OIF
EOD handled the bombs. SSTP treated the wounds. PRP processed the bodies. The 08s fired DPICM. The MAW provided CAS. The 03s patrolled the MSRs. Me and PFC handled the money.
If a sheikh supported the ISF, we distributed CERP. If the ESB destroyed a building, we gave fair comp. If the 03s shot a civilian, we paid off the families. That meant leaving the FOB, where it’s safe, and driving the MSRs.
I never wanted to leave the FOB. I never wanted to drive the MSRs or roll with 03s. PFC did. But me, when I got 3400 in boot camp, I thought, Great. I’d work in an office, be a POG. Be the POG of POGs and then go to college for business. I didn’t need to get some, I needed to get the G.I. Bill. But when I was training at BSTS, they told me, You better learn this, 3400s go outside the wire. A few months later, I was strapped up, M4 in Condition 1, surrounded by 03s, backpack full of cash, twitchiest guy in Iraq.
I did twenty-four missions, some with Marine 03s, some with National Guardsmen from 2/136. My last mission was to AZD. A couple of Iraqis had driven up fast on a TCP. They ignored the EOF, the dazzlers and the warning shots, and died for it. I’d been promoted to E4, so PFC was taking over consolation payments, but I went with him to give a left-seat right-seat on working off the FOB. PFC always needed his hand held. In the HMMWV it was me, PFC, PV2 Herrera, and SGT Green. Up in the turret on the 240G was SPC Jaegermeir-Schmidt, aka J-15.
There wasn’t a lot to look at on the MSR south of HB. We scanned for all the different types of IEDs AQI would throw at us. IEDs made of old 122 shells, or C4, or homemade explosives. Chlorine bombs mixed with HE. VBIEDs in burned-out cars. SVBIEDs driven by lunatics. IEDs in drainage ditches or dug into the middle of the road. Some in the bodies of dead camels. Others daisy-chained together—one in the open to make you stop, another to kill you where you stand. IEDs everywhere, but most missions, nothing. Even knowing how bad the MSRs were, knowing we could die, we got bored.
PFC said, “It’d be cool to get IED’d, ’long as no one got hurt.”
J-15 snapped, said, “That’s bad juju, that’s worse than eating the Charms in an MRE.”
Temp was 121, and I remember bitching about the AC. Then the IED hit.
PV2 swerved and the HMMWV rolled. It wasn’t like the HEAT trainer at Lejeune. JP-8 leaked and caught fire, burning through my MARPATs. Me and SGT Green got out, and then we pulled PV2 out by the straps of his PPE. But PV2 was unconscious, and I ran back for PFC, but he was on the side where the IED hit, and it was too late.
PFC’s Eye Pro cracked and warped in the heat. The plastic snaps on his PPE melted. And even though J-15 left his legs behind, at least he got CASEVAC’d to the SSTP and died on the table. PRP had to wash PFC out with Simple Green and peroxide.
The MLG awarded me a NAM with a V. Don’t see too many 3400s got a NAM with a V. It’s up there next to my CAR and my Purple Heart and my GWOT Expeditionary and my Sea Service and my Good Cookie and my NDS. Even 03s show respect when they see it. But give me a NAM with a V, give me the Medal of Honor, it doesn’t change that I’m still breathing. And when people ask what the NAM is for, I say it’s so I don’t feel bad that I was too slow for PFC.
In boot camp, the DIs teach you Medal of Honor stories. Most recipients were KIA. Their families didn’t get a homecoming, they got a CACO knocking on their door. They got SGLI. They got a trip to Dover to see Marines lift the remains out of a C-130. They got a closed casket, because IEDs and SAF don’t leave pretty corpses. The DIs tell you these stories over and over, and even a POG like me knows what they mean.
So I tell my family, “I’m staying in—the G.I. Bill can wait.” And I tell my OIC, “Sir, I want to go to OEF. OEF’s where the fight is now.” And I tell my girlfriend, “Okay, leave me.” And I tell PFC, “I wish it’d been me,” even though I don’t mean it.
I’m going to OEF. As a 3400. As a POG, but a POG with experience. I’ll distribute CERP again. I’ll roll with 03s again. And maybe I’ll get IED’d again. But this time, out on the MSRs, I will be terrified.
I will remember the sounds PFC made. I will remember that I was his NCO, so he was my responsibility. And I will remember PFC himself as though I loved him. So I won’t really remember PFC at all—not why I gave him low PRO/CONs, not why I told him he’d never make E4.
Instead I will remember that our HMMWV had 5 PX. That the SITREP was 2 KIA, 3 WIA. That KIA means they gave everything. That WIA means I didn’t.
MONEY AS A WEAPONS SYSTEM
Success was a matter of perspective. In Iraq it had to be. There was no Omaha Beach, no Vicksburg Campaign, not even an Alamo to signal a clear defeat. The closest we’d come were those toppled Saddam statues, but that was years ago. I remember Condoleezza Rice declaring that civil administration and police functions had no part in a military campaign. “We don’t need to have the 82nd Airborne,” she said, “escorting kids to kindergarten.” In 2008, around the time I got there, the 82nd Airborne was building greenhouses near Tikrit. It was a brave new world, and as a Foreign Service Officer heading an embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team, I was right at the heart of it.
Touching down in Camp Taji, I was nervous, and not simply because of the danger. I wasn’t sure I belonged. I hadn’t believed in the war when it started, though I did believe in government service. I also knew my career would be helped by time in Iraq. The team I’d be leading had already been in country for a while. I was the only Foreign Service Officer of the group, but the sum total of my experience doing reconstruction consisted of a few college summers in Alabama working for Habitat for Humanity. I didn’t think it would help.
My colleagues had, theoretically, been hired for actual skills. As I exited the helicopter and headed toward a heavyset man holding a piece of paper with my name scrawled on it, I had the nagging impression that he would see through me to what I feared I was—a fraud and a war tourist.
It came as a surprise, then, when the man holding the sign—Bob, our ePRT’s one ex-military team member—cavalierly informed me that he’d signed up on a 3161 as a lark. He laughed about it, as though his lack of commitment were funny, while he escorted me to the Nissan pickup truck the ePRT used to get around base. “I never did anything like this before,” he said. “I never even figured I’d pass the physical. I’ve got a heart murmur. But there was no physical. There wasn’t even an interview. They called me up and told me I was hired, straight off the résumé.”
Bob, I quickly learned, had an existential view of the Iraq war. We were fighting in Iraq because we were fighting in Iraq. His was not to reason why, his was but to receive a $250,000 salary with three paid vacations and little expectation of tangible accomplishments.
“Cindy’s a true believer,” Bob said as he drove us to the ePRT office. “Fighting the fight of good versus evil. Democracy versus Islam. All that Sunday school shit. Careful with her.”
“What is she working on?”
“She’s our women’s initiative adviser,” said Bob. “She used to be on a local school board back in wherever the fuck she’s from. Kansas or Idaho or something. She handles our women’s business association, and she’s starting an agricultural project for widows.”
“She knows about farming?” I said hopefully.
“Nope, but I taught her how to Google.”
He parked the car outside a rickety hut made of plywood, which, he announced, was our office. Inside were two rooms, four desks, a long series of power strips, and a skinny little woman in her mid-fifties, peering intently at her computer screen.
“There’s two hundred fifty squirts in a gallon of milk!” she said.
Bob silently mouthed the word Google. Then he announced, “Cindy. Our fearless leader is here.”
“Oh my,” she said, springing out of her seat and walking over to shake my hand. “Sure glad to meet you!”
“I hear you’re working on an agricultural initiative,” I said.
“And a health clinic,” she said. “That’ll be tough, but it’s what the women tell me they need.”
I looked around the room.
“You can take either of the empty desks,” said Bob. “Steve won’t be using his.”
“Who’s Steve?” I said.
“The other contractor we were supposed to have,” said Cindy. She made a sad face. “He got pretty badly injured on his first day.”
“His first day?” I said. I looked over at the eerily empty desk in the back room. This was, I thought, a war zone. Death and disfigurement were possibilities for all of us.
“When he flew in to Taji,” Bob said, smirking, “he jumped out of the Black Hawk action-movie style, like he was gonna have to sprint through machine-gun fire to get to safety. Shattered his ankle with his very first step.”
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