aSir, are you okay?a aYeah, why?a aSir, your TOCas on fire.a aRight. I got it. Roger.a Goodwin threw his top on and hustled up to the Battalion TOC. He went over to the J-Lens that was focusing in on Yusufiyah, and sure enough, there was a big cloud of black smoke. Goodwin called over and tried to figure out what was happening, but he could get only bits and pieces. After a couple of minutes, he realized this was futile. He sent someone to get Fenlason and everybody from Bravo to get a convoy together as soon as possible.
First Platoonas 3rd Squad was at TCP5. Specialist James Barker had just woken up for an early morning guard shift. He got his gear on and went to the roof. The sun was not completely up yet, just enough for him to be able to see without night-vision goggles. He asked the guy he was relieving if there was anything going on. The guy said he wasnat sure, but he thought FOB Yusufiyah might be on fire. Over to the north there was a dark column of smoke that looked about where the FOB would be. Calls were pa.s.sed over the radio. Yes, Yusufiyah confirmed, we are on fire. Barker called everybody out to the roof to take a look. All they could do at this point was laugh.
aLook, there goes my laptop.a aDo iPods go to heaven?a aWhich is worse? Losing all my photos of my family, or my p.o.r.n? Family, p.o.r.n? p.o.r.n, family?a Everybody had known the FOB was a firetrap, that something like this was not a matter of if but of when. A short had caused an overloaded set of outlets in the MiTT team bay to catch fire and the blaze quickly spread throughout the barn. The structure was engulfed in flames in thirty minutes. Battalion had requested a full complement of fire extinguishers at FOBs Lutufiyah and Yusufiyah and the JS Bridge in December, but defense contractor KBR responded that it was obligated to provide such support only on Camp Striker. Battalion repeatedly sought a.s.sistance from both KBR and Army engineers on Striker, but they got little attention. Two KBR electricians had come down to FOB Yusufiyah to inspect the wiring a few weeks before, but their repairs were minimal. Just nine days earlier, soldiers fighting a fire in the Iraqi area of the FOB had nearly expended all twenty-nine of the FOBas extinguishers. First Sergeant Laskoski sent most of them to Mahmudiyah for an emergency refill, and on January 30 he filed a dire written a.s.sessment of the FOBas fire-readiness, plaintively requesting fire extinguishers, fire axes, and crowbars.
Six days later, the inevitable happened. No one was killed, or even injured, as Laskoski walked through the nascent inferno yelling, aGet up, get up, get up! We are on fire. Out, out, out. Just take what you are wearing. Donat grab anything, donat stop. Out, out, out. Move, move, move.a In the MiTT bay itself, some of the men barely escaped with their lives, gulping down large swallows of acrid smoke as the fire spread fast. Others directed what few sputtering extinguishers were left on the FOB at the flames. One soldier said it was less than a minute from the time he was awakened by the blaze to the time he was pushed out of the room by the spreading smoke and heat.
The loss was devastating to morale. Men s.n.a.t.c.hed what handfuls of personal stuff they could as they left, but almost everything the men owned was gone: clothing, equipment, weapons, pictures, letters, journals, photos, movies, DVDs, music, laptops. Goodwin lost his wedding ring. Goodwinas wife had sent every man in the company a Valentineas Day present, but those were burned before they could be distributed. Norton lost a rosary given to him by his favorite, and recently deceased, uncle.
Most of 2nd Platoon and Bravo Companyas headquarters staff were milling around. Some were wearing T-shirts and ACU bottoms, others had their PT uniforms on, and a couple of guys were wearing just towels and flip-flops. Almost n.o.body had their vests or helmets. Goodwin thought to himself, aI have a platoon that is not mission capable with a new platoon sergeant, I have thirty-five guys without equipment or weapons, and two more platoons who just lost all of their personal possessions. At least no one is dead, but what else could go wrong?a Thatas when the mortars started coming in. A column of smoke makes a great target beacon for long-range weapons, and insurgents took advantage of it. In addition, the companyas own ammunition stores started to cook off. First the small-caliber rounds began to go. They sound like popcorn, but then the .50-cals started to discharge, and their sound was deafening. Finally, all the big stuffa"white phosphorus rounds, grenades, and AT-4 rocketsa"ignited in big thunderous booms and showers of sparks.
Battalion Operations Officer Rob Salome arrived on one of the many convoys the battalion started sending in to ferry whatever supplies they could sc.r.a.pe together on short notice, though the complete refitting of the company would be a months-long process. Brigade and division headquarters tried to push down as much new equipment and clothing as they could, but shortages lasted for weeks, if not months. A box of socks would come in, for example, but they would all be size small. One soldier says he wore the same uniform for seventy days in a row before he got issued a spare. Until housing tents showed up a few weeks later, Bravo lived with the IAs in their barn ahot bunkingaa"sleeping in whatever cot was open, when it was open, regardless of who supposedly owned it.
Blaisdell had been out on an overnight patrol with most of 3rd Platoon. He walked into the FOB midmorning.
aHey, sir,a he said to Salome. aLooks like our building burned down.a aYep,a said Salome.
aAnything we can do?a aNope, not really. I think we got it all covered.a aNo help at all?a aReally, Iad tell you. Thereas nothing to do at the moment.a aWell, in that case, weall just go back out on patrol.a Third Platoon turned around and headed back into Yusufiyah.
After the immediate emergency of the fire was taken care of, Fenlason headed to TCP6 and made that the staging area for 1st Platoon to sift through what they did and did not have. It did not take him long to formulate an opinion of his men. aMy initial impression of that platoon was that they were a joke,a he said. The first time he got the whole platoon in one place, he addressed them as a group. aThe first words out of my mouth when I addressed this platoon that night, I said, aOkay, Iam Sergeant Fenlason. Iam the new platoon sergeant. There are no more victims in this platoon.aa He found 1st Platoon to be undisciplined, disrespectful, and defiant. They were wallowing in self-pity. They were unprofessional. They talked back. When he first arrived and began issuing orders, they would frequently buck against them, saying, aWe donat do it that way.a aExcuse me, soldier?a he would reply. aThis ainat a democracy, bud.a The platoon had gotten the impression that they could run things by committee, that they were a voting body, a notion Fenlason intended to curtail immediately. He inst.i.tuted boot campa"style routine and discipline. aWe started with basic stuff, like first call is at five-thirty a.m.,a Fenlason said. aShaved and dressed by six-fifteen.a They had morning formations and uniform inspections, which the men thought was idiotic: one mortar round hits right now, they said, looking around nervously, and the whole platoon is dead.
Fenlason told Blaisdell, aYou gotta break them down before you build them back up.a To Blaisdell, talk about breaking guys down in the middle of a combat zone sounded insane.
The men pushed back immediately. In their eyes, Fenlason may have had rank, but he had no authority. He may have had a Ranger Tab, but he had zero combat experience. To them, no combat experience meant he didnat know anything. aSo, who the f.u.c.k is this a.s.shole?a said medic Specialist Collin Sharpness. aThis is his first combat tour? Heas been in staff the whole time? And heas coming in here f.u.c.king pumping his chest?a Fenlason knew that the men did not hold his career in high esteem, but he didnat care, because he was none too impressed with their supposed battle-hardening either. aIam not going to pay a whole h.e.l.l of a lot of attention to that anyway,a he rejoined. aYou know, Private Snuffle-upagus, who has been in a firefight, that doesnat necessarily make him Johnny Rambo. So his experience level is still somewhat small.a Fenlason knew that it would take a while for 1st Platoon to come around, but that was okay. Unlike the other platoon sergeants, he wasnat going anywhere. Early on, he hit upon the idea of the immovable objecta"he was the immovable object. aThe resentments were already beginning,a he said. aThe men didnat like the idea of being told when they were going to do certain things and when they werenat.a Since Fenlason knew 2nd Squadas squad leader, Chris Payne, from Fort Campbell in 2003, he drew him close to help him get up to speed on the platoon. Payne tried to preemptively play the peacemaker, advising Fenlason on how to talk to Lauzier. aI tried to say, aLook, heas wild and heas unpredictable and he shoots a lot, but heas a good leader,aa recalled Payne. Payne saw the clash coming. Lauzier was tempermental and very particular about the kinds of leaders he esteemed, while Fenlason was blunt to the point of being tactless and convinced there was his way to do something, or the wrong way. aI said, aYou need to be careful with Lauzier or youall lose him,aa Payne remembered. aAnd he did. It didnat take long.a aI heard you like to shoot a lot,a were the first words Fenlason spoke to Lauzier. The relationship went downhill from there. Fenlason came to see Lauzier as a loud, immature bully who constantly abused, needled, and micromanaged his men and overcompensated for battlefield risk with excessive force and firepower. Lauzier thought Fenlason was a tactically incompetent desk jockey who hid out in his office at TCP1 all day long. Lauzier took offense at Fenlasonas insinuation that he was some sort of loose cannon. How could Fenlason a.s.sess battlefield risk, Lauzier wanted to know, if Fenlason never put himself on the battlefield? aI would say, aHey, youare out of touch here, pal,a but he wouldnat listen to me,a Lauzier lamented. aHe thought I was a cowboy.a Lauzier was not the only soldier Fenlason formulated a quick opinion on. It wasnat long before head identified several soldiers he felt were particularly problematic cases. He was the one who had put Barker in anger management cla.s.ses back in 2003, and he didnat see anything in Barker out here to change his opinion that he was a punk. Cortez, he concluded, was a pout and a borderline malingerer who routinely declared he wanted out of the platoon whenever anything didnat go his way. And he quickly learned all about Green and his extreme hatred of Iraqis. Green had recently rejoined the platoon after a few well-behaved weeks working at the FOB following his altercation with Gallagher. But of all the soldiers who dwelled on the past, who simply could not get over the deaths of Nelson and Casica, Green was, in Fenlasonas estimation, the worst. All day long from Green, it was Nelson and Casica this, Nelson and Casica that.
Throughout the rest of the deployment, Payne tried to be the translator and peacemaker between Fenlason and the rest of the platoon; he felt that he understood both parties better than anyone else. It was a role he thought was important even if it made him less popular. aEverybody hated Fenlason,a said Payne, aand I donat think that the guys can understand why I always defended him. But the way I saw it, I needed to be able to go to Lauzier and Yribe and say, aThis is what he said. This is what he wants,a as opposed to them having to hear it from Fenlason, who didnat know how to talk to everybody. He has a condescending way of talking, like, aI know more than everybody in this whole company. I know more than everybody in this platoon. You guys are f.u.c.ked up, and Iam here to fix it.aa Staff Sergeant Chaz Allen, who replaced Phil Miller, joined 1st Platoon the same time Fenlason did. He was surprised not just at how divorced the platoon was from the rest of the company, but even at how disorganized it was from within. There was very little cooperation between squads. aThere was no distribution plan for water and chow,a he said. aIt was every dog for himself. Each squad, in their own little TCP, they would get in their vehicles and drive up to Yusufiyah, get what they needed, and come back.a And combat credibility for the new guy, regardless of rank, was always an issue. aI received so much flak, like borderline mutiny,a Allen recalled. Men would throw down their weapons, refusing to take orders from him because, they declared, he had never been in combat before. But he had been shot at, he had been blown up before. aSo it was them not understanding who I am, and me not understanding who they are.a Allen tried to undo the bad habits the squad had acquired. The men, for example, did not keep guard rotation schedules, telling Allen that whoever was able to stay awake took guard. Once, when he asked who was going to relieve a soldier whoad been on guard for six hours, several troopers shouted, aNot it!a as if they were in grade school.
During one of his first days on the job, Fenlason was at TCP1. Some of the men were giving him a tour of the house. They were on the roof when an insurgent shot a rocket at the TCP from a broad field to the southeast. It did not reach the TCP, and did not even detonate. But the gunner on the roof thought he spotted a puff of smoke, so he began banging away on the machine gun. Before long, several soldiers had joined him at the walled edge of the roof, shooting at the field with their M4s. Within a few seconds, almost the entire checkpoint was up there, eleven or twelve guys and several IAs, slamming rounds into the field. Fenlason couldnat believe what he was seeing. He yelled for them to stop shooting.
aWhat the f.u.c.k are you shooting at?a he yelled. aStop shooting!a aNo, Sergeant, no!a aYeah, stop! Iam telling you to f.u.c.king stop now. Hold your fire! Hold your fire!a He threw a soda can at one soldier who wasnat stopping.
aWhat?a One by one, the soldiers ceased firing and turned toward Fenlason.
aWhat in the f.u.c.k are you shooting at? Do you have a target?a aItas a suspected enemy location.a aThe whole frigging country is a suspected enemy location. What are you shooting at?a aThereas a probable aa someone started. Fenlason was livid.
aNo. I will tell you what you are shooting at. You are shooting at nothing. When you just go up here and start shooting at everything in sight, thatas not doctrine. It is not correct. It never has been the answer. You got a target, you got a sector of fire. In that target area, you engage your sector of fire. You control the rate and distribution of fire. But you donat just shoot just for s.h.i.ts and grins. You are wasting ammunition. You want to put a patrol together and go try to find the bad guy? Letas do that. Letas go find evidence of the launch. Letas do something. But you just wasted five minutes and hundreds of rounds of ammunition up here f.u.c.king around shooting at nothing.a Soon after that altercation Fenlason told somebody over the radio, aWell, I guess I got my CIB!a The CIB is the Combat Infantrymanas Badge and it is one of the most prestigious medals in the Army because it indicates that you werenat simply an infantryman in a war zone but that you took direct enemy fire. Guys from real combat units had nothing but contempt for the rear-echelon types up at Striker who would go running in the direction of a mortar impact that landed harmlessly two hundred yards away so they could try to convince their superiors that they were aunder firea and get their CIB, or its non-infantry equivalent, the Combat Action Badge. And now, 1st Platoon sneered, they were being led by one of these pogues. Fenlason later said he had no recollection of saying such a thing and doubted he would have. aItas not the kind of thing I would have cared about one way or another,a he stated.
Norton and Fenlason had no problems getting along. While no platoon sergeant would probably ever live up to Nortonas idealization of Lonnie Hayes in Charlie Company, Fenlason was, in Nortonas eyes, an improvement over Gallagher. Though Fenlason usually did most of the talking, Norton felt he could have real conversations with him about goals and progress for the unit and the area. Fenlason thought they should be doing a lot more community outreach, more counterinsurgency. That sort of stuff was a high priority up at Brigade, and other companies were moving far ahead of them in that regard. Bravo wasnat even trying in Fenlasonas eyes. Part of the problem was that these platoons were moving around too much, especially in and out of the TCPs. The people of Mullah Fayyad and surrounding villages could hardly get to know, much less trust, any of the soldiers if they were always just pa.s.sing through. There should be more ownership, Fenlason thought.
Norton definitely agreed, at least in theory. He was wary of doing anything drastic, however, because he did believe that Bravoas sector was hotter than the other companiesa. Maybe this area wasnat quite ready to make the big transition to community building yet, Norton wondered. Or maybe it was. Maybe it was something to try, or at least think about, but Norton reminded Fenlason that he was going on leave on February 22. He a.s.sumed they would pick up the discussions after he returned in about a month.
As Fenlason settled in, the men determined another thing they could hate him for: He almost never left the wire. He rarely patrolled. He never went on IED sweeps. He seemed never to ride along on a Quick Reaction Force when anyone got into a sc.r.a.pe. And the thought of Fenlason pulling guard the way Gallagher had made the soldiers laugh out loud. Fenlason always made sure to get a full nightas sleep, they said. aSergeant Fenlason didnat do anything,a said Sergeant Daniel Carrick, one of the battalionas young stars, who was transferred from 3rd Platoon to give 1st Platoon better junior NCO leadership. aHe sat around smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and thatas it. Head do patrols once a month to go talk to some leaders.a Fenlason conceded that he did not get out very often. aI did one IED sweep my first few days there,a he said. aI did a half a dozen walks in Mullah Fayyad. And I did the two walks out and back to Rushdi Mullah.a But he does not see this as a failing. aIraq in 2006 was a squad-level fight. The patrols were squad-level patrols, or fire-team-level patrols. I donat go on fire-team-level patrols. Why would I? I never considered the perception of the soldiers or even the junior leaders. It never occurred to me to look at it through their eyes.a In the early morning of February 22, about a dozen men, possibly dressed as policemen, entered the venerated Shiaite Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra, wired it with some five hundred pounds of explosives, withdrew, and detonated it remotely. Zarqawi was among the suspected masterminds, and AQIas umbrella organization, the Mujahideen Shura Council, issued a statement celebrating the Shiaite outrage that followed. AQI never explicitly took credit for the attack, however, and several of the bombingas characteristics were atypical of an AQI hit. Regardless, it was spectacularly provocative and successfully ushered in a new escalation in the civil war between Shiaites and Sunnis, throughout Iraq and in the Triangle of Death.
The Samarra bombing galvanized and remotivated Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army (also known as Jaish al-Mahdi, or JAM) to push into locales they had not been operating extensively in for months, including Mahmudiyah. More Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad during the first three months of 2006 than at any time since the end of the Saddam regime. Sectarian killings now claimed nine times more lives than car bombings, and executions had increased 86 percent in the nine weeks after the February mosque bombing.
According to Captain Leo Barron, the 1-502ndas intelligence officer, this trend played out much the same way in Mahmudiyah. Ethnic tensions erupted anew and violence spiked past all previous levels. Less than a week after the bombing, Alpha Company witnessed the first open gun battle in Mahmudiyah they had ever seen between the Mahdi militia and a local Sunni tribe. Alpha did not get involved. aI donat want to get in the middle of that,a Alpha company commander Bordwell told Stars and Stripes at the time, but added, aIf that were to continue, that would be a real concern.a It did continue. In fact, an all-but-government-mandated Shiaite counterattack was already beginning before the Samarra bombing. On February 7, seven masked men in IA uniforms and one in all-black clothing carrying AK-47s and 9mm handguns had aarresteda the Sunni mayor of Mahmudiyah, who had been elected by a council of elders Kunk had organized several weeks before. Four men pulled security outside his office and told anyone who asked that they were working afor Baghdad.a Inside, the other team presented the mayor with an arrest warrant that appeared to have been issued by the previous mayor, the same one who had been arrested just as First Strike was taking over this area. That first mayor, is, today, the mayor of Mahmudiyah, and the second mayor has never been heard from again.
Prior to the Samarra bombing, Barron said, violence in the area was dominated by Sunni locals planting IEDs for money. AQI or other Sunni insurgent groups paid up to several hundred dollars to locals to lay an IED. But after the Samarra bombing, Barron saw an increase in violence committed by Shiaites and then a counterreaction from Sunnis who started fighting back, not for money but out of hate. In this spiral of violence and battle for control, JAM became even more brazen. aShiaites took over many of the city council positions in Mahmudiyah, they were pushing Sunnis out of their neighborhoods,a Barron said. aWhat started as threats and propaganda turned into intimidation and then murder and a.s.sa.s.sination. Over time, the demographics of the city changed completely. It flipped from being a mixed city to one with an overwhelming Shiaite majority.a First Strike was not powerless to stop this ethnic cleansing: they were ordered not to. aWe had a ma.s.sive amount of intelligence on JAM,a said Barron. aWe knew JAMas hierarchy inside and out. But the orders were very explicit: Go after Al Qaeda. Do not worry about JAM.a A reluctance by U.S. commanders to antagonize the Shiaite-dominated Iraqi government, many of whose highest-ranking members had long-established ties to the militias, drove such decisions, but it badly damaged U.S. forcesa credibility among Sunnis in places like Mahmudiyah. aIt was very frustrating,a Barron admitted. aSunni sheikhs came in and asked, aSo how many Shiaites are in your jail?a And the answer was, not a lot. Part of the reason the Sunni insurgencies were having so much success, especially in Bravoas AO, was because the locals, Sunni locals, did not see us as evenhanded.a On February 28, almost five months to the day since the deployment started, Lauzier was scheduled to go on a monthas leave. He didnat want to go. He was afraid of what would happen if he left his men. Not every squad leader went on a lot of patrols, but Lauzier went on every one he could. aHe would try to take point on every mission, and it got to where it bothered me because I would be like, no, man, I got it, you know?a Specialist James Barker recalled. But Lauzier couldnat bear the thought of sending somebody out and them not coming back. If that happened, how could you live with not having been there? Now that he was going on leave, who would lead in his place? He would have been confident leaving Sergeant Tony Yribe in charge, but Yribe had been moved to 1st Squad after Nelson and Casica got shot. Specialist Paul Cortez and Specialist Anthony Hernandez were his team leaders, but they werenat even sergeants yet. He loved his guys, but without him, he was worried they were going to get killed.
The truth was, for all his bl.u.s.ter, this deployment was wearing Lauzier down. Under Lieutenant Britt and Platoon Sergeant Miller, Lauzier had been far and away the favored squad leader, but with Fenlason in charge, Lauzier had lost status fast. He felt marginalized. The new golden-boy squad leader was Payne, which made Lauzier bitter.
aSergeant Fenlason and I didnat talk too much because he wasnat around,a said Lauzier. aBut when we did talk, it never went well. Whenever I offered a suggestion, Fenlason would shoot it down straightaway. aOh, did you read a book?a he would say. I called Norton, Fenlason, and Payne the Circle of Three. I was not included in their little club.a Lauzieras fall from favor was obvious to most in the platoon, and many thought it was unfair. aLauzier was very, very tactically sound and very tactically minded,a opined Sergeant Roman Diaz, who served in both 1st and 3rd Squads. aWeapons were always clean, night vision and optics were always functioning. Lauzier took his responsibilities very seriously. Things like noise and light discipline were very important to him. Third Squad had this reputation for being cowboys, but we jumped when we had to jump, and we ran when we had to run, and we operated like an infantry squad.a Halfway into his second deployment Lauzier was rapidly losing his taste for combat. aKilling AIF is useless beause there are ten more to replace each one,a he said. aIt is a pointless fight. When you first get here itas like, yeah, letas go kick b.u.t.t. But that ends real quick. It gets to the point where you hear a gunshot and all the strength zaps out of your legs.a His body was breaking down, too. He was suffering from painful back problems, and a worsening bone spur was making it difficult for him to walk.
Increasingly alienated, Lauzier started falling back on the men from his squad for support, especially Barker. aThe Army would probably say Iam a s.h.i.tbag soldier for that because Iam confiding in one of my subordinates. But I had no one to talk to,a he confessed. aWhat am I going to do? Iam human. You get real close out there, closer than a motheras bond with her child. Thatas how it was for me. Those men were my responsibility. Iam their mother, Iam their father, their counselor, police officer, princ.i.p.ala"whatever you want to call it, thatas what I am.a The affection was reciprocal. aHe would have done anything for us and we would have done anything for him,a said Barker. When asked what kind of leader Lauzier was, Cortez said, aBy the book, led from the front, took care of his guys first, looked up to by everybody. Loved. Respected.a But outsiders to the 3rd Squad dynamic said Lauzier was, in fact, losing control of his men. aThey were a bunch of loose cannons,a p.r.o.nounced Sergeant Carrick. aHe was either babysitting one guy or he was trying to stop that guy from kicking in some girlas face, just because he could.a This was the difference between control and influence. aYes, he had control if he was there watching them all the time,a said Sergeant Diem. aBut n.o.body supervises their subordinates that much. He had no influence over his squad. He had no power over their behavior when he wasnat there.a And even though Lauzier thought highly of his men, many of the other guys in 1st Platoon thought some of the characters in 3rd Squad, especially Barker and Cortez, were just hoodlums who happened to be wearing uniforms.
Cortez was particularly tweaked these days. Just before Lauzieras leave, 3rd Squad got the call to go fill in some IED holes off of Fat Boy. It was, the men thought, a typically dips.h.i.t mission. aThat was the order: Go out there to fill holes, so that the insurgents could put bombs back in them and blow the f.u.c.k out of us again,a said Lauzier. aIf you wanted to fill the holes with concrete and do an overwatch until it was all dry, thatas one thing, but this was just dumba"and we got ordered to do stuff like this all the time.a It was common for soldiers to complain, even vehemently, when sent on these types of missions. A soldier screaming, aThis is f.u.c.king bulls.h.i.t!a and then throwing something across the room was a normal occurrence, but it would always be followed by his picking up his helmet and continuing to suit up. He might be grumbling to himself the whole time about how he didnat sign up for this s.h.i.t, this was the dumbest f.u.c.king thing head ever done, this is the dumbest f.u.c.king idea in the motherf.u.c.king history of warfare and he canat wait to get out of the Army so he can go to the White House himself and shove an IED so far up George Bushas a.s.s that they are going to have to pry his teeth out of the walls. But he would continue to suit up and be ready to go when it was showtime.
With Cortez, this time, it was different. He was teary-eyed, sometimes blubbering, sometimes shouting, hysterical about how he was sick of it, he couldnat do this anymore.
aThey donat give a s.h.i.t about us!a he shrieked. aThey donat f.u.c.king care if we die, they donat f.u.c.king care. This is suicide, every day is another suicide mission, day after day after day! Iam not doing it!a Lauzier tried to talk him down for a minute or two, but that wasnat working. He tried to get him into a separate room, away from the other men, because Cortezas losing his mind was now freaking them out. Either freaking them out or, for the guys who didnat like Cortez, confirming that he was a little b.i.t.c.h after all. Lauzier wanted to punch him.
aYouare a specialist, for chrissake!a Lauzier yelled once he had gotten him into a semiprivate corner. aYouare about to get promoted. Everybody feels the stress. Go ahead, have a breakdown! But you canat do it in front of the men.a Cortez continued to spout hysterics. Lauzier decided he really didnat have time for this, so he got angry. af.u.c.k it, Cortez, then stay back!a he yelled. aIf you donat want to go, then donat go. Just stay the f.u.c.k back, okay? We got it covered. Youare good, all right? Youare good. Donat worry about it.a Lauzier and his squad-sized patrol headed out. Lauzier stewed on it during the patrol, and when he got back he happened to pa.s.s Norton and Fenlason while he was still fuming. They asked him what was wrong, and he vented. Fenlason called Cortez in. This was not what Lauzier wanted to have happen. He should have held his tongue. He did not want Fenlason involved. Fenlason chewed Cortezas a.s.s.
aI will bust you a rank and make you a SAW [squad automatic weapon] gunner if you pull s.h.i.t like that again!a Fenlason yelled. Lauzier took Cortez aside and apologized for losing his temper, and apologized for getting Fenlason involved.
aBut,a Lauzier told Cortez, ayou canat pull that s.h.i.t in front of the guys. If you are freaking out, you need to talk to me in private. I am going on leave soon and Fenlason has it in for all of us. He is gunning for us, waiting for us to f.u.c.k up. So when I am gone, you have got to be s.h.i.t hot and wire tight, you hear me?a aI hear you,a said Cortez.
MARCH 2006.
18.
Back to the TCPs.
BEGINNING MARCH 1, 1st Platoon rotated back out to the TCPs. Norton had gone on midtour leave in the third week of February, so Fenlason had sole control of 1st Platoon. Goodwin was aware that morale had not come around, but he was optimistic, and he had expected the adjustment to Fenlason to be rocky at first. aAbout thirty days into it, theyare at the lowest point,a he recalled. aThis is when everybody is just fed up. They hate each other. The guys just are pushing back. Itas what happens. New guy comes in. There is always a downturn. Then the body adapts.a He was hoping the body would adapt soon.
But 1st Platoon was at a far lower point than even those who were supposed to monitor it realized. The psychological isolation that 1st Platoon had been experiencing throughout the deployment was becoming nearly total. aFirst Platoon had become insane,a declared Sergeant Diem flatly. aWhat does an infantry rifle platoon do? It destroys. Thatas what itas trained to do. Now turn that ninety degrees to the left, and let slip the leash, and it becomes something monstrous. First Platoon became monstrous. It was not even aware of what it was doing.a Some of the mental states that the men describe are well doc.u.mented by psychologists studying the effect of combat on soldiers. The men spoke about desensitization, how numbed they were to the violence. They pa.s.sed around short, graphic computer video compilations of collected combat kills and corpses found in Iraq. One, with a t.i.tle card dedicated to aMr. Squishy Headaa"a dead body whose skull had been smashed ina"was set to the track of Rage Against the Machineas aHow I Could Just Kill a Man.a It was a horror parade of stills and short clips of gore and carnage.
Justin Cross, who had been promoted to private first cla.s.s in March, admitted he talked with some of the other men about how the social breakdown and the extreme Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence around them would be a perfect cover for murder. aI was on guard one day and they radioed in to be extra alert because people were rioting,a he said. aAt that point in time, in that state of mind, I had this bright idea. I said, aYou know whatas funny, man? Go behind the TCP, kill anybody. Kill anybody. And f.u.c.king blame it on the riots. And wead get away with it.a After saying that s.h.i.t, everybody looked up and was like just looking at each other. Barker and Cortez were just staring at each other. It was like, aThatas a d.a.m.n good idea.aa Iraqis were not seen as humans. Many soldiers actively cultivated the dehumanization of locals as a secret to survival. aYou canat think of these people as people,a opined Yribe. aIf I see this old lady and say, aAh, she reminds me of my grandmother,a but then she pulls out a f.u.c.king bomb, Iam not going to react right. So me, I donat see them as people.a Children were considered insurgents or future insurgents, and women were little more than insurgent factories.
Some began hoping they would die. aI donat know if you have ever honestly prayed for death, but there were times we would just f.u.c.king take our helmets off,a remarked Private First Cla.s.s Justin Watt (who had also been recently promoted). aWead be sitting in a guard tower and be like, aPlease, please put me out of my f.u.c.king misery.a Cross described an almost identical experience: aI had my first breakdown right there, where I was like, af.u.c.k this s.h.i.t.a I took off my helmet, threw it down, and just sat there. I stood up on top of the turret and started yelling, af.u.c.k this s.h.i.t. You want to f.u.c.king kill me, just kill me, please. Somebody, sniper, come on, shoot me!aa Charlie Companyas First Sergeant Dennis Largent said, aMy soldiers pa.s.sing through Bravoas AO would tell me about their soldiers saying, aIt would be easier if I got shot or blown up. At least this s.h.i.t would be over.aa Specialist James Barker described the paradoxical yet typical swings that combat-weary soldiers have between thinking they are doomed and thinking they are invincible. aI knew I was going to die, it was just a matter of time, so I just didnat care. I would run straight at somebody shooting at me instead of taking cover. That was my mentality: Iam already dead so, f.u.c.k it, what can anybody do to me? Iad gotten shot at so many times and blown up so many times and hadnat taken a scratch that itas like, aOh f.u.c.k, Iam untouchable. I am a bad a.s.s and n.o.body can f.u.c.k with me.aa Second Platoon and 3rd Platoon survived, stayed sane, and arguably even thrived in the exact same environment in great part due to their outstanding platoon sergeants and their daily, active effort to combat the hate 1st Platoon had given in to. But 1st Platoon did lose more men, including three leaders killed in a two-week period, which they did not. The disarray caused by those losses was compounded by a consistent leadership vacuum. And emergent dysfunctions were magnified further by the higher commandas constant unfavorable comparison of 1st Platoon with Bravoas better-functioning platoons. aYou can see what happens when the pressure on a set of leadersa"junior leadersa"becomes so great that menas decision-making processes start to break down,a observed the battalionas executive officer, Major Fred Wintrich. aMoral decision-making processes. And thatas what leadership is supposed to mitigate.a House searches turned extremely violent. aA lot of people got dragged out of their house by their hair and beat down,a recalled Diem. aI want you to imagine just for a second that you and your wife are watching TV one day, and then the door gets kicked in and some soldiers come in and drag your wife out by the hair and smack the p.i.s.s out of you in your living room, asking you questions in a language youave never heard, holding guns to your head.a Most of the time, this violence was not strictly random. Usually there was a shred of evidence or a whiff of suspicion before such force was employed. But the trip wire was thin. aItas not like we did it for no reason,a Diem said. aWe worked off suspicion. It was sort of like Puritan witch-hunters.a Suspected insurgents were beaten as a matter of course, with the full blessings and, in fact, insistence of some team leaders and squad leaders. Sergeants would egg the younger soldiers on, making fun of privates who didnat hit detainees hard enough.
During patrols, Green frequently volunteered to kill anyone his NCOs wanted him to. aI was always saying, aAnytime you all are ready, you all are the ones in charge of me. Anytime you all say the word ago,a itas on,aa he recalled. aOne time, we pulled these guys off the road and took them in this house and we were hitting them and trying to make them tell us what they were up to, and Yribe was talking about shooting them. And I was like, aIall do it! Iall take them out right now and shoot them. All you gotta do is tell me to.a And Yribe started talking to Babineau, like, aOh, Babs, but you wanted to shoot them, right?aa Thatas when Green realized Yribe had been pulling his leg the whole time.
Many of the men say the beatings began in earnest when they watched the men they had detained get released by higher headquarters. The way they saw it, they were just taking justice into their own hands because the battalion or the brigade could not be trusted to keep the men trying to kill them behind bars. Brigade commander Colonel Todd Ebel countered that 85 percent of the brigadeas detainees went to prison, a statistic he points to as proof that raids were well targeted and backed up by a judicial system that worked. The men of 1st Platoon say that number does not come close to their experience. aWe would turn them in to Mahmudiyah and what happens?a said one. aTheyare released. Not enough evidence. It came to the point where we had to have criminal investigation packets thicker than a book to send these a.s.sholes to jail. We couldnat rely on Army intelligence to put these guys in jail, so we had to let that town know that we were in charge.a Many men believed it to be a fact that the battalion and brigade not only did not care if they lived or died but probably even conspired against them. Their disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt and their apathy would get them into more trouble, which in turn would then further convince them that they were being singled out.
aI probably didnat help it sometimes with my platoons, since our AOs bordered each other,a said Alpha Company commander Jared Bordwell. aOne of my platoons would be in contact and would send a report up, or an explosion would happen in B Companyas area and we would send up a report of aWe just heard an explosion 600 meters this degrees.a And they would ping Bravo. aWhat the h.e.l.l is going on in your AO?a And the TCPs were like, aOh, yeah. There was an IED that just went off.a Those guys had gotten to the point where they were like, aWhatever.aa At the beginning of the March TCP rotation, Fenlason sent 2nd Squad to TCP5. He, the headquarters element, and 1st Squad went to TCP1. And he sent 3rd Squad to cover both TCP2 and TCP6. Fenlason said that there was no difference in the dangers between TCP1 and TCP2, that the TCPs were equally dangerous, but this is not true. By March, TCP1 had been running continuously as the TCP mission headquarters for four months. It was a st.u.r.dy two-story house with working, generator-driven electricity, good sight lines in every direction, and defenses that were still crude but that had been improving steadily. This TCP was also the most heavily staffed, usually with a full squad plus the medic, radioman, platoon sergeant, and a squad of Iraqi soldiers.
Fenlason would not have known about the relative safety of TCP2 anyway, because he had never been to TCP2, either before this rotation or at any time during it. TCP2 had just been reopened for the first time since it had been shut down in mid-December. This time, at least, the men were allowed to take over a house on the northwest corner of Sportster and the small, unnamed ca.n.a.l road. It was a hovel, more a collection of rooms than a home, each no bigger than 150 square feet, laid in an end-to-end, almost serpentine arrangement. Many of the rooms did not have windows, and of those which did, the windows were just small, paneless holes a foot or two square. There was no electricity, no running water, and no furniture except for cots, plastic patio chairs, and tables fashioned from sheets of plywood laid atop cardboard boxes. The latrine was a plastic chair with the seat cut out where soldiers would defecate into a WAG Bag. There was a wall along the Sportster side and about ten feet of wall on the ca.n.a.l road side. The rest of the houseas yard was exposed. To mitigate this danger, there were several HEs...o...b..rriers, but not having been filled with dirt, they were useless.
With Lauzier on leave, Fenlason gave 3rd Squad the job of manning TCP2 and TCP6 because he believed it to be the easiest. Unlike Blaisdell and Gebhardt, who preferred switching up guard rotations every few hours, Fenlason ran TCP2 and TCP6 as static positions. The men would live out there the whole time. Even though Fenlason once declared that he would not have sent Specialist Cortez to the promotion board to become a sergeant if he had been platoon sergeant at the time, he maintained that this duty was an appropriate tasking for Cortez. aCortez was going to go to TCP2,a he explained, abecause all I wanted him to do was pull guard. Thatas it. IED sweeps and pull guard. Which is tactically and technically well within the realm of someone of his experience and pay grade.a Fenlason had a fondness for static positions, seeming to think they were easier to man than dynamic positions. It was an infantry philosophy that many of his men could not fathom, and one that the other platoons did not subscribe to. Fixed positions invite attack. Said one squad leader from a different platoon: aA static position like a TCP was a no-go for us. In order to keep them from attacking us, we had a constantly roving patrol out there.a When they are boring, static positions breed complacency, and when they are dangerous, they are mind-rackingly stressful.
Indeed, Cortez was not coping well with the added responsibility. He was focusing intently on the dangers around him and becoming increasingly bitter about his sense of abandonment. aA lot of time you couldnat sleep,a Cortez said. aThere were windows where somebody could walk right up and just drop a grenade and you wouldnat even know it.a Fenlason maintained that no one ever expressed anxiety to him about the dangerous conditions at TCP2, but several soldiers contradict this a.s.sertion. aI kept asking to get the HEs...o...b..skets filled,a said Cortez. aI asked for more concertina wire, more sandbags to fortify the position. All they kept telling me was aNo, donat worry about it. We will get it later on. We donat need it right now.a So basically we were just told to just sit there and wait to get killed, thatas the way I took it.a In Achilles in Vietnam, psychologist Jonathan Shay describes how the long-term debilitating effects of combat are exacerbated exponentially when a soldieras sense of awhatas righta is violated by his leaders. aThe mortal dependence of the modern soldier on the military organization for everything he needs to survive is as great as that of a small child on his or her parents,a he writes. During his clinical treatment of Vietnam veterans, one of the most persistent causes of stress soldiers described was the perception that risk was not evenly distributed. Shay continues: aShortages of all sortsa"food, water, ammunition, clothing, shelter from the elements, medical carea"are intrinsic to prolonged combata. However, when deprivation is perceived as the outcome of indifference or disrespect by superiors, it arouses menis [the Greek word for aindignant ragea] as an unbearable offense.a This rage, Shay writes, is instrumental in the soldiersa own aundoing of charactera and aloss of humanitya essential to the commission of war crimes.
Even though TCP2 was only three-quarters of a mile from TCP1, Fenlason never went to evaluate TCP2as defenses or to see how his soldiers were performing there over the next three weeks. With Platoon Leader Norton and 3rd Squad Leader Lauzier both on leave, and with 3rd Squad headed by a soldier Fenlason knew to be a poor leader, not once did he go to TCP2 in the next twenty-one days to a.s.sess how Cortez was enforcing standards or fortifying a brand-new battle position.
Fenlason justified his absenteeism as a reflection of the degree of trust he suddenly had in his mena"whom he had originally a.s.sessed as a af.u.c.king bucket of c.r.a.paa"after just a month of leading them. The men down at the TCP didnat know why Fenlason did not come down, but by this point that suited them just fine. He was the last person they wanted to see. aFenlason was reliable, I will give him that,a said Specialist James Barker, one of the soldiers stationed at TCP2 with Cortez. aWe knew he would never, ever come check on us, so we could do whatever we wanted.a While 1st Platoonas attention was focused on the TCPs, Kunk and the rest of the battalion, in fact all of 2nd Brigade, were looking west, to the Yusufiyah Power Plant. On March 2, a brigade-wide effort called Operation Glory Light kicked off. A weeklong initiative, it was one of the largest missions of the war since the invasion. It began with joint air a.s.saults by U.S. and Iraqi troops into the town of Sadr-Yusufiyah, just north of the power plant, by troopers from both infantry battalions of the Deuce. Though the effort was spearheaded by the 2-502nd, the 1-502ndas Charlie Company and Alpha Company both contributed a platoon or two, flushing terrorists from one of the most lawless areas of the brigadeas AO. aThis could be the final crushing blow for the anti-Iraqi forces in the Baghdad area,a Kunk told Stars and Stripes at the time, something he could not possibly have believed.
Parts of Bravoas 2nd Platoon moved with Captain Goodwin into Rushdi Mullah as a blocking element to prevent insurgents who were fleeing the main thrust from coming their way. They rolled in first thing on the morning of March 4 and cleared the entire village. Then they took over a house and laid in for several days of overwatch. They suffered intermittent fire in various forms, including mortars and small arms. They had a sniper d.o.g.g.i.ng them, who was particularly aggravating because he was extraordinarily patient, firing perhaps as few as ten shots in thirty-six hours, from as far away as three-quarters of a mile, and he moved after every shot. They sent some snipers of their own to lie in wait for him, but they never found him. They tried making a aScare Joe,a a helmet on a stick that they would pop just above the rim of the walled roof, but he never fell for that. Goodwin also sent out patrols into town every few hours to maintain a presence and keep the townspeople on their toes.
Just after 4:00 p.m. on March 5, twenty-one-year-old Specialist Ethan Biggers got out of one of the Humvees parked in front of the house and went inside and up to the second-floor balcony, which had a protective four-foot wall running around its perimeter. He needed to stretch his legs, get a change of scenery. He was Bravoas radioman, the communication link between Goodwin, the rest of the company, and higher command, so he had been practically living inside the truck for two days straight to be near the radios. Some people were always up on the balcony, either getting some air or as part of the guard rotation. Because of his job, everybody in Bravo knew Biggers, and because of his personality, everybody loved him. He was the entire companyas little brother, who never had a sour word about anyone. He and his fiance, Britni, were expecting their first child.
Goodwin was up there too, inside one of the two rooms on the second floor, and so was Platoon Sergeant Jeremy Gebhardt. Gebhardt had his vest on but his helmet off, and others, even those on the balcony, were in similar states of disrobe. It was against regulations to have anything but afull battle rattlea on when outside, but on days-long missions like this, even leaders thought that was not really realistic. Gebhardt allowed soldiers to remove some of their protective gear as long as they kept their heads below the lip of the wall, because this was the tallest house in the neighborhood. Goodwin knew about this and tacitly approved the relaxation of the rules.
Upstairs, Biggers sat down on the outdoor stairwell leading up to the third floor with his head still below the outer wall, took off his helmet, and started talking to one of the medics. Several minutes later, first one shot rang out, from far away. But it was quickly followed by a second, perhaps as close as a hundred yards. This one hit the wall behind the stairwell, ricocheted, struck Biggers above his left eyebrow, and exited out the back of his head, each hole about an inch wide.
Jesus, that was close, some of the soldiers exclaimed. But then the unitas interpreter noticed that Biggers was not moving. aHeas. .h.i.t, heas. .h.i.t!a he shouted. Soldiers dragged Biggers inside and started first aid, but blood and brains were spilling out of his skull. There was so much blood, a bandage would not stay on his head. A medevac bird arrived quickly and rushed him out, but he had lost a substantial amount of his brain and was in a coma.*
Another arguably avoidable casualty was a further blow to Goodwinas status. aThat shooting became a huge thing,a remarked Alpha commander Jared Bordwell. aDiagrams, trying to figure out the trajectory and all that stuff. They were trying to figure out not only how it happened but who they could blame. Who can we blame for this happening?a The first lieutenant who investigated the event found Biggersas head shot preventable, and Colonel Ebel agreed. Ebel recommended that letters of reprimand be issued to Goodwin and Gebhardt. He chastised the commander and the NCO for afailure to ensure a climate of leadership that demands strict adherence to published standardsa. In this case the commander bears the responsibility for enforcing policy.a As with Nelsonas and Casicaas deaths, however, the men who were there insisted that a helmet would not have stopped the shot. aIf you were there and actually saw where the bullet was, it wouldnat have even hit his helmet,a said one of 2nd Platoonas squad leaders.
While far from the final crushing blow to the insurgency in the Baghdad area, Operation Glory Light was declared a success. U.S. soldiers cleared significant amounts of new territory, found nearly two dozen IEDs, uncovered two weapons caches, and detained seven suspects.
On the morning of March 8, Kunkas convoy was returning from the area of the power plant as Glory Light was winding down. aWe had to come down Sportster,a he said. aStopped at every one of those battle positions. Talked to every one of the soldiers. Everything was going good.a His convoy headed up Fat Boy, where it hit an IED but no one suffered any casualties. Twenty minutes later and three hundred yards up the road, the convoy got hit again. This time Kunk suffered a puncture wound to his left calf. The wound got infected and he was relegated to bed rest from March 12 to March 19.
* Shortly after his injury, after he had been sent back to the United States, Biggers and his fiance were married by proxy, and a few months later she gave birth to their son. Biggers would remain in a coma for nearly a year, until his family took him off of life support. He died on February 24, 2007.
19.
The Mayor of Mullah Fayyad.
DURING THIS TCP rotation, Fenlason decided to begin a community-building initiative he had been mulling over for several weeks. Having most recently been a.s.signed to the brigadeas community affairs office, Fenlason was in tune with the counterinsurgency ideas that were gaining traction around this time. And upon his moving into this AO, the town of Mullah Fayyad had caught his attention. A cl.u.s.ter of a couple of hundred houses and other buildings in a compact area that bordered Sportster and was the home of TCP1 and TCP5, Mullah Fayyad seemed to him the perfect target to begin a serious effort to help locals get better control of sewerage, water, electricity, education, and other basics of civilized life. aI went to Goodwin with the idea of changing the focus,a he said. aLetas do the CMOa"the civil-military operations stuff. We are not finding insurgents in Mullah Fayyad, weare not getting anywhere with these IED sweeps, except finding IEDs, because weare not really establishing ourselves in Mullah Fayyad in any way that makes sense.a They were already five months into this deployment and Mullah Fayyad was still only a town in the sense that it was a dense collection of houses. There was no government, and due to vagaries of demographics and tribal dynamics, the town was so mixed that there was no dominant sheikh or local strongman there. Fenlason wanted to jump-start a campaign that would put the town on its feet, or at least start to. He believed he could do this by providing the Iraqis continuity, familiar faces. Rotating soldiers through every three to five days was not enough time to get anything done. aEvery patrol that went out, my guidance to them was to engage people, talk to them, find out what is going on,a he said. He told 1st Squad to make contacts and ask them what they needed and what they thought the Army might be able to do for them.
Alpha and some of the other companies throughout the battalion were successfully beginning such programs, and some were quite advanced, but Bravo, because of its restive area, lagged. Blaisdell was adept at achieving a rapport with the locals and had developed an extensive network of Iraqis who liked him and worked with him, but Fenlason had grand plans to bring a whole town to a higher level of healthy functioning. Encouraged by the progress he said he saw in just a week, and believing stability to be paramount, he lobbied Goodwin to let 1st Platoon stay in place while he tried to get something going.
Goodwin was encouraged. aThey started doing minor patrols outside of the TCPs,a Goodwin said. aTheyare starting to improve, starting to clean things up.a Fenlason told him he wanted to stay a month, Goodwin remembered, but Goodwin responded, aLetas see how it goes.a Fenlason got this extension without speaking to Blaisdell or Gebhardt, which irritated them immensely; each move a platoon makesa"or does not makea"impacts the other two. aI was f.u.c.king p.i.s.sed,a Blaisdell admitted. aWe had s.h.i.t going on in Mullah Fayyad too. We could have shared that s.h.i.t. I remember yelling at him on the radio, aWho in the f.u.c.k put you in charge of the G.o.dd.a.m.n company?aa Gebhardt, as usual, was more understated. aIt was a unilateral call by one platoon sergeant. There was no discussion. I think thatas what upset people more than anything.a He acknowledged that one reason he wasnat as upset as Blaisdell was because his platoon was down at the JSB, which was the choicest of the three missions, and he certainly wasnat dying to have 2nd Platoon cover the TCPs. aIf there is one position that the privates hated, it was the TCPs,a he said. aBut it was bearable because you did it seventy-two hours or so. But weeks at a time? That would drive me crazy.a The impact the extended TCP rotation was having on 1st Platoon was manifest, said Gebhardt. aA lot of his guys were upset by that. And that was obvious, just as you drove through. If you ever drive through the TCPs, platoon pa.s.sing another platoon, thereas friendly waves and chitchat as you go through. But they wanted none of that. They didnat want to talk to anybody. They were just mad. Not that I blame them. Iad be mad too.a Charlie Companyas First Sergeant Largent remembered driving through Bravoas sector and looking at the soldiers manning the checkpoints. aYou know, you see guys in the movies, and theyave been in combat for months and theyare just ragged and dirty and filthy and they got that thousand-yard stare and theyare just burnt out?a he says. aAnd theyare not all there mentally? That was Bravo Company. Those guys were strung the f.u.c.k out.a Fenlason was operating in a coc.o.o.n. He wasnat talking to the other platoon sergeants, nor was he communicating the mission, the importance of it, or the success he was having to any of the TCPs but his. Those not stationed at TCP1 had no idea what was going on when they radioed about when they were rotating back to the FOB. Fenlason said he couldnat tell, because he himself didnat know: the mission was results-dependent and could end at any moment.
Private First Cla.s.s Justin Cross had one of a couple breakdowns around this time. aMy brain was overheating. I started sweating, got really light-headed. I just f.u.c.king broke down, started crying and s.h.i.t. There was no end to this. When the f.u.c.k is help coming? s.h.i.t, how long are we going to do this?a Cross was ultimately evacuated to Camp Striker during this TCP rotation for a complete psychological evaluation and a stay at Freedom Rest.
With the TCP mission now indefinite, Fenlason inst.i.tuted a complex system where nine out of the approximately thirty-five soldiers in 1st Platoon rotated back to the FOB every day for four or five hours to take a shower, grab a hot meal, make a phone call, use the Internet, pick up their laundry, or get supplies for the TCPs. That left, on any given day, two dozen or so soldiers spread across four battle positions, which resulted in some of the thinnest staffing scenarios the men had ever experienced. TCP2 and TCP6 were routinely left with three or four people to man each spot. Staffing became so strained that at least once a single U.S. soldier got stranded alone with four or five Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint. Despite this regular, methodical rotation system, which required nine soldiers to travel back and forth to Yusufiyah every day, Fenlason not only never visited TCP2, he never arranged for the men to receive better defensive supplies or hot food because, he said, aYou donat want to travel if you absolutely do not have to. You donat want to travel predictably. Those are two things that are going to get you blown up.a One major initiative Fenlason got under way was a local leadersa meeting. During the few times he went on patrols himself, he asked old men, anyone who looked as if they qualified as an elder, whether they would come to an informal meeting. Many men, including a veterinarian and the townas only doctor, said they would attend. The meeting took place late in the first week of March, with Fenlason and a translator alone in a large room at TCP1 with about a dozen Iraqi men who showed up. Fenlason asked them what they wanted. They responded, overwhelmingly, that they wanted security. They wanted the insurgents to go away. Fenlason tried to align Americaas interests with theirs, telling them that if they would just tell the Americans where the bad guys were, he and his men could go get them. aSo we just kind of went around and around in circles for about two hours, just sort of saying the same things over and over again,a he recalled. aThey had some food that a friendly family next door had made, and the group ended with an agreement to meet again in a few weeks.a Goodwin was getting an uninterrupted stream of good news from Fenlason about how great everything was at the TCPs. aFenlason was calling me,a Goodwin recollected, aand he is saying, aHey, weare talking with so-and-so, weave got this, and weave got this.a Itas like, holy c.r.a.p. Theyare coming back with information that I just havenat seen in a while. Iam sitting there thinking, aThis platoon is doing great stuff.aa Unfortunately, the men of 1st Platoon did not see it that way. aThe chain of command cared more about what was happening in Rushdi Mullah than what was happening to us,a said Cross. aThe frustration got to the point where pretty much everybody at the TCP started taking it out on people coming through. It kind of became a compet.i.tion, bragging whoas f.u.c.king them up better.a Drinking and drug use were on the rise, frequently right under Fenlasonas nose. aThe vast majority of the Joes were drinking,a Private First Cla.s.s Steven Green acknowledged. aMost of the NCOs. Of course, the NCOs were all like twenty-two years old, though. Since I can chug a pint of whiskey, Sergeant Yribe would be like, aHey, chug that bottle.a By February or March, I was doing some type of intoxicant every day. A lot of Valiums, and a lot of these pink pills that were some kind of a hallucinogen. A lot of other guys were taking those too. Iraqi Army guys would sell them to us. TCP1 was where all of the drugs were coming from, because thatas where the most IAs were, and then they were getting spread to the other TCPs.a Some soldiers had started getting drunk and going out looking for Iraqis to beat up. aCortez, Barker, and them, theyad get on whiskey and s.h.i.t,a said Cross. aTheyad get rowdy. Cortez and Barker at one point went on a two-man drunken patrol. They were like, af.u.c.k this s.h.i.t, letas go find some people and f.u.c.k them up.a They took off by themselves. We had to send another soldier, who was sober, over there to keep an eye on them so nothing happened.a These rogue patrols were not uncommon. aTheyad go out in Mullah Fayyad and beat up some people,a recalled Collin Sharpness, the medic. aTheyad tell me all about it when they got back. There was a lot of s.h.i.t going on. You got a twenty-two-year-old, a twenty-three-year-old in charge of a bunch of nineteen-year-olds? Controlling a checkpoint? Who knows what theyare doing?a On March 9, with so many 3rd Squad soldiers on leave, Cortez needed two more soldiers from the other squads to fill his ranks. Private First Cla.s.s Jesse Spielman begged Cortez to take him, just so he could get away from Fenlason. No matter how bad TCP2 was, it was better than being around him, Spielman said. Fenlasonas approval was easy to secure. He simply didnat care what personnel, in what combination, went down to TCP2. aTurns out to be Spielman and Green,a he said. aWhich, sure, why not? As long as Iave got nine, I donat really give a s.h.i.t.a Around two or three in the morning of March 10, TCP1 got a call from TCP2 saying they had detainees they needed help bringing in. They had been on their way to the house of an informant known as Mr. B when someone fired a rocket at them. They followed the rocket back to the house they thought it came from and now they had some suspects. Sergeant Yribe got Babineau and a couple of guys in a truck to go help out the guys from 3rd Squad. They didnat really know where the house was, so Babineau and Yribe got out and started filing down some of the alleyways as Cortez guided them in over the radio using landmarks. Finally, they were within shouting range.
aCortez, that you?a aYeah, over here!a Yribe walked into the house. Cortez, Spielman, a couple of other soldiers, and an interpreter were all there. In the room there were some electrical works, fuse boxes, wiring. Definitely shady, Yribe thought, so, okay, good grab. But walking in, Yribe could smell alcohol. And looking around, he could see that the soldiers had been drinking. The guys down at TCP2 were drinking at least every other day these days. Tonight they were so drunk they were practically falling down. They were trying to stand the detainees up, so they could punch them again or kick them, but they were so wasted, sometimes they wouldnat even connect and fell to the floor themselves. Realizing just how serious the situation was in terms of their safety as well as their getting into trouble, Yribe tried to take control. He had no problem roughing up Iraqis. Catching a guy who shot at you, or tried to blow you up, and putting a lot of hurt