Embedded (24 page)

Talk about real-time intelligence. We shit-canned the idea of crossing Boardwalk and moving through the village to the WTF. I was amazed that a little Iraqi boy had saved our lives. I will never say learning Iraqi Arabic was a waste of time. Without the ability to humanize myself with these young boys, I fear he would have viewed us as the occupier. I finally had the locals working for the good guys.

We moved with intensity. Ayad regrouped the Iraqis and gave them the hasty plan. We would return the same way we came, through the palm groves, and would scratch the plan to walk through the village. The Iraqi point man peered through a hole in the fence looking at the intersection. “Clear,” he said. Like a group of deer crossing the road, the entire patrol started hopping the fence and running for the palm groves, quickly vanishing into the foliage, spoiling any insurgent attempt to surprise us. As I entered the dense foliage I looked back to see the young boys waving frantically in our direction. We owed that family our lives.

Comic Relief

Living at the WTF was the definition of rough. We were patrolling eight to ten hours a day, sleeping two to three hours a night (if we were lucky), babysitting
jundi
, and living on MRE's. The last night at the WTF, everyone was loopy from the lack of sleep, lack of water, and lack of chow. I was starting to approach my limit of sanity. We needed some comedy to break the monotony. Comedy came in the form of a portable toilet kit.

We had recently acquired a portable toilet kit so we did not have to bug the locals for restroom emergencies. The kit was a plastic version of a toilet with plastic bags strapped to the bottom designed to catch excrement. The kits were not fancy and worked a lot like five-gallon buckets. We always set our toilet kit directly outside the guard shack to maintain easy access. Whenever it was sunny the toilet area was exposed to the world to see. Every insurgent, village local, and donkey could see you taking a dump. But at night, because of the limited moonlight that would hit the area, using the toilet kit gave you a private moment.

Anyway, on our last night Major Gaines was out using the toilet kit. Meanwhile I was in the guard shack trying to find the light switch to the
rear room. I sat there flipping switches up and down wondering why none of them worked. I continued going through the switches, but again none of them worked. I eventually found the right switch, very content with myself.

Major Gaines came crashing into the guard shack with his pants at his ankles. “Who the fuck is turning on the lights outside of the building?” he shouted. “I had a damn spotlight on me as I was taking a shit on the toilet kit! The whole village saw my white ass.” I responded, “Sir, did you feel famous?” We all burst out into laughter. Then Gaines laughed. “Jamal, if I didn't love you, I'd kill you right now.” We all laughed and started telling war stories of the past few days. We were excited to leave this hellhole.

Mission Accomplished

“Hallelujah!” Doc screamed the next morning as the MiTT convoy approached the WTF. Once the MiTT arrived to pick us up, we said goodbye to the locals, cleared our trash from the area, and checked that no sleeping
jundi
were left behind. On our way back Second Lieutenant Le Gette gave me the lowdown on the rest of the team's situation over the past week. Apparently, while we had been ambushed and shot at, their days had been filled with hanging out in the Haditha FOB COC and lifting weights. Le Gette said he was getting bedsores from sleeping too much.

I felt my first bout of infantryman angst. I now understand why the grunts are always angry and feel they are being shortchanged by the support units. I will admit that the noninfantry Marine Corps, while necessary, is not what the Marine Corps is about. God bless the Marine infantrymen.

On arrival at Camp Ali, we showered, slept, and ate to our hearts' content for the remainder of the day. We all needed to regain our senses. The best part about returning was finding the stack of packages from family and fellow Americans. My favorite piece of mail was a handwritten letter from my wife. It nearly brought tears to my eyes. I could only think about how shitty it would have been if I had been killed and never received her letter. Damn insurgents.

Chapter 15

Mo' Leave, Mo' Problem

September 2006

Jundi
-bots in Action

O
ne day in September we went cruising down Route Bronze on another leave run to drop the
jundi
off on vacation. The convoy was running smoothly until we reached checkpoint eleven, which is a Marine outpost with a primary mission to keep Route Bronze free of IEDs. They had not done a very good job.

We approached a bridge that crosses a large wadi along Route Bronze. Bridges are always likely areas for IED activity. Acknowledging this, the Iraqis stopped short of the bridge and conducted a sweep before the convoy passed through. We sat in our Humvee and watched Sermen and Juwad walk onto the bridge. They skipped along without a care. At the end of the bridge things changed. Sermen jumped off the ground like LeBron James preparing to dunk a basketball. Juwad ran over to Sermen's position and started frantically hopping in place. From their actions, I figured they had found a huge cobra or scorpion. If they had found an IED, they would be sprinting to the Humvee.

The Motorola radio screamed Iraqi Arabic, “Aku abu'at chebeera hna!” (There are huge IEDs here!) Major Gaines yelled to Martin in the backseat, “What the hell did they just say, Martin?” Martin responded in his sassy fashion, “They think they found some IEDs. I told them to get away from them; hence the reason they are sprinting to the Humvee right now.” Gaines and I peered through our window and watched Sermen and Juwad clamoring to get back to the safety of their Humvee.

Sermen came sprinting to our Humvee after talking with the Iraqi convoy
commander. Out of breath and sweating profusely, he described what he saw. “Jamal, holy shit, man. There are like ten to twelve artillery shells and a few propane tanks stacked on top of one another. The insurgents want to destroy the bridge, I think.” Gaines interrupted. “Sermen, are you serious? We need to get the Humvees back. If that thing goes off we will all die from the blast overpressure.” Gaines transitioned to the radio and requested the MiTT vehicle in the rear of the convoy help the
jundi
shift the convoy at least another four hundred meters away from the bridge.

Once we reestablished ourselves in a safer position, I drew up the nine-line EOD report while Gaines helped the Iraqi convoy commander organize the convoy. When Gaines returned he asked, “Jamal, you got that nine-line ready?” I replied, “Roger, Sir. One problem though. Our comm sucks balls here!”

We were sandwiched between two hills on both sides of the road and our communications equipment was unable to operate. As a workaround we sent a vehicle in the rear of the convoy farther up the road and had them relay the message to checkpoint eleven, which could relay the message to the 2/3 headquarters in the dam.

The response we received from checkpoint eleven was ridiculous: “Shadow, this is checkpoint eleven; expected time of arrival for EOD is at least four hours. How copy?” How copy? How about EOD get off their ass and help us out! We were stuck with 171 unarmed
jundi
in civilian clothes prepared to go on leave and sitting in the middle of the desert with a large bull's-eye on our chests. We were not waiting four hours for an EOD team. If one insurgent mortar attack landed near our convoy, it might destroy 60 percent of the Iraqi battalion.

We sent a message back to checkpoint eleven, highlighting our inability to wait four hours for an EOD team. We sat and waited for a response. Meanwhile, the Iraqis were getting restless. Garbled Arabic came over Martin's radio. Nuts asked Martin, “Martin, what did they say?” Martin responded, “Basically, the
jundi
are tired of waiting and have decided to go investigate the IED themselves.” Gaines hollered, “What? Why would they” Before Gaines could finish his sentence, we noticed the Iraqis were already sending out
jundi
-bots to investigate the IED.

Sermen and Juwad were halfway across the bridge. There was no convincing them to return to safety, and none of us was crazy enough to drag them back to the Humvees. This was an Iraqi solution to a problem—not a Marine solution. Was it the safest solution? Not quite. Could it work? Yes. So we let them go with it. Sermen, standing on top of enough explosive
force to turn him into a pink mist, relayed in colloquial English over the Iraqi radio net, “Cooool, man. Dis a really, really, really big one!” Major Gaines quickly asked Martin, “Did he just say, ‘Wow, this is a really big one?'” Martin laughed and said, “I think so.”

Photo 1. Inside Al Faw Palace Major Gaines and Captain McShane sit in the chair Yasser Arafat gave Saddam Hussein as a gift.

Photo 2. Early morning view of the MiTT camp. The rest of Camp Ali, including the Iraqi soldier swahuts, are left of the picture (not shown).

Photo 3. The inside of the Iraqi chow hall at Camp Ali.

Photo 4. The author explaining to the Iraqi soldiers how Marines conduct cordon operations.

Photo 5. A destroyed bank in Bani Dahir, where the author chatted with a couple of Iraqi army medics.