Life in Iraq

Goodbye

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 20:03:52 +0300

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.

The Light

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:24:43 +0300

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.

They're everywhere, and no one knows

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 02:12:57 +0300

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.

He was my brother

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 01:52:53 +0300

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.

Wondering what might have been

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 02:28:30 +0300

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?"

Command decisions

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 03:37:40 +0300

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."

"Amen, brother"

Wed, 30 May 2007 02:34:56 +0300

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.

"Little shames, little shames"

Sat, 26 May 2007 05:33:21 +0300

"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.

Fearlessness is a very dangerous thing

Fri, 25 May 2007 05:20:59 +0300

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.

"Just staring at the wall really"

Wed, 23 May 2007 08:05:04 +0300

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.

"My daddy's lost"

Wed, 09 May 2007 01:43:19 +0300

"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

Sat, 05 May 2007 02:07:12 +0300

"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.

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

Wed, 02 May 2007 01:45:21 +0300

"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.

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

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:12:44 +0300

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.

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

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 07:37:57 +0300

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.