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Shade It Black

Death and After in Iraq

Casemate Publishing

To Iraq

WASHINGTON—Word was already circulating throughout Washington that the Marines were planning operational changes in Iraq. Without criticizing the Army's heavy-handed tactics on the ground there, the Marines were quietly working on changing operational tactics.

During the Iraq War, I got to know some of their tactics. Their orders from their commanders were to "win the hearts and the minds of the Iraqi people." They were tough when they had to be, but also thoughtful and considerate.

But now, as they prepare to relieve the Army in some parts of Iraq, the Marines are formulating new ways to interact with civilians, using restraint in the use of force and emphasizing cultural sensitivity.

Marine commanders, recognize the Iraqi population is angered by current military tactics such as knocking down doors of houses and shops, demolishing buildings, flattening fruit orchards, firing artillery in civilian areas and isolating entire neighborhoods with barbed wire fences ...

According to an internal Marine document, platoons of Marines soon to arrive in Iraq intend to live among Iraqis in their towns and villages while training the Iraqi police and civil defense forces. These units will resemble an armed version of the Peace Corps, and will be fully informed about Iraqi culture, customs and Islamic traditions.

From: "Preparing Marines for Iraq," by Barbara Ferguson, The Arab News, March 27, 2004

We walked up the ramp of a huge transport plane whose back end opened like a Thanksgiving turkey. Our destination: Kuwait, soon followed by Iraq. We were packed into its fuselage as though we were stuffing, sitting shoulder to shoulder, with the entire side of the body of one person touching the entire side of the body of the next, from shoulders to feet. Identical and attached, we resembled one of those paper people chains that grade school students make. Our knees were touching the knees of the person facing us, so we were boxed in on three sides by strangers. Many of us were wearing earplugs, but even if we had not been, the plane was too loud for conversation and, as Marines, we could not voice our innate human fear. For the eighteen-hour flight, we sat there, against each other, letting our thoughts wander.

When we landed in Kuwait, many of us already had our war face on. Our weapons were on "condition 3," "magazine inserted, chamber empty, bolt forward, safety on, ejection port cover on." We were on the lookout—because here we were, finally, in the Middle East. Young men who worked out every day puffed out their chests and positioned their arms in ways that made their biceps bulge. Smaller men held their M-16s in the same way they had seen Rambo hold his weapon in long ago movies. The Hispanic and Black kids assumed threatening facial expressions and thugged-up their gait, taking up as much space as possible when they rolled by. The White guys clenched their jaws and narrowed their eyes. Every Marine's head swiveled continuously, their eyes searching the environment for threats.

In Kuwait, we had to wait for the vehicles—the Humvees and the seven tons as well as the heavy equipment, the wratches and trams—to arrive before we could set up for the convoy. During the three or so week stay in Kuwait, we trained. A favorite session had us standing in the desert sand in the spots we would have been in had we actually been in real vehicles. I would pretend I was behind the wheel of a Humvee while Copas stood to my right, a foot or so away. Five other Marines positioned themselves behind us, where they would sit ... as if we were in a vehicle. At random times, Sergeant Johnson would shout out, "Ambush, right!" and we would all dive into the sand, forming a perimeter. Then we would practice advancing while attacking maneuvers by springing up and lunging forward and back down into the sand. "I'm up, they see me, I'm down," we would repeat to ourselves. For a moment or two it might have seemed like a joke, especially when we were riding along in our invisible Humvee, but at the same time, we each knew that it was possible that in a day or two we would be ambushed and would have to know what to do.

When the vehicles arrived, the Mortuary Affairs platoon was fortunate enough to have been assigned three Humvees and a seven ton and because I had my Humvee license and was a mechanic, I was assigned to drive one of them. Copas was my A driver—my assistant driver—and was in the front passenger seat. Our unarmored vehicle—our doors were about two inches thick whereas the Army had steel and Kevlar reinforced six inch doors—was open in the back where there were two benches that seated the other five Marines. It is difficult for the driver to wield a weapon, so my M-16 was propped upright, wedged against the door. The Marines in the back of the Humvee provided security.

We left at 3:00 a.m. and drove until 11:00 p.m. that night, when we pulled into an Army detachment base, which was more of a checkpoint, one of several that could be found along a major route, in order for convoys to refuel or sleep. We parked our vehicles where they would need to be in the morning, positioned for a rapid exit in the event we were attacked and had to leave quickly. The army set up a perimeter and stood post while we tried our best to change our socks, use the head, brush our teeth, eat something, and find a place to sleep. Many of the men jostled around trying to find a warm spot on the hood of a truck, high above the sand. People crashed in the backs of the Humvees or on top of the seven tons, anywhere they could find space. By the time we might have begun to calm down but before we were able to sleep, it was time to go. On paper we got four hours of sleep, but in reality, on the ground, there in Iraq, we got none.

We drove from 0300 to 2300 for three nights. We stopped at various Army checkpoints to take advantage of their perimeters. Sometimes we traveled along a sort of highway, with street lamps along its edges, but nothing else, nothing that could be seen on either side of the road, just the highway itself.

One afternoon we were beat from the tension and the lack of sleep. There was nothing but sand as far as we could see in every direction, except for the paved road we were on, when I looked up ahead and noticed a man, walking. One man walking, alone, in the middle of nothing, like a solitary man on the moon. It didn't make sense. I was tired and the situation was tense and the vast and monotonous sameness of the scenery made me wonder if I were hallucinating. I couldn't imagine where he was coming from or where he was going. Where is this guy going? What is he doing? There was nothing at all around. Occasionally we would see a home on the side of the road made from clay and grass or straw. One solitary house, alone, on a barren moonscape, like the man I saw. A tiny, little one-room house. I thought, "What's this house doing here? Is it really here?" There was nothing else as far as you could see. There was nothing.

The next day, a week day, we drove through a village, and saw several young children running around. Why aren't they in school? What are you little ones doing running around in the streets? Is it because we are here? Outside the villages, the convoy would pull just to the side of the road for a break and that was when all the guys would form a long straight line, all facing in the same direction, and urinate into the sand. Some of the female Marines chose not to relieve themselves. They must have regulated their water intake and sweated most of it out because very few seemed to go when they had this chance.

On the third day the convoy came to an abrupt halt. We may have been attacked or maybe there was a firefight up ahead, but the line of vehicles was so long and we were so far back that it was impossible to say. We pulled off to the side of the road, jumped from our vehicles and hid in the dirt and grass of the embankment to provide a perimeter for the convoy. Were we under attack? Were we about to take fire? We didn't know. We were hyper-vigilant, completely silent, when a Marine commented on a heavy, pungent, odor that engulfed us all. We couldn't identify the smell or locate its source, but eventually realized that it had to come from the land itself. It was the smell of a countryside without infrastructure, without piping, plumbing, or treatment plants. It was the smell of soil gone old and decrepit, ground that had lost its nutrients hundreds of years ago. There were cows in the field in the direction I was facing and they were emaciated, because the grass had dried up into something that even hungry cows would not eat. So they stood there, skinny and scrawny, not moving, as though they were thin, tiny cardboard cut-outs of cows set on a piece of parched plywood in someone's basement on top of which a kid's model train circled. They looked lost too and as out of place as the man I had seen wandering the desert, or the occasional house we passed, stuck in the sand, without a yard, a neighborhood, or a nearby town. As lost and as out of place as we must have looked.

I was behind the wheel and Copas, my assistant driver, was in the front passenger seat. When I was looking to the left for something suspicious, he was looking off to the right. Anything out of the ordinary was suspicious. Usually the roadways were bare, so if we saw a pile of trash alongside the road, it was suspicious. An abandoned refrigerator or a dead animal alongside the road was suspicious. A meals-ready-to-eat box was and a soda can was too, be cause that was how insurgents would disguise Improvised Explosive Devices. The media reported that they were hidden under piles of human feces and inside live sheep that would be herded close to the roads that convoys traveled along. These bombs would be strapped to pedestrians and hidden in vehicles. We would be driving down the road in a convoy and there would be vehicles trying to cut in between our trucks. It could have been a bicycle or a motorcycle, a car or a pickup truck. Copas' responsibility was to ensure that they stayed away. We had been taught hand gestures that the Iraqis understood to mean, "Stop!" We learned not to use the left hand for gestures and, when pointing, to do so not with a single finger, but with the entire right hand. We were taught to shout out certain phrases as we drove along, which, to the Iraqis, meant, "Do not do anything that we might interpret as a threat!" Words and phrases like "awgaf!" and "le tetharak!" Our uniforms helped to intimidate the Iraqis, who easily distinguished our digital cammies from the standard issue of the Army's infantry. Many Iraqis believed that to become a Marine, a person had to first take another's life, through an initiation ritual of sorts. Their level of fear and eagerness to obey when around us reflected this belief. If for some reason a vehicle didn't stop, there were Marines in the back of the Humvee who would point their weapons at them and that would usually be enough. The A driver picks up what the driver misses, and the Marines in the back look over us. We worked together, like fingers on a hand. Seven Marines in a Humvee are not seven distinct individuals, each in his or her own universe, day-dreaming or talking to a distant acquaintance on a cell phone or listening to his own music on an iPod. We are not the same as a group of seven typical American teenagers driving to the beach. Instead, we are parts of a single organism, each carrying out a particular set of responsibilities that allow for the vehicle and its occupants to arrive at its destination in one piece. We are a single organism. An invasion force does what it does, not for itself, but so others can get to their bases safely. Marines can sleep in tents at night because there are other Marines awake in foxholes along the camp's periphery. This kind of connectivity requires a deep trust in one another and it generates a deep bond, a closeness of brothers. And, to a great but somewhat lesser degree, brothers and sisters.

I had not slept in days and was exhausted. When I started to get sleepy, I told Copas he had to keep me awake. He talked to me about home and his daughter and the activities they shared, and then about everything else he could think of, just to keep me from falling asleep. Before long, we were joking around and I asked if he knew of any of the travel games that kids play in cars. He did not. "You've got to learn these games, Copas," I said. "Pretty soon your little girl's going to be fidgety in the back of the car on a long drive. You'll have to entertain her. Educate her." I recalled one word game that required one person say a word that begins with the letter "A," then the next a word that begins with the letter "B," and so on. The sequencing of the words has to make sense so that they develop into sentences, then into a story line. Copas and I drove through the desert creating stories about Giraffes Hitting Ice Junkies and A Big Circus Dance.

Most explosions and most deaths occurred on and around bridges. The insurgents hid on top of them or underneath them and watched as we approached. Our orders were to drive slowly to the bridge and then gun it when passing over or under it. We always saw people on top of and under the bridges and we wondered if one were holding a remote detonator and, if so, which one. Which one has a grenade? Which one has his crosshairs on us? There was no way to tell. The Iraqis wore long, shapeless, cotton clothes under which anything could be hidden. The bridges were scary to drive under and scarier to drive over. Insurgents constructed what were called "daisy chains," or a series of interconnected explosives. A single detonator could trigger a number of bombs that could blow up several vehicles in the convoy rather than just one. There may be four or five simultaneous explosions, or there may be a single explosion, then another and another and another. The blasts may hit different vehicles in the convoy, trapping the still unscathed trucks in between the burning ones. The convoy may continue driving through dense clouds thick with smoke and debris, only to fall through the air, truck by truck, where a demolished bridge had stood seconds before.

Driving through villages was a challenge too. We couldn't get too close to the vehicle in front of us because it could explode and we might get trapped. Yet we couldn't fall too far behind it either as that could allow a car or bicycle or pedestrian to get in among the vehicles—although, when you think about it, we were the ones getting in their way; it was their village, after all. They really should not be that close to us, but they are trying to cross the street, so what was I suppose to do? Children would run into the road and a burdensome decision would fall upon the drivers. We want to stop—any human being would want to stop—but we are in a convoy, with each vehicle moving at the same speed and maintaining a precise distance from the one in front of it, and the child might want to slow us down because his uncle has an automatic weapon and is standing on a roof thirty yards away. It might mean a child's life or a Marine's life. Normally, a driver would say, without a second thought, "It's my life." But it is not just his life. It is the lives of all of the Marines who are in the Humvee, and maybe even the ones who are behind it. Or in front of it.

Sometimes the locals would be cheering us as we drove through their village. Other times, they would be screaming at us and throwing things at us. Occasionally they would yell something in English, but as the driver, I was so focused on maintaining our place in the convoy and not getting lost, I couldn't make out what they were saying, exactly, but I knew it wasn't a welcoming greeting. I do not recall seeing women alongside the roads, just men and small boys.

At one point we were driving through a village that was completely razed. Houses were half-standing. Doors were broken off hinges. A ghost town. No one. Nothing. We could see the dilapidated houses and the leftovers of the village. Cars abandoned. Stray dogs. It hadn't really hit me that we were in Iraq until I saw that devastation. I was struck less by the remnants of the village in front of me than I was by what wasn't there. My eyes searched for them, but I couldn't find intact houses, moving vehicles, living people. My brain tried without success to make sense of what wasn't there.

The men and women who came through during the initial invasion had to do this so that we could pass through this village successfully and get to our camp. They had to do this for us to have a chance of passing through alive. Marines do not talk about what they did during the initial invasion. They may say, "Well, we cleared a village." But a village can not simply be "cleared," like a kitchen table is cleared for a poker game. The process of "clearing a village" can be logically and verbally explained: it means we go into a house, we get the people out, we tell them to leave the village. That's how it can be explained. The reality of it is that there is a house with a family in it and a bunch of Marines kick open the door and maybe throw in a smoke grenade, maybe not. They have their rifles loaded and ready and are pointing them at the mother or father or kids, and are yelling at them to get out. You know that there were people who did not want to leave. How could there not have been? There had to be some who refused to go. How could there not have been? The people who refused to go were the corpses we saw as we drove through what had been their village. Killed. Splattered. There was blood on the walls. On the doors. In the streets. On the cars. It wasn't Marine blood. It was civilian blood. There were bodies. Who was going to pick them up? There was no way the families would come back: they'd be scared for their lives, and rightfully so. The invading Marines had to keep moving. We could not stop to clean up the mess that was left behind. This is what the invading Marines—boys and girls, who, only recently had been advancing down the field during a high school football game or rushing a freshmen fraternity—had to do for us to pass through safely.

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Excerpted from Shade It Black by Jess Goodell, John Hearn. Copyright © 2011 Jess Goodell and John Hearn. Excerpted by permission of Casemate Publishing.
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