Black Hearts Part 2

ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2005, at 10:00 p.m., much of 1st Battalion and the rest of 2nd Brigade left Fort Campbell, Kentucky, making a stop at Germany before arriving in Kuwait just after midnight on October 1. The bulk of the units settled in for a few weeks of last-minute training while advance parties began flying to Camp Striker, where Colonel Ebel and most of 2nd Brigade would make their headquarters. Striker was part of the Victory Base Complex, a ma.s.sive U.S. military multicamp that surrounds most of Baghdad International Airport. Two and a half years into the war, Victory had become a city all its own, with hangar-sized cafeterias, fleets of SUVs, acres of air-conditioned housing trailers, and post exchanges that had Burger Kings, Subways, and Green Beans coffee shops, a fair approximation of Starbucks. Lieutenant Colonel Rob Hayc.o.c.k and his 2-502nd also set up its headquarters at Striker as its forces began to spread out to occupy the western half of the brigadeas sector. Simultaneously, the 1-502ndas advance parties fanned out to their ultimate AOs to meet the 48th Brigade, check out their new homes, and gather intelligence before their handover. Over the next month, the 101st units would slowly add to their ranks while the 48th drew theirs down and transferred final authority of their battle s.p.a.ces at the end of October.

Lieutenant Colonel Kunk decided to split the battalion into three elements. The bulk of men, machines, and equipment would set up at FOB (Forward Operating Base) Mahmudiyah, a large former chicken-processing plant on Highway 8, which the military had renamed Route Jackson, about a mile north of the city itself. FOB Mahmudiyah became the home of battalion staff, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Alpha Company, Delta Company, and Echo Company. Living conditions were spartan compared with those of Striker, but there was a bare minimum of support and supply amenities. The majority of the soldiers lived in five- to ten-man tents with wooden floors and air-conditioning that could bring temperatures down by 20 to 30 degrees during the summer. There were shower trailers and a chow hall serving hot meals. There was an eleven-person detachment from private contractor KBR on site with a carpenter, a plumber, a couple of supervisors, and several workers from India, Sri Lanka, and other developing countries who did maintenance and cleaning. Battalion headquarters moved into a giant three-story brick building, while the company commanders put their headquarters, staff living quarters, and other operations in the other existing structures around the site.

Delta Company took the northern slice of the battalionas area of operation, bounded by a highway the Army had renamed Route Tampa to the north and Mahmudiyah city limits to the south, while MiTT-depleted Alpha Company took charge of the central sector that included Mahmudiyah itself. Charlie Company moved south to Lutufiyah and occupied an old telephone switching station. Its territory covered Lutufiyah proper and the ma.s.sive Al-Qaqaa State Establishment weapons depot. Bravo, meanwhile, headed to the town of Yusufiyah, and its terrain formed most of the 1-502ndas western boundary.

Kunk gave Charlie and Bravo the missions he judged to be the toughest because, at that time, he considered them his best companies, led by his best commanders. Both required setting up shop, in a favored Army phrase, aaway from the flagpolea of battalion headquarters in the sectors where violence was the worst. This was a vote of confidence from Kunk, who was pleased with both companiesa performance at NTC, but particularly Bravoas. Bravo, Kunk declared, ajust did an absolutely phenomenal job. They showed the maturity, they showed the discipline, at the platoon and squad levels.a This was Bravo Company commander Captain John Goodwinas third time in the Army. Skinny, almost gaunt, with hollow, deep-set eyes, Goodwin is originally from Solon, Ohio, a well-to-do suburb of Cleveland. He enlisted in 1986, troubleshooting radio systems for the Armyas signal corps. He got out in June 1990 but reenlisted two months later when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He drove a Humvee during the United Statesa hundred-hour push into Iraq, spent another three years in the service, got out in 1994, and moved to Pulaski, Wisconsin, with his wife and three daughters to work for a yacht builder. That career did not work out. aI donat mind hard work,a he quipped, abut getting fibergla.s.s embedded into your skin on a daily basis gets old quick.a He decided to get his bacheloras degree and, upon graduation in 2000, become an officer in the National Guard. aWe were looking to buy a house somewhere toward Madison,a he recalled. aI was going to maybe work for the state or something. I was thirty-two and still trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up.a Goodwin joined the Army this time by mistake. Rather than fill out a National Guard ROTC contract, he accidentally filled out an active-duty Army ROTC contract instead. As graduation approached, his ROTC adviser told him he was going on active duty immediately. Goodwin insisted there must be some mistake. Once he backtracked over what had happened, it took a while for the shock to wear off. His life had just been upended. Thoughts turned to his wife: he had promised her in 1994 that the second time was it. And now this. aI was dejected, we were making all these other plans,a he remembered. She took the jolt surprisingly well. aIf that is what we have to do,a she told him, athen we will do it.a Goodwin served a.s.signments at Fort Lewis, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Fort Benning, Georgia, but never got his Ranger Tab, was.h.i.+ng out of the school in both 2000 and 2004. After getting promoted to captain, he arrived at Fort Campbell in June 2004 on the division staff and waited for a company command to open up. When he learned that command of Bravo Company (also called the aBulldogsa) was coming vacant in the summer of 2005, however, he hesitated: aI knew that the division was getting ready to deploy in the fall. I struggled with it. I had to do some searching. But then it was like, yeah, I want it.a Typically when a new unit arrives in Iraq, there is a several-week handoff period, known as a aRelief in Place, Transfer of Authoritya (RIP-TOA), with the unit they are relieving. The outgoing unit demonstrates, via aright-seat, left-seat rides,a how they have been doing business in the area, pa.s.sing along lessons learned, contacts, and other inside knowledge. Many members of First Strike were astonished by what they found. They knew that Georgiaas 48th Infantry Brigade was having a tough deployment. Word was, this National Guard unit was out of their depth and getting shredded. Without enough troops to actively and routinely patrol the roads, they had become easy prey for large, deeply buried IEDs that took a long time to set but produced catastrophic casualties. The 48th lost four soldiers to a single device in late July and four more from the same platoon in another, almost identical blast just one week later. Within five months of their May arrival in theater, twenty-one soldiers from the 48th were dead. It was no secret they were being rea.s.signed to a less risky base away from direct combat missions.

Even so, First Strikeas advance parties were shocked at how degraded the unit was. It is a long and not-so-n.o.ble tradition in the military to ever so slightly knock the competence of the unit you are replacing, to say, aThey are a good unit, and they did the best they could, but it was probably best we showed up when we did.a The put-downs are usually subtle, even artfully backhanded. That is not the case when many of the men of First Strike describe relieving the 48th.*

Many soldiers from the 1-502nd concluded that the 48th had given up. They almost never left their FOBs. They did not patrol much, and when they did, they would speed around the area in their vehicles and head back as soon as possible. They did not make eye contact with the locals, they did not stop to talk to anyone. When heading to more remote areas, they would practice arecon by fireaa"preemptively shooting everywhere to announce their position and scare off anyone in the vicinity. If they were hit by an IED, or even noticed a suspicious rustling in the weeds, they would lay a 360-degree perimeter of fire and get out of there as fast as possible. One 101st soldier told of the time a Guardsman asked him if he wanted to buy his night-vision goggles. Another said some men from the 48th told him how to find a brothel in town and which Iraqi Army soldiers would score him booze and drugs. The 48th men in the guard towers at FOB Mahmudiyah used multiple justifications for their frequent firings at civilians. People standing up in trucks got shot at. People walking too close to the FOB got shot at. People driving too slowa"or too fasta"got shot at.

The living conditions on some of the 48thas outer bases, meanwhile, had turned feral. While the battalion headquarters seemed to cling to bare-bones but still recognizably human wartime living, at FOB Yusufiyah the men of the 48th were living like animals. Rather than walk the hundred or so yards to a latrine, men would urinate into empty one-liter water bottles. When Bravo Company arrived at Yusufiyah, there were hundreds of cloudy, yellowing p.i.s.s bottles thrown around in lockers, on top of buildings, or simply corralled into collections on the floor. Boxes of open food from care packages were strewn about, as were rat droppings and gnawed-away panels of cardboard. Feces and other waste clogged the gutters. Discarded food, including slabs of meat, was welded by heat and sand to the floor of the chow hall, while other provisions rotted in open freezers. The insides of the shower trailers were covered in thick green mold.

In late October, the transfers of authority started nearing completion as the 48th decamped for Camp Scania, a much quieter area forty miles to the south. But it is not as if the Black Heart Brigade had enjoyed anything like a honeymoon period. Even during the right-seat, left-seat rides, soldiers from the 101st were getting mortared, IEDad, or shot at every day. Every soldier has his first combat story, and it usually took place within a day or two of arriving in theater.

First Strikeas intelligence officer was frustrated by the lack of information the 48th had on the area. Since they had not been patrolling very much, they had little idea who the local power brokers were or what the current status of the eternal tribal joustings was, and no clue about what was going on anywhere west of Yusufiyah. The 48th intelligence shop had done the best it could, but it comprised only two people and was poorly resourced. They had, for example, no signal intelligence systema"the monitoring of telephones and other communicationsa"whatsoever. First Battalionas eight-man team started building a database of important people and places, times and severity of attacks, anything of interest, and interlinked it all. Within a month or two, a.n.a.lyses of the acc.u.mulated data started spitting out trends and probabilities of attacks.

As the battalion started to settle in and Kunk focused on his mission to fight the insurgency and support the people, he began to realize just how difficult this was going to be. aThere wasnat much governance going on,a Kunk said. aThere wasnat any infrastructure. People wouldnat come out when it got dark.a And what little governance there was could not be trusted. Mahmudiyahas mayor was believed to be corrupt and an insurgent sympathizer. During the weeks the 48th was pulling out, U.S. forces caught him in a car full of weapons and arrested him. Trying to sort out who was who, Kunk embarked on a heavy schedule of meetings with local sheikhs, strongmen, and other claimants to various seats of power. It is a role he would play throughout the deployment.

Part of Kunkas job was also to train the Iraqi security forces into competent organizations, another tall order. There was no functioning police force in the whole region. The 4th Brigade of the 6th Iraqi Army Divisionas area of responsibility roughly mirrored First Strikeas, with a battalion in Lutufiyah, a battalion in Yusufiyah, and a battalion and headquarters in Mahmudiyah. When the 101st arrived, the Iraqi soldiers were understaffed, half of them did not have weapons, fewer had any training, and most were of dubious loyalty. Many, the Americansa interpreters noted, had slogans supporting Muqtada al-Sadr written on their rifles. Sorting through who could be trusted, let alone who was fit to fight, would prove a never-ending challenge. Kunk suspected the Iraqi brigade commander to be, if not a Mahdi Army sympathizer, then certainly prejudiced against Sunnis. Two of the battalion commanders, both Sunnis, would die under mysterious circ.u.mstances. And even though Yusufiyah was the most dangerous place, Kunk noted, the Iraqi battalion there always had the fewest resources and the weakest leaders.

The catchphrase order from Kunk to his subordinates was aGo out and get after it,a and thatas what they did. Deltaas company commander Captain Lou Kangas divided his territory into four pieces, dealing one to each of his platoon leaders.

He told them, aYou own this s.p.a.ce now. Become the expert in absolutely everything having to do with it. Patrol every inch of it, meet every person, take a census of every house.a Within a few days of arrival, Captain Bordwell organized a full Alpha Company patrol of Mahmudiyah. aWe just threw it out there,a he said. aThe mentality was, if this is going to get ugly, letas do it early.a Down in Lutufiyah, Captain Dougherty also started running patrols and began a census. Patrol leaders were to get names and photos of the inhabitants of every house and to develop a database. On the battalion level, operations officer Major Salome started scheduling missions into seemingly random map grid squares, to keep insurgents and townspeople off-balance and to create the impression that the U.S. forces in the area were far larger than they actually were, athat we were everywhere at the same time,a he said.

As Goodwin and the rest of Bravo took over the Yusufiyah area in October, he was supremely confident in his team. Goodwinas first sergeant, Rick Skidis, would be his closest adviser, inst.i.tutional memory, and overseer of the men. Rounding out Goodwinas leaders.h.i.+p crew was his executive officer, First Lieutenant Justin Habash, and his fire support officer, another lieutenant who coordinated artillery fire into and out of Bravo territory.

The magnitude of Goodwinas task weighed on him. He had been entrusted with the safety, well-being, and fight-readiness of 135 young men. He was realistic about the dangers of war, and knew some of his men would probably not be coming home, but he was nonetheless enthusiastic about the job at hand. aI have a great bunch of guys,a he thought to himself. aThe s.h.i.+pas on course. All I have to do is keep it straight.a Goodwinas company, like most light infantry companies, consisted of his headquarters element plus three platoons of approximately thirty-five soldiers each, with each platoon led by a lieutenant who is the platoon leader and a sergeant first cla.s.s who is the platoon sergeant. It also had a weapons squad, with three machine gun teams of two men each; but before deployment, Bravoas weapons squad was broken up and the machine gun teams distributed throughout the rest of the company.

Twenty-four-year-old Lieutenant Ben Britt led 1st Platoon. The son of a Texas rancher, he had propelled his high-school football team to the state finals as an all-state tackle. He was an Eagle Scout, an all-region saxophonist, and cla.s.s valedictorian. He entered San Antonioas Trinity University in 1999 to play Division III football, but he transferred to West Point the next year because he wanted service and sacrifice to be a part of his life. He thrived at West Point, where he played rugby, majored in economics, and graduated in the academic top 5 percent of his cla.s.s.

There is an old joke in the Army: aWhat is the difference between a private first cla.s.s and a second lieutenant? A PFC has been promoted.a That sums up the difficult task every platoon leader has establis.h.i.+ng authority. While a second lieutenant may have a college degree and some high-cla.s.s training, these officers are younger than many of the men they are leading, and they often struggle to earn their respect.

Soldiers can be ruthless in their a.s.sessment of lieutenants, but Brittas men universally said they loved him. A born leader, he was always one of the smartest guys in the room, but he never copped the superiority att.i.tude that West Pointers are often mocked for having. He could talk about the finer points of Keynesian economics, if that was what you were into, or he could just as easily tell you why Tupac was better than Wu-Tang. He was well-read in all of his tactical handbooks, but he always weighed the input of his NCOs before making a decision. A big kid with a large round face, he was fearsome when he scowled, yet disarming when he smiled, which was often. Most of all, Brittas men respected him because he led from the front. There is no quicker way to earn a trooperas respect than to put yourself at the same risks he is forced to take. aHe wanted a piece of the action,a said one of his men. aCommand and control? Not a problem. He did it. But he wasnat satisfied with that. He wanted to be the first guy going in.a Brittas NCO counterpart was Phil Miller, a twenty-five-year-old staff sergeant from North Huntington, Pennsylvania. Platoon sergeants are usually sergeants first cla.s.s, but 1st Platoonas original platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Cla.s.s Rob Gallagher, was one of the few nona"Alpha Company men moved to the MiTT team, so Millera"the platoonas senior squad leader, a go-getter, and one of the only NCOs in the platoon with a Ranger Taba"took over. Despite Milleras considerable youth and inexperience, Lieutenant Colonel Kunk and Sergeant Major Edwards were impressed by what they saw of Miller at NTC and they were sure he was up to the job. He was one of the most popular NCOs in the platoon, and the guys were delighted when they heard he was taking over from Gallagher, who was widely considered a hard-a.s.s. Small and sinewy, Miller was a strutting peac.o.c.k with a loud voice. He was a tough guy when he wanted to be, but also a total cutup when he was in the mood for goofing off. Miller jumped at the added responsibility. aRight before we deployed,a he said, aI pulled everyone in, and I told them, aIam going to do everything that I can to bring everyone home.a Thatas a big statement, to say, aHey, everyone thatas standing here right now is coming home.a But I was confident. I was confident in that platoon.a While bravado can be a powerful force, 2nd and 3rd Platoons simply had more-seasoned and more-mature platoon sergeants in charge. When Second Lieutenant Mark Evans showed up at Fort Campbell in May 2005 to take over as 3rd Platoonas leader, for example, the first words of advice 1st Battalion Executive Officer Fred Wintrich gave him were: aBlaisdellas got a good platoon. Donat screw it up.a aBlaisdella was thirty-two-year-old Sergeant First Cla.s.s Phil Blaisdell, one of First Strikeas fastest-rising stars and most-respected NCOs. A hard-charger and a demanding boss, Blaisdell had formidably high standards yet a surprisingly warm disposition with his men. There was something about the way he operated that made even privates feel important. People did what he said, not just because it was an order but because they wanted to please him. So effective was his charisma that when people did carp about him, they complained he was coated in Teflon. Blaisdellas position as the battalionas crown prince was so secure, they grumbled, that he was forgiven for mistakes others got crucified for. He took risks, often dramatic ones, but he was doubly charmed: most of the time his risks paid off, and even when they didnat, he suffered very few repercussions.

Unlike 1st and 3rd Platoons, 2nd Platoon was not overflowing with powerful personalities. By contrast, its platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Cla.s.s Jeremy Gebhardt, had neither Blaisdellas magnetism nor Milleras brashness. If anything, the twenty-eight-year-old was a bit taciturn in a culture where leaders tend to be boisterous. But his una.s.suming style clearly worked for him, earning him a reputation for calm, understated excellence.

If First Strikeas mission was to win South Baghdad, then Charlie and Bravo, situated on the western and southern borders of the battalionas territory, were on the frontier of the fight. Bravoas domain was a fifty-square-mile swath on the battalionas west side. On the eastern edge of the companyas territory were Bravoas two anchors. To the north was the town of Yusufiyah and FOB Yusufiyah, the company headquarters that Bravo shared with soldiers from the Iraqi Armyas 4th Battalion, 4th Brigade, 6th Division. The base was not large, only about 500 yards by 250 yards. American operations were almost entirely housed in one building, a gigantic corrugated-tin barn that used to be a potato-processing plant. The vast open center s.p.a.ce had six loading bays, three on each side. Each platoon got a bay, MiTT Team 4 (a group of soldiers from the 2-502nd) took a bay, one bay was reserved for visitors such as Civilian Affairs or Combat Stress teams, and the sixth bay contained Goodwinas and his staffas living quarters. In recognition that Bravo was in the hottest area, Kunk centered the battalionas medical corps in Yusufiyah as well. Goodwin put his headquarters, which the Army calls a TOC (tactical operations center), up in front of the potato barn, along with the interpreters and MiTT team offices. Members of the Iraqi Armyas 4th Battalion occupied an identical potato barn two hundred feet away.

The southern anchor of Bravoas area was the Jurf al-Sukr Bridge (which was usually shortened to athe JS Bridgea or just athe JSBa) and a smaller patrol base nearby right on the banks of the Euphrates located in a former water-treatment plant. The bridge, a large concrete span across the river, had been closed to traffic since the Marines took it over in late 2004. A six-mile-long, two-lane paved road called Route Sportster linked Bravoas two nodes. One mile south of Yusufiyah on Sportster was the smaller town that the Iraqis called Al-Shuhada (aThe Martyrsa) but the Americans, for reasons no one seemed to recall, had always known as Mullah Fayyad. Bravo was also in charge of a vast expanse of land to the west, which was largely terra incognita. In this area was a sprinkling of smaller hamlets that the soldiers would get to know much better over timea"Rushdi Mullah, Al-Toraq, Quarguli Village. But for now, few even knew what these places were called, let alone what was lurking there.

Like much of the battalionas area, the terrain was perfect for guerrilla warfare. In the towns, the houses were densely packed, making it difficult and confusing for the Americans to find their way, especially when they were in a hurry. Outside the towns, there were acres of empty farmlands, affording ample privacy and plenty of places to hide weapons, bomb materials, equipment, and people. There were few paved roads, making it difficult for heavy vehicles to maneuver. And hundreds of interlacing irrigation ca.n.a.ls diced up the land like a maze. It was easy to get pinned between two ca.n.a.ls with only one avenue of escape, or to see an enemy just fifty yards away but have no way to get to him. Elephant gra.s.s and reeds ten or more feet high lined many of the roads, allowing insurgents to skulk about with unnerving ease. Thanks to the ca.n.a.l system, the land here was greener overall than might be expected, but there were still stark contrasts in a tightly concentrated s.p.a.ce. Down by Quarguli Village on the banks of the Euphrates, the land is extravagantly lush, an idealized oasis. But just a half-mile in any direction are flats of crumbly brown, cracked earth.

To the north of Quarguli Village, which is strung along a route called Malibu, lay the ma.s.sive, abandoned Russian Thermal Power Plant construction site. Until the last months of First Strikeas deployment, however, the power plant was a no-go area for U.S. troops. aWe couldnat get in the power plant under policy constraints until June of 2006,a said Colonel Ebel. aWe were restricted because of some diplomatic arrangement with Russia, at least that was the interpretation through the staff channels, all the way down to us.a Not surprisingly, it had become a stronghold for insurgents, practically a FOB of their own.

On his early rides out around the area, Kunk saw the first glimpses of what he needed to do. Riding along with the 48th, he would hear them say, aWe donat go down that road. That road? We donat go down that one either.a Whenever they hit a catastrophic IED, the 48th would declare the road ablacka (off-limits to military traffic) and never drive down it again. As a result, they had to take tortuous, detour-filled routes to get anywhere.

aI asked, aWhy donat you go down Sportster?aa Kunk remembered. aThey said, aThat is where the bad guys are, and youall get killed if you go out there.a They hadnat gone down there in many, many months. The enemy was dictating the fight. We had to change that. It was going to be tough, but we had to take Sportster back, and then we had to hold it.a Upon Bravoas arrival at Yusufiyah in October, Captain Goodwin split his three platoons into three duty rotations, each twenty-one days long. One platoon would go down to the JSB, secure that territory, and run patrols and missions from there. Another platoon would be responsible for holding down FOB Yusufiyah. They would pull guard and act as the companyas Quick Reaction Force (QRF) if another Bravo element ran into trouble. If Goodwin spotted something on the J-Lens, the companyas eye-in-the-sky camera observation system, he might send them out to investigate, and they would also run support and supply convoys up to Striker or Mahmudiyah when necessary. The third platoon would be the companyas amaneuver platoon.a Also operating out of FOB Yusufiyah, they would conduct ambushes, overwatches, s.n.a.t.c.h and grabs, searches, and presence patrols, as well as outreach and contact with the local populace. Every twenty-one days, the platoons would rotate.

Of course, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

* Many of the men of the 1-502nd said they would have been far more polite about the 48th if, when the 101st started making headlines in the summer of 2006, they had not read an Atlanta Journal-Const.i.tution story with quotes from 48th commanders implying that they had done a better job and that the 101st was handing back the gains they had made. Feeling such comments to be a knife in the back, in addition to an outrageous aggrandizement of the 48thas accomplishments, many from First Strike acknowledged that they felt no impulse to cover for what they considered an incompetent Guard unit that they believed had surrendered its territory to the insurgency.

5.

1st Platoon at the JS Bridge.

GOODWIN DECIDED TO send 1st Platoon down to the JSB for the first rotation. Why? aFirst comes before second,a he said. aNo other reason than that.a Following the advance teams, much of Britt and Milleras 1st Platoon helicoptered in to the JSB in early October. Living conditions were grim. The JSB patrol base was dominated by three main buildings surrounded by a ten-foot-high cement-covered cinder-block wall. A mortar team stayed in the plant itself, which is where the platoon set up its TOC. Most of the soldiers slept in a dingy bas.e.m.e.nt of one of the other main buildings, a place they called the Bat Cave. And leaders stayed in a third, smaller building.

There was no chow hall or any kitchen to cook meals. All the food was either the Armyas cook-in-pouch combat rations called MREs (meals, ready to eat) or hamburger patties or steaks they would grill themselves. Their first barbecue was made from a storm draina"they had cleaned it by burning it with diesel fuela"placed on top of an oil drum. There were no dishes or cutlery, so if they grilled, they either saved the MRE plasticware or gnawed on hamburger patties with their bare hands. There was no electricity, no lighting that wasnat battery-operated, no air-conditioning during the day and no heaters at night. There were no showers, no toilets, and no Porta-Johns. There was no running water of any kinda"ironic, they noted, considering the place was a water-treatment plant. Soldiers defecated in aWAG Bags,a small green garbage bags with solvents inside that were tied off and then thrown in a pit and burned once a day. Often the smoke would blow back into the guard areas, bathing the men in odors of smoldering plastic, feces, urine, and trash.

Besides holding down the JSB patrol base itself, their other major duty was to secure something called an Armored Vehiclea"Launched Bridge (AVLB), a metal span that Army engineers had placed over a bend in a ca.n.a.l that joined the JSB frontage road to Route Sportster and provided access to both north and west. The bridge was narrow and the banks of the ca.n.a.l it crossed were steep. It was a lonely outpost, three-quarters of a mile from the JSB. There would be frequent controversy over the best way to secure ita"and what the word asecurea meanta"but generally, 1st Platoon adopted the staffing rotation that the 48th employed: three to four soldiers parked in a Humvee off to the side of the road, near the ca.n.a.l, twenty-four hours a day. During the daytime, it was not uncommon for the bridge to be guarded by just two soldiers in a truck. Everyone who looked at it knew it was a dangerous position. There were angles of attack from virtually every direction but bad defense sight lines, and virtually no barriers, man-made or natural, to slow any approaching vehicle. It could not be directly defended by the JSB base because it was barely within that outpostas visible range and well beyond effective rifle range. Most of the men started calling the AVLB what the 48th had called it: the Alamo.

Besides guard duties at the JSB and the Alamo, 1st Platoon kept patrols to a minimum early on because building up the siteas defenses was unquestionably the priority. The 48th had stationed only about a squad of men out there and they hadnat fortified the place. There was no high gun position and there were big holesa"literally blasted-out gapsa"in the perimeter wall that anyone could have walked through.

aFrom the moment those guys. .h.i.t the ground down there, it was, aWhat the h.e.l.l is this trash heap? How are you supposed to defend this place?aa said Bravoas executive officer, First Lieutenant Justin Habash. aThe duration of 1st Platoonas first rotation was work. Manual labor.a First Platoon filled sandbags, from sunup to sundown. It was dirty, demoralizing physical labor that quickly devolved into sheer exhaustion. To build a rooftop gun perch, soldiers would load rucksacks with as many sandbags as they could carry and trudge up several flights of stairs. There was a profound lack of equipment. They had only two hammers. They had only two pairs of gloves to string concertina wire. They had no saws. They had to use their Gerber hand tools, essentially high-end Swiss Army knives, to cut two-by-fours and planks of plywood.

Staff Sergeant Miller had no doubts about 1st Platoonas abilities, but there was no denying they were a young and inexperienced group. There had been a lot of turnover after Operation Iraqi Freedom 1 (OIF1). Many of the NCOs were in leaders.h.i.+p positions for the first time. Obviously, many of the youngest soldiers were hardly men at alla"eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds. But in this platoon, even some of the older guys with ample time in the military had had little time in the infantry.

Forty-one years old, 1st Squadas leader Staff Sergeant Travis Nelson enlisted in the Army before some of his soldiers were born, but head been an infantryman only since he re-entered active duty just over a year before this deployment. Born in Cullman, Alabama, he entered the service in 1982 and served twelve years as a tanker. During the Gulf War, absolutely everyone who talks about Nelson will tell you, he was part of the longest tank-to-tank kill in history. Men in the platoon lovingly called Nelson aGrampsa or aOld Man River.a Old as he was, Nelson never dogged it during a run or PT (physical training). He always hung in there and sometimes bested kids half his age.

Nelsonas wife, Sh.e.l.ly, was always amazed when a young soldier mentioned to her that Travis was a tough boss. To her, at home, he was as cuddly as a puppy dog. She mailed him a steady stream of care packages, filled with Marlboro Lights and Red Diamond single-serve coffee sachets. Nelson was willing to endure many hards.h.i.+ps, but he was not willing to forgo freshly brewed coffee. Back home, Sh.e.l.ly and he had become especially good friends with Miller and his wife. The two couples would spend long nights playing Spades and the men would go fis.h.i.+ng all the time. Not long before the division headed out, Sh.e.l.ly was sitting out on the front porch of her home and she told Miller to bring Travis home safe to her.

aThe old man will be home,a Miller said. aI promise.a Nelsonas Alpha Team leader, and thus the squadas second in command, was Sergeant Kenith Casica. A thirty-two-year-old native of the Philippines, Casica grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He met his wife, Renee, in high school when he was seventeen and she was fourteen. She got pregnant and they got married two years later. He worked at McDonaldas, delivered papers, and poured concrete. Sick of dead-end jobs, he joined the Army in 1996 to give his family a better life. Ken and Renee ultimately had three kids. While he enjoyed the Army, he was looking beyond it. He ran an Amway business and wanted to go to college, become a registered nurse, and someday get his U.S. citizens.h.i.+p. Casica was, everybody says, the nicest guy they had ever met. A lean six foot three and handsome, with a big, broad smile, he made his home one of the unofficial clubhouses for the platoon, especially for the younger unmarried guys. They were always welcome to come over, hang out, and have a beer.

Casicaas unflappable friendliness extended to Iraqis. When he was in OIF1, also with Bravo Company, he was always the most outgoing to the Hadjis (or simply Hadj), as soldiers universally called Iraqis. He learned an impressive amount of Arabic during his first deployment. He had mastered the common Middle Eastern and Asian resting position back on oneas haunches that soldiers called athe Hadji squat,a and he had even bought a dishdasha, the white flowing Middle Eastern garb that soldiers call a aman dress.a Because of his dark complexion, Iraqis often thought he was an Arab and locals warmed to him instantly. He didnat just talk about helping Iraqis, he actually did it. Head use his own money to buy extra cases of soft drinks, or sometimes head afinda a few extra during a resupply mission, which he would give to a couple of Mosul boys who had a roadside beverage business. He helped them build their stand out of broken-up s.h.i.+pping pallets and other street jetsam. It looked just like Lucy van Peltas psychiatry office from Peanuts. The hand-lettered sign he helped paint declared the name of the watering hole: aThe Thirsty Goat.a He retained his optimism about the Iraqis even after he was injured by an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) blast in OIF1 that sank shrapnel fragments deep into his shoulder blade. His platoon mates frequently ribbed him about just how buddy-buddy he was with the Iraqis. They called him a Hadji Hugger or Hadji f.u.c.ker, but he didnat care. If the point of being here was to help the people, he said to anyone who gave him a hard time (which was often good-natured, but sometimes not), then letas help them. Because otherwise, what the h.e.l.l are we doing here?

A kid desperate for a father figure, Private First Cla.s.s Jesse Spielman was exactly the sort of 1st Squad trooper to flock to Casicaas house. The twenty-one-year-old was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to a teenage mom. Spielmanas grandmother was concerned that her own daughter was not fit to raise the child and, after some ugly legal wranglings, she a.s.sumed custody of the boy when he was seven. Beyond that rocky beginning, Spielmanas grandmother remembered him as a sweet child who was eager to please. One of Spielmanas uncles gave him an Army camouflage outfit when he was eight or nine years old and from then on all he would do was play Army man outside. Sometimes his grandmother had trouble getting that getup off of him long enough for her to wash it. He joined the Army in March 2005 and became a member of the 101st in August. He married just before deploying, his bride wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt that said, aI love my soldier.a His superiors found Spielman to be a quiet kid, hard to draw out, but a competent trooper who was easy to lead and eager to advance. If there was a cleanup call or some other random task to accomplish and his squad mates were resting, head just do it himself. When an NCO would tell him to wake his buddies up and spread the work, head say, aNaw, let aem sleep.a Private Steven Green was one of those squad mates Spielman would let sleep. Growing up in Midland, Texas, Green was always the odd kid, the outsider, the strange child on the margins always picked last for kickball. Though highly intelligent, he was bowlegged and uncoordinated. He b.u.mped into things, and he had a drooling problem that lasted well into the 8th grade. According to court records, he was an unwanted child, his mother did not hesitate to tell him. She simply never bonded with him, never grew to love him. She called him ademon sp.a.w.na and constantly compared him unfavorably with his brother, Doug, who was three years his senior. Working nights at a bar, she was a neglectful mother who let her children fend for themselves. Doug was, not surprisingly, unable to cope with the responsibility of being a surrogate parent from as young as age seven or eight. He subjected Steven and their little sister to frequent, brutal beatings, sometimes requiring trips to the hospital and once breaking several of the girlas fingers.

Greenas parents divorced when he was eight and he lived with his mother until she kicked him out of the house at age fourteen. Diagnosed with ADHD and low-grade depression as an adolescent, he bounced around various family membersa homes for the next few years. Desperate for attention, he did win a few friends in high school by being the cla.s.s clown. He would entertain at pep rallies by doing a spastic chicken dance and smash dozens of soda cans on his forehead during lunch. After he dropped out of high school in the 10th grade, trouble followed him wherever he went. Smoking cigarettes, drinking booze, and walking around with marijuana are fairly common activities for teenagers, but Green managed to get caught, arrested, and convicted for each of those things by the time he was nineteen, spending a few weeks in juvenile detention for one and a few days in jail for another.

Along the way, he had developed some pointed ideas about society, culture, religion, and race. He decided to join the Army in early 2005, not just as a way out of his rut but as a means to partic.i.p.ate in what he saw as the latest flare-up of a centuries-long struggle between Western civilization and Eastern barbarism. aThis is almost like a race war, like a cultural war,a he said about 9/11, the March 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the now lengthening conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. aAnd anyone who is my age who is not going to go fight in it is a coward. They can say itas about this or that, but itas really about religion. Itas about not even which culture is going to rule the Middle East, but which culture is going to rule the West. I felt like Islam is, was, and always will be like fascism.a Green spent several months obtaining a high-school correspondence diploma and the Army granted him a amoral waivera for his prior convictions. With the Army strapped for personnel, it granted such waivers to almost one in five recruits in 2005, an increase of 44 percent over prewar levels. After graduating from basic training, he headed to Fort Campbell in July 2005. Green was not a terrible soldiera"in fact, he would be promoted to private first cla.s.s relativly quickly, in Novembera"but here, as in school, he developed a reputation for not being quite right in the head. There was no doubt he was smart, and he read far more widely than is typical for a soldier. One lieutenant was surprised to find Rousseauas Social Contract on his bookshelf. But he was a racist, a white supremacist, and a misanthrope. He remained socially awkward and unable to control his emotions or impulses. He was also an incessant monologuist, with no internal editor, who launched into the most ridiculous and offensive tirades about an.i.g.g.e.rs,a about Jews, about northerners, about foreigners, about anyone. He did have some friends, but much of the platoon viewed him less as a cla.s.s clown and more as the village idiota"occasionally entertaining as spectacle, but best kept at armas length.

Second Squad was a much more low-key operation than Bravoas other squads, and that suited squad leader Staff Sergeant Chris Payne just fine. To the best of his ability, Payne pursued a no-drama policy in his personal and professional life. It was part of the reason, the twenty-four-year-old said, he had advanced fairly quickly in his career: he tried not to get bothered by the things that other people wasted their time getting upset about. The politics, the power games, the backbitinga"he just blocked them all out and did his job. Some of his men said that this remote and detached att.i.tude sometimes lapsed into inattention that put outsized responsibility on his subordinates. Payne countered that training his team leaders to step up was part of a squad leaderas job.

The team leader whom Payne relied upon most was Sergeant John Diem. By most other soldiersa definition, Diem would appear to be a textbook dork. He was not physically imposing and he did not have a commanding voice. He had thick gla.s.ses and reddish curly hair. He played a lot of Xbox, read j.a.panese comic books, and was a role-playing-game enthusiast. But Diem had fought in OIF1 and he had ascended to a leaders.h.i.+p role by virtue of hard work, accomplished technical proficiency, and an obvious, overwhelming intelligence. He always got the job done, and he also had a steely will. Easy to underestimate, he was impossible to intimidate, and he was not afraid to tell subordinates and superiors alike truths they did not want to hear.

Upon taking leaders.h.i.+p of 3rd Squad, thirty-four-year-old Sergeant Eric Lauzier resolved to turn his crew into the toughest, hardest, tightest squad in the company, if not the whole battalion. Lauzier was aggressive, manic, task-driven. He was Sergeant Milleras go-to guy. Captain Goodwin came to think of him as his Clydesdale, who would just pull and pull and pull until he reached the goal, or broke down trying. Whether it was his maps or his green, cloth-covered notebook that every Army NCO and officer carries around, or even his underwear, Lauzier signed almost everything he owned with his name followed by the initials aBMFaa"Bad Motherf.u.c.ker.

This was his second stint in the military. Head been a Marine in the 1990s. Dissatisfied with civilian life, he sought to reenlist in 2001. The Marines wanted him to complete boot camp again as a private, but the Army said he could keep his rank and head straight to Fort Campbell. He was a specialist with Bravo during the invasion (and he would be promoted to staff sergeant in December 2005), making him the only squad leader in 1st Platoon with OIF1 experience.

That campaign, especially the invasion, felt like everything Lauzier thought war would be: entire companies of men following slow-moving tanks as they advanced on a defined enemy. He remembered his first kill, the pink mist of impact, the way the manas body droppeda"instantlya"drained of all vitality, hitting the ground with a thud. Lauzier remembered the electric, elemental frisson of realization that he was still alive, and that other guy, that guy was now dead because of him. He remembered all of them, five confirmed kills, including one rare hand-to-hand kill in Mosul. He still thought a lot about those five men, often when he didnat want to.

Lauzier did not head out on his second tour to make friends with Iraqis. He was going to Iraq to put the hurt on the enemy. And donat let anybody lie to you, he cautioned: All throughout the deployment, n.o.body was talking about counterinsurgency the way they might be now. That suited him just fine. Hearts and minds didnat work in Vietnam, he often said, and it wasnat going to work here.

Lauzier was emphatic in wanting his men to be the best and he rode them hard. He made his guys do extra PT, extra drills, extra book study. He rarely slept and he consumed almost a case of energy drinks a day. After OIF1, he had washed out of Special Forces selection because he botched a land-navigation test, a failure that irked him. From then on, he made map and compa.s.s skills a priority for himself and his squad.

Despite the French half of his ancestry that contributed his last name, he identified much more with the Italian side of his heritage. Woe to the smart aleck who asked, aHow you doing, Sergeant Lo-zjay?a because that kid was going to be doing push-ups for hours. Some of the senior NCOs called him Lolo, but the younger guys were strictly forbidden from calling him that too. He had several tattoos, including the face of the Joker on his left forearm, the phrase aLaugh Now, Cry Latera on his left calf, a memorial to a fallen friend from OIF1 around his right wrist, and aMachine 0311a around his left (a0311a is the Marine designation for infantryman and aMachinea an expression of his indefatigability). Lauzier looked around at his squad and he liked what he saw. He had more OIF1 veterans than anyone in the platoon, and they were some pretty tough customers.

The toughest customer of them all was Sergeant Tony Yribe, a walking, talking G.I. Joe action figure and Lauzieras Alpha Team leader. Head joined the Army just eight days after 9/11 and had already served tours in Germany, Kosovo, and Iraq during OIF1 with the 1st Infantry Division before transferring to the 101st in January 2005. Though only a team leader, he radiated a powerful charisma that made him by far one of the dominant personalities of the platoon. Some say he surpa.s.sed the squad leaders and the platoon sergeants as the real seat of power in the platoon. The younger guys flocked to him, wanted to be like him, idolized him. He could be brusque and intolerant of those he did not like or respect, and extraordinarily loyal and kind to those he did, which made being a member of his inner circle particularly sweet.

No small part of Yribeas persona was his fearlessness in combat. If the situation was getting dicey, he was not afraid to pull the trigger. He saw a lot of fighting during his first deployment, and that experience had hardened him greatly. He had a tattoo of a Glock 9mm pistol on his right hip and the word aWarriora in a semicircle around his stomach. Lauzier called Yribe his linebacker because of the way he would just blow through doors and lay dudes flat. Yribe had an uncanny knack for being where the action was. aI would joke with him that if something bad was going to happen, I could count on him being there,a said Goodwin. Yribe saw no need to apologize for this. He just refused to take any s.h.i.+t, especially from Hadj. If you had to use force to get their attention or win their compliance, he argued, then that was what you had to do. And if anyone thought it could be any other way, well, then, he was quite certain they hadnat spent very much time on the line.

One of the guys most completely under Yribeas spell was Specialist Paul Cortez, who had recently transferred to the Deuce from the 4th Infantry Division. With wide-wingspan ears and a p.r.o.nounced widowas peak, he resembled a postadolescent Eddie Munster. Living in motel rooms around Barstow, California, with his drug-addict mother for most of his childhood, Cortez was taken in by the parents of a school friend around the age of fourteen. Under his foster parentsa care, he flourished, pulling his grades up and finis.h.i.+ng high school. When he turned eighteen, they discussed his options. College wasnat realistic, and technical schools were expensive, so Cortez joined the Army.

Cortez had driven a Bradley Fighting Vehicle with the 4th Infantry Division during OIF1, and when he arrived at the 101st Airborne, he was originally a.s.signed to Payneas squad. But Payne couldnat deal with him. Cortez had potential, Payne thought, but his work was inconsistent. For two, three weeks, even a month, he could be a good soldier with real leaders.h.i.+p potential, and then head mess things up again, get into a fight, get busted for weed, or drink himself into the hospital. He had a nasty streak, too, and a chip on his shoulder. He was obsessed with proving himself better than others, but he was rarely more than average at anything he did. When given a challenge, sometimes he would rise to meet it, but just as often he would quit in a heap of complaints and sulks.

aYou take him,a Payne told Lauzier. aSee if you can do something with him.a Lauzier could and did, finding him to be a cla.s.sic afield soldieraa"someone who doesnat do well in garrison but excels on the front line. In a lot of ways, he was exactly what Lauzier wanted.

Specialist James Barker was an even better example of a field soldier. Just five foot six, Barker was a natural outside the wire, one of the best combat soldiers Lauzier had ever seen. Childhood friends from Fresno, California, described Barker as a mischievous, lovable dork nicknamed Bunky who hung out mostly with girls. But as he grew older, darker traits emerged. His father died when he was fifteen and Barker fell into a depression. He joined a gang, drank, did drugs, and dropped out of school. He finished high school in 2001 at a continuing education program and had a son with a girl he met there.

He married and joined the Army in March 2003, he said, because he couldnat hold down a job. Almost immediately, his marriage started to sour. As he was relocating to Fort Campbell, an NCO helping with the move reported Barker for being abusive to his wife and child. Barker said he grabbed his son to prevent him from falling down the stairs, but all the NCO saw was rough treatment. Barker was forced to go to anger management cla.s.ses, which delayed his first deployment to Iraq by several months. After spending October 2003 to February 2004 in Mosul, he returned home, where his marriage continued to unravel even though his wife was having their second son.

Rounding out 3rd Squad were a handful of younger soldiers whom Lauzier and Yribe worked mercilessly. Being in 3rd Squad, they declared, was a privilege, and they hazed the h.e.l.l out of new privates before accepting them. Twenty-two-year-old Private Justin Watt, from Tucson, Arizona, was among the newest arrivals. He had dropped out of high school to take a job with a dot-com during the Internet boom, but it went under in eighteen months. He got his GED and tried a few semesters at a technical college in Tempe, but that didnat work out so well. He was struggling to find his role. He was a computer enthusiast who wasnat a geek; the smart kid who wasnat a student; the athlete who wasnat an all-star.

He just wasnat inspired, so he took a job as a blackjack dealer at a casino in Tucson. The money was good and, around the same time, head fallen in love with a girl. They were going to get married and they had a plan. Head go back to school, get a degree, and pursue a career in casinos. No doubt it was a growth industry, but he was conflicted. At its root, gambling is a shady, depressing business. As he was questioning whether he really wanted to be a part of all that ugliness, his girlfriend dumped him, causing a total reappraisal of his priorities. Head always admired his father, who was an Army airborne combat engineer during the late 1970s. The war in Iraq did not look like it would be ending soon. Joining the Army, especially now, he decided, would be a chance to test himself, to take the harder route for once, to be a part of something big.

Yribe and Lauzier had months of fun tormenting the small new private. But Watt never quit. He had made a promise to himself that this was the one time in his life he wasnat going to wuss out, and, after thousands of push-ups, miles of running in place, and hours of repeating some stupid phrase or self-insulta"aI am the f.u.c.king new guy, and I am gayaa"it wasnat long before he was a fully accepted member of the squad. They never stopped teasing him, but the tone had changed. It wasnat a tryout anymore, it was just good-natured ribbing, and Watt was as proud as he had ever been.

6.

Contact.

AS 1ST PLATOON moved into the JSB sector, the insurgents didnat waste any time testing their new neighbors. Only two or three days after 1st Platoonas arrival, Yribe and two other men were guarding the Alamo in a gun truck. It was dark and quiet, almost one-thirty in the morning, when Yribe heard rustling in the reeds. Animals? People? There was no good reason for a man to be out here at night. He looked around nervously, but he couldnat see anything. Then his vision sharpened, and silhouettes of crouched men skittered against the night sky. Jesus Christ! Two, maybe three shadows, definitely people. They were trying to sneak up on him. He opened fire. His two soldiers followed suit.

Soldiers on guard at the JSB heard a volley of fire and several grenade explosions.

aThatas the Alamo!a Platoon Sergeant Miller yelled. aGet up! Get up! Get the f.u.c.k up!a Men started piling their gear on. There was no officially designated Quick Reaction Force (QRF) yet, so everybody scrambled into the armored personnel carrier. When about a squadas worth of men had loaded, it took off, with Cortez driving. Roughly halfway there, the shooting stopped. They arrived, unloaded, and a.s.sessed. All of Yribeas men were fine. The insurgents had beaten a hasty retreat. Miller took Lauzier and half of 3rd Squad to search the nearby hamlet that the shooters would have had to pa.s.s through. The soldiers kicked in doors and questioned the locals, but they all professed ignorance.

First Platoon was usually up and working by 6:00 or 6:30 a.m., filling sandbags or fortifying other positions until sundown. Between those duties, patrols, and guard rotations, soldiers were lucky to get more than four hours of sleep a night. Miller was appalled at the lack of equipment and lack of support 1st Platoon received from the very first day. They were dependent on airdrops for everything. He would get on the radio every few minutes to request new supplies. You name it, they called for it: sandbags, food, ice and coolers. Two minutes later it was cots, wood, water, charcoal, and lighter fluid. Two minutes after that, shovels, pickaxes, hammers, and hoes. Finally, Goodwin said no more calls. Keep a list, for chrissake. For weeks afterward, it became a running joke. Anytime Goodwin saw Miller, head say, aNeed anything? Need anything? Need anything?a Miller didnat find it funny. He was annoyed that getting his guys even the bare minimum of equipment seemed to be such a low priority.

Working like coal miners and just as dirty, most of the men stripped down to their T-s.h.i.+rts while they were filling sandbags or doing other manual labor. Being aaway from the flagpolea had its benefits. Britt and Miller didnat sweat the finer points of uniform discipline. They were familiar with the theory why strict adherence to uniform regulations is important at all times: If you get the little things right, it shows an attention to detail, a seriousness, and a vigilance that results in greater self-respect, situational awareness, and, ultimately, safety and combat effectiveness. Thatas all well and good, they reasoned, but with all the work they were doing on such little sleep and having so few of the necessities like, say, enough water to drink, if a soldier didnat feel like shaving for a day or two, that was fine with them.

But it was not fine with battalion command. Senior leaders started circulating First Strikeas territory within the first few days of arrival and Kunk or Edwards began visiting the JSB every few days. They did not like what they saw. aSupposedly they werenat fortifying their positions fast enough,a said Bravo Executive Officer Habash. aThe Colonel came to the FOB and just destroyed Captain Goodwin over the conditions of the JSB. Theyare working their a.s.ses off to fortify this place, and to have your battalion commander come down and destroy you over not doing enough was frustrating.a But Kunk wasnat just annoyed at what he perceived to be lack of progress. Hard work or not, he and Edwards concluded 1st Platoon was awfully quick to decide that the rules didnat apply to them. The men looked like slobs and were sauntering around not just in their T-s.h.i.+rts but in T-s.h.i.+rts with the sleeves cut off! And flip-flops?! There was trash everywhere. They told Miller and the other NCOs to get their acts together and knock their men into line. Miller and the squad leaders tried to explain that if they had seen what the place looked like before, theyad understand how clean it actually was, how many improvements they had made, and how they were doing it all without any equipment or support. In fact, they thought they were doing a h.e.l.l of a job. aI wasnat concerned about the small s.h.i.+t,a said Miller. aYour bootas unbloused? Who the f.u.c.k cares? Last time I checked, that f.u.c.ker ainat gonna stop you from getting shot in the face. But me putting up nine hundred f.u.c.king strands of wire is. The guys had their sleeves rolled up. Whoopie. Itas a hundred and twenty f.u.c.king degrees out here. Maybe they saw that as lack of leaders.h.i.+p because I didnat make them keep their sleeves rolled down.a Thatas precisely the way Kunk and Edwards saw it. Being far away was no excuse to let standards slip. If anything, they insisted, it made enforcing standards even more important. What really made Kunk mad was the feeling that he wasnat being taken seriously. aThere was always a reason why they couldnat do something,a he said. aI would put out instructions, I would be gone for a day, get back out there, and they wouldnat be doing what we had talked about. Sergeant Miller and different people wouldnat write stuff down. And Iam like, aLook man, Iam not saying this for my health. Iam saying this for a reason.aa But to Miller, there was a very good reason they couldnat do things as quickly as Kunk wanted: Battalion was not providing the tools they needed to do the job right. aI asked for engineer support,a he said. aCouldnat get it. Couldnat get any backhoes or any of that stuff down there. My big question was, aI know theyare here, so whatas the issue?a And I didnat get any clarification on that.a A few days after the first attack on the Alamo, it got hit again, from the same direction, but this time in the late afternoon and with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). The RPG didnat hit anything, but 1st Platoon was better prepared to react. They had a QRF ready to go, which found an IED made of three 155mm artillery rounds on the road leading to the Alamo from the other side. (One 155mm sh.e.l.l weighs about a hundred pounds and, when fired conventionally, has enough destructive force to severely damage a tank.) A squad moved into Quarguli Village. They started kicking in doors, searching houses, looking for the men or man who just shot at them and laid that IED. In a chicken shack out back of one of the houses, they found a man with an AK-47, detonation cord, and what looked like an IED trigger. They zip-tied his hands, put a sandbag over his head, roughed him up a little, and brought him back to the JSB to be picked up.

Watt remembered everybody standing around the man nonplussed. He was a skinny little wretch, 150 pounds tops, with muddy feet and no shoes. This was the enemy? How disappointing. But finding a clear suspect like this proved to be a rarity. Most of the time, they wouldnat find anything. They would receive fire, return fire, and by the time they could get a search party together, the insurgents would be gone, and the locals would claim ignorance, not just about where the bad guys might be, but often that they had even heard shots. The men started calling their enemy athe ghosts.a Up at FOB Yusufiyah, Goodwin and the rest of the company were also trying to settle in. The battle rhythm, it quickly became clear, was going to be unrelenting. It was a rare day when no member of Bravo got attacked by the enemy in some way. This was true throughout the entire brigadeas sector (four 2-502nd soldiers died in an IED strike on the unitas first full day in charge of the area), but, over the year, Bravo always had a little bit more, sometimes a lot more, going on than everyone else in First Strike. Days with multiple, even ten or more, significant violent events were commonplace.

From the start, Kunk was unsympathetic to the notion that Bravo should be given any special treatment. Captain Goodwin, First Lieutenant Habash, and First Sergeant Skidis attempted to explain that their environment was more chaotic than Mahmudiyahas, but that got no play. aDonat think you have it any worse than anyone elsea was one of Kunkas common refrains. Bravoas leaders.h.i.+p couldnat figure out if this was a motivation technique or if Kunk really thought it was true. aIf Kunk really believed that, then he had to be crazy. Or supremely out of touch,a said Habash. aWhen we tried to say that we werenat like Alpha and Delta, with all our troops inside the wire, sleeping peacefully at night, Battalion reacted like we were just making excuses.a Kunk railed that Bravo was not getting the job done. Even the way they filed their daily reports was deficient. Battalion wanted highly detailed updates every day about everything that happened in each companyas sector. Alpha and Delta platoons at Mahmudiyah could go on patrols and then debrief company leaders.h.i.+p in detail, in person, down to the color of every car they had searched. It wasnat that simple for Bravo. aWhen youare spread out and half of your reports are coming via the radio, the transmissions are unavoidably less complete,a commented Habash. aI understand what Battalion was trying to do. But there was a certain level of reality we needed to confront.a But every time he attempted to explain why Bravoas reports were more fragmented, he said, athey thought I was blowing smoke up their a.s.s.a Those reports should have been the company commanderas job, but Habash started doing them because almost immediately, Goodwin seemed overwhelmed. It wasnat more than a week or two into the deployment that the officers and NCOs around FOB Yusufiyah noticed something odd, and disconcerting: Goodwin never left the TOC. Twenty, twenty-two, even twenty-four hours a day, you could find him by the radios trying to keep tabs on the entire companyas operations. Sometimes he would skip meals. Often, soldiers would find him pa.s.sed out, in the middle of the TOC, sitting in a folding directoras chair he liked to use, with a poncho liner pulled over his head. aI just thought it was the growing pains of starting up,a said 3rd Platoonas Second Lieutenant Mark Evans. aI thought surely as we got more settled, head start to go to sleep. Youad just say to the guy, aSir, you look like h.e.l.l. Youave been here for four days.aa Beyond the relentless pace and the incessant violence, working with the Iraqis was maddening. aTake whoever was supposedly the mayor,a said Goodwin. aThe locals tell you, aThis is where he lives.a So you go to the house. aWhere is he?a aHeas not here.a aWell, does he live here?a aNo.a aSo where is he?a aI donat know.a You know, you could be talking to the guyas brother. h.e.l.l, you could be talking to the guy himself. One of the big questions: aWhereas so-and-so?a aHeas in Baghdad.a aWhatas he doing in Baghdad?a aHeas looking for work.a That happens all the time. Or, asking somebody: aDo you speak English?a There are two answers. Either aNoa or aA little bit.a Sometimes aNoa means they are fluent, while aA little bita means that aA little bita is the only thing they know how to say. You never know what the real answers are. I would send squads out, saying, aYou need to go find this guy.a They would come back. aWhere is he?a aHeas