Hillah, Iraq.
[knock knock knock]
I must have slept through my alar
m.
[knock knock knock]
“Sir, you have a phone call.”
I grabbed the flashlight, and found that it was 0300. I quickly dressed, and went to the team room. I picked up the phone, and spoke to the Special Forces duty officer in Baghdad. He asked, “Are you located at Camp Stack or Camp Charlie?”
“Camp Charlie,” I replied.
“……………..I see. There has been a bit of confusion on that issue.”
“I am sorry to hear that.” I said.
“If you don’t get helicopters, are you going on the mission tonight?”
“No.”
“If you get helicopters tomorrow night, can you do the mission then?”
“Probably not,” I said. “The informant is being flown in from Baghdad. I will find out if he is available tomorrow night.”
“OK, let’s plan for that.”
Seeing that there was nothing I could do to further the situation, I went back to bed.Much later, we learned that some Air Force staff officer had it in his mind that all the Green Berets and Anglicos were over at Camp Stack, which has a tiny and unusable helicopter landing zone. The Air Force officer never read any of the paperwork, and canceled the mission based on his assumptions.I got up at 0700 to check my email. There were sixteen messages. One was from my colonel in Diwaniyah. He insisted that it was extremely unlikely that I would ever get a helicopter borne assault. I beg to differ. In a most respectful manner. Sir.
All but the last three emails constituted an impressive display of aggressive finger pointing, defiant shifting of blame, and ninja quality backstabbing.
“Forward Air Controllers can’t contact the squadrons directly.”
“Yes, they can. But we are shifting away from that.”
“Well, we noticed that he didn’t use the right form.”
“Hey, that form hasn’t been approved yet. They are still supposed to use the old form.”
Ad nauseam.
The last three messages were:
3. From Air Planning: Mission is approved.
2. From Helo Squadron: Squadron no longer has adequate time to plan.
1. From Air Planning: Mission scrubbed because squadron can’t support.
So…..time for breakfast.
Later in the day, the area commander for Special Forces paid us a visit. This in itself is not particularly unusual, but today he came with a purpose. The Major stated that the Green Beret colonel in charge of all the Special Forces in Iraq found out that one of his teams could not get assets that were available due to an administrative error. The colonel had made his views on the matter known to the air planning staff, and he made it quite clear that we were to be given every air asset that we requested. Further, we were given another mission for the night following the helo assault. The Major wanted us to arrest an arms dealer. This was an equally challenging problem. The arms dealer had an early warning system consisting of lookouts with cell phones. The Green Berets asked me if I could arrange a particular national level asset to enhance our chances for success. There seems to be a law that the more you need an asset, the more likely it is to be unavailable. Now that I had a substantial amount of paperwork to generate, our secure email went down, requiring me to journey all the way to the other side of the camp, home of the signals battalion detachment. ‘Detachment’ is a grand name for four dudes in a trailer. The corporal and three privates are responsible for keeping electronic channels open for the camp. Apparently, the associated equipment does not require much attention, as I have yet to see these four soldiers do anything but watch movies.I have taken to wearing predominantly shorts and tshirts (and flip flops, since my Tevas broke), reserving my uniform for special occasions, like fighting the war. My repeated visits to the communications trailer generated a certain level of discomfort, mostly as a result of having to interrupt the movies so they could let Staff Sergeant and me in. But I was also an unknown element to them. The military offers instant social standing in the form of a rank structure, and generally you can tell rather quickly where you are in relation to another. I was not wearing any rank whatsoever, as I consider uniform devices on tshirts to be rather gauche, so they had no clear idea of what I was. They figured out that I was an officer because Staff Sergeant kept calling me “sir”. Finally, one of them asked,
“Um….so…what are you? Sir?”
“I am a Lieutenant Commander.”
“Lieutenant Commander…..” he replied, rolling the words around.
I waited for a bit, then answered the obvious question,
“The same as a major.”
“Oh. Well, you must have made rank really fast.”
“What do you mean?”, I asked.
“Well, you look really young for a major, sir.”
Staff Sergeant asked, “How old do you think he is?”
“Twenty six. Maybe twenty seven.”
“I will be thirty eight next year.” I said, grinning.
“BullS#!t, sir.”
“No, really. Here is my ID.”
And I felt really, really great the rest of the day.
I made the round trip across camp several times that day, generating traffic to the helo squadrons, as well as to the liaison officer for the national level asset. I fielded one from my colonel who offered congratulations for getting the helicopter assault request approved, but flatly stated that I would never get the national level asset, a fact that he guaranteed. As in, “I guarantee you will never get [the national level asset].” As the afternoon wore on, the pieces fell into place. The assault helicopters would arrive tomorrow night tonight shortly after sunset, followed by the gunships. The air crews would come over to the team room for briefings, and then things would kick into high gear. Hoo boy. Helicopter borne assault. Right on.I checked my email before dinner. I included my colonel in my reply thanking the liaison officer for finalizing our upcoming mission, telling the liaison how much I appreciate his efforts, and how much I was looking forward to working with them. I treated myself to peach pie for dessert.