Black Knights, Dark Days Page 4
A line was beginning to form at the latrines. Male warriors of all ages and ethnicities stood patiently in line, towels slung over shoulders, personal hygiene bags in hand, weapons safely slung. It struck me then that normal people don’t wait to brush their teeth while clutching a rifle. The wait didn’t seem worth the reward, so I strolled to our dining tent, grabbed a tiny apple, and filled my aluminum canteen cup with hot water. Back at the Lieutenant’s vehicle, I lathered up to shave the face reflected in a side-view mirror.
Nearby, Sergeant Chen was sitting cross-legged on top of the M-1114 next to the huge .50 caliber machine gun wrapped tightly in a poncho liner. He looked like Buddha incarnate—an extremely muscular Buddha who could rip your arms off, but most likely wouldn’t from the placid expression on his face. Always hard to tell what he was thinking. Maybe he was pondering his fiancée back home or planning for law school, which he claimed was his intention if he survived deployment. Or maybe he was just cold. The morning air in Iraq had to be chillier than it was on Saipan where he’d once served as a police officer. Among the few things I knew about Sergeant Yihjih “Eddie” Chen was that he liked country music and was very proud of his pickup truck. I was determined to get to know him a little better. Before I could strike up a conversation, Lieutenant Aguero approached looking both angry and thoughtful.
“How’s it going, Sir?”
He spent a few profane moments complaining about “those ass-clowns” at battalion headquarters and then pointed at Chen. “Make sure your crew’s equipment is ready to go within the hour. We have a mission to the DAC at 0800.”
That sent me to work on my rifle as everyone began to gather and check their individual gear. My hands worked over the weapon easily from long practice as I watched the platoon get ready for a second day of activity outside the wire. The lieutenant didn’t specify, but apparently something at the District Area Council (DAC) needed attention and whatever it was, our platoon was going to handle it. Specialist Deaver sat down to keep me company, and we both carried out the soothing ritual of weapon maintenance without much to say. When he finally spoke, I had to strain to hear.
“Look at that LMTV.” He motioned vaguely toward a big four-wheeled Light Medium Tactical Vehicle that was the Army’s replacement for the standard family of five-ton trucks. It had an unarmored three-man cab with a weapon mount in the roof and huge wheels that kept the chassis high off the ground. To make up for a lack of armor, our platoon had spent a good deal of labor lining the vehicle bed with sandbags to reduce IED blast effects. “Can you believe those morons sent us through IED Alley in the back of that mobile sandbox? How’s a thing like that gonna stop a firecracker much less a freakin’ high-yield explosive? Are these people nuts? Or are they intentionally trying to kill me? I swear to God, if they make us go on patrol in that deathtrap, I will create whole new definitions of workplace violence.”
All I could do was nod in the appropriate places. He was right. The road from Kuwait to Baghdad which we had traversed mainly packed into LMTVs was known officially as our MSR or Main Supply Route, and soldiers who traveled that route called it IED Alley due to the number of road-side bombs encountered.
The DAC was a large two-story structure with an open rotunda balcony that peeked over high concrete walls. The gate was nothing more intimidating than a large pole manned by lethargic civilian guards, but the facility was surrounded by snarls of serpentine concertina wire or razor-wire. The street in front of the DAC was closed to civilian traffic, which made it a tad less likely that some loon in a car stuffed with high explosives could conduct the dreaded Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device or VB-IED attack. Across from the DAC was a block of two-story brick buildings containing shops that all seemed to be closed at this early hour.
We parked in front of the gate and dismounted to form a protective perimeter. While our Company Commander went inside to meet our Battalion Commander, there was nothing much for us to do but stand around and watch the clumps of kids that were beginning to gather. A gaggle of them were playing soccer on the pavement of what had been a parking lot before the Army conscripted the building. Most wore no shoes, but that didn’t deter them from running full-tilt up and down the area littered with gravel and broken glass. Specialist Christopher Rusch approached carrying his automatic rifle at the low-ready position. I pointed at the kids playing in the near distance. “Do you see that? Playing barefoot in all that junk.”
Rusch stared for a few moments, probably wondering what his infant daughter was doing back in Texas. He was half Dominican and he’d inherited handsome Latin features from his mother. He had an enormous head that barely fit inside the standard Kevlar helmet and a tough time communicating. He often seemed to be searching for the right words either in English or Spanish. “Tough kids,” he finally said.
“Durned skippy, they are.” I watched one of the older boys conferring with a younger one. There was some conversation that we couldn’t hear, and then the older boy stared at us. He wanted the younger one to follow him in our direction, but the little kid was having none of it. Finally, the bigger kid picked up the little one and walked toward us. They didn’t look threatening, so I turned my attention to my assigned security sector. I had a soft spot for kids, but we’d all heard the horror stories about kids bearing bombs or grenades. And there was always the sniper threat if you let yourself get distracted. There had been no recent sniper attacks in Sadr City, but there was always a first time and I didn’t intend to be a target. I was scanning the buildings in the area so closely that I almost didn’t notice that the two kids were rapidly approaching our perimeter.
“Stop!” I ran through the standard Arabic warnings. “We are American Forces. You are safe. Go away.” Immediately I felt foolish about the shouting. It was a big fat duh and nothing if not obvious to a couple of Iraqi kids. The older boy seemed shocked to hear an American speaking Arabic and stopped in his tracks. He squinted at me for a few moments, apparently trying to decide on his next move. The kid he was carrying on his hip stared wide-eyed and sucked his thumb.
“Good Mistah, good Mistah—you my friend, Mistah.” He raised the smaller child a little higher on his hip as if to show him off and smiled. “Baby, Mistah.” I looked at Rusch who just shrugged.
I asked the boy his name. He replied, “Mustafa” while patting himself on the chest and grabbing his passenger’s leg. He showed us a deep gash in the sole of the younger boy’s foot and said something that sounded like Do-wah. I had no clue what that meant, but it was obvious that he wanted some sort of medical treatment for the boy’s injury.
Motioning them to approach, I got a closer look at the younger boy’s foot. It was a fairly bad gash, likely from one of the glass shards littering the parking lot playground. They were both dressed in dirty clothes that looked like they’d been picked up at some stateside yard sale in 1979. The cut on the little guy’s foot would need more than a Band-Aid. I looked around for our medic and spotted him hanging out near the rear of one of our vehicles.
“Hey, Doc! Guzman, come here a minute!”
The medic started in our direction in no particular hurry. Guzman was a New York Puerto Rican with no accent and pale mocha complexion. His middle name was Aristoteles, the Spanish spelling of the great Greek philosopher. He was an intelligent guy and a solid aid man in our platoon.
“What do you want, Fisk?” he asked, and then spotted the gash on the kid’s foot. He went directly to work. “That’s a pretty good one,” he said. “Somebody get me some water.”
Rusch fetched a bottle from the nearest Humvee and we watched as Guzman washed the wound and the kid’s filthy foot. The injured kid didn’t make a peep while Doc cleaned and bandaged his wound.
When I asked him for his name, he meekly replied, “Hamed.”
“Mathias,” I replied tapping my chest as I had seen the Iraqis do.
The kid nodded enthusiastically and I reached into a pocket for some Tootsie Rolls saved from my last
MRE meal. I handed him one and gave another to his rescuer, brother or friend. They were much more interested in the candy than the medical treatment. “Go on, now,” I told them. “Go home.”
“Thank you, Mathias. You good Mistah.” Mustafa walked away still carrying Hamed who was now wearing a big smile and had a mouthful of chocolate. I had a warm feeling at that moment. Maybe we could do some good here after all.
Neurobehavioral Assessment by Ortiz, Felix @ 15 JAN 2013
CPT Fisk is a 39 year old, right hand dominant, divorced Caucasian; OD who was referred for neuropsychological screening secondary to concussion and difficulties in concentration, memory and hand writing (ideomotor apraxia like) related difficulties.
CPT Fisk has 13 years of military service. He has had three combat deployments. He was deployed to Iraq (2004-05), (2010-11). During his first deployment he faced many firefights; he was an infantryman at the time. In regards to mTBI related events, he was involved in a rocket blast that occurred approximately five feet from him. He was thrown across the room. Later his section leader woke them up. He received quarters for three days and experienced vertigo for three days. He described multiple events in which his vehicles were hit by IEDs and/or RPG.
CPT Fisk described his second deployment as uneventful
Overall, CPT Fisk total score on the RBANS was at the 90th percentile indicating superior performance in cognitive functioning at this time. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-hyperactive amygdale with hippocampal atrophy, resulting in heightened state of arousal.
Hours passed before we got a new mission. It seemed simple and promised a little sightseeing to boot. We had to transport a Civil Affairs captain to another large U.S. base in Baghdad, located near a former tourist attraction called the Martyr’s Monument. That frequently photographed destination was an onion-shaped building built by Saddam as a tribute to Iraqis who died in the war with Iran during the 1980s. It was comparable to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., as the names of the dead were etched on walls inside the cavernous structure.
The American base was also located near an abandoned amusement park where the rusted steel structures gave the place the look of a dinosaur graveyard. It was a weird juxtaposition of dead structures and monuments to the dead as we pulled into yet another security perimeter and listened to Sergeant First Class Swope outline the plan. “We’re gonna sit here and use their PX,” he said. “Ya’ll better sit there and go to finance while you’re here and get your checks cashed and whatever. Be back here no later than 1545. Move out.”
Swope was a short, quiet man. He spoke without the stereotypical Senior NCO bluster and so quietly that we often had to strain to hear him. Likely a hangover from his Texas childhood, he peppered everything he said with the phrase sit there, no matter whether or not what he was ordering us to do could be accomplished by sitting there or anywhere else. Swope was usually calm, but if you pissed him off, you could expect lightning to strike in a hurry. He could go from serenity to explosive rage, and that produced lightning-quick responses from his subordinates. Swope’s occasional tirades had the effect of a nuclear detonation. I was never able to figure out if that was calculated or genuine. Probably the former.
Most of us wandered over to the Martyr’s Monument to look around the structure which reminded me of the city’s minarets and prayer towers. Looking up at the massive dome, I admired the architect. He was a talented man and the monument’s workmen were obviously skilled. I’d read once that Saddam used the same man to design this structure as he’d used to recreate Ishtar’s Gate in the ruins of old Babylon. We descended a massive concrete spiral staircase to the levels below, where former shops and offices had been commandeered and occupied by the American admin and logistics machine. Some stood in line to cash their checks at the finance office, while others raided the PX for goodies they couldn’t get elsewhere. I went in search of a western-style flush toilet. Few things say civilization to me like the feel of cool porcelain on my butt. The toilet. I didn’t get much of that feeling at the FOB—or anywhere else in Iraq, for that matter.
There was a familiar Little Soldier’s room at the end of a long hallway, and as I stood admiring the plumbing, I thought about a stop we’d made on the long convoy run from Kuwait to Baghdad. That was just five days ago, but it seemed like years. We been pissing into plastic bottles most of the way until the convoy finally stopped to refuel. At the site was a long line of military Porta-Johns for the use of travelers. We stood before the bank of green and gray plastic outhouses waiting for our turn when I noticed several of them were marked as “Arabic Bathrooms.” Never having seen an Arabic Bathroom and curious about potential differences, I pulled a door open and inspected the interior. The first thing I noticed was no toilet seat. In its place was a pair of molded plastic foot impressions on either side of the hole. Treaded grooves were built in to the foot rests to provide extra traction for those awkward mornings after a fig binge. Apparently, the evacuation procedure involved placing your feet in the indicated position, squatting over the hole, and letting it rip.
There was none of that in the Little Soldier’s room here. Angels sang and cherubs capered as I scrabbled at my belt and gazed at the glory of a modern, American-style bathroom complete with firmly attached plastic toilet seats. It was bliss. And so what if I’m that easy to please.
Later in the day, we were back out in the city turning just shy of Route Silver and weaving through some of the sewage-infested back streets. So many people had spliced into the main power line that our vehicle gunners had to carefully lift the tangled wires over their turrets as we passed. We went slowly, leading an ever-growing crowd of singing and clapping children through alleys full of excrement. They walked along boards that had been placed on bricks as a makeshift sidewalk, laughing and oblivious to the stench. After several minutes, the platoon leader announced that we had reached our second destination and called a halt.
It was a school of some sort—a two-story seafoam-colored building that rose above a high concrete wall covered with red and black Arabic writing. Other buildings, taller and dressed with drying laundry, stood nearby. As we dismounted, a crowd of about 100 people materialized from various alley outlets. There were older men, boys and teens dressed in the black shirt and trousers that composed the uniform of the Sadr Bureau. In the mix were some women in black burqas. They all gathered around our position. Either they wanted something from us or they wanted to give us something, and neither seemed promising. We spread out on full alert and waited to see what might happen.
Lieutenant Aguero led his usual contingent forward to find the person he wanted to meet. Those of us delegated to tag along included our interpreter, Staff Sergeant York, Specialist Tyrell, Specialist Perry, the black musician from College Station, Texas, and me. We formed a tight ring around Aguero as he charged toward the walled compound. The crowd gave us a fairly wide path until the lieutenant found an older man who seemed like he might have some authority, and used our translator to ask for the Moqtar. The gray-beard assumed an air of great importance and gave rapid Arabic instructions to a boy at his side. The kid disappeared through a metal gate in the compound wall. We followed the chosen elder—and several undesignated people who decided to tag along—toward the door.
“Sir, what is this place, and who are we meeting?” I had my notebook out ready to record whatever was about to happen.
“This is a boy’s high school that’s in our platoon’s sector. I’m supposed to show my face to the local Moqtar and the Headmaster to let them know that we’ll be helping them.”
“Very good, Sir. And what’s a Moqtar?”
“He’s the guy elected by the people to represent them at the District Area Counsel—some Grand Poobah type that likes to act important.”
Aguero stopped to wait for his contacts and asked several of the usual word-on-the-street questions of the elde
r he’d spotted in the crowd. There was a lot of give and take through the interpreter, but it all boiled down to something like, “Gosh, Americans, everything’s just swell here.”
Aguero crushed his cigarette as another old man dressed in gray and black robes with an impressive black turban entered the street from the school’s green door. When he saw us, his eyes opened wide with surprise or delight. He opened his arms wide as if he were receiving a long lost relative. “Peace be unto you,” he said in Arabic.
“And unto you, peace,” said Lieutenant Aguero in the pro forma Arabic greeting we’d all learned in pre-deployment training. There was a burst of laughter and chattering from the assembled crowd who were apparently surprised to hear Arabic spoken by foreigners. The old man who greeted us identified himself as Ahmud Ishani, school proprietor, and said he was anxious to talk to us. The crowd crushed in to listen to the exchange and a clear pecking order took shape as the Lieutenant spoke. Every time Aguero asked a question through the interpreter, all the men in the assembly pressed closer to hear what was being said. When things got too tight, an elder among them would establish his seniority and start shouting for the younger men to back off. This was occasionally accompanied by a swat aimed at one of the boys in the crowd. The jockeying for position and prominence went on until we were surrounded by concurrent rings of male Iraqis with the eldest inside and the youngest standing on tip-toes on the outside. It was apparently standard operating procedure, as it happened everywhere we stopped to confer with Iraqis.