Evan Wright - Generation Kill

War Pig, driving ahead of us on the same highway the battalion fought its way up earlier, is again taking fire from both sides of the road. Tracers stream through the night sky. We drive into the gunfire. Enemy muzzle flashes jet toward us from the right side of the road no more than five meters from my window. Colbert opens up on the position, his rifle clattering. Spent shell casings ejected from the side of his M-4 rain down inside the Humvee. If his past performances in these types of situations are any guide, there’s a strong likelihood he hit his target. I picture an enemy fighter bleeding in a cold, dark ditch and feel no remorse—at this time.

We drive the next ten kilometers in near silence, while the Marines search for additional targets, until we leave the ambush zone. Colbert pulls his weapon back in from the window and resumes his discussion with Person. “The point is, Josh, people that sing about cowboys are annoying and stupid.”

BY THE NIGHT OF APRIL 9, offensive U.S. military operations in Baghdad have ceased. The city is taken. Crowds have toppled Saddam statues. American military units are pouring into the city to begin the occupation.

We reach the outskirts of Baghdad at about eleven o’clock, having driven straight from Baqubah. We arrive in the same industrial suburbs we passed through the day before. The looters are gone, the streets are empty, the city is black. A few fires rage in the distance, sending columns of flame over Baghdad, but given the level of destruction Marines have witnessed recently, the place seems relatively tranquil. The American artillery that was pounding continuously for the past several days is silent. We pass construction sites where military bulldozers, with floodlights mounted on them, are laboring in the night. The military machine that crushes everything in its path is quickly followed by armies of worker-ant battalions, who’ve already marched up and begun smoothing out the rubble and building infrastructure. We drive into a sprawling supply depot and fueling station erected in the past several hours to service thousands of American vehicles. There’s a sense in the air tonight that Baghdad is pacified, the Americans are now quietly, efficiently in control. It’s perhaps the only time things will ever appear this way to the men in First Recon.

FIRST RECON enters central Baghdad on April 10, at about three in the afternoon. Colbert’s team drives with Hasser at the wheel, singing the hobo classic “King of the Road.” We approach the city from the east. The striking thing about the outskirts of Baghdad is how green everything is. We pass through a wealthy neighborhood of spacious stucco homes perched atop small hills, shaded beneath palms, sycamores and eucalyptus trees. Occupants of some homes sit outside in gardens, watching convoys belonging to the American invaders rumble past on streets below.

We cut down a dirt embankment and approach a temporary pontoon bridge over the Diyala River, the eastern crossing point into the city. When we reach the other side, Fick reports over the radio that American forces in Baghdad are experiencing “intermittent sniper fire and attacks from Fedayeen in trucks.”

The eastern side of Baghdad is a shantytown. We drive on dirt roads past corrugated tin and mud-brick huts jumbled together amidst a patchwork of open spaces, with cows and chickens roaming everywhere. We round a corner and two enormous bulls, each seeming more powerful than the Humvee we’re in, stand in the road. Hasser gingerly veers around them.

We pass donkey carts pulled over on the side of the road, intermixed with Toyotas, ancient Chevys and BMWs. Barefoot, scruffy kids line the edges of the shantytown. Some shout, “Go! Go! Go!” while pointing toward the city center and dancing like cheerleaders. One kid we pass comes right to the point: “Money! Money! Money!” he chants.

The battalion drives onto a massive berm, about five meters wide by five meters high. The Marines laugh. There are berms even in Baghdad. The battalion stops. Marines get out. The berm offers a commanding view of the city—a sprawl of low-slung apartment blocks, homes, offices, avenues, canals, freeways that stretch beyond the vanishing point. It spreads across nearly 800 square kilometers and has a population of about six million people.

“Jesus Christ!” Colbert says. “That’s a lot of city.”

Gunny Wynn walks over to Colbert’s vehicle. The two of them study maps and detailed satellite images of the city, marveling at the thousands of streets and alleyways. Gunny Wynn shakes his head. “And we thought those little towns a kilometer long were tough. I don’t know how we’re going to control this.”

Person stands by the Humvee, urinating on the berm. “Hey!” He calls out triumphantly. “I wrote U.S.A. with my piss.”

FIRST RECON’S DESTINATION in Baghdad is a working-class slum called Saddam City (since renamed Sadr City). More than two million Iraqis live here in an expanse of vaguely Stalinist-looking apartment blocks spread out over several kilometers. We drive down the main road that edges Saddam City and are greeted with a blend of enthusiasm tinged with violence. Thousands of people line the street, pressing up against the sides of Colbert’s Humvee. Sniper rounds periodically crack in the air. The side streets into Saddam City are barricaded with rubble, trunks of palm trees and scorched cars.

When Colbert’s Humvee momentarily stops, along with the rest of First Recon’s convoy, we’re swamped by young men in threadbare clothes who zombie-shuffle up to the windows. Many smile, but their faces have a hungry, vacant look. They resemble a crowd from Night of the Living Dead. Several grab at the Marines’ gear hanging off the sides of the Humvee—canteens, shovels and rucksacks. Colbert pushes his door open, jumps out and cows the crowd of perhaps 300 people into backing away from the vehicle. He paces from side to side, weapon out, establishing his territory.

Colbert is ordered back into the vehicle. The convoy circles around, driving over some traffic islands, and snakes into a gated industrial complex across from Saddam City. Inside, vast warehouses are spread across several acres. Most of them are bomb-smashed, with smoke and flames curling out of missing roofs. Piles of bright silver paper flutter on the ground like leaves. A familiar aroma wafts from the smoldering warehouses: tobacco. Someone in the Humvee figures out the silver paper on the ground is from cigarette packs. We have rolled into Iraq’s central cigarette factory. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of burning cigarettes fill the air with what is likely the world’s biggest-ever cloud of secondhand smoke.

The convoy stops by a loading dock next to a warehouse untouched by bombs, the battalion’s first camp in Baghdad. Nicotine-addict Marines immediately loot the nearby structure. Inside, cases of Iraq’s “Sumer” brand of filter cigarettes are stacked ten meters high. Marines emerge with cartons of them, then lie back by their Humvees and smoke the spoils of conquest.

Gunny Wynn paces uneasily up to Fick. “Do you realize how fucking weird this is?” he says. “When we set up in Mogadishu, we spent our first night in a cigarette factory. I hope this turns out better.”

There’s a ten-story glass-and-steel office tower on the west side of the complex, perhaps 500 meters from the warehouse where we’ve stopped. Every few minutes, loud bangs emanate from the upper floors of the office tower. Navy SEAL snipers occupy the top of the building, and are busy taking out targets across the city. Judging by the pace of their shooting, they’re killing Iraqis at a rate of about one every five to ten minutes. We on the ground below them have no idea who they’re shooting at. Only later do we discover there are Iraqis spread out around this complex, taking random shots at American troops, and the SEALs are attempting to eliminate them.