Evan Wright - Generation Kill

SENSING THE GROWING RANCOR within the battalion, Ferrando calls his officers in for a meeting early in the afternoon on their second day by the airfield. About thirty of them gather by a blown-up mud hut. “The men are bitching too much,” he tells his officers. In Ferrando’s opinion, his Marines’ bitching about the Grooming Standard, the loss of the battalion colors and questionable decisions he and others have made is the fault of his officers, who, he says, have poor attitudes. “I’m starting to hear some of you questioning and bitching just like the troops,” Ferrando lectures. That is a fucking no-go. Attitude is contagious. It breeds like a fucking yeast infection.”

Ferrando’s assessment of how the invasion is going is grim. “Saddam is winning the strategic battle,” he tells his men, citing negative publicity American forces have received for killing civilians. “Major General Mattis has expressed a concern to me that division-wide, we’re shooting more civilians than we should.”

Later, when I talk to Mattis about the invasion, he insists that the resistance the Marines met in cities and villages in central Iraq “was not much of a surprise.” Ferrando’s comments to his men on this day are at variance with Mattis’s assertions. He tells them, “The resistance in the urban areas has been stiffer than we expected. It’s caught us by surprise. We expected the resistance to be regular military, but it’s paramilitary. We’ve got to make sure we don’t let this get the best of us.”

After dismissing his officers, Ferrando calls in Colbert and other senior enlisted men for a briefing intended to quell discontent. “The civilian engagement,” he says, referring to the shooting of the two shepherds, “was largely reflective of the ROE guidance I gave as we pushed to the airstrip—the order that everyone is declared hostile.”

He explains, “I pushed the ROE because we had reports of enemy tanks and armored personnel carriers on the airstrip. It was a military target. I had seen no civilians. It was five in the fucking morning. The general told me to get on the field. I knew that slapping everyone together and moving onto the airfield in twenty minutes was reckless, but that was my order. It was the most rash fucking thing I’ve done. Borderline foolish. But I can’t tell the general we don’t do windows.”

He then tries to dispel the resentment some men feel for his initial order to not medevac the wounded boy. “If that casualty had been you, I would not have medevaced you because I still thought we had armor to the south.” He expounds his interpretation of the rules of war. “Some of you seem to think we have to give wounded civilians every consideration we give ourselves. That is not true. The ROE say we have to give them the same medical care they would get by themselves. That is zero.”

Ferrando makes a play for his men’s support. “We are going to get tasked to do things that suck,” he says. “You have to have faith in me. You may not like me. That’s okay. But you have to understand that my number-one priority is protection of our forces.” He concedes, “We’ve done a few things that could have been catastrophic, but we made it through. The bottom line is, we volunteered to fight.”

As they walk back to their positions on the perimeter, one of the men says, “Yeah, we volunteered to be here, but we didn’t volunteer to be treated like idiots. His story always changes. ‘Protection of forces’ my fucking ass. He sent us onto an airfield where he thought there were fucking tanks. Why did we make that pell-mell fucking rush? So a colonel could score a few extra brownie points with his general.”

IT’S ANOTHER BITTERLY COLD MORNING on March 30, and the men have again been up all night. The Marines in Bravo Company spent their final hours at the airfield camp in their Humvees, crashing around in the darkness, trying to execute orders that changed every forty-five minutes or so until dawn. At around midnight, they were told enemy forces had gotten a fix on their positions and they needed to move to new ones in order to avoid mortar or artillery strikes. They kept moving a few hundred meters this way and that until four in the morning, when Fick announced, “For First Recon, the operational pause is over. We have warning orders for a new mission.”

But even with Fick’s promise that clarity of purpose was on its way, the company kept up its hectic maneuvers until dawn. Now everyone is sitting out by some berms, watching a beautiful rose-tinted sunrise. Lovell is freezing after having fallen into a canal while retrieving a claymore mine during the frantic night moves. Reyes, who has just spent half an hour cutting concertina wire out of his Humvee’s undercarriage—after having driven through it while circling the camp in the darkness—says, “We’re Pavlov’s dogs. They condition us through rules, through repeatedly doing things that have no purpose.” He laughs. “They probably knew at midnight we would just spend the next five hours driving around aimlessly. They know it just makes us mad and gets us keyed up to do something.”

He has a point. Despite another night of sleeplessness, spirits are soaring. Most men are elated at the prospect of another mission. It’s like they’ve forgotten the horrors of Nasiriyah and Al Gharraf, twisted Amtracs with dead Marines in them, mangled civilians on the highway. Three days of stewing in the camp, being chewed out by the Coward of Khafji for not having proper haircuts, has made them eager to get back on the road. In their minds, at least when they’re in the field, getting shot at and bombed, they don’t have to deal with retards in the rear.

Fick now adds to their élan with good news. He tells his team leaders, “It looks like we are going to be doing interdiction and ambushes along Route 17, west of 7.”

Instead of driving blind into enemy positions, the Recon Marines will be turning the tables. They will be setting up their own ambushes on enemy fighters. Even Pappy, among the most reserved of the men, is guardedly optimistic. “Finally, it looks like we’re going to be doing to them as they do to us.”

“I feel like it’s Christmas morning and I’m about to open my presents,” Trombley says.

Fick treats the Marines to a special breakfast. He distributes two meal packs of humrats to each team, for the men to divide among themselves.

While eating hot lentil stew and rice, Espera ponders American culture. “Dog, before we came over here I watched Pocahontas with my eight-year-old daughter. Disney has taken my heritage as an American Indian and fucked it up with this typical American white-boy formula.”

“Pocahontas. Wonderful children’s cartoon,” Colbert says. “I like the music.”

“Dog, Pocahontas is another case of your people shitting on mine. What’s the true story of Pocahontas? White boys come to the new land, deceive a corrupt Indian chief, kill ninety percent of the men and rape all the women. What does Disney do? They make this tragedy, the genocide of my people, into a love story with a singing raccoon. I ask you, would the white man make a love story about Auschwitz where a skinny-ass inmate falls in love with a guard, with a singing raccoon and dancing swastikas? Dog, I was ashamed for my daughter to see this.”

Trombley slides in next to Espera. “You know, my great-great-great-grandfather was a mercenary up in Michigan who had a militia where they’d kill Indians for hire. He was really good at it.”

“You know, Trombley,” Espera says, “in the fishing village I’m from, Los Angeles, if I mention that I’m part Indian, most white motherfuckers will bring up some great-great-great-grandparent who was part Indian because they want to let me know that even though they look like white motherfuckers, they’re actually down with my people. You are the first white motherfucker I’ve ever met who’s said that.”