Chapter 28: Back to Normal

August 2004 - March 2005

When I got back I discovered that Riley Fox had gone on leave the day before, so it was my turn to pick up the slack. When I got back to Camp Custer I unpacked and retrieved Precious. We were going to be a three-man fire team for the next few months. After Riley returned, Joe Williger was gone, and after that it was Sergeant Satterly’s chance to go home. We would be finished up with all of this by sometime in October. In the meantime, we were a small platoon. Between killed, wounded, guys on leave, and guys moved around or at Battalion or Brigade, our platoon was numbering in the high twenties for body count. Everybody was doing things short-staffed. It would probably get worse. When Darwin was talking about ‘survival of the fittest’, Dush-el-Kebir must have been on his mind.

We started learning what the rest of the Brigade was up to. Their assignment was to basically do what we were doing, which was to hold fortified positions along the main routes west of Baghdad. Part of this was to take over positions formerly held by the Second Brigade, First Cavalry. The Cav’ was going to rebuild and rearm and move into position for a big operation that was planned for later in the year. We didn’t know what was going on, but an awful lot of American strength was moving into the western Baghdad region, and something big had to be planned. You didn’t need a division-plus to hold the area we were in. The talk around Camp Custer was of two minds. It was a good thing that we had reinforcements; it was a bad thing because that meant that we would probably be involved in this somehow.

By November we found out what was involved. The Raging Vipers were going to become involved in something called ‘Operation Dawn.’ The Second Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry was moving into Fallujah. That had been attempted by the Marines back in the spring, but we hadn’t stayed, and the results had been decidedly mixed. The Marines had gone in, faced off against a mix of Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda fanatics, pacified the area supposedly, and then turned it over to the new Iraqi Army. The Iraqis were promptly kicked out, leaving the area in the hands of the hajjis again. Now we were going to do it all over again.

I had been by Fallujah, but only in passing through the area on convoy escort. I’m not sure I wanted to ever try and enter the area, at least not unless I was sitting inside an Abrams tank. The place had been turned into a fortress; I had heard that it was twenty square klicks in size, a pure rat’s nest of alleys and buildings. Everybody knew we were going back in, including the hajjis. Women and children and innocent bystanders were leaving daily, but that left thousands of insurgents and nut jobs inside. They had spent the entire summer fortifying the city. A lot of those nut jobs were al Qaeda-linked foreign fighters, who thought that blowing themselves up along with Americans was a great idea. It was mostly the Marines, with some Army assault units going in. Around the whole area, reinforcing them and cutting off any hajji reinforcements and preventing hajji retreats, were a bunch of other units, like most of the Second Brigade, Tenth Mountain Division, and even including some Brits from the Black Watch. The entire area was about to become a massive free-fire zone, including bombing and artillery strikes into supposedly civilian areas, and the Marines and Second of the Seventh were going in with a full armored assault. The mosques, of which there were hundreds, would be targeted and captured, since it was assumed that they would be enemy strongholds and weapons caches. There were even reports that we would be firing high explosive and white phosphorus rounds at the hajjis in what we called ‘shake and bake’ missions. That sort of fire mission was Geneva Protocol violation-type stuff if there were civilians around. God knows I wouldn’t want it falling on me!

A platoon of Polar Bears took over Camp Custer, and First Platoon moved out, to take up blocking positions southwest of Fallujah. Fallujah was east of us, between us and Baghdad, but a bit north of the direct line. Most of Fourth of the Fourth was involved, with the Polar Bears covering our bases and backing us up if needed.

Most of November involved maneuvering around our area, while the assault guys went in. Technically, the assault began on the 7^th, but there had been fighting before then, and it continued past the 16 ^th, which was the day that the Marines announced that it was down to just ‘mopping up.’ Mopping up, my ass! We stayed in position right through Christmas!

Fourth of the Fourth didn’t get any significant action, but it wasn’t a tea party, either. We set up three company-level checkpoints, where we allowed people to leave the area, but we only let women and children through. Men were forced back into the city, since we automatically assumed they were insurgents and fanatics trying to escape to fight another day. Fuck that shit! They could stay and die! Some of them took offense at our attitude, and after going back to the city, would arm themselves and return and attack us. We identified some of them from digital photos we took before and after.

Nobody from First Platoon was killed during this, but a few were wounded, though not badly. We formed a line in Alpha Company’s assigned area, and squads rotated to the front line and checkpoints on a schedule. Yes, I saw some action; no, I didn’t get wounded. One major problem was that we were in very impromptu accommodations. Essentially, we had taken over some existing houses from their owners, who were nowhere around anyway. Forget about any form of creature comforts that we had managed to cobble together at Camp Custer. We were now in the field. Mail call was iffy at best and forget about phone calls home. We took to hoarding our MREs and water and ammo. Supply was sparse. We didn’t even get Thanksgiving dinner, just turkey-and-stuffing MREs.

We didn’t get back to Camp Custer until after Christmas. Some of our mail caught up to us there, and we got some Christmas presents. I found a fruitcake and some cookies waiting, which were devoured in a few minutes by me and my buddies. I had spoken to my folks a few weeks ago and told them I had no idea when I would be home, so just stack any presents away and we would have a big party when I got home. It wasn’t like any of us in Dush-el-Kebir had a chance to hit Macy’s and Sears to go shopping.

By that point morale was dropping badly. It was our second Christmas away from home. Soldiers complain a lot. It was what we did and was mostly harmless. By then it was different. Guys were starting to get very bitchy with senior sergeants, and friends were fighting each other and forming cliques. We still went into action together, and would fight to the death for each other, but after the fight, we would be fighting amongst ourselves. Briscoe and Turner were spending a lot of time telling people to knock it off and pull their heads out of their asses.

Shortly after we got back to Camp Custer, Lieutenant Briscoe called me into his office in the command post. I wondered what I had done, but it wasn’t bad. I was just one of several guys called in, one at a time. He told me I had been doing a good job, and then handed over a Specialist’s insignia. “We’d have done this before, but even with Colonel Gilhooly backing you, we had to wait until you had eighteen months in service, and six months in grade before he could sign a waiver.”

“Uh, thank you, sir.”

“You’ve earned it, Specialist.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”

Briscoe smiled at me. “Do me a favor. I know you outrank your buddy, Fox. Don’t dump Precious on him just because he’s junior to you now. You’re better than he is on the M-249.”

I smiled at that. “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir, I won’t give Precious to Riley. Besides, we scrounged up a second 249 earlier. We’ve actually got a couple of them in the fire team.”

He smiled at that. “I must have missed that, somehow. Still, he’s not quite as good as you?”

“Nobody is, sir.”

That earned me a good laugh from the Lieutenant, who sent me out with instructions to send in the next victim. About half a dozen of us were getting early promotions, some to Specialist, some to Sergeant, and one lateral promotion from Specialist to Corporal. My friend Gary Halston, who was a hell of a soldier, was one of the guys who made Sergeant.

Camp Custer became a real grind that January. It would get chilly at night, and then heat up miserably in the daylight. We fended off a pair of attacks by insurgents; they never got close to us, but another half dozen guys got shot up and sent off to the Thirty-First Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. Two of them never came back. By the beginning of February, First Platoon was down from thirty-nine soldiers to twenty-nine, and half a dozen of those were still in hospital. The rest of the company was in the same state. We were getting spread thinner and thinner. Four-man fire teams were down to three men, and a few two-man teams were around. I was now Number Two in Alpha Team since Joe Williger had transferred to Bravo Three to fill in a vacancy there.

The entire battalion must have been feeling the strain. Alpha Company began moving in and out of their fortifications, filling in as the Golden Dragons and Polar Bears began doing combat ops. We began forming temporary task forces, with a platoon moving out for a week or two, and nearby platoons sending squads over to cover while they were gone. It left everybody feeling stretched to the breaking point and beyond.

I asked Lieutenant Briscoe about it at one point. I was in one of the supply rooms, running a useless inventory. The Ell-Tee came through, and I buttonholed him. “Lieutenant, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, Specialist Reaper. What’s up?”

I looked around and closed the door to the supply room. I turned to face him and said quietly, “Sir, I don’t mean no disrespect or nothing. Really, I don’t, and I know I’m just a Specialist. Sir, when are we getting out of this shithole?”

“Specialist...”

“Sir, how much longer can we go on like this? We stay here much longer, you’re not going to be commanding a platoon, just an overgrown squad, and Captain Holman’s going to be running a platoon.” I must have sounded like I was whining, but I wasn’t the only one who wanted to know. We’d been here now for thirteen months, well beyond the ‘seven to eight month’ deployment we had been told we were making.

Briscoe nodded but held up a hand. “Specialist, I know what you’re saying, I really do. I don’t have an answer to your question. When I learn something, you and the rest of the men will know. Good or bad, I won’t hold it back, and I won’t lie to you. The next time I see the Captain, I’ll ask him. He can ask the Adjutant, and the Adjutant can ask the Colonel, and the Colonel can ask the General. You following me? In the meantime, are you going to do your job?”

“Ell-Tee, I will always do my job. If I’m the last man in this platoon, I’ll still be doing my job. I’d just like to know if that will be next Christmas, or the one after that?”

I didn’t get an answer from the Lieutenant, and we split apart and left the supply room. I didn’t say anything to the other guys because that would just cause trouble.

I wasn’t terribly surprised by Lieutenant Briscoe’s response, or lack of a response. First Lieutenants were about as far down the officer food chain as Specialists were down the enlisted food chain. I think it was on Battalion’s mind, though. Throughout December, January, and February we were getting a lot of promotions and decorations. I made Specialist in December; Riley made it in February. He got a Commendation Medal with V in January, and I got a Bronze Star with V in February. It was a bit generic, simply stating I had ‘performed valorous action in combat’ with a period dating from January 1, 2004, through January 31, 2005. Still, it was nice to be noticed, and I think anybody else who got a commendation was thinking the same thing. By that point you had to be a really lazy-ass useless goldbrick to not have gotten a commendation or promotion.

Captain Frank, the chaplain, was also wearing down. He was hopping from camp to camp, and you could see it beating on him, as the death toll mounted. Chaplains got breaks, too, and by the end of the tour we were getting a few visits from some of the REMF chaplains back at Camp Victory. REMFs were Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers, generally useless individuals and paper-pushers. I had met a preacher in the hospital who had been a holy roller Baptist out to save my soul, and who smelled of cologne and had a manicure. I had sent him packing, and none too politely.

One of the reasons my morale was down was that I wasn’t hearing from Kelly very much. After I got back to Camp Custer after leave, I took some pictures of where we were, and got one of the guys to take some pictures of me. We even got a picture of the entire fire team in full combat gear, looking fierce and deadly, like one of those staged photos you could make back home in Western props and clothing. After that, however, her letters began to slow down. She was at Vanderbilt, and sounded very excited about it, but I could sense that something else was going on. She told me that the workload was immense, but there was more to it than that. She was in a coed dorm and was making friends with a lot of new people. Her roommate was a girl from Kentucky, and she and her friends had begun to go to parties together. It was what I had always known would happen to her, and what I had always feared. She was going to discover a whole big world outside of Matucket, a world that she fit into a whole lot better than I did. Part of me was happy for her because I loved her with all my heart, but I knew this was just the beginning of the end. I would only write back when I got a letter from her. Something was wrong, I could tell. Something had happened, or maybe it was a someone.