The Big Shia City was well south of the FOB. Getting there meant driving an hour down a four-lane highway called Route Carentan. Traffic was usually heavy on Carentan, but it served to clear the route so that you didn’t have to worry too much about pressure plates.
There was a point where Carentan crossed the river and you’d have to cross on a pontoon bridge since the actual bridge had been bombed during the invasion. Bravo Company kept a bridge guard there, and lots of haji kids hung around in the daytime to beg MREs off the soldiers on the banks of the river. The kids were skinny shoeless boys mostly. There was also a little girl you’d see sometimes who might have been seven or eight, or she might have been older only more malnourished. She had dusty brown hair that was like a bird’s nest, and her dress was like something out of the Flintstones.
We called her Pebbles.
We kept two rifle squads at the Iraqi Police station in the city center. But it was whatever. We didn’t control the city. Neither did the IPs. It was the Mahdi militia who controlled the city. We had a cease-fire with the Mahdi on account of the higher-ups having decided they were too much of a pain in the ass to fight. The Mahdi were Shia. And they were backed by Iran. So we weren’t allowed to fuck with the Mahdi and we weren’t allowed to patrol the city. We could drive to the police station and leave the same way we had come in. That was all.
The police station was three stories high with a walled courtyard in front and another in back. There was a jail and it was packed with prisoners. One time the prisoners all sang together and you could hear them outside the jail and it was very beautiful and it made you feel like an asshole.
Some of the IPs were alright. Some of them were fucks. But that was whatever too. And there was a special haji SWAT team sort of deal there and the hajis on the haji SWAT team thought they were the hottest shit going; they were absolutely fucking delusional but this was what they thought. They rode around in a shitty compact pickup with a machine gun in the back and them all piled on top of one another looking like a lot of goddamn fools. We hated the shit out of them because they’d got some kicks out of showing us grainy IED videos on a portable DVD player; they’d pointed at the screen and said, “You see? Good. You see? You see? Good, yes?”
Yes, we were for killing them and it would have been easy. But orders were orders, and we’d been told to endure them for the sake of their hearts and minds. So we did.
* * *
—
I WAS on the roof of the police station, on a guard shift, trying to figure out the sniper scope on an M14. This wasn’t my job but I had got stuck up on the roof with this M14 and I was doing my best. We didn’t ever have near as many guys as we were supposed to have.
An IP walked up behind me and said, “Mister.”
He offered me a cigarette, a Miami. He called me brother. It was a windy day. You had to be careful smoking Miamis on a windy day; one false move and the Miami would turn to ash in a great flash of light. I cupped the cigarette. The haji cop admired my form. He smiled knowingly, and said he wanted to ask me something. I said alright.
He gave me a long windup about this crippled wife of his: “The leg is very sick, you see.”
He asked if I had any morphine I could spare.
“You want me to give you morphine?”
“Aha! You did not know. But you see, I too know things about medicine.”
“I’m sorry but I have no morphine I can give you.”
“You have the morphine, yes?”
“If I give you morphine I’ll get in trouble.”
“You can give the morphine to me?”
“No.”
He stopped smiling and he said something in Arabic. Sounded like “motherfucker.”
Going home, the Humvees stopped to wait to cross the pontoon bridge. Sergeant North saw the shoeless haji kids and Pebbles standing out there and he got an idea. He opened his door and called to Pebbles. He held out an MRE and waved to her. She hurried towards him, reaching out for the MRE, and North, who incidentally survived the tour without a scratch, pulled the MRE out of her reach just when she got there and he shut the up-armored door and thought it was funny.
* * *
—
ON DAYS when it wasn’t our turn to go to the police station we’d get sent out to the middle of fucking nowhere to collect unexploded ordnance. A couple of us would have mine detectors. Sometimes we’d walk in old minefields. It was boring as hell.
We were out this way around an old barracks complex. It had been bombed in one of the wars, and all the buildings were in ruins. I wandered around. I got to thinking of Emily and I tried to picture what she was doing. I pictured her eating her lunch, probably something with lentils. Then I remembered it wasn’t lunchtime where she was.
There was an old Air Force bomb lying out on the desert floor. It hadn’t exploded whenever it was dropped. It was cracked open and there was green foam that had come out of it. Our people took turns posing with the bomb, having their pictures taken.
The lieutenant called it in.
The radio came back and said to get away from the bomb.
So they all got away from the bomb.
That same day three vans full of explosives went off and killed more than 140 outside the mosque near the police station. First Platoon was there when it happened. Some of them stood on the roof of the police station and filmed what they could get of it with their digital cameras. I saw the videos they took and you couldn’t really see anything.
* * *
—
OUR FIRST raid was on an apartment complex north of the Big Shia City. We came up in a wedge formation over a long stretch of open ground looking up at a lot of windows. It had been raining. I thought, This isn’t a bad way of drawing fire.
All I had was a 9mm pistol and everyone else had a proper gun and I felt like a fool. I asked the sergeant nearest me, “Am I supposed to have my weapon drawn? Cuz I don’t know. It seems kind of stupid.”
Staff Sergeant Greene had been an NYPD cop. He had enlisted after September 11. They said he’d killed 15 hajis in 2003. He was no faker.
He said, “Shut up.”
So I drew my pistol and I did my best, but I had my mind made up to look into getting a better gun when I got back to the FOB.
A lot of bomb-making material was found in the apartment of an IP captain, and he was detained. We also found a few dozen mortar rounds and 155mm shells all around the grounds behind the buildings. One-five-fives were the big ones. You hit an IED with a couple one-five-fives in it and you were having a bad day, probably your last bad day. So we gathered up all of those and brought them back with us and rode back to the FOB with them rolling around on the floors of the tracks, wondering if we’d suddenly disappear.
* * *
—
WE WENT back to the Big Shia City for the Ashura. One hundred thousand pilgrims would be there. At least 100,000. We expected attacks. We were staying at the police station through the week, a whole platoon’s worth of us.
I was doing a turn on radio guard. It was the middle of the night. Valentine’s Day was coming up and there was a laptop with Internet in the radio room, so I got an idea about ordering Emily some flowers. I had my debit card on me. I asked Staff Sergeant Castro and he said I could use the computer. Castro was laid-back. I went online and found an affordable orchid for $110. It had to be an orchid; nothing else would do.
I couldn’t come up with anything good to put on the card. I was tired, I guess. I ended up typing the bouquet of parentheses from Seymour: An Introduction. I thought she’d know what it was. I signed “love” and my initials.
Staff Sergeant Castro asked me if I was a rich kid.