Evan Wright - Generation Kill

Colbert tells me his feelings about the upcoming venture are similar. As a professional warrior, politics and ideology don’t really enter into his thoughts about why he is here in the desert, waiting to invade a country. “I’m not so idealistic that I subscribe to good versus evil. We haven’t had a war like that since World War II. Why are we here now? I guess it’s to remove this guy from power. I’m not opposed to it, and I wasn’t going to miss it.” For him, it’s a grand personal challenge. “We’re going into the great unknown,” he says. “Scary, isn’t it?” he adds, smiling brightly. “I can’t wait.”

AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN on March 20, the Marines in the staging area are awakened by the thundering of distant artillery. It confuses everyone because the night before, commanders in First Recon told the men the invasion wouldn’t start for a couple more days. Colbert keeps a small shortwave radio in his Humvee, and I join him in the gray morning light while he tunes in the BBC. They announce that the Americans have bombed Baghdad—in what we later learn was a failed attempt to hit Saddam. The explosions we hear in the desert are American strikes on Iraqi positions just over the border. Colbert clicks off the radio. He looks up with a grave expression. It’s probably how he looks when he opens his eyes under the ocean for the first time on a dive. “Well,” he says. “We kicked the hornet’s nest. Now we better kill all the fucking hornets.”

At about ten in the morning, Fick gathers the platoon for a briefing. This is held, as all future ones will be, around the hood of his Humvee. It’s one of those weird desert days, chilly in the shade, blazing hot in the sun. All Marines now wear full battle gear—bulky chemical-protection suits, Kevlar helmets and flak vests, which have ceramic plates in the front and back to stop AK-rifle rounds, and utility vests covered in hooks and straps for carrying rifle cartridges, grenades and radios. All of this weighs about sixty pounds and gives the Marines a puffed-out appearance, like partially inflated Michelin Men. They jostle together, leaning on each other’s shoulders, trying to get as close as possible to Fick.

“This is our forty-eighth day in the field,” Fick says. “And last night President Bush started the war. We can expect to roll out of here tonight.”

He allows a tense smile. He, like everyone else, seems to be wrestling with excitement and a profound awareness of the seriousness of this situation. “You’re being called on to kill,” he says. “You’re going to be shot at. The Iraqis will try to fuck you up. Don’t be a trusting American. Leave that at the border. Think like a devious motherfucker. Be suspicious. Be aggressive.”

The Marines have drilled for weeks, studying the Rules of Engagement (ROE). The ROE lay out all the conditions regarding when a Marine may or may not fire on Iraqis. The problem is, some Iraqi soldiers will presumably change out of their uniforms and fight in civilian clothes. Others will remain in uniform but surrender. There might be some in uniform surrendering, and others in uniform fighting. On top of this, large segments of the civilian populace are expected to be armed with AKs, so these armed but not hostile civilians will be mixed up with enemy fighters dressed in civilian clothes. Therefore, the usual battlefield rules—shoot guys wearing enemy uniforms; shoot guys with weapons—don’t apply. What the ROE boil down to is that if the Marines come across a bunch of armed Iraqis, they generally can’t shoot them unless the Iraqis shoot at them first.

Fick has two big concerns about the ROE, which he brought up to me earlier in private. “If we kill civilians, we’re going to turn the populace against us and lose the war. But I don’t want to lose Marines because the ROE have taken away their aggressiveness.”

Fick repeats a mantra, echoed by every commander throughout the Corps. “You will be held accountable for the facts not as they are in hindsight but as they appeared to you at the time. If, in your mind, you fire to protect yourself, you are doing the right thing. It doesn’t matter if later on we find out you wiped out a family of unarmed civilians. All we are accountable for are the facts as they appear to us at the time.”

Following Fick’s talk, Gunny Wynn addresses the men. Gunny Wynn serves as Fick’s loyal executive. He is thirty-five, making him the oldest man in the platoon. He’s also among the more experienced men in the platoon. In Somalia he headed a sniper team and scored numerous confirmed kills, a fact that alone gives him instant macho credibility with his Marines. He has a lean coyote’s physique and speaks with a rangy Texas accent.

Gunny Wynn describes himself as a “staunch conservative” who’s never smoked marijuana. With his chiseled face and Texas accent, he fits the image, yet he likes to point out, “I’m not one of those guys driving around waving Texas flags. It’s just the place I’m from.” He almost never barks at the men the way platoon sergeants do in movies. His conservatism boils down to a rigid adherence to his own personal code. “The most important part of my job,” he tells me, “is to care about my men.” His leadership philosophy is based on “building confidence in my men by respecting them.” He and Fick function not so much like autocrats but like parents. At times, Gunny Wynn almost seems like a worried den mother, whose role is to soften the more aggressive messages Fick gives the men.

His guidance for handling the ROE is almost the polar opposite of Fick’s. “I spent five months in Somalia, and we got a lot of good kills out there,” he says. He gazes at the men, not blinking, letting his credibility as a sniper-killer sink in. “But we let a lot more bad guys get away than we killed, and that’s okay. Don’t fucking waste a mother or some kid. Don’t fire into a crowd. Those people north of here have been oppressed for years. They’re just like us. Don’t hurt them, even if you can justify it later under our ROE.”

Gunny Wynn’s gentle talk is interrupted by the sound of Marines screaming across the desert, “Gas! Gas! Gas!”

Everyone freezes for an instant. In the distance we see Marines in gas masks flagging us. They stand with their arms extended out, bending their elbows and tapping their shoulders—universal sign language for a gas attack. In their bug-eyed, black masks, they resemble insects.

WITH EXPLOSIONS BOOMING in the distance and now frenzied shouts of a gas attack, it’s the first time I feel like I’m in a war. While the nonexistence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction has almost become a bad joke in the wake of the invasion, on the morning of March 20, just south of the Iraqi border, with the bombing having begun, threat of a chemical attack is foremost on everyone’s mind. It’s one of the biggest fears among Marines.

The chemical-protection suits everyone wears are called MOPPs (which stands for Mission Oriented Protective Posture, but in military parlance, MOPP has become the name of the suit itself). On the outside they look like ordinary fatigues, though extra-bulky ones. Due to a supply fuckup, Marines have been issued MOPPs in dark forest-green camouflage, which makes them extra-conspicuous targets in the desert. MOPPs come in two pieces: pants, held up by suspenders, and a hooded jacket. They are fabric on the outside. On the inside they are lined with a plastic mesh that feels like the surface of a scouring sponge and is embedded with carbon powder, a barrier to most chemical agents. They are hot, stiff and scratchy, and have the bulk of wearing a ski suit after you have fallen into a lake.

They are always soaking wet on the inside, from sweat. Not only is the suit itself hot, but on top of it everyone wears the added sixty pounds of flak vests, ceramic plates and utility harnesses. One of the dumbest features of the MOPPs issued to Marines is that they don’t have flies, so to go to the bathroom, a Marine has to remove his utility harness, his flak vest and his MOPP jacket in order to pull down his suspenders and lower his pants. Obviously, in a chemical environment they would have to poop or piss in their pants. Marines tried to get Depends diapers to wear underneath the MOPPs, but most were unable to.