Ryan Smithson (4 page)

W
e’re a platoon full of simple GIs. We’re not airborne Rangers or Special Forces or even Infantry. Hell, we’re not even marines. We’re army reservist engineers, and we have more invested in our lives outside than inside the military.

I am only one of these simple GIs, and I am nothing special. I am a copy of a copy of a copy. I’m that vague, illegible, pink sheet on the very bottom of carbon paper stacks. They will not make movies about me. There will be no video games revolving around my involvement in the war. When people write nonfiction books about the Iraq war, about the various battles and changes of command, I will not be in them. My unit will not be mentioned. We
are not going to be part of any significant turning point in the war.

We’re not going to bust down doors and search for weapons caches. We’re construction. We’re going to build crap. We’re not going to hunt for insurgents. Our job is to stay away from the enemy. Our job is small, a minute part of the larger picture.

And I’m not even sure what this “larger picture” means. I’m not sure why we invaded Iraq.

I am just a GI. Nothing special. A kid doing my job. A veritable Joe Schmo of the masses, of my generation.

I am GI Joe Schmo.

I am one soldier, and I stand in one squad in one platoon in one company during the battalion formation. A squad is about twelve soldiers.

My squad, we’re equipment operators. My platoon, we’re equipment platoon. My company, we’re headquarters company. The three other companies in the battalion—A (Alpha), B (Bravo), and C (Charlie)—are called “line companies.” As headquarters company, we run the show. In Iraq we’ll support the line companies. Plus, the commander tells us, we’ll have our own missions.

EQ platoon is four twelve-soldier teams full of GI Joe Schmos. And we’re in this together. Our wives and girlfriends are home. Our moms and dads and siblings left behind. All they have is one another.

All we have is one another.

And we’re going to do whatever it takes to come home alive.

On December 1, 2004, the entire battalion packs into one giant plane. Our next stop is our refueling point in Germany.

I am flying over the Atlantic at night for the first time. No clouds, only light coming from the moon. A billion stars and moonlight dancing off waves that are thirty-seven thousand feet below me. There are no city lights. No streaks of red-and-white highway. There’s no relation to anything in space, and zero relativity feels like zero gravity.

As I skip through time zones, I wonder how Heather’s doing. She doesn’t even know we’re flying out today. Before we left the commander told us not to e-mail or call our families with information about dates and times. This is called OPSEC (Operational Security) and it’s something the army takes very seriously. And for good reason.

In Iraq operational security matters more than anything, because any one intercepted message can jeopardize an entire mission and the lives of soldiers.

In all honesty this plane trip to Germany isn’t that big of a deal as far as OPSEC is concerned, but I have to get used to it. And so does my family. So when I called them for the last time before we left the States, I told them,
“Soon. We’re leaving soon.”

OPSEC is for the better, but I still feel as if I’m abandoning my family.

After refueling in Germany we take off for our last stop: Kuwait. On a map of the world if the Persian Gulf is a mouth, Kuwait is the back of the throat. And when we’re done in Kuwait, she’ll swallow us, push us into the stomach. That violent, churning stomach.

We land near Kuwait City, the capital, and hop on a convoy of buses. Kuwait City is beautiful in a windy, flat, desert kind of way. I wish we were going there and not to some army camp in the middle of nowhere.

I am anxious, even though I’m not in a combat zone. Iraq is the dangerous country, the one that’s always in the news, but I’m still anxious. Because the bus is bringing us into the unknown.

On the way to reception in basic training all I knew of it was the media image of loud, belittling drill sergeants. So that’s what I expected.

On the way to some army camp in Kuwait all I know of the Middle East is the media image of car bombs and people rioting in the streets. So that’s what I expect.

Looking out my window, I see a car passing our bus. A woman in the passenger seat holds up a thumb and smiles. Kids in the backseat see my uniform and wave. I don’t wave back. I smile uncertainly.

It’s nighttime, and there’s not much of anything to look at once we get past the unique architecture of Kuwait City. Nothing to look at except for tough desert plants and trees that line parts of the edge of the road. I watch the empty desert go by, glad to see that it’s filled with darkness and not car bombs or people rioting in the streets.

Munoz is sitting in front of me.

“It wasn’t like this in the first Gulf War,” he says.

“How was it?” I ask.

He pauses. “Different.”

He tells me, “The Kuwaitis love the Americans now because we liberated their country in Operation Desert Storm in ’Ninety-one. But they weren’t always so friendly. During the first Gulf War they were like the Iraqis are today. In another decade hopefully the Iraqis will appreciate us the way the Kuwaitis do.”

Another car passes. The passengers wave to me. This time I wave back.

Munoz was an engineer in Desert Storm. Most of the time he ran a bulldozer. Twelve-hour shifts building long, large piles of dirt called berms to catch bullets.

My platoon sergeant had been a specialist like myself. He was a dozer operator, a GI Joe Schmo just doing his part. But it was a part of something bigger.

Maybe I’ll be a part of an operation that changes an entire country. Kuwait is our stepping stone to Operations
Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom for the country of Iraq.

How many people have an opportunity to change an entire country? How many people can find such a sense of purpose? How many people can say they did their small little part and the result was a whole country full of happier, free people?

Basic training taught me to appreciate freedom. My deployment, I hope, is allowing me to spread that freedom.

We get to Camp Virginia and unload our duffel bags. There are soldiers stationed here to in-process units like us. They take our IDs, for financial purposes, swipe them in a card reader, and give them back. They give us a briefing, but it’s hard to listen. Traveling through eight time zones makes you real tired.

We split into company formations and get another briefing from our commander. He leads us to our group of tents. They’re tan on the outside and white on the inside. They have wooden floors to prevent camel spiders and scorpions from crawling in our boots at night. It’s December and the bugs aren’t too bad. I notice it’s chillier than I thought Kuwait would be. Low 40s at nighttime.

So far no car bombs, no scorpions, and no sweltering heat. With every new experience I learn how false my pretenses about the Middle East have been.

We stay in Kuwait for three weeks, getting used to the eight-hour difference in time zones and the foreign climate: the dry weather, the wind, the sand.

We are waiting for our engineering equipment (construction vehicles) to arrive on navy ships coming up the Persian Gulf.

PMCS (Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services) is an inventory and inspection of anything we use in the army—from our weapons to our gas masks to our engineering equipment. It’s checking every nut and every bolt, every seal and every fluid level. And it’s how engineers spend most of their time.

When there’s nothing to do, we PMCS. After we’re done, if there’s still nothing to do, we PMCS. Before we use a piece of equipment, we PMCS. After we finish using a piece of equipment, we PMCS. It’s such a common task that we joke about it. When we’re caught sleeping, we tell our squad leader that we’re PMCSing our eyelids. Renninger rarely finds it funny.

Another big part of our three weeks in Kuwait is to train on equipment. Every soldier in the platoon is cross-trained on the equipment we may have to operate during our tour. On an average day, between chow and cigarette breaks, first and second squad—the operators—cross-train the other squads on how to PMCS and use our loaders,
dozers, hydraulic excavators, backhoes, Bobcats, and 5-ton dumps.

Then third squad—the concrete squad—cross-trains the other squads on how to PMCS and use their concrete mixing trucks, called PLSs. These are not the tumbling, cone-shaped tanks on wheels you see at construction sites. Picture some militant, OD green Willy Wonka machine that stores, mixes, and pours clay, limestone, and water. All of this is a very complicated process, too complicated for third squad to explain fully. So they give us a basic rundown of how a PLS works. Then a hands-on training driving the monster.

Fourth squad—the dump truck drivers—cross-trains the other squads on how to PMCS and operate the M916 tractors, the trailers that go with them, the 20-ton dump trucks, and the LMTVs (Light Medium Tactical Vehicles)—large cargo trucks each with a gun turret.

For almost every serious army training, we take steps—called the crawl, walk, and run stages. The crawling stage involves the PMCS and basic operation (i.e., how to turn it on). The walking stage involves driving around a cone, maybe on a civilian road, or in a Kuwaiti army camp, the military routes on camp. In the States running means you know what you’re doing without really thinking. In Kuwait running means ready to do it in combat. Like anybody could ever be ready for combat.

After three weeks the commander announces that he wants the unit to be at its final destination by Christmas. None of us knows our final destination yet. All he can tell us is “It’s in Iraq.”
Gee, thanks.

But we do know that Christmas is a blackout day. On a blackout day, other than routine patrols, convoys don’t operate in Iraq. These Islamic assholes are on a holy mission, and they’d love to grease one of us on an international Christian holiday.

We spend our last week in Kuwait awake for hours and hours getting ready for the company-wide convoy. Half the company flew up to Iraq as the “advanced party,” but there’s still one hundred or more soldiers living out of duffel bags, sleeping on fold-out cots in tents, and organizing every piece of equipment headquarters company owns. PMCSing it, training on it, and trying to find a home for it in the massive convoy.

I’ll be driving a 20-ton dump truck across the border into Iraq. I only know the 20-ton dump truck as far as crawl stage. I haven’t operated it at all. I’m licensed on it, but I really haven’t a clue how to drive it. And it’s a stick shift.

Since we have so many soldiers to transport, standing in the back of my dump body will be four guys. One of them, Josh Miller, is in EQ’s first squad with me. He’ll be manning an M60 machine gun for which we’ll have to weld a makeshift gun mount onto the dump. We’ll be crossing the
border of a combat zone. We’ll be facing death.

LT organizes time for me to train on the 20-ton—a total of two times. My vehicle isn’t the only one in need of armor and gun mounts, and when I’m done training with it, I park by the maintenance platoon.

The unit has stumbled upon quarter-inch thick plates of armor. It’s weak, but it’s better than nothing. And apparently it’s made in the Middle East, because everyone calls it
haji
armor.

Maintenance platoon runs the extensive operation. They have the welding tools and oxyacetylene torches and bolts and power drills and grinders and air compressors and a hundred other things I never thought I’d be using at midnight in the Middle East. I get sleep in two-hour intervals every twelve to sixteen hours, and the entire company is working together to weld
haji
armor on as many trucks as possible.

Running on minimal sleep does things to a person. At first it’s simply exhausting. I feel like I can no longer stand up or keep my eyes open. The pain in my leg muscles is deep and throbbing.

And my brain feels like it’s on the verge of stopping completely. I have double vision. I wonder why our tent now smells like Grandma’s basement, why my duffel bag smells like my father’s aftershave.

As soldiers, we push ourselves. We push one another.
We’re all in it together. If one quits, we all quit. So we keep one another from giving in to the sleep.