The strange war just kept getting stranger. Enemy soldiers could become free citizens simply by dropping their guns and uniforms and walking away from their fighting positions. Their comrades up the road would still be trying to kill us, and some of those who quit made their military retirement temporary and would revert to their combatant ways in the cities and villages that we had bypassed. Who to trust?
That night, India Company was marching back from a mission to join our position when they crossed a field that we had traversed earlier, sidestepping the bodies of some enemy soldiers. The “bodies” suddenly came to life, leaped up, and started firing, but the Marines reacted instantly and returned fire, so the enemy soldiers went back to being dead, this time for real. It was another lesson that we were close to the enemy’s heartland and sudden death could come from any quarter: suicide bombers in pickup trucks; fedayeen hiding in the bushes; soldiers who were dangerous one moment, then changed into civilian clothes at our approach and laid down their guns-but not their hatred. There were booby traps, deadly RPGs, roadside bombs, the threat of weapons that could deal death in massive amounts, and now people faking death to stage an ambush. It was dangerous to let down your guard.
On the flip side were the friendly little mom-and-pop stores that could be found alongside almost every road in Iraq. Sometimes, when a trove of Saddam’s private cash was discovered, the intelligence guys we called the “Secret Squirrels” became our private ATM machines, spitting out money, as they distributed Iraqi dinars among the troops as unofficial bonuses so we could pump cash back into the local economies. We figured the dictator had stolen enough money, so we were happy to give it back to the citizens.
We would step into those dark little shops and buy almost everything on the shelves-bottles of 7-Up and the Arab version of Pepsi-Cola, bubble gum, and local snacks such as an odd version of caramelized corn. There would be a lot of friendly jabber about prices, and the costs skyrocketed as more Marine customers showed up. A cold drink that went for only five dinars to the first customer was suddenly five thousand dinars for latecomers who were trying to shove ten-thousand-dinar notes into the hands of the shopkeepers. They could not believe the bonanza spilling from the wallets of the young men carrying guns. Those shop owners were friendly, exuberant, and happy to see us.
Or were they? Who knew? How could you tell? To say we were on edge is an understatement.
Artillery blinked against the night sky in the north, and mosquitoes hit us in swarms as I made myself as comfortable as possible among the hardpan ruts of the plowed field. I wondered what kind of crops could possibly grow in such desolation, other than sheaves of hardship and vines of misery.
Suspense gripped us tightly, for the war was entering its final phase. All along the Marine lines on that Saturday night, recon teams were out, snooping to find ways through the last big obstacle, the Diyala River.
Over the centuries, the swift green waters of the Diyala had dropped from a lake far to the north to carve a wide and deep channel that meandered for miles through central Iraq and the eastern suburbs of Baghdad until it bled into the Tigris River. In a country that was mostly desert, we now faced a natural geographic barrier that would be easily defensible by the enemy, a big, deep river with extremely steep bluffs at the sides. By any method, getting over it would be a bitch.
The Force Recon boys can do wonders, but they can’t build bridges alone in the dark. They investigated every small road and muddy cow path leading down to the river and kept reporting back that no suitable crossings were available, except for the one place that was right in front of us.
Headquarters types are nocturnal creatures who are not allowed to sleep at night, because they stay up reading tea leaves, preparing orders, and drafting plans for the following day. While the rest of us either loafed within the bermed complex of buildings or stretched out on the field, the planners filtered through the alternatives until, by default, and to the utter delight of Lieutenant Colonel Bryan P. McCoy, the primary assault on the Diyala fell to his Marines. The Bull got the job.
Straight ahead on the road that we currently straddled was the bridge, two parallel spans across the river, about 150 yards wide. There was a slim two-lane span for pedestrian traffic, and the main bridge was a four-lane highway. Far below swirled the strong currents of the Diyala.
Worse, the bridge was located in the middle of an urban area. That meant a house-to-house fight would be needed just to reach it on our side of the river; then even more urban fighting awaited us on the far side. But if we could take it, we would be only nine miles from downtown Baghdad.
The captured Iraqi colonel had warned us that Saddam’s troops had been ordered to make a stand at this bridge. Nutty fedayeen and militiamen defended the town on this side of the river, and regular troops were well dug into positions on the far side, all with orders to fight to the death. The enemy commanders could read maps, too; well aware of the vital importance of the river crossing, they laced it with explosives. They planned to blow it up the moment they saw the first American approaching.
Of course, all of this is very plain in hindsight, but at the time, I was blind as a bat and innocent as a lamb with regard to what tomorrow might bring. Nine times out often, the Tac, or tactical headquarters, would have been located with the Main, and I would have known what was going on. But with the discovery of the sensitive site, the Tac had stayed within the berms, and I was back at the Main, totally out of touch as the planners toiled through the vampire hours. At least four plans were debated about how to go get that bridge, and although I was oblivious to them all, I was confident that I would be in the thick of it. But when I asked Officer Bob about it, he told me there would be no attack at all tomorrow.
So we slid into relax mode and caught some shut-eye, lulled by the distant bumping of our long-range artillery guns lobbing shells at the defenders of the Diyala Bridge. Nothing going on but a war.
The next day, Sunday, April 6, began in an unhurried manner back where we were, with no sense of pending combat, although a lot of Marines and machines were moving about as the battalion lined up on the road, with the Abrams tanks up front. It is natural to have your stomach in a scramble of nerves before a fight, but this was a normal, piece-of-cake, let’s-get-our-shit-together kind of morning. Our combat power was strung out in a line long enough to cover the length of about eight football fields, and from our place at the rear, we couldn’t even see the front. I called Officer Bob again and was once again firmly told that the senior officers were getting together but there would be no attack. Specifically, I was to stay with the Main.
The sun jumped into the morning sky and was already burning bright with a soaring temperature that had us sweating in our protective suits; MOPP meant HOT. I found a chunk of shade on a sidewalk and sat with my back against my Humvee. Wait. Sweat. Wait. Casey came by to say that he thought that getting shot at was “a bit of a rush” and that he was considering trying out for the CIA when the war was done. I told him not to make any decisions out here: Keep your head in the game. Wait. Wait. We were clueless.
This just didn’t feel right, though, and I began to fidget. I got up, stretched, and looked up the road at the long line of vehicles. Something was stirring up front, and the combat power was on the move. Were they going into a fight or just repositioning?
Little bells began to jangle in my head. Something was up. Something had to be happening!
At nine o’clock in the morning, we suddenly heard the clear sounds of battle ahead and watched some rocket- propelled grenades ride their hot little tails into balls of explosions. I flipped the radio to the Tac-1 net and clearly heard gunfire behind the voices. Detonations erupted in the area of the sensitive site. I tuned to the Main net and got Officer Bob on the horn. Why had I not been told about the order to attack?
His laconic reply was simply “The colonel said he doesn’t need you today.”
Oh, my God! McCoy himself had told me that I would be taking my gun into a target-rich environment, and now I was once again on the sidelines, literally stranded at the very back of the line and intentionally left out of still another fight. Cursing loudly, I got out of the truck, found a scrawny tree, and sat beneath it in a brooding sulk, so plainly pissed off at the entire fucking world that no one dared say a word to me. The boys had questions but asked them only with their eyes, and for once, I had no answers.
Then one of them screamed that there was some talk on the radio about me, so I walked over to the truck in time to hear the last part of the transmission. It was the unmistakable voice of Darkside Six roaring over the tactical net, shaded by a background of crackling gunshots, asking, demanding, none too politely:
