Generation Kill (32 page)

"I have no targets! No targets!" Colbert repeats. But our vehicle rocks as Hasser begins lobbing rounds from the Mark-19.

"Cease fire!" Colbert shouts.

"I got muzzle flashes, for sure," Hasser shouts.

"Easy there, buddy," Colbert yells. "You're shooting a goddamn village. We've got women and children there."

The reservists behind us have already poured at least a hundred grenades into the village. Colbert continues scanning it through his scope. "We're not shooting the village, okay?" he says. In times like these, Colbert often assumes the tone of a schoolteacher calling a timeout during a frenzied playground scuffle. Mortars explode so close we feel the overpressure punching down on the Humvee. But Colbert will not allow his team to give in to the frenzy and shoot unless the men finds clear targets.

The fire from Delta Company continues unabated. One of First Recon's air officers riding near them looks back and sees a Mark-19 gunner in Delta standing at his weapon, burning through cans of ammunition, and he's not wearing NVGs, meaning he can't even see what he's shooting at. The reservists now make another classic mistake of nervous, undisciplined Marines: They fire down the axis of the convoy, their rounds skipping and exploding next to the friendly vehicles in front of them. A platoon commandeer in Alpha gets on the comms, shouting, "Get those assholes to cease fire. They're shooting at us!"

Their wild fire continues. Then the voice of Captain America comes over the radio, quavering and cracking. "Enemy, enemy! They've got us on both sides!"

"Oh, my God!" Person says. "Is he crying?"

"No, he's not," Colbert replies, cutting off what will likely be a bitter tirade about Captain America. In recent days, Person has pretty much forgotten his old hatreds for pop stars such as Justin Timberlake—a former favorite subject of long, tedious rants about everything that's wrong with the United States—and now he complains almost exclusively about Captain America.

"He's just nervous," Colbert says. "Everyone's nervous. Everyone's just trying to do their job."

"We're going to die if we don't get out of here!" Captain America screams over the radio. "They've sent us to die here!"

"Okay," Colbert says. "Fuck it. He is crying."

The firing drops off behind us. In front, LAVs pop off quick bursts. We hear their diesels grinding as they maneuver.

"LAVs are breaking contact/' Person reports from the radio. It's arelief. It means we're turning around, pulling back. Mortars are still bursting steadily, while AKs crackle intermittently.

"Person, move forward," Colbert says. "We're covering the LAVs while they pull back."

"Is that right?" Person asks, startled.

"They want us to envelop them," Colbert says. "Just move up the road."

The wisdom of driving into a column of twenty-four LAVs while they pull beside us, some still firing their weapons, escapes the Marines. Colbert's team has no radio contact with the LAVs, nor much experience practicing an enveloping maneuver.

Person deals with the order by simply flooring it. We speed up alongside the LAVs as their guns pop off rounds in front and behind us. Their diesels growl past us as they retreat. Soon all of War Pig and First Recon are behind us. Second Platoon sits out alone on the highway for several minutes.

"Turn around," Colbert says.

"Roger that!" Person says, evidently relieved.

"We're moving three clicks south and punching out patrols," Colbert says.

We draw past the hamlet lit up so heavily by Delta. "That was a civilian target," Colbert says. "I saw them."

He sounds tired. I think this war has lost its allure for him. It's not that he can't take it. During the past hour or so of shooting, he still seemed excited by the action. But I think after mourning the loss of his friend Horse-head, trying to care for dehydrated, sick babies among the refugees the other day, the shot-up kids by the airfield before that, and having seen so many civilians blown apart, he's connected the dots between the pleasure he takes in participating in this invasion and its consequences. He hasn't turned against the aims of this war; he still supports the idea of regime change. But the side of him that loves war—his inner warrior—keeps bumping against the part of him that is basically a decent, average suburban guy who likes bad eighties music and Barry Manilow and believes in the American Way.

The battalion spends the night of April 8 in a bermed field by the road just two kilometers north of the magic line. Because of the low cloud cover, it's an especially dark night. On the horizon, lightning competes with bomb bursts from mortars War Pig is dropping on suspected enemy positions. The rolling berms we occupy are rock-hard. Walking around in the darkness, unable to see my own feet, I feel like I'm in a curved, concrete skateboard park. The Marines were ordered out of their MOPP suits a couple of days ago—the military no longer believes there is any chance of WMDs being used. But I put mine on tonight. I've reached a point where I feel calm during shooting, but afterward I tend to get a little spun. I'm convinced there's going to be a chemical attack tonight. Even though my MOPP suit has a hole in it and wouldn't do me much good, I wear it along with my rubber boots—eliciting amused laughter from Fick. I find a ditch to lie in for the night and wrap myself up in a poncho.

F-18s make repeated low passes. It's too cloudy for them to bomb anything, but according to Fick, it's hoped they'll scare off any tanks from approaching. Some of the passes the F-18s make are so low, the sonic forces they exert feel like a crushing weight on your skull.

Marines on the perimeter talk among themselves, as they observe for enemy movement. They pass around different optical devices, debating whether different shapes they see in the surrounding fields might be weapons or enemy positions. Their voices are quietly excited, cheerful.

They like this part of war, being a small band out here alone in enemy territory, everyone focused on the common purpose of staying alive and killing, if necessary.

The high winds pick up. But instead of dust, they carry rain. It pours for about twenty minutes, and two hours later the sun comes up.

Standing in the early-morning mist, Fick gives his team leaders the order for the day. "We are clearing and killing enemy, moving north through hostile areas. We made two kilometers yesterday. We have thirty-eight to go."

The battalion devotes the morning of April 9 to creeping up the road to Baqubah at a walking pace. Marines on foot clear the surrounding fields, with War Pig's LAVs sometimes joining them, sporadically firing into huts and ditches. The enemy drops mortars continuously, but with the Marine lines stretched across several kilometers, they present a diffuse target. In Colbert's vehicle, we sometimes get a flurry of mortars falling within a few hundred meters, then nothing for twenty minutes.

The Iraqis' tactics today seem clear: They let off some harassing fire with AKs and light machine guns, then retreat while dropping mortars. None of their fire is particularly accurate. While the Marine advance is dangerous, tedium sets in.

Colbert and Person are beginning to have personal problems. There's no particular reason for the strain; it's more like they're two rock stars who have been touring a little bit too long together.

About noon, when a salvo of six to eight enemy mortars lands a few hundred meters from the Humvee, Colbert begins harping on Person's driving. The platoon is ordered to scatter into a berm by the road and wait out further mortar strikes. The idea is for Person to pull between two high berms for cover, but Colbert is not satisfied. As the next salvo begins to blow up in the vicinity, Colbert starts giving Person a driving lesson, ordering him to back up and maneuver the Humvee repeatedly.

"You see that pile of dirt by the trail we're on?" Colbert says, his voice cracking. "That is a berm, Person. Berms make me feel warm and fuzzy inside because they protect me from shrapnel. So when I say, 'Pull up next to the goddamn berm,' I mean pull the fucking Humvee up next to the fucking berm. Don't leave it sitting in the middle of the fucking field."

Person responds by alternately pumping the gas and brakes. We slam into the berm. Cans of ammo and AT-4 rockets piled in the rear shoot forward through the compartment. "Sorry about that," Person mumbles, not sounding very sorry.

A Hellfire missile blows up something 500 meters across the field. Mortars boom. Person begins belting out his latest song, one he and Hasser have been composing. It's a country song, which he sings in flagrant violation of Colbert's ban. Colbert doesn't even try to shut him up anymore. It's tough to reach Person these days. He's had a severe allergic reaction to Iraq. His eyes have swollen to red slits. They ooze tears constantly, which mix with the snot pouring from his nose. Doc Bryan has put him on a regimen of antihistamines and other medications to combat the allergies. God only knows how these medications interact with the Ripped Fuel and other stimulants Person uses. The whole morning, Person has been babbling about his latest scheme. He and Hasser are going to change their last names to "Wheaten" and "Fields," respectively, in order to put out a country music album, eponymously titled Wheaten Fields.

Now, as the explosions continue, he shares their first song, much of which they composed last night on watch. It's called "Som' Bitch," and its aim, according to Person, is to hit every theme of the country-music lifestyle. Person sings:

Som' bitch an' goddamn and fuck All I ever seem to do is cuss About how life's a' fuckin' treatin' me To save my one last shred of sanity.

Som' bitch and goddamn an' fuck The price of Copenhagen just went up My NASCAR won't come in on rabbit ears My broken fridge won't even chill my beer.

When he finishes, he turns to Colbert. "You like that?" "Why don't you just quit while you're ahead," Colbert says.

Minutes after Person's performance, we drive back onto the road. Colbert stays behind, leading Garza and other Marines in a foot patrol of fields edging the highway. Several minutes later, they come under fire from Marines in Alpha Company, who rake their position with .50-cal machine-gun rounds. The Marines in Alpha are specifically trying to hit Garza. With his brown Mexican skin, they've mistaken him for an Arab.

Person floors the Humvee toward Alpha's truck while screaming out the window, "You're shooting Marines!"

The men on the truck continue firing for another thirty seconds, until Capt. Patterson catches their error and orders them to stop. Colbert and Garza emerge from the field unscathed. Garza approaches the Humvee, shaking his head. "I figured it was those LAPD cops from Delta lighting us up. They love shooting Mexicans."

"Mistakes happen," Colbert says, climbing into the Humvee. Despite his attempt to slough it off, his face appears almost silver from the perspiration drenching it.

By early afternoon the Marines have advanced more than twenty-five kilometers past the magic line and are fifteen kilometers south of their destination, Baqubah. In keeping with the poor judgment the Iraqis have shown in other situations, they only start to move their armor down to attack toward the middle of the day. But by now the clouds have burned off, and waves of British and American jets and Marine Cobras simultaneously bomb, rocket and strafe targets in all directions. Trucks, armor, homes and entire hamlets are being attacked from the air, blown up and set on fire. The Iraqis' one chance to wipe out the Marines with a mass formation of armor evaporated with the vanishing cloud cover.

Right now, the world's attention is focused on televised pictures of American Marines in the center of Baghdad, pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, where we are, enemy mortars start exploding within fifty meters of Bravo Company's position. From a raw-fear standpoint, this is among the worst moments for the platoon.

The Marines in Second Platoon have been ordered to hold a position in a barren field by the highway. Their five Humvees are bunched within a few meters of one another when the mortars begin to land.

"We are receiving accurate mortar fire," Fick informs his commander over the radio.

"Remain in position," his commander, Encino Man, radios back.

Unlike earlier in the day, when Marines rolled back during close encounters with enemy mortars, Lt. Col. Ferrando doesn't want to lose his momentum. Now, having the benefit of robust air support, he's divided his Marines into two columns a few kilometers apart. His plan is to rush toward Baqubah as quickly as possible, while conditions remain favorable.

When Fick passes the word that the men in Second Platoon are to remain in place, Espera turns to his men in the next Humvee over from ours and says, "Stand by to die, gents."

The twenty-two Marines in the platoon sit in their vehicles, engines running, as per their orders, while blasts shake the ground beneath them. Everyone watches the sky. A mortar lands ten meters from Espera's open-top Humvee, blowing a four-foot-wide hole in the ground. It's so close, I see the column of black smoke jetting up from the blast area before I hear the boom. I look out and see Espera hunched over his weapon, his eyes darting beneath the brim of his helmet, watching for the next hit. His men appear frozen in the vehicle as the smoke rises beside them.

Before leaving on this mission, many of the men in Colbert's platoon had said good-bye to one another by shaking hands or even by hugging. The formal farewells seemed odd considering that everyone was going to be shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped Humvees. The good-byes almost seemed an acknowledgment of the transformations that take place in combat. Friends who lolled around together during free time talking about bands, stupid Marine Corps rules and girlfriends' fine asses aren't really the same people anymore once they enter the battlefield.

In combat, the change seems physical at first. Adrenaline begins to flood your system the moment the first bullet is fired. But unlike adrenaline rushes in the civilian world—a car accident or bungee jump, where the surge lasts only a few minutes—in combat, the rush can go on for hours. In time, your body seems to burn out from it, or maybe the adrenaline just runs out. Whatever the case, after a while you begin to almost lose the physical capacity for fear. Explosions go off. You cease to jump or flinch. In this moment now, everyone sits still, numbly watching the mortars thump down nearby. The only things moving are the pupils of their eyes.

This is not to say the terror goes away. It simply moves out from the twitching muscles and nerves in your body and takes up residence in your mind. If you feed it with morbid thoughts of all the terrible ways you could be maimed or die, it gets worse. It also gets worse if you think about pleasant things. Good memories or plans for the future just remind you how much you don't want to die or get hurt. It's best to shut down, to block everything out. But to reach that state, you have to almost give up being yourself. This is why, I believe, everyone said good-bye to each other yesterday before leaving on this mission. They would still be together, but they wouldn't really be seeing one another for a while, since each man would, in his own way, be sort of gone.

After the platoon holds its position under close mortar fire for about fifteen minutes, the attacks cease. The platoon is ordered to move a couple more kilometers north, toward an intersection where locals have warned of an ambush.

We drive to within a kilometer of the intersection and stop. There's a cluster of barracks-like structures, a water tower and high-tension power lines ahead where the road forks into a Y. To the left there's a thick stand of palm trees extending west for about a kilometer. Several minutes earlier, Cobras had come under AAA fire from the buildings near the intersection. They and other aircraft decide to prep the area before the Marines roll through on the ground.

We sit back and watch them bomb and strafe the intersection for about ten minutes. Colbert tunes in the Air Wing's radio channels. We listen as the pilots call in intended targets—from Iraqi military personnel hiding behind garden walls and in berms to trucks and armored vehicles—then watch as the aircraft nose down and destroy them. Orange rosettes flash ahead of us from powerful bombs dropped by jets.

"We've never had this much air," Colbert says, eyes gleaming, pleased with all the destruction we are witnessing. "It's all about having some air and LAV escorts," he concludes with a grand smile.

Pilots over the radio now discuss their next move, doing a "recon by fire" on the palm grove to the left of the intersection. The pilots can't see what's in the palm grove, nor have they taken any hostile fire from positions inside it. Nevertheless, they request permission to do a recon by fire, which simply means they're going to rocket and machine-gun the fuck out of it and see if anything shoots back. The battalion's forward air controller on the ground approves the plan. Helicopters skim low over the trees, stitching the ground with machine guns, setting off a storm of white fire with their rockets. It's a real Apocalypse Now moment.

Colbert's team and the rest of the platoon are ordered to drive up to the intersection, take the Y left and enter the palm grove while it's still burning.

We drive into a bank of smoke, glimpsing a succession of small horrors. There's a truckful of shot-up cows in the field, nearby several slaughtered sheep, their guts smeared out around them. Two charred human corpses by the road are still smoking. There's a dog with his head buried up to his ears in the stomach of a cow he's eating. We are again in Dog Land.

We come alongside the palm grove on our left. Fences made of dried reeds crackle and burn outside the vehicle. We continue on, pull upwind of the smoke and now see there's a hamlet nestled between the trees—a series of farmhouses, interconnected by walls, animal pens and grape arbors. Thatched roofs and fences burn. These are what were reconned by fire.

"I hope there's no people in there," Colbert says. The gleam that had been in his eyes moments earlier during the bombing has been replaced with his worried, helpless look.

Republican Guard berets, uniforms and other pieces of military gear are scattered by the road across from the palm grove. Iraqi forces—legitimate military targets—have obviously been in the area. Colbert stops the Humvee. He and other Marines get out. Iraqi military communications lines—cables from field phones—lie by the side of the road. Colbert's men cut them apart with their Leatherman tools.

While standing outside, we hear a babble of voices. Men whom we can't see are chanting something. Their voices come from ditches by the road across from the burning hamlet. An old man now rises from behind a berm ten meters away. His hands are up. His eyes are wild and his face covered with tears as he shrieks, "No Saddam! No Saddam!"