Sunrise Over Fallujah (3 page)

“No, sir,” I said.

“All signs point to go,” he said. “If you're going to write any letters home…”

Marla spotted Danforth and beckoned him over. He came to the table, turned a chair around, and straddled it.

“Marla heard that the Hoodlums left camp last night,” I said.

“They can't be going into Iraq yet.” Danforth gestured with his hands as he spoke. “There's no official war.”

“They've been going in and out of Iraq for the last six months,” Coles said. “They're setting up scouting operations, making contacts, that sort of thing.”

“How come they didn't get the Hoodlums to supply security for Civil Affairs instead of us?” Danforth asked. “I mean, some of those Special Forces guys act like they'd consider it a favor if they killed you.”

Coles laughed, a big toothy laugh that lit up his whole face. “That's probably why the average Iraqi won't talk to them,” he said. He put more sugar into his coffee, tasted it, and pushed it aside. “You guys look like reasonable people. The army probably thinks you might even try to talk to a villager before you killed him.”

“There's Ahmed.” Marla nodded toward the chow line. “Where's he from? He's in the American army? Those aren't desert camouflage units he wears.”

“Cleveland,” Captain Coles said. “He's a civilian translator. Try not to kill him if you can help it. They frown on that kind of thing in Cleveland. The army wants him to blend in wherever possible. Be a kind of go-between.”

“This be a strange war,” Marla said.

“Where you from, Captain Coles?” Danforth asked

“Allentown, Pennsylvania. My family's lived there for three generations back. Before then we were, or so I've been told, in England. Allentown's a good little place. A couple of hours from anywhere exciting. Some of the best food in the world from nearby farms and some of the Amish folk in the area. Where you from again?”

“Richmond,” Danforth said. “Right outside of the city, really.”

“What's your hometown?” Coles asked Marla.

“Is this the beginning of a war movie?” Marla asked. “Everybody tells about themselves so when they get killed we'll all feel sorry for them?”

She didn't wait for an answer. She stood and just walked away. Definitely cool.

The next morning we watched President Bush give a message to the American people that sounded like it was from a cowboy movie.

The Humvees came and we received ours with the usual military lecture.

This is the finest fighting vehicle in the army of the United States of America, so don't you meatheads go f'ing it up!

Second squad, Harris, Darcy, and Evans, painted a name on their Humvee, calling it
Def Con II
. I was still a little mad at Marla for always calling me Birdy, so I suggested we call our Humvee
Miss Molly
, which was what Sergeant Harris called her.

“Yeah, that works,” Marla said.

From:
Perry, Robin

Date:
17 March 2003

To:
Perry, Richard

Subject:
Various

Hey Uncle Richie,

Just got online for the first time over here. They have a list of about 100 rules about email. We can't say this—we can't say that—all about security. BUT…there are 590 reporters (give or take a 100 or so) asking us questions and reporting everything we're not supposed to be saying. No real problem because we don't know anything. I wrote Dad a good letter. Anyway, I thought it was okay. Did you know he doesn't like the internet? He says it “will mature” in another 20 years.

The infantry and the marines are the stars over here. The camera crews follow the guys with the most equipment. Oh, this is not important, but I thought you might find it interesting. They have floors in the tents that look like the kind of floors at basketball games, the kind you assemble. We can't put water on them because when the guys come in with sand on their boots it really messes them up. So we don't have to wash them down. Small blessings. Last thing. The guys from the Arabic television station, Al Jazeera, all look like they could have come from Harlem…dark skinned, etc.

If you talk to your brother, aka Dad, you might tell him that I was waiting for a letter from him.

A lot of guys were getting nervous thinking we
were going into combat, but most were just excited. It's funny, but as much as guys talk about not wanting to be in a danger zone, I think we really do want it. We want to get home safe, but we want the danger. We were shown films of the first Gulf War over and over, watching planes hit small targets with guided missiles, hearing the voice-overs of guys cheering.

I knew we were building up to it. It was almost like getting ready for a basketball game, reassuring ourselves that we were cool, that we were going to win. It got to be even more like that when the 3
^rd
Infantry Division called a huge formation. It looked like a trillion guys lined up. The colors of the 3
^rd
ID were out front along with the American flag. A few officers spoke, talking about the mission in Iraq and how proud America
was of us. Then the main speaker, a tall general with a pistol strapped to his leg, came out and gave the order for us all to stand “at ease.”

“We are the best trained, best equipped, bravest, most daring army in the world,” the general said. “Soon we will be entering Iraq. If Saddam is smart he will step aside and give the order to allow us to enter peacefully. And we will do so. If Saddam is dumb and refuses to step aside, we have to enter with force, and we will do so. How this war goes is up to the Iraqi army. But they will not be an obstacle to the successful completion of our mission.”

Officers moved smartly, looked tough, reminded everybody over and over about how well we were trained. There was something about the speeches that all sounded alike.

Back in the tent, me and Jonesy weren't that sure about our training.

“You think the Third is better trained than us?” Jonesy asked.

“Probably,” I said. “I was trained to shoot at targets popping up in a field and they weren't shooting back.”

“Most of my training was about diving down when you heard gunfire,” Jonesy said. “Dive down, roll over one time, and get up running.”

“Where was that training?”

“In the ghetto, my man!” Jonesy said. “We had drive-through restaurants, drive-through car washes, and drive-by shootings. So on a real busy day the brothers didn't even have to get out their machines.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “I just hope Marla has enough training to work the squad gun. She could have pulled driver.”

“I think she can do it,” Jonesy said. “She's got a little gangsta lean to her.”

Jonesy was right. Marla Kennedy wasn't somebody you took lightly.

When Jonesy and I got back to our tent Sergeant Harris already had the television on; he flipped channels, looking for news. Harris hadn't found anything official yet but kept saying stupid stuff like how he could tell by the Iraqi minister's body language that they were going to fight.

“Man, these people need to learn something!” he said.

Yeah, and he was going to teach them.

It was still dark when Jonesy woke me, shaking me by the shoulder. I opened my eyes. “What's up?”

“You believe in God?” he asked.

As I sat up I saw that he was holding a flashlight in one hand and a small Bible in the other.

“Yeah, I do,” I said.

Jonesy bowed his head for a moment, then turned on his flashlight and began reading from the Bible he held. “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”

I felt awkward. It had been years since I last prayed, and I had never prayed with a friend. Jonesy held up his fist and I touched mine to it.

“What's up, man?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he said. “I just got a feeling.”

“Like, what kind of feeling?”

“Crossroads,” he said.

“What's that mean?”

“There was this blues dude—Robert Johnson—got to the crossroads, met the devil, and they struck up a deal. Sold his soul to the devil for some guitar licks.”

“Yeah?”

Jonesy stood up and tucked the Bible under his arm. “I'm just wondering if I need to strike me up a deal,” he said. He went back to his bunk, lay down, and turned his back toward me.

In the distance I could hear the roar of planes. I looked at my watch. It was five thirty. The sun would rise soon.

“This is not my grandmother.” Jean Darcy was pissed out of her mind. “This is my great-grandmother and she is eighty-five years and four months old. Her birthday is the same as mine and I promised to write her and tell her what is going on. She don't understand stupid, and that Colonel King was just talking stupid!”

We had just had a lecture from King, who was in charge of
all Civil Affairs in the area. If what he told us wasn't exactly stupid, it was at least confusing.

“So what do you need to know?” Pendleton asked.

“Who are we supposed to be shooting over here?” Darcy asked. “Because I am not worried about who we're supposed to be getting along with. I figure if they're trying to get along with us they won't be shooting at us.”

“Anybody who has on a different uniform than we have on we can shoot,” Pendleton said.

“Unless they're Coalition forces talking Dutch or Italian or something else I can't understand, right?” Darcy asked. “And King was talking about if the Iraqis are fighting and things don't go right for them they just take off their uniforms and act like civilians but we're not supposed to shoot civilians.” She was on a roll. “Now can you tell me how I'm going to explain that to my great-grandmother?”

“Okay, let me straighten this mess out.” Jonesy was soaking his feet in a basin of water. “If somebody who looks like an A-rab shoots you, the first thing you got to do is to pull out your Rules of Engagement card and see what the rules are for the day. Because it could be a Rodney King day and we just all trying to get along and then you don't shoot him.”

“You think that's funny but it ain't funny, Jones.” Darcy was still mad. “And how about that stuff with the Sunnis and the other people?”

“The Shiites,” I said. “Colonel King said there might be battles between the two sects.”

“So if they're shooting, you have to see who they're aiming at,” Pendleton said. “They could be shooting at each other.”

“And Saddam wiped out a whole village of Kurds,” Marla said.

“My great-grandmother is not going to understand this crap,” Darcy said. “I don't understand it, either. We're over here talking about an enemy we can't identify and friends we're not sure about.”

“What bugged me was when Captain Coles asked if we were going to disarm the Iraqis and Colonel King said we weren't,” Pendleton said. “He said it would be disrespecting the tribes and we can't do that because we're going to be dependent on them to give us information.

“What we got to do over here,” Pendleton continued, “is to kill all of them and let God sort them out.”

I turned and looked at him and saw he wasn't smiling. He meant just what he said.

King had been talking about treating people humanely, and with dignity, but we were thinking about how hard staying alive was going to be.

The bombing of Iraq has started. I don't know what it's doing to the Iraqis, but it's filled us with shock and awe. We watched the first impacts on Baghdad this morning on television just before daybreak. The dim images of city buildings suddenly
illuminated by explosions that swept across the night sky filled the TV screen with brilliant color. A reporter wearing a flak jacket flinched as the bombs exploded behind him. Some of our guys were cheering; most just watched quietly. It wasn't hard to imagine those bombs falling somewhere near you.

At 0600 we saddled up and went out to the range to test-fire our weapons. Targets were a hundred yards out and each squad took a turn trying to hit them. In stateside training, the shooting was a pastime, something you did because it was interesting but you didn't really like because you knew it meant you had to clean your weapon. Here on the Kuwaiti desert, target practice was suddenly serious.

When it was my turn on the squad gun I was on target when we were stationary but way off when the Humvee was on the go.

“Don't worry about it,” Captain Coles said. “When we're on the move it's suppressive fire—all we want the enemy to do is to keep his head down while we get away.”

Jonesy wasn't any better than I was, but Kennedy was on the money big-time.

“You do a lot of shooting back in the States?” I asked.

“I guess,” she said with a shrug. “My training officer said it just comes naturally to some people.”

“You're a lot better at it than I am,” I said.

“Birdy, the way you shoot is pitiful.” Marla grinned. “Maybe you should just practice making mean faces at the enemy.”

I didn't like that. The girl had an edge to her that ran along my nerves all the time. I thought about what my father said: I'd meet a lot of lousy people in the army.

We left the target range and trekked to supply. Sergeant Harris was in charge; he had checklists and made us lay out all of our equipment on the ground.

The supply sergeant, a huge black dude who looked half asleep, gave us a mini lecture on the equipment. When he saw that some of the medical officers weren't paying attention, he stopped.

“My apology, Sergeant,” one of the doctors said, throwing the supply sergeant a sloppy salute.

“You don't have to be sorry, sir,” the sergeant said. “But if you don't have the right equipment and you get your sorry butt wounded or killed, it won't be funny. And the first time you see somebody lying on the ground with a sucking chest wound where his body armor should have been, you're going to be thinking about getting back here and making sure you have the right equipment. You might be smart enough to be a doctor, but you ain't smart enough not to die.”

“I think that's enough, Sergeant,” the medical officer said, trying to sound more authoritative.

“No, it ain't,
sir
!” the sergeant said. “ ‘Cause you don't know more than me about being over here. I been here before. I went home. Hope you get that message.”

Captain Coles stepped in front of us. “Everybody is responsible for everyone else in this unit,” he said. “If you see somebody out there without his protective gear on, speak up. If you see somebody walking away from his goggles, or who isn't taking care of his gear, speak up. The teams going out in the field are too small to have to deal with wounded or killed soldiers. Medevac worked in the first Gulf War, but we don't know what the enemy has learned since then.”

We finished getting our equipment together, signed for all of it, then broke for lunch. Me and Jonesy sat together. I had hoped Marla would come over, but she sat with some women from a PSYOP unit. What they did was work on the minds of the enemy. Sometimes they dropped leaflets, sometimes they did nasty little propaganda things, like spread rumors about the enemy's officers. They spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the enemy was thinking.

A small, round Specialist came over and asked if Jonesy and I wanted to join a prayer group.

“I don't think so,” I said. “Maybe…” I looked at Jonesy.

“No way,” Jonesy said. “I'm a blues man. All we believe in is the blues and hard whiskey.”

“Sometimes prayer can help you see what you're missing,” Small and Round said.

“No interest.” Jonesy waved the guy away.

I watched as the SPC went to the next table before I looked
at Jonesy. “Yo, man, you came to my bunk the other night and asked me if I wanted to pray.”

“That wasn't me talking,” Jonesy said. “That was my testicles talking.
I
ain't worried about dying, but you know how testicles get sometimes.”

We were scheduled to move out right after lunch. I didn't feel like eating. Coles pulled out some maps and showed us where we were, north of Kuwait City.

“We're following two Infantry brigades,” he said. “We're going to be traveling southeast and then swing around so that we're behind the Infantry all the way.”

My stomach tightened. We were actually going into combat.

There wasn't a whole lot of talking as we lined up our vehicles and moved over to the fuel station. Some of the crews turned back their odometers to zero so they could record how many miles we totaled.

The fuel line was two miles long and we had nothing to do but hang out and notice that other units got to fuel ahead of us even if they were after us in line.

“Hey, where you guys from?” I turned to see a roundish sister who looked a little bit like a short Queen Latifah. She was with two other little lady soldiers.

“Harlem,” I said. “Where you from?”

“El Paso,” the woman said. “I know you never been there.”

“These guys from New York have never been anywhere, never seen anything, and don't know anything,” Marla said. “Birdy's still waiting for a cab to take him home to his mama. Who are you guys with?”

“Five Oh Seventh.” The little blonde's accent was thick enough to laugh at if she had been on television. She crossed her legs, squatted, and then sat. “You guys with the Third ID?”

“Sort of.” Jonesy was looking hard at the little blonde. “We're Civil Affairs—trailing behind them, making friends with anybody they don't kill.”

“We're logistical support or something like that,” the black woman said. The name tape over her pocket read johnson. “We got thirty-two trucks of stuff to transport some freaking where.”

“You going north by the Blue Line?” Marla asked. “That's what we're doing. Then 106 to the IHOP, a hard left when we reach Petticoat Junction, then straight on to Disneyland.”