One Bullet Away

When we returned to the carport, I sat down to figure out what to say to the captain. He was a bad combat leader but not a bad person. It didn’t seem right to hold poor decisions under fire against him. To a greater or lesser extent, we had all made such mistakes. But vindictive decisions after the fighting was over were another matter. I thought the captain had a grudge against Wynn.

When I went back to the captain’s office, he looked up wearily.

“Sir, I feel obligated to warn you that you’ll have most of your company in revolt if you relieve Gunny Wynn,” I said.

This time he asked me to take a seat. To his credit, he listened while I explained that relieving Wynn over my objections meant that he no longer had faith in my judgment. If that was the case, then he should relieve me, too. When I hesitated, he waved a hand for me to continue. “Sir, we’re almost on our way home,” I said. “The company did its job and nobody died. Can’t we just let it go and get back to our lives?”

Gunny Wynn kept his job, and I kept mine.

On a Friday afternoon in May, I gathered the platoon at the center of the carport. I had been working on a secret project for the previous week — wrangling permission from the division for a visit to the ancient city of Babylon. Colonel Ferrando pressed hard on our behalf, and almost unbelievably, it was granted. After major combat ended, the First Marine Expeditionary Force moved its headquarters to one of Saddam’s palaces near the town of Hillah, seventy miles north of Ad Diwaniyah. The palace overlooked Babylon’s ruins. Part of my desire came from studying the classics in college. I had tramped through crumbling cities in Greece, Italy, Spain, and North Africa. But nothing compared to joining the handful of Westerners who, in the past thirty years, had visited one of the ancient world’s greatest cities. Part of it, too, was the welcome change of pace for the Marines and a chance to go home with memories of something truly good. Seeing Babylon was a way to get out from behind the gun sight.

We left Paige at seven o’clock the next morning. Iraqi vendors lined both sides of the road, hawking beer, AK bayonets, Arab porn, and crude Iraqi flags of painted canvas. We disciplined ourselves to stop only for two coolers filled with sodas and a bunch of ripe bananas. Turning north on Highway 1, the platoon accelerated. Army supply convoys lumbered along in the slow lane as we flashed past on their left. Hikers in San Diego joke about not needing to outrun mountain lions; they only have to outrun other hikers. The same principle applied on Iraq’s highways. For a month or two, though, the roads were mostly safe. The war had ended, and the insurgency hadn’t yet begun. Still, when I briefed the Marines about the trip, I acknowledged that some of them might think it foolish to take the risk of going sightseeing. Anyone who preferred not to come was free to stay at Paige. They all chose Babylon.

The exit toward Hillah led us through miles and miles of palm groves. Holes in the frond canopy marked where American planes had blasted Iraqi tanks. Fresh growth would soon cover the blackened patches of earth, and maybe someday tourists would poke at the rusting hulks as they do in the South Pacific and Normandy. Closer to Babylon, we noticed changes in the modest homes along the road. A stainless steel Sub-Zero refrigerator dominated the front yard of a one-room mud hut. Slabs of pink marble and two ornate wardrobes stood near another. A decrepit Datsun pickup truck held a crystal chandelier. It looked as though a palace had been looted.

We rounded a bend in the dirt road and saw a building like a science-fiction fantasy atop the only hill for miles around. Part fortress and part castle, it tapered as it climbed, squat but ornate. It shone in the sunlight, punctuated by gaping black windows. That first view of a presidential palace conjured up all the dark mysteries of Saddam’s Iraq. Dinner parties with lines of black limousines, sparkling lights and music reaching out across the palm groves. I imagined hammered brass trays piled with steaming meat and vegetables, cavernous baths, and a harem. I thought also of forced labor, torture, and executions. The building exuded a bit of each of these things. An American flag hung in the highest window.

Ancient Babylon spread across the plains beneath the palace. The city had been excavated by Germans a century earlier and its treasures carted off to Berlin. Most of what remained was, like the palace, a fantasy. Saddam had reconstructed Babylon not according to any archaeological evidence, but to tickle his own fancy. Crenellated walls and soaring towers crowned the bricks of the original ruins. Once each year, the regime had held a ceremony in Babylon to celebrate Iraq’s glory. Saddam himself had played the role of King Nebuchadnezzar.