Black Hearts Part 5

Goodwin had hoped that his order was the correct one. He was tense when he overruled Brittas wishes. He was nervous, and he was still weighing the pros and cons when the call came over the radio at 2:37 p.m. The patrol had hit an IED, the transmission said. They couldnat find Britt and Lopez, but it was likely they were dead. Goodwin reeled. He felt nauseated. He thought only one thing: aI just sent them to their death.a aBritt! Lopez! Britt! Lopez!a the men who had been walking shouted. They didnat know where they were. The two had effectively vanished. But the soldiers in the Humvees across the ca.n.a.l had seen the whole thing. Private First Cla.s.s Chris Barnes, in one of the Humvee gun turrets, yelled and pointed that Britt was in the water. Head seen the ca.n.a.l go crimson with blood, but the current had carried the stain away almost instantly.

Yribe turned and said to Laskoski, aHey, First Sergeant, Iam going in.a He ripped his vest and helmet off and jumped in. Almost immediately, he realized that this was a mistake. The ca.n.a.las water temperature was about 55 degrees, its depth was twenty feet, and the current was moving so fast that Yribe was as much trying not to drown as trying to find Britt. Soon exhausted, he barely reached the other bank, where soldiers from the trucks helped him to dry ground.

After a minute or two, as the shock wore off and the permanence set in, Goodwin realized he was about to have a breakdown. He needed to get out of the TOC. He couldnat let his men see him in that state. Laskoski was running the recovery mission down at the site, helicopters were already in the air, and QRFs were already either en route or being staged from both the JSB and Mahmudiyah. So at least for a little while, the wheels were turning and Goodwin was not needed. Which was fortunate, because he was suddenly, ma.s.sively, uncontrollably incapacitated by grief and guilt. He told First Lieutenant Habash, aHey, youare in charge. I need to step outside.a Goodwin sought out Combat Stress nurse Lieutenant Colonel Marrs, who was still on the FOB. He broke down in sobs and self-recrimination. aYou tell a guy to go across a bridge, and within five minutes heas dead,a Goodwin said. aWith everything that had been going on, I just snapped.a The two talked for about an hour. The session helped. By the end of it, Goodwin was at least able to project a composed demeanor and go back out and do his job. But he wasnat sure how. aAt this point, how do you manage this debacle?a he wondered.

Phil Miller also sought out Marrs later that day. During their discussion, he told her that he thought 1st Platoon had become combat ineffective. aItas one of the most embarra.s.sing things for a leader to do,a Miller admitted, ato call your platoon combat ineffective, but I told Captain Goodwin, too, that they are not in the fight. Their soul, everything, is gone right now.a Goodwin went down to TCP4. People there were doing math problems. He couldnat believe how morbid and mundane it was, but they were trying to figure out how far and how fast Brittas body might flow through in the ca.n.a.l system. If the ca.n.a.las water is traveling X miles per hour, they scribbled, and object A at start point Y has a ma.s.s of B, how fast would object A travel to position Z? aWe were throwing sticks into the ca.n.a.l to determine how fast the water was running, so we could figure out where the body was,a he said. aIt was ridiculous, unG.o.dly, inhuman.a Multiple relief teams, including the original Iron Claw team, Bravoas 3rd Platoon, Army dive teams, Edwards and Kunk, and Ebel and a general from division headquarters would eventually converge upon the site, but it was up to the squad on the ground to begin the recovery effort.

The carnage in front of them was difficult to process. There was a jawbone, stripped clean and s.h.i.+ny white, lying in the dirt. There was a large internal organ that Yribe could only think was a liver, Lopezas liver. Flack vests, or parts of them, were lying on the ground, ripped to shreds as if they were made of paper. They found ID cards, tatters of money, a wedding ring. Lopezas torso had been thrown two hundred yards from the blast site. His arms were gone from the bicep down and his eyes were wide open. The men put his upper body in a poncho because they didnat have any body bags. Yribe carried him over to one of the Iron Claw vehicles and handed him off to another soldier. They didnat know each other, and there was nothing to say. They just nodded to each other.

Captain Jared Bordwell showed up with a team of Alpha soldiers to relieve the shaken 1st Platoon men. Alpha started jumping into the ca.n.a.l and dragging it with grappling hooks. As usual after a catastrophic event, the men on the ground found the senior officers who had flocked there disruptive. Bordwell thought the men could have used a kind word from Ebel about how c.r.a.ppy it was to have to look for a dismembered comrade, but Ebel wanted to know why they werenat wearing eye protection. Bordwell said that the men in the ca.n.a.l werenat even wearing their body armor so he didnat really see what difference eye s.h.i.+elds made at this point. Later, the general from division called Bordwell over and inquired what that was that he had found sticking out of the road.

aThat is det cord, sir. That is an IED,a Bordwell responded. aYou need to back away from that.a The general sent his aide, a captain, to mark it by setting an oilcan on top of it. Bordwell looked at him and said, aSir, youare f.u.c.king nuts.a The Alpha guys shook their heads in disbelief.

By 4:50 p.m., the medevac took off with Yribe and Diaz to get treatment at FOB Mahmudiyah. That night, they had part of a tent to themselves, and they talked about what they were going to do now, how they were going to survive.

aI donat even know what to tell these guys anymore,a Yribe said to Diaz. aBecause I canat tell them itas going to be all right. What do I tell them?a Diaz said he didnat knowa"all they could do was get back out there and be with the rest of the men as soon as possible. They both caught the first convoy to Yusufiyah the next morning.

Lieutenant Colonel Marrs agreed with Milleras and Goodwinas a.s.sessments of 1st Platoon. Later that night at FOB Yusufiyah, she told Kunk that ahostility and vengeance seem prominent in 1st Platoon.a She advised him that the platoonas mental health status was aredaa"nona"mission capablea"and they should be given respite from their current operations tempo to recover from their losses.

Kunk and Edwards approached Goodwin that same night. They asked him how he was doing and what he needed. This time, there was no joking around, no sheepishness about how unlikely the request was.

Goodwin said, aI need another platoon.a They asked him how he thought 1st Platoon was doing. Goodwin replied, aThey are not mission capable, and I donat know when they will be. They are done.a Kunk looked Goodwin in the eye, said, aOkay,a and got into his truck. Goodwin was confident that something would be done to reduce the pressure on 1st Platoon. He was sure, now, that some sort of relief was coming.

Later that night, the word came down. First Platoon was being pulled out of the fight for forty-eight hours, after which they would resume their normal duties.

When asked about staffing, Kunk sometimes said that he tried to get more troops down in the AO, but there were none to be had. aIf I needed more manpower,a he explained, athen I would ask for more manpower. I would lay it out to the best of my ability. If the resources arenat there, then my brigade has to rob Peter to pay Paul, and they werenat willing to do that.a Other times, he a.s.serted that he rejected Goodwinas requests for more men because he didnat think that Bravo needed them. He thought the company had enough troops to complete the job. The problem was that 1st Platoon could not get their act together and Goodwin was not using what he had efficiently.

Goodwin insisted on going through and boxing up Brittas and Lopezas personal items that night. He didnat want to put any of his men through that. Everything was shredded and mangleda"Kevlar, ammo magazines, pieces of uniforma"and soaking wet, whether from water or blood or both. The smells were ripe, the textures magnified, either extraordinarily rough or extraordinarily smooth. Goodwin tried to separate the stuff as best he could. The wedding ring was obviously Lopezas. The watch, probably Brittas. He made two piles, trying to get back to each family as much stuff as possible, so maybe they could feel more connected to their father and husband, or son and brother. The whole time, Goodwin was thinking to himself, aThis is what you did. You killed them.a Around-the-clock dive teams did not find Britt until the middle of the next day. HHC commander Shawn Umbrell was there as Brittas body was pulled out of the ca.n.a.l, and the sight took his breath away. With the water running so fast and so cold over him for so long, Britt had been thoroughly washed and preserved. He was perfectly white and clean. He was immaculate.

Caveman was declared black (closed to military traffic) after the incident and, with few rare exceptions, it remained black for years afterward. First Strike units patrolled the road periodically, but not in any concerted way ever again. And even though there was still one large concrete span over the ca.n.a.l that his own chain of command would not let him blow up, and all the other bridges could be easily rebuilt, Kunk considered the Caveman missions a success. aIf you are stopping the freedom of movement of the bad guy, now you are controlling and dictating where he can move and canat move. We did go in there and drop a lot of the bridges. And it paid huge dividends. It got to the point where I didnat need Caveman, but the reason why I didnat need it was because I took it away. We took Caveman and the use of Caveman away from the enemy.a Others disagreed. aI donat know what the h.e.l.l we were thinking,a Goodwin volunteered. aSeriously. It poses absolutely no significance to anything. And I hate to say that for as many hours as I spent on that f.u.c.king road, for nothing. There was no reason for us to go down there. None. It served no purpose. Insurgents could maneuver in there, but they couldnat get out. There was nowhere for them to go. They were going to run into us or the IAs somewhere. So what did we need this road for?a

14.

Leaders.h.i.+p Shake-up.

WHEN THE PLATOON a.s.sembled at FOB Yusufiyah for another Critical Incident Debrief, Colonel Ebel came down too. He was in the potato barn talking to Goodwin and Laskoski when Miller walked up. They talked for a while and Miller mentioned Green, saying that Green was having a particularly hard time dealing with these deaths. Ebel and Green met privately for about thirty minutes, an extraordinary occurrence. Although Ebel spoke briefly with a wide variety of soldiers every day, frequently consoling them during times of loss, he cannot remember another occasion when he met one-on-one with a private for half an hour.

During the meeting, Green told Ebel that he hated Iraqis and wanted to kill them all. Ebel thought that this was a normal reaction to what he had just been through. When you watch a comrade destroyed by the enemy, Ebel felt, everybody goes through a full range of emotions.

Green asked about the rules of engagement, wanting to know, aWhy canat we just go shoot them all?a Ebel responded, aBecause that is not what American soldiers do.a aIall be all right,a Green told Ebel. aIam just frustrated.a Ebel was rea.s.sured by the conversation and told Greenas immediate supervisors to keep looking after him.

Green said Ebelas high rank made it just the most noteworthy example of a fairly common occurrence: head simply agree to what a superior officer was a.s.serting about treating Iraqis humanely, and the officer would think he had fixed him. aI would tell them right from the get-go how I was,a he recalled. aAnd then they would tell me, aNo, this is how youare supposed to look at it.a And I would say, aAll right.a They outranked me by so many levels, itas not like Iam going to get into a big argument with them.a The debilitating effects of warfare have likely been known to humankind since warfare existed, at least since Homer described Achillesa rampage and desecration of Hector in the Iliad. But scientists have been studying the topic in earnest only since World War II. And that work, though constantly growing and being revised, is conclusive on several major points. Primary among them: A soldier can endure combat for only so long before he begins to break down. In The Face of Battle, military historian John Keegan wrote that early studies concluded that a soldier areached his peak of effectiveness in the first 90 days of combat, and after that his efficiency began to fall off, and that he became steadily less valuable thereafter until he was completely useless.a It is tempting to contrast the great battles of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge and even the Tet Offensivea"ma.s.sive waves of tens of thousands of soldiers clas.h.i.+ng against one another as gunfire rained down for days and thousands of men dieda"with Bravo Companyas fight and say the two donat even compare. And that is true in certain respects. Bravo faced no force-on-force battles that lasted more than a few hours, and these were rarely larger than a squad fighting a handful of insurgents. But to then conclude that Bravoas struggles were somehow less significant or more bearable does a disservice to the way that warfare has changed in the last few decades and glosses over the psychological effectsa"still largely uncharteda"that these changes have wrought. During World War II, units would be thrown into major battles that could last a day, a week, perhaps a month or even twoa"but then they would be withdrawn from the front lines for weeks, sometimes for several months, before being sent into battle again. American policy during WWII was to never leave troops on the front lines longer than eighty days.

The men of Bravo stayed in a combat zone, went aoutside the wireaa"onto the front linesa"every single day for eleven months straight. In the case of the TCPs, they lived outside the wire twenty-four hours a day. And they experienced some form of enemy contact almost every single day. Deployments where every day is a combat day are a fairly new phenomenon in the U.S. Army. As former lieutenant colonel and psychological researcher Dave Grossman writes in his 1996 book On Killing, aSpending months of continuous [emphasis his] exposure to the stresses of combat is a phenomenon found only on the battlefields of this centuryait is only in this century that our physical and logistical capability to support combat has completely outstripped our psychological capacity to endure it.a Even pushed to the limits this way, the vast majority of Bravo did not crack. But all men start any endeavor with different capacities to cope, and in this environment, with so little support from superiors, it is not surprising that some were overwhelmed. After Britt and Lopez died, an already fraying platoon began to unravel more quickly. Its psychological separation from the company and the battalion became more p.r.o.nounced. The platoon began falling in on itself. In the turmoil of combat and stress, violence and death, they started to redraw moral and social codes that they believed applied only to them. Foremost among their rationalizations was their conviction that no one else had experienced what they had, and no one else could possibly understand it. aWe didnat want to hear anything from anybody, because n.o.body knew what we were going through,a explained Sergeant John Diem. aThatas the leitmotif: an.o.body knows what weare going through.aa They became isolated in every sense; the Pygmalion effect was in full swing. After being continuously told that they were screwups and outcasts, 1st Platoon consciously or subconsciously decided to live up to their outcast status. This ashrinkage of the social and moral horizon,a as psychologist Jonathan Shay puts it in Achilles in Vietnam, is a common phenomenon for small groups of soldiers in prolonged combat settings. Such soldiers, Shay writes, asometimes lose responsiveness to the claims of any bonds, ideals or loyalties outside a tiny circle of immediate comrades. An us-against-them mentality severs all other attachments or commitments.a Extreme hatred of Iraqis was now common, widespread, and openly discussed. Paul Cortez rated his hatred of Iraqis as a 5 on a scale of 10 when he first deployed. By December, he said, it had hit 20. The platoon became more aggressive. Suspects were routinely beaten before being brought back onto the FOBs. There was a hierarchy that governed who got to punch or kick a detaineea"new men were not allowed to partic.i.p.ate until they had experienced a sufficient amount of combat. There were insiders and outsiders and you had to earn your way in. aIf you werenat there the whole time,a said one soldier, anew guys would get told, aWho the f.u.c.k do you think you are?a aStay away from me. I donat even want to know you.aa Many of the men suffered from other well-doc.u.mented symptoms of extended combat exposure, including fatigue, anxiety and panic attacks, increasing irritability, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Drinking increased, became more open, and was not limited to the lower-enlisted. Some NCOs not only allowed their soldiers to drink, they were drinking themselves. A common att.i.tude was: Everythingas fine as long as it doesnat get out of hand.

aThe platoon rejected anything that wasnat tailored to the reality that they had crafted to protect them from what was really happening,a explained Sergeant Diem. aAnd what was happening is they were debasing themselves as individuals. Iam not coming down on these guys any harder than I come down on myself. Because I can church it up and say, aI was doing the best I could. We were doing the best we could.a I allowed myself to feel overwhelmed and I allowed myself to misinterpret reality, allowed myself to basically become insane in order to make it as easy on myself as possible.a The whole brigade was aware that Bravo was depleted, and that it would be a challenge to fix it. aHaving to reseed the leaders.h.i.+p of virtually an entire rifle company while in combat is a very difficult thing to do,a commented battalion executive officer Fred Wintrich. The answer, battalion leaders.h.i.+p decided, was not to rotate units but to rotate leaders. aMaybe we should have put a whole new company in there,a reflected Ebel. aBut I donat knowa"the model was that a company builds credibility with the populace by having some tenure there. Tom Kunkas strategy was sound. He was rotating his leaders, his platoon sergeants, thinking thatas the catalyst.a In reality, everyone understood that there was no real issue with 2nd or 3rd Platoon. Sergeants First Cla.s.s Gebhardt and Blaisdell and their men were performing exceptionally well even without lieutenants. The real focus of the leaders.h.i.+p shake-up was 1st Platoon.

Enough with the false starts and second chances, Kunk and Edwards decided. Miller had to go. They started lining up Rob Gallagher, the former 1st Platoon sergeant now on one of the MiTT teams, to take over the platoon immediately.

aThe exact words I received from the sergeant major were aYou need to fix things quick, fast, and in a hurry,aa Gallagher said. Beyond that, he didnat receive a lot of guidance on what was wrong or instructions on how to correct it. He knew that there were problems with morale, discipline, and coping with the loss of four comrades in a short amount of time. And, as Gallagher understood it, Miller would continue as platoon sergeant. He was being installed as platoon leader, in the same way that Blaisdell now ran 3rd Platoon and Gebhardt ran 2nd. He loved his old unit and he was immensely honored to be handed the task.

Gallagher was a surprising choice for many in the battalion. Before this deployment, he had been Bravoas platoon sergeant for nine months, and before that he had taken over as 3rd Platoonas sergeant three months into OIF1. But Battalion moved him to the MiTT team, it is widely acknowledged, as a graceful way to rea.s.sign a platoon sergeant who was not jelling with his men. Before deployment, head had some close friends in 1st Platoon, including Nelson and Miller (aNelsona is Gallagheras sonas middle name), but his opinion of the junior soldiers in the platoon was low. Among the biggest complaints from peers and superiors about Gallagher in garrison was that he was too critical and dismissive of his own men. He was quick to declare them beyond hope. He would vent inappropriately at meetings that his men were a bunch of losers and dimwits who couldnat do anything right. Both Blaisdell and Gebhardt liked Gallagher personally, and both resisted offering an opinion on whether he was the right man for the job, but they agreed on this: If the chain of command did not have confidence in him in garrison, which was no secret, they did not understand why they would bring him back now.

Gallagher arrived on December 26. Although he was excited to be asked to take charge of his old platoon again, there was not exactly a receiving line waiting for him. aThe company commander didnat even know that I was coming,a Gallagher said. aThe first sergeant didnat even know who I was. So I donat know at what level I was directed to go back to the unit, but I got the impression that no one really knew what the purpose of it was.a Nonetheless, after showing up and introducing himself around the TOC, he dropped his gear and headed out to the TCPs to be with the platoon.

The men of 1st Platoon were not happy to see him. At best, he was tolerated. To a degree, this was the inevitable by-product of Gallagheras conscious decisions. His friends.h.i.+ps with Miller and Nelson notwithstanding, he rarely cultivated relations.h.i.+ps, with either subordinates or superiors. He came to the job with an old-school mentality that being overly familiar clouded oneas judgment and ability to perform the tough tasks that both leading men and taking orders required. He was disdainful of aJoe lovers,a leaders who sought approval or friends.h.i.+p from those many ranks below them. He thought the informal and relaxed dealings between enlisted men and senior NCOs and junior officers that was increasingly becoming the standard in the Army was a disgrace. Nor did he develop mentors. aI am never the type to cultivate close relations.h.i.+ps with a person regardless of their rank,a he said. aSo I was never in Sergeant Majoras tight circle. I did not arbitrarily strike up a conversation with him just to have a conversation.a While principled, his taciturn, standoffish, and tetchy demeanor meant that he had few friends, no allies, and no base of support.

Arriving at the TCPs, Gallagher was stunned by how 1st Platoon had changed in just three months. aI donat think he was prepared for what he was walking into,a said one 1st Platoon soldier. They looked nothing like the happy, eager, optimistic troops he had said good-bye to. They were dirty, haggard, exhausted, pale, and dead-eyed. Many were alternately angry or despairing. Some of them would tear up on routine missions or cry into their lunches. aI have been in the Army a long time,a Gallagher said. aAnd I was overwhelmed by the amount of despair.a Asked about morale, he said, aOn a scale of 1 to 10, it would probably be 1, the lowest possible.a Miller was among those hurting the worst. After losing four men so quickly, he was having doubts about himself, but he also knew, with the arrival of Gallagher, that Battalion had lost its faith in him as well. Although he still retained the t.i.tle of platoon sergeant, the move felt to Miller like a demotion and he did not subordinate himself to Gallagher gracefully. His relations.h.i.+p with Gallagher, once strong, was now strained, and would soon break down completely. He undermined Gallagheras authority. Squad leaders and soldiers exacerbated the power struggle. They would frequently look at Miller after Gallagher issued an order, as if to ask, aIs it okay to do what he says?a Gallagher spent his first few days trying to restore order and discipline to the unmoored platoon. He emphasized proper uniforms, grooming, and hygiene. The men were unimpressed. According to Lauzier, Gallagheras fatal flaw, in their eyes, was his inability to filter out the pressures coming down from higher-ups, one of the widely acknowledged but unofficial jobs of a senior platoon NCO. Ideally, the men should have no idea how hard they are being leaned on. Gallagher would not just pa.s.s along the stress, Lauzier said, but magnify it. aHead get the lash, and then head come back and explode on you,a explained Lauzier. aAnd you canat do that. He put a lot of stress on everybody.a Unbeknownst to Gallagher or Miller, however, there was another leaders.h.i.+p shake-up in the works. Kunk planned to bring in First Lieutenant Tim Norton, who was also serving on a MiTT team in Lutufiyah, as 1st Platoonas platoon leader. Norton was the senior lieutenant in the battalion, he had received high praise from everyone head worked with, and he was considered one of First Strikeas most promising young officers. Kunk called Norton to his office shortly before the New Year to tell him of his new a.s.signment. Norton got only the shortest of briefings on what to expect and what was expected of him. Kunk told him that the platoon was having some morale and discipline issues and that he wanted Norton to help get them on their feet.

Kunk mentioned that Miller had declared the platoon combat ineffective, but added, aThe platoon sergeant doesnat get to do that. Only I get to do that.a Get them to work through their losses, focus on the basics, and start being soldiers again, Kunk said.

Norton was wary, but willing. Bravo, and 1st Platoon especially, had developed a reputation throughout the battalion. Depending on how charitable the person relating the info was, around the battalion you could hear anything from aBravo is in a fight to the death down there,a to aBravo is having a tough time,a to aBravo is seriously d.i.c.ked up.a Norton was confident in his abilities, and excited to lead a platoon again, but he was well aware that he was not inheriting a custodial role. He was being brought in to fix something no one had been taught to fix. As he noted, aThere is no manual that says, aHereas how to take a war-torn platoon and train it back up to a fully operational level while still in combat.aa Norton caught a ride to Yusufiyah on New Yearas Day. He arrived at about 10:30 p.m. to report in to Goodwin, whom he had never met. He found Goodwin sitting in the TOC, in flannel pajama bottoms and a T-s.h.i.+rt with a poncho liner over his head. He was asleep. Norton said h.e.l.lo to the rest of the TOC and headed out to meet the platoon. Not surprisingly, he got the cold shoulder from them. aWho the f.u.c.k are you?a some soldiers ranking as low as private challenged him. Others barely acknowledged his existence, hardly responding when he spoke to them, until he explained that he was not some cherry lieutenant straight from Officersa Basic. He had been in Lutufiyah the whole time, and before that he was with Charlie, so it was not like he just fell off the turnip truck. That, at least, prevented outright insubordination, but it still took a while for him to be taken seriously because, as the soldiers never ceased to remind him, aLutufiyah sure as s.h.i.+t ainat Yusufiyah.a Nortonas leaders.h.i.+p philosophy was based on a quote he picked up somewhere: aLeaders.h.i.+p is 90 percent people skills and 20 percent motivation.a He didnat see any point in being aloof, or in pretending that he wasnat the same age as most of his soldiers. He thought it was possible to maintain a command separation, but the line could be drawn in chalk, it didnat have to be etched in stone. aYou have to feel peopleas emotional states, their wants and needs,a he explained. aItas not like I have to be their best friend. But if I know some dude likes fis.h.i.+ng, then Iall start the conversation with fis.h.i.+ng.a Given how closed off 1st Platoon had become, Norton did break down their walls very quickly. Soldiers grew to like him because he had an infectiously upbeat att.i.tude, even in that environment. He didnat demand a salute and he insisted on being called not aLieutenant Norton,a or even aTim,a but aTimmy.a He was not happy unless other people were laughing and, unusual for a lieutenant, he was not afraid to make a fool of himself to do it. He did a wicked Harry Caray impression. He was also an enthusiastic soldier who always volunteered to patrol, who always offered to ride along into the field. Frequently, he wouldnat wait for orders to come down, head just draft up a mission and go. aHe merged with the platoon like he had been there the whole time,a remarked one soldier. aTo take over a platoon that smoothly, never mind just join one? Youave got to be doing something right. He fit right in with us, no problems whatsoever.a Thatas not exactly true. Taken by surprise, Gallagher and Miller both had a big problem with Nortonas arrival. They both felt lied to. As Gallagher understood his initial brief, he was coming in as the platoon leader, so for Norton to arrive just a couple of days later, with no communication, no warning, no nothing, did not start things off well. And as Gallagher slotted back to platoon sergeant, that relegated Miller back to being a squad leader, which incensed him. If Miller had felt as if he was being demoted before, now he explicitly was.

aAt that point,a Miller said, aI was like, aYou know what? You can f.u.c.king kiss my a.s.s. Iam not going to be part of this bulls.h.i.+t anymore.aa He would have had no problem taking a squad with a different platoon or a different companya"he was still a staff sergeant, after alla"but to be relieved yet forced to remain in the platoon was a double humiliation. aI was bitter. And I was f.u.c.king p.i.s.sed. To be lied to like that, to be told that I was staying on as platoon sergeant, and then moving me down to squad leader after I had run this s.h.i.+t for four months without a word to me? Thatas when I started thinking, aI am not going to be a party to this abortion anymore.aa After the Britt and Lopez memorial, a general asked the 1-502ndas executive officer, Major Wintrich, aWhere are you getting your replacement lieutenants?a Wintrich told him, aWe arenat. We donat have any infantry lieutenants sitting on their hands saying, aPut me in, Coach.aa Actually, there was one sitting on the bench up at Striker: twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Paul Fisher. And soon after that memorial, he started as Bravo Companyas 2nd Platoon leader. Fisher entered the Army on an officer candidate contract in February 2004. Basic Training, Officer Candidate School, Infantry Officer Basic Course, Airborne School, and Ranger School kept him in training until August 2005, when he got to Fort Campbell. He arrived just as the brigade was making its last push toward deployment. He was excited to get a platoon and alive the dream,a as infantry officers in on-the-ground leaders.h.i.+p positions like to say. Then he received his a.s.signment: in the Brigade Public Affairs Office. He was not happy. aSo my first job as a lieutenant who did absolutely everything correctly, all the right schools, everything to a T? I got f.u.c.ked.a He spent two and a half months up at Striker with Brigade Headquarters, and he was frustrated. aI was living on this little Fort Campbell in the desert,a he said, awhere I could not have felt safer than in my own bed at home.a The sound of gunfire in the distance especially irritated him because thatas where he should be. The idleness of his job drove him crazy. Among his tasks was delivering the morning newspapers to brigade senior command. Desperate, he started pulling guard at the front desk of the TOC checking IDsa"ordinarily an enlisted manas joba"hoping someone from an infantry unit would notice his lieutenantas bar and his Ranger Tab. It worked. Lieutenant Colonel Rob Hayc.o.c.k, commander of the 2-502nd, pa.s.sed him one day and asked him what the h.e.l.l he was doing there, and told him to come work for him. Fisher was ready to head down to 2nd Battalion, but on December 29, he got the word: 1st Battalion needed him more. He was going to Yusufiyah. aYouare going down to the Wild West,a one of the brigade staff officers told him.

Fisher caught a MiTT convoy down to Mahmudiyah carrying a ridiculous amount of equipment: two footlockers of stuff in addition to his rucksack. aLittle did I know what a brigade puke I had turned into,a he admitted. aI didnat even know how soft I had become.a He had a quick briefing with Kunk and Salome.

aYou need to get your s.h.i.+t together, Lieutenant,a they told him, abecause youare about to go where things are life or death. It ainat DVD Night every night around here, so get your head screwed on straight and you might be okay.a He caught another convoy to Yusufiyah about an hour later.

Halfway to Yusufiyah, at the exact same spot that Specialist Galloway and 2nd Platoonas previous platoon leader, Jerry Eidson, had been hit ten days earlier, Fisheras Humvee triggered a trip-wire IED, setting off three 120mm rounds strung together. The entire truck was lifted off the ground, and it landed with a thud. He heard screaming and checked himself. He was unhurt. Sitting in the rear left seat, he could tell the guy next to him, the gunner, and the driver were all wounded. He got out and started trying to treat the driver. The driver had a two-inch hole through his leg that was gus.h.i.+ng blood, soaking Fisheras uniform as he tried to stanch the bleeding. Other members of the convoy took over, started applying tourniquets, and managed to save all of the injured soldiersa lives. The three other occupants of the Humvee were later evacuated back to the United States. But at that moment Fisher stood in disbelief at what he had just witnessed. Just hours earlier he was naively ensconced up at Striker and now he had narrowly escaped death his first time on the road.

Once all the blast debris was cleaned up, the convoy completed its journey to Yusufiyah. Fisher headed to the TOC. He thought it odd to find Captain Goodwin asleep in the middle of the headquarters. First Sergeant Laskoski gave him the thirty-second tour, introduced him around, and pointed him toward his platoon sergeant, Jeremy Gebhardt, in the potato bays and told him to introduce himself.

At no time did anyone at Yusufiyah seem to find it strange or feel the need to mention to Fisher that his uniform was covered with fresh, wet blood. aSo I can only conclude that this is completely normal, to get blown up out there like this,a he said. aI was freaked.a He met Gebhardt and they had coffee while Gebhardt tried to bring Fisher up to speed. There was a midnight mission heading out soon, but Gebhardt suggested Fisher skip this one, grab some shut-eye, and get ready for tomorrow. Fisher noticed that 2nd Platoonas bay had a wall where soldiers marked down each time they got hit by an IED or a mortar. They were running out of room for their hash marks and they had only been there three months.

JANUARY 2006.

15.

Gallagher.

WITHIN A COUPLE of days of his arrival, Sergeant First Cla.s.s Rob Gallagher was deeply concerned about what he was seeing in 1st Platoon. The whole setup was insane, he thought. Bravoas mission was clearly flawed by design. aThere were three rotations,a Gallagher said. aThere was the JSB rotation, there was the TCP rotation, and there was the mission rotation. But there are only three platoons. There was no downtime. Everything was a constant on. The guys lived outside the wire three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and in my eighteen and a half years of experience, I just didnat envision a soldier being able to handle that tempo without some sort of consequence on the back end.a He considered FOB Yusufiyah outside the wire because, to him, it could not be called a forward operating base at all. A FOB, in his mind, provided a degree of comfort and rest, a measure of safety and security. But after eight months of that potato factory being occupied by U.S. forces, including three months by the 101st, Gallagher could not understand how the place had none of the basics that most people would consider essential to maintaining the long-term morale and welfare of combat soldiers. He could not believe that they were still living in the potato bays, with no more overhead protection than the buildingas corrugated tin roofing.

aI addressed that with First Sergeant Ski [Laskoski],a he said. aI explained to him that in my opinion morale is terrible and immediate steps needed to be taken to correct this, otherwise we were going to have major problems. Simple things in regard to the living conditions, which were abysmal in my mind.a When he voiced such concerns, he was told that he was whining. Laskoski, for his part, had quickly decided that Gallagher was incompetent and noted deficiencies of not just discipline but combat readiness. aIt was the rainy season,a Laskoski said. aArms and ammunition, youave got to keep that maintained twice daily, three times, it doesnat matter how many times, daily. I looked at some of his vehicles and they were just trashed out. Ammo rusted, commo [communications] gear just not working. Thatas unacceptable.a Looking more closely at the a.s.signments at the TCPs, Gallagher concluded that he did not have enough men to meet minimum staffing requirements. aWhen you talk about an Army guard rotation, you are talking about three reliefs,a he explained. And when he arrived, each TCP typically had six, seven, or eight troops. Guard detail alone required three people, with three in relief for every guard position. aSo, right there, there are not enough people.a And at the TCPs, time not on guard was not really downtime. Soldiers not on guard had to search vehicles and people pa.s.sing through the checkpoints, do IED sweeps, supervise IAs, and be ready for any ad hoc tasks or emergencies that arose. aYou are burning the candle at both ends,a Gallagher admonished. aYou canat ask a guy to pull guard for six hours and then as soon as he gets off guard to go on a six-hour IED sweep.a Similarly, because everyone was already doing something else at the TCPs, it was impossible to reinforce the positionsa pitiful defenses.

He likewise thought that searching for IEDs on foot was crazy and dangerous and demonstrated contempt for the soldiersa safety. aYou are looking for a large-caliber artillery round that is designed not to be found, and the blast radius of that round exceeds your visual radius,a Gallagher said. Gallagher would clear Sportster using Humvees until he had to be specifically ordered not to. He began b.u.t.ting heads with Sergeant Major Edwards immediately over the issue. aIt was a death march,a he a.s.serted. aI told them the way we were doing business was absolutely ridiculous. The exact words I received from the sergeant major were aWho are you to question brigade policy?aa Even Gallagheras critics among the soldiers acknowledge that he always led from the front. He never asked his soldiers to do something that he didnat do. Frequently, he would pull guard himself, just to buy another soldier an hour or two of rest. aHe was the only platoon sergeant that would pull guard,a said one. aHead be like, aYeah, put me up for two night s.h.i.+fts. You guys need to rest too.aa And despite how foolhardy he thought the policy was, he led every IED sweep he could. aI was the point man,a he said. aI felt if anyone should be blown up it should be me. I was not going to put soldiers in danger.a He also ranged 1st Platoonas positions randomly. It was his way to stay connected to every facet of the platoon and keep his soldiers on their toes. aI have been in the Army a long time,a he explained. aI know soldiers act out when there is no leaders.h.i.+p. I would try not to let the soldiers know where I was going. I was the variable that n.o.body knew. It was deliberately built that way so that the soldiers donat plan on doing things that they are not supposed to do.a Once he had fully evaluated the situation, Gallagher became convinced, like many of the others in 1st Platoon, that he was going to die. aMy survivability as well as the soldiersa was very suspect on any given day,a he acknowledged. aMy wife asked me the likelihood of my, based on my experience, making it out. I said it was not very good. Itas probably not going to happen.a Gallagher had little time at the helm of 1st Platoon before Battalion deemed his tenure a failure. Not a week had gone by before Kunk and Edwards regretted their decision. aGallagher was not getting his job done,a Kunk said. aGallagher was falling under the same trap that Miller had. There was an excuse why they were not in uniform, why they didnat have security.a Circling the battlefield, Kunk and Edwards would see that, again, 1st Platoon didnat have their helmets on, or were failing in some other way. aSo we took corrective actions, we did some teaching, coaching, mentoring,a Kunk said. aWe followed up about three days later, and it was worse.a Kunk repeatedly pointed to the success that 2nd and 3rd Platoons were having as proof of Gallagheras deficiencies. aThe other two platoons never had any trouble doing the three missions they had to do,a Kunk said.

Many members of 1st Platoon insist that if uniform discipline, let alone other more serious discipline breaches, was really an issue, then the sparkle of Blaisdellas and Gebhardtas halos had become so strong that Kunk, Edwards, and the rest of the battalion were simply blinded by them. Second and 3rd Platoons, they claimed, dumped their ACU (Army combat uniform) tops when it was too hot or went several days without shaving when it suited them just as often as 1st Platoon did. To the men of 1st Platoon, the battalionas conviction that they were incompetent now just seemed like a grudge. aEverything that ever went wrong in that entire area was our platoonas fault,a said 2nd Squad Leader Chris Payne. aWe were the only ones ever out of uniform. We were the only ones who took our Kevlars off outside the wire. We were the only ones who did this and the only ones who did that.a Compounding Gallagheras problems was the fact that he and Lieutenant Norton did not get along. Gallagher thought Norton was young and callow, the epitome of the aJoe lovera he despised. He found Norton unprofessional, even treacherous, going behind his back to discuss important matters with Miller or the other squad leaders before he discussed them with him. aI do not know why I was Xaed out of the loop in a very early period,a Gallagher said. aI felt the relations.h.i.+p was sort of doomed from the beginning. I just think Nortonas demeanor, his character, was very immature.a Norton didnat have a huge problem with Gallagher, aside from the fact that he was not impressed with his intelligence, his tactical skills, or his relations.h.i.+p with his men. Coming from Charlie, where he benefited from First Sergeant Largentas and Sergeant First Cla.s.s Hayesas mentoring, he found Gallagher wanting. Norton thought Gallagher was clueless when it came to managing relations.h.i.+ps. It is one thing not to want to be a political hustler, Norton observed, but it is another when your sour disposition starts working against your own goals.

Norton felt he had been put in this position to fix things, not to declare 1st Platoon unfixable, as Gallagher was doing. Emotionally, 1st Platoon was frayed, there was no question about it. But tactically, Norton felt, they were not that bad. They still got up every morning and they went on patrols and they completed their missions. They needed a huge att.i.tude readjustment, obviously. Norton was trying to get the guys to focus more on the Iraqis as people, to consider that man over there as not just another f.u.c.king Hadji but as Ali, who owns a falafel shop and loves his kids and has problems because he needs to get to Baghdad and back every week to buy restaurant supplies.

aI really had to work to convince them, aDude, not everybody out here needs to be killed. Not everybody needs to get the c.r.a.p kicked out of him. In fact, beating the c.r.a.p out of people is wrong, you know? Geneva Conventions? Look it up. Itas a concept.aa Norton thought that getting the men to change their focus was an achievable goal, but he was certain that if Gallagher really wanted to get 1st Platoon yanked to the rear, he wasnat going about it the right way. aGallagher vocalized it too emotionally and not tactfully at all,a Norton explained, aso it was easy for them to say, aOh, heas just throwing fuel on their fire.aa Around this time, Miller headed up to Striker for a week or so to get a chipped tooth fixed. While there, he started looking for a new job without telling Kunk or Edwards. He b.u.mped into Staff Sergeant Chaz Allen, who was in Battalionas liaison office with Brigade and was itching to see more action. aI told him that it was rough down there,a Miller recalled. aI asked him what his plans were. He said he was trying to get down there. I asked him did he want to swap?a Allen was all for it. He had been to Kosovo, but he hadnat deployed for OIF1, so he was eager to get back down on the line.

Second Brigadeas Command Sergeant Major Brian Stall called Edwards to say, Miller is up here wanting to know if I have a job for him. This was not a move Kunk took kindly. aInstead of looking us in the eye, like a leader should, and being honest and straightforward, and telling your command sergeant major and your battalion commander that you canat do the job, or that youare burned out, or that you might be under stress, he went fis.h.i.+ng for a job,a he said.

Miller didnat see it that way. aI wasnat going to let someone determine my fate,a he stated. aI wasnat going to be held responsible for my guys dying if I wasnat getting the support I needed to prevent it from happening. I think I had the leaders.h.i.+p ability to get them through, after all the casualties we were taking. Maybe not. But if they had said youare the platoon sergeant and youare staying the platoon sergeant, then, roger that, I would have Charlie Miked,a he said, using Army slang for aContinued Mission.a aI will take the responsibility for every casualty when I was in charge. If they want to blame me, then so be it. Those were my guys. And they still are, whether theyare here today or six feet below. But to blame me, and make me a squad leader, and still keep me around in the same platoon? No, that ainat gonna cut it.a After rotating down to the JSB for the first time, Gallagher a.s.sessed the Alamo bridge as even more dangerous a position than the TCPs, and he pulled his men off of it. How to properly treat the AVLB had been a controversial issue throughout the year and would continue to be so for the rest of the deployment. The battalionas order was to asecurea it. According to the U.S. Armyas Field Manual 3-90: Tactics, asecurea means to prevent a unit or facility from being damaged or destroyed by the enemy. Obviously, there are a number of ways to secure something, a point that Operations Officer Rob Salome said he consistently tried to impress upon Captain Goodwin. aI donat have to physically have my hand on something to secure it,a he pointed out. aI can secure it by fire or overwatch or with a patrol, not necessarily by occupation. John didnat understand those critical pieces of those definitions, so he couldnat articulate those to his NCOs either.a Kunk a.s.serted that it was possible to see the Alamo from the JSB patrol baseas crowas nest and thus it was securable from there. Everyone else disputed this. The bridge may have been technically visible, but sight lines were not clear enough to make it securable, especially at night, especially since there were recessed routes to the bridge via the ca.n.a.l banks that could be checked only from very close distances. Before late June 2006 the battalion never issued written guidance to Goodwin on how the position should be manned, rationalizing that squad-level staffing decisions are customarily a company commanderas job. Goodwin, for his part, never issued any kind of guidance to the platoons. aI let the platoons figure out their staffing down there,a Goodwin said.

So it is unclear who ordered Gallagher back out to the bridge, and it is unclear whether he received instructions that he had to have men literally on top of it, but he was under the impression he had no choice. aI had to send people back out there,a he explained. aSo I sat my best NCOs down and told them these are dangerous missions. I told them what could happen if they go out and not do the right thing. aYou need to be on your guysa a.s.s. You need to not be f.u.c.king around, or these will be the implications if you do not obey,a I told them. aYou will be on Al Jazeera getting your head chopped off.aa Second and 3rd Platoons found other ways of securing the bridge without always having men standing next to it. Sometimes 2nd Platoon would run patrols down there, or they would overwatch it from an ambush spot, or they would just run a Humvee back and forth from TCP4 to the AVLB to the JSB and back at irregular intervals. Blaisdell would employ all of these tactics as well, saying that he never put a Humvee down there in exactly the same location twice. He used the truck, he said, alike a roving TCP.a Regardless of how they varied the detail, it was still common for there to be just two to four men and a truck guarding the AVLB. No one pa.s.sing by, from Brigade on down, ever corrected them. Captain Shawn Umbrell and other company commanders said the staffing down there was common knowledge. aSometime in November or December, I remember in a meeting being briefed that the truck at the AVLB took some small-arms fire,a Umbrell recalled. aAnd I think they said there were like four guys at that position with one truck. And that was the first I heard of it. And I remember thinking, aHoly cow! Weare manning a TCP that shorthanded? Four guys in one truck?a Iam looking around and trying to gauge the looks on other peopleas faces, and I donat recall Colonel Kunk ever saying, aThatas unsatisfactory. You need to up the numbers down there.a But I remember hearing Colonel Kunk talking later, aI never knew we had three or four guys!a And Iam thinking, aWhat do you mean, you never knew? We all knew.aa Their relations.h.i.+p already strained, Sergeant Major Edwards and Sergeant First Cla.s.s Gallagher almost came to blows in January. An Iraqi base was being constructed adjacent to the JSB, which required earthmovers, bulldozers, dump trucks, and other heavy support machinery. On the day Edwards came to visit, it had also been raining. There was not enough room at the JSB to harbor all this equipment and the terrain was messy, so the place was sloppy.

aI think what upset him the most was when his PSD came ina"because he had a large entourage, there was not enough room for him to move around,a Gallagher said. aHis discomfort getting in prompted much of this.a Edwards sought out Gallagher and began to berate him about how messy the JSB was. He was especially irritated that he had also seen some soldiers relaxing, playing a video game. This was not the first time that Gallagher had heard Edwardsas concerns about tidiness, but he frankly thought they were misplaced and mistimed, and, given everything that was going on, he had less patience for Edwardsas yelling than ever before.

aI am not really worried about trash right now, Sergeant Major,a Gallagher replied. aI am worried about my guys getting some rest.a Edwards did not like that response and started to yell some more, so Gallagher volunteered to go pick up the trash himself rather than disturb the men. He started walking around plucking cigarette b.u.t.ts out of the mud. This response was also not acceptable. The discussion, according to Gallagher, went downhill quickly, turning personal and almost degenerating into a physical altercation. aThe conversation was very volatile, and I took some offense to the fact that the conversation degraded to a nonprofessional basis,a Gallagher said.

Not long after Gallagheras run-in with Edwards, he tangled with Green, who had continued his downward slide. No one thought he was an exceptional soldier, but he was not terrible. While not extraordinarily brave, Green was no coward, either. He never ducked a combat mission or froze under fire. But his performance and his att.i.tude, even his hygiene, were declining rapidly. Many in the platoon, when they thought about him at all, were split on whether he was just a little messed up or a t.u.r.d through and through. Some could not countenance all his talk about blacks or Jews or his increasingly frequent a.s.sertions that they should lay waste to the entire country. Others admit to having an odd kind of affection for him, like a disturbed, runty little brother they wanted to protect.

Lieutenant Norton remembered having a couple of late-night bull sessions with him as he made the rounds checking on guard positions. aHe was very mad with everything that happened,a Norton said, abut the more you talked to him, the more you realized just how demented his thinking was. Pretty much everybody besides himself was bad. Democrats were bad. Republicans were bad. JFK was an idiot. Abraham Lincoln was a dumb a.s.s. Everybody outside of his town in Texas was an idiot. But then, all the people inside of his town were idiots too. aIf we just killed everybody in Iraq,a head say, awe could go home.a In conversation, head come around and see that, no, we canat kill everyone. In fact, we need to be nicer to Iraqis than they are to us. But it was like Groundhog Day. The next day, it was back to aEverybodyas a dumb a.s.s. Everybody deserves to die.aa Gallagher could not figure out why the NCOs allowed Green to coast by on lower standards than those applied to everyone else. On this particular day in late January, when the whole platoon was back in Yusufiyah, Gallagher was especially high-strung. He was getting in everybodyas face about rolling down their sleeves, cleaning their area, making sure stuff was picked up. Lauzier grabbed a toothbrush and started scrubbing away on a doorjamb or a piece of equipment in elaborate and mocking protest against Gallagher being so fussy. Green walked by, with sungla.s.ses atop his off-kilter cap, his ACU top unzipped, and his trousers slung low, almost falling off his b.u.t.t. Gallagher could not believe what he was seeing. The lack of discipline, the insolence, the completely unsoldierly bearing were simply dumbfounding to him. The final outrage: The crotch of Greenas pants was ripped and his genitals were exposed.

aGreen, get the f.u.c.k over here!a Gallagher bellowed. aWhat is your motherf.u.c.king problem, son? You had better get your uniform straight or I will kick your a.s.s.a He told Green to hit the floor and start doing push-ups. Green grudgingly did so as Gallagher continued to upbraid him for his slovenly appearance. aYou are a f.u.c.king sc.u.mbag, Green, you know that?a Gallagher yelled. The word asc.u.mbaga hit a nerve. Green popped up and stepped to Gallagher.

aIam a sc.u.mbag?a he screamed. af.u.c.k you, you f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h!a Incensed and eyes wide at this insubordination, Gallagher squared his chest to Green, whom he outweighed by at least sixty pounds, and shook his pointed finger to the side of his face, in the cla.s.sic drill-sergeant pose. He yelled every syllable ponderously.

aStand down, Private. Get yourself squared away, Green, or you will regret it.a aOh yeah? Letas go, right now!a Green yelled. aYou want to make it personal? Well, come on, motherf.u.c.ker, letas go.a Gallagher was again dumbfounded. He had never experienced anything remotely like this. aI seriously contemplated, after eighteen years in the Army, throwing away my career to physically abuse him,a Gallagher later recalled. They stepped up to each other even closer, chest to chest, a ridiculous picture because Gallagher outsized Green in every way.

aDo it, motherf.u.c.ker!a Green continued to yell. aCome on, motherf.u.c.ker, do it!a Squad leaders and others leapt to separate the two. As soldiers pulled Green away and led him off, he shouted behind him, aYou are driving me crazy! You are driving us all f.u.c.king crazy!a Green pushed his rescuers away and stormed off, hurling expletives as he went. Before leaving the room, he swung a kick at a pallet of one-liter water bottles, but he missed completely, the momentum of his leg throwing him up and over, and he landed on his back with a thud. aG.o.ddammit!a he shouted as he pulled himself up and continued to curse as he sulked off. Some soldiers rushed off to console Green, while others talked to Gallagher, trying to convince him that Green was a unique case who needed special handling.

Gallagher had tried to be tolerant considering everything 1st Platoon had seen, but this was way over the line. He went to First Sergeant Laskoski to get Green removed from the platoon. aI required him to take all of his belongings and all of his gear and get it out of our platoon area, because I didnat want him a.s.sociating with any of my soldiers,a said Gallagher. After hearing about the altercation, Laskoski gave Green an administrative job up at the TOC where he didnat have much contact with the rest of 1st Platoon.

As part of a broader battalion strategy, Bravo started running more frequent missions to the west, toward a small town called Rushdi Mullah. Lieutenant Norton and Captain Goodwin planned a platoonwide mission into the nearby town of Al-Toraq, which is about three miles northwest of Yusufiyah. Norton and Goodwin would go with the main effort and Gallagher would stay behind with the support and relief element. They would push out from TCP5 and head down Mullah Fayyad Highway. The main element was to move into town while the support element would pull off and wait until the mission was over.

Reviewing the map, Goodwin told Gallagher, aYou are good up to this point on Mullah Fayyad Highway. But at this intersection, turn right and stay off the road. We will call you. Head east and we will link up with you there.a He lost count, he said, of how many times he told Gallagher: aDo not drive on Mullah Fayyad Highway past this point. If you go past this point, youare going to die.a They headed out after nightfall and a firefight took place. Some insurgents shot at them. They returned fire. n.o.body hit anybody, but the platoon searched several houses and detained three men. As they were leaving, Norton called Gallagher to meet at the linkup point. Through his night-vision goggles, however, Goodwin could see vehicles way past the no-go line and headed in the wrong direction. A soldier in Gallagheras convoy said, aHe took us down this road, up to these fields, and everywhere in the world. Weare driving Humvees through fields in the middle of the night like a bunch of morons. It was a mess.a aRob,a Goodwin called over the radio, awhere you at?a aI donat know,a Gallagher responded. aIam lost.a Goodwin couldnat tell which road, if any, Gallagher was on either, but he could see the convoy crawling back and forth. Goodwin was getting worried, and angry. They were overdue for the pickup, and now the men were just sitting there, a juicy, stationary target. A mosqueas speaker system crackled to life.

Goodwinas translator listened and said, aThat is not a call to prayer. It is telling people that we are here. They know we are here.a Goodwin radioed some Apache helicopters that he had on call.

aHey, can you see my Humvees?a he asked.

aRoger,a came the reply.

aCan you direct them to our linkup point?a Goodwin gave the Apaches the grid coordinates, and over the next couple of minutes, the helicopters guided Gallagher back to Goodwin.

As they were waiting, Goodwin said to Norton, aWere we not perfectly clear?a Both Goodwin and Norton had seen enough. They knew that Edwards had been displeased with Gallagher from the start, but after a potentially life-endangering operational screwup like that, Goodwin decided he was not taking any chances.

Goodwin told Laskoski, aHey, go talk to Sergeant Major. I need another platoon sergeant.a Laskoski responded that that would not be a problem, since Edwards had wanted Gallagher gone within the first three days.

Even before Goodwin demanded a new sergeant, Edwards had been telling Brigade Sergeant Major Stall that things were still not clicking with 1st Platoon. Edwards wondered who else was available. Stall had an idea. How about Fenlason? Jeff Fenlason was a thirty-seven-year-old sergeant first cla.s.s from Springfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, who had just moved from the brigade MiTT office to its Civilian Affairs shop up at Striker. How about him? Head just had a little problem with his previous boss, which is what facilitated his most recent move, but overall he had a reputation as a good logistician, an organized administrator, and a meticulous planner. He was Ranger qualified and he had been a drill instructor, so he knew a thing or two about discipline. And head done a good job in 2004 and 2005 as first sergeant setting up Echo Company, First Strikeas support company, so he was already a known ent.i.ty to the rest of the battalion. Kunk, in fact, had known Fenlason since 1993 and considered him very much what Kunk liked to call aan engaged leader.a Blaisdell and Gebhardt thought 2nd and 3rd Platoons had a couple of strong staff sergeants who could step up, but after Miller, Edwards felt 1st Platoon needed a sergeant first cla.s.s. Blaisdell even volunteered to take the platoon, which might have happened, Edwards told him, if he wasnat running 3rd Platoon without a lieutenant.

Several times throughout the winter, First Sergeant Laskoski had also offered to take over 1st Platoon. In several regards, he seemed like an ideal candidate. He had been with this deployment from the beginning, so he had extensive combat experience, and he had seen firsthand all of the losses that 1st Platoon had suffered. But as an outsider, he also maintained a certain psychological distance that Gallagher and Miller didnat have. He felt the losses that they had suffered, but he did not dwell on them. The men may not have loved Laskoski, but they respected him. aI tried my d.a.m.nedest to take that d.a.m.n platoon,a he recalled. aI donat think any of the platoon sergeants that they had made them understand what the h.e.l.l they were doing there, and how important it was. They just needed the right frigging dude in there.a The higher ranks discussed the merits of Laskoski versus Fenlason, but they decided to keep Laskoski where he was and put Fenlason, who had never been a platoon sergeant before, down with 1st Platoon.

Second Squad leader Chris Payne had gotten to know Fenlason when they were stationed at Fort Campbell together during OIF1 and found him to be a canny careerist, always aware of rsum gaps and how best to fill them. Payne had just arrived on base in August 2003, and even though it was late in the 101st Airborne Divisionas first rotation of the war, he was eager to get to Iraq.

aWhoa, slow down,a Fenlason said. aWhatas your situation?a Payne, then a sergeant, told him that he had just gotten married and he had a child at home, but he had talked to his wife and she supported his desire to deploy. Fenlason wanted to know if Payne had been to Primary Leaders.h.i.+p Development Course (PLDC), a school he needed to attend to get promoted again. Payne hadnat. Fenlason told him, aYou need to go to PLDC now so that you have the chance to get promoted if the opportunity comes about.a And that, said Payne, taught him a lot about Fenlasonas perspective. aHeas very much, aIam going to make sure that I have my ducks in a row, so that if the opportunity for me to advance comes along, I will be ready for it.aa Fenlasonas briefing from Stall was short but direct. Stall told him his charter was to fix a platoon that had been hit by several leadersa deaths and was now suffering from low morale and bad discipline.

aGo down there and just do the basics,a Stall told Fenlason. aDonat pull anything special, donat try any heroics, just get the platoon back on its feet.a aWhatas the issue with the platoon sergeant down there now?a Fenlason asked.

aSergeant Gallagher is all about Sergeant Gallagher, and not necessarily taking care of the platoon,a Stall replied. aGo do what you do.a Fenlason, who never betrayed any doubts about his own abilities, leaders.h.i.+p style, or decisions, knew he was up to the job. aI knew what I needed to do and I knew how to do it,a he said. aIt wasnat difficult. I knew exactly where we needed to go and exactly how we were going to get there.a If the battalionas decision to plug Gallagher back into 1st Platoon had raised eyebrows, the brigadeas decision to