Issue #103

The Second Iraq War Part II

by: Beowulf

Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Neither side is glorious. On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under the earth, but to walk upon it - without crutches. -Peter Weiss

April 1st 2004, Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. - Welcome to the Middle East

We arrived at Camp Arifjan on April Fool's Day. The war had already begun, and we were a week or two into it. All the combat units had already "gone over" and the base was swarming with support and supply units: the second wave. We spent three days in the relative peace and quiet of Kuwait, got a chance to call home, and ate our last cooked meals. On the morning of the fourth day we "went over" as well.



Arifjan was a way-station into Iraq, the processing center for all new troops and a sort of orientation to the theater. It was monolithic: hedged with endless rows of concrete barriers and corrugated iron warehouses assembled in such numbers that the base was, in truth, a small city. It had a four-lane highway running through it and separate districts for each of the nations' forces that made up the coalition. It was drab and crowded, housing tens of thousands. Our unit slept in a warehouse with perhaps five hundred other soldiers and quickly adjusted to standing in line for an hour or more at meal times. For all the crowding and inconvenience, it was something like home. It had showers, ice cream and fast food trailers and flush toilets (which we held in particular esteem). In the coming months we would look back on Arifjan with poignant nostalgia and fantasize about visiting it again, just to take a shower and use a toilet. Spartan as it was, it would become a golden memory for us.

I remember climbing out of bed the first night, making my way through the densely packed canvas cots under the dim red beam of my flashlight. The air in the warehouse was hot and humid from the breaths of five hundred sleepers, and when you walked outside, the desert air washed over you like a shock of cold water. The wind was fresh and fragrant, coming in off the sea. Above, the Kuwait skyline was hard and clear, unmarked by clouds. Somehow, everything seemed brighter and sharper, not a sound from the entire camp. It felt intensely, undeservingly peaceful. From the vantage of that moment, leaning against a wall of sandbags in my t-shirt and shorts, it was impossible to visualize a war going on around you or conceive of the possibility that you would have to join it soon. Everything seemed remote and serene, as if Iraq and all its perils were a million miles away.

Although it was technically a safe area, everyone in the camp operated in the highest state of alarm, coiled with tension and anticipation of the move North. The only real danger we faced was an errant SCUD missile from Saddam's mobile launchers, and we lived in fear of them because they could theoretically contain chemical weapons. Gas masks were to be carried at all times, along with our chemical protection suits. There was a palpable hunger in the camp, everyone cleaned and polished their weapons obsessively and pumped up their courage by talking about "going over", wildly speculating and conjecturing about what Iraq would be like. The younger soldiers, like myself, talked tough and tried to act very cavalier about being in a war-zone. Any bravado we had instantly vanished after the first SCUD missile alert.



We were sitting in the cafeteria, dozing or chatting during our welcome briefing. The base commanders had been dryly reviewing the rules of the camp and most of us were bored and sleepy after a large lunch. They had just finished reviewing the procedure for a SCUD attack, when suddenly the camp loudspeakers blared out that blood-stilling call, "LIGHTNING, LIGHTNING, LIGHTNING", the signal for an incoming SCUD missile. Instantly the cafeteria erupted in chaos. With one enormous sound of ripping velcro, soldiers tore open their bags to reach their gas masks and fumbled into their protective suits. I remembered reading that 80% of all last words are "Oh shit." and those were exactly the words that crossed my mind. Something like a hallucination washed over me, and I imagined a shell breaching the roof, bursting, breathing in mouthfuls of yellow gas, doubling over and bleeding from the mouth. I blanked out for a second, only a nudge from my sergeant sitting next to me, jerked me back to reality. I saw, across the table from me, a female soldier who had forgotten to bring her mask struggling with another soldier trying to take his mask from him. Then everything went blurry as I threw off my glasses and cinched my mask down around my face. I struggled into my JLST (chemical suit) as I ran and threw myself against the cafeteria walls for additional cover. As I finished securing my suit, I suddenly felt a deep, cold hardness in my stomach as I realized that I had forgotten my suit's gloves. Not thinking, only realizing desperately that I had to cover my hands in case of chemical attack I thrust my hands up into the armpits of my jacket and sat down cross-legged against the wall. That scene will be forever etched in my memory: myself in a forest-green Haz-Mat suit, with my arms crossed like a pouting child, staring out into a sea of blurry faces.

Within minutes we received the "all-clear" signal, the missile had struck Kuwait but missed us by miles. That was the thing with SCUD's: deadly but entirely inaccurate, especially when fired by the ill-trained Iraqi army. As we breathed a collective sigh of relief and pried of our sweat-soaked face-masks, I began to look around. People were dressed in an odd patchwork of protective gear, some had lost their hoods, gloves or boots. Many soldiers, especially the female ones, were sniffling and their faces were streaked with dirt and tears. I looked out at this mob of red-faced people and realized that it was just an ordinary crowd of people, frightened and disordered. Panicked. The disciplined and highly-trained units of the United States Army had dissolved into a hysterical mass at the first sign of danger. I began to feel much more apprehensive about the job I was about to do, and my pride in the much-vaunted discipline of the Army vanished. I no longer felt like part of an invincible tide. I felt acutely mortal and frightened, made more so by the fact that others around me were frightened, too. It was an enlightening and sobering experience. I never wanted to be part of that mass again, the instant chaos of one thousand people gone mad with self-preservation. It was the first of many revelations. After that, we all took the "gas mask rule" very seriously.

April 4th 2004, Camp Arifjan, Kuwait - The Last Day

The evening of the third day, word was quietly passed that a selected group of our company would be "going forward" to set up base camp in Iraq before the main body arrived. That evening those of us selected gathered around the platoon sergeants to receive our briefing. Everyone had notebooks out, but few if any could hold them steady. He began. We had been chosen based upon recommendations and special skills, an assortment of the all professions that we would need to set up base. Military police to guard prisoners, clerks to set up operations, medics, and mechanics. None of our vehicles or heavy equipment had arrived from the States so we would be traveling light, just packs and duffel bags, twelve men to a truck. It was painful irony. Every one of my friends in the motor pool wanted desperately to "go forward" and yet I had been picked along with one other and our sergeant. It was a foregone conclusion they told me, "you're the only one who speaks any Arabic." I had put my foot in it, or rather my mouth. I barely even spoke the goddamn language, just a few words and phrases I picked up during my seven years living in Egypt. Pitifully, that still made me the best Arabic speaker in the battalion. Of anyone in the company, I was probably the one who wanted to fight the least, yet here I was going over first, a victim of my own big mouth for admitting to Arabic.

Then everyone got quiet as the elderly platoon sergeant began to discuss the threats we might face on our convoy north: unknown number of suicide bombers, unknown number of partisans, unknown number of pick-up trucks filled with explosives, but definitely in the thousands. The road north into Iraq was hot and convoys frequently came under attack. Any questions? Crates of ammunition were piled around us. The ten or twelve lowest-ranking members of the company were told to grab a crate and start loading magazines. We did so all day, and then were given the evening off to relax and decompress before the early morning movement. Maybe someone slept that night, but I didn't. I lay awake in my cot, vegetable lasagna churning in my stomach, till the hazy hours of morning... then, somewhere around four, I drifted off into a dreamless trance.

At five, we were roused. By six thirty, we had showered, shaved and eaten breakfast, if we could get anything down. By seven, the trucks were loaded, checked, re-checked and idling. Our friends were waving us off and wishing us good luck. Once more into breech dear friends, and so on...

April 5th MSR Tampa - "Going Over"

I spent the whole two day trip sitting on my duffel bag with my SAW machine-gun sticking out the back of a 2½ ton Army truck. From the moment we had crossed the heavily-fortified Iraq border we had to be in full battle-rattle (helmet, vest, mask, and weapon) and on watch for enemy activity. I had my belt-fed machine-gun locked and loaded, resting on the bench seat, while I and everyone else sat on duffel bags in middle of the truck bed. Our nerves had reached a fever pitch. My knuckles were clenched white on the grip of my weapon and I scanned the dismal brown horizon feverishly.



My first impression of Iraq was that it wasn't so much a desert as a scrub wasteland. There were none of the dunes and open desert we had expected but, rather, a barren plain dotted with scraggly bushes and trees. A checkerboard of little two-lane asphalt roads seemed to branch off everywhere and trail away into the bleak plain. of The whole landscape seemed scarred: pockmarked with trenches, dry canals, and stubby hills. Even this far south we encountered wrecked and ruined Iraqi tanks, perhaps relics from the first Gulf War, lying gutted by the side of the road. Here and there we saw more modern ordnance, artillery and anti-aircraft guns, still recognizable although twisted and burned. Our apprehension intensified.

A few brave Iraqis still frequented these roads, an occasional bus or cargo truck passed by us and gave us either a solemn nod or an emphatic "thumbs-up". Either way every vehicle displayed a prominent white cloth or handkerchief to signify that they were not fighters. As the trip wore on, tension and wariness gave way to monotony and then finally to boredom. We lolled or half-dozed with our heads drooping against our gun-sights. My helmet began to plague me. Now, anyone in the military knows that a helmet is an irritating thing. It doesn't hurt to wear one, but it is aggravating. The kevlar has to weigh at least a few pounds and over a long ride those few pounds begin to get very, very heavy. Unless it is expertly padded and balanced (something every soldier learns to do on long deployments) the helmet becomes an instrument of torture. Mine began to weigh on me, first putting pressure on the top of my skull and then the front. My head began sag forward, resting the brim of the helmet on the stock of my machine-gun. I gradually became aware that the morning chill had faded into a dull noonday heat. Sweat began roll down my shirt. The weight of the helmet pressed down on my temples, making it even hotter and causing the blood to pound in my ears. The misery of the heat and the bumpy ride began to set in. It was at this moment that I realized I might spend six months or more in this place, and the feeling was like being tied to a boulder and thrown off a high precipice. Rock bottom, more or less.

When evening finally came, it was blessing, the heat receded, but we were still hours from our destination. The convoy commander had figured conservatively; not to chance a night run through southern Iraq. We holed up for the night at a military checkpoint called Navstar, little more than a patch of desert fenced off with concrete barriers. The dust inside the barriers had been churned and stirred by so many vehicles that it was now powder fine and ankle deep. The evening wind swept it up into everything: our clothes, mouths and eyes. Soon we were coated in it. I spent the most uncomfortable, sleepless night of my life in that truck. I was sandwiched between two other people, so close it would have been intimate under any other circumstances. I was restless and tossed frequently, annoying everyone who was trying to sleep. I finally managed to find a slightly less uncomfortable position atop my duffel bag and eventually slept from sheer exhaustion.

In the morning, the trucks churned up another coating of dust as the entire convoy started up again. The second half of our journey was not substantially different from the first, save that we were all now thirsty, exhausted, and irritable from lack of sleep. The convoy rumbled on all morning. Late that afternoon we finally turned off the main road and headed onto a dirt and sand track. Looming out of the horizon we saw a huge ziggurat, a relic of the days of Ur in ancient Babylonia. Our destination lay in it's shadow.



We had reached it at last. Tallil Air Base, our home for the first part of the war; a bombed out Iraqi airbase captured by Coalition troops not two weeks earlier. Food and water supply lines were tenuous and virtually no other supplies had reached it yet. It was littered with wrecked vehicles, derelict aircraft, and unexploded bomb-lets dropped from our aircraft. A few Air Force guards lazily challenged us as we came to the main gate and then waved us ahead. We rolled inside and took possession of the first building we saw that looked suitable: an old ruin of a barracks with six inches of sand on the floor and a scraggly plowed field in front. Jumping out of our vehicles, eager to be done with the long ride, we began to slog our gear into the wrecked and littered building. Water was passed out, but the heat had made the water undrinkable, like scalding un-flavored tea. We were told to move out, grab your shit and get it inside. I raced to recover my pack and weapons. There was some commotion behind me and I turned. One of our soldiers, a muscular Asian with a short thick mustache, had a glazed look in his eyes and seemed to be staggering under the weight of his gear. He sank to his knees, vomited white mucus all over the front of his vest and collapsed; unconscious from heat stroke before he hit the ground. Jesus. This was going to be home. People surged past me, waddling under the weight of their bags to claim the best rooms. Not wanting to miss out, I raced to catch up.