Life in Iraq

Goodbye

2007-07-06T16:03:52Z

Dear Blog Readers,

I have been meaning to write a letter to you all. As many of you may know, and many others may have figured out on their own, I am not sending in any more blog entries. The last entry posted was the 50th over the approximately six month period the project was actively underway. Somewhere around entry number 40 I decided that 50 would be it. As it stands now, I have about two more months to go in Iraq, with about one more month after that before I am actually released home. June marked a year for my unit since we left our homes, although I came a few weeks after most of them. Nonetheless, it has been a long year.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who read the entries and especially those who took the time to write in their comments. So many of them were encouraging. It seemed that comments came in from all representative elements of the political spectrum which reassured me that I was, for the most part, successful in keeping my personal political views out of the entries. That was always one of my larger goals in writing. I also want to thank the editors of The Fresno Bee for all of their help in launching, managing, and editing the project.

I initially started writing to create a record of my experiences for my children to read someday after I am gone. There are about four months of writing in two full leather journals that did not go into the blog. If nothing else, the writing will serve as that, a record for my family. But the blog project gave me something I could perceive as positive to derive out of all of this-something constructive.

My family, like many families, has a long history of involvement in the wars of our nation. I had an uncle in Viet Nam and another in Korea. Another uncle served over twenty years in the Navy, ultimately retiring as a commander. My grandfather fought as a 101st Airborne Paratrooper on the battlegrounds of Europe during WWII. He was one of three brothers who were all fighting there. His wife, my grandmother, had a brother in the jungles of the South Pacific at the same time, and her father, my great grandfather, fought on European battlefields in WWI. My sacrifices are minute compared to theirs. This I know is true.

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They say that only something like one or two percent of American citizens will actually ever fight in a war for our country. I have seen who fights these wars for us. I have yet to meet any rich men's sons. Where are the children of our leaders here? I don't know. Perhaps this is how it has always been, and perhaps, how it always will be.

The Army is an industry of opportunity for those who perceive or have little or none in the places where they are from. True, many do join for god and country, but most join for a way to advance themselves in the world or to pay for college, to be able to buy that new car with their reenlistment bonus, provide housing and health insurance for their families, or to pay off their credit cards. I know countless people who in fact have benefited from the financial and educational programs of the Army. I am one of them. But for most of those who are born into lives of greater wealth, and greater options, these lures hold little if any temptation. Perhaps this is the way it will always be.

As for me, and my children, I will take every measure possible to ensure they perceive other options. I told my wife that I wanted to take down or cover up any photograph of myself in uniform on the walls of our home. This shocked her but when I shared that thought with one of the other officers I work with, he said that was his plan for his son too. I am not ashamed. I simply do not wish to glamorize these things to my children. These are just the things that go through my mind as I take cover from incoming rounds on the floor of my tent. "I would never want this for my son."

So, you could say that I then become part of the problem. Create enough wealth in my family to leave the Army GI Bill to those who need it, to those whose parents didn't or couldn't save enough. Meanwhile, my child goes on to college with a 529 plan and watches a war on TV with the rest of the young upper middle class. First and foremost, I am a father. And a father worries most about his family. All of the slogans in the world will never change that.

I know that some who have served their country may take offense to what I have written here. That was not my intention and I apologize for that. I do respect all of those who have served and realize the sacrifices so many have made. I have seen many make those sacrifices here, and have known men who died. Some gave all, so they say, and it is true as much for this war as it was for those that came before. But few serving today can deny the economic disparities in backgrounds that exist between the greater majority of the heroic one or two percent and those same age peers who are not here. May my children never be a part of it. Be that right or wrong.

Sincerely,
Jeff Leonard

The Light

2007-06-12T20:24:43Z

Mr. Oleary was the father of two of my best friends from high school. He had been in the Marines in Vietnam and had decided to send me encouragement and advice periodically through e-mails.

"Don't trust the children," he would write. "Keep your distance from them. Keep your safety off when you're outside the wire. Don't wear your rank."

He had spoken little about the war as we grew up, but I do remember taking a trip to Washington D.C. with his family one year. It was the only time I had ever seen him cry. He didn't say anything, but he dragged his finger slowly across the stone and the name of someone he once knew. Then he lowered his head and began to sob, with his hand leaning up against the wall over the name. His two sons and I stepped back and stayed silent. And when we looked up and down the long black wall, we saw many other men doing the same thing, hands on the wall, heads lowered.

]]> I had written him that what we were doing here probably wasn't anything compared to what he had to do in Vietnam. I remember one particular exchange over several days where I confided to him that I was not very confident I would live, that I had a bad feeling, and that I could, in fact, see my own death very clearly in my mind. He responded that we had both been to a place where we were not sure whether we would make it home. He confessed that he had a tear in his eye as he wrote back to me, and he signed the message:

"Welcome to the brotherhood,
Larry."

My memory goes back to a moment I had with some soldiers on my FOB one night. One of them was giving haircuts and while we waited our turns, the movie "Pearl Harbor" was playing. A shadow loomed over our FOB that night. It had only been a few days since the lieutenant had been killed, and, in fact, he had died just on the other side of the wall where the TV sat on its shelf.

The pilots in the movie were performing a dangerous bombing raid over Japan in the early days of the war and as we stood around the TV and watched, we looked mystified, and no one spoke. You could sense that our silence was out of respect and awe for the actual men who performed such a dangerous mission. And there was a sense of never being able to compare, that we fought in their shadows, that these were the shadows of great men who came before any of us.

I thought of Mr. Oleary and what he had written, and I thought of my own grandfather who fought in that war and how I had done nothing here to compare with what he had done. I felt the weight of his shadow and the shadows of others. But I remembered a conversation he and I had just before he died. It was after 9-11 and I had told him that if there was a war, I wanted to go like he did. He answered with silence, and I knew that he did not want that for me because he loved me and because he knew what war was.

But standing there with all of the others that night, and thinking about my grandfather, it all became clear to me. These men did not cast shadows. That would never have been their wish. The war itself was the shadow and they were the light. And we were welcomed into it, like brothers into that light, all of us who have feared our deaths, prayed for our lives, missed our homes, and did not know for sure if we would ever return. It was the brotherhood, and the light. And it had never been a shadow at all. It was always the light.

They're everywhere, and no one knows

2007-06-08T22:12:57Z

In the first few months of my deployment, my wife confessed to me that she was very sad. She told me that one day she broke down in tears in the laundry room of our home. Our daughter, hearing her mother crying, had gone to her and asked if she was all right.

"Mommy's okay, sweetie. She's just sad because daddy's not here and mommy doesn't have very many friends," she replied, wiping the tears from her face and attempting to regain herself as she looked down at our little girl. Then she squatted down to her level and did her best to muster a smile as she looked into our daughter's eyes, dragging the heel of her hand outward across the corner of her eye and onto her temple, to wipe away the tears.

My daughter looked back into her mother's eyes for a moment and then replied, "Don't worry mommy, me and brother are your friends." And with that she kissed my wife's cheek and hugged her.

]]> My wife had told me that she just felt so alone and it seemed like no one knew or understood.

"The other day I was in the grocery store and I just wanted to cry as everyone just went on with their shopping and their lives around me. ... I just felt so alone."

"I'm sorry I'm making you go through this, honey. I would never have wanted it this way," I said.

There was a short pause in her voice before she answered. "I know. I'm just sad. I just feel like no one understands," she replied.

"I know this may sound weird, honey, and it may not make you feel any better, but when you're feeling sad, you know, like when you're in the grocery store, do you ever wonder who else is feeling sad?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know, the other people around you in the store." I paused briefly before going on. "You know, the other ones who are trying to hold it together, the ones that feel alone."

She was silent on the other end of the phone for a moment and then finally answered, "No, I guess I never thought about that."

"Well, surely somebody else around you is sad. Someone just had a parent die or maybe they have a sick child or something ... and they just go on every day. And no one knows, right?"

"Hmmm," she replied.

"Maybe we just never knew they were there until we became one of them, and then we realized they were everywhere. They were all around you all along. And maybe they feel just like you. You know, alone."

He was my brother

2007-06-07T21:52:53Z

There we stood, all of us, with our heads bowed, inside the cavernous space of the motor pool bay. As we stood, the sweat poured down our necks and down our foreheads into our eyes from up under our hats. It trickled down our backs under our shirts and gathered at the tops of our socks under our pants. It ran down our arms, out through our sleeves onto the backs of our hands, and dripped off our knuckles as we held them at our sides.

In a far upper corner of the space, a loose flap of metal siding just below the high roof flapped in the hot wind of the afternoon, clapping, thumping, like a voice trying to speak, each time letting in a flash of bright light from the sky outside. Up in the metal rafters above our heads, the birds had made homes for themselves in spite of us, and they swirled around in the air, seemingly unaffected by our presence below. The moment of silence seemed all too brief in spite of the sweat that rolled down my neck.

]]> The chaplain stood forward at the podium and offered his words, and the words of God, in an attempt to weave them together into a meaning for this young man's life, and into a meaning for his death. When he was finished, the first sergeant marched forward from the back, between the rows of metal chairs. When he reached the front he stopped, performed an about face, and began his ceremonial role call.

With a loud booming voice he called out, "Pvt. Stacey."

"Here, first sergeant," a voice in the crowd answered loud and prompt.

"Sgt. Wade."

"Here, first sergeant," another voice loudly answered.

"Pvt. Bader."

No one answered back.

The first sergeant paused and then again called out, "Pvt. Anthony Bader."

There was no reply and the first sergeant paused again.

"Pvt. Anthony Wayne Bader."

The silence following his words was broken only by the firing of rifles in unison, just outside the bay. A few soldiers jolted or twitched when the crack of the first volley hit the air, but held still at attention for the other two. Then, the volley was made official by the all too familiar echo of taps, the melody of the fallen, and the theme song of war.

We were called to remain at attention as the members of command stepped forward to render their respect. As the haunting chords of the bagpipes began to resonate throughout the bay, members of the senior command stepped forward from the front row and marched up the stairs in twos to render a final salute to the symbols before them. They laid down their coins in appreciation, and knelt before the upturned rifle and the photo of the young man they had likely never met. They held his dog tags in their hands and bowed their heads, closing their eyes. And then after them, each of us in turn. I, myself, had never met this soldier either. But that did not matter. He was my brother.

Wondering what might have been

2007-06-05T22:28:30Z

All through the night, I tossed and turned in my bed in our tent at Mahmudiyah. Periodically, I would wake up and think about the position of my body on the bed and the position of my head on the pillow.

With my eyes slowly opening, coming into consciousness, I would think, "Right through the top of my head if I lay like this." Rolling from my side onto my back I would think, "Down through my shoulder if I lay like this." As I lay there, trying to go back to sleep, I would wonder, "What if it hit my neck? I wonder if I could have bled to death? I wonder if it could have penetrated my skull if it hit me in the top of my head? What if I lay like this? Or this? Or This?"

]]> Maj. Johns and I had just returned from a three-day mission out to stay with a small company-sized element at its battle position. On the first night, intelligence sources revealed that a massive coordinated attack on the battle position by several hundred insurgents was being planned. The first sergeant informed me personally that he considered the source very reliable and the information very detailed. He considered the attack likely and went as far as giving me specific instructions to follow in the event that our position was likely to be overrun. The company medic, Spc. Bernardo, Maj. Johns and myself sat in the aid station and listened to Mozart from the Bernardo's iPod as we waited for the attack that first night. It was eerie and surreal and I wondered if this would be my last memory on Earth. When the attack didn't come, it was assumed that it might come the next night and all of the previous night's security measures were re-employed. I spent the three days wondering if we might be overrun and wishing we were back at our FOB.

When Maj. Johns and I finally arrived back at Mahmudiyah, we were both relieved. We unlocked the plywood doors to our rooms in the tent and began to shed our assault packs, Kevlars, and IBAs. As I looked down, I saw a small, gray metal object lying in the center of my bed.

"What the hell is this?" I thought, as I picked it up and looked it over. I had seen pieces of metal just like this one in the past. Though it was only about the size of a bullet, it was flat and its edges were razor sharp, and I knew immediately what it was, shrapnel.

"But where the hell did it come from?" I thought, as I looked around my room and at the tent canvas that made up the ceiling over my bed. And then I saw the hole. Just above the metal frame headboard of my bed a tiny hole was letting in a bright, thin band of daylight down onto my pillow. As I leaned down to look closer, I noticed the tear where it had grazed across my pillow before finally coming to rest almost perfectly centered on my bed, as if it had been placed there by someone for me to see. The rocket had hit nearby earlier that morning. No one had been hurt in the attack.

So now I lay in this bed, sleeping only lightly and waking up throughout the night, silently imagining the impact on my body, had I been laying in this bed when the rocket hit.

"What if I lay like this? Or this? Or this?"

Command decisions

2007-06-01T23:37:40Z

As we lay sleeping on our cots in the plywood hooch in the dark early morning hours there was an unusual amount of activity. When we awoke, we were told by Pvt. Striber what all the commotion had been about. During the night, several American soldiers had been killed and others were captured as they guarded a crater on the road from their vehicles down by BP 324. By sunrise, Pvt. Striber and Lt. Palmorello had already learned the names of all involved since they were soldiers from their company. Over the following days, the patrol base where we were staying became the launching pad for the search and it flooded with soldiers and vehicles like never before.

The news of the abduction tapped into all of our deepest fears. It was as if a shadow had set in over the entire patrol base as the number of troops there rose throughout the morning and later into the day. The soldiers whispered and spoke in lowered tones as they stood next to and passed each other along the tents and other structures. No one dared laugh or smile and all wondered what horrors the missing soldiers might be experiencing as the rest of us were quietly shamed by our safety behind the guarded walls of the tiny base.

"We would have been down there last night had our trip not been cancelled, you know," I said quietly to Maj. Johns as we sat at the table in the chow hall eating our breakfasts. "Meters. .. meters away. We would have heard the whole thing."

]]> "I know," he answered back, looking at me intensely from across the table. "I know." Then his face faded into a blank expression and he drifted his eyes down to the surface of the table next to his cardboard food tray.

As the day wore on, Maj. Johns and I mostly stayed in the metal storage trailer we had been working out of. But not one soldier came in to talk. All efforts were focused on recovering the soldiers who were missing. And the soldiers at the patrol base could no longer justify their own sadness for themselves, as they knew their troubles paled in comparison to those of the missing men. And their sadness for themselves was turned into shame for ever having felt it, and they were sad for their missing brothers instead.

Helicopters landed and took off with increasing frequency throughout the day. Two had just landed and left again as Maj. Johns and I were walking between the barriers. As we began to emerge onto the walkway near our hooch through a back route among some generators and other equipment, I saw a blindfolded man pass ahead as he was being led by Iraqi Army soldiers.

"Stop," I said to Maj. Johns as he was about to emerge out onto the walkway in front of me.

I knew there would likely be more to follow. Maj. Johns stopped short of the walkway and I stood next to him. We watched as the blindfolded men were led in by the soldiers. The men wore mandresses and were barefoot. The bottoms of their feet were black with the dirt from their walking. Their blindfolds were rags of different colors. They passed before us in a line with each man behind the first holding his hand on the shoulder of the man to his front and with several Iraqi Army soldiers walking behind them all. One IA soldier walked in front of the blindfolded men, leading them into the building I called the planetarium and off into other rooms off to the sides.

Inside the planetarium two prisoners who had been brought in earlier sat motionless on the concrete floor with their legs crossed and their hands in their laps, blindfolded with their heads lowered. The bright ethereal beams of light which sometimes passed into the space from the mortar holes in the high arched roof overhead were nowhere to be found this day. These men sat in shadow. The Iraqi soldiers around them stood by them as more and more blindfolded men were led into the rooms behind them into the spaces controlled by the IA.

Back in the plywood hooch, Maj. Johns and I were alone.

"I've been thinking about the whole 324 thing," I said.

"I know," Maj. Johns said. "I could tell it's been bothering you these past couple of days."

"Yes, it has." I paused as he sat down at the edge of his cot facing me to hear what I had decided. "I think it is probably too hot of an area down there. Not that that is news. We've always known that. The rocket through the window and the guys being kidnapped are just a couple more examples."

Maj. Johns nodded in agreement.

"There were plenty of examples before those." I paused and looked away as he listened and then returned my eyes to his. "I've decided I'm not comfortable sending you down there." Maj. Johns' eyes narrowed and he nodded slightly as he continued to listen. "I spoke with Lt. Palmorello about it and as long as the road is not cut off they can get guys back to you for meds as long as you are down by the river at say, 262." Maj. Johns nodded. "But I won't allow you any farther out than that, regardless of what our command decides to allow."

"Okay," Maj. Johns said, and waited to hear the rest.

"I'm also not going to let Carpenter down there either." Maj. Johns' brow furrowed with concern as he sensed where I was leading. "If anyone has to go down there it will be me, not you guys."

"Hmmm," Maj. Johns said, raising his hand up to his lips and pinching them and then dropping his hand back onto his lap. He looked away for a brief moment and then back at me. "I don't agree with that."

"You don't have to," I answered and smiled back at him. "You're not the new OIC. I am. And besides, I've made up my mind and I would rather go down there myself and take the risk than have to go talk to your little boy someday. I couldn't live with that."

Neither one of us spoke for a moment. Instead, Maj. Johns looked at me intensely with an almost undetectable grin in the corner of his mouth.

"Well, I don't agree with that. That's all I can say," Maj. Johns added again. I tipped my head to the side raising my eyebrows and thinning my lips, at once acknowledging and denying his objections.

"I feel a lot better about things this way," I said, taking a sip of water from a plastic bottle that had been sitting next to my cot and shifting my gaze to a patch of plywood wall to his side. "Maybe our command won't want any of us down there once I brief them on things. But until I do that, or if they still want us to cover that area, I will refuse to let you guys go there. I'll be the one to go for the team."

"How do you think Carpenter is going to feel about that decision?"

"He's not going to like it," I answered. "But, again, he doesn't have to." I smiled again. "I'm pulling the OIC card," I said in a Boston accent. The OIC card reference was an inside joke on the team. Capt. Wilde had repeatedly made reference to his ability to "pull the OIC card" when making decisions which usually involved preferential treatment for himself or placing us at risk in his place on missions. "I guess I just decided the right decision is easy. I just imagine what Capt. Wilde would have done and I'll do the opposite," I said jokingly and smiled at Maj. Johns. He smiled back, shaking his head and then nodding, looking off onto the floor of the hooch.

Over the next several days, Maj. Johns and I continued to stay out at the patrol base. By the time we returned to Mahmudiyah, we had been there for almost two weeks. I had explained my position to Lt. Rivers regarding who, on our team, would be available to go down to the area around BP 324 -- that only I would be available for that AO for now and I would be briefing my command in the coming week about the situation there.

Eventually, one evening after dinner, Lt. Rivers let us know that we would be taking a helicopter back to Mahmudiyah. As we waited in a bunker by the LZ the wind picked up and it began to rain and lightning flashed in all directions in the darkening sky. Maj. Johns confessed to me that he had a fear of flying.

"But you're in the Air Force!" I said, laughing.

"I know," he said, and cringed as he looked up at the lightning in the sky outside the bunker.

"Don't worry, man, they won't fly if it's not safe," I said.

Five minutes later the rain had slowed and the birds landed. We ran out onto the LZ, strapped ourselves in and were airborne.

"Amen, brother"

2007-05-29T22:34:56Z

The next morning Maj. Johns and I went about our regular routines with breakfast and then finding our way to the metal trailer we were working out of. The thought of the guys down on the river at 324 weighed heavily on my mind throughout the day. By the end of the day one of the platoon leaders from that company moved into our hooch temporarily as he prepared to go on his leave. I ran into him when we went back to the hooch before dinner. His name was Lt. Palmorello and I had spent some time with he and his platoon last fall.

"Hey, Lt. Palmorello. How've you been?" I asked.

"Fine, sir," he answered. But he did not remember me.

"Hey LT, remember that night we took that convoy and you had me TC one of your trucks?" I asked. "There was some area that you guys called 'the gantlet' because you'd been blown up there so many times. Remember, two craters and then a turn through the reeds?"

"Oh, yah," he answered half-heartedly as he jogged his memory, trying to remember me.

]]> "I remember you saying, 'Here it comes! The gantlet! Say your fuckin' prayers!' and then we flew through that area like friggin' bats out of hell."

Lt. Palmorello smiled. "Oh, yah, now I remember. I remember that night." He nodded, still smiling, and looking off past me, and then back at me. "We got lucky that night."

"Our team had this one doc back then, Capt. Chase. Great guy, but oblivious as hell, at first. That was one of his first trips outside the wire. I just remember hearing you screaming 'Say your fuckin' prayers' over the headset and I looked back at Capt. Chase in the back of the truck and he was just looking out the window into the dark with a big smile on his face like he was on some kind of night sightseeing tour." I laughed. "He couldn't hear you. He didn't have a headset on." I chuckled. "I always remember that night when I think of him." I laughed again, shaking my head and looking off. Lt. Palmorello was remembering that night too, and was looking at me intensely with a sort of half smile.

"I remember that night," he said. "I had no idea you guys were even still operating in our sector."

"Well, we had some issues with our OIC pissing your command off and then we had transportation issues too after you guys moved. Anyway, we're around. We were supposed to go down to 324 yesterday but the trip got cancelled."

"That would be good if you guys could get down there. My guys could really use someone to talk to," he replied.

"I'm sure," I replied. In my gut I began to get that sinking feeling of dishonesty again -- a sinking feeling of dishonor. The little shames.

After dinner, Maj. Johns and I returned to the plywood hooch and our cots. Two privates, Pvt. Giselle and Pvt. Striber, had been staying with us for the last couple of days. They were from Lt. Palmorello's company, although a different platoon. They remembered me because I had ridden and stayed with them multiple times over the months.

"You know this mother fucker went out on patrol with Lt. Brock's guys just before we took the house up at 324?" Pvt. Striber spoke with a southern accent, and was gesturing toward me by nodding his chin. I smiled faintly at what I knew equated to respect and credibility for these guys, although I was too ashamed to fully embrace it. I looked flatly back at Maj. Johns sitting behind me on the edge of his cot to gauge his reaction. He shook his head at me as he listened to the privates. "It was before we even cleared that area," Pvt. Striber added, and then smiled at me, shaking his head.

"Oh I know, he used to roll with us too," Pvt. Giselle said, "Hey, sir, remember that time you were with the colonel and we were getting ready to do a foot patrol in the village here and you wanted to go?"

"I don't remember, but it probably happened," I answered.

"I remember you asked the colonel if he cared if you went out, and he said it was on you, and so you were like, 'Okay, let's go'. But then your convoy showed up all of a sudden and you guys rolled out somewhere else."

Listening to these stories and seeing the admiration in their eyes was making me feel like a worm.

"I gotta be honest with you guys," I said in a serious tone, "I wouldn't go out on foot patrol nowadays unless I had to. My whole outlook on this shit changed after I went home on leave and saw my kids." I paused and looked at the floor. Pvt. Giselle and Pvt. Striber's reminiscing smiles faded from their faces as they watched me. Looking back up at them I added, "I think I was just all gung-ho at first." I paused. "But I won't be going out on any foot patrols any time soon. That shit is over for me 'cause it's not my job."

"Oh hell yah, we're all like that at first, sir," Striber said. "All gung-ho and shit." I could sense that my honesty had not lessened his respect for me by the way he was speaking. I felt a relief in my stomach for having been honest and also for knowing that the heroic stories were likely over. "You got balls, sir," Striber added. "You're just being smart now."

I nodded back at him and then looked away toward the floor.

"Shit, we wouldn't go out anymore if we didn't have to either, sir," Pvt. Giselle added, and then looked at Pvt. Striber and laughed.

"Hell yah, mother fucker!" Pvt. Striber said. "I can't wait 'till all this shit is over. I don't want nothin' to do with any of this shit ever again."

"Amen, brother," Giselle said. "Amen."

"Little shames, little shames"

2007-05-26T01:33:21Z

"It's getting very hot down there by the river, don't you think?" Maj. Johns asked me in the morning before we went to breakfast.

"Yah," I answered without looking at him, "It's been hot."

"Do you think we ought to be down there?" he asked.

I paused. "I'm starting to think no. I don't think our command would want us that far out if they really knew the situation," I answered.

"Well, it's not just that. It's not doctrine for us to be out that far," Maj. Johns added.

I looked up at him and nodded and then turned away. After a brief pause, I looked back up toward him and said, "Well, I guess when I take over the team from Capt. Wilde next week I will have to clarify that with the commander. But in the absence of that guidance we will have to go down there if they ask."

The major looked back at me and nodded, tightening his lips.

]]> "Too bad Wilde never ironed that out with our command," Maj. Johns said. "Why didn't he?"

"Well, Wilde never came out here, that's why. He hid behind the rest of us. I think he felt like a worm making any definitive judgments about danger since he was using us to protect himself from all of it and we all knew it." I looked up to Maj. John's eyes. "And he knew it, too. And he knew that we knew it." I looked back down toward the ground. "Anyway, I was a little crazy in the beginning. I wanted to go everywhere. That all changed when I went home on leave and saw my kids. That's when Capt. Wilde's hiding behind us really started to bother me. It never bothered me before that because I didn't mind being the one who always went out. I mean, don't get me wrong. I always knew what a coward he was. We all did. It just didn't bother me the first few months."

Maj. Johns nodded.

"Hey, maybe we'll get lucky this trip and they won't ask us," I said and smiled at the major.

Maj. Johns and I walked over to the chow hall and after filling our paper trays with food, got cups of coffee and took a table in the center of the room. Sgt. Standish came in and asked if he could take a seat with us.

"Of course, man," I answered. "Have a seat." As he pulled out the chair and sat down I asked quietly, "How are you doing today?"

"Did you hear, sir?" he asked.

"About your lieutenant?" He nodded back at me. "Yes," I said.

He looked down at the table and didn't speak for a moment and then said, "I should've been there. Instead, I was back here with a pierced eardrum and a few scratches." He shook his head in disgust for himself.

"I heard he's probably going to live, right?"

"I think so, sir," he answered, staring down at his tray.

"Don't be so hard on yourself man." I said. He didn't reply.

Maj. Johns was sitting across from me and had a view of the entrance to the chow hall behind me. He seemed to be taking special notice of someone so I turned in my chair to see. It was Lt. Rivers and he was walking toward us. He crouched next to me and put a hand half on my back, and half on the back of my chair, to keep his balance as he crouched.

"Hey, I need you guys to go down to 324," he said.

"Okay," I answered.

"I'll let you know when I find out how you're getting there," he said as he stood up and looked down at me in my chair.

"Okay, man," I said.

I looked across the table at Maj. Johns who had heard the news. We exchanged a serious look at each other and turned down toward our food. I looked up at Sgt. Standish and he nodded and gave a half smile. "Those guys will be glad to see you guys down there, sir."

"I'm sure," I replied and started eating my food. Maj. Johns was still staring across the table at me. I felt the muscles in my face strain and tighten, like I was telling a lie somehow. I looked back down toward my food.

When Sgt. Standish eventually stood up and excused himself, Maj. Johns and I exchanged that serious look again.

After a pause I said, "So much for getting lucky, huh?"

"Yah," he replied and then we both looked down at the table again and quietly finished our breakfasts.

By the end of the day, we still hadn't heard anything from Lt. Rivers regarding our trip to Standish's AO. The sun set to the smell of burning trash and to the prayers of the nearby mosques echoing through the buildings just outside the patrol base. Sgt. Standish had returned to his company shortly after breakfast. I laid in my cot and stared at the ceiling until we eventually turned out the light and Maj. Johns and I fell asleep, not knowing if we would be awakened to get on a convoy in the middle of the night.

The next morning, Maj. Johns and I packed our things and left our sleeping bags and assault packs on our cots. By late morning Lt. Rivers had informed us that our trip had been cancelled because he could get us there but would not be able to get us back to our FOB according to our schedule. We were both silently relieved. I felt ashamed to be relieved.

As we lay in our cots that night, I said, "You know, sometimes people talk about war and they say, 'I'm not proud of everything I did' and we all think, killing people, maybe women, or civilians. But I think maybe, a lot of times, it's the little things that you're ashamed of. Times when you make little decisions based on fear, based on your own survival. Shame from that, you know? Stuff only you know."

"You're having a hard time with this, aren't you?" he answered.

"Well, I know I could have said 'to hell with getting us back on time' and we would be down there right now. That's what I would have done six months ago."

"We don't belong down there Jeff. It's against doctrine," Maj. Johns said.

"Those guys need us a lot more than the rest of them."

Maj. Johns did not answer and we laid silently in our cots for a moment, both staring at the ceiling.

"Little shames, little shames," I said.

Fearlessness is a very dangerous thing

2007-05-25T01:20:59Z

The night in the plywood hooch was dark and, for the most part, quiet. Occasionally, mortars came in and we would try to gauge their distance from us. When they landed very close, you wondered if, perhaps, someone had been killed or hurt. Maj. Johns had moved to a cot away from the wall, after reasoning that it might be better for him were a mortar to land just outside the walls of the hooch. Two of the four air conditioners, which were built into cut holes in the walls, worked and, while they could only dull the heat of the day, at night they were sufficient to keep the space cool. When the lights were on I would lay in the cot and stare at the ceiling. One of the privates I had known since last September commented that I stared at the ceiling for over an hour one night.

Sgt. Standish was a medic with one of the infantry companies who lived and operated out of one of the worst areas in the battalion AO, another great man who had seen too much. A rocket had been fired through the window of a house that is now used as a patrol base there. One man was killed and Sgt. Standish had suffered minor injuries. So while he was being pulled back for his injuries, the medics at the aid station recommended he see us as well. He was the sort of guy that took guard shifts from other guys so they could sleep, forgoing his own needs.

]]> He told me of his platoon leader and how he was fearless. "Ranger tab, you know?" He told me that he often found himself hiding behind a palm tree when the lieutenant walked up to look at a suspected IED. Sometimes the lieutenant would pull the thin copper wire up out of the dirt with his hand. EOD had shown the lieutenant pictures of his own footprints taken by their robot as it fixed explosives on the IEDs for controlled detonations. They had repeatedly warned him that he was taking too many chances and had, more than once, stepped within inches of pressure plates. I told Sgt. Standish that fearlessness was a very dangerous thing where he lived and that his lieutenant would unfortunately probably pay a high price for it eventually, and that when it happened, it wouldn't be Sgt. Standish's fault.

In the course of our conversation, Sgt. Standish opened up about everything he had seen and he systematically recalled every death or serious casualty he had seen or treated. I told Sgt. Standish how much I admired troops like him and that he needed to take care of himself too. I told him to protect himself from fearlessness, to make sure he made it home.

When we were done speaking I walked over to the chow hall for a drink. It was about 10 p.m. When I walked back a figure was standing in the shadows between two of the tents.

"Sir?" the voice said quietly as I passed.

"Yes?" I answered and stopped, looking back in the dark, still not seeing a face.

"Thanks a lot for talking to me. It helped a lot."

"Oh, you're welcome Standish. Take care of yourself, okay? Don't forget what I said. You need to go home, marry that fiancé of yours."

"I won't forget, sir," he answered quietly. "I won't forget."

When I got back to the tent the other soldiers told me the news. Sgt. Standish's lieutenant had been blown up in an IED blast and was still alive, at this point, but was injured severely enough to ensure he would not be back whether he survived or not. For him, the war was over, either way.

It gave me an eerie feeling to think that he was blown up within minutes of our discussing it. But I did not feel that my prediction of it somehow willed it. I wondered if Sgt. Standish had found out about the lieutenant before he thanked me from the shadows in between the tents. I wondered if I would have known, had I seen his face. Sgt. Standish spent the night in our hooch on one of the empty cots and we didn't speak of the lieutenant. No one did. We turned out the lights.

"Just staring at the wall really"

2007-05-23T04:05:04Z

Maj. Johns and I had been at the patrol base to the west for several days. We took up residence on two adjacent cots in the far corner of a plywood structure which, by size comparisons, was much like the other Army tents it was built among. There were no walls to divide the space within the structure. Cots lined the long side walls with space for a walkway in the middle. There were about 20 cots in all and transient soldiers came and went, mostly as they left for, or returned from, their leaves home. During the daytime, the structure would shake and breathe in the hot winds and the thin lines of light where plywood panels met on the walls, and at the meeting of the walls and the ceiling, would swell and widen broadening bright luminous fissures in the dark space. Small gray lizards would crawl though these cracks and take refuge from the heat on the plywood ceiling between the beams.

Soldiers getting ready to go on leave would talk about things they planned to do at home with tones of relief and elation. Soldiers returning to their units would move about anxiously and hope for delays in their returns back to the line. When details of their returns were received, and when all hope of delay had been exhausted, their muscles visibly tightened and their movements became jolted, almost angry, and they began to speak of their hopelessness, the friends they had seen killed. They began to question and criticize the war, late into the night on their cots in the darkness. In the morning, they would be gone, their empty cots a reminder of them, and of where they would be by now. Often when we spoke to them, we wondered secretly if they would become one more of those we had talked with who might later appear on a memorial flier before us, an inverted rifle and bayonet, a Kevlar, a pair of boots, and dog tags, a typed message naming who they left behind back home.

]]> The major and I took up shop in a metal storage trailer during the daytime. It had no windows but had been fitted with lights and an air conditioner. Command, knowing he and I were coming, had detained or sent in several soldiers they wanted us to see. The recent decision to extend all of the soldiers had made our job harder and those who lived day to day had begun to digest and absorb the mental impact of 90 more days they would need to survive.

"No, sir, I don't really sleep. Well, maybe an hour or two, then I get up. I don't want to dream," the soldier said to us. His name was Staff Sgt. Johnson. He was a good soldier, and you could tell when you spoke to him. He was a man of honor. He was ashamed to be speaking with us, but his leaders had insisted. He had served three combat tours as a squad leader in a line unit. His body and his hands shook during pauses in his speaking and he stared at us, and sometimes past us, with a wide-eyed look of hyper alertness. He had just returned from leave and two guys in his squad were killed days before his return.

"You know, I think I thought, or...you would think, that each time you lose someone in combat it would be easier, but it's not. It's not." He shook his head and looked away from Maj. Johns and down at the floor. "It's not," he repeated as he stared at the floor. He looked back up at me nervously, still shaking his head. When he finally stopped shaking his head, his body erupted into a tiny tremor as he tried to keep still. He pressed and rubbed his palms against his knees as he sat, presumably to try and stop his hands from shaking. "Every time someone dies, I relive all of the other deaths. Over and over." He shook his head and looked back down at the floor and the tremor began again.

"That's a very normal response," Maj. Johns said. I nodded and Staff Sgt. Johnson nodded back at us sadly, and then looked away.

"You know, I think going home on leave really told me how bad I was."

"What happened on your leave?" Maj. Johns asked.

"Well, not too much really. Well, the first few days were good."

"What did you do the first few days?"

"I checked into a nice hotel and got a bottle of scotch and I didn't come out for about four or five days. It was great. I didn't get drunk. I just sipped, you know?"

"What were you doing in there all that time?" Maj. Johns asked.

"Just staring at the wall really," he answered, and then drifted his gaze past us as if remembering. "I didn't turn on the TV or anything. I just stared at the wall. Well, for the first three days anyway. I know it sounds weird but it was really great."

"Then what happened?"

"Well, then my girlfriend came. And don't get me wrong. I love her and she's a great girl and all but it just wasn't the same after she came. She's great though. She's so understanding."

"How did things go with your girlfriend? Did you get along okay?"

"Oh yah, we didn't fight at all. No, we got along. But..." he looked from Maj. Johns toward me and hesitated.

"But what, man?" I asked.

"Well, I couldn't do it, you know? I mean sex. We didn't have sex at all. Her skin just felt really weird. You know what I mean?" He sort of squinted and cocked his head to the side slightly when he asked if we knew what he meant.

"No, not exactly. What did her skin feel like to you? Describe it to us," Maj. Johns replied.

"Like rubber, like an animal," he crinkled his cheeks as he remembered, as if it were repulsive to him. "Like she wasn't real."

We talked with Staff Sgt. Johnson for a while longer. He was one of the worst we had ever seen. When we mentioned the thought of him taking his squad out again he simply said, "I can't. I won't. I won't load another body onto that chopper. I can't. I won't."

"My daddy's lost"

2007-05-08T21:43:19Z

"You know your son sort of had a bad day today," my wife said over the phone. It was late at night in her time zone and the kids were asleep.

"Oh yah?" I replied.

"Well, not really a bad day I guess, but he was talking about you a lot in day care," she replied.

"Yah?"

"Yah. I guess he kept saying, 'My daddy's on the airplane' and the day-care workers would ask, 'But where did he 'go' on the airplane? Where did he go?' Then he said, 'He's on the helicopter' and so they said, 'yes, but where is he now? Where is your daddy?' So then he said, 'My daddy's lost.'"

My wife told me she tried to explain to him that his daddy wasn't lost, that I was in the Army and that I had a very important job helping the soldiers. "Daddy isn't lost," she told him.

She didn't ask me what I was thinking. If she had, I would have said that I was wondering if he might be right.

"Get up, LT. Get up, LT" -- Part II

2007-05-04T22:07:12Z

"I just don't see how I can do my job. I mean, I'm supposed to be helping them. I'm supposed to be the strong one," Pvt. Carnes, the chaplain's assistant, said as he sat with us in the office area of our tent.

He had exhausted himself from crying and now carried a flat, exhausted expression on a sloppy red, damp face. It had been about 20 or 30 minutes since the rocket attack and the death of the lieutenant. Others were injured in the attack and we had heard the helicopters flying in to medivac them to the CSH. By now, the entire FOB would know about the fate of the lieutenant and the injuries of the others.

"I just wanna go home. I just wanna get out of here," he said quietly. "Maybe I can call the brigade chaplain and he can let me come up to Stryker for a few days."

"Maybe," Capt. Wilde replied, "Maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea for you."

"I'm just not strong enough to do this job. I'm too weak. Look at me," he said, lifting his head up and looking at me.

I paused for a moment and then said, "You are part of this, man. Do you understand that?"

He nodded.

]]> "You can't expect yourself to be unaffected by this shit. You knew the lieutenant, and we are all together down here. You know what I'm saying?" I leaned forward toward him, my elbows propped on my knees, and nodded my head as I squinted slightly.

He tightened his lips and nodded back, more clear of what I meant. I could see the others nodding in the corner of my eye as I spoke.

"It's a double-edge sword man. You're not external to this stuff. You're part of it. It's a strength you know. When you talk to these guys, they know you're in it too. You're not just some guy flying down from Baghdad after the fact. You cried with them."

Pvt. Carnes had lifted his head now and was watching me as I spoke.

"You saw some heavy shit, man. Just let it ride. You can still do your job." I said. "So what if you cry?"

Pvt. Carnes just nodded at me and then turned his gaze back down toward the floor when no one spoke.

"How about we go check on your people, man? I'll put my shit on and go with you if you want," I said, as I stood up from my chair and looked down at him.

Pvt. Carnes sat up taller in his chair, but didn't say anything.

"Let's go, man. You want to?" I asked, standing over him.

"Yes, sir," he replied, and stood up and turned to grab his weapon lying on the floor next to the camp chair. His face lightened as he stood; he looked at me with a determined expression when I turned to him as we walked out of the tent into the dark.

The rocket had struck just outside the area where Pvt. Carnes worked and slept. I kept close to him as we walked toward the impact site. As we approached the doorway to the building, the light from inside illuminated three or four soldiers to our right on the concrete. They stood with shovels and mops. They looked up from their work at us blankly as we stepped over the debris as we passed. I didn't look down. The light from the doorway lit their numb expressions as they watched us passing. As we neared the door, Carnes began to slow to look at the spot where the rocket struck and then down at the debris.

"Come on, man," I said, placing my hand on his back and pushing him gently through the doorway into the building. "Let's not look. Let's keep moving."

We entered into the office where he worked and he went into a room in the back to put on his IBA and Kevlar. The room was silent, though it was full of people. The soldiers looked up when we entered but then returned their eyes to the empty corners of the room they had been staring into. The air in the room was thick with a heavy silence.

"Sgt. Merlot," I said, almost whispering. Sgt. Merlot was Carnes' roommate.

"Yes, sir," he answered.

"I am going to take Carnes around a little. I think he needs to get out and do his job. Know what I mean?"

"Okay, sir," he replied.

"Are you okay, Merlot?"

Sgt. Merlot didn't answer but nodded his head slightly and looked sadly into my eyes.

"We'll talk later, man," I said.

"Yes, sir."

Pvt. Carnes had his gear on now and was stepping out from his room. "I'm ready, sir," he said. "Can we go see the medics?"

"Uh hmm. Let's go."

We walked through the building, out through a different exit, to walk over to the aid station. I could sense Pvt. Carnes was eager to get there. He seemed to be walking taller with each step.

"I really appreciate you doing this for me, sir," he said, as we walked to together in the dark by the light of my tiny flashlight.

"No problem, Carnes. I think this is what you need to do."

When we arrived at the aid station, the place wore a strong smell of bleach. Scattered small groups spoke in lowered tones and several of the female medics were crying as they finished cleaning up the areas around the raised stretchers. They looked up toward Pvt. Carnes and me as we came into the light through the doorway. One of them came over to the entrance, crouched, and began to scrub a few drops of blood that had fallen at the doorway. She scrubbed the spot hard but the drops had landed on a wooden piece of threshold and, so, left a stain behind like a shadow of the blood.

One of the female medics turned toward us and, seeing Pvt. Carnes, began to cry. She ran over to him and he held her and they cried together. The others in the room looked over to them and then away. I stood silently and waited. I talked briefly with the doctors and told them we would be there in any way we could.

After Pvt. Carnes and I left the aid station, we walked over to the motor pool. Six or seven soldiers stood silently in an open circle. Pvt. Carnes shook each of their hands and hugged each of them in succession. I stood back and just nodded at them solemnly and then lowered my eyes with the rest of them.

After I had brought Pvt. Carnes around to a few other places he had wanted to go, we decided to go back. It was after midnight.

"I think it meant a lot to these guys to see you out, Carnes," I said as we walked back in the dark.

"Thank you, sir," he answered back.

"No problem, Carnes."

"Thank you for going with me."

"You did a good job, man."

"Get up, LT. Get up, LT." -- Part I

2007-05-01T21:45:21Z

"God, I wish we would kill those bastards," I said as I passed Sgt. Carpenter and Pvt. Carnes, the chaplain's assistant. Carnes had been in our tent talking to Sgt. Carpenter and two rockets had just impacted somewhere nearby. "Those sounded like they hit somewhere on the FOB for sure. Sooner or later they are going to kill one of us."

Pvt. Carnes looked at me, nodding with a slight grin, and said, "You're probably right, sir."

The rocket attacks had been averaging about every other night for about two or three weeks. We had all become very tense, and throwing ourselves onto the floor had become something we seemed to do with ever increasing regularity. We would often laugh at ourselves from our hiding places under desks or in corners, our hearts racing, shaking off the nervous energy with our laughter, glad to be alive, thankful for the privilege of feeling our hearts racing. Our arms sported bruises from the things we hit on our way down. Maj. Johns had built a bunker of sandbags in his room next to his bed and had begun sleeping in it in his IBA and Kevlar.

]]> "Goddamn it," I said to Sgt. Carpenter as Pvt. Carnes walked out of the tent. I shook my head and he nodded, stiffening his lips. I could feel the adrenaline still flowing through me.

Capt. Wilde was walking toward us now, down the length of the tent along our plywood rooms, having passed Pvt. Carnes on his way out. "Those hit inside. I think someone might have gotten killed," he said.

"How do you know?" I asked, anxiously.

"I saw people running around out there and I heard a lot of yelling but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. It's pitch black out there tonight."

"Fuck."

I ran outside and saw the amber glow of someone's cigarette as they stood outside their tent. "Hey, did you see people running out here?"

A voice answered in the dark, "Yah, one guy went that way." And he pointed the way with the glowing head of his cigarette.

I went back inside and the four of us stood in the office area of our tent for a moment. Wide-eyed, we stared into meaningless corners of the room, and into each other's faces, as we focused our ears to the vague noises outside.

"Thump," the wooden door on the front of our tent closed as someone entered. I turned and walked toward them and squinted my eyes down along the rooms trying to see who it was. The hall was dark and the light was behind the figure so I couldn't see his face very well but I could tell it was Pvt. Carnes. He was staggering as he walked as if he might collapse.

We froze as we all watched him walking toward us.

"Carnes? Are you okay? What's the matter?" I asked.

He didn't answer at first. Then his face passed the shadows as he neared me and the light revealed his tormented expression and his tears. "He's dead! He's dead!" he said, sobbing and still staggering toward me.

"Who's dead, Carnes? Who's dead?" I asked.

"The lieutenant, Lt. Browning. He's dead!" He burst into tears. He was standing right in front of me now and he leaned his forehead over the back of his hand, into the metal cross brace at the meeting point of the tent wall and roof pitch.

The rest of the guys were standing behind me and didn't speak as Pvt. Carnes cried, burying his face into the tent canvas.

"Carnes?" I said quietly, "Did you 'hear' or did you 'see'?"

He didn't answer for a moment and then sniffled deeply before he spoke. "I saw, sir," he answered quietly, without turning toward me.

I stepped in closer to him and put my hand on his back just below his left shoulder.

Then he cried out loudly, "He didn't have a head!" and he burst into uncontrolled crying. "He didn't have a head," he said again, quieter now. Then almost inaudibly, and almost as if posing a question, or as if he were confused, "He didn't have a head..."

The words were like ice as they passed through us and I felt the hair on my arms stand up. I rubbed his back with my hand as he continued to cry.

"Let's go sit down, Carnes," I said, and we moved as a group to the office area behind me and I helped Carnes sit in one of the camp chairs.

Pvt. Carnes propped his head on his hands, as he stared down at the floor between his legs, crying forcefully and gasping for air between sobs.

"Let it out man," Capt. Wilde said.

"Pvt. Mac was shaking LT's leg," Pvt. Carnes sobbed, "and he just kept saying, 'Get up, LT. Get up, LT." We shook our heads as we listened. "We had to pull him off of him. Then he just curled up into a ball on the ground and cried." Pvt. Carnes did not look up as he spoke to us and each time he spoke he would go back into a heavier fit of tears. "I just wanna go home. I just wanna go home. I just wanna go home..."

His words echoed through his tears and encircled us, flew above our heads like sparrows in the room. "I just wanna go home, I just wanna go home, I just wanna go home."

It is what it is -- Part III (My eighth memorial in Iraq)

2007-04-27T00:12:44Z

After we returned to the patrol base by the river, we told the company commander that the briefing went well and we felt that his soldiers were part of a tightknit group. Maj. Johns and I spent most of the afternoon hanging out with medics at the aid station and with Chaplain Thomas. We were told that we would be riding back to the other patrol base in the morning in Abrams tanks, in the loaders seats. The idea was exciting, and it was comforting to know we would be traveling in the most heavily armored vehicles in this entire country. There were few safer ways to travel than this. But I worried about whether or not my stomach would handle the rough one-hour ride in a tank without being able to see where I was going. As I went to bed that night, I put it out of my mind.

In the morning, Maj. Johns and I had one more MRE breakfast and MRE instant coffee. We gathered up our gear from our cots and walked outside with our IBAs and Kevlars on; we continued to where the vehicles were staging up. At the last minute we were bumped from our seats in the tanks and put into regular gun trucks. The guns for the trucks had not been mounted the night before and there was a general sense of disorganization. Maj. Johns began to display his doubt and frustration through looking at me and shaking his head.

]]> When the two sergeants who had been standing with us by the vehicles ran off to find someone, Maj. Johns turned to me and said, "This is all pretty fucked up don't you think, Leonard?"

"Eh," I replied, indifferently and avoided eye contact.

Maj. Johns looked at the soldiers running around us and the ones on the truck, trying to mount the 240-Bravo. Turning back to me, he said, "I'm finding it hard to keep much confidence in these guys right now."

"Don't worry sir, these guys are killers," I replied, turning to look at him now.

"Killers? What the hell does that mean?"

"It means these guys would love to kill the enemy to save you, themselves, or the guys next to them. That, and they know how to do it. These are the people you want to be traveling with out here," I said, and looked him sternly in the eye.

He just looked back at me for a moment and then looked away.

When we were all finally ready to go, the sergeant I had been talking with asked me to TC the vehicle so I sat in the front passenger seat and put the headset of the radio on. I asked the sergeant what our call sign was for the trip but found out we had no comms when I tried to radio check. Unfortunately, Maj. Johns was partially right about these guys. They should have gotten their equipment squared away the night before.

The sergeant, who was now sitting in the driver's seat, leaned back and yelled up to the gunner up in his hatch, "Private Smith."

"Yes, sergeant," he replied.

"Take all of your commands from Capt. Leonard from here out."

"Roger, sergeant."

We backed up and then pulled forward and fell into the column of about five vehicles.

As we pulled out of the gate I yelled over to the driver, "Hey, Sgt. Chandler, where are we in the convoy? Fourth of five, right?"

"Yes sir," he answered.

"Abrams behind us?"

"Yes, sir."

"What's our call sign?"

"Bandolier 25."

"You know we have no comms though. Well, I can hear them, but they can't hear us."

"Yes, sir."

As we drove away from the patrol base it began to rain just slightly, but enough so that Sgt. Chandler turned on the windshield wipers. By the time we were beginning to get back into the village the ground was damp all around but the rain had mostly stopped.

"You know this rain sucks, Sgt. Chandler," I yelled over to him.

"Yah, it does," he answered back.

I pointed to some piles of dirt we were passing on the side of the road. "You have no idea if that ground is disturbed or not."

"Exactly," he replied.

We began to pass the people as they walked along the road. We passed a group of about seven children that were all between the ages of 3 and 6. They were walking together holding hands, along the side of the very same road we were scanning for IEDs. It seemed ironic and sad, all at once -- us all in our armored vests, Kevlar helmets, and armored trucks, they walking along the road side without any armor, never having known an Iraq without convoys passing them by on the roads, as they walked or played.

We passed a small white pickup with a lone man sitting in the driver's seat. He was backed off the road in a parking lot and I got an eerie feeling as we passed him. He seemed to be edging forward.

"Sgt. Chandler, you got that white truck in your mirror?!" I yelled over to Sgt. Chandler.

He leaned to his left a little to get a better view. "Yes, sir, I got him."

"What's he doing? Is he pulling out yet?"

"No, not yet...Damn, now I can't see him."

"Gunner! You see that white truck back there?" I yelled up to the gunner.

"Yes sir," he yelled back as he stood up tall out of the gunner's hatch.

"Still sitting there?"

"Yes, sir. Do you want me to keep eyes on him, sir?"

"No. Get back down in here," I answered. "The tank passed him right?"

"Yes, sir." The gunner, immediately sat back down on his sling, back below the level of the protective glass shields.

When we arrived at the patrol base we thanked our gun truck crews for the ride and grabbed our gear. When we found Lt. Rivers he told us that he had a ride for us to get back to Mahmudiyah but we declined it. We told him that we wanted to meet with the soldiers that helped him clean the body parts out of the vehicles and we thought it best that we stay at least through the next day so we could attend the memorial for the Bradley crew that was killed.

It was my eighth memorial in Iraq. Some were for one soldier, some for two or three. This one was for three. It was in the planetarium, and the bullet holes in the roof let in their streams of light. Down onto the upturned rifles with their bayonets fixed, with Kevlars on top and dog tags hung. As the company commander of the Bradley crew tried to render his eulogy of the men, he lost himself and could not go on. Chaplain Thomas, who was sitting behind him, stood and placed his hand on the captain's shoulder as he continued to try to speak.

"I'm sorry," he said, as he sobbed from behind the podium. "I'm sorry."

And we all waited, from the generals sitting in the front row to the privates standing in the back. But he could not come back. Instead, he just stood at the podium crying until Chaplain Thomas helped him back away. As he stepped back, away from the microphone, he cried out, "Words cannot express." Then he sat in his seat by the podium with his head buried in his hands, next to the other speakers, as the next one stood up.

It is what it is -- Part II ("That could be me")

2007-04-24T03:37:57Z

After breakfast, Maj. Johns and I walked back to the main building and read magazines in the aid station while we waited for the other soldiers to wake up. Eventually, as the morning went on, the soldiers got up and we had conversations with some of them. In the early afternoon, I went into the TOC to see if the company commander had figured out a way to link us up with the other Bradley team.

"I'll be honest with you," he said, "I just don't have the bodies to be able to pull them back in to see you guys."

"No problem. We can be flexible. We could see them where they are, too, if you can get us there," I replied.

He looked at me for a moment and paused and looked away as if he were thinking.

"We can even spend the night out at their BP if we can't get an escort back in today. It doesn't really matter," I added.

He laughed and raised his eyes back up to me like I couldn't be serious. When he saw I wasn't joking, his smile dropped abruptly.

]]> "Sgt. Jones, which battle position are those guys at right now?" he asked, turning toward an NCO sitting at one of the computers.

"Let me look, sir," the NCO answered, and began to type something on the computer keyboard. "262, sir."

"Hmmm," the captain said, and looked down at the floor to my side, placing his thumb over his lips. Then, looking back up at me, he said, "I think I can get a foot patrol to escort you guys out there. It's not far."

"I've been there before. It's not far. I know. That'll work," I said, nodding.

"How long do you need with them?"

"Maybe an hour or two," I answered.

"Stand by and I will throw something together in about 30 minutes," he added.

"Sounds good, man."

When I walked out, Maj. Johns was standing with the medics in the aid station area next to the stairs. He turned toward me as I walked over.

"What's the plan?" he asked.

"We're going to do a foot patrol over there in about 30 minutes," I replied.

Maj. Johns' eyes narrowed angrily and his lips stiffened into a tight, forced smile.

"What's the matter, sir?" I asked. "Are you mad or something?"

Maj. Johns just tightened his lips into that slight smile and maintained his piercing glare, shaking his head as if in disbelief.

"What?!" I said.

"You know 'what,' Capt. Leonard," he answered.

"It's the only way they can get us out there with those guys right now. Besides, it's not that far. You passed it on your way in. Remember?"

He continued to stab at me with his eyes and again shook his head, but still smiled slightly.

"Doesn't the Air Force do foot patrols, major?" I asked sarcastically, smiling back at him.

"No! The Air Force doesn't do foot patrols, Capt. Leonard," he replied loudly.

"It's not that hard. Just remember, keep 10 meters between you and the next guy, and step where the guys in front of you stepped. And if you hear a boom or a crack, get down."

"You suck, Leonard."

The medics, who had been paying very close attention throughout this interaction, had all been silent around us but stood listening, not sure how serious we were.

One of the medics asked Maj. Johns, "Sir, do you have a rifle or just that nine?"

"Just the NINE MIL," he answered loudly and with emphasis, looking at first toward the medic and then casting another dirty look at me.

"Don't worry, sir. We'll hook you up," the medic said, and then disappeared under the stairs, returning seconds later with a camouflaged M4 with all of the pimped out attachments imaginable. "Here you go, sir," he said as he handed the rifle to the major.

"You do fire weapons in the Air Force, don't you, major?" I teased as the medic handed him the weapon.

"Yes, Leonard. I missed expert by one shot on the M16," he fired back.

"We call that sharpshooter in the Army, sir. Good job." I said.

"MmmHmm," he replied flatly, still shaking his head at me.

"Well, we better go get ready, sir," I said, and began to make my way to the base of the staircase.

As we stood by our cots up on the landing, Maj. Johns did not say anything to me as he put on his IBA.

"Hey, man, this commander really didn't think he had any other options to get us with these guys. It is really close, you know?"

He still didn't say anything.

"I'm not trying to get you killed or anything," I added.

Maj. Johns just looked at me and then back at his gear.

"Don't worry, man. We're gonna be fine," I added.

As we walked back down the stairs, an NCO with his IBA and Kevlar on was coming up. "Are you guys the combat stress team?" he asked.

"MmmHmm," I answered.

"Okay," he said and turned back down the stairs. We followed him outside.

As we walked, a group of soldiers gathered around some vehicles came into view ahead of us in the direction we were walking.

"Are we taking vehicles now?" I asked, confused.

"Yes, sir," he answered.

I turned back and looked at Maj. Johns walking behind me. "Vehicles now, sir," I said.

When we arrived at the BP, we gathered up the three soldiers from the Bradley team and sat on cots under a camo net next to the little hooch. We conducted a critical event debriefing, and they shared with us the details of the incident as they observed it from their vantage point. The details were graphic, and they seemed to be taking things as best as could be expected. Two of the three were here in Iraq for their second time. The third soldier, who had not been here before, described trying to watch his sector after the initial explosion but not paying attention to the body burning in the road, in the corner of his field of view.

"I just kept trying not to look directly at it," he said in a soft, sad voice. The other two looked at him as he said this and then calmly back at us.

This was their first week here. Their emotional reactions in the moment are universal, "That could be me."

After the formality of the briefing, the mood lightened and the topic changed. And while the soldiers expressed appreciation for what we did with them, we all welcomed the shift in tone. The other soldiers at the BP, sensing the briefing was over, joined us where we sat, and they shared stories with us of drunken exploits prior to their deployment. They harassed each other at an intensity only soldiers understand and interpret as brotherhood. Someone had managed to grab a bag of frozen shrimp scampi just before the cooks had left the patrol base and one of the soldiers heated it up in a banged-up pot on a fire pit made out of a slice of a 55 gallon drum. We took our chances with getting sick, and it was delicious. We laughed with them for at least another hour until, finally, a convoy of two Bradleys eventually came by and radioed for us to run out to ride back to the patrol base.

Before the hatch on the troop carrying compartment of the Bradley lifted and closed, leaving us in the dark for the ride, I looked at Maj. Johns on the bench across from me and gave him an approving nod but said nothing. He was smiling back at me as the hatch closed and the compartment went black.