Generation Kill (20 page)

March 28, the day after the bombing, First Recon Battalion remains at its encampment outside the airfield, with no orders for its next mission. A little more than a week into the invasion, the U.S. military has called an "operational pause." The Army, moving up a western highway, met fierce resistance outside Al Najaf, where nearly twenty of its most technologically advanced Apache helicopters were shot down or severely damaged, with two American pilots captured by the Iraqis. According to Marine commanders, the unexpected stiffening of opposition caught the Army off guard, and it has now gone into resupply mode, steeling itself for tougher engagements ahead. For their part, the Marines are continuing to encounter guerrilla tactics—snipers and RPG ambushes—along Route 7. According to Lt. Col. Ferrando, 90 percent of RCT-l's supply chain is being used to haul artillery rounds to feed the big guns as they pummel towns and suspected Fedayeen hideouts around the clock.

The Marines in First Recon, the northernmost unit in central Iraq, have had their rations reduced, a result of both supply problems across the First Marine Division and the fact that the battalion truck with MREs on it was destroyed outside of Ar Rifa. The Marines' water, also in short supply, smells, in the opinion of Colbert, like "dirty ass." The camp is infested with flies from all the camel dung.

Many Marines who have taken their boots off for the first time in a week discover the skin on their feet is rotting off in pale white strips like tapeworms, as a result of fungal infections. The green T-shirts they've worn for eleven days straight underneath their MOPPs are so impregnated with salt from their sweat that they've turned white. Some Marines attempt to wash their crusty T-shirts and socks, but there's not enough water to adequately clean them.

Everyone is coughing and has runny noses and weeping, swollen eyes caused by the dust storms. About a quarter of the Marines in Colbert's platoon have come down with vomiting and diarrhea. Now, with the time to dig through packs and retrieve mirrors, many are amazed by the gaunt reflections staring back at them. In just a short time in the field, most have already shed five to ten pounds. Colbert finds what he thinks is an enormous blackhead on his ear. When he digs it out, he discovers it's a bullet fragment.

It's not a good day for God in Iraq. The battalion chaplain, Navy Lieutenant Commander Bodley, takes advantage of the downtime by circulating among his flock. He finds ministering to Recon Marines a daunting task. "I've been around other Marines and sailors before," he says. "But I'd never heard such profanity—the offensive put-downs—so commonly used until I came to First Recon."

The chaplain was attached to the unit shortly before the invasion. He never swears, seldom drinks. He grew up on Chicago's South Side, and from a young age he felt called to do the work of the Lord. He was ordained a Lutheran minister after attending Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and shortly after became a chaplain in the Navy Reserves. (The Navy provides the Marines with chaplains.) Married with three children, and a minister in a church in Orlando, Florida, his first immersion in Marine culture didn't occur until he was called up before the war and attached to First Recon at Camp Mathilda. He has labored to open his heart to the profane young men in First Recon. "I've come to understand that they use the language to harden themselves," he says. "But my question is, once they've turned it on, can they turn it off?"

Today, circulating among the Marines, he has only grown more disturbed. "Many of them have sought my counsel because they feel guilty," he tells me. "But when I ask them why, they say they feel bad because they haven't had a chance to fire their weapons. They worry that they haven't done their jobs as Marines. I've had to counsel them that if you don't have to shoot somebody, that's a good thing. The zeal these young men have for killing surprises me," Bodley admits. "It instills in me a sense of disbelief and rage. People here think Jesus is a doormat."

The chaplain has no takers in Colbert's team when he approaches to offer his counselling. After being up all night dealing with the phantom enemy convoy, Colbert's Marines loll under the cammie nets, attempting to nap. Person lounges outside on a poncho, naked but for skivvies and a pair of golden Elvis-impersonator sunglasses. He's trying to roast the "chacne"—chest zits—off in the harsh Iraqi sun, while busting bass beats with his lips, chanting Ice Cube's lyrics, "Today I didn't even have to use my AK/I gotta say it was a good day."

Gunny Wynn stops by to pass on the latest gossip. "Word is we might go to the Iranian border to interdict smugglers."

"Fuck, no!" Person shouts from beneath his Elvis glasses. "I want to go to Baghdad and kill people."

A couple of Marines nearby pass the time naming illustrious former jarheads—Oliver North, Captain Kangaroo, Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wayne Bobbit. "After they sewed his dick back on, didn't he make porn movies where he fucked a midget?" one of them asks.

Gunny Wynn chuckles, beaming with a sort of fatherly pride. "Yeah, he probably did. A Marine will fuck anything."

Gunny Wynn, along with Fick, is still facing threat of disciplinary action for his role in trying to stop Encino Man from dropping danger-close artillery by the platoon's position the other day outside Ar Rifa. Casey Kasem has told me he is attempting to have Gunny Wynn removed from his job. "It's wrong to question the commander," Casey Kasem says. "Lieutenant Fick and Gunny Wynn don't understand that. Their job is to execute whatever the commander tells them to do. By questioning his orders or his actions, they risk their men's lives by slowing down the commander. Discipline is instinct, a willingness and obedience to orders. What Fick and Gunny Wynn have is the opposite of discipline."

When I ask Gunny Wynn if he's worried about the action brewing against him—Casey Kasem and Encino Man are drafting a memo detailing his "disobedience to orders"—he laughs. "Some guys care about advancing in the Marine Corps. Me, I don't give a fuck. I care about my men being happy, shielding them from the bullshit, and keeping them alive." He adds, "Guys that believe no orders ever should be questioned are usually the same ones who are too dumb to explain them. They just don't want to look stupid in front of their men. I encourage my men to question orders."

This morning, looking out at the expanse beyond the perimeter, Gunny Wynn says he has only one fear in his mind. "Man, I hope this doesn't turn into another Somalia."

Despite the chaplain's despair over the Marines' seeming insensi-tivity to the suffering brought on by war, discussing it among themselves, Marines express deep misgivings. I join Espera's team, dug in by his Humvee several meters down from Colbert's. He's enjoying his first cup of hot coffee in more than a week, brewed on a fire made from dried camel dung mixed with C-4 plastic explosive (which, when ignited, blazes intensely).

"This is all the tough-guy shit I need," he says. "I don't like nothing about combat. I don't like the shooting. I don't like the action."

Espera believes the whole war is being fought for the same reason all others have for the past several hundred years. "White man's gotta rule the world," he says.

Though Espera is one quarter Caucasian, he grew up mistrusting "the white man." A few years ago, he deliberately avoided earning his community-college degree, though he was just a couple of credits short of receiving it, because, he says, "I didn't want some piece of paper from the white master saying I was qualified to function in his world."

Before joining the Marines, Espera worked as a car repo man in South Central Los Angeles. While in a job he hated, he watched his friends and one close family member go to prison for violent crimes, which were fairly routine in his world. Then one day, after four years of repo-ing cars in L.A.'s poorest neighborhoods, Espera had an epiphany: "I was getting shot at, making chump change, so I could protect the assets of a bunch of rich white bankers. The whole time I'm hating on these motherfuckers, and I realized I'm their slave, doing their bidding. I thought, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

So he enlisted in the Marines. Espera reasoned that as a Marine he might still be serving the white man, but he'd be doing so with "purity and honor."

As he's gotten older, Espera's begun to accept that maybe the white man's system isn't all that bad. Travelling the world as a Marine has opened his eyes to stark differences between the way Americans and those in less fortunate parts of the planet live. "All these countries around the world, nobody's fat," he says. "Back home, fat motherfuckers are everywhere. Seventy-five percent of all Americans are fat. Do you know how hard it is to put on thirty pounds? A motherfucker has to sit on the couch and do nothing but eat all day. In America, white trash and poor Mexicans are all fat as motherfuckers. The white man created a system with so much excess, even the poor motherfuckers are fat."

Those who know Espera understand he's not a racist. He's a humorist whose vitriol is tongue-in-cheek. Even so, Espera questions the white man's wisdom in sending him tearing through a hostile country in an open Humvee. "Every time we roll through one of these cities, I think we're going to die. Even now, dog, sitting here in the shade, my heart's beating one hundred forty times per minute. For what? So some colonel can make general by throwing us into another firefight?"

In their most paranoid moments, some Marines believe Ferrando is trying to get them killed. Sergeant Christopher Wasik, a thirty-one-year-old Marine who sometimes serves as Ferrando's driver, comes over this day to share some coffee and gripe with his friends in Second Platoon. Before the invasion, Wasik openly rebelled against Ferrando's Grooming Standard after having been severely upbraided for allowing his mustache to grow too far beyond the corners of his mouth. He shaved it into a perfect Hitler mustache, which he wore for weeks at Camp Mathilda. Nevertheless, his rebellion was a failure. His superiors commended his Hitler mustache for complying with the Grooming Standard. Now, he and the other Marines speculate on Ferrando's motives in Iraq. "In some morbid realm," Wasik says, "it may be a possibility that the commander wants some of us to die, so when he sits around with other high leaders, they don't snicker at him and ask what kind of shit he got into."

Whatever feelings Colbert has over his involvement in the shooting of the shepherds, he seems to have filed them away. His mood has been chipper since the all-night watch for the enemy column. Late in the morning, however, he receives another reminder of the incident. The tattooed grandmother and a man from the family who appears to be in his late forties walk through the perimeter toward his Humvee. Person, now on his stomach, tanning his bacne, is the first to notice their approach. "Hey," he says, lifting his head up. "We got Hajjis. Anyone know how to say, 'Get the fuck away from my Humvee' in Habudabi?" he says, using Marine slang— "Habudabi"—for Arabic.

"I'll take care of this," Colbert says. He scrounges in the Humvee for an English-to-Arabic cheat sheet, then walks up to the man and the old lady.

"A\ salam al'icum," he says haltingly, reading the customary Arabic salutation from his cheat sheet.

His greeting provokes a torrent of words and frantic gestures from the couple. Colbert queries them in Arabic, then repeats in English, "I have pain?" "I am hungry?"

They shake their heads no. Then he asks, "Bad people?"

They nod, point across the field and speak more urgently. Colbert tries to radio for the translator, but he can't be found. The grandmother keeps repeating something. He can't figure out what it is. He shakes his head. "I don't understand. I'm sorry."

She shrugs. Colbert hands her several humrat packs. "I'm sorry/' he says in Arabic and English. "You have to go."

They walk off. He watches them, exasperated. "We can't have civilians hanging out here. There's nothing I can do about this."

Doc Bryan returns from the RCT-l's medical unit with good news. "We got the kid stabilized and medevaced out on a bird." Even so, Doc Bryan takes little satisfaction from the effort. "The whole drive down I was staring in the kid's eyes," Doc Bryan says. "He was staring at me like, 'You just shot me, motherfucker, and now you think you're great because you're trying to save my life?' "

Later that day, Encino Man walks the perimeter, talking informally with his men in an attempt to ease the tensions. Meeting with Doc Bryan and the other Marines in Team Three, he apologizes for the incident a few days earlier when he tried to fire a 203 grenade into a house where the men had observed civilians.

His candor earns high marks from the Marines. Then he asks them to speak up about anything that's bothering them. The funny thing is, the Marines have been laughing off hardships caused by the lack of food, the filth, the flies, the dysentery, even the uncertainty of not knowing what their next mission is. The one thing that no one laughs about is the loss of First Recon's "colors"—a Marine Corps flag affixed with battle streamers. The colors are reputed to have been carried by Marines into combat since at least the Vietnam War. A few nights ago, they were lost on the supply truck blown up outside of Ar Rifa. One of the Marines tells Encino Man, "The colors should never leave the commander's side. Losing them is a reflection on his leadership and on all of us."

The only other serious complaints the Marines air are the usual ones about the battalion commander's continued obsession with the Grooming Standard. Ferrando recently sent the Coward of Khafji around to lecture the men about committing petty violations—from allowing their hair to grow a quarter inch too long to lying in the sun by their vehicles with their helmets off.

One of the Marines complains to Encino Man, "They're treating men who've shown discipline in combat like a bunch of six-year-olds."

Encino Man listens, staring cryptically from blue eyes beneath the shelf of his Cro-Magnon brow. Then he turns to Doc Bryan, who's been lying quietly on the ground the whole time. "Doc, is there anything you want to talk about?"

"I'm fine, sir," Doc Bryan answers.