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The boat ride during the cruise was horrific. The exiles shivered uncontrollably, meat carcasses slapping them in the face with each wave. What made the situation worse was the lack of oxygen in the refrigerator. The operators of the smuggling business had gotten greedy and had tried to fit twice as many refugees as was possible given the oxygen content of the cooler.

Stuck in the meat cooler with no oxygen proved a disaster. People started dropping like flies. Unfortunately, there was no way for the refugees to open the door from the inside to allow more oxygen into the room. Yasser, assuming the role of the leader for the group, decided on a plan. They would form a human pyramid that was tall enough to reach a small opening at the top of the meat locker. Hopefully, someone could fit in the opening, crawl through it, and eventually make it to the outside to open the door and save everyone inside. If this person was unable to open it, the meat locker would gain 150 additional carcasses.

The strongest individuals still able to function created the human pyramid. Yasser crawled along the human ladder to the small opening at the top of the cooler. He met face to face with the small opening that would save everyone's life.

Yasser attempted to squeeze through the opening but failed miserably. But he couldn't give up. He stripped naked to make his profile slimmer. He tried again to force his body through the opening. He eventually became stuck and thought for sure he would die in the meat locker. With no
hope, Yasser corkscrewed his body through the shaft. As he moved he felt blood slowly trickling down his body as his exposed sides scraped against the screws along the passageway walls. The pain was excruciating, but this was a matter of survival.

Eventually Yasser popped out on the other side of the shaft. Unaware of his surroundings, he immediately started running around the ship, buck naked with blood soaked over his body. He yelled for a doctor or the captain of the ship. Miraculously, he ran into the captain's quarters on the ship. Trembling and in extreme pain, he began yelling in Arabic, hoping the captain would understand what he was saying.

Yasser failed to communicate but was able to convey that there was a dire situation somewhere on the boat. The captain called on a doctor to attend to Yasser's wounds. When the doctor arrived Yasser was able to explain to him the situation. Yasser and the doctor sprinted for the meat locker hoping to save those inside.

Once at the door to the meat locker, Yasser sprinted to open the door. He pulled on the levers. An Afghan man yelled at him from inside, “If you let us out of here I will kill you, and so will many others!” The Afghan, and a concerned crowd inside the locker, were afraid they were still over Lithuanian waters and believed that even if they survived this ordeal they would be sent to a Lithuanian prison to die.

Yasser was then faced with a decision: save these people now or wait a bit longer to fully explain the situation and hope they were in Swedish waters. Yasser explained in confidence to the doctor the situation they were facing. The doctor looked Yasser in the eyes and told him that if he did not open the door, the people in the locker would die very soon. Yasser continued to hear the cries of the Afghan man and a large crowd inside the meat locker who begged him to reconsider. Yasser decided to follow the wishes of his fellow refugees.

Yasser told the doctor his decision and the doctor sprinted to the captain of the ship to explain the situation. The captain of the ship, a kindhearted man, called the office of the king of Sweden to ask for a solution to their predicament. The decision was quickly reached by the king: everyone on board would be granted green cards, guaranteed safe passage, and would not be handed over to the Lithuanian authorities.

Upon hearing the news the doctor streaked to the meat locker, where he met Yasser. “Open the hatch!” he cried. “The king has saved you.” The
two men tugged on the doors with all their might and cranked them open. A crowd of very cold but very grateful refugees poured from the cooler. The immediate exposure to oxygen-filled air saved everyone in the nick of time. They were all going to be given another chance at life in Sweden.

To this day, according to Mark, Yasser thanks God and prays for the king of Sweden on a daily basis. He has also found out about the finer things in life, such as drinking wine and hitting on Swedish woman, things that he dreamed he would be doing in Europe five years before he began his journey.

Showing the New Guys around Campus

Il hamdu Allah! The day the new MiTT arrived at Camp Ali was quite possibly the best day of my life. At the time I thought that if I died right then and there it would not matter, because in the past twenty-four hours I had felt more joy than most people feel in a lifetime.

The Iraqis decided to make the new team's first experience outside the wire way more exciting than we had hoped it would be. Within five minutes of leaving friendly lines, as we crossed into South Dam Village, the lead Iraqi vehicle had spotted an enormous daisy-chained IED, set up to destroy multiple vehicles in one shot. On finding the IED we conducted our immediate action drills, secured the area, and waited for the EOD teams to arrive.

As we were waiting on EOD there was even more excitement to be had. The
jundi
starting firing their massive Dushka (a 12.7-mm antiaircraft machine gun) in the direction of the palm groves. A hundred meters away each of us in the Humvee could feel the thunderous boom of the machine gun's rounds leaving the barrel. The young captain in the rear of my Humvee yelled, “What the fuck is going on? Are we in a firefight?” Suffering from combat complacency, I calmly replied, “No, Sir. I'm not sure what's going on. Iraqis like to shoot things. I wouldn't worry about it. There will be radio traffic any second now explaining what is going on. Just stand by.” As I had suspected, the
jundi
firing into the palm groves was a knee-jerk reaction to nothing.

Eventually EOD arrived on the scene. We handed over the situation to them and proceeded to take a bypass route through the western desert. Typically, such a bypass operation was not a problem. However, Bill, the new terp, had forgotten his Motorola radio. Without a radio to communicate with the Iraqis, the scene escalated into pandemonium. The new team
was witnessing the most unprofessional and pathetic showing of military efficiency and effectiveness the world had ever seen.

After bypassing the IED through the open desert, we continued on our way to central Haditha. A few miles away from the Haditha FOB, we entered an Iraqi police checkpoint. As soon as we arrived at the checkpoint, bursts of AK-47 fire spewed in front of us. We were in the rear of the convoy and did not know what was happening. It turned out that the Iraqi police had opened fire on a vehicle that was speeding toward their checkpoint. The captain and the sergeant from the new team immediately looked toward me and asked, “What the fuck is going on up there? Does this shit happen all the time?” I attempted to calm them down. “Gents, listen, this is not normal. Past month has been dead silent. I'm not sure why everyone got antsy on your first time outside the wire.”

After showing the new team the operations in Haditha, we returned to Camp Ali. On our arrival the boss ordered, “Gents, we're going to turn around and do the same convoy, but we're switching in different members from the new MiTT.” Doc sneered at me. “Sir, is he serious?” I answered, “Doc, would you expect anything less from our fearless leader?”

On our second trip to the Haditha FOB, we assumed we would field fewer questions. We had a Navy corpsman who was on his fourth combat tour and a Marine gunnery sergeant who was on his third trip to Iraq. Our assumption was false. The Navy doc acted like a puppy the entire time. First, he bitched about Staff Sergeant Haislip's driving and told him he was “swerving and juking around on the road trying to play games.” I tried to explain to the doc that you couldn't drive in a straight line because you have to dodge potholes and suspicious areas along the way. This explanation sailed over his head. In his mind the drive to Haditha should be like a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway in California.

The new doc's other gripe was that we didn't immediately turn on our Chameleons on leaving camp. I tried to explain to him that there was no radio-controlled IED threat in the area and that the insurgents don't plant IEDs just outside the gate of Camp Ali because it is under surveillance at all times. He dismissed my answers and then threatened to kick all our asses if the next time around we didn't turn on the Chameleons the exact second we left the wire. Doc McGinnis replied to the new doc's threats for all of us: “Doc, quit being a pussy. You are with the Marines now. Plus, the Chameleon is not a force field that saves your life. Grow a pair of balls, dude.”

The new team was running scared. I understood being motivated when
you are in a combat zone and training hard, but I also understood that this was a marathon and not a sprint. If these guys planned to survive the deployment they needed to take a “chill pill” or they wouldn't survive the tour. I got tired just watching them.

The absurdity of the new team was exemplified on our convoy to Barwana. On the way the Iraqi water truck overheated and died along Route Phoenix. Somehow Sermen and his crew of Iraqi mechanics were able to get the thing running just long enough so that we could make it to the entry/exit checkpoint that sits on the outskirts of Barwana. With the malfunctioning water truck, we made it into the safety zone. We were relieved. If we had been stuck along Route Phoenix in hostile territory, the situation would have been much worse. The new team seemed to have a different assessment of the situation, however. They still thought we were under enemy fire. Once the Humvees stopped at the checkpoint, the new MiTT rushed from their vehicles, posted security, and searched for the enemy.

Doc McGinnis and I, still sitting in the safety of our bulletproof Humvee, looked at each other in amazement. Doc blurted out, “Sir, are these guys crazy?” I had no reasonable response. They were crazy. Here we were, in a Marine-controlled checkpoint surrounded with ten Marine amphibious assault vehicles mounted with 50-cals and MK-19 grenade launchers. What the new MiTT guys were going to accomplish by exiting the safety of their bulletproof Humvees was beyond me. I wondered if we had acted like this when we first got here. I remembered being nervous, but not stupid.

Chapter 26

An Assessment

January–February 2007

T
urnover to the new MiTT was officially complete. We were no longer on the hook for anything. The new team was definitely a different breed, and I hoped they would be successful. I thought they would realize over time that their overconfidence, strictness, and motivation were useless on adviser duty unless they formed relationships with their Iraqi counterparts. I knew it had taken our team at least a few months to understand that Iraqis do not take orders from Marines.

I was happy our duties were over, but I was also very sad that I was leaving the battalion. I had formed amazing friendships with the Iraqis and gone on some amazing adventures. Sure, they were selfish, lying, untrustworthy, backstabbing, begging bastards for the most part, but they were my friends. I had to survive alongside these men. They were rough around the edges, but I knew that if it came down to protecting me in a firefight, every
jundi
in the battalion would have taken a bullet for me (see
photo 19
).

We were bound by a warrior ethos, and that is something I will never forget.

Final Observations on Camp Ali

I made some observations my final day at Camp Ali. Around camp we had half-built foundations for a group of buildings that were supposed to have been erected months ago, fifteen tractor and heavy equipment machines collecting dust and at the same time costing Iraqi and American taxpayers large amounts of money, a group of Iraqi contractors sitting in their hooch
watching television and sleeping all day, and an ongoing fight within the MOD and the MOE/MOW over whether or not building can continue at Camp Ali. Hordes of wasted efforts and resources because the central government could not agree on issues.

We also had a battalion that had gone from about 500 soldiers to a unit of roughly 185 with low morale, no initiative, no desire to protect the Iraqi foundations of democracy, and a strong desire to collect their paycheck.

I witnessed six different occasions on that last day in which Iraqis, both
jundi
and the civilian contractors, came up to MiTT Marines to beg for coats, gloves, computers, iPods, memory sticks, and food. All of this begging despite the fact that many of the Iraqis already owned many of these items. The root of their begging stems from their perception that Americans have all the money in the world because the Jews stole it from the Arabs and stashed it in American banks.

In addition, I asked one of the Sudanese engineers on camp how he was doing as he walked back from his morning shower. He replied, “Kosey” (“Good” in African Arabic dialect). I then looked around and noticed that out of the fifteen generators on camp that this guy was supposed to be maintaining, only two worked. This begs a few questions: who from the Iraqi government is overseeing these contractors? Why can't somebody just tell these guys they aren't cutting it and rehire someone who can get the job done? And why is the Iraqi government hiring Sudanese engineers when they have a population of unemployed Iraqi engineers?

Another observation: this afternoon Howyi, a
jundi
squad leader, slapped an insurgent detainee in the mouth, which caused the detainee to bleed from the lip. The MiTT Marines were then under the gun from the 2/3 lawyer. He wanted them to explain what was going on and why they allowed the incident to happen. What kind of question is this? How long is it going to take American policy makers to understand that we are never going to change Iraqis and make them Americans? Iraqis are going to get rough with their detainees and there is nothing we can do to change this until they decide it is a bad idea.