In previous wars, you were on this side of the line. You shot anything or anybody out there on the other side of the line. In that respect, the modern soldier was not so different from the one of a century ago or, for that matter, from the Roman Centurion in first-century Judea. Today’s ground pounder could readily identify with the American 1st Cavalry in Vietnam’s Ia Drang valley, with the “Big Red One” slogging through Italy during World War II, or even with General Washington’s troops crossing the Delaware. It was the foot soldier’s task to find, fix, and kill the enemy while avoiding having the same thing done to him.
Things in this war, however, didn’t seem all that simple. Rather than clarifying things, the new Rules of Engagement (ROE) left the Joes confused and uncertain, afraid that if they made a mistake and shot at the wrong time they might be charged with murder after the fact by people far removed from the reality of what things were really like.
“It’s a question of proportionality of return fires if the enemy initiates contact with you,” was how ROE classes went at Fort Drum. “If, on the other hand, you initiate the contact, the question you must consider concerns the collateral damage you may inflict.”
Huh?
Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery broke it down for his Second Platoon. “That means you can’t go around shooting up everybody. If some asshole takes a shot at you from a house, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can blow it up or burn it down. Say a dozen ragheads use innocent civilians as a shield and open fire on us, we don’t blast back and take the chance of harming innocent citizens.”
“So what do we do? Let the fuckers kill us?”
“To win this war, we have to win hearts and minds,” ROE instructors stressed. “We’re dedicated to liberating the Iraqi people, not killing them. We accomplish that through kindness and understanding.”
“And,” someone added, “a 5.56 round through the head.”
“That’s a bad attitude to go over there with, soldier.”
“You still haven’t told us what we’re supposed to do—let ’em kill us while we play nicey-nice?”
During the battle handoff and transition phase, Lt. Colonel Infanti’s 809-member task force composed of his 4th Battalion, elements from the Iraqi Army, and small detachments from other U.S. units moved in with the 101st to occupy the FOBs at Mahmudiyah and at Yusufiyah, where Infanti would establish Battalion Headquarters before stretching out to build what would become the first Coalition presence in parts of The Triangle of Death.
FOB Yusufiyah consisted of a pair of large concrete-block buildings surrounded by ten-foot-tall cement blast walls and razor wire. An electrical fire had gutted one of the buildings earlier that year, forcing some soldiers and activities into large GP tents out in the yard. The surrounding terrain was mostly flat, desert-looking, with a few date palms growing along the banks of numerous canals. The town of Yusufiyah began outside the walls with a scattering of businesses and residences along a single thoroughfare.
FOB Mahmudiyah was similar to the one at Yusufiyah, except it enclosed more ground, the walls were higher, and a Bradley fighting vehicle blocked the gate. Iraqi flags, not American ones, flew over both bases and would fly over all new positions. After all, this was Iraq and not U.S. territory.
At first, things were relatively quiet, about like two fighters checking each other out from their corners before the bell rang. Here and there, hate-filled stares and graffti splashed in red paint on a wall—DOWN TO USA—reminded the newcomers of the danger seething beneath the surface. The Joes were already apprehensive not only about the danger but also about what might be required of them and whether or not they could measure up to it. To that was added cultural shock. The “fertile crescent” was not nearly as fertile as GIs on their first combat tour to Iraq imagined it to be.
“Some people believe the Garden of Eden was located in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley,” observed PFC William “Big Willy” Hendrickson, twenty, who wanted to go on to college after he left the service and eventually teach history. “Can you believe it? We’ve invaded the Garden of Eden!”
Houses in the towns and villages belonging to the common people were mainly mud brick and cinderblock built low to the ground, tan or brown and rendered otherwise almost colorless by the scouring effects of sand and desert winds. The squalid structures contained little furniture and sometimes almost no food. Family members of all ages and sexes slept in single rooms on thin blankets spread on the floor, or on the rooftops when the night heat of summer became unbearable.
Running water was for the most part a luxury enjoyed by few, especially in the more rural villages and communities. Stripped-down Russian tanks sat jacked up on blocks in vacant lots, the Iraqi version of hillbilly pickup trucks in the Ozarks. Trash and garbage filled the yards and choked off streets. Raw sewage filled the air with the pungent odors of human refuse and decay. In the open-air markets—and every community had one—piles of skinned and boiled sheep heads attracted swarms of greenhead flies. Plucked dead chickens and skinned goat carcasses hanging from racks drew even more flies.
“How do you suppose they cook that stuff?” PFC Alfredo “Chiva” Lares wondered. He was a solidly built Latino from California who wanted to be a cop when he got out of the army.
“Nasty fucking stuff, ain’t it?” his buddy PFC Robert Pool said. “Maybe they season it with flies.”
Most of the Iraqi men wore Western clothing accessorized by dingy red-and-white shemaghs, the multipurpose headscarf adopted by Middle Eastern males. Children up to a certain age went bare-headed. Women were less than stylish in form-concealing robes, mostly black, with their heads and often their faces covered.
“Some of the young Iraqi girls are real hotties, but they grow up into old hags,” soldiers of the 101st sagely advised their replacements.
PFC Byron Fouty was doubtful. “How can you tell the hotties from the hags, what with all the bed sheets they’re wearing?”
People traveled by foot almost everywhere they went; nearly everything they needed was within walking distance. Cows, geese, donkeys, hairy goats, sheep, and children wandered about, rooting through trash and the occasional abandoned Toyota. Women and girls sometimes stood begging on the flat tops of their houses with their palms up and extended.
“Come on down here, honey,” soldiers muttered to themselves. “We’ll treat you right.”
Polar Bear commanders and senior NCOs at all levels, from Brigade down to platoons, met with their 101st counterparts during the transition, picked their brains, sat in on war council briefings and conducted “left seat-right seat” operations in which incoming and outgoing peers pulled missions together before transferring command authority from one to the other. The relieved unit passed down voluminous briefing books, maps, operating procedures, patrol routes, and other essential intelligence, along with a set of fully functional bases in which vital preparations like security walls, food services, and blast-resistant barracks had largely been completed.
Inevitably, a lot of valuable information was lost whenever a new unit replaced a veteran one. Although some commanders made concerted efforts to preserve intelligence relating to local insurgent groups and pass it on, what usually happened was that incoming officers and analysts ended up developing their own leads and sources. It was like inventing the wheel all over again. There was just too much information to be digested in a short time.
One afternoon, Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery and his counterpart linked up with a four-vehicle route reconnaissance and familiarization patrol from Yusufiyah to the Jurf Sukr Bridge. Much of the road to the Euphrates was dirt or gravel before it reached the bridge and turned into the bleached macadam designated as Route Malibu by army planners. Malibu Road curved alongside the river from roughly south toward the north.
Montgomery had expected the Euphrates to be a great waterway like the Mississippi or the Nile. Instead, it was rather narrow, often shallow, muddy, and so slow moving in many places that it was practically stagnant. How could such a sorry excuse for a river have ever spawned “the cradle of civilization”?
The little convoy stopped at the bridge. Malibu Road had earned a sinister reputation for itself.
“This is as far as we go,” Montgomery’s counterpart announced. “We get blown up every time we go there—so we stopped going.”
Montgomery got out of his hummer, fired up a cigarette, and stood looking up the road. Built into a bed from the surrounding lowlands, it didn’t strike the sergeant as particularly ominous, not in the full light of day. But thick groves of date palms, eucalyptus trees, and patches of reeds higher than a man’s head lined either side of the road where there were no farm houses. Shifting patterns of shadow might easily conceal killers waiting for troops to venture into their domain.
“We’ll drive any road in Iraq,” said the 101st sergeant, squinting into the forbidden lands, “but when we’re called to drive Malibu, we’re scared. You will never control that road. If you try, all of you will die.”