from being in a combat zone, the trip through Iraq almost felt like a relaxing summer roadtrip. Except for when we took a wrong turn and drove through the heart of Baghdad at two in the morning, accidentally avoiding a huge daisy chain of IEDs we later found out. I guess all those Christian prayers for this godless heathen paid off. This was my view for most of the three day trip.

On the way back from the range we ran into a herd (the correct noun?) of camels and some Bedouins. It is not uncommon to have to cease fire on the ranges so these guys can pass with all their camels.

A happy little camel family (in a Ranger file).

In the chow line I noticed this Marine’s cheat sheet for handy Arabic phrases.

This is me today, rockin’ the new Neo-esque Ray-Bans. Matt has the Mr. Smith ones.

Tent livin’! This tent is currently home to two platoons from our company.

The walk to chow is a kilometer (.6 miles) and starts here as we step out of the tent.

Then we walk…

and walk…

and walk…

and walk…

and walk by the MWR (moral welfare recreation) area where the phones, computers, gym and theatre can be found…

stop to take a photo for the mom…

and walk by the tower whose purpose is beyond me (modern tower of Babel perhaps?)…

then we wait in the line for chow…

then we wash our dirty little sandwich clamps…

then we actually get the chow slung to us with a kind of haste reminiscent of New York City…

then we take a seat and wolf it all down.

On the way back we hit the fast food area where the coffee shop is
located…

and we order up coffee. In the bible this area was referred to as “the wilderness”, but today I can still manage to get a café latté. And Jesus wept.

“Justice”, Kirk’s newest tattoo. A second date will be put on the right side once our deployment ends.

     Foster and polish
    The warrior spirit
    While serving in the world;
    Illuminate the Path
    According to your inner light

THE ART OF PEACE, Morihei Ueshiba

I would like you to meet Wazina.