Evan Wright - Generation Kill

Across from the building, a live Arab lies in the road. He’s in a dingy white robe, squeezed between piles of rubble. The man is only about two meters from where our wheels pass, on his back with both hands covering his eyes. After being subjected to hostile fire all day, there’s a kind of sick, triumphant rush in seeing another human being, perhaps an enemy fighter, now on his back, helplessly cowering. It’s empowering in a way that is also depressing. All the Marines who drive past the man train their guns on him but don’t shoot. He’s not a threat—childishly trying to protect his face with his hands. To the Marines, the man doesn’t even merit being shot.

After clearing the second bridge, the convoy races up to about forty miles an hour, speeding past the urban mass of Al Hayy to our right. Ahead of us Charlie Company comes under sporadic AK fire from the town. Marines shoot back. Corporal Caleb Holman, a nineteen-year-old .50-cal gunner, sees a man perking up in some scrub grass fifty meters from his Humvee near the middle of the convoy. Firing armor-penetrating SLAP rounds from his .50-cal, Holman blows the top of the man’s head off.

AFEW MINUTES BEFORE SUNSET on March 31, First Recon reaches its objective: the bridge that serves as the main road out of Al Hayy. It presents another strange juxtaposition typical of Iraq. After moving all day through primitive hamlets, the Marines now stand at the foot of a span that, with its long, graceful concrete lines, wouldn’t be out of place on the German autobahn. Bravo Company is tasked with setting up the blockade on the highway at the north end of the bridge. The rest of the battalion pushes a kilometer farther north up Route 7.

Colbert’s team and the others in the platoon pull their Humvees up to where the guardrails start at the foot of the bridge. They point their main guns toward the bridge, which rises in a slight crest about 200 meters from their position, where it stretches over a canal. Beyond that, the highway drops out of view, as it descends toward Al Hayy about two kilometers to the south.

Three Marines sprint onto the bridge with a bale of concertina wire, which they stretch across the roadway. They run back to the Humvees in the last minutes of daylight. The area around the highway where the Marines have their blockade is a barren no-man’s-land. The ground is saturated with salts that push up to the surface, forming a white crust on the mud. In the twilight gloom, all you see is the pale whiteness of the salty flats. Fick walks up, grinning. Even loaded down with his vest, flak jacket and bulky chemical-protection suit, he displays his characteristic bouncing stride. Right now it’s more buoyant than usual. “I feel like for the first time we seized the initiative,” he says, surveying the roadblock. Everyone seems to be swaggering.

After nearly two weeks of feeling hunted, the Marines have done what they were supposed to do: They assaulted through resistance and took an objective. Psychologically it’s like a game of king of the hill, and they now occupy the high ground. This small band of young men controls the key exit from a town of 50,000.

First Recon Battalion is completely alone. The Marines are twenty kilometers north of the nearest American unit, RCT-1. They are thirty kilometers south of Al Kut, home to approximately 15,000 Iraqis in a mechanized division. There is nothing between them and those thousands of Iraqis but a straight, narrow highway. Only later will it become clear that most regular Iraqi forces won’t fight; on the night of March 31, that fact is unknown. Adding to their sense of isolation, First Recon has lost communication with its air cover this evening, as the result of a technical glitch. If the battalion is attacked, it will have to fight on its own.

ONE THING THE MARINES haven’t trained for, or really even thought through, is the operation of roadblocks at night. The basic idea is simple enough: Put an obstacle like concertina wire in the road and point guns at it. If a car approaches, fire warning shots. If it keeps coming, shoot it. The question is: Do the Iraqis understand what’s going on? When it gets dark, can Iraqi drivers actually see the concertina wire? Even Marines have been known to drive through concertina wire at night.

The other problem is warning shots. In the dark, warning shots are simply a series of loud bangs and flashes. It’s not like this is the international code for “Stop your vehicle and turn around.” As it turns out, many Iraqis react to warning shots by speeding up. Maybe they just panic. Consequently, a lot of Iraqis die at roadblocks.

The initial killings at First Recon’s roadblock come just after dark. Several cars approach the bridge with their headlights on, coming from the direction of Al Hayy. Bravo’s .50-caliber gunners fire warning bursts. The cars turn around and leave. Then a tractor-trailer appears, its diesel engine growling. The Marines fire warning shots, but the truck keeps coming.

A few seconds after the truck fails to heed the second warning burst, its headlights dip onto Bravo’s position, blinding the Marines. The truck sounds like it must be doing thirty or forty.

“Light it the fuck up!” someone shouts.

Under the ROE, a vehicle that fails to stop at a roadblock is declared hostile, and everyone in it may justifiably be shot. Almost the entire platoon opens fire. But for some reason, these Marines who have previously put down enemy shooters with almost surgical precision are unable to take out even the truck’s headlights after several seconds of heavy fire. Red tracers and white muzzle flashes streak across the bridge. Mark-19 grenades burst all around the truck, but it keeps coming, horn blaring.

Just before reaching the concertina wire, the vehicle jackknifes and screeches. Someone has finally managed to hit the driver, whose head, they later discover, is blown clean off. Meanwhile, three men jump from the cab. Espera, who is wearing night-vision goggles, sees them and fires his M-4 from a crouching position, methodically pumping three-round bursts into the chest of each, as he was trained. Almost as an afterthought, the Marines shoot out the last headlight of the truck.

THERE’S NO TIME to examine the scene of the shooting. The entire battalion pulls back from the bridge, moving a couple of kilometers north to a more defensible position. The triumphant feelings that soared a half hour ago have vanished. It’s suddenly cold, a Humvee becomes stuck in the mud and in Bravo’s Second Platoon, Marines are again dealing with weapons that jammed catastrophically in the engagement with the truck. Next to Colbert’s vehicle, the .50-cal on Lovell’s Humvee had a round explode in the chamber, puffing out the gun’s chassis—a fifty-pound block of forged steel—like a balloon. In the darkness Lovell marvels, “Fellas, we just destroyed a ten-thousand-dollar piece of U.S. government property.” They are lucky the gun didn’t blow up.

In Colbert’s vehicle, the Mark-19 jammed again—as it has in two previous engagements. Hasser, who’s manning the weapon, screams, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and pounds the roof of the Humvee, trying to unjam it. He lets out a half-crazed scream. “Raaah!”

Colbert shouts up to him, “Walt! You’re losing control of yourself. Shut the fuck up and take a deep breath.”

“This goddamn gun!” Hasser shouts. His voice cracks. “It’s a piece of shit!”

“Walt, you know I like you a lot,” Colbert says, trying to calm him. “But it’s not going to help if you lose control of your emotions. We just don’t have enough LSA to keep it lubed properly. There’s nothing we can do about it.” He adds, “I’m sorry I had to yell at you.”