Our quarters in the new camp were by no means lavish, but they were comfortable. Three of us shared half a building with a Marine civil affairs team, who themselves did not take up much space, so there was plenty of room to stretch out. The plywood structure covered an area about six meters wide and twenty-four meters long, with a central living space furnished with a television and shelves full of toiletries and magazines. Known as SEA huts, or Southeast Asia huts, the buildings were cheap and quick to construct in a simple style popular with the military since Vietnam. Outside, the building’s white paint reflected the sun and some dusty tarps draped over the peaked roof kept the rare rain showers out. Similarly constructed buildings along a central walkway housed a post office and small post exchange. Some resourceful residents of a neighboring barracks had built a patio from tank treads and a couch from sandbags.
The most interesting aspect of Al Qa’im was that the camp had been set up inside an abandoned train station. Railroad tracks still ran unused through the middle of camp, the empty hulks of giant grain cars that once passed over them parked where they’d been dropped years ago. The massive bays of the locomotive maintenance building housed a motor pool where blown-up Humvees were patched together or scavenged for parts.
One of the passenger cars had been converted into a small chapel called the “Soul Train.” Inside I found only a table and a few rows of plastic lawn chairs, but walking inside, I felt very peaceful. I hadn’t attended any religious services for a long time, yet I was reminded by the Spartan surroundings how little a building matters to one’s faith. The peaceful atmosphere made me want to be more thankful for the things I did have: eyes to experience the beauty of a desert sunrise, an Iridium satellite phone to call my family whenever I wanted, and friends I would die for … if I had to. Life seemed more precious since I’d realized how fragile and transient it could be.
I wandered around the camp enjoying the coolness of morning, trying to get a feel of where to find the all-important internet café, showers, and chow hall. Fortunately all three were within walking distance of the hut. The internet café was dark and cramped, filled with benches of Marines cradling their rifles and waiting their turn at one of the few laptop kiosks glowing along the walls. I took a number from the front desk and joined in their game of “musical bench,” sliding down to make room for the next man as stations opened up.
When I got to my station, I was dismayed to find several keys vacant from the keyboard. Evidently the vandals who’d covered the desk in graffiti liked to pick apart the equipment, too. Luckily I found that if I pressed hard enough on the nub where the keys had been I could type most of the missing letters. I logged into my email and waited for the page to load. The connection was so slow that by the time I’d finished half an email, my twenty minutes had expired, and I walked out mildly frustrated at having stayed so long and accomplished nothing.
I’ll have to prewrite my emails and save them on a thumb drive, I reluctantly surmised, shaking my head as I walked back to the hut to see if Cat needed any help with his capabilities brief.
A good brief to the commander, we’d learned from the stories told by our compatriots returning from the war, could make or break a TPT when integrating with their supported unit. We needed to be sure we made a good first impression and let the commander know exactly what PSYOP could accomplish and the applications in which we were most effective. I stepped through the door of the hut. Cat hunched over his laptop, his forehead furrowed in concentration.
“Take a look at this, man. Tell me what you think.”
We were all familiar with the presentation, having rehearsed it together back home, but Cat wanted it to be perfect. I couldn’t imagine that with his outgoing personality he was nervous about briefing the battalion commander, but I didn’t see anything wrong with the PowerPoint, either.
“Looks good. Do you want to run through it one time?”
Lieutenant Colonel Dooney had the furrowed brow of an overworked man. A moustache flecked with gray underlined the battalion commander’s gaunt features. He looked up from a desk covered in paperwork to welcome us into his small office. The battalion sergeant major stood next to him. In a gruff voice, he commanded, “Show us what you got, PSYOPs.” His bald head and stocky features gave the impression he might once have been a wrestler.
Cat gestured toward the screen of the laptop I placed on a small table in front of them.
“Sir, I’d like to introduce my team and give you a brief overview of our capabilities as a tactical PSYOP team and some suggestions how we might best help achieve your intent.”
Colonel Dooney nodded slightly and greeted us politely, if humorlessly, as Cat introduced Josh and me.
Cat clicked through the slides as he discussed the limitations and advantages of our speaker truck and how our team could help not only induce surrender of the enemy, but also be employed in crowd control and tactical deception or harassment operations. He spoke briefly about our weapons systems and the disadvantages of a long approval process for new handbills and the distant location of our product development detachment in Ramadi.
“We are not just leaflets and loudspeakers, sir, although we certainly have that capability. We are trained to provide both lethal and nonlethal fires to positively influence the audiences in your area of operations and counter enemy disinformation. We are, sir, simply put, a conduit for your voice to be heard on the battlefield.”
The colonel eyed Cat thoughtfully. “Very nice, Sergeant. We can certainly use you. I hope you are ready to hit the ground running. Get with Major Knight. I think he has something for you.”
Major Knight was the battalion operations officer, one of the commander’s most trusted aides. We walked down the hall to the operations center to see if we could find him. Computers and radios covered every flat surface and maps of the area around the camp reached to every corner. A group of Marines stood around a large projection screen, engrossed in the black-and-white video of an Iraqi town seen from above. It was drone footage, streaming live from a remotely piloted flying robot. I looked around the room for anyone operating a joystick, but didn’t see him.
“Is Major Knight around here?” Cat asked.
“In there.” One of the Marines in the semicircle indicated with a pointed finger the side office with an open door. “You guys army?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Cat. “We’re your new TPT.”
A cloud of confusion darkened the Marine’s face. He didn’t understand the acronym. “Are you part of the task force?” he wondered, referring to the Special Forces contingent on the other side of the camp.
“No, sir,” I added. “We’re PSYOP. That’s our speaker truck out front.”
“Oh! Well, welcome aboard. We’re glad to have you.”
“Thank you. Good to be here.”
In a service characterized by intense personalities, Major Knight stood out as a soft-spoken and level-headed Marine. Sparks of intelligence glittered in his eyes. He informed us there would be a mission going out to a nearby cement plant the next day, and advised us to talk with Captain Lund, the commander of Kilo Company, one of the Marine infantry companies stationed on the base.
Unlike the major, Captain Lund epitomized intense personality. Even his walk seemed emphatic, determined, and his mannerisms were that of a rushed man with much to do and little time in which to do it. He was conferring with one of his lieutenants over a map in their combination bedroom-office when we found him.
“Basically,” he informed us, stabbing at the map with his finger, “our mission will be to make our presence known to the people in the areas surrounding the base, and to gather any intelligence we can while doing so.”
Insurgent mortar cells in the towns around us had been targeting the base, and anything we could do to reduce their effectiveness might save American lives. We could expect our operational tempo to be very high because the battalion covered such a huge area with so few troops. Cat dropped off our battle roster information with him and the captain mentioned a time to return for a rehearsal of the mission.
Ali, unfortunately, had not traveled with us to Al Qa’im, leaving us without a translator. After Barwanah he’d decided working with the Americans was too dangerous and stayed in Al Asad to take his paycheck and go home. Cat strode back into the headquarters building to make a deal with civil affairs to borrow one of their translators while Josh and I stocked the truck with water and double-checked that the radios and all our equipment functioned properly.
I liked that the Marines seemed to be visual learners. Planning army operations involves a lot of PowerPoint and paperwork, but the Marines’ approach was efficient and direct. When we returned for the rehearsal, a Marine sergeant handed out a single sheet of paper to each of us that included the timeline, objectives, and pertinent radio frequencies of each element participating in the mission. A large terrain model built into a sandbox roughly replicated the countryside surrounding our base with different colored strings and wooden blocks representing roads and buildings. The rehearsal was simple yet professional, and when it was over everyone knew exactly what was supposed to happen, down to the lowest-ranking private.
Still, I felt restless. There is a saying in the army that no plan survives first contact. As I lay in bed thinking about what might go wrong on the next day’s mission, I listened uncomfortably to the distant echoes of explosions and gunfire I soon learned was a massive attack on Camp Gannon, a small outpost guarding the Syrian border town of Husaybah, and the impact of rockets on the Haditha dam. They were the sounds of people dying, and Marines earning Purple Hearts.