One Bullet Away

I wanted to help them. Leaving the neighborhood earlier had smacked of abandonment. It had eaten at me during the drive along the dike and through the palms. We were out there to do more than sight-see and wave the flag. I wanted to make good on my own assertion that Americans had to give concrete gifts to the Iraqi people. An action then, in the first week of the occupation, was worth a thousand speeches about the virtues of democracy or the evil of the fallen regime. The citizens of Salih Hasan believed that their livelihoods, if not their lives, were under attack. For them, our lone Marine platoon was American power personified. We could make everything right. Leaving them would be a symbolic desertion they weren’t likely to forget.

And yet we had a mission. We had been tasked with planting our feet in each of the zone’s four corners and with reporting back on what was happening in all of it. Spending the night in one small village seemed, at the time, like a misallocation of our scarce resources. I reasoned that looters, seeing Salih Hasan protected, would simply move down the road to the next town. We couldn’t ambush them. Since the end of open hostilities, force was permitted only in self-defense or to save a life. Thievery, from the skewed perspective of the occupiers, was regrettable but legal. When I told the men that we couldn’t stay with them, they didn’t protest. Stoicism is a common quality among Iraqis. No wailing, complaining, or arguing. Just a nod of resignation. They are a people accustomed to neglect. I promised we would return the next day and second-guessed myself all the way up the road.

As it turned out, we didn’t get very far. Delays in the palm grove and at the neighborhood checkpoint kept us from reaching the amusement park in daylight. We drove south as darkness deepened, trying to gain a little more situational awareness before settling into a patrol base for the night. In my mind, the plan was changing. It was apparent that neighborhood watches were functioning in almost every community. Armed Iraqis guarding their homes and armed Marines moving in the dark would be a volatile combination. I decided to find a safe place to harbor the platoon for the night and punch out a team on a foot patrol to do some snooping. We found a perfect spot along the canal where we had earlier detoured around the ditch. Instead of driving right up to it, we passed by and watched it for a few minutes before moving back under the cover of darkness.

Perched high above the surrounding fields sat the remnants of an Iraqi antiaircraft artillery position. The gun emplacements were abandoned, but their sandbags and commanding views made the place easily defendable. We pulled the Humvees into a rough circle on the concrete pad and set out concertina wire. A .50-caliber machine gun pointed down each section of the dike we’d driven in on, while the Mark-19s aimed out over the fields, ready to drop grenades down below. We towered thirty feet above everything around us, protected by concrete walls. The place was a natural fortress. I laid out my infrared strobe light and an infrared buzz saw. If we were attacked, I would simply mark our position and let aircraft obliterate anything beyond. The Marines began a watch rotation, while I radioed a situation report, or SITREP, to the battalion.

“Godfather, this is Hitman Two. Stand by to copy SITREP.”

“Hitman Two, this is Godfather. We have you loud and clear. Standing by to copy.”

“Patrol base location Mike Bravo 4153 9920.” I read our exact position from the map in case we needed artillery support during the night, then went on to outline some of what we’d learned that day. As the battalion radio operator read the map coordinates back to me, I thought of the warm room at the power plant, hot coffee, and the Marines updating the status board. I hoped Major Whitmer heard our call and knew where we were.

“Godfather, we plan to remain in place for the night. One foot patrol, call sign Hitman Two-Two, will investigate PIRs as briefed. How copy?” PIRs were priority information requirements — all the little details the division tasked recon with learning. Ours included the locations of schools and hospitals, the trafficability of roads, and anything we could learn about the amusement park.

When the battalion had agreed to the plan, I joined Gunny Wynn and Sergeant Reyes to plot the foot patrol. The missions I couldn’t go on were always the worst. It was easy to order the platoon into danger when I was riding with them. That was our job. There was a gung-ho camaraderie in it, a glee in scoffing at the safety-conscious, risk-averse, seat-belt-and-safety-goggle culture that had raised us. After all, I would be right there at the front, in as much danger as anyone, sometimes more. An instructor at Quantico had told me that officers got paid to be gophers: when all the sane people were burrowing in the dirt, it was an officer’s job to poke his head up and see what was happening.