Evan Wright - Generation Kill

Fick radiates quiet confidence, mixed with purpose. He tells me after the briefing, “What we did up to now was the easy part. This is where the work really begins.” Fick is under the impression that Marines will stay in this cigarette factory for at least a month, maybe longer. They will be given sectors to patrol. They will set up nighttime observation posts in neighborhoods in order to capture or stop looters, paramilitary forces or jihadis who are still active. They will come to know the people in the neighborhoods they patrol, rendering them assistance and serving as liaisons for the nation-builders—engineers, doctors, civil-affairs specialists—who are no doubt on their way.

“This is going to be tough,” Fick tells me. “But I think for my men it will give them a sense of purpose about all the terrible things they’ve seen and been through.”

ASHORT WHILE after Fick’s briefing, he invites his team leaders and me to accompany him on a tour of their new home, the cigarette-factory complex. As soon as we near the open-stake fence I discovered the night before, a crowd of civilians on the other side rushes forward. They stick their faces between the bars and begin shouting at the Marines, several of them in English. “Please, stop the looting,” two of them plead.

Fick approaches the fence, telling them, “Order will be restored very soon.”

More civilians mob the fence, shouting in Arabic, gesticulating. Fick and the others retreat from the babble. We walk into in an open area between looming warehouse structures, cross about fifty meters of barren ground and approach another section of fence—this one with no people on the other side. We’re looking out at the city when there’s a loud cracking sound, followed by a zing. A few more follow. Smoke puffs pop up from the ground a few meters behind us.

“Sniper,” several of the Marines say at once.

Lovell, who’s also an expert sniper, says the rounds are coming from close by, and that we are directly in front of the barrel of whatever gun is shooting at us. I ask him how he knows this. “You can tell by the sound,” he says. He explains that the type of cracking we’re hearing isn’t the gunpowder blast of the bullet being fired but the sonic boom the bullet makes as it crosses the sound barrier. You only hear it so clearly when you’re pretty much directly in front of the barrel. The zinging sound we also hear, he says, is something you only pick up if the bullet’s passing within a few meters of your ears. This is all more information than I wanted.

The five of us have fifty meters of open ground to cross before we can reach cover. We sprint back one at a time under fire from the sniper. For some reason, as I make the dash all I can think of is the scene from the Peter Falk comedy, The In-Laws , in which Falk absurdly urges his sidekick to run in a “serpentine” pattern when they come under fire from a band of guerrillas while stuck in a Central American dictatorship. In my fear, this scene comes to me when I run through the sniper fire. Following Peter Falk’s advice, I zigzag in a serpentine pattern as the shots ring out. It takes me twice as long to reach safety as it takes the Marines. After everyone gathers behind a building, we stand for a moment, panting heavily, collecting ourselves. Finally, Fick looks at his team leaders and they all burst out laughing. Lovell asks me why I was running back and forth. When I tell him, he suggests, “Next time we come under fire, just run in a straight line. You might live longer.”

FIRST RECON BATTALION only launches one patrol on its first full day in Baghdad. The problem is, the battalion has just one translator, Meesh. While looting and burning continues unabated in the city, the Marines, with nothing to do in First Recon’s “occupation force,” kill the day by exploring the factories, warehouses and offices in the complex.

I follow along with several on a mission to ratfuck the main office tower. Marines are hoping to find cool souvenirs to bring home. On the way in, the Marines grab giant crescent wrenches from one of the cigarette-factory buildings to break down doors.

The main office tower has already been claimed by the First Battalion, Fourth Marines. They guard the front entrances, but the ratfuck crew I’m with smashes through some of the side windows with their monkey wrenches and circumvents the sentries. We take stairs up to the eighth floor. Some of the outer offices are occupied by the SEAL sniper teams, still busily shooting Iraqis every few minutes.

We sneak into rooms containing vast rows of low cubicles. The Marines are simultaneously freaked out and disappointed. It looks like any boring American office. You can see some workers have gone to a lot of trouble to decorate the drab cubicle walls with family photos, framed kitschy pictures of peaceful sunsets, beaches, forests, as well Christmas and Valentine’s cards with holiday sentiments written on them in English.

Marines rifle through everything, looking for souvenirs, but all they find are colored pens and coffee mugs. “It’s all stupid crap,” one of them says, slamming his wrench into a computer screen.

The Marines kick down the door to what looks like the boss’s office in the corner. One of them sits behind the expansive wooden desk, punches buttons on the speakerphone and plays boss. “Have my secretary send in my next appointment,” he says in an obnoxiously official voice.

Then he starts smashing the phone and the desk apart with his wrench. The Marines destroy the boss’s office with gleeful vengeance, throwing stuff at the walls, pissing in the corner, all of them maniacally laughing. In a weird way, they’re living out the fantasy Carazales often talks about—in which one day a year the blue-collar man gets to go into rich neighborhoods and smash apart expensive homes.

AFTER TWO DAYS of aimless waiting, the Marines in Second Platoon finally get a mission in Baghdad. Their job is to enter a neighborhood north of Saddam City and drive through the streets. The goals are simple: to talk to locals who’ve never seen Americans before and to not get into any gunfights. Before leaving, Fick briefs his men. “If we take a potshot, don’t open up with a machine gun on a crowd. The days of running and gunning through towns are over.”

His precautionary briefing seems unnecessary when the Marines roll into the neighborhood. Compared to Saddam City, the place they enter seems almost bucolic. Broad, unpaved roads lead to large stucco homes that would not be out of place in San Diego. Lush gardens grow from vacant lots. Young men line the street and greet the Marines in halting, yet formal English. “Good morning, sir,” they say.

The Humvees drive for about 500 meters until a cluster of residents blocks the road. They stream out of their homes bearing jugs of water and hot tea, which they offer the Marines. Small girls emerge carrying roses for the Americans.

The neighborhood men gather around the Humvees, puffing cigarettes and bitching about life under Saddam. Most of their complaints are economic—the lack of jobs, the bribes that had to be paid to get basic services. “We have nothing to do but smoke, talk, play dominoes,” a wiry chain-smoking man in his late thirties tells me. “Saddam was an asshole. Life is very hard.” He asks if the Marines can provide him with Valium. He pleads, “I cannot sleep at night, and the store to buy liquor has been closed since the war started.”

Aside from the complaints of the idle men, the most striking feature of the neighborhood is the hard labor performed by women. Covered in black robes, they squat beneath the sun in the empty-lot gardens, harvesting crops with knives, while children crawl at their feet. Others trudge past carrying sacks of grain on their heads. The division of labor exists even among children. Small boys run around playing soccer while little girls haul water. “Damn, the women are like mules here,” Person observes.