Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Dirty for Dirty: A Grunt's Eye-View of the War in Iraq  

(above: Michael Auton. Image: Kevin Sites.)

He has 12 confirmed kills. One for every month he's been here. But, he says, it's not unusual for his unit, Bravo 1-36 of the 1st Armored Division, which has been deployed in Iraq longer than any other division.

"Some have more some have less," shrugs 21 year-old Specialist Michael Auton of Lenore, North Carolina.

"Out here it's either kill or be killed," one of the sergeants in his company says, overhearing our conversation. Auton nods in agreement.

"When I got here I found out that pulling the trigger wasn't as hard as I thought it would be," Auton says. All except the first one.

"It was wow, I just killed a man," he says, "you start thinking he coulda been a guy just protecting his family. But then you think, ok he's running around out here with an AK-47 shooting at us--then you just get over it. Move on."

Auton isn't even a sniper, just an Eleven Bravo, the army's classification for infantry soldier, a grunt. But he's seen more war and more killing at his young age than most of us can comprehend. More than he wanted, but now, after being on the verge of going home after a year in Iraq, his mechanized infantry battalion is back in it deep--dug into the powdery sand on the outskirts of Karbala. They're awaiting orders to go into the city and root out the remnants of the Mahdi militia loyal to Shiite firebrand Muktada Al Sader.



(above: Michael Auton. Image: Kevin Sites.)

Auton's unit was supposed to go home last month, but then the twin uprisings happened: Sunni insurgents in Falluja and Al Sader's fighters in Najaf and Karbala. Because they're the most experienced division in Iraq, the 1st Armored was rewarded with three more months in the combat zone.

"I was scheduled to leave Iraq in four days and then my squad leader woke me up late one night and said ‘I have good news and bad news.' I said 'what's the bad news;' he said ‘you're not going home.' I said what's the good news? He says, ‘there is no good news.'"

He says that with all that was happening in Iraq he kind of expected it, but it was still tough for the first few days.

"I felt some rage for the Iraqi people, for the ones that caused this. But then I though, better get the job done. Sometimes that rage comes out when people are shooting at us."

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Here on the edge of one of Shiite Islam's holiest cities, home of the shrines of Ali and Hussein, the 1-36 makes a temporary forward operating base in primitive conditions; they sleep on the platforms of their tanks, curl around the hardware of their Bradleys or simple lie in the dirt. The sun and heat are withering. There are no showers or toilets and they're back to eating the high-calorie, long-shelf-life, constipating military m-r-e's, (meals ready to eat) again.

Some soldiers say it's almost nostalgic; the same way it was when they first got to Iraq a year and a week ago. They don't know how long they'll be here and won't play that game anymore, but there's no more moping. They are busy doing things soldiers do before battle: cleaning the dust from their weapons, playing cards, insulting each other, using black markers to write their blood types on their desert boots.

Overnight this few acres of sand has become an American community of sorts.

They whittle, listen to music, prep their gear, or talk incessantly--the kind of juvenile banter you'd expect from guys on a yearlong camping trip in Iraq. But then that's punctuated by moments of candor and honest concern; this band of brothers, as they refer to themselves like the GI's of World War II, a support group in camouflage.

In a nearby Bradley, guys from 3rd platoon gather to shoot the breeze. At the moment they're listening to 23-year-old Corporal Joe Coy read out-loud a letter from his wife.



(above: Joe Coy. Image: Kevin Sites.)

"My new stepsister I never met is getting her license, the other one is getting her braces tightened do you all want to hear about that?"

He looks at the letter, lost for a moment.

"Aw man she really misses me," he says of his wife, "I wish I were going home."

During their year in Iraq, all of them here have missed important things, things they say they can never get back.



(above: Juan Rosa. Image: Kevin Sites.)

"My brother just got engaged to his new fiancé who I haven't met yet," says Bronx native Corporal Juan Rosa, "and my parents are moving to Philadelphia which I haven't seen yet."

"It's like missing a half of a life," says Private Vitaly Sorokin, who emigrated with his family from Russia to the U.S., then joined the Army. " The more you've been here the more you realize time pretty much stops here…you're missing everything. It's all taken out of your life for that period."



(above: Vitaly Sorokin. Image: Kevin Sites.)

"The biggest thing is missing my daughter," says 26-year-old David Anderson of Mississippi, "since I've been here she started walking and she started talking. She's two and half now. I've missed all the good stuff--I've missed all of it."



(above: David Anderson. Image: Kevin Sites.)

"I'll have been married two years in July," says Corporal Timothy Turner of California, "this is going to be the second anniversary I've missed. My wife's birthday is tomorrow and I won't be able to call her to say happy birthday."

Turner shakes is head, "my life has stopped back home. Some people are going to go back and they're not going to have a life. Some people are going to get divorces. Lives ruined."



(above: Timothy Turner. Image: Kevin Sites.)

And once they finally do get home--they will still be faced with the complex task of finding their way in a civilian society again. And while they're eager to leave their weapons and Kevlar behind, the violence they've experienced here will likely be with them in one way or another, always.




(above: Derek Ellyson. Image: Kevin Sites.)

Derek Ellyson says his memories have already hardened, fixed in his mind. "You never forget the faces. I can describe to you every dead person I've seen out here. What their faces looked like, the position they were laying in."

Sorokin agrees, "War brings a lot of ugly things, you see a lot of ugly things you see other people dead and sometimes when you see somebody dead you see the face of death--the way the guy died. It could be an enemy it could be an ally it doesn't matter."

Yet living with those images of death is part of the job--the same one that requires them to pull the trigger. Before going to war soldiers have always had to ask themselves if they'd be willing to die for their cause. But there is a second part to that question which for some, is more difficult to answer: would they kill for it?

For most if not all in the 3rd Platoon--the question is already moot.

"We all know what we signed up to do, we're all infantry," says Texan Joe Coy, "We all know our job, but still it's a rough thing. It's not a natural thing to take another human life--but every time we pulled the trigger, we've done it to protect our buddies left and right." He pauses for a moment, circumspect, "In a bigger sense to protect everybody in the army, everybody in our country."



(above: Ray Hernandez. Image: Kevin Sites.)

Ray Hernandez says it's anger that allows him to kill, "The only thing I think about when I go out there and pull the trigger is revenge--for every guy that fell down doing the same thing I was doing. I'm not going to let him die in vain. The object of this fucking war is to let the other guy die for his country, because I'm not dying for mine."

But when an American soldier does die, nearly 800 since the invasion of Iraq, each here says they don't want those sacrifices to be hidden. They're angry about a Pentagon ban on photographs showing American flag-draped coffins from Iraq being unloaded at Dover Air Base. They were happy to see the photographs made it into the newspapers anyway.

"It shows all the Americans who aren't here what's happening," says David Anderson, "how many are giving their lives for their country and what they're doing over here."

"It's pretty easy for a lot of people back home to push us out of their minds," says Coy, "but when they see something like that--they have to give us a second thought."

But media exposure cuts both ways. Many think that most stories coming out of Iraq are negative. They're especially frustrated about coverage of the Abu Graib prisoner abuse scandal.

"That's all people at home see is the media and if all they see is the prison scandal that's all they're going to think, they're going to think the soldiers ‘oh they're just beating Iraqis and making things horrible over there,'" says Ellyson, throwing up his hands in frustration. "I don't even know those people (the MP's). I've never been to the prison and they certainly don't represent anything we've done."

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(above: Soldiers inside Bradley. Image: Kevin Sites.)

Captain Chris Ayers has been in command of Bravo Company for it's entire deployment.
He's from Delaware, a West Point grad, and a friendly but understandably serious 29 year-old fully aware of the burdens of the job.

"I had a solider die seven days after I took command," he says, "and it became very real to me the level of responsibility I had."

In the back of his Bradley, he shares some intel with his platoon leaders about the dangers of Karbala.

"There's one enemy sniper that is very, very proficient--this isn't a guy with an AK-47 popping off rounds," he pauses and looks at the faces that surround him. "This is a guy with a scope. He's firing mainly during the day and he's taking shots in the throat and shots in the groin. That's his focus so what that means for us is the street is a killing zone. Stay out of the street."

The company's senior medic Salvatore Cavallo checks the supplies in his trauma pack for the night ahead. At 36, he's the oldest in the unit, Brooklyn-born; he spent 12 years in the reserves but went active duty in 2003 – his last chance before age limitations made him ineligible.

Like Captain Ayer--he learned the realities of war very quickly. His first combat casualty is a friend in his unit with a gunshot wound to the head

"It was shocking at first, we new it was going to be violent and we we're going to take casualties but the first time you really see someone tore up on the verge of dying or dying right in front of you while you're working on them--it's takes it's toll."

But there's little time to consider the loss he says.

"When it's all over with and you lay down at night you do your mourning, you do your thinking, you make you're peace and hope that nobody else you know comes along."

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In this makeshift camp there is a constant baseline of sound, shifting, but constant; choppers ferrying back and forth, diesel tanks engine charging up their generators, warning beeps from a truck in reverse, barking dogs, the occasional outgoing mortar.

An officer sneezes repeatedly, "Bless the hell out of you sir," a specialist responds.

After throwing up in the porta-john, a tower guard slowly climbs back to his post--a
victim of the heat or a bad m-r-e.

And now, the harsh commands of squads rehearsing, going through house clearing drills for their mission tonight.

"One clear, two clear, three clear," they say, and stack up, muzzles sweeping imaginary rooms outlined with wood planks in the sand.

Nearby one soldier passes a couple of American flag patches to another. In between the bars on the patch are the words, handwritten in ink: Dirty for Dirty. They are calling cards to put on the bodies of dead enemies, a non-sanctioned post-mortem psyche-out. Something to let the Muktada al-Sader's militia who they are and what they're up against.

The same soldiers tell me about a recent fight they were in which a Shiite militiaman popped into an alleyway and began firing his AK-47 at a tank.

"You could see the turret swivel around, train it's 50-mike mike on the guy and fire. It blasted a huge hole right through his middle." He shows dinner plate size circumference with his hands."

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(above: Row of tanks. Image: Kevin Sites.)

The combat operations scheduled for this evening have been cancelled with no explanation, but that night as we try to sleep--we can hear the sounds of an AC-130 gunship blasting away in the city. It's 30mm mini guns; rockets and airborne howitzer have earned it the nickname "spooky" for it's fear-inspiring firepower.

Obviously, the area commander had other plans for Karbala. We learn later that U.S. troops withdrew from a mosque they had occupied in the city--and when they did, militia forces attempted to move back into it that night, but the AC-130 was waiting. The next day the military sources reported anywhere from 18 to 80 militia killed. It was hard to tell, one said, after the "spooky" was through.

Bravo 1-36 is given a new operations order for the next night. It's flank protection for another unit doing a raid near Karbala. Third platoon is unhappy because they know they're unlikely to see any action.

Like baseball players, soldiers are incredibly superstitious. While we wait for that evening's event they engage in their rituals of drawing the lines between good luck and bad, donning or pocketing those things that will protect them, vanquishing those with dark energy.

One soldier pulls a packet of Charms candy from the bottoms of his m-r-e bag. Everyone who see its groans.

"Get rid of em, get rid of em." It's like a chant. They're quickly tossed to a soldier standing next to a garbage bag hanging off a Bradley. He catches them and tosses them into the plastic abyss. Disaster averted. Charms, I learn, are legendary for bad luck in the military. No one can tell me when or where the legend started, but they insist that when Charms are eaten bad things happen.

Michael Auton points to Turner, "He was making fun of the old rumor, ‘you know what I'm gonna eat charms, and he ate charms and sure enough we got extended. We got the news the next day. It's true. It's bad luck."

Auton, with a big pinch of Skoal in his gum is laughing now but seems to believe what he says, "Everybody gets em, but you cannot eat em! These things are killers. If we was to eat these, somebody would die tonight."

But whatever negative power Charms have, the soldiers all seem to have their own defensive countermeasures. One by one they show me the talismans they carry into battle, some strange some expected touchstones that give them strength or confidence in the face of their fears.

There are crosses and bibles, St, Michael medals and photos of their families taped to the inside of their helmets. One soldier shows me a spoon his girlfriend's mother gave him, the one she fed her daughter with, said to bring it back to her when he returned home. He carries it everywhere.

Coy shows me a silver heart locket. It holds a strand of his wife's hair.

"The knights in the old day's used to have a lock of their lady's hair, a symbol of good luck and good return," he smiles.

Another soldier shows me an angel medallion.

"My nickname for my wife is baby angel so since I can't have her I keep one angel with me always. I keep it in my left pocket --because it's closest to the heart."

Auton pulls on a small chain that leads into his pants pocket. Connected to it is a thumb-size book. I'm surprised to see what it is.

"It's the Koran," he says, a gift from his Turkish girlfriend that he met while based in Germany. Some of the guys give him grief about carrying the Islamic holy book, the same book so often found among bodies of the enemies they've killed in action, but he doesn't listen to them. "It's always there," he says, slipping it back in place.

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(above: Sunken Bradley. Image: Kevin Sites.)

At 10:30 PM we pack into the Bradleys. It's hard to imagine more uncomfortable vehicles for soldiers riding into war. While they provide heavy metal protection from assault rifle rounds and rocket propelled grenades, they are sweltering hot, dark and claustrophobic. Think of a large microwave oven on tank treads--then pack in seven to nine guys with weapons and full body armor.

When we arrive at our location, a suburban neighborhood outside Karbala--it is nearly pitch black. The soldiers set up barricades on the street and wait. But it doesn't take long before things go wrong. Word over the radio is that one of Bravo's Bradleys has plunged into a ravine. I follow a squad to the location. While trying to cut off a car, the Bradley missed the irrigation ditch and went over the edge. It's still upright but stuck at a steep angle in a few feet of water. It must be towed out.

But then we hear reports that a second vehicle has gone into the drink as well. This one from Alpha Company--and the situation is much worse. At the site, a quarter mile away, only the top of the Bradley's turret is exposed; the rest lies submerged in seven feet of water. The driver, relying on his night vision, didn't have the depth perception to see the deep canal.

The Bradley filled up with water in seconds.

"It was crazy, I mean you'd never think that a Bradley would fill up that quick but it did," says Private First Class Tim Leshney, "It was scary, my hands are still shaking. It was pretty scary," he repeats to himself.

"It was dark, it filled up with water, people were panicking," says Specialist Joseph Lee, "but I tried to stay calm, I knew that if I didn't stay calm I probably wasn't going to make it because--I can't swim."

Sgt. Christopher Lee Merrill was able to get the troop hatch open and get his soldiers out--but while he was struggling to get his body armor off he was sinking to the bottom.

"I forced myself up to the top one more time, screamed for help and one of my soldiers grabbed me," he says.

But the longest swim was left for the Bradley's driver, 18-year-old Ferdinand Delarosa, who couldn't open the driver's hatch above him because it was underwater.

"As soon as I tried to take a breath inside the driver's hatch I got pure water."

He had to turn around and wiggle through a small opening called the "hell hole" which led to the Bradley's turret. But his body armor got caught on something--and for a moment he thought he might not make it out.

"I just kept trying to squirm my way through like a little worm through its hole--once I finally made it through I just though, I've made it this far I'm going to keep going."

Once he got through he swam up the turret and opened the top hatch. He had been underwater for nearly two minutes.

"I didn't want to die like that, I didn't want my mom to get a phone call like that," he says, shuddering, "But you're life kind of does flash before your eyes, it does, I'll tell you it does."

While Alpha Company spends the next few hours trying to tow the sunken $5 million Bradley out of the canal, the soldiers of Bravo Company load into their vehicles and head back to base.

As we ride back in the darkness, I think about the Bradley plunging into the canal and the fear those soldiers must have felt as their 32-ton metal box filled with water. It was in these kind of moments over the last year that the soldiers of the 1st Armored Division have had to learn to exist, young men barely out of their teens, making excruciatingly permanent choices over and over that will define the rest of their lives--if they're lucky enough to live through them.

Who can blame them for not eating the Charms?

Discuss

Kevin 9:28 AM