FROM SMALLEST TO largest unit, the infantry is organized like this: team, squad, platoon, company, battalion, brigade, division, corps, Army. I was assigned to the 2nd Prophet Team of 3rd Platoon, Delta Company, 311th Military Intelligence (MI) Battalion attached to 3rd Brigade in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). Soldiers in the 101st are known as the Screaming Eagles. (They used to take an eagle as a mascot into battle with them.) Soldiers in 3rd Brigade (187) of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) are known as Rakkasans. It’s a name they earned from the Japanese during World War II; it means “falling umbrellas.” That’s presumably how the Japanese saw them as they parachuted from the sky.
I am proud to be a Rakkasan and proud to be part of the Screaming Eagles. The Screaming Eagles have a great tradition. I’ll be proud of this for the rest of my life. If anyone ever asks: “What unit in the Army were you in?” I’ll be able to say I was in the 101st and people will know right away what I’m talking about.
“That’s Fort Campbell,” they will say. “They served with pride in Vietnam and World War II.”
But when it comes to day-to-day life, your team is what counts.
The team is the smallest and most fundamental unit in the military. During any deployment, it is almost always the most important. When you get deployed, your whole life—everything—is intimately bound up with the people on your team. These are the people with whom you live, sleep, work, eat, fight. You know them better than you know your lover or your spouse. You know what music they like. You know what they eat. You know their shitting habits. And you trust them with your life. You have to.
So if there’s a problem within your team, it can be extremely difficult.
I was assigned to a team, but the team shifted several times over the course of the next few months. So I and the people I went to war with never really got a chance to know one another before we left for Iraq.
A Korean linguist, Specialist Geoff Quinn showed up from Korea but then left for a leadership development course for new noncommissioned officers. He returned in December as a brand-new E-5. A buck sergeant with no real leadership experience who tended to rub people the wrong way.
When we did the PMCS (preventive maintenance checks and services) on our truck, for instance, he filled every single thing to the top—including the radiator fluid.
I told him, “You don’t do that.”
“I’m a sergeant. You’re a specialist. I don’t see why I should listen to what you have to say.”
“But you’ve never PMCSed a truck before. And I have.”
Of course, when SGT (Sergeant) Quinn started the truck, radiator fluid burst out everywhere.
And then our team leader got in my face.
“Why did you let him do that?”
“Let him? I couldn’t stop him! He wouldn’t listen to me!”
(One positive thing I can say about Sergeant Quinn. He got better over time. He did learn. It just took awhile.)
So Quinn was no buffer for our team leader’s weaknesses.
Our team leader, SSG (Staff Sergeant) Moss, had not been at Fort Campbell when I first arrived. She’d returned to DLI in California for an intermediate Arabic course. So I didn’t meet her right away, but I met people who knew her. They’d laugh about her, but I had no idea why.
Then SSG Moss returned. A small woman who looked confused all the time. She immediately made clear how much she loved physical training. She’d burst out: “Hooah PT! Hooah PT! Hooah PT!” (Hooah in this context meaning “Awesome.”)
That fall, we practiced our deployment. We loaded our equipment on our truck. Got it weighed. Got it ready for rail-loading. We banded our equipment with metal bands so it wouldn’t shift around or fall out. We taped the lights. Simple things. But SSG Moss had a very hard time. She never quite grasped that the bands had to go around the equipment and through rings on the truck. She banded the equipment to itself or to other equipment.
SSG Moss also thought we could fit more equipment inside a space than was possible. She drew up a load plan and then taped the plan to the outside of our truck. This enabled us to see immediately what was inside. But she never seemed able to gauge proportions accurately; she was determined to fit larger items inside smaller ones.
We gently informed her: “That obviously won’t work.”
She always responded with the same puzzled answer.
“Why not?”
“Look at it!”
It also worried me when she discussed the fate of her previous truck.
“Cursed,” SSG Moss said. “Every time we went on a field problem, that truck got stuck in the mud.”
“Who else drove the truck besides you when it got stuck in the mud?”
“Um, no one.”
“But the truck was cursed?”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t think your driving might have had something to do with it?”
SSG Moss did not make me feel safe at all.
The fourth and final member of our team showed up only in January. Like Sergeant Quinn, Specialist Lauren Collins was a Korean linguist; she came to us directly from her advanced individual training in Texas. Less than five feet tall, she looked like the sweetest little thing.
I have the most vivid first impression of Lauren.
Lauren had been at Fort Campbell for less than two hours when Sergeant First Class (SFC) Fuller chucked a football right at her, missing her face by inches.
SFC Fuller liked to throw footballs at people. No fewer than three times, he hit me in the back of the head. He wanted soldiers to buck up. He wanted us to act tough. Be strong. A lot of people hated SFC Fuller.
“I will kick your fucking ass!” Lauren yelled at him.
Everyone froze. SFC Fuller was three ranks above her. He grabbed her and started to drag her from the room. We were convinced he planned to kill her. Start beating on her right then and there.
Instead he told her: “I like to push people. Nobody has ever reacted to me the way you did. I really respect that. You’ve got one big pair of balls.”
So that’s my first impression of Lauren. One big pair of balls.
I’d had discomfort in my right foot since June, but the Army took its time with a medical diagnosis. Soldiers always attempted to sham injuries. Cry wolf. So the Army tended to stall diagnoses until things got serious.
My diagnosis was Morton’s neuroma. In the ball of the foot there are nerve bundles that run and split down into the toes. A nerve bundle in my right foot was inflamed and, over time, the inflammation caused scarring in the nerve bundle.
I was given a choice. I could get immediate surgery and not deploy with my unit. I would probably miss the war and remain nondeployable until I was completely recovered. Or I could deploy and deal with the pain in Iraq with occasional cortisone shots.
I refused to deploy late. I would take the shots and put off the surgery.
Our unit deployed in February 2003. As world opinion spun on its axis away from support for the invasion of Iraq, we spun in the opposite direction—closer and closer to absolute certainty. We would go to war because that was the way it worked. We had signed a contract. We had given our word. It might not mean too much to give your word anymore, but that did not mean we would not keep ours.
For the longest time, though, we kept hearing the same refrain.
“There is no deployment order for the division.”
We responded: “Uh-huh. But we are going to deploy?”
“No. There is no deployment order for the division.”
“See those railroad cars with our trucks on them? Those cars are going to Jacksonville to get on a boat and take our trucks to Kuwait. That means we are going somewhere.”
“No. There is no deployment order for the division.”
“Just admit it! Tell us something like: ‘Hey, look. We can’t give you any dates. We can’t give you any specifics. But we all know it’s going to happen, so be ready for it.’ Just say it!”
“There is no deployment order for the division. But you’d better go get your anthrax shot. Make sure your will is up-to-date. Get a power of attorney. Please update your life insurance policies. Be sure to set up automatic bill payments. Get a smallpox shot. And you females? If and when the order comes, be prepared to pee in a cup for your pregnancy test.”
“Quit lying to us! A duffel bag with all our extra gear has already gone to the Middle East. We’ve been told to pack personal hygiene equipment for six months! We went to Wal-Mart and spent three hundred dollars on binoculars, batteries, cameras, books, and a solar shower! Extra fucking everything! And you’re trying to tell us we’re not going anywhere?”
“Roger that. There is no deployment order for the division.”
Then the deployment order for the division was announced on CNN. It was lunchtime, and everybody’s phones all started to ring at once. So we checked it. We went to CNN.com and printed out the web page where it said the deployment order for the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell had been published.
Our lieutenant came into the office. We confronted her with the news.
“So the deployment order is out.”
She shook her head. “There is no deployment order for the division.”
“It was on CNN. A major is quoted as saying that the division is getting deployed.”
She got flustered. “Well, what does he know? Who’s this major anyway?”
“He’s the fucking public affairs officer! He’s the person authorized to speak to the press for the division!”
“There…there’s…” She stammered. “There is no official deployment order until we’ve had a formation and had a chance to announce it to you.”
FTA. We said it all the time. Some soldiers even took a Sharpie and wrote it on their duffels or their helmets or boots—any damn place they could find. Fuck the Army.
A week later I left for Kuwait as part of the advance party for our unit. Zoe drove me to post that day. It was a Sunday. A light snow fell. I had a rucksack and one duffel bag. My second duffel had already gone with our trucks.
We hugged a tearless good-bye.
“Now don’t go and start the invasion without us. Be safe.”
Except for a brief time in Kuwait, I wouldn’t see Zoe again for six months. Until after the war proper ended, and the president had stood on an aircraft carrier in front of a banner that announced: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.