War Stories (12 page)

      
Tactical Assembly Area (TAA) Ripper, Kuwait

      
Tuesday, 11 March 2003

      
1300 Hours Local

T
AA Ripper is a dusty, dun-colored, tent camp parked on a barren, flat, windblown desert plain, lacking both vegetation and recognizable terrain features. It is scorching hot and the heat rises in waves off the desert floor. Behind every moving tank, armored vehicle, or truck, a plume of talcum-like dust rises and hangs in the air. Without a GPS receiver, it's impossible to know where you are or where you are going.

Canvas cities like this one are spread over the desert in northern Kuwait—“up close and personal to the Iraqi border,” as a Marine gunny puts it. Each one of these Tactical Assembly Areas is “home away from home” for a U.S. or British ground combat unit. From the air they all look about the same: row upon row of large tents, surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall of earth topped with razor wire. This
one is the temporary home of the fabled 7th Marine Regiment—one of three Regimental Combat Teams in the 1st Marine Division, the major ground component of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (known simply as I-MEF).

The entrance to TAA Ripper reminds me of the cavalry outposts in the Old West. Only instead of a log-walled fort, it's a sandbagged watchtower with a Marine manning an FN M-240G light machine gun who yells, “Halt.”

Griff Jenkins, Adam Housley from the FOX News Channel bureau in Kuwait City, and I disembark from the air-conditioned comfort of our GMC Suburban to stand in the blazing sun while a team of Marine MPs examines the big SUV, inside and out. Since the beginning of the year, Marines have been killed over here by terrorists, so these guys aren't taking any chances.

With the inspection of the vehicle complete, we're waved inside the compound and directed to the Regimental Command Post. As we disembark again, a rifle company of Marines shuffles past, weapons slung over their shoulders, the sweat showing on the sleeves and trousers of their desert camouflage uniforms. They all have gas masks on their hips and bulky chemical protective suits in rucksacks. Web belts and carrying harnesses are crammed with canteens and canvas pouches for transporting the tools of war: magazines, grenades, ammunition, first aid kits, and radios. Their flak jackets and helmets are covered with grime, and dust swirls in the dead air as they pass. It occurs to me that the antiwar activists in Hollywood and the striped-pants bureaucrats at the United Nations who have succeeded in delaying the inevitable ought to see them.

Most of the Marines at TAA Ripper have been here for two months or more, having left California—either Camp Pendleton or the Marines' sprawling desert training base in Twentynine Palms—back in January. They are blissfully unaware of the political machinations at the United Nations that have held them in this dusty
desert limbo for more than a month, poised like a diver prepared for a plunge at the end of the board. Few seem to be aware of the protests by the “Blame America First” crowd in San Francisco and on the streets of many European cities.

They do know that the French have “wimped out once again.” And they are quick to remind any journalist who will listen that it's okay because, as one Marine put it, “the French have always been there when they needed us.”

In front of a nearby tent is a small crimson banner on a silver-tipped staff. Gold letters stitched onto the fabric read, “Co. L, 3rd Bn, 7th Marines.” I enter the relative darkness of the tent and it's like a furnace. As my eyes adjust to the gloom I spot, a few feet inside the entrance, a Marine, head down on a field desk, clearly asleep. Behind him on a plywood shelf are two radio sets, the coiled handset cords looping down into the sand. Beside the sleeping Marine, open on the field desk, is a yellow, dog-eared edition of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
dated February 6, 2003. Mail from home takes almost three weeks to get here, and any newspapers enclosed in a care package circulate through a thirteen-man squad, then around the rest of a forty-five-man platoon, until the paper is worn thin and the print is barely legible.

This newspaper has clearly made the circuit. The lead story is all about the dramatic speech Secretary of State Colin Powell had made the day before at the United Nations, laying out the case for going after Saddam Hussein. The story is complete with satellite photos, diagrams of chemical weapons facilities, and transcribed intercepts of Iraqi communications. Next to one such translated conversation between two Iraqi officers, some Marine wag had written in ballpoint pen, “These guys talk too much.”

I decide not to awaken the sleeping Marine and proceed back outside, to be accosted by a crowd of Marines who had been on the way back to their billets from the mess tent when they spotted our civilian
vehicle. They have surrounded Jenkins and Housley and are peppering the pair with questions such as “what's happening back in the States.”

This goes on for several minutes until a gunnery sergeant comes along and shoos the Marines off with a growled “Go clean your weapons” type of command. The Marines scatter, and as soon as they are out of earshot, he tells the three of us that Col. Steve Hummer, the regimental commander, is “down at Commando”—the 1st Marine Division CP (command post)—“for a briefing.” The gunnery sergeant adds, “He won't be back before nightfall.” Since we have to be back in Kuwait City before dark, in lieu of an interview with the regimental commander we accept his offer of some chow and walk to the mess tent. On the way he answers our questions and describes their situation, though he is careful to say nothing about their mission.

Most of the troops are billeted in frame tents holding twenty to twenty-five Marines, roughly half a platoon. The plywood floors, 2x4 support frames, and canvas have been erected by a U.S. military contractor. Contractors have also poured concrete pads for generators, maintenance space, communications equipment, and other heavy equipment, and installed some utilities.

“The rest of what you see here,” the gunny continues, “we brought in with us when we came from the States, or we offloaded it from the MPS.”

“MPS” is Marine vernacular for the Maritime Prepositioning Ships—the large “roll-on roll-off” vessels full of military equipment, weapons, and ammunition that are strategically placed to expedite the deployment of U.S. military units. Five such ships were dispatched from their Indian Ocean base at Diego Garcia to Kuwait back in January.

“This MPS offload was a lot easier than during the first Gulf War, because of all the contract stuff,” says the gunnery sergeant, pointing around the area—and he looks at me, knowing he's baited the hook.

“Okay, I'll bite. What ‘contract stuff'?” I reply.

“The construction and logistics contractors, Colonel,” the gunny answers. “The civilian outfits that put all this stuff up. They have been working on these base camps out here in the desert for more than a year. This stuff didn't just all happen overnight. Some very smart people started planning for this gunfight in the desert a long time before we got our predeployment orders back in December.”

As we approach the mess tent, an enormous green scoop loader with a Seabee logo grinds past us and dumps a bucket load of sand atop a prefabricated concrete shelter. Navy Construction Battalion and Marine Engineer personnel wearing hard hats instead of helmets are constructing these bunkers throughout the camp. The gunny gestures toward the structure being buried beneath the sand and says, “This camp is closest to the border, so we're adding a few more bunkers just in case Saddam hits us before we hit him.”

We enter the mess tent and join a long line of Marines. The food service is also a contract operation, run by a Kuwaiti contractor. The Marines are being served by locals from a steam line on plastic trays rather than the old metal mess kits that had been in use when I retired. The food isn't great, but it's palatable, and there is salad, fresh fruit, and ice to put in the drinks—all things that can't be found in an MRE, the “Meal, Ready-to-Eat” combat rations.

“Any concerns about ‘locals' preparing and serving the food—and coming and going around this base?” I ask the gunny.

He pauses to reflect a moment, then says, “Some, I suppose. But the contractor has been vetted, all the workers are too, by the Kuwaiti security service. They are escorted on and off the base and closely supervised while they are here. Most of them are from Bangladesh or the Philippines. I guess the risk is worth it, because for every one of them back here fixing food, it releases one of our own. That means we have another shooter in a combat unit.”

We finish our meal and go back outside. A “show and tell” has been arranged for fifteen to twenty foreign journalists. The goal, I'm
told, is to familiarize these overseas reporters with Marine Corps weapons, equipment, and organization. Because FOX News Channel isn't part of the contingent, we're not allowed to bring any cameras. Apparently the press corps covering the war doesn't want to be covered itself, so I just tag along.

It's quickly evident that these masters of the overseas media are less interested in the weapons on display than they are in what the Marines who use them have to say. They swirl around the young troopers like sharks looking for prey. Questions fly about everything from the weather to opinions on the UN, antiwar protests, and their commander in chief, and how long they have been here waiting for the war to start.

In response, the Marines, most of them corporals and sergeants, are brutally frank. Despite the delay in getting done what they came here to do, these young warriors revere their commander in chief. And whether the nice folks at the UN or the critics in Europe and antiwar activists in the United States like it or not, these Marines have a refreshing certainty about their mission, Saddam Hussein, and the need to evict him from Iraq. This isn't because they are naïve or “poor, uneducated minorities,” as some liberal politicians have alleged in advocating a reinstitution of conscription. Supporters of a draft say that it's necessary to equalize the pool of conscripts, so that white upper- and middle-class Americans are made to serve as well as those from lower economic groups, and minority groups. Yet these all-volunteer troops are already predominantly white, middle-income Americans and they are all high school graduates. Minorities are, if anything, underrepresented in these units.

The “mission focus” of these young Americans in uniform doesn't stem from being “brainwashed” by their superiors. And not because these Marines are “bloodthirsty,” as some of these foreign journalists seem to believe. In fact,
none
of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, or
Marines with whom I have spoken over the last several days has told me that they are over here “itching for a fight.”

What has apparently been missed by many of the media elites who are here covering the preparations for a fight in the Iraqi desert is the fact that no one who has ever really been to a war ever really wants to go to another one. And a remarkable percentage of these young men already have combat experience. One commander I spoke with estimated that nearly half his officers and senior non-commissioned officers have served under fire before—in the first Gulf War, the Balkans, or Afghanistan, and in some cases, all three. They know better than any correspondent, reporter, or politician the true nature of war: that it is the most terrible of human endeavors.

Yet precisely because so many of them have combat experience, they are anxious to get on with the task at hand. They know that the sooner it gets started, the sooner it will be over. Many of them express frustration that what was supposed to be a blitzkrieg has become a “sitzkrieg.” One young NCO says, “We're the best there is, but this is going to be the most ‘telegraphed punch' in military history.”

And that's not the only problem with further delay. A “recon Marine”—one of those whose job it is to penetrate deep inside enemy territory to scout out routes, objectives, and enemy targets to be hit—says, “We do our best work under conditions of marginal visibility. We don't like to operate when the moon is like a big light bulb in the night sky.”

I watch as the foreign reporters scribble furiously while talking to an NBC NCO—one of those responsible for ensuring that the Marines survive an attack by weapons of mass destruction. The “NBC” isn't the network—it stands for “nuclear, biological, and chemical.” His comment gets their attention: “The longer we wait, the more time Saddam has to plot and carry out a chemical, biological,
or nuclear attack—and the hotter it's going to be wearing those protective suits and masks.”

As the reporters head back to their vans, I ask a Marine staff sergeant how he thinks it went. He shrugs and replies, “They will probably say we were whining and complaining, but what the troops were saying is all just common sense. What I don't get is why we're letting these foreign reporters hang around with us. They are more hostile than the Iraqis.”

I walk over to eavesdrop on the departing correspondents, who are now hammering away at their escorts. One female correspondent, with what sounds to me like a French accent, is asking—or is it
telling?
—one of the Marine minders that she has “never seen so much bravado, machismo, or arrogance” in her life. The young NCO listens to her complaint, appears to mull over her grievance, and then replies, “Yes, ma'am, that's why they call themselves United States Marines.”