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It's over now - this was meant for several days ago
The moon has been huge lately. Bright and high in a nearly cloudless (and haze less) sky. Makes getting around at night much easier. The FOB at night is rather dark – no exterior lights to make mortar spotting harder – so walking around can be an interesting experience. This is the sort of place that makes you realize the importance, and our dependence on, street lights (and sidewalks). The ground here is uneven – occasionally rocky – moving from gravel to thick silt and back and then to hard packed ridges left in the road from previous rains. I try to get around without a flashlight, partially because I don’t want to have to use one, and partially because I don’t often remember to grab one. The moon’s size and position can be predicted fairly easily – it’s the clarity in the sky, the lack of light-choking dust, that has caught me off guard of late.
Communication Blackouts suck.
The first reason is obvious – they only happen when someone on the FOB has died. It allows the Army to make next of kin notification through official channels, ensuring that no one discovers that they’re a widow on MySpace. Commo blackouts suck because it means that someone, a fellow soldier, has died, in most cases someone you didn’t know – and to find this out at the phone center is a strange thing. You feel for this person’s friends – the ones he or she lived with on the FOB, the ones who likely had to recover the remains, the people who are simultaneously grieving and thankful they’re still alive – and you feel for this person’s family – the ones who don’t know yet what they don’t yet know. But for the rest of us, those who know this person only by the uniform and the FOB we share, it’s a disconcerting reminder of both our own mortality and the smallness of one person’s death.
The other reasons become apparent as you live through the blackout. There’s no way, no matter how cold your heart, to really blame the dead for your inconvenience – for your inability to call your girlfriend. But you can blame the Army. For whatever you want – that is a soldier’s right. You can blame the Army for (in order of increasing import and decreasing rationality) for its inability to contact the next of kin. Honestly, how hard can it be – the number of times I have had to give various parts of the Army my parents address, phone numbers, place of business, most common route to work, stride length, etc baffles me – to find someone? You can blame the Army for getting this soldier killed – through some overt act or negligence or lack of training or maintenance or equipment or leadership. You can, and many do, blame the Army for us being here – Iraq, Baqubah, not in the US drinking beer – entirely, seeing that as cause enough for this most recent death.
Communications with the outside world is what keeps us sane. Most of this communication is one-sided – in the form of movies, tv, dvds, magazines, et al. – but it helps keep us sane. That’s why the Army lets the Haji shops sell bootleg dvds – we’d all revolt if they didn’t, or get the same product off post, in a much more violence-prone locale. But at least in my case (and I’m not even married, or in a relationship or trying to raise children), you can only watch so much tv and play so many video games and write and not send so many blog posts before you need to actually hear a familiar voice telling you anything at all. We all have friends here, work friends, close friends, friends we would likely die for, but it’s the communication – the personal communication – with all of you out there that keeps us sane. For good or ill, we here are all tainted with this place, this place we all fought to get, continue to fight for, and want so much to leave. Talking about the world outside this place – the little things, the personal bits, the tiny and huge things that we miss most about the world we’ve all left behind – that is what keeps us from despair. (I once told a friend of mine, in fact my favorite bartender, that his place was the reason why I fought. I find that just as true now – I’ll keep on going here so that when I get home I can sit at that bar and drink amazing microbrews and Belgians.) Remember what good – what small, seemingly insignificant, taken for granted things – we have to come home to, that is what we lose. That we lose at the same time as we are filled with uncomfortable reminders of our own transience.
Of course the blackout isn’t as total as I make it out be. For one thing, you’re reading this. Because the death wasn’t in my Brigade, our internet center is open, working on the assumption that I either don’t know enough about the death or don’t know anyone to tell. However, the post phone center remains closed, which is why none of you have received any calls this week.
- In fact, if anyone could find me the email/snailmail address of Steilacoom Wine and Brew (of Steilacoom, Wa), I would be much obliged. I’d like to drop Jake a line.
A couple of things
The FOB is on a commo blackout - someone on the FOB died (I have no idea who, just that their not in my BDE). That means no phone calls out - which sucks, because I've been wanting to call a lot of people, and can't. Shitty. More on this later.
My platoon had an Iraqi photographer tailing us on a mission recently, and we got a lot of photos on the AP wire. That was cool. I'll get those photos up when I get better internet.
I got a lot of letters and care packages from people lately - Manny and Eliz most recently - and they were all awesome. I appreciate them all - they're great, really. That said, stop. Yeah, we'll be moving away from this FOB soon enough that if you don't send me something, by let's say, 01 August, I probably won't get it. It'll get lost somewhere in Iraq. Thank you all the stuff, and if I stay in one place long enough I'll get you all my new address.
Finally, I will not be getting back to Lewis until early/mid October. The rest of my Battalion will be getting back mid September, but I get to stay in Kuwait for about an extra month doing paperwork. Sucks, but I'm the new guy and I've only been here a couple months instead of fifteen. C'est la vie.
Why I won't get a Combat Action Badge...
The clearing operations we’ve been doing in Baqubah have been relatively uneventful (considering the number of soldiers involved) since I got here. During the operation were involved in now, clearing Old Baqubah, we really only took fire in the first hour or so. When we were on the west side of Baqubah, after the first two days, we only had sporadic contact with the enemy. We’ve had people killed (mostly by IEDs), and more injured, but considering the number of soldiers moving on the ground, and compared to the types of losses my battalion was seeing before I got here, the losses from this operation are light. Similarly, during the two operations I’ve been a part of (on the west and east sides), we’ve largely failed to capture the high level Al Queda (AQ) and Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) targets we were hoping to scoop up.
The six weeks I was at Fort Lewis, preparing to come here were terrible for my battalion. We lost 10 men and 6 Strykers in six weeks. Six men from my company, and Russian reporter were killed when their Stryker was destroyed by a giant, deep-buried IED. Only the driver survived. I don’t know the number of soldiers who were wounded in that same time period, but I do know it was significant. Baqubah was declared by the ISI as the new capital of a fundamental Islamic Iraq – after the surge began high-level AQ and ISI leaders fled the 30 miles north to Baqubah to establish their new headquarters. All of this to say that Baqubah, especially Old Baqubah, where we’re operating right now, is a very dangerous place, a place not to be taken lightly.
So, why has it been so quiet here since I arrived and why have we been unable to capture any of these AQ and ISI leaders? I argue that it’s largely the same reason for both. We attacked this city in a slow, smart, methodical way. We went from a battalion to a brigade plus (four or so battalions) to hold the city. Instead of moving through the city in small groups and leaving, we cleared routes, held them then moved into the city, clearing building by building, holding the ground we’d taken. It took time and coordination to build the combat power to be able to do this all. It took time, it took more and more people, and because eventually (I hope) we’re going to hand Iraq off to Iraqis (and evidently they’re already ready) we had to tell the Iraqi Army about it. All of this, combined with a flawed cordon, lead to a large number of leaders, and perhaps fighters, fleeing Baqubah. The commanders of my battalion and my brigade made the decision to conduct this fight slowly and safely (as safe goes in the Army). They must have known that the slower, the larger, these operations got, the fewer AQ and ISI members they would find. They decided that force protection was more important than getting every insurgent we could.
And do you know why I agree that it should have been done the way we did it? Because this place isn’t worth it. The Army will continue to do its job. We will stay, trying to accomplish the objectives we’re given, trying to provide some measure of stability to this country until the bastards in suits (read this - now) tell us to come home. That said, this place is not worth taking chances. We might have been able to cut off more of the head of the insurgency in Baqubah if we hadn’t waited for the rest of the brigade to arrive, or if we had been more aggressive in going on raids or clearing. And that might have had an impact on the ability of Al Queda to operate in Iraq. Or it might have had no impact on the insurgency. But it would have gotten more of my men and my friends killed and maimed, rest assured. As military leaders, we’ll continue to do our best to accomplish our mission; but our first mission is bring everyone home in one piece.
I’m not quite as bitter as Audrey (though she’s not really as bitter as her blog makes her seem) – I would love it if I could help Iraqis. I feel bad kicking Iraqis out of their houses for a night so we can use it as an overwatch. I feel bad for blowing up the door to a shop to search it, knowing that we may have destroyed the livelihood of that shop owner just because his locks were too good. It was kind of nice delivering food to people (though the mob mentality that developed made me hate people, all people, just a little more), helping the people who’s city we’ve been blowing up. But it’s not worth taking risks that get my men killed. We’ll clear Baqubah, hand it off and go home. Maybe this place will be a little safer for us having been here. Hopefully. Hopefully all of Iraq will be safer. Maybe a couple decades down the line Iraq will look a bit like Vietnam does today. I’ll do my job to the best of my ability, but this place isn’t worth my guys dying.
To whom it may concern...
This is one of those letters without an addressee. It has to be a letter – it doesn’t really feel like a journal entry of any kind – and it definitely should be read by someone. I just can’t tell who you’re supposed to be.
So maybe that’s the problem. I just watched Garden State, and listening to the final song – it brings up this feeling, this feeling very well summed up in the movie – and it requires, yes requires, some response, something done in reaction. It’s that song, that movie, that time that it came out, all of fills me a feeling of love and and anticipation of something great coming up. And therein lies the new, interesting twist and the reason I’m writing to you.
That feeling that I had to share this great feeling, share it with someone (though I don’t know who) because something big is about to happen. And it occurs to me that, indeed in my life, something big is about to happen. We’re starting our clearance of [REMOVED] soon, and while I am not expecting any kind of terrible thing to happen to me, I know that it could. And all this thinking of someone to share it with makes me realize that I never wrote you the letter I had intended. The letter I had meant to write months ago and leave in a safety deposit box in Dupont, Wa. Just in case.
It’s not a fear of death. For some reason, I don’t fear it at all (and that may change once I’ve experienced a little more combat), and the thought that I might die doesn’t really affect me at. It’s not really fatalism (I don’t think), it’s just that if I die, if not I don’t, and while I’m here in Iraq I’ll do all the things I can to stay alive (but this being the Army, all of those things are already rules I have to follow anyway). It’s not even a fear of being misunderstood. If I’m dead and you didn’t know exactly what I thought of you – well, that’s unfortunate, but I’ll live (pun intended).
But I should have written you a letter – I intended to. I was going to tell you all the stuff you and I already knew, things that we don’t talk about because they would complicate things or because they seem too sappy said aloud. I was going to be casually eloquent – too verbose, too formal and I would sound forced, too casual would read forced and not leave the impression I was looking for.
I thought about writing the letter before I left, giving it to you the last time I saw you – telling you to read it once I was safely far away, still in the US, maybe, or maybe once I took off – but I decided against it. Perhaps because I chickened out, perhaps because I thought it wouldn’t be productive, and might even be detrimental. Maybe I just ran out of time. Whatever it was, I’ve neglected it too long. So, soon I think I’ll write it soon. For now, however, you’ll have to make do with this one. How long you’ll have to wait for the next one depends on a lot of factors – only some of which are under my control.
The Army as High School
It’s funny how much army life can resemble normal life in small, amusing ways. Any number of people like to think of the Army (and I think that this applies more to “the old Army” than to the current “professional Army”) as a place for boys who never grew up. I don’t think that that is fair for any number of reasons, however that doesn’t mean it’s entirely wrong. But I think it’s more than that, a small bit of the Army’s microcosm is stuck in high school.
Both have an integral class structure; one being year, the other being rank. A great number of people, largely enlisted, enter the Army immediately out of high school. Both the Army and High School significantly limit immediate mobility. It is fairly difficult to get away from the people you’ve been assigned with, whether you like them or not. This leads to increased levels of tension – from being forced to interact with people you may not like and from a natural human inclination to form a social hierarchy. In terms of dating, long term deployments can lead to a level of promiscuity often seen in high school relationships. Additionally, the heavily skewed gender ratio in theater specifically, and in the Army in general, adds extra tension.
Obviously, there are any number of reasons why the fit isn’t perfect (age, experience, senior leaders, violence, availability of weapons, discipline, missions, etc). That said, there are parallels, and high school is one of the few experiences that almost all Americans share (and the media loves to use).
Perhaps all this is to say that while I walked by the movie theatre tonight, I saw a number of people, in pairs and trios standing around outside, just hanging out, talking, probably even flirting. It was like any summer night, anywhere, outside any movie theatre (except even darker and more private) in America. The mental throwback to high school was striking, a bit funny, but mostly, reassuring.
Notes and errata
I'm slowly recovering from a lovely bout of "Saddam's revenge" (think Montezuma's made local). It's not so terrible, but was made more interesting by the heat and activity of this area (needed an IV to prevent dehydration). I'm out of the woods and into some swampy meadows, and should be back on the road to over-extended metaphor in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
I am, fortunately, looking at having some more free time in the next couple of days, and so hope to have time to call more (assuming you pick up [pointed glance]). I've also started receiving mail, which is much appreciated. This however leads me to the following conclusion: I am only loved by the following people:
The Kohan family (who sent me a very lovely card)
My parents
A colegue of my father's (whose package, mentioning my last bout of naseua on Thanksgiving, arrived in the midst of this bout)
And that, apearantly, is it. No one else. I am abandoned to the insurgents and the desert winds by those I thought would care. Alas and Alack! I may not recover from the heartbreak.
This place has this bizarre dichotomy about it. Every detail you could think to describe a war zone –houses rubbled, fairly regular explosions, military occupation, ever-present attack helicopters, curfews and cordons, breakdown of essential services – it’s all present. When we run patrols, we do so expecting contact, covering high and low, down alleys, popping smoke grenades to mask our movement through open areas and clearing every building we go into. If we need to, we will bust in or even blow up doors to get into buildings we suspect. Despite that, despite the fact it seems it would be very difficult to forget that there’s a war on, the people we see everyday often seem to be doing just that. There is a discordant air in this place.
I think part of what feels odd about this place is the air of familiarity. Despite all the massive and obvious differences between life here and the life that I’m accustomed to, there are enough small similarities. My platoon seized a house that overwatched an intersection that we need to control. We were as nice as we could be in the situation, but in the final look we evicted a family of six from their house with minimal compensation. While I sat or lay in the ridiculous heat in this house for several days it reminded me of my grandparents’ home in southern California. The heat (though Baquoba is much worse than Dana Point), the slight breezes, the concrete, and most of all, the light all reminded me of sitting on the patio with my grandparents in the summer.
Perhaps the strangest thing is the reaction of many people we encounter. Despite then fact that we are an occupying army, and that when we came into this neighborhood we cordoned off the entire city and started blowing up houses (houses that were rigged with explosives by Al Queda, or used by snipers), many of the residents I’ve talked to have thanked us for being in the neighborhood. The head of the family I evicted, whose house we essentially stole for several days, told me that he was very grateful that we, US forces, were there to protect the neighborhood and that we had kicked out Al Queda. His was not an unusual sentiment. As we patrolled through the neighborhood and went into houses to speak with residents we were often offered chai (hot, sweetened black tea) and food.
Days later we walked through a neighborhood in southwestern Baquoba. Even before the war, this place had open sewers that flowed into the dirt road between houses. We were polling the residents on the overall feeling in the community, looking for sources that would inform against Al Queda, getting what we call “atmospherics.” The power has been out in this part of Baquoba since the beginning of this operation (taking with it local well water pumps), and no one is allowed out of the neighborhood, so almost all food and water come from US/Iraqi Army sources or small local stockpiles. The complaints we get often center around the scarcity of food and water, the lack of power, and the cordon.
We came to the door of the courtyard of one house (all houses here have walled courtyards around them), and listened to an old woman bound to a wheelchair tell us that they had very little food and water because she couldn’t go to the humanitarian aid drops. She was surrounded by her family members, one of which was a little girl of perhaps ten or twelve. The little girl, through all of this talk of deprivation, had a bright, adorable smile spread across her face. Perhaps she was used to the situation – children seem to adapt more quickly – and perhaps she was excited or intrigued by our presence, but she seemed genuinely happy despite all that was going on around her. And even as we moved down to the next house I couldn’t get over how much she looked like Susann Almasi when she was that age.
How is it that I'm actually surprised...?
Sweet god. I actually didn't see this coming. It really is the "shame exploit." Read the whole article. Fuck.
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