Friday, May 20, 2005
Letter from a soldier in Iraq to his brother
A friend of mine, who often comments very thoughtfully on this blog, has a younger brother who is a reservist serving in Iraq. His recent dispatch home is revealing, not the least for his dim view of the new Iraqi army. Note also the active role played by Ukranian forces in the mission described.
Hi. It's 2300 over here. I woke up this morning at 0300 to go on a mission, to make a starting point at 0430. We drove in a convoy to a place called Suena. We set up in a staging area, and then drove over to the fuel point at the brigade tactical operations center to top off our tank and link up with some Marines and military intelligence types. While I was gone, an Iraqi dropped an AK-47 which was not on safe and the weapon accidentally discharged. An Iraqi soldier received an entrance wound to his right flank, and an exit wound to his right abdomen. I met the ambulance at the brigade toc, as it was the medevacc site. We dressed his wounds, started an IV, and waited an hour for the Ukrainians to send out an evac helicopter. It was a Hoplite, escorted by a HindD. (I remember my aircraft types from my air defense artillery days.)
We drove back to the staging area, grabbed a quick meal ready to eat, and then set off on an operation designed to apprehend insurgents. (I can relax a little on operations security now that the operation is over.) Things got all jacked up for a while, since we were at the rear, in order to allow the Iraqis to run things. It was a giant cluster fuck for a while. We hit two mosques and several private residences. There was a sniper in one mosque, but he fled after firing a few rounds. He was wounded in his thigh, and apprehended. We then played hide and seek for seven hours. Almost two hundred individuals were detained. While I was in an uparmored Humvee, trying to locate the source of some incoming rounds, an Iraqi soldier shot himself in the foot. This is discouraging, because we kept yelling at the Iraqi soldiers, telling them to take their fingers off of the trigger until they had acquired a target and were ready to fire. They keep walking around, swinging their loaded weapons nonchalantly, and pointing them indiscriminately. They then are surprised when fraticidal or self-inflicted gunshot wounds occur.
We never did find the source of the incoming fire. Later in the day, we heard additional fire from the same location, and someone spotted the shooters fleeing. We attempted to pin them down in a large area of cultivated fields which had been freshly irrigated and which sported seven foot tall plants. We had a Ukrainian helicopter circling the field for a while, but it couldn't fire its cannon for fear of causing casualties to our forces. (The cannon requires a region 200 meters square for its targets. Soviet made. Not very accurate.) We tried to drive our Humvee over the fields to push the insurgents towards our blocking formation on the other side of the field. We did flush out several, but the Humvee got stuck and eventually was buried up to the transmission in the soft mud. We winched the Humvee out with another Humvee, but the quarry had fled by the time we were operational again. Damn. We were less than 100 meters from where the bird was circling, and we almost had them all.
Eventually, we concluded the operation at about 2000, as the sun was sinking over the Tigris river, and the muezzin were calling out for evening prayers. We saddled up and drove back to Numaniyah, arriving on post at about 2200. The Iraqi soldiers at two of our checkpoints had not waited for orders to join up in the convoy. They had just jetted out when they got bored. (Actually, the Marines had jetted at about 1400, as soon as the excitement was over, avoiding the tedious mopping up of cordoning off buidings and fields and conducting searches.) We wasted about 45 minutes trying to locate our lost sheep, and finally just headed for home, where we found them. If they were Americans, they would get smoked for pulling nonsense like that. Since they are Iraqis, nothing much is going to happened. Just like the Iraqi whose weapon accidentally discharged. In an American unit, he would face a field grade article 15, an official letter of reprimand, and a summary court martial, with a reduction in rank of one pay grade. In the Iraqi, he will get away with saying, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."
We all decided to postpone recovery for tomorrow, and I just got done cleaning my weapon and restocking my aid bag (you have to stay ready) and I've checked my email before hitting the sack for the night. I am pretty tired, but I can't sleep just yet. I think I may have earned my combat medic badge for today's action. [Deleted editorial comment that does not bear repeating. - ed.] If I get it, fine, but if not, oh well. Or, as they say in Arabic, inshallah (God willing, or, it was the will of Allah that I missed formation by half an hour). Just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive, glad to still be alive, and looking forward to seeing you all again one day. Inshallah.
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