Hillah, Iraq.
Tonight we went hunting IEDs. This did not seem like an inspired piece of planning to my untrained mind. Actually, we were going to hunt people setting up IEDs, which even upon clarification of our mission, did not stand out as a remarkable bit of clever thinking. Presumably, booger eaters planting IEDs would have foresight to bring some IEDs with them, and there really isn’t a good way to fight an IED. ‘Fighting an IED’ is a lot like fighting a very large and threatening rock with a bat. Wail away as you please, but the rock has only to roll over on you and you have copped it. But the effort must be made, and a presence patrol was the order of the day. The IED attacks of late have been concentrated in a reasonably nearby area on a highway leading south of Baghdad. The influx of foreign fighters, primarily from Iran, have brought more powerful and sophisticated plans and materiel for manufacturing IEDs. Setting up an IED is not like something done out of the Spy Hunter video game. The process takes time, and we hoped that an increased Coalition presence on this stretch of highway would deny the area to bad guys wishing to do harm to the good guys and innocent civilians. The best suburban analogy I have: never wrap a house in toilet paper if the house is on a busy street. Ah, those heady teen angst fueled suburban delights….
The lack of participation in making a 25 Car Mix CD has proved to be a boon for me, as I picked virtually all the songs. The Staff Sergeant offered up a bunch of 80s, which suited me fine. My musical tastes are ‘eclectic’ in the way that the reject barrel at the Jelly Belly factory is ‘mixed’, but I was surprised at the positive reaction from the younger Marines, most of whom are nearly twenty years my junior. The Soundtrack of the Iraq War is Generation X diverse: punk, funk,rock, alternative, classical, rap, classic Southern rock, ska, and bagpipes. Of course, Metallica is a vehicle favorite. Then again, Metallica is a Marine Corps staple, along with chili mac and Copenhagen. Some things in this world you can count on.
In a pedestrian display of Coppola pop culture obsequiousness, our ‘roll out the gate’ song is The Ride of the Valkyries. That’s right. You heard me. Yes, it is cliche and thoroughly unimaginative. But you know that you would do the same thing, if for no other reason than to say that when you rode out of the gate into combat, you cranked Wagner, just like in that movie. Sure, I stooped to a creative low, but it is the same guilty pleasure as singing along with The Go Gos atthe top of your lungs, because even though in high school you constantly bad mouthed them as a musically insignificant and manufactured band, the fact remains that they wrote some really catchy tunes. Regarding Wagner, few things really pump you up like Gothic Opera.
The sun had long since set as we went out hunting, heralded by the sounds of Götterdämmerung. Working our way out to the highway, we headed north with increased vigilance. Driving around in Iraq is a stressful business in the best of circumstances. Every piece of trash on the road might hide an IED. Discouragingly, Iraqis are not big on litter control. That Indian would be gushing tears alongside Arabian roadways. Were that not enough, the bad guys are also building giant bombs into cars, which they park on the side of the road for the express purpose of destroying people. Similar to the litter issue, automotive reliability has not quite reached North American standards. There are broken down cars all along the road, nestled in among the Large Enough To Hide A Bomb litter piles. Nothing adds to the zesty enjoyment of a drive in the country like the realization that forty to fifty percent of the roadside could be lethal.
And now we were going looking for that stuff. I cranked the Go Gos a little louder and sang along. A few miles up the road, the Captain’s vehicle again developed mechanical troubles, and we stopped to troubleshoot it. The Anglicos pulled forward and rear security while the Green Berets circled their wagons in a wall defensive to the envy of less happy booger eaters. I took a very, very good look at the surrounding area with my NODs. Not seeing anything ‘suspicious’ (a symbolic gesture, really, as everything passes for suspicious to me in Iraq), I took a good look at the road itself, and the trash alongside it. Deeming it satisfactorily unthreatening, we kept a watch out for anything suspicious in the area, which continued to remain suspiciously unsuspicious.Standing on a roadwith a rifle in the middle of the night waiting for trouble to start was not unlike playing hide and seek when I was a kid. You get really nervous, then bored, then you hear something and get nervous, then you get bored, and then realize that you have to pee. As I finished up and returned to the vehicle, my gunner, scanning through the thermal scope, saw somebody stirring around in a house a kilometer up the road. One of the Green Beret vehicles, accompanied by the rear guard Anglico vehicle, sortied to the house, finding a farmer walking around, probably only awake to find who was playing the Go Gos so loud.
We finally got the vehicle fixed enough to divert to the nearby American camp for more repairs. We mounted up to roll. At that camp, we met with the other Green Beret team stationed there, and the mechanics began to work on the ailing car in earnest. The rest of the team members hung out by our car, listening to the music, abusing tobacco products, and generally enjoying each others’ company. We watched for shooting stars while the truck was repaired. The lack of light pollution in Iraq makes star gazing rather spectacular. The Milky Way stands out brightly, and thousands of stars can be seen. I could see most of the navigational stars, although chances are my identifications may have been wildly suspect. My Celestial Navigation Professor and I tacitly agreed that my “C” was something of a gift. The Perseids are predicted to be exceptional this year. Although they are to peak on 12 August, there were so many falling stars that I think the Perseids may be a bit eager this year. None the less, the celestial fireworks were inspiring.
The other ODA team has a new Forward Air Controller, who was roused out, and I got up off the hood to go pay a professional call on my colleague. We swapped notes on calling air and the resources in country. He, too, has found that the Special Operation (SO) air assets are difficult, at best, to work with, and he managed to find an alternate source of helicopters that he raved about. There are some Blackhawks out of Baghdad that normally just haul around VIPs, and they are looking for more interesting work. He was happy to oblige them, and spent a great deal of time listing their merits. Most happily, they do not suffer many of the restrictions placed on the SO assets. He also said they really worked to help the team, compared to the SO guys who tended to come it a bit high, as though they were doing you a favor. I got the contact information, and I can’t wait to use them.
Vehicle repaired, we called it a night, and returned to Camp Charlie. We didn’t want to continue looking for IEDs with a gimp vehicle, the first really solid bit of thinking I had come across all day.