Ryan Smithson (6 page)

I know I’m safe, but I think of Heather and my parents and how hard it must be for them not to have that peace of mind. For the last few days they’ve been worrying, knowing that I’m driving into a war zone.

I think of past wars. Soldiers who didn’t have phone access. Soldiers who didn’t even know something like the Internet could even exist. I can’t imagine how their families got by. Back home they’d wait weeks, months maybe, before they received word. And sometimes that word was a notification of death.

But luckily, I’ll be able to call and e-mail today. Luckily, I’ll be able to tell them I’m okay.

An alarm. A slow, loud alarm like a town fire alarm
back home. It echoes across the huge air base. Everyone in my tent stops and looks at one another.

“What the hell is that?” asks SGT Tim Folden.

SSG (Staff Sergeant) Lee says, “I think that’s the mortar alarm.”

A mortar is a flying bomb. It’s manually shot into the air from a tube.

“I didn’t hear anything explode,” I say. But this camp is huge. It could have hit miles away or not even landed on post. It could have been a near miss. Or maybe it’s a drill.

We throw on our body armor and Kevlar helmets. We don’t need our weapons to fight or anything. But in the military you never, ever leave a weapon unattended. So we grab them, too, and run out of the tent. There’s a nearby mortar bunker that we duck into. It’s a four-foot-high tunnel of concrete shaped like a box. The openings of the tunnel are protected by stacks of sandbags.

“I think we’re supposed to wait twenty minutes,” says Folden.

So we wait, sitting on rocks under a box of concrete. All twelve soldiers from my tent wearing body armor and clutching M16s. Waiting to hear something explode, we GI Joe Schmos realize our war has begun.

“W
e can do this one of two ways,” LT Zeltwanger says to his driver, SPC Greene.

“Okay, sir,” says Greene.

“There’s the right way, and there’s the fast way.”

The lieutenant and his driver, a specialist like myself, sit in a cheaply armored Humvee. Its motor snores in neutral, staring at a large field of dirt, waiting for its driver to make a decision. This large field of dirt is to become EQ platoon’s first mission.

Clearing is when a room, a service route, or a field of dirt, for example, is swept thoroughly for mines, forgotten artillery, the presence of evil doers. It’s a very crucial and
lifesaving step. This hasn’t happened at all.

It’s January 2005, and Iraq is a combat zone. In the middle of this combat zone, in an open dirt field, an entire platoon will be working, sleeping, eating, and digging shit holes for the next two weeks.

When LT asks the battalion staff whether the field has been cleared of explosives, they have no idea what he’s talking about.

LT sits in the
haji
armored Humvee with twenty-year-old Greene—both of them looking at this field of dirt, hoping it won’t be the last thing they ever see. They have to clear this field. The right way or the fast way.

The right way: Hands and knees. A minesweeper maybe. One cubic meter at a time. Double-check.

The fast way: No hesitation. Zigzag through the site. Turn around. Pray. Zigzag back the other way.

The entire platoon is stretched out along the road behind LT’s Humvee. We’re in immediate danger of attack from car bombs or mounted insurgents. We need to pull our vehicles into the field and set up a defensive perimeter.

Greene smiles at Zeltwanger.

“Better go fast,” says LT. And Greene stomps the pedal to the floor.

They make their first set of connected
Z
s. Right away it’s obvious how slow Humvees actually move when the
gas is punched from a dead stop. And zigzagging through winter mud doesn’t make them any faster. If something explodes, they’re both so toasted. They’re growing to love the adrenaline.

They zigzag back, turning their
Z
s into hourglasses, tied shoelaces. The field is cleared as best as it can be, and the rest of the platoon—army green 20-ton dump trucks and M916 tractor trailers carrying scoop loaders and bulldozers—pull in.

In January in Iraq the air is chilly and the wind won’t stop. Our hands are chapped and red from it. It’s 70 degrees during the day and 30 at night. This 40 degree difference between day and night, it’s like being on another planet.

In January it rains all the time. And the dust that covers this country doesn’t mix with water. Imagine walking in a twelve-inch blanket of chunky peanut butter. Every step sinks deeper, gets heavier. It cakes up around the sides of your boots, so you have to stop and wipe it off with your chapped hands. It doesn’t shake off like normal mud. Imagine boots, gear, and vehicles buried in this stuff.

Your family is eight hours away. The family you’re sure won’t even recognize you when you get home. The eight-hour delay between Iraq and the United States is a lifetime away.

Now you have a new family. The only family who understands you are the fifty soldiers you’ve grown to love.
At first you just put up with their snoring, their smell. Then you get to like them, their knack for biting sarcasm. Before you know it, you’re one of them. It’s like being on a wrestling team, only you’re more pissed off and carrying munitions. That’s a platoon of American soldiers in Iraq.

We unload the vehicles. An M16 for each of us. Some of us have SAWs. Or we have an M60, a machine gun like the SAW but with fatter bullets.

Each of us shoulders a rucksack. These portable homes, efficiently packed without an inch of wasted space, contain everything we’ll need for Lord knows how long. A day? A month? Pack everything. Pack like you’re not coming back.

Inside our rucksacks there are at least eight pairs of green socks and eight carbon copy brown T-shirts. There’s the wet weather gear, the poncho, and the roll of 550 cord. Utility equipment to make everything from dry shelter to cover from the enemy to shade in the sun. And of course, there are the two essentials: baby wipes and deodorant. Field showers.

In our rucksacks we have the other necessities, like beef jerky, trail mix, and hand sanitizer. A deck of cards, a good book, and a flashlight with a red lens cap. The red light so
haji
can’t see us.

Hanging off our rucksacks there’s the sleeping bag that smells like camping, that old, dusty smell that gets all over
everything. There’s the E-tool (entrenching tool): a small black, collapsible shovel. We’ll be using it to create extra-portable toilets. Field expedient.

Everyone unloads, fit with body armor and watchful eyes. Palm trees, orchards, and plenty of peanut butter mud for scenery. It’s nine o’clock in the morning and still chilly. Our words puff clouds of steam as we talk and drink coffee. We wear polypropylene undershirts, gunner’s gloves, fleece caps underneath our Kevlar helmets to keep warm.

We execute LT’s plan. We unroll concertina wire and fix it to the ground. We establish fighting positions and lookout points all along our perimeter. We post guards, and they watch their “sectors of fire.” All the vehicles sit in the center of our newly established “camp,” all our gear scattered around them. The army look.

An hour or so later, after everything is set up, LT rallies a briefing. We stand around him in a circle. We’re anxious, excited, and curious about our first mission.

LT gives a detailed briefing:

The military bridge that runs across the Tigris River, only half a mile from this point, has an entrance that isn’t wide enough. The army’s HEMTTs are too big to negotiate the last turn onto the bridge. The trucks keep taking out the concrete barriers that border the road there. Civilian vehicles have been hit because there is a civilian bridge that runs parallel to ours. It’s a bad situation: slow
moving and full of distractions.

LT explains the second part of the mission, the army’s deal with the local sheik. There’s a local family: mother, father, kids. They’re sustenance farmers who had a bad year due to erosion. New, freshly turned soil would be a great help to them and the local economy. In exchange for our efforts, the sheik has given us this large dirt field from which we can pull land.

LT mentions our SOP about giving out food and water to civilians. He does this with a wink, because our SOP for giving out water and food is “under no circumstances,” and he knows that none of us will listen.

This is not because the army doesn’t care about the civilians here. It’s just that there have been a few instances where kids have been run over trying to fetch a box of water or MREs from the road.

Before we leave on a convoy mission, SGT Buckelew stands as the gunner on LT’s two-door Humvee. There’s no armor on this vehicle, nothing to protect Buckelew from
haji
’s bombs and bullets except for dust and sunlight. He leans down and tells LT that this particular army policy is complete bullshit.

“This is a desert culture, sir,” he says. “How can we accomplish anything here if we can’t even share water?”

LT nods and tells Buck to make sure the last cases of water in the Humvee are strapped down. The LT would
just hate to have a couple of them “accidentally” fall from the vehicle as they pulled out…

SSG Charles Selby is a driver and a gunner. He’s a gruff and otherwise unforgiving dude. He always volunteers for the lead vehicle, probably the most dangerous spot to be in a convoy, and never hesitates under fire. He personally trained all of the heavy weapons operators and machine gunners in the company. Selby is an expert at warfare and violence. Today, he rests his arm on a case of Girl Scout cookies he just received in the mail. And he has no intentions of eating them.

LT has also been in contact with the local Iraqi police chief. He controls this part of town and wants to know what we’re doing. The police chief nods at LT’s explanation. The men shake hands, and the police chief asks for a favor.

Lay it on me, says LT.

Radical extremists come in the cover of night to kidnap and kill local civilians in their homes. The town is too pro-American, and civilians suffer the consequences. On random nights, the extremists’ drive their Mercedes down a side road to get to the town. Conveniently enough, it runs right through our newly established camp.

“We’ll take care of that right now,” LT says, turning to Renninger, my squad leader. “Won’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” Renny replies with a satisfied grin.

Renny tosses his Marb red on the ground and jumps on a bulldozer. In all of five minutes he’s built a dirt berm the size of a tank. It’s a wall right across the side road with our M60 machine gun fighting position sitting right on top. No radicals will be using this road to kidnap or kill civilians anytime soon.

Later that night, sure enough, a black Mercedes, barrels down the side road. It flies by palm trees and bounces along the rough dirt road.

SGT O’Brien is on the M60, his trigger finger ready for anything.

LT Zeltwanger is next to him. “Watch this,” he says.

The car’s brakes lock up. Tight. They skid to a stop only feet away from the berm. It’s eight o’clock, and the sun is almost down. But there’s still enough light for the radicals to see the silhouettes of O’Brien and LT on the hill and the machine gun poised between them. Both LT and O’Brien are praying.
Just give us a reason to light you up, you cowardly shits.

But they don’t. The car slams into reverse, and the radicals who kill families while they’re sleeping never return.

The next day, the villagers, the ones we’re really fighting for, celebrate because no one was murdered the previous night. And the women of the village prepare fresh flat bread in a brick oven and bring it down to us.

For the next two weeks, with the help of B Company,
we move over 15,000 cubic yards of dirt to the bridge and the local family. We live out of our rucksacks. Baby wipe and deodorant showers. Security perimeter shifts at all times of the night. Eating MREs twice a day and digging holes for toilets.

We widen the road for the military. We cultivate dirt for the local economy. Same mission. Two different goals. Both of them equally our duty.

There’s an eight-hour delay between Iraq and the United States. Millions of content American families will be sitting down for dinner eight hours from now. They’ll be tired from work. Their boss doesn’t give them the recognition they deserve. They’ll be hungry for dinner and for the evening news. They’ll be ready for the daily body count, the daily Bush-bashing, the story from Iraq. And that’s all it will be to them: a story, a dramatic saga full of twists and turns and epic heroism. It’ll be entertainment, the only thing they’ll ever learn about the Iraq war.

They won’t see this piece of war footage:

“On a mission to restore a bridge for the military and to cultivate farmland for a local Iraqi family…” A voice-over won’t introduce…

SPC Jeremiah Ingold on his first mission, standing next to a Humvee. Dressed in desert camo, body armor, and a helmet, waiting for his turn on the dump truck. To his right, palm trees overlook an embankment that runs down
to the Tigris River. Behind him dump trucks pour dirt into piles, bulldozers even the piles out.

Ingold watches for potential hazards. He’s holding his M16, barrel down, by its pistol grip, taking a drag off the cigarette between his fingers.

And America won’t see the changeover between cameras…

To a young Iraqi boy, no more than eight, walking down a lonely desert road toward this GI and his cigarette. This young boy wears a dirt red shirt with holes in the collar and under the armpits. He is shoeless. He is carrying a clear, plastic bottle. Its contents are speckled and brown, like water from a mud puddle. Actually, it’s from the Tigris River.

The boy smiles. He waves to Ingold.

Ingold waves back. To the boy he says, “I hope you’re washing your feet with that.”

The boy doesn’t understand.

Ingold asks him, “Are you drinking that?” and motions to his mouth with his hand.

The little boy nods.

“Oh, hell no,” Ingold says to this eight-year-old without shoes.

Ingold reaches into a cardboard box in a nearby Humvee.

Content American families everywhere won’t see the beaming gratitude on the boy’s face when Ingold shows
him what drinking water is supposed to look like: clear and sparkling. There won’t be a voice-over with some cutesy little pun about a clear future for Iraq.

Because it doesn’t matter either way, does it? Bombs still go off and people still die for no good reason. Good deeds mean nothing when they’re cast in the shadows of bad ones, right?

America will never sit down and feel a lick of guilt as they watch this boy and this soldier in their one true moment of glory. Because, unlike this little boy who won’t be on their televisions, they’ve never had tears in their eyes over a bottle of water.

They’ll never see…

The way our efforts are shunned. At first we don’t care. In a way it makes us proud. It’s humility. And selfless service is truly selfless if you’re never recognized.
All in due time,
we tell ourselves.
America will know. All in due time.

This is what we say. This is what we actually believe. The truth always comes out in the end. But somehow the truth doesn’t come out.

So there’s nobility. Hanging on for the sake of sharing our story. Because we realize that the truth can come only through us. So we tell people. We yell it right in their ears. But these letters and e-mails, they never break out further than with our family members. For the bad news is what people want to hear. Oh, sure, it’s still the truth. The half
of the truth that sells newspapers.

And this truth is what buries us in frustration. We become consumed with anger. No acceptance, no sympathy. Just pure, boiling anger. The way people don’t understand, the way they can’t understand—it’s like a back alley full of hot metal. The only people who understand are stuck here with us, feeling the same outrage and same fear that we’ll die without a chance to share our story.