“Roger, Two-Two. Cleared hot.” I turned from the air show over Al Hayy and watched Jacks lob a string of grenades over the berm next to the road. Two robed figures with rifles ran at a stoop. The grenades exploded with a sequence of thumps muffled by the mud, and the men disappeared. I finished my granola bar as we neared the intersection.
We pulled off into a field where irrigation dikes provided some natural cover, then set up in a square we could defend in all directions. Beyond us, a field of waist-high green grass waved in the morning breeze. The sky overhead shone blue, and sunlight glimmered on the river in the distance. It was the most beautiful spot I’d seen in Iraq. Marines not on security lounged in the grass, smelling the sweet, wet summery heat. The spot seemed quintessentially American. I expected two boys in overalls to come strolling down the road with fishing rods over their shoulders and a golden retriever trailing behind.
The yellow truck was the bucolic picture’s only blemish. It had been pushed down the embankment to clear the road. Bloody handprints covered the doors to the cab. Two bodies lay at unnatural angles on the ground, flies buzzing around them. The warm sun, which felt so good on our arms and faces, drew out their stench.
When the battalion joined us, we packed up our scopes, radios, drying boots, and half-eaten lunches to drive north again along the river. We were told that the Al Hayy attack had been canceled because the fedayeen had fled. I took a turn at the wheel, while Gunny Wynn rode shotgun, alternately fingering his grenade launcher and looking at the map. There was no radio chatter.
“Gunny, where’s this road taking us?”
“There’s a town on the river about ten klicks up called Muwaffiqiya. Captain just said we’ll be swinging around it to the east. Looks like open farmland.”
Third Platoon raced past us to recon a route around the town. I concentrated on driving while Wynn kept track of the map and radio. Driving in Iraq, even on a pretty day as part of a large American force, demanded full concentration. Berms collapsed, rolling Humvees onto their sides. Roadside bombs were not yet endemic, as they would become later in the occupation, but we worried about land mines and booby traps. I studied the tires of the Humvee ahead of me and tried to stay right in its tracks.
We slowly climbed away from the river, passing through planted fields lined with stone walls. Far in the distance, I saw the smudgy outline of Muwaffiqiya, a collection of buildings and a towering water tank on the banks of the Al Gharraf River. Wynn looked content. “We’re finally learning to go around the towns,” he said.
I LEANED AGAINST the Humvee door in the fading light, spooning applesauce from a field ration pouch and watching two ants fight for a dropped grain of rice. It had been days since I’d seen a mirror, but my blackened hands looked no better than those of the gaunt and sunken-eyed Marines around me.
The evening was quiet. We were parked in a field just off a narrow country road, hemmed in by stone walls and hedgerows that looked more like Connecticut than central Iraq. I had double-checked the placement of the platoon’s machine guns and hacked a sleeping hole from the soft earth before sitting down to eat dinner and breathe. I dared to hope we’d spend the night in one place, and the field seemed indulgently comfortable.
“Sir, the captain wants all commanders at his truck,” Christeson called from the cab of the Humvee, where he was monitoring the radio and cleaning his rifle. I pocketed my dinner and set off to see what bad news was about to shatter our evening.
When the captain finished his brief, I called the team leaders on the radio. “Hitman Two-One, Two-Two, and Two-Three, actuals to my vehicle. Naptime’s over.”
Walking back across the field, I saw Sergeants Colbert, Patrick, and Lovell converging on the platoon headquarters Humvee. They carried map boards and rifles and looked as if they already knew what I was about to tell them. A Humvee hood doubles as a decent map table, so we held platoon briefings around its ten square feet of dusty fiberglass. They joined Gunny Wynn, chatting together as I walked up.
Colbert grinned and said, “Sir, I don’t like that look in your eye.”
“Yeah, well, we’re saddling up and rolling out of here at 2200 local to move through that town to our west and set up ambushes on the other side to interdict the fedayeen moving toward Highway 7.” After a week of being sniped at, shot at, and mortared, we were going to set the agenda. As the Marine Corps puts it, we were going to take the fight to the enemy.
“Ambushes?” Sergeant Patrick snorted. Clearly, this plan did not excite him. Only ten days before, I had listened as Patrick had cautioned his team with one of his countless southern aphorisms: “Never pet a burning dog.”
