Evan Wright - Generation Kill

Fawcett has a desire for revenge like everyone else, but at the same time he keeps thinking, as he later tells me, “When I get home people will probably ask me to speak at high schools about this. I don’t know how I’m going to explain all the dead women and children I’ve seen, the things we’ve done here.” Now he tells some of the guys he’s with, “If you’re mad about them mutilating a Marine, it’s not like this is the only country on earth with sociopaths. We’ve got people at home in American cities who hurt and degrade people all the time.”

Not only are the men in Alpha thirsting for payback, they’re so hungry that when their convoy pauses on its journey to Ash Shatrah, they jump out and ratfuck trash piles along Route 7. POG supply units passing by in recent days have left mountains of MRE litter beside the road. Marines in Alpha, having endured reduced rations for several days, dig through them, hunting for uneaten Tootsie Roll or peanut butter packets.

Alpha Company’s commander is dealing with a whole different set of problems. The mission has gone through so many permutations in the last several hours that it’s now clear to Capt. Patterson that finding the body of the lost Marine is a distant secondary objective. In fact, Patterson’s orders now verge on the fantastic. His Marines in Alpha, along with a much larger force from RCT-1, will link up outside the city and join a CIA-controlled operation to liberate Ash Shatrah, assisted by an indigenous army of “freedom fighters.”

According to the portions of the plan Patterson has been let in on, the CIA has spent months training and equipping a small army of Iraqi “freedom fighters” in an unnamed foreign country. Now these freedom-loving patriots have been flown into Iraq, where they will face their first test, liberating Ash Shatrah.

The Marines will not be leading this mission. Their role is simply to be there to help out the Iraqi freedom fighters in case they get into a jam. Once the CIA-controlled exiles have liberated the city in the name of Free Iraq, the Marines will enter, brave the crowds who some are now predicting will be dancing in the streets, and search for the lost Marine.

Patterson has been careful in the past several hours to try to tone down the mood of his men. He later says, “I didn’t want some dramatic idea of revenge to be motivating everybody.” Even so, as his company rolls up to Ash Shatrah, Patterson experiences what he later describes as a “feeling that there is a heroic aspect to what we’re doing, that we are going to go into this town, getting one of our fallen brothers, and we’re going to be the saviors of everyone.”

IT’S OVERCAST when Alpha Company arrives on the northern outskirts of Ash Shatrah at about six in the morning on March 31. The ground is wet from recent rains, and the place smells like decay. First Recon had passed through Ash Shatrah on March 26 on its thrust up from Nasiriyah, and the town had been exceptionally foul smelling then. This morning, Patterson realizes the odor comes from the corpses of shot-up Iraqi fighters rotting in nearby ditches. Ash Shatrah runs for about two kilometers north down the eastern side of the road. Alpha Company sets up along the north end of the town. Several hundred infantry Marines from RCT-1’s Third Battalion are deployed farther down the road, bolstered with tanks and armored vehicles.

Patterson realizes just how big a deal this mission is when he sees General Kelly, Maj. Gen. Mattis’s personal emissary, arrive by helicopter to consult with high-level Marine officers and the CIA officials running the show. The CIA guys, three young men who look to be in their late twenties, arrive in an armored vehicle, and emerge wearing jumpsuits, flak vests and black caps. The CIA men ratchet up the anticipation level of the mission with exciting new intelligence: One of Saddam’s top henchmen, General Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali,” is believed to be holed up in the town.

AFTER FAWCETT’S TEAM gets into position by the highway at the north end of Ash Shatrah—using the road’s elevation to provide cover—they notice the town is filled with military installations. Just a couple hundred meters away, they spot barracks, artillery pieces, stockpiles of munitions, an obstacle course for training soldiers and, most amazingly, Iraqis in uniform walking around outdoors in broad daylight. Fawcett can’t believe that Marine convoys have been driving up and down this road for nearly a week next to a sizable, heavily armed force of Iraqis. Watching this, he later tells me, makes him wonder “what’s going through the minds of the guys we have planning stuff for us.”

It’s not like the Iraqis don’t have a clue the Americans are coming. The night before, U.S. ships launched several Tomahawk cruise missiles into the town (at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of approximately 1.5 million dollars per Tomahawk). Patterson, who’s told about the cruise missiles when he arrives, is impressed. Comparable Marine operations against small, run-of-the-mill hostile towns like Ash Shatrah haven’t rated the use of such high-tech weaponry. Clearly, this shows the hand of the CIA, sparing no expense in its effort to make the liberation of Ash Shatrah go as smoothly as possible and become a showcase for its handpicked army of Iraqi freedom fighters.

Patterson and his counterpart in the infantry battalion sit down outside the town and coordinate “control measures.” They make sure they know each other’s radio frequencies so they can communicate. They study maps of the town so their men don’t run into each other later on. They rename all the main routes in the city, replacing confusing Arabic names with ones that are easier to remember, like “Sally,” “Jane” and “Mary.” Marines tend to be methodical about things like this, few more so than Patterson. Within forty minutes of these consultations, Patterson is all set to participate in this small, history-making event: the first liberation of a town in central Iraq by Iraqi forces.

There’s just one problem: The freedom fighters have gone missing. Several of them had infiltrated the town the night before, under cover of the Tomahawk strike, in order to find sympathizers among the ranks of the Iraqi soldiers garrisoned there, but they were captured. Apparently, the Baathists who apprehended them had not been impressed by the missile strike, and they were summarily executed. Their comrades waiting outside the town lost heart. Early in the afternoon Patterson’s men are told, “The freedom fighters have fled.” After all their elaborate preparations, the CIA’s army has vanished into the countryside.

BY NOW PATTERSON’S MARINES have started to come under sporadic small-arms fire from the town. They call in a mortar strike on suspected enemy positions. The Marines, who’ve driven all night to carry out what they thought would be a sweet, revenge-fueled version of Saving Private Ryan, grow frustrated.

Very quickly their mission outside Ash Shatrah becomes as confusing as all the others they have participated in. Commanders begin to change the ROE. Initially, Marine snipers are cleared to kill anyone in uniform. They get in a few shots, then word is passed down that soldiers are surrendering and they shouldn’t automatically be shot.

Following this, Marines see a truck filled with soldiers zoom onto a street directly across from their position. The Marines hold their fire. The Iraqi soldiers drive past, waving white flags, then speed off, throwing the flags from the back of the truck. “We’re letting all these soldiers escape,” one of Fawcett’s men complains.

Fawcett requests an artillery strike on a headquarters building 600 meters across from his position. His team has observed Iraqis in green military uniforms coming and going from the front door of this building all morning. Fawcett regrets passing his request up almost immediately.