Evan Wright - Generation Kill

“That’s all they said?” Fick asks. “You spoke to those guys for ten minutes!”

“They say they don’t want us to leave the town,” Meesh adds. “They’re afraid as soon as we go the Baath, dudes are going to come back and kill them.”

Ar Rifa is another Shia city that rose up against Saddam after President George H. W. Bush’s call to rebellion in 1991. As in Nasiriyah, the uprising was put down, and the citizens were treated to months of bloody reprisals.

Maj. Gen. Mattis’s strategy of racing north as fast as possible precludes putting forces inside towns after they’ve been “liberated.” The Marines or the CIA or whoever is actually in charge of this operation at Ar Rifa have come up with a stopgap measure to protect the citizens. Right now, Meesh is the sole agent responsible for executing this plan.

He hands out infrared chemlites to the men who’ve come out of the town waving white flags. Their job tonight, after the Marines depart, is to put these chemlites on top of buildings and other locations inside the city occupied by Baath Party members or Fedayeen. American aircraft will then fly over the town and bomb any position they see illuminated by the infrared chemlites.

Fick is as intrigued by this plan as I am. After Meesh distributes the chemlites, we both accost him. I bribe him with several more packs of Marlboros, and Fick asks him, “How do you know those guys aren’t just going to put those chemlites on the homes of people they owe money to, or have some other grudge against?”

“Believe me,” Meesh says. “They’re good dudes. We can trust ’em.” He proffers a bottle to Fick. “Beer?”

“No thanks, Meesh,” Fick says.

“Yeah,” Meesh says. “It’s not the good shit. It’s local brewed.”

AS THE SUN DROPS, muezzins call the faithful to prayer from minarets and loudspeakers across Ar Rifa. Then the city erupts with celebratory AK fire. We sit inside Colbert’s vehicle eating cold MREs in the darkness. In recent days, rations were cut from three to two meals per day. There is a silver lining to having your rations cut. When you eat MREs in abundance, they taste foul. Now, with everyone having a constant edge of hunger, meals that once tasted like dried kitchen sponges in chemical sauce are pretty tasty. Everyone plows through the ratfuck bag, eagerly retrieving meals like Chicken Jambalaya and Vegetarian Alfredo that a week ago no one would have touched.

We are happily eating when, from behind us on the highway, we hear the sound of rolling gunfire. All of us look out into the darkness and see dozens of orange tracer rounds spewing out from both sides of an approaching U.S. military convoy.

“Everybody get down!” Colbert shouts. We dive to the floor of the Humvee. The American trucks pass, mistakenly discharging a torrent of automatic weapons fire toward our Humvee and those in the rest of the company. Tracers skim over the hood. A high-caliber American round slices through the armor plates, penetrating the vehicle behind Trombley and me. The shooting lasts about twenty seconds. “It’s fucking friendlies,” Colbert says, uncurling himself from the floor.

After dark, the Marine Humvees put out infrared strobe lights invisible to the naked eye. Their rhythmic flashing is designed to be seen through NVGs, to help other drivers locate the position of your vehicle. The problem is, to nervous, inexperienced personnel the infrared strobes look like enemy muzzle flashes. Fick later finds out that we were shot at by Navy reservist surgeons on their way to set up a mobile shock-trauma unit on the road ahead. “Those were fucking doctors who a few weeks ago were doing nose and tit jobs in Santa Fe Springs,” Fick tells his men, laughing. “The fucking POGest of the POGs. Luckily, they’re not the best sharpshooters.”

Several Humvees up the line are hit, but no Marines are injured. Within minutes of the latest near-death episode, Trombley is snoring, sound asleep.

AFTER THE FRIENDLY-FIRE incident outside Ar Rifa on the evening of March 26, Fick pokes his head into Colbert’s vehicle to inform him that the Marines’ night is just getting started. During the next six hours the battalion is going to race across open roads and desert trails, advancing twenty-five to thirty kilometers behind enemy lines, in order to set up observation on an Iraqi military airfield near a town called Qalat Sukhar. All of this has to be done as quickly as possible. A British parachute brigade is planning to seize the airfield at dawn. But reports have come in from U.S. spy planes that the airfield may be defended with AAA batteries and T-72 tanks. First Recon will go there to make sure the way is clear for the British.

The mission is plagued with snafus from the start. A battalion supply truck becomes stuck in the mud outside Ar Rifa. First Recon halts for forty-five minutes, while higher-ups debate whether or not to extract the truck. They decide to leave it and come back for it later. Shortly after we pull out, the truck is looted, hit by at least one RPG and burned to the ground. It had been carrying the battalion’s main supply of food rations. As a result of this incident, everyone will be reduced to about one and a half meals per day until we reach Baghdad.

By midnight we have been driving for several hours. For the last forty-five minutes the Humvee has been rocking up and down like a boat. We are in the dark on a field covered in berms, each about a meter high, like waves. Despite Colbert’s efforts to track the battalion’s route using maps and frequent radio checks with Fick, he has no idea where we are.

“Dude, I am so lost right now,” Colbert says. It’s a rare admission of helplessness, a function of fatigue setting in after ninety-six hours of little or no sleep since the shooting started at Nasiriyah.

“I see where we’re going, don’t worry,” Person says. His speech is clipped and breathless. He’s tweaking on Ripped Fuel tablets, which he’s been gobbling for the past several days. “Do you remember the gay dog episode on South Park, when Sparky runs away cause he’s, like, humping other dogs and shit?”

“Fuck yeah,” Colbert says. He and Person repeat the tagline from the episode: “‘Hello there, little pup. I’m Big Gay Al!’”

“They opened a gay club in the town where I’m from in Michigan,” Trombley says. “People trashed it every night. They had to close it after a month.”

“Yeah,” Person says, a note of belligerence in his voice. “When I get back I’m gonna start a gay club. I’ll call it the Men’s Room. There will be, like, a big urinal with a two-way mirror everyone pisses against. It will be, like, facing the bar, so when everyone’s drinking there will be, like, these big cocks pissing at them.”

“Person,” Colbert says. “Give it a rest, please.”

AT THREE-THIRTY in the morning on March 27, the battalion reaches the edge of the enemy airfield, stopping about two kilometers from it. The Humvees set up a defensive perimeter. Colbert’s team pulls down the cammie nets and we dig Ranger graves in the darkness. It’s nearly freezing. Most of the Marines are kept up on watch. Two Recon teams are pushed out on foot to observe the airfield for what they have been told is the coming British paratrooper landing. But they are called back at dawn.

Sometime around six in the morning First Recon’s commander, Lt. Col. Ferrando, receives a phone call from Maj. Gen. Mattis asking him what’s on the airfield. The British are set to begin their air assault at seven-thirty. The latest reports from American observation planes say there are up to four T-72 tanks on the field and perhaps several batteries of AAA, enough to wreak havoc on the British. Ferrando is forced to tell Mattis he still doesn’t know what’s on the airfield. His Recon teams were unable to reach it within the allotted time.