We are not robots, and with newspapers, radios going constantly, laptop computers with Internet access, and telephone calls back home, everyone had been keeping up on the latest developments. We also received classified information that the media did not. We knew exactly what was going on. The rhetoric for war had risen in intensity, and the belief that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction was universal among our leaders. The White House spelled out that we faced twenty-five thousand liters of anthrax, thirty-eight thousand liters of botulinum toxin, enough material to produce five hundred tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve gas, and mobile biological weapons labs. But the time for high-level discussions was over, for the command structure of the United States had all but made the decision to send us over the line along with a “coalition of the willing.” Our job was not to question our orders but to carry them out.
My personal viewpoint had only hardened since the terrible attacks on the United States on September 11.1 wanted to hunt down and kill every terrorist I could find, to make them pay tenfold for what they had done, so they would think twice before trying it again. I considered Iraq a logical target in the war on terror and believed that by fighting in someone else’s house, we would occupy their interest and their focus. It would be better to fight the terrorists in Iraq than in Boston. I make no claim to be a national security expert, although I know how it works better than most people. While I don’t make policy, I implement it by stepping onto the battlefield. It’s what I get paid to do, and I was ready to do it.
“Oh, we’re going,” I told Casey. “Even as we speak, Officer Bob is getting all soldierly by watching
The wind thumped the canvas tent, cold and steady, and armored vehicles growled by outside, on their way to some night exercise. “What if we don’t really get into the big fight?” Casey asked. “The Army gets to take Baghdad, and if we get held up in Basra, I don’t want to be stuck in the rear.”
“Not to worry. The Army may get the first bite at that apple, and the more people we have killing things, the better. Don’t sweat it, you’re going to see plenty of action.” I put down the cleaning cloth and gun oil for a moment and looked over at my eager friend. He still wasn’t convinced.
“But don’t believe all that stuff about being welcomed by kids tossing flowers and herds of Iraqi soldiers surrendering,” I said. “Everyone knows what’s at stake this time, and they are going to fight. We’re going to have to fight in Basra, then with the Republican Guard, with those fedayeen crazies, and guerrillas in every little ten-cent town all the way to Baghdad, and then within the city itself. We will win, but it’s going to cost us. This is going to be a bloody business.” I had been here before and knew from hard-won experience that the game plan goes to hell when the first shot in fired. Some of my Marines would not be coming back. I just didn’t know how many, or who.
7
“My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals!” Lieutenant Colonel McCoy, whose radio call sign was appropriately “Darkside Six,” was atop an Amtrac, giving some final fighting words to his battalion as they stood beneath a broiling midday sun at Camp Ripper on March 17, 2003. “We’re going to slaughter the 51st Mechanized Division!” he said, balled fists on his hips. “We’re going to kill them! We’re going to make an example out of them!”
He confirmed that our part of the war would start by attacking Basra, the second largest city in Iraq, and the intelligence guys predicted that an entire division of the Iraqi army would be waiting in our path. Thousands of enemy infantry troops, supported by a couple of hundred tanks and armored vehicles galore, had spent months preparing for our arrival. We would be outnumbered maybe eight to one. Some may have wondered just how our single battalion was going to demolish a full division all by our lonesome, so McCoy explained that the enemy had no idea how we were coming at them. How the other guys had planned and trained did not matter because this was going to be our kind of fight-a one-sided, nasty, eye-gouging, kick-in-the-nuts, bullet-in-the-ear, smash-mouth Marine-style brawl, and he promised that we would stomp their asses right into the sand. Fight fair when outnumbered eight to one? Fuck that. “We will hit them with everything we have,” McCoy said.
Fifteen huge M1A1 Abrams battle tanks, the best in the business, stood nearby like brooding steel racehorses, eager to run. Fifty-four armored Amtracs were scattered about, each twenty feet long, eight feet high, and able to carry twenty Marines safely inside while tooling around at forty miles per hour. Sixty-three camouflaged Humvees dotted the sands, several of them specially modified with souped-up engines and armed with a staggering array of missiles, machine guns, and automatic grenade launchers. These vehicles, which traded some armor for speed, were known as CAATs (Combined Anti-Armor Teams) and would race around the desert to protect our flanks and probe enemy weaknesses. This was going to be a war not only of bullets but also of tracks and wheels and gasoline, of rapid movement and space-age mayhem.
“When other Iraqi units see what happens to the 51st, they might just go ahead and surrender,” McCoy shouted, and the confidence of Darkside Six was infused into his 1,004 Marines. Although most had never seen combat, they whooped as if they were at a Super Bowl instead of in the middle of the Arabian Desert, and the smell of war rose in their nostrils. Few considered that some would not be coming back, for their blood was hot, their knives sharp, and their guns ready, and nobody felt the least bit sorry for Saddam Hussein’s goddamn doomed 51st Mechanized Division.
The formation ended, and everyone got back to work, tearing down the camp and getting ready to move out. The heavy metal band AC/DC wailed “Hell’s Bells” from a boom box. It was a terrific speech. Too bad Casey and I missed it. We were already gone.
We had gotten up hours earlier, about four o’clock in the morning the same day that McCoy would give his pep talk, to tune in the radio and hear President Bush give Saddam Hussein and his two weird sons forty-eight hours to leave Iraq. “Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing,” the president warned.
Once those forty-eight hours were up, we had to be at the starting line, because no one really expected the Hussein gang would leave. So beneath the glow of a full moon, Casey and I had our boys load the Humvees with enough ammunition, communications gear, fuel, food, and water to get us through five full days, and we went tearing out with the advance regimental quartering party to find our battalion’s assigned staging point in the Kuwait dirt.
In any major military movement, somebody has to go in first and stake out an area that is defensible, is accessible by vehicles, and has good lines of communication. With tens of thousands of men and vehicles on the move, the job of the quartering party is not very sexy, but screw it up and confusion reigns.
Our designated dispersal area was several miles from Safwan Hill, a big pimple in the desert on the Iraqi side of the border with Kuwait. The Iraqis used this dominant geographical feature as their southernmost observation post, and as dawn broke on March 17, they had a superb view of the powerful American force that was growing before their eyes. I knew this place only too well, as did other Marines and Army grunts who had chewed Iraqi sand before. When the fight started, Safwan Hill was to be pulverized.
We guided in the rest of the battalion that afternoon, and for hours, wave after wave of Marines arrived in convoys that trailed sky-high rooster tails of dust. The Iraqis up on the hill must have been putting down their binoculars and packing their bags to get the hell out of there. It was after dark before our final elements arrived, and before anyone slept, we were lined up with all of our guns facing north.
We thought it was the fucking end of the world.
