Over the course of the next week, Golf Company settled into a loose routine that would form the basis for our combat rhythms and that would give some vague shape to our new life in Ramadi. The CO created a rotation schedule guaranteeing that at least one out of every eight days was spent guarding the Outpost, which meant that, except for periodic squad-sized local security patrols, the majority of the day was spent either on or behind the compound walls. Another of the eight days was scheduled to be “off.” In theory, this meant a day free of all mission responsibilities for the Marines. (The platoon commanders and platoon sergeants stood duty as watch officers—even in theory, we never had a dedicated day off.) The other six days were spent running missions, either as the platoon tasked to take the twelve to fourteen hours during sunup, the platoon tasked to take the remainder during sundown, or the platoon tasked to stand ready for twenty-four straight hours as the backup for both (the QRF platoon). Golf Company’s final eight-day schedule, then, went as follows:
DAY ONE: Day Ops
DAY TWO: Night Ops/Tertiary QRF
DAY THREE: QRF
DAY FOUR: Security
DAY FIVE: Day Ops
DAY SIX: Night Ops/Tertiary QRF
DAY SEVEN: QRF
DAY EIGHT: “Off”/Secondary QRF/Gunny Duty
A few days after our first mission, on our first “off” day, I walked into the platoon’s courtyard to check on the men and found eight gray Marines shuffling confusedly around. I almost fell over. In the dim light of the early evening, the strange figures looked like statues come to life, but on closer inspection these animated wonders turned out to be merely Mahardy, Yebra, Henderson, Guzon, Bolding, and three others. Shirtless, they ground to a halt when I walked into the courtyard. From stony faces eight eyeballs rolled whitely in my direction, the only proof that these now-still creatures actually lived. Even Bolding’s dark black skin had succumbed to a fine gray powder that covered every square inch of him, but his hundred-megawatt-smile still shone through the dust and obvious exhaustion. As he was the first Marine I recognized, I made a beeline for Bolding to ask what had happened to turn my platoon into living statues. Before I got there, though, I was intercepted by an agitated Noriel.
“Sir, sir, sir! I finally found you. I’ve been looking all over for you, sir. The XO made the Marines move concrete powder bags for the past three hours. Each of the bags, he weights about fifty pounds, sir. We had to put them in one building, and we did it, sir, but as soon as we finished, the XO decided that we had to move them to another one. So we had to redo it, sir! Now the Marines is filthy, but Gunny’s told the companies we can’t use bottled waters to take showers. I asked Staff Sergeant if we could use him just this once, but he said no. Sir, how can the Marines sleep like this?” Noriel waved his arms at the statues.
How indeed? We had no running water, and all of the baby wipes we had brought with us from the States wouldn’t even clean one of my men. At the courtyard’s entrance, I peered around the corner. None of the company staff were in view. I ducked back to Noriel and told him to sneak into the mess hall and take whatever water he needed. If anyone asked my sergeant what he was doing, he was to tell them I had ordered him to retrieve some water. If they had a problem with it, they could deal with me directly.
Hearing this, Noriel grinned and was off like a shot to the mess hell. Five minutes later he returned, arms and cargo pockets full of bottles of water.
Establishing any sort of routine in Ramadi was nearly impossible. We soon learned that our missions were completely unpredictable and would arise, or change themselves, at any time, day or night. Being technically “off” was no guarantee of rest.
There was one notable exception to this patternless pattern: the morning route sweep. Because Michigan was such an important transportation artery for all coalition forces in the area, keeping it free and clear of IEDs became a high priority for our company, so almost every morning started off with a platoon patrol straight down the highway from the Outpost on the eastern edge of Ramadi to the Government Center on the city’s western boundary. The mission seems sound and practicable in theory; even the term, “route sweep,” sounds professional, efficient, antiseptic. The reality is anything but—a route sweep is a nasty mission that can only be accomplished by ugly, primitive, and fairly risky methods.
The Army had performed its sweeps by driving down the highway in fully armored Humvees at forty miles per hour, minimum, looking for whatever suspicious objects they could spot at such high speeds while holding their breaths, just waiting to get exploded. By contrast, we performed our route sweeps by walking down Michigan wearing body armor. Like the Army, we also held our breaths, waiting to get exploded. Walking at five miles an hour rather than driving at forty, we stood a much better chance of spotting unusual objects among the trash and other clutter littering the road. Wearing only body armor, though, we also stood a much worse chance of surviving a blast. Even at the slow speed, Marines still rarely spotted well-camouflaged IEDs until we were about thirty to fifty feet away, well within the kill zone. Each morning route sweep was an extremely nerve-racking forty minutes, to say the least. I envied the Army and their armored vehicles.
Every platoon commander had his own preferred time of morning to do the sweep, giving the recurring mission some inherent unpredictability. Exhibiting regular mission patterns is a great way to get your men killed. Quist liked to wait until midmorning, when he could be sure that the streets would be crowded with people. If they weren’t, or if certain spots seemed to be widely avoided, then he could be relatively certain that an IED was in place. By understanding the ebb and flow of daily life, he used the city’s inhabitants as early warning devices.
As compelling as it was, I had heard of too many times when tens or hundreds of unsuspecting civilians were blown up to trust too fully to this logic. Instead, I preferred doing my sweeps early in the morning, just after first light. The terrorists are Homo sapiens,and, like the rest of the species, they are subject to the very human desire not to wake up at 4 AM. Furthermore, without crowds, the insurgents were deprived of their most valuable asset: normal civilians to provide cover and concealment for their operations. Since we couldn’t use civilians in the same callous manner—as mere pieces of terrain at best and as human shields at worst—I liked to level the playing field whenever I could by depriving the enemy of their inherent advantage. They could still detonate us, of course, but now they would have to do so from a nearby building instead of a nearby crowd, and a distant triggerman would be deprived of a hidden, anonymous observer. The downside to such early morning operations, though, was that the light wasn’t as good as it was later, so it was a bit easier to miss well-hidden IEDs.
At 5 AM on March 14, Joker One set out on its maiden route sweep. An engineer squad had been attached to our company, and I had earlier grabbed two of these explosives experts and asked them to walk point during the mission. They moved on the sidewalks on the north and south sides of Michigan, and Teague’s team followed closely behind. Walking on the median, straight down the center of the road, were Noriel, Mahardy, and I. Someone had to investigate the area, but walking in the middle of a four-lane highway with no cover for thirty meters on any side was a dicey business. I wanted the smallest number of Marines possible exposed like that, so on that day the leaders walked the medians while everyone else stayed on the sidewalks, closer to the buildings and cover. Later, Noriel and I traded off center responsibilities to give the enemy a less concentrated target, but on this first unpleasant mission we wanted to send a signal to the Marines about what they could expect from their leadership going forward.
By the time we made it to the road’s center, Bowen and Leza had already peeled off to our south and north, respectively—in addition to being a juicy bomb magnet, first squad also presented a tempting target to potential ambushers holed up in the multistory buildings bordering the highway. By patrolling one to two blocks off Michigan, second and third squads protected our flanks and provided some early warning in the event of an enemy staging to attack. For forty-five minutes, Joker One walked the city this way. I alternated between using the PRR to monitor all of our squads’ positions, scanning the median for bombs, and trying not to hyperventilate.
Finally we hit the Government Center, and I relaxed a bit. The sweep part of the mission was over, and I leaned my head back to tell Mahardy to call in the checkpoint. He was already on it. He was more than on it: Not only was Mahardy telling the COC our current location, but he was telling them where we were headed next and that he would let them know when we hit our follow-on checkpoint. This kid was a keeper, I thought. The more I could rely on my RO to communicate with the COC in my stead, the more I could focus on controlling my platoon.
At the Government Center, Joker One wheeled south, deep into the butchers’ area. Incredulous Iraqis stopped everything to stare. In the past, U.S. forces had rarely, if ever, ventured down here, and they certainly had not done so on foot. We walked past butchers who halted in mid-chop, schoolchildren who stopped walking to school, shopkeepers who completely ignored their customers, customers who completely ignored their shopping. Smiling and waving when we could, we pressed on, moving quickly through the area. I wanted to say something, to talk to the locals, to reach out to them, but without any translators in our platoon it was impossible. Bowen tried his rudimentary Arabic a few times, but the Iraqis couldn’t understand him. He had apparently learned a different dialect.
When we hit the Farouq district, the stares intensified, and some took a harder edge. We still smiled and waved, and after about ten minutes a crowd of children formed around us, all shouting at once in broken English: Mister mister, give me, give me. Give me Pepsi. Give me soccer ball. Give me Frisbee, pencil. We handed out all the candy and writing utensils we had on us. I started thinking that no matter where you went, little kids still acted like little kids. It was reassuring that in this crazy city, at least something translated across cultural lines. I broke out in a wide smile. Then Carson called me over the PRR:
“Sir, they’re starting to throw rocks at us back here.” He was at the tail end of second squad.
“Who, the men?”
“No, sir, the kids.”
The smile vanished. “What? The kids are throwing rocks at you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, well, let them throw rocks for now.” Five more minutes passed, then:
“Sir, they’re pretty good at throwing rocks. These rocks, they really hurt, sir. Some of them are big, too, sir.”
I was at a complete loss as to how to respond. We had come here to win hearts and minds, and I had never envisioned a scenario where I would have to choose between roughing up ten-year-old kids or forcing my Marines to endure some serious punishment at their hands. If anyone could take it for a little while, though, Carson could. Walking, I pondered our response, but after about two minutes of enduring a vicious pelting, Carson solved the problem for me.
“Hey, sir,” he radioed, “we fixed it.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I grabbed some old man standing by, pointed to the little kids throwing rocks, and he chased them away. We’re good to go, sir.”
“Oh. Good work. Thanks, Carson. Keep it up.”
“Roger that, sir.”
When we made it back to the base about half an hour later, I was still unnerved. What kind of child tries repeatedly to stone someone who has just given them a present?
Maybe children all over the world weren’t the same after all, and maybe we needed a more nuanced understanding of the various neighborhoods and of the attitudes of the Iraqis who inhabited them. For the first time, I wondered whether our smile-and-wave tactics would be sufficient to win the hearts and minds of the adults (and keep them from attacking us with rockets) if they couldn’t even prevent the children from stoning us.