MOSUL 20JAN09

1230: First contact with enemy forces.

I was inside an Iraqi National Police company headquarters speaking with their commander when the room was rocked with a resounding explosion. It came from right outside the building. My first thoughts were of the disposition of my humvees pulling security outside; where they had all been stationed, where I had placed my dismounts, where the alleys were and the neighboring buildings. Then, as I bolted out the door to assume direct control of my element, all I could think about was what I would see when I opened the door. The explosion was very loud and very close. All I could imagine was one of my trucks on fire with Blue Platoon corpses scattered across the street. Then, as I threw the door open, the firing started. The street was hot. We had a firefight on our hands.

Never did I imagine that my first thought in a firefight would be of immense relief, but when I finally got eyes on my element all I could feel was the pressure draining as I witnessed all of my vehicles, perfectly fine and operational, and all of my men—excited and returning fire, but all very much alive and well. Thank God for that. A quick scan of the bodies in the alley to our southwest confirmed that none of my men were down. No time for giving thanks, though; we were still engaged in a firefight with at least one insurgent and I wanted that bastard dead. My blood was up. He needed to die.

He had thrown a grenade at a National Police truck neighboring my position from a large rooftop to my immediate southwest. One National Police soldier was lying on the ground with a partially amputated leg, surprisingly quiet given his condition. Or maybe it was just too loud to hear the screaming. Two local nationals had been wounded: one older man had taken shrapnel to his leg, and one child had lost an ear to shrapnel and had taken some metal in the abdomen. I grabbed a dismount fire team, commanded by SGT Skizz (thank God I got our best for our first contact), and pushed all of us forward into the alley. My first thought was to get SSG Lark’s truck to push in first and cover our movement, but once he informed me that the attack was grenades thrown from rooftops that plan was scrapped. He’d just be an easy target. So we pushed up, six of us with minimal cover, and started clearing the building to get access to the rooftop. My first room clearing in combat. Fortunately we were met only by five very surprised office workers, all of whom quickly complied with our instructions to get down on the floor and stay there. No weapons, no ammo, and regrettably, no access to the roof from their office. So we got them all on their knees and handed them off to the National Police following us. Then we shot down to the next door, breached, and found ourselves staring right at the stairwell up. How fortuitous was that? Made my life easy, certainly. So up we went. By the time we got to the top, of course, our insurgent friend was gone. He had doubtless fled by one of the dozens of stairwells leading to every corner of what we quickly ascertained was a ridiculously large complex of individual apartments all housed under one roof. And he was gone. SGT Skizz was pretty sure he winged him, but I regret to announce that I found no blood, weapons, ammunition, or trace of the enemy when I searched the roof. And we were unable to identify him out of the dozen or so local national we rounded up inside the complex. So he got away clean. Final tally was one National Police seriously wounded, one child moderately wounded, and one civilian male lightly wounded. And our attacker was gone. Air assets pushed up too late to be of any assistance, which is a great pity because I have been so pleased with their assistance and performance to date. I wish they could have been on station or at least around when we took contact. I wish we could at least have flown a drone over ourselves during the patrol. If we had kept our eyes in the sky we could have tracked him down. There is nothing more frustrating and demoralizing than getting your blood up, having the men under your charge attacked, watching innocent bystanders bleed in an alley, and be unable to close with and destroy the enemy. But try us again, asshole. We’ll get you next time.

The only Coalition casualty, I announce with the utmost regret, was my pants. I ripped the crotch completely open when I dove for cover. This is a long-standing problem with ACU pants. I didn’t notice until the issue was brought to my attention a good half-hour later. The boxers I was wearing at the time did not have a button on the flap, so—yes, you guessed it—I spent the entire engagement exposing myself to the people of Mosul. I tactically questioned (can’t say interrogate, as we aren’t qualified to doctrinally interrogate anyone) families inside that complex in an attempt to find our attacker, and didn’t even realize that I was showing a bit more of the “vestiges of humanity” than was normally allowed. For heaven’s sake, there were children in those groups I questioned. I can’t believe nobody mentioned it. But what would you say? Your home was just the site of a grenade attack and a firefight and your living room was just breached and cleared by a fire team of American soldiers all hungry for blood. You probably aren’t going to list public indecency very high on your priority of concerns. Still. Could my life get any more ridiculous? Probably not. My commander was the one who finally pointed out that I was pointing out. How embarrassing.

Reactions after the fact were unanimous; the platoon has experienced catharsis. PFC Bourbon (a young and surprisingly gentle Kentucky soldier who serves as my RTO [carries my radio] and got married a month before we deployed to a woman he had met the month before) was downright excitable. He showed some particularly fierce killer instincts for a man who is generally so mild. PFC Devil happened to be my driver today, as we decided to give my usual team some time off to recover, and he was overjoyed that he was there when it happened. I know I shouldn’t show any favoritism to any of my soldiers, but I’ll come out and say it here. PFC Devil is my favorite soldier. He’s a tall, lanky older twenties soldier who spent time in prison for assault and spent most of his youth addicted to some of our society’s nastier drugs. His brother is still in prison leading a band of the Aryan Nation. Despite all of this, he is one of the most calm, composed, resourceful, and competent soldiers it has ever been my pleasure to work with. He would have a great career ahead of him in the Army were it not for his felony record. As it stands, though, he will most likely never rise above Staff Sergeant. He can’t get the security clearance to be a Platoon Sergeant. But from here on out, whenever I hear someone complain that the quality of soldiers dropped when the Army decided to fill the gaps by accepting convicted felons, I’ll use PFC Devil as a counterexample. I’m grateful he was there today, too. Our real hero of the day, though, was Doc. I recognized this guy as an invaluable asset when I first arrived to the platoon. Of all the medics in the company, and probably the battalion, we got the best. Doc is absolutely stellar. He’s a quiet, friendly, and very intelligent soldier who has yet to demonstrate fear, frustration, or exhaustion in my presence. And we’ve been in some pretty strange spots. Through it all, though, he’s been constant. He can perform combat medicine without even thinking about it. He slapped tourniquets on that NP’s legs before we had even pushed our fire team forward of his position. Just dove right out and started assisting the casualties. We couldn’t complete our job out there today because the enemy escaped, but Doc definitely completed his. I came back from the rooftops to find him calm, composed, and coated in blood. Jovial, even. Looked right at my pants, looked at his shirt, and announced with a wry smile that we were both out new uniforms. Speculated that, had we been the same size, we could have combined my top with his pants and at least salvaged one. Maybe he’s just naturally like this. I would conjecture that part of this is because Doc is the only man in our platoon who has ever been shot… but he was shot in a bar fight when he was a civilian. This baffles me. I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to fight Doc. He’s just too good natured. I have an even harder time imagining someone wanting to shoot him.

The rest of my day, after having my heart launched into my esophagus, was an endless series of mind-numbing debriefs. This misery was compounded by the fact that my body was just about ready to crash once my blood rush ended. Fight or flight takes it out of you. Nevertheless, there I was: eyes barely open, fingers clutched in a death-grip around my coffee, reciting my debrief narrative by some method of rerouting my subconscious/unconscious directly to my mouth. It was downright impossible to bring myself to recall all the little details the Iraqi commander and I had discussed before the explosion. I couldn’t bring myself to care. There was my life before the explosion and my life after the explosion, and right now I really didn’t feel like thinking about my life before. This was big. This was life-changing. This was first contact under hostile fire. This was the first time I took a fire team into a building, tearing our way up the stairs as I waited for the other shoe to drop—would the house explode, was there an ambush waiting on the roof, would a car bomb detonate around my security, is one of these local nationals wearing a suicide vest, is the enemy waiting around this corner, is another grenade ticking off seconds even now?

We took another mortar on the FOB today. I was walking outside when I heard it impact. I was surprised at how little I cared. There was life before first contact and life after first contact. I can understand how some people could become addicted to the adrenaline rush of combat, but quite frankly, I’m just tired. Tired and relieved. I wished for something just like this to keep my men from getting complacent, and I got it. But all I can think about is that similar acts took place against Coalition Forces all over the city today. Maybe it was in honor of our new President. Maybe their elections are just looming close. Maybe they’ve decided that the observation period is over. Whatever the cause, I get the feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot more of this in the next few weeks.

ADDENDUM FROM 21JAN09

Couldn’t even finish this entry last night. We got the call to respond to a Task Force (Special Forces) QRF mission, so we put on the gear, turned on the trucks, and moved out. On the way out, just before midnight—meaning that both major incidents did manage to fall on the same day—my lead vehicle was shot at by Coalition Forces. Some lunatic gunner on a convoy security MRAP looked over, saw our trucks trying to pass, and somehow convinced himself that the insurgents had stolen five HMMWVs, packed them with explosives, and were trying to integrate themselves into his convoy. No, you idiot. You were going two miles an hour and we had to respond to a QRF call from a unit in sector. We were trying to pass you. Anyway, long story short, he tossed a warning shot at us. A very close warning shot. SSG Chase was in the lead vehicle—and immediately he was out of it, correcting malfunctions on this idiot in a way we can all wish we’ll never see firsthand. I had to stop him from physically assaulting the man, get him back in the truck, and push us out on our mission.

What does this mean? Well, at a basic level it means that I’ve had two firsts today: enemy small arms fire and friendly small arms fire. Exciting day to be in Blue Platoon. At a punitive level, it means some unit out there committed a Blue-on-Blue (friendly on friendly) hostile act. And that means that after I spent all night out with Task Force, doing nothing, I spent the early hours of morning doing paperwork on the “incident.” Then, just as I finished with that, Blue Platoon was called out to another QRF call. When we returned from that we were instructed to stay in our vehicles at RedCon 1.5 (5 minutes out the gate from time of order) until further notice as an operation was currently underway. Remember how I said I was tired last night and hadn’t slept in a long while? Well, the situation has not improved. I’m running entirely on coffee fumes by now. That’s all right; tomorrow is our first maintenance day. Our vehicles are getting absolutely torn apart by the constant pace of our operations (naturally we’re more concerned about vehicular than personnel breakdown) and we need to get them into the mechanics. I’m going to go ahead and designate a block of that time as Human Maintenance. I’m going to shower. I’m going to eat. And then I’m going to sleep.

I can’t stand it when anyone here complains of exhaustion, since we’re all undergoing some form of sleep deprivation and nobody wants to be subjected to constant whining, but today I’ll make an exception. I’ve started walking funny and stumbling everywhere. I blink and blank out for whole minutes. It’s been at least three days since I caught more than two hours of sleep a night. The worst part is that it isn’t for any good reason: I’m awake because the infernal inhuman machine at headquarters wants me to give them more paper so they can justify their existence. I’m doing nonsense work. Mandatory nonsense work. I have a list of dozens of things I need to be doing, but command forces me to waste my time on trivial paperwork instead. They interrupt my patrols with orders to investigate shadows. They send me out at night so I can observe Task Force and make sure they don’t abuse anyone or damage any property during their operations (surreal moment last night as I’m calmly discussing the finer details of property accountability with an operative in the middle of a room of screaming and wailing women at 0200). They send me out to escort VIPs suffering from delusions of tactical competence. And then they complain that I spend too little time patrolling my neighborhoods… and where was that paperwork we needed last night, LT?

Go. To. Hell. Stop bothering me. I have things I need to do, you lunatics, and I’m on the verge of physically dragging some of you out into my sector so you’ll have a chance of seeing how incredibly ludicrous you all are being with your own eyes. Seriously. I’m tired, I’m angry, and you’re bickering at me that I didn’t give you a grid for my last front-line trace. It’s the Main Traffic Circle, you ass! It’s big, it’s on your map, and you DO NOT NEED ME TO TELL YOU EXACTLY WHERE I AM ON IT AT THIS GIVEN INSTANT. Because I’m STILL MOVING. By the time I finish giving you the grid it’ll be a distant memory. And next time someone gets into a fight out there? Don’t flood the net with three thousand requests for additional information. That Platoon Leader is trying to maneuver his element and develop the situation. He needs that frequency clear to arrange for air assets or CASEVAC. Do not bog it down because you just feel curious and have somehow convinced yourself that your need to know trumps their need to survive.

I’m sorry. I think I get a little grumpy when I’m tired. SSG Chase and Crunchbery have already discovered this; joking does not go over well with me at these points. I’m getting a bit abrasive around the edges. So I’ll stop bewailing my little problems and get around to sleeping. I’ll write as soon as I can—but go ahead and be jealous. It was a hell of a day to be in Blue Platoon.

MOSUL 19JAN09

I’ve been unable to find time to write any entries over the past few days. We have been very, very busy. But after finally catching a few hours of sleep (I actually couldn’t remember when I had last taken a full three-hour sleep cycle) I’m back up and even have a little spare time on my hands. Couldn’t be happier. Because of this recent spate of activity, I have quite a bit to report and comment on, but I’m honestly a little fuzzy on what happened on what day. The last few patrols have all blurred together in my mind. The key point remains, however, that we have yet to take (serious) contact, are still engaged in constant area reconnaissance in our AO, and are still working with the same National Police forces.

First, a brief letter to whom it may concern. Dear Iraqi Man in the vicinity of the traffic circle: I saw you pee last night. When you thought no one was looking, around midnight, and stepped outside to relieve yourself on the street corner, I was there. When you glanced furtively around you, checking to ensure that nobody witnessed your act of public urination, I was there. I observed you with casual interest from only a few dozen meters away. Your urine glowed bright green in my night vision. So, in short, you have been caught in the act. We know what you did. An entire platoon of American forces witnessed the act. Our surveillance drone witnessed the act. I would not be surprised if our satellites did not also peek in. When you approach street corners in the dead of night, we get apprehensive as to your intentions. We like to watch. And while countless insurgents all over the city were probably simultaneously laying IEDs at every other traffic circle in the city, all our assets were there with you. Watching. Judging. Evaluating your performance. Quietly whispering our suggestions as to how you should relax more, lengthen your stance, and in general stop urinating on traffic circles. Think on that for a while. Big Brother is watching everything… except for the important stuff, apparently.

As for yesterday, I am quite frankly amazed that I did not get shot. Or any of us, really. We did the most fantastically ridiculous thing. An Iraqi Army General, his staff, and about a fire team of American Colonels decided that they would like to conduct a market-walk in my AO. They wanted to dismount, go straight down the main avenue, and talk to everybody along the way. Get a feel for the area. And Blue Platoon was tasked to escort them on this walk. I would like to take this opportunity to make two points. First, while I appreciate that higher command has taken an interest in seeing how our operations affect the daily lives of the populace, I would presume to remind them that they would be better suited in their efforts if they coordinated their intents through the unit that actually owned that battle space and had conducted similar patrols a dozen times. This means that when we make tactical suggestions we should not be completely ignored. When we tell them that we can’t take Bradleys and MRAPS down certain routes, they should probably take heed. When we tell them that we need to minimize our vehicular presence in order to provide actual tight local security instead of just the illusion of security, we would appreciate it if they listened. The second point is that, while their confidence in my platoon’s ability to maintain their personal safety was encouraging, they should be more realistic in their expectations. And more sound in their own tactics. Just because a perimeter has been established doesn’t mean that the interior is secure. Not in an urban environment. Especially when they don’t want to disrupt the flow of individual or vehicular traffic. So when you see a six-lane intersection, please don’t stop and stand in the middle of it for half an hour while you tell the Iraqi private in the tower how to arrange his sandbags. Two sub points here: first, you are a general. He is a private. There is a chain of command for these things, and you do not need to concern yourself with—let alone personally supervise—the disposition of his six sandbags. Second, you may have noticed that I only have one fire team and myself deployed forward of your position. There are six lanes on this intersection and only five American soldiers securing them. The tower would have been able to cover down on the last lane, but as you may know you had completely diverted his attention to the crucial matter of the sandbags. Insurgents of Mosul, you may never have a chance like you had yesterday. I will never understand why you didn’t strike. We were a perfect target. One suicide vest would have knocked my entire battalion combat ineffective. Why? Because all of these colonels and majors were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, clustered together, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MARKET. I’m not angry, I’m stupefied. I’m stupefied that we would even do something like this, and I’m stupefied that the enemy didn’t take advantage of us. And I’m even more stupefied that we tried to do the same thing today. Thank God for last minute cancellations—not because they recognized it as a horrible idea, but because the official party of VIPs was late in arriving. So here’s to not getting shot while pursuing incredibly foolhardy and misguided schemes.

And on the subject of disrupting vehicular and individual traffic: I have nothing but awe for the patience that the people of this city have developed. Whenever a Coalition patrol approaches, all local nationals must stop their vehicles on the side of the road and turn on their hazard lights. And if we stop to check something out, they stay there. Until we leave. And sometimes we’re there for hours. We are a serious disruption in their lives. And it isn’t just the roads; the schools, the banks, the markets—everywhere we go, we stop business as usual. And we’re spread out all over the city. Granted, business as usual is marked with explosions, executions, theft, and extortion. So they have a choice to make between security and freedom. Most seem to have embraced (or at least resigned themselves to) security, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more than one donation to the insurgency was a result of a six-hour traffic jam.

I am amazed that they can see us as humans at all. They have developed patience, yes, but some have established a degree of human empathy with us as well. This is a recent surprise for me; while beforehand I would have expected it, a few days ago I so terrified a little girl that I came to realize what we must look like to them. Blue Platoon entered the school to check security and see how they were doing. Obviously no teaching was done during this time, as the students went into all forms of different reactions. The teachers were forthright, friendly, and easily answered our questions (which I feel my predecessors have asked them repeatedly for years). But the kids are all over the map. Some stand away cautiously, some rush for chocolate or pens or goodies of any kind, but some are straight up terrified. This little girl just hid behind her teacher while I talked to him, trembling and staring with wide eyes, and I couldn’t understand. How could you be terrified of me? I’m about the least terrifying person you’ll ever meet, in my estimation. I like to think I’m pretty friendly. My eyes are gigantic and blue, my dimples are embarrassingly noticeable. Then I realized how I looked from her perspective: an armed mechanical giant adorned in Kevlar, weaponry, and communications gear. Only my mouth is visible. I have trouble thinking of my guys as terrifying, since I know them personally, but I could see how someone could envision us as a bit intimidating. How have they ever learned to live with us? We’re a walking paradox. Thirty-two tons of folded steel and bristling guns purge an exhaust of Everlasting Gobstoppers to eager children. Mechanized contraptions in the form of humans smile at families from behind shatterproof black lenses and hand out pencils carefully stored beside their ammunition, stopping occasionally to excrete tobacco spit/motor oil on the street. Immaculately armed and trained killers lift their trigger hands to their Kevlar chests and wish peace upon elderly gentlemen. Machines are trying to win the hearts and minds of people. God help us when the next line of body armor is revealed. We’ll be covering the mouth, finally, and hiding the last vestiges of humanity behind dark bulletproof glass. Our communications will be received through external computers that translate Arabic to English, we’ll mutter our answers from behind our blast shields, and a computerized Arabic translation will issue from our robotic voice box. The warrior of the future. How could people do anything but love us at first sight?

This is not to say that we aren’t doing good things here. Iraq needs to find peace, and we’re helping them get there. Mechanized soldiers might be cold, sterile, and inhuman at times, but seeing how humans can behave, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to be a bit detached from them. A baker was executed in the middle of a crowded street this morning, in my AO, for having sold bread at discount to his friends in the National Police. Four pistol shots to the head. A woman and child were vaporized when an IED detonated in a crowded traffic circle yesterday. A National Police soldier was shot in the head, execution style, when he left his station off-duty to buy cigarettes. An innocent bystander was decapitated in an indiscriminant rocket attack the day before that. His face showed no recognition of his fate, no surprise—his eyes and mouth were contorted as they had been as he walked down the street, oblivious to his impending death. If this is human behavior, then maybe we should go ahead and get the new armor. Maybe we’ll be seen as more judicious and impartial when we have covered those last few inches of human flesh. Maybe the last thing the Iraqis need is more people acting like people.

Enough waxing philosophical. Sorry you had to endure that (assuming you read this far). It was just weighing on my mind, and this seemed like a reasonable venue to vent. But we have another patrol tomorrow, which means I have to get back to my maps and my paperwork. And I’ll have to enjoy a little heart-to-heart with SSG Crunchberry and SSG Chase, who are becoming downright moody as of late. The schedule of constant patrolling has wearied them. I would be sympathetic, but those two rotate on patrols. SSG Lark and I are on every patrol. My gunner and driver are on every patrol. This is a combat zone, we are soldiers, and I honestly feel that our own moodiness should not affect our performance. Mission first. Men second. Self last. That’s doctrine. That’s how the Army works. This is not the war of the past. We aren’t under fire for days at a time, we have chow available whenever we’re hungry, we have heat and air conditioning where we sleep, we can shower every few days, and we can even call home from time to time. Maybe my interest in military history has poisoned my expectations, but I simply can’t take any man seriously when he complains that our work is exhausting him. Just drink some coffee, find some intestinal fortitude, and drive on. We haven’t come close to finding our limitations. And with any luck we won’t have to. But enough on that; I’ve got to get to those maps. I’ll write again as soon as I’m able.

MOSUL 11JAN09

I heard that you would start hating being here after about a month. I figured that the tempo of operations, or the violence, or the smell that permeates so much of the city, or maybe even the constant interaction with a population that is sometimes downright hostile to your presence would be to blame for this. I had never imagined that the discontent would stem from within.

My company is driving me insane right now.

We have been on lockdown—grounded—for the past four days. We can’t leave the company area unless we’re on patrol. We can’t call home. We can’t pick up our laundry. We can’t buy supplies (the smokers were the first to lose composure). This kind of thing is necessary when someone is killed, as it allows us to notify the family of the deceased before the rumor mill reaches them. Fortunately, nobody died. We actually have yet to make contact. Violence keeps happening really close to us, but we’re always 200 meters or 10 minutes too late to be involved. Lucky? I guess. I’m starting to think that the insurgents have decided that it’s much easier to hit Iraqi forces than American forces and are hedging their bets. Not to question the bravery of our Iraqi allies—to the contrary, they’re probably too brave. Brazen. Occasionally foolhardy in their machismo.

No, we’re on lockdown because my leadership wants to prove a point of some kind about accountability of equipment. My platoon (yep, I’m afraid that I have a hand in this disaster) lost track of two handheld radios about three months ago. Fortunately these were outdated pieces of junk without cryptography, so they weren’t sensitive items—more like crappy walkie-talkies. But yes, we lost them. And we scoured the earth to find them. And then we scoured the other platoons to find them. In essence, no stone was left unturned for miles and miles around the company area in the vast effort to locate these radios. Lo and behold, however, we found one four days ago comfortably nestled between two boxes in the middle of our stuff. Are we incompetent? Maybe sometimes, but not in this case. Someone had apparently finally opened one of their personal bags, realized that they no longer needed that radio they had accidentally(?) taken, and had made an effort to blamelessly return it. The commander called thief. Probably right, all things considered. But the fallout was ridiculous. After all of the leadership stood at attention for a half hour being screamed at, we were told that we were to be cut off from the world. No contact. Daily details—lay out your property, inventory it, repack it, lay it out again, repeat procedure—until the thief came forward or the other radio was recovered. If the other radio is even here, the person who has it was obviously smart enough to dispose of it in a place where we’ll never find it. It would be suicide to present it now. And no one is going to identify himself as the thief.

So here we are. Our families probably think some of us got killed. Nope, we’re all sound of body. But we’re rapidly losing our minds. My squad leaders were the first to start rebelling, which is no surprise as SSG Crunchberry and SSG Chase can be pretty downright moody at times. Especially Crunchberry. They have been exceptionally surly and sullen as of late. Then PSG Lark started losing his cool this evening—not in an angry way, but in an advanced apathy that is much worse for me to deal with. Some of my team leaders, including SGT Mountain (who was signed for those two radios in the first place) decided to utilize the open door policy with the commander (despite my objections) in order to state their displeasure at this policy. I can understand. One just found out his wife is pregnant, another is going through a divorce, and another is a newlywed. They need to call home. But going to the CO via the open door policy, thereby bypassing and simultaneously dragging in their own chain of command, is a recipe for pain. There is no better way to get me in trouble, which in turn makes me a bit taciturn. So with torrents of abuse coming down from above and torrents of complaints surging up from above, I find my general good nature is beginning to rebel.

I’m QRF right now, which is the Quick Reaction Force. We stand by for a 24 hour period and provide immediate relief to any units under fire in our AO. We’re supposed to be battle-ready and rolling upon 15 minutes notice. This is doable unless you’re the guy planning the mission. I have to make a maneuver plan in route and try to brief it over the radio—very difficult—and just hope I’m fast on the draw. It’s an adventure every time. My shift ends at 0200, which is why I find myself with a rare moment of free time with which to write this entry. When I haven’t been patrolling I’ve been planning patrols, debriefing patrols, being briefed on new patrols, doing silly details as part of our mass punishment, and maintaining the paperwork on our platoon. Occasionally I sleep, but I’m starting to get a serious case of weltschmerz. I’m sure I’ll buck right up once I can talk to my wife again and eat a solid meal. Maybe we’ll even have a regular patrol schedule soon. And maybe they’ll stop sending me on fool’s errands across the city of Mosul.

Three days ago a helicopter team located a machine gun on a rooftop. They didn’t see any National Police or Iraqi Army manning it, so they called it up as a possible attack position. I was tasked to investigate. We found it on top of the roof, just as they said, and thoroughly confused the police officer manning it. He had just stepped down for a bit to use the latrine. This is common enough here; I had to physically wake up the guards at the last National Police outpost I visited. Still. This place was marked on the map as a checkpoint. I mean, good practice and all, but really? I had to cancel the mission I was on so that I could rapidly respond to this breaking intelligence.

And yesterday I had to stop my mission yet again and respond to a report of a possible IED on one of the main roads. They gave me a six-digit grid to the coordinates, which is a nice way of saying that it might be within a hundred meter radius of the point provided. This is a lot of ground to cover to find a bundle of buried explosives. Especially since you REALLY don’t want to walk up and find it right beneath your feet. There was no problem finding this one, though, because the Iraqi Police were everywhere around it. Or where it was, anyway. It had exploded three hours before I received my intel that there MAY be one there. You cannot pay for this kind of intel. It’s how we win wars. Of course, it took me about an hour to ascertain exactly where the IED was, when it had exploded, and what it had damaged because none of the police on the ground had the same story. So at least they’ve got it worse than we do.

On the upside, I got flipped off by an eight-year old child today. Little tyke. Adorable, really. Standing there by the road as I patrolled by with my men, innocent and curious. Straight up flipped me off. And not just my patrol, but me individually. Must have a solid sense for finding the officer. The neighborhood I patrolled today has not been visited by Coalition Forces in YEARS, I’m told. Somehow all my predecessors just kept passing it by. These guys were obviously not happy to see us in their streets, and the military-age males in the neighborhood were downright hostile. Nothing significant in the way of violence, fortunately, but they made it clear that we weren’t welcome. The kids stayed away and didn’t wave, the adults all just stared us down silently, and the dogs stopped frolicking and started baring teeth. Seriously. I think cats were hissing at us. Thank God we had air cover at the time. Some incredibly bored chopper pilots happened across our convoy, jumped to our frequency, and asked if we minded if they tagged along up above. I was more than happy to have the company. And they, with their itchy trigger fingers, were just thrilled to hear about the reception we were getting down there. I really do think they’ve started going insane with boredom. When guys started moving up on their rooftops, our chopper friends started buzzing them at low altitudes. They came back down in a hurry. Invaluable asset.

Then, strangely enough, things started changing. The patrol crossed some invisible line where people loved us. Adults held up small children to see our patrol and wave at us. I looked back at one point to find one of my soldiers completely surrounded by fascinated school children, all giggling and pointing at him. Strangest transition ever. I went from fully expecting to get shot to knee-deep in happy kids with practically no warning at all. I’m gonna have to check the demographics of my AO and figure out where and why things started looking rosy back there.

Well, it is 0140, so I imagine it’s time for me to start wrapping up this entry so I can brief my replacement and then catch a few hours of sleep. It’ll be my first in a while. We have another full day tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Some of my men complain of boredom, and I get positively livid with envy. They’re spared the planning process and the infinite debrief. Some people on the FOB work eight hour days. I actually find myself wanting to inflict bodily harm upon them. If anyone was foolish enough to invent a drug that would render sleep unnecessary for human functioning, only one organization would be cruel enough to force it upon their people. The US Army. Sleep is a crutch, a handicap, a weakness that must be purged from the body. I have so much caffeine and nicotine in my system that my hands shake. I have been awake for DAYS. I actually can’t remember when I last slept for more than thirty minutes. Every now and then I glance down and find a lit cigarette in my hands, half-way finished before I even remember that I don’t smoke. How did it even get there? I don’t know anymore.

Things will improve. We’re gaining stability, getting a long term schedule soon, and starting to get a grasp on the things we need to accomplish. Our vision as a unit is clearing. The lockdown will eventually stop. I will one day be able to call my wife. People will stop calling me in the middle of my mission because they saw a light flicker four miles away. I will meet all of my Iraqi National Police counterparts, we will banter and befriend each other, we will conduct perfectly executed joint patrols, and they will barrage me with their finest chai in gratitude. It will get better. But right now? This whole damned war can go to hell.

MOSUL 07JAN09

Blue Platoon has now conducted three patrols in the past three days. Well, not all of Blue Platoon, but I’ve been out for all three. The first two patrols were actually led by the unit we’re replacing and I just got to sit in the passenger seat and observe how they did business. They dismounted us at a few key locations to let us get a good view of the neighborhoods, discuss an area prone to serious attacks, or meet some of the principal characters we’ll be working with. It was a good introduction for me since I got to spend my time concentrating on the environment and their tactics rather than focusing entirely on my own maneuver elements and my own plans for reacting to enemy contact.

The crucial part of our first patrol was rolling out and meeting the key leaders of the Iraqi National Police in our area. These are not police as you know them at home. They’re light infantry who generally live in sparsely covered checkpoint shelters, guarding traffic circles, main highways, and government buildings. In many cases their living conditions are deplorable. The problem is that Mosul has become, for the Iraqi Government, the Waterloo of this war. If Mosul can be tamed the war will be won. So command of National Police units in the area has become a highly coveted position, as every Iraqi officer wants to claim that he led the big fight at the last days of the conflict. What this means, effectively, is that the commanders and units get cycled through this place at a ridiculous rate as different officers exploit different political connections to steal that position. And when the old ones go, they have the units strip every amenity from the bases. Light bulbs? Gone. Electrical wiring? Stripped away. They even take the water bottles. It’s a combination of petty vengeance and shameless profiteering.

We found out about the most recent change in command after we arrived at the headquarters of what was, until immediately after this discovery, Blue Platoon’s AO. (The change shifted my AO to the Main Effort, so Red Platoon moved to deal with that, and Blue has moved to handle the old Main Effort Area. Very, very violent.) The meeting started out simply enough with our commander greeting the Executive Officer, thanking him for his hospitality and continued cooperation with Coalition Forces, and asked if the Colonel was in. Oh no, comes the reply, I’m afraid the Colonel was ordered away a few days ago. I’m in command currently. Will he be coming back, we ask? Nope. Where is he now, we ask? Can’t tell us. Interesting. I tried to unobtrusively scan the room for missing light bulbs.

What proceeded from there was an introduction to the social customs of our Iraqi colleagues. Americans meeting traditional Iraqi families should know a few things before they accidentally spark a Jihad, so consider this a brief overview of Middle East Chai Survival Techniques.

1) They will offer you a tiny, tiny little glass filled with equal measures of piping hot brown stuff and sugar. This is called chai. You will accept it either with instant gratitude, or if you’re feeling a bit coy you can hold out to the third offer. But you WILL accept it, and your WILL drink it. And some chai is not as good as others. This isn’t Starbucks chai, people. This is a thick black tea leaf concoction ground with some kind of secret spices which should probably stay secret. But even if it’s bad, even if you’re meticulously planning your suicide with every gulp of noxious liquid, you have to drink at least one. Fortunately the chai I had at our first location was pretty darned tasty.

2) This culture has systematically learned to avoid saying anything in which you admit ignorance, acknowledge that something is impossible, or possibly and in any conceivable way insult the one who acts as your host. In case of chai this means that you cannot refuse a second cup of chai outright. Really you should drink at least two anyway. But if you just can’t take anymore, never say “No.” They’ve developed a culturally understood signal to convey the meaning without using that most odious word. Hold up the dregs and swirl it in the cup a few times, subtly and politely, and the person serving the chai will hopefully see this signal and understand that you would prefer not to be offered another drink. In case of planning and cross-force coordination, this philosophy of conversation can cause many incidents. The American military forces soldiers to admit, freely and without reservation, whenever they do not know the answer to a question. We’d rather not have somebody just pretend to know and then get us all killed with his ignorance. When we know we can’t accomplish a task, it’s true that we’ll still try, but first we inform our chain of command that our efforts will most likely result in failure. Just so they know. The Iraqis, however, are loath to ever admit that they don’t know or can’t do something. It’s just a cultural stigma. They have developed, as with the chai, a series of subtle codes meant to convey the meaning without directly admitting the ignorance. Was the car fully prepared before it left? “I will check for you.” Warning bells should now be going off in your head. While we consider this to be a promise in which the other person will immediately pursue this information, this is in fact another of those secret codes at work. They have acknowledged in the most obscure way that they do not know, by leaving the possibility open that they DO know and just need to verify or update their information and by letting you know that they do not want to terminate your friendship by openly leaving you in the lurch. But they will most likely be “checking” for the rest of human history. Don’t hold your breath for the answer.

3) Your Conversational Chai Opponent has another tool in his belt, or bullet in his chamber, or what have you—the deeply feared Insh-allah. “If God Wills It.” This phrase will be uttered with great repetition whenever you begin speaking of the future. As you speculate on a day when all of Mosul will be peaceful and secure, your partner will mutter Insh-allah practically the whole time. I’m amazed they can hear you at all when they do it, but somehow they know to transition out of it the moment you go to present tense. On the surface, this seems like a wonderfully humble acknowledgment of Man’s place in the divine purpose. Every conversation of the future should involve an Insh-allah. But on closer inspection it reveals yet another social code. Let’s try it with a few examples. “Will the Commander be able to meet us for dinner tonight?” If you answered Insh-allah, congratulations! You passed your first test in Passive-Aggressive Conversation. Your great piety has now resulted in great consternation. Was it a yes? Was it a no? In actuality, it’s nothing at all but a diversion. You have admitted that you don’t have control over the situation and cannot make a promise you cannot keep. This would be laudable if the culture didn’t also teach you to avoid ever taking responsibility. As such, it’s always going to be Insh-allah. But so far this is nothing but a minor social disruption, as the worst that could happen is you end up eating alone. More food for you. Let’s try another example. “You need to emplace these barriers around your outer defenses or you’ll be attacked by car bombs!” If you also answered this with Insh-allah, well done! You’ve advanced to Dangerously Ambivalent! Did you mean insh-allah for the part about placing the barriers, or the part about being attacked by a car bomb? Both! Neither! You have successfully detached your Will from playing any role in our world. This is, given the phobia of admitting failure, ignorance, or offending your host, the safest position for most men in the culture. You are now completely passive. There are two ways that Americans can react to this, as I see it: immense frustration or immense sarcasm. We like to push our Will onto everything. We’re an aggressive culture like that. We’ll tell you when we’re ignorant, but in return we want to be in control when we know we’re right. That’s two major faux-pas in your chai encounter. So we’re forced, upon hearing the dreaded Insh-allah, into our predetermined American responses. The first is to get frustrated and angry, as my XO does. “No, you asshole, it’s MY will! You get him to the meeting place on time, or you risk MY wrath! You don’t know if God is vengeful, but you better damned well know that I AM!” This, while cathartic, is not the most polite conversational gambit in a culture where you have to refuse beverages in secret code. My response is a touch of piety and sarcasm, with what I hope is a little lesson in the way I think. The moment they start muttering Insh-allah, I join in. We quickly meld into harmonious piety, deferring all to the will of the All-Mighty, and the conversation ceases while we wait to see who’s going to stop first. Theoretically this could continue until one of us spontaneously combusts, but usually (though I’ve only done it twice now) we both just go silent after about a minute. They stand there silently, at a loss, and I stand there hoping that I’ve subtly conveyed what I think about this kind of passivity. If it spreads, nothing will ever get done. I hope, Insh-allah, that I have been successful.

4) Be prepared to change your views on hygiene. The left hand is never to be used for anything involving another person, as the culture hasn’t really taken a great liking to toilet paper. I’m reminded of a story from one of my drill sergeants who once held an Iraqi man at a vehicle checkpoint for a few hours until the man requested permission to use the restroom. The checkpoint didn’t have a restroom, so the sergeant just escorted him to the corner they had been using. The man proceeded to defecate, wipe himself with his left hand, and began to walk away. The sergeant, who had heard of but never directly seen this, was horrified and quickly moved to offer the man some baby wipes (we always carry those things around). Our Iraqi friend stared down at consternation, pondered this great mystery, and then stared up questioningly at the sergeant. The sergeant did his best to mimic wiping motions in pantomime. The man had an obvious Gestalt moment where his eyes lit up with recognition and understanding. He smiled, turned around, walked to the corner, and very carefully placed one baby wipe on top of his refuse. Then he glanced up triumphantly to see if the sergeant had acknowledged his success. The sergeant mastered his obvious frustration, smiled back, gave a thumbs-up, and just sent the guy back to his car. Good try, buddy. That kind of effort, however misguided, deserves at least a thumbs-up.

5) Never give an Iraqi man a thumbs-up. Or an OK sign with your fingers. These are obscene gestures, and while most of these guys have seen enough American movies that they understand what we mean when we use it, it can lead to misunderstandings about your intentions with the females of his family. Never shake hands with the left hand. Never stop someone by holding up your left palm to their face. This is difficult to avoid as my trigger finger is on my right hand and I’ll be damned if I’m going to make a stopping gesture AND take my finger off the trigger. Never cross one of your legs when sitting around a table with another person, and if you must, make sure your heel isn’t visible to him. That shows that you consider him to be lower than you. Do not relax back into your chair, as this demonstrates that you are not interested in the proceedings. You may, however, raise your voice and gesticulate wildly to convey a point. Hysteria is encouraged; comfort is not.

6) The end result is that chai is a carefully choreographed conversational gavotte (so close to some serious alliteration right there) more centered around what is not said than what is. This is a culture where you cannot admit fallacy or ignorance. You are obligated to show hospitality and are terrified of incorrectly receiving their hospitality. To complicate this, you are not allowed to drink alcohol. Or have pre-marital sex. Or masturbate. Freud would have some things to say about this, I think. Perhaps one day I’ll write the post-modern anthropological analysis of the sexually repressed chai drinking peoples of the great deserts. The Great American Novel, really.

From our adventures in chai we resumed the patrol and dismounted to conduct a movement through the marketplace by the river. This was, without reservation, the most nerve-wracking experience in my life thus far. I hope I don’t develop agoraphobia as a response. The market is composed of very narrow streets hedged by multi-storied shops (each of which is built on ancient foundations the Babylonians may have recognized), and is completely filled with people. Every nook and cranny has a person to go along with it. Sometimes two or three. The major risks along this route are small arms fire attacks (they shoot at us) or suicide vests (they blow everybody up). This is understandable seeing as you’d have a nigh impossible time trying to keep every possible suicide bomber out of detonation range in a place this crowded. After only three patrols I’ve already found myself scanning every car on the road to see if its suspensions are heavy-laden or reinforced, if the driver is the only occupant, and finally if he’s wearing white and is clean-shaven. Some of these bombers believe that they are transported to heaven immediately upon the blast, and that they arrive just as they were in the last moment of their lives, so they try to make themselves presentable to the All-Mighty. The same works dismounted: I’ve taken to scanning everyone for bulky clothing, hands inside pockets, inordinate interest in our patrol, and general nervousness. This makes one a wee bit twitchy, I find. Not to make light of the results… I almost shot a little kid on my first patrol. He started running up from behind to ask me for money. All I knew, until I had recognized him as a little kid wearing form-fitting clothes (and after I had already taken the safety off my weapon and was ready to let go a few rounds), was that someone was trying to get close to me from my blind side and that someone wasn’t one of my soldiers. I might never go to a shopping mall again after this.

About half-way down the road we heard semi-automatic rifle fire. About ten rounds, I’d guess, in quick succession. I was behind cover before you could blink. When I glanced behind me to locate the guys around me and try to get a fix on the source, all I saw was SSG Lark standing over me in the open, barely containing his laughter. “Sir, what the hell are you doing down there? Noise carries in the city, and that firing was at least a block away. Nobody was shooting at YOU.”

Crazy bastard. I think I’ll live longer my way.

Nothing came of the contact on our end, as it was directed against another of our patrols on a neighboring road. They got one of that patrols Humvees with a parachute grenade, another readily available and immensely frustrating Soviet weapon that has found its way to the Middle East, but inflicted no casualties. But you, dear American taxpayer, will be buying us another truck. So sorry.

The second patrol was even more uneventful. I just rolled around to the different National Police companies in my AO and got to meet their leadership, assessed their combat strength, determined where they had their checkpoints and who they had manning them, and what they needed to be more effective. I’m working on getting some earthworks for one of the COPs (Company OutPosts) as it was fairly vulnerable to car bombs in its current state. That being said, yesterday morning it was in fact hit with a car bomb. A little north of the most devastating point, but definitely close. I was in the American base at the time, working on my platoon equipment, when I heard the blast. (Not so strange, as everything JUST KEEPS EXPLODING IN THIS COUNTRY.) So last evening, around 1530, I received instructions that I was to conduct an escort for the engineers who would be filling the resulting hole in the ground. Brief was to be held at 1800, start point (SP) at 1900. What resulted was a flurry of activity that boggled the mind and dazzled the senses. We had no vehicles so we had to find a company able to give us some. Remember, we’re still transitioning into operations right now. This isn’t normal. So I signed for the vehicles and all of their basic issue items. That took a good 30 minutes. We had no radios, and once we did have them (more begging, scrounging, and time off the clock), we still had to encrypt them. We had no mounted weapons. Once we did, we had no ammo. Once we had ammo, we had no mounting brackets with which to mount the weapons on the vehicles. More scrounging. More begging. More time lost. We had to hook up the electronic equipment, which I assure you is mind-boggling in complexity but also classified so I can’t go into any further details… though I’m sure CNN has probably told you all about it already.

Throw in a little time for me to make a plan, brief the plan, coordinate with the engineers, and conduct final tests, and you’d have a two day effort on your hands. We did it in three hours. My CO let it be known that he was less than pleased with the fact that one of our machine guns was improperly headspaced and timed, which is (I concur) an embarrassing mistake, and that one computer system wasn’t completely plugged in, which would also be embarrassing under normal circumstances, but I think that we worked very well with what we had. Honestly, I’m angry that my leadership said anything negative at all about our progress (as I’m told they did at the nightly meeting, which I missed because I was on the patrol watching cement dry). We went from zero to combat ready in three hours. And I mean ZERO. We had NOTHING but our own personal weapons. And we didn’t even have ammo for them. We had to beg and borrow and scrounge for EVERYTHING on the vehicles, including the vehicles themselves. Let’s see the other platoons try that. Only Blue Platoon, the “Dirty Third,” is the right mix of clever and crazy to pull it together in time. White would have been unable to resource out all of the stuff, because they don’t have the begging/borrowing system down, and Red would have spent all their time inspecting the vehicles and equipment before signing for them. We just had to take some of our material on faith. Dangerous? Yes. But engineers, while great guys to have around, should never be trusted to defend themselves. So it was important that we get out there on time.

Of course, the convoy was delayed for a good half hour while my lead vehicle tried to figure out what was wrong with its gun. We sat and sat while I fumed at the gunner, who we initially blamed for being incompetent, then at his Truck Commander, who should have fixed the problem by now, and finally at the guy who conducted the headspace and timing in the first place. Ten minutes passed as I fumed, then twenty, and as we approached thirty my eccentric sense of humor got the better of me. “Good evening and welcome to Bulldog Convoy,” I shot onto the radio—disregarding decades of accepted radio protocol. “We know you have a choice in escorts, and we appreciate you choosing Bulldog. Unfortunately we’re having some minor technical difficulties at this time, so we ask for your patience and understanding, but once we square this away and receive clearance from the tower we’ll have you on your destination in no time. Thank you for flying Bulldog.” SSG Lark says I missed my calling. I always knew the Army was a bad idea.

The patrol was mind-numbingly boring. Attacks rarely happen at night, because the point of the insurgency is to terrify the local populace and show that we are powerless to stop them, and audiences are somewhat sparse around midnight in January. We arrived, established security, and waited. And waited. And waited. Cement, apparently, is not a fast process. Towards the end we were all playing celebrity name games just to stay awake and alert. When they were finished, we turned around and drove home. There. That’s it. My first patrol as commander inside a hostile zone. I watched cement dry in the dead of night. Then I drove home over a thousand potholes even bigger than the car bomb hole, so towards the end I wasn’t even feeling that useful. We’d need a whole division of engineers to fix the Baghdad Highway.

And that brings us to early morning today, where I finally got to call Hope for twenty minutes (one phone, 200+ people) and then rack out for four hours. I am starting to get tired. That’s all right, though. I passed another major milestone. I’ve conducted my first patrol, then my first patrol in command. Soon it’ll become a rhythm, and once that happens I’ll be just fine. But I’ve got some meetings to attend, so I’ll cut this short. That’s all the news from Mosul. Go practice your chai skills.

MOSUL 03JAN09

I first arrived to my platoon as it was in the middle of a brigade field problem about six months ago. I had never worked with a mechanized force, had never met my NCOs or my men, and was entirely out of my element; the training we received as infantry officers was sadly lacking when it came to conducting the actual day-to-day functioning of a platoon. At that point it was just SSG Crunchberry and a few corporals leading a severely under-strength platoon, and they needed an experienced and knowledgeable officer to take control. Instead they got an OCS 14-week wonder with no mechanized maneuver experience. I can’t tell you that it wasn’t rough. My first weeks with Blue Platoon were filled with amateur oversights and rookie mistakes. At the end of the field problem I was put on notice, effectively. If my performance did not improve, and quickly, the CO would have no choice but to try his luck with the next LT they sent.

There was no way on earth I was going down without a fight. I wanted this. Badly. Ever since I was branched Infantry in OCS, I’ve realized that the only way to know I was doing my job right was to have a platoon. Infantry lieutenants without platoons are cursed to sleepless nights of self-condemnation and flagellation, deep introspective fits of depression and self-loathing, and long boring days behind desks working on things none of us were ever trained to do. When I didn’t earn my Ranger tab I was told that there would be no chance at me commanding an infantry platoon. I started resigning myself to the inevitable.

When I arrived at my unit and was immediately pushed to a platoon, I thought it was a combination of clerical oversight and divine intervention. It was a second chance. So there was no way I was going to give it up. The road from then to now is pocked with mistakes and embarrassing stories, yes, but I’m still here. And Blue Platoon is steadily improving with each day. The CO has honored me by letting me know, repeatedly, that I have learned faster and made more improvements in less time than he ever thought possible for any lieutenant; though to tell you the truth, I initially interpreted this as meaning that my beginning was very, very, very bad and the current status is just marginal. But recent events have made me wonder if we really are performing better than we had thought.

Yesterday the Commander informed me that we would be changing our battle space again. Brigade HQ had included a chunk of neighborhoods across the river into our AO, so our company now had territory in both East and West Mosul. There’s an entire brigade of combat troops here, but our company encompasses maybe fifteen percent of the city space and twenty percent of the population. We have the government district, the river, and three of five bridges spanning the river. Our neighbors in Alpha Company are also taking a considerable amount of territory, though nothing comparable to our chunk. It strikes me as odd that we would have all of these troops in sector and then lean overwhelmingly on two or three companies, but I suppose the fewer the men, the greater the share of honor (and all that).

Well, Blue Platoon has been given the government district, the river, and the few neighborhoods we are to control across the river. We’ve just received our tickets to the big game. This sector is NOT quiet. This sector is NOT peaceful. The Commander has noted our improvements as a platoon and has decided to place more trust on us. Additionally he feels that I might have a better chance of acting as my company’s diplomat (without portfolio, unless you count my ammunition…and I suppose all diplomacy is empowered by threat of coercion) within the area. I’m going to be surrounded by people who severely outrank me in my own military, in their military, in our government, and in their government, and the CO seems to think I’d be the most capable at holding my ground with them. I’m touched by the confidence—and I’ll work my ass off to prove that it isn’t misplaced. Blue Platoon is moving up in the world.

SSG Lark is passed out right now. He spent all of last night getting our Brads moved over to an equipment installation yard and was completely exhausted, but I still had to practically order him to go to sleep. When he gets his mind working on something he hits an admirable form of high-octane tunnel vision. He just won’t stop until it’s finished, and sometimes he won’t stop even after it’s finished, so occasionally I find myself worrying about his general health. My God, he even tried to wake up as I wrote this. I may have to knock him unconscious in a moment.

SSG Crunchberry, my old partner in crime, has been informed by the Commander and the First Sergeant that he himself may be on notice for a while. When he was Platoon Sergeant he was overwhelmed, yes, but definitely invested in his job. And when his dream came true and he reverted back to leading a squad he was thrilled. Finally a break, he thought. Well, the Commander is concerned that he’s trying to take too much of a break. That he may be getting a little lazy and that SSG Chase is following suit. This concerns me deeply, because under no circumstances whatsoever do I want to lose him and have him replaced by whatever refuse White Platoon is trying to throw off. 1LT Freddy in White Platoon (so named because he dressed as Freddy from Scooby Doo this Halloween, and yes, he does look just like him—so restrain yourselves, ladies) is a great guy, a very competent officer, and is fortunate to have SFC Stupendous Bad-Ass (I don’t have enough security clearance to know how many secret operations this guy has done) as his Platoon Sergeant. But even with that duo, they’re in a rut: their squad leaders are truly and completely awful. This is why Blue has moved up in the company, and White has moved down—and while I’m grateful for the opportunity, I have to admit feeling some pretty deep sympathy for 1LT Freddy’s situation. I don’t envy him. And I definitely don’t want one of his squad leaders coming in to replace SSG Crunchberry. Oh, hell no. So we’ve been pushing to get Crunchberry and Chase some limelight in the past few days. Make it clear that they’re working hard and effectively. They’ll be organizing a firing range in a few days, and mostly by themselves with only a few signatures and resources from me, so they should be able to prove themselves as capable and competent leaders to the Commander. I hope. I really don’t want to consider the possibility of losing one and gaining some dead weight after all of the progress we’ve made.

The other news? I’m happy to announce that on 1140 on 01JAN09, someone finally tried to actively kill me. Well, kill anyone, really. Mortars are a bit impersonal. But it is the first time anyone has fired a shot in anger capable of hitting me. I was under hard cover at the time, so I was pretty safe, but my heart rate still jumped for a second. KABOOM. Shook the room. My reaction startled me more than the act itself; for some reason, I was positively gleeful about it. Landmark reached and safely passed. Now they hold no real interest, as every subsequent mortar will just be a pitiful impression of the first. I felt a bit like a Midwest tourist in New York when it happened: eyes wide open, struggling to keep my excitement from bubbling over to everyone around me. “Aren’t these buildings just fantastic? Oh, and Bernice, have you seen the mortar impact? Just unbelievable!”

I’ll also be rolling outside the wire for the first time tomorrow (and as I’ll be posting this entry of the journal after the fact, I’d like to point out that operational security has been observed and adhered to). Six to eight hours of area familiarization with the unit we’re replacing. About time, really. I’m getting tired of this administrative aspect. As SSG Chase so aptly stated, it’s as if we went to war and garrison broke out. We’re all a little anxious to get started with the work at hand. So my next entry will contain a description of my initial observations and my first patrol. Fortunately I’ll be in the passenger seat on this mission, so I’ll just be observing. The unit we’re replacing—which I would like to point out has done an incredible job in Mosul with severely limited resources—will be conducting the actual tactical maneuvering and leadership. I’m just here to watch how they do business.

That’s all the news from Mosul, where the men are anxious, the women are armed, and the children are hiding behind concrete barriers. More to come as soon as I get a chance.

MOSUL 31DEC08

Happy New Year. The CO is due back this evening, so it shouldn’t be too long before we’re able to roll out and see our area. I’m heading over to brief him on the state of our platoon in an hour, so I won’t have too long for this entry. Blue Platoon is doing well; we’ve been covering our new radios and equipment in recent training, including the famed MRAP vehicle—we should be issued some of them. This new contraption may be the Army’s next major fighting line vehicle and our answer to IEDs. It has a V-shaped hull, intended to deflect general blasts from run-of-the-mill IEDs, and tons of armor. The vehicle is still somewhat vulnerable to Explosively Formed Projectiles, or EFPs, the newer and better constructed IEDs the military’s been encountering for the past couple of years. These things are ingenious, really. Take a copper pot or ashtray, orient it behind explosives, throw a little laser on it (usually the motion sensors or line-of-sight sensors found in the lights around your garage door), and you’ve got a recipe for fiery death. Turn the laser on as the convoy approaches so it detonates when one of your vehicles breaks the beam. The explosion immediately melts the copper, which shoots through your vehicle like a bullet, setting fire to anything it comes in contact with. Very ugly. The entrance wound is miniscule, but the exit wound can be catastrophic. Kind of a lesson in counter-insurgency, really. We spend billions on a new weapon system, and the enemy counters with a thirty-cent ashtray. Granted, these things are difficult to construct properly, and only insurgents with outside connections can really get them going. But they’re still ridiculously cheap, minus the cost of expertise. Additionally, the profile of the MRAP is so high that it tends to run into power lines on patrol. And it’s so wide that it can’t make it through most of the streets in Mosul. We’ll be able to use it on missions skirting the edges of the city, but otherwise it’ll just sit here in the motor pool, waiting to be mortared.

Speaking of which, still no mortars. The XO got his fill of them when he arrived early, but it seems the rest of us just aren’t worth killing. It’s almost as if the enemy doesn’t care anymore. I’m kind of insulted.

Blue Platoon will be assuming a battle space previously owned by a whole company, so I’ll have plenty of work on my hands. The area is relatively quiet right now. Nevertheless, it was a major hotspot a few months ago, so we expect some volatility. There are two large populations of refugees in the area; we have some Turkoman refugees in the south who are generally cooperative and peaceful, and some Tal Afar refugees in the west who apparently have a reputation for causing trouble. We’ll be keeping a close eye on them. They fled Coalition operations in Tal Afar and came here because the size of the city gives them better opportunities to blend in with the population. While most of them are just petty criminals or general opportunists, some are undoubtedly here with more violent intentions. The area is overwhelmingly Sunni, which is good because the homogeneity probably means a minimum of ethnic violence will be conducted in the AO, but bad because a potential Shia landslide in January’s elections could send them into riots and increased support for insurgent elements. The Coalition will become, in their eyes, the enforcers of a Shia-controlled Baghdad and a Kurdish-controlled Mosul. We might not be well liked, soon.

I attempted to brief these items to my partner in crime, SSG Lark, but we quickly ran into a serious conflict of minds. The qualities that make him good as a platoon sergeant, namely his tunnel vision and absolutist mindset, can make him absolutely infuriating here. “Religion doesn’t mean a damn here,” he claimed. “It’s all about the money. All the Hajjis (wince) are baddies, and they don’t care about the reasons. Don’t worry about the religion or the politics.” I tried to patiently stress that yes, religion is in fact a MAJOR issue in Iraq, but was quickly shut down. “Oh, I forgot that you’d also spent 13 months here,” he replied sarcastically. True, I haven’t been here before. Yes, experience is the best teacher. But I was just about ready to start banging my head against the wall until sweet unconsciousness took me away. The political make-up of the neighborhoods? Of no consequence. Refugees? Just more willing to plant IEDs for an extra buck. Doesn’t matter what they’re fleeing from. And the unit we’re taking over from? They’re not to be trusted, they’re just trying to make themselves look good, they’ve done a terrible job, etc. It took all of my self-restraint not to rejoin that they have been here for 15 months, in fact, and more recently than he was here. Oh, well. He does an excellent job as a platoon sergeant, and I have no complaints on that front, so this is more frustrating from a personal than professional standpoint. I just told him that he needn’t worry about those details, that I would concern myself with the subtleties in the local populace, and that I would consider it a favor if he humored me whenever I naively acted as if such things were occasionally important.

I’ll be conducting all of the engagements with our counterpart leadership in the Iraqi Security Forces. If worse comes to worse, I may have to issue a standing order that he just not speak around them. It’s amazing how such trivial misunderstandings—your religious and political views are merely a front for your avaricious desire to blow things up—could cause diplomatic tension.

I suppose I’m just angry right now, and later on I’ll look back at this conversation with greater understanding. We are soldiers. We’re trained to find, fix, and finish our enemies on the field of battle. If he isn’t wearing an allied uniform and he’s armed, he’s an enemy. A simple premise. And while the response to this simplicity is in fact an incredibly complicated series of tactical maneuvers and cross-force coordination, the initiating act is supposed to be very easy to understand. Find, fix, finish. Unfortunately this isn’t the kind of war we’re engaged in. That armed civilian could be on our side, conceivably, trying to protect his property from looters or insurgents. The world is very, very confusing. And while the Army has done an outstanding job adapting our tactics and procedures in dealing with the new war, we haven’t been able to fundamentally change the individual soldier. They’re young, jumpy, confused, and armed. They’re good men, and they all want to effect positive change here, but it’s obvious that we all yearn for a simpler day when the enemy made it clear that he was an enemy. Here, they sell you fruit in the day and plant bombs in the night. And not just against you; against their neighbors, their political enemies, and their own police forces. Some of these people even conduct these attacks in the belief that they share a common goal with the Coalition, and that if they could eliminate this one particular group from the city it would finally be stable and secure. It is nuanced, it is subtle, and it is frustrating as hell. And these are not things a fighting man likes to hear. Give me a target, set me loose, and I’ll deal with it. But as that is a rarity, my job becomes something a bit different than those of my colleagues in previous wars. Explain the nuance, clarify the subtlety, and be ready to turn on—or off—the killing spirit in my men on command. I only hope I’m up to the task.

Since I’ve spent most of my time in meetings or conversations with the people I’ll be replacing, I really haven’t been around the rest of Blue Platoon that much. I’m feeling pretty detached from them (which is actually how my NCOs like it, as they feel—and rightly so—that the men are their territory).

That’s enough for now, though. I’ve got to go brief the commander and learn about our course of action for the next few days. Happy New Year to all of you..

MOSUL 29DEC08

We’re here. In the early morning of 28DEC08, Blue Platoon completed manifest and got on the buses to our Kuwaiti airstrip, boarded a C-17, and flew to LSA Diamondback (Mosul) which borders our current home, FOB Mirez. Stepping off of the plane was a slightly surreal moment; the first sight was the weeping willow-esque trees surrounding the airfield, and behind that was a clear view of the city of Mosul. Game on. We’re finally in a place where a lot of people actively are trying to kill us. The XO told us not to be surprised if we received indirect fire en route to Mirez, as the FOB has received mortar fire for three of the last seven days he was here (one conspicuously close to the place I’m currently living). Nothing yet, but I’m waiting with almost gleeful anticipation. Come on. Lob one at me. Let’s see who gets the honor of trying to kill me first.

All in all, the threat from indirect fire is minimal. It isn’t like an artillery barrage. Some bad guys are just trying to pop a few rounds at the FOB to see if they get lucky, and the atmosphere here is one of minor annoyance. Short of locating and eliminating the mortar team, there isn’t much you can really do about it; we’re already bunkered down surrounded by concrete and sandbags. It would take a direct hit to actually kill you, unless you happened to be walking in the open at that moment, so the general opinion is, “Well, all right. Either you get hit or you don’t.” And the odds of you—individually—getting hit are astronomically high, so we aren’t too concerned.

The city is very, very big. 1.8 million people live in Mosul, and it shows. It’s not New York City big, granted, but it would take the entire US Army to occupy and hold an insurgent NYC. We have a brigade for this one. This isn’t counting the multiple brigades of Iraqi forces stationed here; taken in tandem, we constitute maybe two divisions. Gunfire is a constant background noise, helicopters are circling the city around the clock, and it all feels very real. I’m having a hard time convincing myself that this is just like training. No, this is clearly the real thing.

We haven’t rolled outside of the wire on our first patrol yet, since our CO hasn’t arrived from the additional training he’s been tasked to receive. We’re essentially grounded on the FOB for the next few days. This is pretty beneficial for us, actually, as it forces us to get all of the final maintenance and administrative details out of the way first. Left to our own devises we would be outside immediately. We’re all eager to get out there and see our new battle space, meet the people we’re going to work with, and get this show on the road. After the two years and multiple millions the Army has spent on my training, I know that at some level I’ll feel fundamentally relieved after my first patrol: they’re finally going to get some payoff on their investment. And, most of all, I want to start learning first-hand. The curve will be steep, certainly, but I’m betting that I’ll begin to see things differently and learn tactics, techniques, and procedures that never really made sense in training. It takes nine months for a fertilized egg to develop into an autonomous human baby; what will twelve months of Mosul do to all of us?

Regrettably, SPC Ladies’ Man’s paperwork didn’t come through on Christmas Day. So I didn’t get to reenlist him as Santa Clause. He’s adapted, though, and now wants me to conduct the ceremony in one of the frilly, lacy shirts the locals tend to wear. I’ve decided to humor his request. Now he just needs to get those documents in order. SSG Lark is a little on edge right now. Part of this may be the fact that circumstances have forced us to temporarily share a Containerized Housing Unit (CHU), a little container that would be cramped for one person. Combine that with his OCD and we get a potentially explosive situation. But most of the stress is Mosul. It’s big, it’s busy, and we’re still not entirely sure what or where we’ll be operating. I’ve gotten a good tentative outline of my area over the course of the day. Currently my neighborhoods are relatively safe, but they were a hotspot of insurgency only a few months ago, so we’re going to find out pretty quickly if the progress was permanent or not. Additionally, with the Iraqi elections so close at hand, the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that limits our role in theater, and the rumor that some of the Iraqi National Police units may be forced to stand down, the city is sitting on thumb-tacks. It could get very volatile, very soon.

There isn’t much to report, otherwise. Most of the time over the last few days was spent in transit, waiting for transit, and unpacking equipment. The food at the DFAC is excellent. I mean truly excellent. Whatever I’ve said about KBR—which I continue to stand by with few exceptions—they can keep the cooks here. The walk to chow is a bit ridiculous, but definitely worth it. I also finally have an address:

NAME (with rank)

UNIT

FOB Mirez

APO AE 09334

Yes, I know. Silly anonymity. If you don’t know my unit, contact Hope or my family. If you don’t know my name, then you probably shouldn’t be reading this, let alone mailing me stuff.

That’s all I have to report for now. We’re here, we’re very eager, and we’re grounded for a few more days. Shouldn’t be too exciting. I’ll update this as soon as I can find internet; we’re not really moved into our final CHUs, so we don’t have internet access yet. But soon. And then I’ll start updating the journal directly, as opposed to writing it on my laptop and then wandering until I can find a terminal with a connection. But days one and two are complete. 300-something more to go.