Chapter One: Grunt Work

September 26, 2006

It was quiet.
The day of our first patrol, and it was quiet. American news channels were broadcasting horrific scenes of violence, suicide bombings, gunfights, IEDs, civilian casualties. All I could hear from our small room was boot soles striking the concrete catwalk, the quiet chatter of Marine voices in other rooms, and the soft rattle of tactical gear.
It was a little discomforting.
Enemy activity had picked up significantly right before we got into town. Just yesterday, a young Marine named Miller was killed just a hundred yards from the base. A hundred yards outside the wire. The Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was an 82mm high explosive dual-purpose mortar shell buried under six inches of soft dirt on the side of the road. Two wires led from a blasting cap wired to the fuze, strung to a nearby home where the enemy attached the leads to a small motorcycle battery when Miller walked right on top of it.
Miller was medevac’d quickly while other Marines traced the wires to track the insurgent down. Too late. He had fled the area, weaponless, no evidence to where he might be. That’s how it was out there. The insurgents had the upper hand.
It was going to be a long seven months.

*          *          *

“Perna,” Lieutenant Brusch, our platoon commander, called me. Brusch was an ivy league educated African American 2nd Lieutenant on his first combat tour. I had already cut my teeth on truck loads of Taliban in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, the year before, as had a few members of my squad. Almost all of the squad leaders, fireteam leaders, and other important positions had seen combat before. They were combat tested, hard, decisive, and brave.
All of the lieutenants were new.
“Yes sir?” I answered.
“Meet Corporal Roberts,” he said, pointing to a tall, slender Marine I had never seen before. His eyes were sunk, hollow, his cheek bones gaunt. He had been here a while. “He’s going to lead you on a terrain familiarization patrol so you can get a feel for the city.”
“Roger that sir,” I said. “You coming with us?”
“Negative. In addition to learning the lay of the land, your mission is to establish an observation post on the northern edge of the city. Keep an eye out for insurgent mortar teams making a move on the base,” he said, pointing to a large map of Barwanah tacked crudely on the wall of the COC. “The LCMR popped out a gird the other night right about here, in the wadis and open desert north of the city.”
“LCMR?”
“Oh, the Lightweight Counter-Mortar Radar system. It detects incoming rounds, calculates their trajectory, and triangulates a grid location of their launch site.”
“Fuckin’ high speed, sir,” I said, using the Marine colloquialism for badass. Just next to the map was a chart of indirect fire attacks. An indirect fire weapon is anything where the round flies in an arc, rather than straight at the target. For example, mortars, artillery, etc.
During the last six weeks, the base had been hit by mortar attack eighty-six times. Eighty-six times. Not just mortars being fired at the base—I’m talking the rounds inside the wire, striking the building, hurting Marines type of mortar attacks.
They were good.
Not only were they striking the base, but they were coordinating most of their attacks between the hours of 1100-1400 and 1800-2000. For you non-military folks, that’s 11 am to 2 pm, and 6 pm to 8 pm. When the chow hall opens up, Marines have to cross an open area, then stand in line to get lunch and dinner. Even eating a shit meal was dangerous out there.
“Perna, here’s the general vicinity of where we want that OP set up,” Brusch said, breaking my thoughts. The area was about a click, one kilometer, away from Forward Operating Base (FOB) Barwanah. Looking at that map, not knowing the city, I had no idea how to get there, or how to get back. It was Indian Country to me. Shit, we pulled into the city late last night, I had no idea what the place even looks like in the daytime.
Roberts had been in country for the last seven months. I had to trust him to get us to the OP site, and then return safely. I was combat tested, sure, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous. The type of combat I experienced in Afghanistan wasn’t as close in as Iraq would be. A squad leader level intel brief told me that the average engagement distance in Iraq is seventeen meters. Seventeen fucking meters. That’s about fifty feet. A little too close for comfort.
I turned to my squad of twelve young men, most of them new. There was Lance Corporal Jason Dunaway, my first fireteam leader. J-Dun, as we called him, was from Winnie, Texas. Has was a good old country boy with fists made of bricks and a heart made of gold. In Afghanistan, he got shot in the left arm, the bullet lodging in his SAPI plate, the bullet proof armor inside flak jackets. “That motherfucker shot me,” he said, as he unloaded a magazine at the poor bastard. J-Dun patched himself up, turned to his fireteam leader and said, “I’m better than that.” Tough son of a bitch.
He fought for the next four hours.
Private First Class Ryan Finley, one of two Marines on point, was from Watertown, Connecticut. He was a short, stocky, hockey player whose mouth more than made up for his height. Make no mistake; he’s a strong guy. I’d seen plenty of guys try to wrestle him down, but he took them out every time. He’s a smart ass, but he made up for it by being tactically proficient, and having his mind right every time we stepped outside the wire.
Lance Corporal Paul Denison paired with him on point. I decided to pair up our first two and last two men so there’s never just one guy popping a corner by himself. If one takes a sniper round, at least the other guy will see or hear where it came from. Denison was a bit unsure of himself, and I was a bit unsure of him too. But, we operated as a team and he was a part of it. We’d all keep an eye out for each other. He had deployed a couple weeks earlier with our advance party, and was walking right behind Miller when he was killed by that IED. Can’t blame him for being jittery. I hope that event didn’t shake him up too bad. There was plenty of killing ahead.
Private First Class Joseph Patishnock was from Jersey. He was a fighter. He could work a pair of nun chucks like Bruce Lee, and he threw a hell of a haymaker. His brother fights professional mixed martial arts. He was a mean shot with his M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, a 5.56mm light machine gun organic to the Marine Corps fireteam. He was a good guy to have at your back, even if he did throw a little attitude every now and then. Hell, I wouldn’t trust a Marine that didn’t have an attitude.
Lance Corporal Cade Cooper, who would later became 2nd fireteam leader, was also from Texas. He had a passion for cheap beer and women, like every Texan I’d met. Sometimes his carefree attitude got to me, but he’s tactically superior and crazy enough to walk into hell with you, if not before you. He was always pushing the boundaries on the grooming standard, military appearance, and all that. He loved a good conflict, and Barwanah was the right place for a guy like him.
Private First Class John J. Redmon. Honestly, I didn’t know what he was doing in a war zone. The kid grew up watching Star Trek and eating peanut butter and jelly with the crust cut off. The boy’s umbilical cord was still wet, if you know what I mean. Redmon ended up bearing the brunt of the squad’s jokes, he seemed to be set up for failure. However, he was the first one to tell me he was afraid of coming to Iraq. No one else did, but I could see it in some of their eyes. I respect that kind of honesty. Shit, I was afraid. Not so much for myself, but for making decisions that could lead to the death of one of these young Marines.
Redmon would became a hardened Marine though, completing three combat tours before getting out of the Corps.
Private First Class Ernesto Chavez. He was the quiet guy who gets the job done. He didn’t open up to anyone until he knew us better. When he first came to the fleet, I found a package of Oreo cookies in his wall locker. I crushed them on his floor, and trashed the rest of his junk food. He had a bit of a spare tire going, but proved himself during PT. The boy could run faster than most of the squad. I still didn’t know much about him, but he never questioned orders and I’d never had a problem with him.
Lance Corporal Anthony Adams, leader of 2nd fireteam team. Adams was a tweaky little fuck. I swear he had undiagnosed ADHD. He was a wiry dude that would beat anyone wrestling, though he’s never worked out a day in his life. He was a great artist as well, and had just gotten married to a girl who seemed to be a great fit. At 20 years old, I told him to wait it out, as 90% of marriages like that in the military didn’t work out, but they did it anyways. They proved the status quo wrong, and had a son in 2009.
Adams could get on your nerves, he seemed to thrive on it. Not too many people knew more than that about him, but he was as honest and unselfish as they came. He would do absolutely anything for a fellow Marine. Often he was dismissed as a joker, but his friendship meant the world to me. He also got his purple heart in Afghanistan, getting hit with some shrapnel from a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG). I remember the look in his eyes when I was ordered to tell him he was getting on that medevac bird with the other half of our squad. He was heartbroken. He didn’t want to leave his friends on the battlefield.
Loyal motherfucker.
Private First Class Michael Goble, from Florida. He was the metro one. He listened to indie rock bands, dressed in tight pants with studded belts, and wore tight shirts with band logos on them. He had two star tattoos, one on each wrist. Not many of us knew that one is for his fiancée, and one for his unborn child, who were both killed in a car accident. He said fuck it, and joined the Marines to go to war. He had nothing to lose. He was a good man who fell on hard times.
Lance Corporal Christopher Roby. Black dude from the deep south, somewhere outside of Nashville, Tennessee. I didn’t like him at all. He was a reservist who went active to go to war. He always told us he had seen combat before, some gang bangers shooting at him in Tennessee. Hard core insurgents are a little different. When’s the last time twelve guys in your local gang set up an ambush with machine guns, RPGs, hand grenades, car bombs, and suicide vests?
I remember seeing him one Saturday morning doing dexterity drills in flak and kevlar out in the grass. Saturday morning! Turns out he was the best guy to have at your rear on a patrol. He spotted everything, was vigilant as a cat on steroids, and quick to react. Perhaps it was because he didn’t trust anyone to watch his back, so he does a better job of it.
I certainly didn’t help with how I treated him.
Lance Corporal Christopher Gentry. He was your stereotypical nerd type. Wore glasses, wiry frame, slender build. Obvious choice to carry the squad radio. He studied all the ins and outs of the radio system in his spare time, and was always asking questions. He was the brains, not the brawn. He’d make a good leader once he got a little more aggressive.
Private Rudolfo Booth. He deployed with us to Afghanistan as well. He was a great guy, always smiling and laughing. He was a bit of a ladies man, too. He could dance like crazy, but regardless of how he spent his downtime, he was 100% squared away at his job. It was impressive to see him when he was at work—it was all effort. He got busted down to Private after he failed a urinalysis coming out of Afghanistan. He had been taking some prescription sleep aids to get to sleep that weren’t prescribed to him. Private Eduardo Lopez was busted down doing the same. Everyone in the platoon showed up to their court-martials as character witnesses, and they were both allowed to stay in the Corps. These were great guys in unfortunate circumstances. No one slept right after that deployment.
I still don’t.
Doc Ferdinand Buquing, our Navy Corpsman, was the silent type. Navy Corpsman are like medics for Marines. They are sailors, trained in combat trauma, first aid, sports medicine, and fighting. He never talked much about himself or his family, and always had his head in a book or watching a movie with headphones on. He really knew his job and looked after the Marines’ health. He was always quickest to respond when someone was wounded or injured, no matter the danger.
I put all these men through a series of pre-combat checks and inspections, ensuring everyone had all their body armor on properly, full ammunition, water, other tactical supplies, and mission essential gear for our patrol into the city.
The FOB had a gate, framed out of wood and covered in cloth that served one purpose: to obscure vision into the base. There was only one problem. It only reached shoulder height. Apparently whoever designed and built the gate decided that head shots were still game. I thought that was rather careless, but put it aside as everyone loaded their weapons.
Roberts took point, and as we headed outside the base, I racked a round into the chamber of my M16, tapped the forward assist to make sure it was seated properly and the bolt locked, closed the ejection port cover, and moved into the unknown.

*          *          *

After what seemed like the longest twenty minutes of my life, we reached our destination. The home sat on top of a small rise, offering a clear view of desert on the northern edge of Barwanah. We had a clear view of the north, to the open wadis, rocky desert, and dried up steam beds. Somewhere out there was the grid the LCMR reported a mortar team.
The problem with fighting in urban terrain like the city is that everywhere is a threat. Bombs could be buried in the road, hand grenades could be thrown from windows, alleys, rooftops, snipers could be drawing a bead on you in the distance, well planned ambushes could be waiting around the next corner.
It was impossible to take scope of every conceivable threat, so training took over and narrowed down this sensory data—out of necessity, and for preservation of sanity—of threats to a manageable number, which our tactics were designed to mitigate. Most of my combat experience to that point had been in the vast ranges of the Hindu Kush, in Kunar province Afghanistan. The type of combat I experienced over there is markedly different from what I expected to see in Iraq. A Marine Corps publication on military operations in urban terrain, or MOUT, states the average engagement distance in a city is 17 meters. Seventeen fucking meters. That’s a bit close for comfort.
The home Roberts chose for our observation point had great visibility all around, solid defense capabilities, and no kids. The woman of the household was home, but we allowed her to leave. There was no sense having her around in case shit hit the fan.
Just inside the door I dropped my helmet. It had to be at least 120° and I was sweating buckets. It wasn’t the worst I’d seen, but it was still fucking hot. The new side armor plates we were issued not only dug into your rib cage, they kept all the heat in, too. I grabbed a sip of water  and walked around the house to ensure our security formation was solid. After establishing sectors of fire for everyone, I had a word with Roberts.
“About six days ago we got into a firefight here,” he told me. We stepped into the living room, where the windows were all shot out. There were bullet holes all along the inside of the room, shattered glass on the floor. I step towards the window, the glass crunching under my boots. There were three bullet holes in the glass at my chest, and two just in front of my face.
“So you ran into that mortar team up here?” I asked.
“No, didn’t see any mortars. There were about six motherfuckers in that building there,” he said, pointing to another home less than 100 yards away.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Well, we returned fire, I set up a SAW (an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, a 5.56mm belt-fed light machine gun) in this window, and they broke contact. We tried to pursue, but these guys don’t have sixty pounds of body armor on. We can’t fucking run ‘em down.”
“How often have you guys been taking fire?” I asked.
“It picked up right before you got here. Ever since then we’ve been hit multiple times every day. There wasn’t shit during the winter, I guess the Hajjis don’t really like to fight in the cold. That and Ramadan starts pretty soon,” he replied.
“Great,” I said. Ramadan is a Muslim holiday, observed around September, October, or November. It starts on a new moon, and lasts for a lunar cycle, to honor the month in which the prophet Muhammad was presented the Koran. Fasting during the daytime is commonly practiced, as this is supposed to erase the sins of a Muslim. Consequently, insurgents who have declared jihad on Americans viewed this holy month as a great time to increase their attacks on coalition forces. Sweet.
We remained in place for about two hours, scanning the area, looking out for any sign of insurgent activity. Nothing. We returned to base under cover of darkness. I noticed I was more centered on the return. Adrenaline doesn’t last forever, the little spike there was when leaving the wire subsided, and I was in a relaxed state. It’s kind of like the moment after sex, when you’re not thinking with your cock anymore, and your thoughts are clear, calm, and collected.
After getting back to the base, I conducted a small debrief. The mission could be considered a success, because there was no mortar attack on the base. However, there was no way to tell if that was due to our presence or not. We turned our fragmentation grenades into the Ammo Supply Point, or ASP. There’s no need to sleep with your high explosives.

*           *            *

The next morning I was standing on the short catwalk between the Combat Operations Center (COC) and the main building on the FOB talking to Dunaway. As we waited for the final inspections before our second patrol, suddenly we heard a series of metallic thuds behind us. We’re peppered with dirt and rocks.
I ducked reactively, not knowing what was going on.
“Who’s kicking rocks?” Lieutenant Brusch asked.
“Incoming! Fuck!” someone yelled.
I turned to my right to see Staff Sergeant Ledbetter, the Marine conducting the final inspections, cover his head and dive behind a pillar. He wasn’t wearing any body armor, so Dunaway covered as much of his body as he could. I dashed behind the pillar and tried to shield Ledbetter with my body as well.
We waited for the blast.
The round could go off at any time. I was scared shitless. If the round detonated, myself, Dunaway, and SSgt Ledbetter would surely be killed. The rest of my squad might be seriously wounded, if not worse. After a few long seconds, nothing exploded. The three of us got up and ran into the COC.
The funny thing about having a near death experience and the adrenaline rush that comes with it is that one loses all fine motor control. I felt like an uncoordinated jackass as I ran for cover. Looked like one too. I could barely keep my feet under me. My heart was trying to jump out of my chest. I looked back to see the fucking 120 mm mortar round halfway sticking out of the dirt not 10 feet from the catwalk. There is a second one stuck in a Hesco barrier, and another 10 meters further. Close call indeed.
Holy shit.
Lance Corporal Ryan Finley, my point man, turned to me and asked, “Corporal Perna, what’s the kill radius of that thing?”
“Big,” was my response. It’s 20 meters. The casualty radius extends another 40 meters past that. These things are fucking deadly.
“Were we in it?” he asked.
“Yeah, we were fucking in it,” I replied.
We finished the conversation with a look.

*          *          *

Staff Sergeant Ledbetter returned a minute later with his gear on. “Jesus Christ, thank you guys. You saved my ass,” he said, referring to Dunaway and I. It was the logical thing to do and we both never even thought of it. Dunaway moved first. I had to think about it.
“Hey whatever, you didn’t have armor. It’s cool,” Jason told him. Humble motherfucker. He’s right though. It didn’t take a second thought. Some people might think that is heroic. We were all dead if that round exploded. Anyways, he’s going home in a few days. He deserved to live more than we did at that moment. He had something to look forward to.
We collected ourselves, then stepped pass the mortar rounds on our way towards the front gate. We couldn’t afford to let non-exploding mortars prevent us from accomplishing the mission. Leaving the base, we headed lengthwise down the serpentine alley of concrete jersey barriers barring entry to the compound. I didn’t like how we were exposed down the long axis of our patrol formation every time we go outside the base.
Fuck it, I thought to myself, everywhere is dangerous in this country.
An Iraqi Army convoy started pulling down the street towards us, heading back to the FOB. I crouched behind a jersey barrier as they rolled by, flashing one of the machine gunners the “V for Victory” sign. Hippies might call it the peace sign. I’ve adopted it back to it’s original meaning. Victory. V-E Day, the day Germany was defeated in World War II. The dude flashes it back to me.
I wondered if he knew what it meant, either way.
We turned down a side street, carefully keeping a look out for insurgents, tripwires, mines, IEDs, anything out of the norm. Shit, I didn’t even know what the norm was yet. The last night’s patrol was bullshit. We saw merely a small part of Barwanah, a city of 40,000 people. I still didn’t know how to get back to base other than finding the mosque, if there happened to be electricity that day and  if someone remembered to turn the minaret light on.
The first part of the day’s mission was to conduct a reconnaissance of the north part of the city, talking to the locals and getting a feel for the place. Kind of like driving around a new town right after you moved in. Then, on our way back, we were to link up with 1st squad and provide close support for them while they maneuvered through the palm groves. We really just wanted to scope out as much of the city as possible.
As we headed down a side street, Patishnock spotted a suspicious looking vehicle. He aimed in with his SAW. What made it suspicious? The list of known insurgent vehicles posted in the COC. I had a copy in my pocket, and pulled it out as we inched closer.
It looked like a match.
There wasn’t a license plate number to check against, though. Cooper and Chavez searched the vehicle, questioning the driver. It’s just a taxi, or so he said. There wasn’t really any way to tell unless we found weapons or explosives inside. There wasn’t anything suspicious in the vehicle, so we moved on.
We turned off the street and started patrolling through backyards and ditches. I was under the assumption that most IEDs targeted vehicles. Why waste all that time and effort to get one Marine on foot if you can get four in a truck? The company standard operating procedure, then, was to never drive vehicles within the city limits unless it was for a raid or a medevac. I figured it was a safe bet to stay off the roads in case there were any errant IEDs around.
Intelligence cited that there had been smaller explosive devices that targeted Marines on foot — the one that hit Miller was not a rare event. To cut down on the threat, we carried man-portable electronic countermeasures systems that jammed radio signals. It’s designed to defeat any remote controlled IED threat, so any explosive device nearby must be detonated by command wire. This requires a direct connection from the blasting cap to the battery, which makes the IED harder to disguise and requires the triggerman to be closer, increasing his risk of death or capture.
Preferably death.
Denison walked point in front of the patrol alongside Finley. Denison was nervous and on edge. He wasn’t the same person I sent out here a couple weeks back, having been in country for that time as part of the advance party, or ADVON. Every once in a while he would point out sites he had been in firefights, where Iraqi soldiers had been killed, where Marines had been shot, and the spot where Miller was killed just two days ago. Turns out he was walking just 10 yards behind Miller when the IED went off. It’s hard watching somebody die, and the toll it’s taken on him, mentally and physically, was clear.
Still moving north to our pre-planned OP site, 3d squad, 4th platoon (Mobile Assault Platoon 3, or just Four-three) radioed in, “Fox Main, this is Four-three, over.” Our call signs were organized by platoon and squad. My call sign was Fox Three-two, meaning Fox Company, 3rd Platoon, 2d Squad. First Squad was Three-one, and so on throughout the company.
“This is Fox Main, send your traffic,” came the reply.
“We have a possible IED, grid XXX XXX, over.”
“Roger, keep us updated, over,” Four-three’s radio operator replied.
“Roger, be advised there’s a visible command wire leading to the east of that position, over,” Four-three said.
“Roger, Four-three.”
I checked my map, and noted where Four-three was — roughly a kilometer away to the northwest.
None of us heard the attack.
“All units, all units, this is Fox Main, we have indirect fire, LCMR grid XXX XXX, over!” came the call over the radio.
I glanced at my map and made a snap decision, “Fox Main, this is Three-two, we’re close to the grid. We can be there in ten mikes, over.”
“Roger Three-two, get some. Fox Main out.”
We headed towards the LCMR grid, looking for the IED command wire that would be strung along the ground. The location was 600 meters past the northern edge of the city, out in the open wadis. Completely exposed all around. I directed Finley to the general area of the objective, and had him pick up the pace. I wanted to kill a mortar team that nearly fucked us up that morning.
I was blood drunk.
All I wanted to do was kill those fuckers. I was sweating profusely, breathing heavily, but the excitement of the kill kept me going. The freedom to kill human beings and not be punished — even better, praised for it — is intoxicating. As we arrived, I noticed some of the newer Marines were starting to drag ass. That was no good. I noticed I was pretty spent, too. It’s all that goddamn gear we were carrying. Body armor, water, ammo, it all weighed a fucking ton. It must have been close to 125°, too. Thank God we weren’t deployed during the hottest time of the year. I remember being in Afghanistan in 2005, where daily temperatures were 115° every day, and that was a cool day. One day hit a record high at 142°.
Fucking melting.
I came to a small building in the open wadis, and established half the squad as a base of fire. Dunaway, Coop, Gentry, our radio operator, and I went scouting ahead for the exact grid. Hopefully, as a small element, we could draw some enemy fire, then the rest of the squad would waste the motherfuckers. We made sure to stay out of the line of fire of the other Marine’s. There were only four of us out there visible. I figured that the easiest way to get in a firefight was to appear like we’re doing everything wrong.
We were certainly doing that.
We spread out on line and combed the area, moving to a group of average sized homes. We made entry to a structure undergoing renovations, about 200 meters from our original position. I saw locals mingling about, and directed my other team leader, Adams, to bring the rest of the squad to a supporting position while we spoke with the locals.
I greeted a woman at the first house we came to, who informed me that her husband was not home.
“Wayn Arrhabi?” I asked her. Where are the terrorists?
“Lah. Makoo shee,” she tells me. No, there are none. I didn’t know what to think. The LCMR pinged us a grid out this way. If there were insurgents who had just fired mortars around here, someone had to have seen or heard them. Even if this woman knew where they were, she probably wouldn’t tell me. Three months ago Lima company “arrested” a city council member to bring him to the base incognito so they could talk.
He was beheaded the next day as an example.
It wasn’t very likely anyone would volunteer information unless they were under duress. I called the other half of the squad, and ordered them to move out towards our position, maintaining vigilance as they moved.
As we walked around her home, the children glanced nervously at us. Her husband returned shortly, and gave us no information. He offered us some orange drink that looked like Tang. I recalled stories of Vietnam, where local children would offer troops Coca-Cola with shards of glass, infectious waste, or other shit in it.
I didn’t care.
I was sweating buckets, so I drank some before we moved out.
“Hey, it’s fucking Tang!” Dunaway said.
“Nice. Hook it up,” Finley asked. It didn’t taste that bad, but I still didn’t want to know where their water came from. Probably some well contaminated with shit water.
The next house we came to had a man that looked suspiciously like one of our high value targets (HVT). I had a printout of photos plus descriptions of HVTs on the opposite side of the vehicle list. I decided to search the house. One of my Marines found a two-liter bottle of gasoline.
Strange.
I immediately ordered the occupants into one room and posted two guards on them. An emerging tactic of the insurgents was to place a flammable enhancer, such as a bottle of gas, propane tank, or other accelerant, alongside an IED. If the initial explosion wasn’t enough to penetrate the vehicle’s armor, we’d still be consumed in flames. It’s a dirty trick.
We tore the place apart, finding PVC pipe, a soldering kit, some circuit boards, and spare wiring. The pipe was just big enough to fit an RPG rocket, I thought. It could be wired as an IED. Upon further inspection, the circuit board appeared to be from a car stereo. I checked out the car just outside. It looked like another BOLO vehicle (Be On the Look Out for – a term used to describe a list of vehicles or personnel to be looking for). The car was broken down, however, and after a bit of questioning, I decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to detain the guy.
As we headed towards the city again, a young Iraqi boy came up to us, beckoning that we came to his home. I looked to the house to see his father waving us in. They had prepared some chai tea. We sat down, drank up, and thanked the man and his family. They seemed happy to have Marines in their town.

*            *            *

First squad should have been in place near the palm groves, so I called Lieutenant Brusch on the radio, “Fox 3, this is Three-two, over.”
“Perna, I want you to move into an overwatch position at grid kilo charlie 592 768, how copy, over?”
“Roger, kilo charlie 592 768. ETA ten mikes,” I reply. We can make it in about ten minutes, I thought. The palm groves consisted of the land on either side of the Euphrates river that used to be a part of the riverbed before the Haditha Dam was put in place many years ago. On the land based side, there is a 20 meter high section of cliffs, rocks, hills, and trails leading to the rest of the town.
“Our intention is to sweep from north to south, and call on you for support if need be. Once we hit the Echo 3 sector, we’ll go firm and wait for you to join us and then return to base,” Brusch said.
“Roger that sir, we’ll be in position to reach you within five mikes if something goes down, Three-two out,” I replied.
By the time we got to the house to set our overwatch, Three-one was already further south than I expect, stopped in a home to wait for us. We continue moving, coming to a ditch, and across the road my point man greeted an Iraqi. The man said nothing back and started to move away.
“Awgapf!” Stop! Finley yelled.
The man ran into a nearby house. Naturally, we pursued. I sent Cooper’s team around to the back of the house to block escape, then kicked in the front door. We came across two women and two children, put them into the living room, shut the door, and locked it.
I turned to face the three men, all what we called “military aged males”.
We asked if they had weapons, though a search of the home by Finley, Denison, and Chavez turned up nothing. Inside one man’s pocket we found 95,000 Iraqi dinars.
Jackpot.
A fat wad of cash. I radioed Fox Main to see what the best course of action was. Even without cause, we could detain an individual for questioning for 24 hours, maximum.
“Fox Main, Three-two. We’ve got an individual here with 95,000 dinars on him, should we bring him in?”
“Negative, Three-two, that’s only worth $60 American. Fox Main out.”
I turned to Dunaway, “Get the fuck outta here. That shit is worth sixty bucks. I thought I knew a lot about Iraq, but they never mentioned how much their fucking money is worth in any of those pre-deployment briefs.”
“Fuck it. This guy is bad, I can feel it,” he replies. JDun stared the kid down. I let the three men sweat a little bit while we bullshitted, then let him go. I could tell he wasn’t friendly, but there wasn’t shit I could do. He had a smug look on his face. We’d see him again, I was sure of it.
I just hoped he’d give me the chance next time.
I decided we should find a better place closer to the palm groves, hopefully we’d get into a fire fight. Dunaway was chomping at the bit for some action, and the junior Marines all said the same, although some of them had a look in their eyes that betrayed their true feelings. It’s cool, I’d been there before. Coop was all for some battle. Me too.
I didn’t come ten thousand miles to walk around and drink fucking chai.
I was still nervous, however. Not at the thought of getting into a firefight, but about how my junior Marines would react. Were they trained well enough? Were they going to freak out? What’s going to happen? How was I going to control all these men under fire?
I quieted my thoughts about it.
I knew that the Marines were going to follow my lead, not to mention their fire team leaders. I had a conversation about it with Cooper and JDun a few weeks earlier in Kuwait:

“Look, we gotta be the first ones to kick down the door. We have to be the first guys returning fire, closing with the enemy, and the first one in the building. If you go into a hostile area first, the Marines will follow you,” I said.
“For sure Pern, you know I got you,” Dunaway replied..
“Fuck yeah dude, you think I’m gonna let one of them boots get the first kill? I’m all over that shit!” Cooper said.

By ‘boot’ he was referring to the junior guys. The term boot goes back to the days of Marines swabbing the decks of Navy ships. The new guys’ feet weren’t used to the salty breeze, so they would wear boots to stop their feet from getting cracked and chapped.
We stopped by a house that had a decent view of the palm groves, and a very friendly Iraqi man made some more tea for us.
What is with the tea in this country?
Perhaps he was too friendly. He asked who the leader of the group is, set me down in the place of honor in the home, and offered me some shitty palm date candy. He even turned on the TV to some local music station. He seemed to support us, America, the Marine Corps, but I had the sinking feeling that the reason he was able to act like this was because he was in very high standing with the insurgency. It’s possible they would leave him alone if he was respected as a town or tribal leader. Maybe he was playing both sides.
“Three-two this is Three-one,” the radio belched.
“Send your traffic Three-one,” I replied.
“Hey, we’re going to RTB (return to base) in 15 mikes, we’ll see you there, over,”
“Roger that.”
We were on our own. After sitting down for a while, watching the Iraqi TV, maintaining security, I decided to head through the palm groves on our way back, check the area out, and see if we couldn’t draw some hostile fire. If we were here for a war, we were going to fight it, damn it.
I wanted to shake this stigma around the palm groves the Marines had. I wanted the insurgents to know we weren’t afraid to go down there. Intelligence reports told of daisy-chained  (connected to each other in succession) IEDs, IEDs at head level with trip wires, men in trees with rifles, random throwing of hand grenades, and more.
It was not a place to be fucking around.
We treaded lightly, following the path of the man in front of us in case there were land mines or other booby traps. That way, only one of us would get blown up at a time.
Tactics.