Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

“Roger, sir,” I said. “Quick update: house was clear, totally abandoned. But it’s getting bad down here. There’s a fire, and it’s spreading fast.”

“I understand that.” Even through the radio static, his irritation punched through like jabs. “We’ve notified the Iraqis, they’re on it. Remember, this is their country.”

“Sir, this one is on us. We need to stay.”

“Negative. Proceed to Camp Independence, time now.”

“But, sir—”

“Did I stutter?” The uppercut stunned from miles away, using my own sardonic language. “This is a direct order. Gather your men and report to Camp Independence for your mission. Now.”

I chucked the hand mic into the bowels of the Stryker, ripping it off the radio body. I walked back to Snoop and the locals, giving any soldiers I met along the way the mount-up motion, a halfhearted twirl of my left index finger. The blaze had savaged the house, dragon snorts engulfing it room by room. More young men were moving buckets from the other houses, having established an assembly line that passed full buckets down and empty ones back. A strong wind stirred from the west and pushed east, bringing sparks with it.

“Tell them we’re leaving, Snoop,” I said.

He did. The Iraqis yelled even louder, and Snoop backed into me, and I raised my rifle to keep them away. Somewhere behind us, Chambers laughed.

Once we got inside the Strykers, all four surrounded by clamoring Iraqis, I ordered the men to throw down all the jugs and bottles of water they could find. There were some objections about what we’d drink if we got thirsty, but I repeated Captain Vrettos’ direct order to me and dared them to challenge it.

“Do what he says,” Chambers said across the platoon net, from his Stryker. “So we can get the fuck out of here.”

I opened my hatch and climbed out to unstrap a plastic jug we’d been keeping for emergencies. I handed it down to the short Iraqi mother with wide shoulders. Under a dark red head scarf, she shouted at me, the hard eyes of poverty never blinking. Beneath the guilt and the shame, I felt a curious sort of release. Then we left.

As we pulled onto Route Madison and pushed east, I turned around and looked back at what we’d wrought. Under sad yellow stars, billows of smoke swirled in the wind, and a sheet of wildfire tore through what had been the field of poppies. Flakes of ash drifted through the air. I stuck out my tongue and caught one.

We met the supply convoy at Camp Independence and escorted them south. We dispersed the herd of fobbit vehicles between us: one Stryker, then the fuel tanker; another Stryker, then the cargo truck and a water trailer; then our last two Strykers. The irony of the full, lumbering water trailer only miles away from a burning Ashuriyah proved too much. Not even the joes mentioned it.

I remembered how back in the early days of our tour we’d pretend to see IEDs and RPG launchers just to scare supply soldiers making a rare trip out of the wire. I didn’t feel like doing that anymore. Neither did anyone else. The hour-long drive passed in silence. Black dogs barked and barked in my mind, but I ignored them, or tried to.

A vast gold dome marked the north gate of Baghdad. We passed under a sandstone tower with wooden scaffolding and parked on the side of the highway; now we waited for the landowning unit’s escort to show up and take the supply convoy to the airport. Wanting to get some air and stretch my legs, I stepped onto the ink-black pavement. The supply soldiers’ leader, a sergeant first class with short, braided cornrows and an eye patch, did the same.

“Going home?” I asked. “Good for you all.”

“We’ve done our time,” she said. I hadn’t thought my question hostile, but she’d taken it as such.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to call you out.”

“Uh-huh. Tough-guy infantry. All we hear is fobbit this, fobbit that.” She pointed to her left eye. “I didn’t get this raking leaves.”

Maybe there had been undertones laced into my words after all. I didn’t know how to interact with people anymore, just infantrymen. I asked whom she was going home to. She just shook her head.

Their escort didn’t arrive for another hour. With the joes getting tired from the tedium, I had them switch up the vehicle crews for the return trip. Hog climbed into the back of our Stryker and slapped Doc Cork on the back. “Hey, sir,” he said, all canted-eyed affection. “Like old times.”

On the way back, we passed Route Pluto, a thin artery that pushed southeast past the Tigris and through the insurgency’s heartbeat of Sadr City. So many soldiers had died on that three-mile stretch of blacktop, I thought. Too many crevices and curves to hide away small boxes wired to blow. I wasn’t sure wars like ours got monuments, but if it did, it belonged on that road.

The sky had darkened into black knots of clouds. Our iPod played tangy hipster music. There were still no signs of the fire, which meant they’d put it out, somehow. Near Checkpoint 38, the radio squawked. It was the outpost.

“This is the CP. Be advised of a large gathering of locals at the entrance to Ashuriyah. Orders are to disperse it, by any means necessary.”

“Roger,” I said. “Any more info? Like why they’re gathering?”

“Negative. Captain Vrettos is still at the mukhtar ’s funeral. His patrol radioed us saying that the gathering started there before moving east to Ashuriyah. Our guards on the roof report they’ve started a bonfire near the arch.”

“So be ready for anything, pretty much.”

“Roger that.”

My head was throbbing again. Doc Cork and Hog laughed bitterly. I couldn’t help but join them.

“Go there and figure it out when you arrive,” Doc Cork said. “Improvise. If it goes well, higher gets credit for planning it. If it goes poorly, we morons on the ground fucked it up.”

No different than any mission we’ve done over here, I thought. Probably no different than any mission anyone’s done.

A tall orange flame marked the entrance to Ashuriyah, perpendicular to the stone arch. The bonfire had been built on a dry meadow, a halo of rocks controlling the burn. Dozens of Iraqis lined the road, with another group circling a crooked utility pole to the side. Judging from the loud chants and large banners, it seemed we’d been ordered to disperse a protest, not a gathering. We pulled over to the shoulder of the highway.

“This is retarded.” Chambers’ voice cut across the platoon net like a saw. “This has ambush written all over it. We need to drive through and come back with more men. Like a battalion of fucking SEALs.”

“Hear that,” I said. “Wait one.”

I pushed back against the CP, calmly explaining just how crazy their order was. They referred me to the operations center at Camp Independence. I repeated my request to push through and wait for the protest to fizzle out from a distance.

“Hotspur Six.” It was one of the majors. “Do you sleep with a night-light?”

“No, sir,” I said. “But even if I did, I still wouldn’t send us out into this.”

“Sir, this is Hotspur Seven,” Chambers interrupted, and I was glad for it. “My platoon leader ain’t exaggerating. It’s chaos out here. In my experience, waiting this one out is the only option.”

“You all are a platoon of infantrymen, correct?” The major’s question sounded rhetorical, so no one answered it. “I’ve been wondering why Ashuriyah is the only place in Iraq that’s still a disaster. Now I know why.”

“Sir—” I said.

“Do your fucking job,” the major said. “Disperse the gathering. Report back when mission complete. Out.”

“You heard the man,” I said over the platoon net. I was scared but knew I needed to hide it. “ De Oppresso Liber .”