Chapter 25: Road Work

February 2004 - May 2004

The good feeling from Operation Sucker Punch, which was what this had all been called, only lasted about another day. The day after that it was back to the normal grind at Camp Custer, which was none too enjoyable at the best of times. The assholes outside were still taking the occasional potshot at us, and we would return the favor if we could. Where we were taking it on the chin, though, was out on the road.

For me, and for most of the guys, convoy and escort duty was the most dangerous part of the job. It wasn’t possible to just hunker down in Camp Custer. We had to go out into Dush-el-Kebir every day. Supply convoys had to go between Baghdad and Ramadi. Various officers and other important people often had to meet with village elders for some reason or other. We also had a small group of do-gooders from the Provisional Authority based in Ramadi, and they often had to be nearby. Theoretically they were building a school and a clinic in Dush-el-Kebir, so there were constant escort and support drives to that site.

I think I built tree forts in elementary school faster and better than what was going on with that school and clinic. At least half of what we delivered was stolen, but I was probably wrong. I am sure the amount was much, much more! Riley suggested we label the building supplies ‘Courtesy of Provisional Authority’, so that when we found them in Iraqi fortifications, we would know who to thank. What wasn’t stolen was usually destroyed, often the night before the ‘Grand Opening!’ That was heartbreaking for some of the guys. Some of them really felt for the locals, most of who just wanted to get on with their lives and try to take care of their kids. Riley was one of them, and he was always handing out candy to children.

Me, I wasn’t anywhere near that warm and welcoming. As Sergeant ‘Timmo’ Timmons once commented, “Why the hell should anybody listen to what we have to say about this shithole? We were dumb enough to come over here, so we must be too stupid to know what we are talking about!” I think Timmo had it right. The idea of winning hearts and minds might be great, but the locals’ version of that seemed to involve cooking and eating our hearts and minds. Why I shouldn’t return the favor was completely lost on me.

By then we were into February and were starting to get a feel for the dynamics of what was going on around us. The Professor would occasionally explain things when the words from Baghdad and Ramadi got too long. We were in the middle of what he called ‘a war for the soul of Islam.’ Now that the Sunnis were out of power, the Shiites wanted their turn, and they wanted revenge for a few generations of shit they had been taking. Okay, that part was simple enough that any of us could understand it, but that was just the beginning. The split between Sunni and Shiite was across all of Islam and was violent. It made the differences between Protestants and Catholics look minor. That was complicated by the fact that most countries in the region were majority Sunni, but the southern part of Iraq, and almost all of Iran, were Shiite. Since Iran was also an enemy of the United States, this didn’t help us any. They were most likely to egg on any Shiite problems, just to raise holy hell with everybody else.

Meanwhile, the Sunnis had their own issues. While most of them simply wanted to be left alone, they also hated the Shiites. Some of them hated Saddam Hussein, now hiding in the Sunni Triangle, and some supported him. Al Qaeda, from Afghanistan, had a bunch of locals representing them, all sorts of foreign nut jobs tended to infiltrate in so they could add their two cents, and then you had something calling itself the Islamic State out there. Intelligence reported over two dozen distinct groups, and they were often breaking up and joining together. The one thing, probably the only thing, they could all agree on was that they wanted America to go away so that they could get on with the nice and pleasant business of butchering each other in the name of Allah.

For every American or Western soldier killed, at least ten or twenty Iraqis died, usually at the hands of another Iraqi. Even the crazies were killing each other, so they could get the spot as top dog of the crazies. Al Qaeda wanted to take the war to America and the West, but the Islamic State wanted to create a new Caliphate and lord it over everybody in the Middle East. I had to have the Professor explain what that was. Then, up north, you had the Kurds, who were a completely separate people, also Sunni, but with their own language, who lived spread out over four different countries, and they hated everybody else, but supposedly liked us.

It was enough to give you a headache!

In any case, the net result was that the big game in town was bombing the Americans and Supply Route 1 from Baghdad. Every convoy required an armed escort, mostly gun trucks, which were Humvees with a machine gun mount on the roof. A lot of the convoys had heavy anti-IED engineer vehicles leading the way, with systems to remotely detect IEDs and then either detonate them or mark them for hand removal by bomb disposal units.

IEDs could be anything, from a professional device to something cooked up in a kitchen. Most were some sort of abandoned or captured ordnance that had some sort of trigger built into a fuse. That could be anything from a professional mercury switch job to a blasting cap hooked up to a length of telephone wire with a battery at the other end. Some were remotely controlled, either directly wired or through a cell phone or radio, and some were only detonated when a pressure plate was activated. A lot of them were stuff that was from Saddam Hussein’s ammo dumps, which were all throughout the Sunni triangle, and which could provide an endless supply of misery. A lot of the stuff was old and unreliable and might be more dangerous to the user than to the target, but there was just so much stuff available! Further, if you didn’t want to chance a metal detector finding military ordnance, maybe you make your own explosives from fertilizer and fuel oil in a plastic barrel.

Every night insurgents would go out after dark and bury the things everywhere. Since most of the roads were dirt and gravel, they didn’t need a lot of specialized equipment. Even if they managed to dig up and bomb an asphalt or concrete roadway, the repair was nothing but gravel, so they might just plant another IED in the repair. Driving around was like guesswork. Is that dark spot up ahead an IED, or is it a repair from yesterday’s IED? Is that a dead donkey, or is it a dead donkey with an IED lying underneath? Is the first IED actually a decoy for the second, larger IED ten feet away, and is there a third one lying in wait to be command detonated when one of the first two blows up somebody looking for IEDs?

The stuff ranged in size from small pipe bombs up through thousand-pound bombs. Simple mechanics tended to limit the size of the bombs they planted. Bigger bombs made for bigger explosions but were a lot more dangerous and difficult to transport and plant. It was one thing to dig a hole and plant a few mortar shells in it, but a 250-pound bomb would take a team and take a lot longer and require a much bigger hole.

Most IEDs wouldn’t destroy a military vehicle, but they could disable it. That would require that the occupants leave the vehicle, either to transfer to another vehicle, or to repair the damaged one. Again, most military vehicles were relatively armored against rifle and machine gun fire, but once outside you were vulnerable. That meant that we had to be on the lookout for secondary bombs, designed and placed to inflict casualties on repair crews or rescuers. Explode a couple of mortar shells under a Humvee, and even if you don’t penetrate the inside, you’ve probably shredded the tires and rattled the guys inside bad. Then, set off a second explosion five minutes later, while the crew is being rescued and the Humvee is being rigged to be hauled away. It was all standard stuff you learned in Basic training and was being used against us.

Our vehicles were mostly able to take some punishment, but the emphasis was on the mostly and the some. The basic fact was that Humvees were originally invented to replace Jeeps, which were completely unarmored and very light and small. Still our Humvees were never designed to take any sort of heavy punishment, and the first ones shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan had been deadly - to the users! Halston told us about Afghanistan, and how they had taken to bolting on what they called ‘hillbilly armor.’ They’d put sandbags on the floor of the vehicles, rig up heavy duty bumpers, cut up shipping containers and weld them to the outside, and even hang spare ballistic armor vests on them. Meanwhile, back at their bases, numbnuts supply officers would be complaining about this non-regulation armor and bitching about the wear-and-tear on the vehicles’ engines and transmissions! Some of them demanded it be removed and were usually ignored.

Most of what we were using now were official up-armored Humvees, shipped in that way from back home, but not always. Even those weren’t great. They still weren’t proof against RPGs, and a lot of anti-rocket stuff was being bolted on in the field. That might not keep the truck from being destroyed, but it might save you long enough to get out.

Vehicles were prime targets, and it was nothing to be rolling down a road and need to swerve around a suspected IED or shoot back at somebody who jumped up and let fly with an RPG. Convoy duty was the scariest thing I ever did. I swear I’d rather be in a straight up firefight than spend hours bouncing around waiting to get killed by some asshole with a remote detonator.

It was a war of attrition. Getting supplies in from Baghdad or Ramadi was always questionable. Water was always limited, so bathing was out, and we shaved every other day and with leftover wash water. A lot of us began to shave our heads, not because we liked the look, but because it was easier to take care of in the field. On occasion MREs ran low, so you saved food for later. Personal items were at the low end of the list, although they did try to deliver our mail. Even that could be questionable, and it was heartbreaking to discover that our mail had been blown up and burned in an IED explosion.

In late February I had a chance to get back at the bastards. It wasn’t my idea, but a guy over in Fourth Squad who asked, if we were allowed to shoot at hajjis with weapons who were using them against us, then why couldn’t we shoot at hajjis burying IEDs? Why not post guys up high and watch the roads through our night vision gear? That made perfect sense to us, but it had to be kicked all the way up to Brigade for approval. Heaven help us if we didn’t give the bastards an even chance to kill us!

The answer was slow in coming, but when a thousand-pounder went off over in Bravo Company’s area and blew a Bradley twenty feet into the air, killing or maiming everybody inside, we got permission. By then we’d built some elevated observation posts around the perimeter of Camp Custer, in addition to the spots on top of the CP. Beginning that night, extra spotters with heavy weapons and night vision gear would be looking for hajjis behaving badly. I was tagged as one of the guys tapped to do some killing.