Carnivore (2 page)

K
orea is known as the Forgotten War. Iraq isn't a forgotten war; everybody knows someone with a relative who served there, but it was a war. People forget that before it devolved into snipings and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on the evening news, it was a real war, where thousands of American troops lined up against thousands of Iraqis—the fourth-largest army in the world—and despite bragging claims to the contrary, nobody knew for sure quite what would happen.

This is the story of the Iraq War you never heard about in the media. First and foremost, this was a war fought by and between armor—M1 tanks and Bradleys against top-of-the-line Soviet T-72s, APCs, anything and everything the Iraqis could throw at us. The Special Forces operators are the darlings of the media, but the regular army always does the heavy lifting, and in Iraq things were no different. Armor wins wars.

I was lucky enough to ride at the front of the American war effort and serve with some of the finest soldiers and men you'd ever want to meet. Crazy Horse Troop, 3/7 Cavalry, 3rd Infantry Division, was the tip of the spear throughout the war, and this is their story as much as it is mine.

This book should have been written long ago, but I've been too busy. After recovering from cancer caused by firing all those depleted uranium rounds on my first tour, I did a second combat tour with Crazy Horse, then spent six years as a private contractor. I've retired from that life, though. In addition to being able to spend time with my wife and kids, I now have the opportunity to pass on what I've seen and learned. Not just that—I have a duty.

After all the close calls I have had in my life, I thought my purpose was to tell everyone this story. A tale of the young men and women of the cavalry making a charge into history, where a young soldier in a supply truck without armor raced to the front lines under a hail of bullets to resupply a Bradley under heavy fire. The supply soldier was black, the Bradley crew was a mix of Italians, a Korean, one white rapper, and an old hillbilly. There is no race or sex when you are fighting for your life: there are only the fellow soldiers around you. I was willing to give my life to save them, just as they were ready to do the same for me.

But why did I wait? I was afraid that if I ever did tell this story my life's purpose would be completed. As I am writing this, my body is again fighting cancer from the depleted uranium rounds that saved my life so many times. Every soldier who fought in Iraq has had to face his or her own demons, and I'm no different; my demon just happens to be cancer.

God bless the Cav, the 3rd Infantry Division, and the United States of America!

O
n 9/11 I was in Bosnia with the 3rd Infantry Division. We went over in 2000 as peacekeepers, part of the United Nations forces.

Our area of responsibility, of operations, was to the north, a town called Brcko (“Birchko”). We were right across from Croatia, and the entire situation was sad and horrible. Imagine being in post–World War II Germany. Everybody was starving, and a lot of people were wearing little more than rags. The city was in shambles and everything was falling apart. Most people were just trying to find food. The Russian mafia was there in force taking advantage of the chaos, and that meant a lot of human trafficking was going on, as well as pirating of videos and God knows what else. It was a free-for-all of exploitation.

That was an eye-opening experience for me, seeing a country in that shape. An impoverished country. Not a poor country, but a nation whose people have just been devastated by war. Whether they were Muslims or Christians, Serbs or Croats, I started really feeling what they were going through. It stuck with me. They looked like us, like Americans. The places we were, some of them looked like Anytown, U.S.A.

We did what we could, keeping the Croats on their side of the river. Our forces were based at Camp McGovern, which was in the Zone of Separation (we called it “zoss”). McGovern was right where the border had been before the whole conflict started. They built the camp outside the town, and there were minefields on both sides of us. Every day it was an adventure going out on patrol or trying to do anything. If you didn't stay right on the road, you'd hit a land mine. It was nothing to be driving down the road and see land mines right on the shoulder of the road.

When the countryside flooded, land mines actually floated up against our fences. So there'd be a land mine. You'd sit and watch it because you knew they were all using the Soviet land mines, and with the Soviet stuff, you just never knew. They weren't exactly reliable. We'd watch them float by, see them in a line like little wooden docks.

As far as action, actual combat, we had snipers firing at us every once in a while. They weren't really that big an issue, but you did have to watch out. We'd drive through and rounds would bounce off the turrets or whatever else, but they weren't really focusing on us. We were right on the border between Croatia and Bosnia, and the two sides were more concerned with each other.

Our duties involved frequent meetings with the Serbs. Many times we were going to disarm them, and they had big warehouses where we had to inventory their weapons. There had to be parity—if we went into Croatia and counted out 89 rifles in this country, then we would go to Bosnia and count out 89 rifles in that country. Everything had to be exactly the same.

On one of our trips I did get to meet one of the Serbian tank commanders, which was very interesting. He had something like 50 tank kills, 50 Soviet T-72s, which is what the Croatians were using. I wish I'd been able to take pictures of his tank. It had been hit by sabot rounds on the sides of the turret. They weren't direct hits but grazes, where the rounds just caught on the side. It looked as if somebody had taken a big knife and ripped through the side of the tank. The damage had happened when he'd taken on four tanks at once.

Fifty is an amazing number of tank kills. The Serbian tank commander would set up inside a building and wait for the Croats to drive down the street past him. When they rolled by he would shoot them in the ass (the most vulnerable side on any tank), but as soon as he took them out he would get out of there and set up somewhere else. They would send more tanks to try to find whoever had taken out the first one, and he would get more of them. It was guerrilla warfare with a tank. He was quite effective. I don't think there are very many people, even American Iraq War heroes, who have as many confirmed tank kills as that. I know in World War II the Germans had a lot, but this guy—one tank gunner, he'd just sit back and blast 'em. And I got to get in that tank and spin the turret around and work the gun, which was pretty cool.

There's another thing that sticks with me. I found a Tommy Gun, a Thompson submachine gun, in one of the warehouses. It was supposed to be destroyed. The weapon was engraved with a name, Sergeant Wilson, and it had
D-DAY
1944 and
JUNE
7
TH
carved in it with a knife. Talk about holding a piece of history in your hands—that was one of the machine guns actually used on D-Day. I hope it served Sergeant Wilson well. (Yes,
I
know D-Day was June 6, but I'm guessing Sergeant Wilson was a little too busy to keep track of his calendar.)

We attempted to get that Thompson sent back to the States for the division, but it had to be destroyed due to the United Nations mandate. There were lots and lots of guns like that in their armories, but the Tommy was the one I'll never forget.

O
n 9/11, we were out on patrol, and I actually had the V Corps Commander, Lieutenant General William Wallace, in my formation. He had flown in from Germany and was up looking at some of our areas because they fell under V Corps jurisdiction. We had his vehicle inside our formation, escorting him while on patrol, when we heard across the radio, “You are authorized to go Red Direct on weapons.”

Usually we carried our weapons Green Clear, which basically means we had the ammunition lying on the feed tray, but we didn't have our weapons charged. Red Direct means to lock, load, and place the weapons on Safe.

We were also told to get our personnel immediately to Camp Eagle, which was in Tuzla, down at the airport. We were instructed, “Use extreme caution and get there immediately.” Even the General didn't have any idea what was going on, but we did as we were ordered and rolled through the town ASAP. When we arrived at the U.S. airfield, the gates were closed.

The airfield was outside the town, and the Air Force was running security at the gate. It didn't move as we rolled up. I was lead vehicle, so I said, “Hey, you gonna open the gate and let us in or what? You need to open the gate and let us get in there.”

The skinny, baby-faced guard at the gate told me, “We can't. The place is locked down. Nobody can get in or out.”

So I got out and walked up to him. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?” I asked him. “Camp out here on the side of the road? You see our IDs. We're U.S. forces. We need to get in the damn base.” I told him, “We've got a very important person with us. We need to get inside the base.”

He said, “You can't come in here. I got my orders.”

Admittedly, I have a short temper and very little tolerance for idiots. I said, “I got my orders, too. You need to open the gate up or I'm gonna run over it.”

The guard looked at me and said, “If you do, I will use deadly force.”

I looked at him, then at the column behind me, then back at him. I told him, “I've got four .50-cals. You've got a pistol. What the fuck are you gonna do?”

He opened the gate.

Why didn't I tell him to call his Commanding Officer or try another tack? Well, for starters, he threatened me with his pistol first. And you have to understand, nothing in the military is as simple as calling your Commanding Officer and getting it done. Especially with the base locked down. It's just plain stupid to lock U.S. forces outside when there's a possible hostile element out there. Whenever you can, let them inside the base. It's the checkpoint, for God's sake. You've got all the procedures, you searched the vehicle. Do what you need to do. Get us on the base. We've got ID cards. We're U.S. military. He could see we were who we said we were.

Once this dumb airman decided to let us in, he said something like, “Okay, we'll open it up, but I'm gonna call . . . I'm gonna call my . . . my guy.” Yeah, whatever.

Once we were through the gate, and he realized we had the Corps Commander with us, the gate guard realized he'd been an idiot and decided that things might go better for him if he didn't call anyone.

On post we dropped the General. We had drills all the time, and none of us knew that anything in particular had happened to cause the alert, so we decided to head to the PX.

We walked inside and there were no cashiers. The PX was open, but everybody was off in the back where the TVs were. We walked toward the crowd, and they told us, “Hey, a plane hit one of the World Trade Center towers.”

And then, just right there, we watched the second plane impact, and I thought to myself, You've got to be fucking kidding me.

We knew what it was. There was a terrorist attack, and we realized, We need to go NOW. We need to get back to base. So we, I, everybody, dropped all the shit we were going to buy at the PX and hurried back to our vehicles.

Our base camp was a good three hours away, so before we headed out, we topped off our vehicles before heading to the gate. We pulled up there, and the same guard said to us, “Nobody in or out.”

I walked up to him and said, “Really? Are we having this conversation again?” And he opened the gate and let us go.

So, I spent 9/11 doing peacekeeping missions in Bosnia. I still remember that day, of course. My parents' generation, everybody remembers where they were, what they were doing, when they heard Kennedy got shot. For us, it's 9/11, when the second plane hit the towers.
This means war
.

E
verybody says, “Things were different when I was growing up,” and while that sounds old-fashioned, the fact of the matter is that it's true. I was born in the rolling hills of Kentucky and didn't live around very many other people until I was 10 or maybe 12 years old. It was pretty remote: western Kentucky, north of Bowling Green and south of Evansville, Indiana.

Island, Kentucky, is a tiny little town. It was originally called Worthington Station, named after Edward Worthington, who was a veteran of the American Revolution, pioneer, surveyor, and explorer of Kentucky and the Ohio River valley. Sometime in the 1800s, when the train came through, the town was renamed Island. The story I heard was that at some point all the rivers backed up and flooded the whole area, but this town stood out and was a little island above the waters. The name stuck.

I had a normal childhood. My dad worked all the time, and my mom off and on. I had two sisters and one brother, all older than me. They were all caught up in that whole 1970s hippie revolution or whatever you want to call it. I didn't really see or hang out with them much.

I don't know if Kentucky is far enough south for us to be officially called rednecks, but I'm sure no cosmopolitan Ivy League graduate. Hell, my name is Dillard, and my father is Harlan Johnson. If anyone called Harlan
or
Dillard has graduated from Harvard in the last fifty years I'll lose a bet. Like most people in this country, we weren't poor, but we weren't rich.

A lot of days after school or in the summertime I was out roaming around with my .22 rifle or pistol through the old strip mines or hiking through the hills. Shooting my gun and spending time out in the woods was great. Back then, you really didn't have to worry about the safety of your kids every second, especially in the small community that I grew up in. It wasn't like it is now.