Sunrise Over Fallujah

  “There’s a lot of theory going on in this war,” Coles said. “Theories about what we can do, how the equipment is going to stand up, and how the Iraqis are going to act. If it all works, then this is going to be a textbook war. The big brass doesn’t want an established Civil Affairs unit to fail so we’re like an advance scouting party. We’re testing the water, so to speak.”

  It sounded good. I knew that Coles was sincere. He wanted to do well, to serve his country, but he didn’t want to sound too gung ho.

  We were up and mounted before daybreak and were on our way. We reached the border area at 0600 hours. There were hundreds of Kuwaiti soldiers and American engineers at the border. They had filled in the anti-tank traps and had made a path across the border into Iraq.

  “From now on, every time you get into your vehicle you’re going to be on high alert,” Coles said through the radio hookup. “Combat locks on at all times. Don’t let anybody approach your vehicle. Good luck.”

  I didn’t feel anything special as we were waved into line to cross from Kuwait into Iraq. I remembered an orientation booklet the navy had passed around talking about how Iraq was known as the cradle of civilization. We were headed into Babylon and were excited.

  “Yo, Birdy!” Marla’s voice crackled in the intercom.

  “What?”

  “Check out that line of green on your left,” she said.

  Me and Jonesy looked over and saw some civilians laying something in a neat line on the ground. “What is it?” Jonesy asked.

  “Body bags,” Marla said. “Welcome to Iraq.”

  I could feel my heart beat faster as we crossed the border into Iraq. Marla’s pointing out the body bags didn’t help it slow down. We were still in convoy formation, with vehicles stretched out forever.

  The way I understood it, the Marines were going in first, pushing aside any resistance. Then the 3rd Infantry Division came behind and secured the positions and established Lines of Communication. In some places they would switch and the 3rd ID would go in first and the Marines would follow. It was a kick-ass operation that ran by the numbers. Move in, take the position and establish a Forward Operating Base, then secure the Lines of Communication back to the jump-off point. That’s what the sister with the 507th was doing, making sure that the Forward Operating Base was supplied.

  “Piece of cake,” Captain Coles said. “Just check off the boxes as you go along.”

  “We need to hook up the television set as soon as possible,” Marla said. “So we can get the scores. So far I think it’s the Coalition one, the Iraqis zero.”

  The breaks in traveling came at odd times; whenever anything was happening a mile or two up the road we stopped so we could all move as a unit. It was nearly seven thirty in the evening, and the sun had already gone down, when we were told to pull over and set up a bivouac area.

  Marla made a big deal of setting up the television and even convinced Sergeant Harris to hold up the antenna. After turning the antenna around a bit we finally got CNN. They were interviewing a round-faced marine.

  “I know we’re facing a war on terror and we have to make sacrifices to overcome a determined foe and rid the world of weapons of mass destruction, and I’m willing to do my part…”

  “If he said he was scared out of his mind he wouldn’t get on television,” Marla said.

  “If they stick a camera in my face I’m going to say the same thing that marine said,” Jonesy said. “I ain’t never been on television before!”

  The newscaster gave the name and city the marine was from. Then they switched to a newscaster who looked like he was on a balcony. There were explosions in the background and he was flinching as he tried to describe the scene.

  “You think the bombs are hitting anybody?” Marla said. “I don’t see any bodies laying around.”

  That was true. They were still talking about shock and awe and how many bombs were falling around Baghdad but they weren’t showing any casualties. I didn’t want to see any, either.

  We had parked our Humvee off the road and bedded down around it. The night was hot and we were all sweating. I smelled something bad and thought it was Jonesy but then realized it was me. I thought about getting up and washing, but I was too tired.

  “We’re moving out!” Captain Coles was yelling into the tent. I heard him, but nothing he said made sense. Somehow I got into a vertical position, found the tent flap, and walked out into the brilliant desert morning. There was already a small line in front of the latrine tent so I trailed off toward the back of the squad tents and peed on the ground. I saw Harris across from me. He was making sure that everybody saw his business. Yeah. Sure.

  We packed our gear, policed the area, and loaded our extra equipment into the supply vehicle. Jean Darcy came by carrying a plastic tray with her breakfast on it. I saw scrambled eggs, sausages, and potatoes.

  “You like people?” she asked, looking up at me.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said.

  “Jerk!”

  Strange chicks joined the army, I thought. Strange and strong.

  I looked at my watch. It was only five o’clock. How could anybody be so pissed that early?

  Captain Coles came by and told us that we were moving out in thirty minutes.

  “You know where we’re headed?”

  “Dunkin’ Donuts in Baghdad,” he said.

  I looked around for Darcy to tell her no, that I didn’t like people. I didn’t find Darcy, but I found Marla helping Jonesy adjust the straps of his vest.

  “Hey, look at that sunrise,” she said.

  I looked to where she was nodding and saw the sun on the horizon and above it a thin red line that stretched endlessly in the distance. There was also sand, rising like a shadow with shifting shades of dark brown and orange, coming toward us. Cameras were brought out and guys stepped away from the trucks to get clear pictures.

  “Jonesy, check this out!” Sergeant Harris called out. He had put a bayonet on the end of his weapon and was holding it up so that Jonesy could photograph him in profile. Sergeant Harris. American hero.

  The sandstorm blew nearer and the sky suddenly darkened. The sand, swirling through the hot air, blocked out everything.

  By the time the sand hit us it was coming from every direction. There was no place to turn. The fine grains stung my flesh and went into my nose, my mouth. I was breathing sand, inhaling sand, coughing, trying to spit.

  “Get down! Cover up!” I recognized Major Sessions’s voice. When had she shown up? I found a spot against the wheel of a Humvee and squatted. I thought about my goggles and tried to pull them down but my face was already covered with the fine grit and stinging in a thousand places.

  Somebody yelled for us to cover our weapons. I got my goggles down and tried to open my eyes. There was sand on my eyelids; I thought I heard scratching as I opened and closed them.

  We settled into the storm. We were not the winners. After the first few minutes of cowering near whatever stable object we could find, we just stayed put and hoped we would outlive it.

  I did not want to be here. I thought of the places I could be: Harlem, Philadelphia, Chicago. I did not want to be in Iraq.

  The sandstorm lasted two days. Two days of misery and wanting to die. When it ended we were all a mess. There was grit in every piece of gear and caked onto our skin.

  “This crap doesn’t even wash off!” Marla complained.

  “God sent down some shock and awe and you guys folded,” Jonesy said.

  “And what did you do that was so great?” Captain Coles asked.

  “I wrote a song,” Jonesy said. “I call it ‘I Hate Your Mother Worse Than I Hate This Sand Blues.’ You want to hear it?”

  Nobody wanted to hear it.

  I rinsed my mouth out with a mixture of water and baking soda we got from the medical people. By the time I had done it three times and couldn’t feel the grit in my mouth anymore, the squad had the television on.

  We watched the news and found out
the navy had sent more missiles into Iraq. Buildings exploded in flames and thick black smoke disappeared into the night skies over Baghdad.

  In between the bombing coverage and the shots of ground targets being bracketed and then destroyed, there were images of cheering Iraqis.

  “They know why we’re here,” Sergeant Harris said. “They probably don’t know what it means to be really free, but they can sense it. You know what I mean?”

  “Then again,” Coles said, “if they weren’t cheering, would they be on television?”

  Marla’s head snapped up and she looked at Captain Coles. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  We spent hours cleaning the sand out of our gear, out of our ears, our weapons, our uniforms, and the Humvees. We had to test everything to see if it worked. Lieutenant Nelson, one of the intelligence guys, had an expensive camera and had tried to take photos of the sun through the sandstorm. His camera didn’t work at all anymore; he spent an hour cursing at it.

  We were back on the road headed north when we got the news about the first confirmed casualties. The 507th, the same crew we had talked to just before the dust storm, had bought it big-time.

  “They had at least five killed and a bunch captured north of Highway One,” Captain Coles said. “They got hit around some place called An Nasiriyah.”

  “How do you know some of them were captured?” I asked.

  “They were on Al Jazeera, the Arabic station,” Captain Coles said. “There were feeds to CNN, all the stations. The Iraqis have three of the women.”

  “Crap! We were just talking to them the other day,” Jonesy said.

  Marla exhaled heavily, blinked hard, and looked away from us.

  This scared the living crap out of me. I thought about the women we met from the 507th and wondered if they were the ones who had been captured. I couldn’t imagine someone pointing a weapon at me while I begged for my life. I couldn’t think about it—that was all I thought about.

  More news about the 507th trickled in. There were at least a half dozen killed, probably more.

  At 1100 we were told to pull over to the side of the road, that we were standing down until further orders.

  At 1130 we were told we might be moving back to Kuwait, to hook up with the 422nd Civil Affairs.

  “What’s going on?” Harris asked. I could see he was getting jumpy.

  “The best laid plans of mice and men…” Captain Coles said. “CENTCOM is trying to figure out what happened to the 507th. They were supposed to be in a safe area. Now they’re rechecking the Lines of Communication to figure out just what is safe and what’s not.”

  “Was the 507th moving too fast?” Marla asked.

  “I don’t know, we’ll have to check it out on the news.”

  Somebody had painted the television in the supply truck in desert camouflage colors. We took it out, hooked up an antenna, and tried to get the news. The only thing we got was static and some ghosts; some officers from the 3rd had a set that was working and they let us come and watch the news. We saw the captured guys from the 507th. They faced the television camera, but their eyes were looking around the room. They looked absolutely terrified.

  “What are they looking at?” Marla asked.

  It was what we were all thinking.

  One of the soldiers, pale, wide-eyed, could hardly sit up. The Iraqis who held him kept asking him questions. The black woman who looked like Queen Latifah, who had been so funny when she was talking with us at the refueling station, was shaking. Her eyes were wide and darting around the room. My stomach tightened as she answered questions about where she was from in the States.

  God, please don’t let them be killed.

  Somebody said it was chow time but Captain Coles came in and told us to mount up. “Eat something on the way if you can. We have orders to head toward An Nasiriyah,” he said. “There’s still a lot of heavy fighting going on there, but they want our Civil Affairs unit in place as quickly as possible. I don’t think anybody anticipated POWs so early in the game.”

  “So we’re going to look for them?” I asked.

  “The theory is that if any Iraqis are going to give over the POWs, or tell us where we can find them, it’ll probably be to somebody who is treating them decently,” Coles said. “Hopefully, that’ll be us. They’re sending a Bradley with us for protection. I’ll be briefed on the way. That kid Ahmed from Cleveland who speaks Arabic is going to ride with First squad, and you’ll be right behind the Bradley. Stay in touch with each other and stay alert. Kennedy, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

  “Bull!” Marla said.

  Coles looked at her, then nodded and headed toward the Bradley.

  We started moving out at 1315 hours. We took a position behind the Bradley fighting vehicle, a big tank-looking affair with a mounted cannon.

  Ahmed, the interpreter, found us. He had been around but not hanging out with the regular troops. He was thin, dark-haired but light-skinned. He could have been Latino. He shook hands all around and Jonesy asked him how he had learned Arabic.

  “My family is from Lebanon,” he said with a shrug. “My grandmother made me learn it.”

  An Nasiriyah was less than two hours north according to the maps. We started off and matched our speed with the Bradley. Second squad was behind us with two male medics. I wondered if the two women on the medical team had wanted to stay behind.

  The day was white brilliant. Inside our vehicle we were quiet. We watched everything on the road. The road itself was a little wider than two lanes. Someone from the Bradley called back to us and told us that the shoulders were soft. Jonesy was riding right down the middle. Occasionally an Iraqi vehicle flew by and we could see the Bradley’s big gun train on it.

  As we neared An Nasiriyah, the traffic picked up. We were passing people in fields, some in carts. In the distance we heard the sounds of fighting. Automatic fire, big guns, explosions, and a steady chorus of small arms fire. Once in a while there would be a brief lull and then it would start again.

  “Air support!” Marla called down. “Two o’clock! Twelve o’clock! Wow!”

  Jonesy and I tried to look up out of the right window but the jets had already streaked by. They were really low and the boom made us all jump. I felt a pain in my hand and saw that I was clutching the door lock. I let it go and wiped my hand on my pants leg.

  We rolled through the outskirts of An Nasiriyah and into a section of town. The low two-story buildings were painted white or pale green. Dark smoke bellowed from one of them; another was burning. The smell was terrible. I couldn’t see any smoke near me but I knew it was all around, making it hard to breathe. Soldiers on the ground formed a ring behind a string of Humvees, Bradleys, and some big trucks with what looked like communication gear. My heart was beating fast. I hoped I didn’t look scared.

  We stopped, got out, and moved to where Captain Coles was signaling us. He was standing next to an officer with white hair who reminded me of my homeroom teacher in high school. I saw the bird on his collar, which meant that he was a colonel.

  “We’re doing a house-to-house search in this area,” the colonel said. He pointed toward the row of buildings directly in front of us. “This is a Shiite area, so they’re mostly friendlies, but you can’t be sure. Captain, get your medical people just to walk through. See if anybody needs first aid. Do a little smiling at them. They told our translators they didn’t know anything about our POWs, but we’re not going to leave much of a force here, so we need to win a few hearts and minds in a hurry.”

  The section they were searching was only about a hundred yards deep. Some guys from the 3rd said they had received fire from a rocket-propelled grenade from somewhere.

  “So don’t fall asleep!” a square-shouldered corporal said.

  If we were scared, the Iraqis seemed even more terrified. Some of the men waved white rags in the air, showing they were surrendering. Most of these men were old. The women spoke to us in Arabic.

&nbs
p; “Ahmed, what are they saying?” I asked.

  “Mostly they’re saying they don’t want to fight,” Ahmed said. “That they’re not in the army. Some are saying ‘Welcome to the Americans.’”

  Me, Marla, and Jonesy got out of our Humvee and walked into the first building we came to with our weapons high, sweeping the rooms, checking for movement. We kicked in the doors, just as we did back in training. But in training I was just trying to get points for doing it right. Here I was holding my breath. Here I was trying not to tremble.

  I couldn’t tell if the house we were in was an apartment house or one family. It was neat. There were onions on the counter and a mesh bag with eggs. A magazine on the table had a picture of Oprah Winfrey on the cover with something written in Arabic under it. It was a nice picture of her, so I guessed it was an entertainment magazine.

  “I got something! I got it!” a voice called out from down the hall. “Somebody get a translator!”

  “Ahmed!” I called to him.

  “Coming in!” Marla called as we approached the room to let the guy inside know who was carrying the weapon.

  Marla went in first and then me and Ahmed. There were three people, an old woman, a boy younger than me, and an old man, sitting on a couch covered with what looked like an old sheet. A small girl stood at the end of the couch, her elbows on the armrest, her dark eyes watching us closely.

  The guy from the 3rd, a big, thick-necked sergeant, was holding up a tube. It was an RPG launcher.

  “Ask them who this belongs to!” the sergeant barked at me. Did I look like an Iraqi to him?

  Ahmed asked the Iraqis and they all started talking at once. The sergeant was on his radio.

  “They’re saying it was their uncle’s and it was here since the war with Iran,” Ahmed said. “Nobody knows how to use it.”

  The sergeant repeated what Ahmed said into his radio. Marla took the tube and sniffed it. She handed it back to the sergeant and he sniffed it.

  “Yeah, it’s been recently fired!” the sergeant said.