Chapter 4: Captain Buckman

I turned back to the Land Rover, and we headed back to the camp. At my tent were a couple of soldiers. I never did get the hang of the Kurdish words for the various ranks, but I knew they were the equivalent of a lieutenant and a corporal. They had some uniforms and equipment for me, and I changed into them. It felt like I was changing back into a soldier as I did so. We had outfitted the Peshmerga with American style uniforms, helmets, and protective vests. For a pistol they provided me with a Russian 9mm Makarov. I examined it curiously, and then put it in the PALS holster on my MOLLE harness. My uniform had the shoulder boards of a Kurdish captain, two gold stars. It felt strange carrying a Russian weapon, since that was what I had trained to defeat all those years ago.

I threw some spare socks and underwear into a go-bag, along with a few other essentials, and turned to the lieutenant. “Em herin!” ‘Let’s go!’ He looked me over curiously, and then nodded. After saying something to the corporal, we left the tent. I had nothing left there I needed, and I knew I might never be back. We rounded up Ahmed and got him set up, too, from his tent next to Marilyn’s and mine. I showed him how to wear his K-pot and then I settled mine on my head and we climbed into their pickup with them and headed out of the camp.

We drove for about an hour until we arrived at what looked like an American artillery battalion headquarters. That wasn’t too surprising, since the U.S. Army advisers had set up the Peshmerga 1^st Artillery Battalion like the way they knew. There were three firing batteries and a headquarters ‘battery’, which didn’t have any 105s but was the HQ and command center. It was an awful lot like what I remembered from the dim and dusky memories of my misspent youth.

The Peshmerga might be a small army, but they were also a professional army. This was not a bunch of ragtag Arabs in whatever clothing they could find, shooting their Kalashnikovs into the air, and running at the first sign of actual combat. They had a well-defined rank structure, uniforms, a standardized table of organization and equipment, and they behaved professionally. I was saluted properly and returned those salutes accordingly. The only difference I could see was that while their field gear might be American Desert Camouflage Uniforms, their standard ‘office’ uniforms were dark green. They had a reputation going back centuries as serious soldiers.

I went inside and met with the colonel running the battalion. Colonel Iqban spoke broken English. He introduced me to his exec and his battery commanders, most of whom had met me at some point in the past and explained I would be going with them during the operation. His deputy and subordinates were surprised by this and made some comments in Kurdish I couldn’t follow. I wasn’t sure how comfortable they were in English and decided to use my interpreter as much as possible. After a bit, I was led over to a map table, and was showed the targeting system they had from the Americans, which tied in with the drones the 47^th was still flying over the border area, to get coordinates of Syrian Army artillery locations, and they began to mark them on the map. In several cases I learned that Peshmerga units inside Syria were reporting these same locations, so we had confirmation, which would be helpful.

Artillery is killing by the numbers and at a distance. None of us here would actually be able to see what we were hitting. The most critical item is accurately knowing where you are and where the target is. When I had been doing it for real, you spent huge amounts of time trying to determine where you were. Then you would determine your map coordinates and calculate where to aim, and then correct fire after the shooting started. The 105s the Kurds had were standard M102s like I had used way back when, and they could accurately reach out and touch someone about seven miles away. The big difference between then and now was in the electronics. Back then we had used radio to do everything, and your own position was never really known with any degree of accuracy once you left the target ranges. Now, with GPS telling you everything, it was much faster and monumentally more accurate. With the digital targeting systems, we could target the Syrians quickly and very accurately. You didn’t have to fire a round or two and then correct your aim. You could fire a massive salvo without warning and be relatively assured you were on target. The Syrians had Russian 122s with a nine-mile range and 152s with an eleven-mile range but weren’t getting intel from inside Kurdistan. The Kurds did have good intel filtering back from the Syrian Kurds.

It was explained that the plan was for the 1^st Artillery to start southwest of Sinjar and travel northeast for a few days along the border, with two battalions of Peshmerga infantry screening us. We would begin by shelling the Syrian artillery positions firing into Kurdistan, but if any other targets of opportunity presented themselves, they would get a dose of Kurdish hospitality as well. Because of the shorter range of the Kurdish 105s, we would be right up against the border. I was to coordinate the targeting intelligence we were getting from the 47 ^th. Then we discussed their operational plans, which would be simple, in that they would have three batteries firing at targets at the same time, then moving out.

At that point I cleared my throat and when the colonel looked at me, I said, “Might I make a suggestion?”

Colonel Iqban eyed me curiously but nodded and gave a ghostly smile. “Please, proceed, Captain Buckman.”

I pointed at the first two targets on the map, undersized batteries of 122s. “After you hammer these two targets, displace to your alternate locations, and then repeat the fire mission on those same coordinates. You’ll catch whoever came out into the open as well as anybody moving in to help. Very demoralizing. That’s just a suggestion, of course.”

The first time long-range massed artillery was ever used was in World War I, where the technology had advanced to the point that hundreds, if not thousands, of howitzers were able to fire at enemy targets, with communications by phone line. Monstrous quantities of ammunition were fired in barrages lasting days, to soften up a target and allow the infantry to attack. That sounded great in theory, but by the end of the war evidence had been found that these types of attacks didn’t kill any more soldiers than barrages that lasted only a few minutes, or maybe half an hour. Most of the damage done in a heavy barrage occurred in the first five minutes or so. After that, everybody had managed to duck into foxholes or trenches. All that the rest of the shelling accomplished was to tear up huge amounts of countryside and make the terrain impassable, so the infantry or tanks couldn’t advance anyway! A short but intense barrage, followed by enough time to let the survivors stick their heads up and try to get sorted out, followed by another barrage to kill and demoralize the survivors, would be far more effective. I was simply proposing something of the same sort.

I looked around the map table at Colonel Iqban and the others and saw several sly smiles. One of those was the colonel’s, and he nodded and issued orders to do that. We would move out in the morning and be on the firing line by dawn. After the group dispersed, I simply mentioned to the colonel the need to make sure his firing batteries simply went through the motions the way they had been trained and maintain firing discipline. When the troops and officers got excited, they might want to fire at the maximum rate, which was nine to ten rounds per minute. That destroyed barrels. Three rounds a minute saved barrels and destroyed armies. They might not be happy with the Americans right now, but that didn’t mean they should throw away what they had learned. They also needed to make sure they didn’t waste any time when they were setting up and tearing down. Standard tactics are ‘shoot-and-scoot’ because modern radars can track artillery shells in flight, and then calculate backwards to see where you fired them from. If you stayed in one location too long, you would be hearing the magic word “INCOMING!” and ducking for cover yourself! The answer was to do a fire mission and then pack up fast, to move to an alternate firing position and set up to do it all over again. After a while it becomes totally rote, with firing orders and targets coming down from on high, and the gun crews and you will be saying the magic words, ‘culate backwards to see where you firemotor pool moving like robots.

That was how things went for the next two days, starting with the Syrian 122 batteries and then moving northeast along the border. I was receiving damage assessments as well, and we learned that our first targets were destroyed. As we moved, we next hit a large battery of 152s and creamed them, and then hit some Syrian Army border positions and infantry posts. By the late afternoon we were informed that the Syrians had figured a new player was involved, and were repositioning units along the border, in some cases to move vulnerable units out of danger, and in one case to move a battery of 122s into position to do counter-battery on us. The next day we hit that battery around noon, hard, before they ever had a clue we were in range. The Kurdish Peshmerga screening us were hard pressed to keep up and stay in a flanking position. Colonel Iqban knew what he was doing.

The fun and games ended late that afternoon. I was walking from the command tent towards one of the trucks in the motor pool and talking with Ahmed about the next day’s plan. Suddenly his eyes grew wide, and his face had a terrified look, and I glanced over my shoulder at what he was staring at. I caught a glimpse of some fast-moving jets heading my way, and then there was a big explosion that knocked us both off our feet, and a wave of heat passed over us and went on past.

It didn’t really knock me out, but I was stunned and out of breath for a minute or two, and I found myself lying on top of Ahmed. I rolled to a sitting position and shook the cobwebs from my head and looked around. That was when I knew something was wrong. I felt some sharp pains on my left side, in my arm and leg, and I felt something warm and liquid on my face. I brought my left hand up, which hurt a lot, but was working, and touched my face, to feel something hot and sticky. Ahmed looked at me with horror and began screaming for a doctor. I looked at my hand and it was covered with blood. Great! I’d caught a piece of something. Then the most ridiculous thought came to me. For years I had been correcting people who called my bad knee a ‘wound’ when actually it was an ‘injury’; wounds are caused by enemy action, typically from high-speed flying objects sent by the bad guys. Now I had a wound, but since I wasn’t in the Army anymore, it didn’t count. At least I hadn’t been shot in the ass like Charlie!

I looked down and saw my jacket was turning red as my face kept leaking, and I turned my head to the left to see why my left arm and left leg hurt. I must have caught some shrapnel, because they were leaking, too, and my ribs on that side were protesting, too, so my vest must have done its job also. I decided to sit there and wait for some help, with Ahmed jumping up and down and yelling and waving his arms to attract some attention.

There was a lot of screaming and some fires over at the command tents, and a couple of the trucks had fireballed and gone up in flames. The Syrians must have taken exception to our shooting up their army and had decided to do something about it. Since they had been shit out of luck hitting us with counter-battery fire, they decided to send in their Air Force. I struggled to my feet with Ahmed helping. My leg was killing me, as we slowly moved towards the center of the command area. I ignored the stain on the front of Ahmed’s pants. The only people who laugh about pissing your pants are the ones who’ve never seen any action. My Nicaraguan jaunt had been more than enough action for me; I wasn’t going to laugh.

Medics were already near the command tent and had set up a triage line. For all my blood and discomfort, my wounds were relatively light, so a compress was slapped on my left cheek, and I was told to wait. I replied, “Spas dikim,” ‘thank you’, and looked over at Ahmed, who was now looking very self-conscious. “Ahmed, I’ll be here waiting. Go back to our tent and change, and then bring me back a clean uniform. This one has some holes in it. Thank you.”

He looked miserable at that. “I should not be here. I have shamed myself,” he told me, referring to the stain on his pants. He was looking at the ground.

“Ahmed, look at me. Look at me!” I waited until he lifted his eyes to meet mine. “That is nothing. You will shame yourself only if you do not come back.”

He took a second to mull that over. “I was so scared when I saw those planes and the explosion. I could not control myself.”

“Ahmed, do you think I had no fear?”

He looked confused at that. “Of course! You are a very brave man! You have no fear!”

I smiled. “Ahmed, I am as afraid as any other man in this camp. To be brave, you must first know fear. Bravery is simply not letting your fear rule you. All brave men are afraid, we just don’t care. If you come back, then you are brave, too. Now, go change and bring me a clean uniform. Thank you.”

He looked confused at that, but he moved away and left. I just sat there and zoned out for a bit. My leg was throbbing, and my arm began to burn, and my face hurt. Eventually, just as Ahmed returned, now wearing a clean uniform, and carrying a bundle for me, I was taken into a medical tent and stripped down. The prognosis was good, but painful. My leg was the most serious injury, with a metal splinter penetrating into the outer thigh muscle; that was unceremoniously and rather painfully extracted and then sewn up and bandaged. My arm wound was light, being not much more than a flesh wound, a simple straight cut across my upper arm, which got a few stitches and a Band-Aid. My face was ugly, but it wasn’t like I was all that good looking to begin with. A piece of shrapnel must have whizzed by and sliced the left side of my face open at the cheek bone. An inch to the left and I would have been missed completely. An inch to the right and I would be in a body bag, but this just got sewed up and bandaged. No permanent damage was expected but I could expect a very nice Heidelberg scar.

I am not going to claim I enjoyed my treatment, and I was not so stupid as to refuse the shots of Novocain or whatever they needed to numb the sites before they started stitching on me. On the other hand, I was in better shape than some of the men. Both Colonel Iqban and his exec, Major Rauf, were dead, and their S-3 and top battery commander, Captain Failly, was being evacuated to the hospital in Erbil, along with most of the other staff officers for the battalion. The 1^st Artillery wasn’t moving until we got sorted out, at least not for another day or two.

The two remaining battery captains, Captains Ali and Murad, and Lieutenant Rasif, the exec for Captain Failly, found me after I managed to get free of the medics and had gotten into a uniform. As I met with the battery captains, I was able to get a sense of what had happened.

After the attack on Sinjar, the Syrians had used their planes elsewhere, bombing other innocent civilians. At that point the 1^st Artillery began exacting a certain measure of revenge, destroying several Syrian artillery positions, as well as anybody else they could smack. This pissed off the Syrians, and since they were getting nowhere with hitting us with their own artillery, they decided to send their Air Force after us. Half a dozen Syrian MiG-23 fighters rigged for bombing took off and headed for the border areas. Two each went towards a pair of Kurdish refugee camps, and the other two headed towards the Turkish border. The four that aimed for Kurdistan were noticed by the Turkish AWACS and warnings were sent out to the camps, and those four MiGs ran into a buzzsaw! Two were shot down by various Stingers and SAMs, one got blasted by a Shilka, and the fourth dumped its ordnance and turned back to home trailing smoke and wobbling; it never made it back to base. The two that headed for Turkey were a different story. They were spotted, and when a pair of Turkish F-16s intercepted them and lit them up with fire control radar, they boogied back home, lickety split. The Turks promptly lost interest, but the Syrian ground controllers diverted the MiGs towards Kurdistan and sent them after the 1^st Artillery. We had no warning. One MiG missed us and bombed the empty countryside, but the other managed to hit the command center and truck park. It was a case of it being better to be lucky than to be good. They got very lucky.