Evan Wright - Generation Kill

AFEW MINUTES after the double sunset, the Marines are ordered to be on the lookout for a downed American aircraft. Later, the BBC reports that a Navy F-18 was shot down, leading Fick and others to surmise that the brilliant fireball we’d seen had been that jet crash.

We drive for several hours in the darkness, dogged by sporadic mortar fire and enemy forces that keep lighting up the sky with illume flares.

Around midnight the battalion stops a few kilometers south of Al Kut and digs in. The canal is a couple hundred meters to our right, and the ground here is saturated. Boots sink ankle-deep in the mud. It takes twenty minutes just to find a spot dry enough to dig a hole. With enemy mortars and illume flares still going off nearby, Colbert’s team excavates a massive hole, big enough for everyone, in the event of a bad artillery attack.

Machine-gun fire across the canal is heavy at times. RCT-1 is on the other side, and they are moving into position to assault into Al Kut. Low-flying American jets crisscross overhead. Bombs and artillery rumble.

I sit in the mud, eating an MRE ration I saved for dinner. After squeezing the contents from the foil pack into my mouth, I’m too tired to discern what it tastes like—a spaghetti dinner, chicken breast or chunked beefsteak. There’s not enough light to read the packaging and figure out what these chunks of food in my mouth are. It’s the first time existing in total darkness has bothered me.

The dark and sleepless conditions under which Marines operate have already caused several fatalities. Two men sleeping near their Humvee in another unit were crushed to death by a tracked vehicle, and a third was paralyzed. An infantry Marine crawled into his hole after watch and fatally shot himself in his sleep with his SAW.

Nearby in the darkness, Marines in Bravo pass around these stories. Some of them now bring up another nighttime activity: “combat jacks.” They’re trying to tally who’s masturbated the most since the invasion started. During long, fatiguing hours of watch, some Marines beat off just to keep awake and pass the time. “Dog, after that first ambush,” one of the men says, referring to a fevered night of combat jacks after the attack at Al Gharraf, “I get into my hole, and I had to go three times, bam, bam, bam! Couldn’t stop. Hadn’t happened like that since I was seventeen. I thought something was broken.”

ON THIS NIGHT, April 2, five kilometers south of Al Kut, First Recon is alone on the western side of the canal. Given the fact that Al Kut is home to thousands of Republican Guard forces and is now being bombed from above by American aircraft while being attacked on the ground by RCT-1 (as well as other Marine units from the west), commanders in First Recon are concerned that enemy forces, fleeing the city, might overrun its encampment on this night of chaos. The battalion pushes foot patrols out beyond the perimeter in order to set up observation posts and watch for approaching Iraqis. Kocher, who spent the previous night reconnoitering the ruins of Al Muwaffaqiyah, now leads a patrol out.

The moon hasn’t risen yet. Creeping through a field in near-absolute darkness, Kocher and two of his men spot an Arab through their NVGs about twenty meters away. The Arab, wearing a robe, is sitting cross-legged in a low spot between some broad, undulating berms.

Kocher’s first impulse is to shoot him. He’s upset about Pappy being hit the night before and wouldn’t mind exacting some revenge. But as he later explains, Kocher doesn’t shoot for fear of giving away his position. Iraqi soldiers are still launching illume flares less than a kilometer away, presumably looking for Americans.

With two of his men covering him, Kocher approaches the lone Arab, confident the guy can’t see him in the darkness. Speaking rudimentary Arabic, learned from his Marine cheat sheets, Kocher tells him to put his hands up and stand.

The Arab complies. As he rises, an AK slides out from under his robes and clatters to the ground. Kocher draws nearer. Then he hears footsteps, someone shouting “ Ahhh!”

Captain America runs past, making a bayonet charge for the Arab. He slams him in the chest, and the two of them tumble over with a meaty thud.

“I fucked that guy up!” Captain America shouts, rising triumphantly.

Kocher is pissed. It’s not just that his commanding officer is running around in the darkness, screaming and bayoneting a prisoner who had been completely under control. Now Kocher figures he’s going to have to get out his medical kit and render aid to the Arab if he’s not dead.

He rolls the Arab, zip-cuffing his hands behind his back, then spins him around to examine his chest for wounds. He’s unharmed. The Arab wears a chest rig beneath his robe, loaded with ammo. Captain America’s bayonet smashed apart a rifle magazine in the Arab’s vest but failed to penetrate his chest.

“Nice going, Captain,” Kocher says. “You missed him.”

“That guy was resisting,” Captain America says. “I just wanted to jab him.”

Kocher strips off the Arab’s ammo vest and pulls him to his feet. Captain America curses and tries kicking the Arab in the groin. Instead, he hits Kocher in the stomach.

“Fuck! Did I hit you?”

“Yeah,” Kocher says. He doesn’t say anything else. Kocher finds that speaking with his commander just adds to the aggravation. Following this night’s latest escapade, some of Kocher’s men begin fantasizing about capping their captain, talking about it openly among themselves. Kocher doesn’t. He tries to maintain a balanced view of his commander. “He’s got personal problems,” he says. “I’ve got no problem with being aggressive, but he’s bloodthirsty toward the wrong people, unarmed people.”

THE BOMBARDMENT OF AL KUT continues into the morning of April 3. RCT-1’s advance into the city is well under way on the other side of the canal. We hear Amtracs clanking past, machine guns, explosions. Some are less than a kilometer away, but from where we’re sitting the nearby action has a remote feel, similar to being in a cheap multiplex where you hear sounds of a war movie seeping out from the next theater. First Recon is sitting out this assault.

Within a couple of hours, the Marines in RCT-1 blast their way to the main bridge over the Tigris. But as soon as they reach it, they will pull back and depart the city. Their mission and First Recon’s in Central Iraq will be over. After having sent them all the way here, Maj. Gen. Mattis has decided not to seize Al Kut. First Recon and RCT-1 are ordered to turn around and leave.

First Recon’s entire campaign since leaving Nasiriyah has been part of a feint—a false movement designed to convince the Iraqi leadership that the main U.S. invasion would be coming through Al Kut. The strategy has been a success. The Iraqis left a key division and other forces in and around Al Kut in order to fight off a Marine advance that now has been abruptly called off. With so many Iraqi forces tied down near Al Kut, Baghdad has been left relatively undefended for the combined Army and Marine assault now gathering on the outskirts.

Mattis, a key architect of this grand diversion, later boasts to me, “The Iraqis expected us to go all the way through Al Kut—that the ‘dumb Marines’ would fight their way through the worst terrain to Baghdad.” While the plan worked brilliantly, Mattis adds, with characteristic modesty, “I’m not a great general. I was just up against other generals who don’t know shit.”

The Marines have known nothing about this feint strategy until the past couple of days, when Fick began guessing that this was his platoon’s purpose, based on hints he’d received from other officers.