The good captain, p.34
The Good Captain, page 34
Much of our work was constantly checking up on our units, in keeping with the old saying that “the unit only does well those things the commander checks.” During one of our nightly spot checks, the duty officer happened to find two soldiers sound asleep in their tower, wrapped up in poncho liners and oblivious to all else. This was a serious dereliction of duty in a combat zone, and I directed the deputy commander to convene a court martial. Soldiers from each unit were directed to attend, and Colonel Pattillo served as the presiding officer. An attorney in civilian life, Ladd understood we needed to send a strong message to the command. Opening the Manual of Courts Martial, he read out the maximum penalty for “sleeping on one’s post in time of war”—“death, or such less penalty as a court martial may direct.” Gasps could be heard in the courtroom, while the defendants literally turned white. Both were reduced in rank to E-1, heavily fined and sent to Kuwait for confinement. An account of the proceeding was published in daily orders, and no more incidents of this kind happened for the rest of the mission.
As the brigade commander, “battlefield circulation” was an almost daily practice as it was for all commanders of combat units. In this way I could visit my units, see soldiers where they lived and worked, maintain situational awareness, and keep informed in ways large and small. (By standing order, all brigade staff officers were required to accompany units outside the wire at least once per week to stay involved and aware of the challenges faced by our soldiers.) Each movement began with pre-combat inspections (PCIs), a tactical brief, and a short group prayer. Like every other combat unit in Iraq, my TAC had a tacit understanding, seldom discussed but always in force. Should the day go against us, we would not allow any to be captured alive. This was not bravado. We had all seen the gory videos and knew what would happen if we did. In both Iraq and Afghanistan there were cases where small groups of soldiers and Marines fought to the bitter end, but surrender was almost unknown. These wars were different.
We would then mount our vehicles, strap in, check our communications and prepare to move out. A typical radio message as we rolled out would be “Sky Dragon Main, this is Sky Dragon 6 … SP-ing for the IZ with four victors and 12 pax, time now, over.” A rough translation is: “Command post, this is the commander … I am starting movement to the International Zone with four vehicles and 12 personnel at this time … please acknowledge.” During movement, we would call in checkpoints as we passed so that the BDOC could track our movement. Like all military units, we used jargon and “pro words” to speed communication without loss of clarity. To the uninitiated, military radio traffic is virtually unintelligible. A trained ear is necessary to tune out the radio static and background noise, while military acronyms and verbal shortcuts can sound like a foreign language.
In early March of 2005, we became embroiled in an ugly incident highlighting just how hard coalition warfare can be. A month earlier, an “unembedded” Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, working for the communist newspaper Il Manifesto was kidnapped by insurgent forces near Baghdad. As they had often done in other conflicts (for example, in the Balkans and in Somalia), Italian authorities negotiated her release through a large ransom payment. Without informing U.S. authorities, Italian secret service officer Nicola Calipari attempted to transport Sgrena to Baghdad International Airport in a civilian vehicle, a hazardous and foolish excursion. Approaching a U.S. checkpoint at high speed, Calipari’s vehicle was fired on by U.S. troops belonging to the 69th Infantry, an adjacent National Guard outfit out of New York, after ignoring warning signals. Calipari, an intelligence major general, was killed in the incident, igniting a firestorm in the Italian press.
In the ensuing outcry the Italian authorities and media worked hard to obscure or distort the facts, alleging that Calipari and another agent, Andrea Carpani, were “murdered” in an “ambush.” Denying that any ransom had been paid or that prior coordination was not conducted, the Italian authorities dismissed the results of the U.S. investigation and later attempted to charge American soldiers in Italian courts.
In fact, Calipari encountered a mobile checkpoint established to protect the movement of U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte that day. At that time, Route IRISH was known to be perhaps the most dangerous road in the world, with almost daily attacks. (One New York Times report chronicled 135 attacks on the road in the four months up to early March of 2005, including 15 suicide car bombs, 19 roadside bombs, and 14 attacks with rocket-propelled grenades.) The 69th would sustain heavy losses during its year in Baghdad and had in fact lost two soldiers in a catastrophic explosion nearby only two days before. Brigadier (later Lieutenant) General Pete Vangjel from the Corps staff was tasked to investigate the incident and his report was comprehensive and accurate. 69th soldiers on the scene were well versed in the Rules of Engagement and had employed searchlights, laser pointers and warning shots before engaging the careening vehicle.
Following the incident, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government came under great pressure, threatening Italy’s continued participation in the coalition and damaging the military-to-military relationship seriously (Italy would withdraw from the coalition in 2008). On the ground, we were equipped with more and better barriers, signs, and warning devices, while our soldiers were exhorted to be even more “aware” and “sensitive.” At the tactical level, however, the threat remained critical. We could not and did not retreat from a bedrock principle—the fundamental right of self-defense.
Soon after, I would experience this tension and this agony first-hand. On occasion I accompanied subordinate units on mounted or dismounted patrols, and on this evening, I joined a squad from the Hawaiian infantry battalion as it moved on foot after dark through the Ameriyah neighborhood. An hour into the patrol, a civilian vehicle entered from a side street and began to accelerate towards the rear of the patrol. This was unusual, as by now all Baghdad residents knew not to approach any U.S. patrol in anything that looked like a threatening manner.
As with the Calipari incident, here was a life-or-death situation which called for split-second decisions from the young soldier bringing up the rear. A vehicle-borne suicide attack could wipe out the entire patrol and kill many civilians in nearby buildings. But how to be sure? Taking no chances, in mere seconds the trooper executed the “escalation of force” sequence that by now was almost second nature. First, he fired two warning shots into the air, immediately followed by two shots into the pavement in front of the oncoming vehicle. When it continued towards him, he fired two more into the engine block. The car continued to charge right at him, and now out of options, he engaged the driver directly with a burst into the windshield at a range of no more than 20 meters.
Tragically, his rounds flew between the driver and passenger and struck a 10-year-old boy in the back seat, fatally wounding him in the head. The driver, his father, was from Anbar province and simply panicked when he came up on the American patrol. We rushed the boy to our aid station in my vehicle, his blood drenching its floor. He died 30 minutes later.
I returned to the BDOC and sat in my command chair, unmoving, still in my body armor and soaked in sweat. Around me the night shift worked quietly, standing apart, sensing my anguish. After a few minutes the battle captain thoughtfully turned out the lights, so that no one could see the tears running down my face. For an hour they worked by the light of their computer screens, the silence broken only by the soft staccato of the radio nets. A young sergeant, unobtrusively posted by the entrance, kept all visitors away. For what seemed an age I wrestled with myself in the dark, until I gave up, exhausted. My armor had never felt heavier, or more useless. At that moment, the war didn’t make sense to me. Not really.
That night, I thought about a talk with my father, years before. Then, I was a grad student, my head filled with lofty notions of international politics. I asked him what it felt like to fight in a war with no clear path to victory. Puffing on his pipe, he waited before answering. Then he said, “They gave me an area to work. My job was to kill as many of the enemy as I could and bring home as many of my men as I could. That’s what I did. All the rest was somebody else’s business. We go where we’re sent. And we do what we’re told. It’s pretty awful sometimes. But that’s the job.” Not much seemed real to me that night. But that did.
My young soldier was inconsolable, though a subsequent investigation concluded that he had followed the correct procedure to the letter. Only two days later, a similar incident not far from VBC resulted in eight dead Iraqi soldiers and 20 wounded. This time, the threat was real. This was the reality of war among the people. We knew that every incident of “CIVCAS” would be turned against us to alienate the locals. Yet our forces were constantly attacked inside populated areas by an enemy that dressed like civilians and hid among them. We did all we could to avoid harming non-combatants, but batting 1.000 was simply not possible. All we could do was try to live with the consequences when we failed. We live with them still.
Three months into the mission, on March 26, a catastrophic explosion shattered the calm of the BDOC as our radio nets sprang to life. Our tower guards quickly reported in and we trained our dirigible-mounted TV cameras on the scene. Zooming in only seconds after the blast, we saw a HMMWV in flames only yards outside the perimeter wall. A small blue pickup truck had slammed into the vehicle and detonated, burning two Louisiana Guardsmen to death and seriously injuring two others. Within seconds CSM Zacheus and I were rolling to the scene, while the BDOC staff rushed field ambulances to the site and reported to higher.
By now we had learned that an observer was usually in the vicinity to video the attack. An alert battle captain, expertly manipulating the aerostat cameras, located the observer and shifted the field of view to track him as he fled with his camcorder in a small white car. We began to vector QRFs onto the fleeing insurgent. If we could catch him, we would likely learn much about his network. Suddenly, without warning, the camera view shifted violently back to the burning wreck. Officers in our higher headquarters had overridden the BDOC and taken control of the cameras. Fascinated by “war porn,” they watched the dead and wounded being carried away as the attacker escaped. Later, I argued hotly with the staff at 3ID. Voyeurism was not an excuse for crippling an operation in progress.
On the scene, I was briefed by the 111th Engineer Battalion sergeant major, over 60 and a veteran of the Ia Drang battles in Vietnam. He was tough, composed, and in charge. Apparently, the targeted unit (a small patrol from the 1st Battalion, 141st “Washington Artillery”), had stopped to pick up an interpreter, as they did each morning at the same time and place. A thinking and adaptive enemy had observed this patterned behavior and acted on it.
In a curious postscript, the remains of the suicide bomber were left on the scene, in full view of our towers only yards away. We summoned the Iraqi police, but they refused to evacuate what was left of the body, arguing that as he wasn’t Iraqi it wasn’t their job. How they determined nationality wasn’t clear, as there wasn’t much left that was recognizable. With no other options we called in graves registration soldiers to do the job.
The incident hit the 141st hard. Behind every death in war lies an unspeakable human tragedy that will never really end for the families. In the midst of war, Sergeant Lee Godbolt from New Orleans had thoughtfully sent his aunt, Mae Hagan, a birthday card. It arrived two days after his death. Godbolt had some college behind him and had worked hard to better himself. Service in the Guard was part of that. Sergeant Isaiah Sinclair from Natchitoches left a widowed mother. His father, twice wounded in Vietnam, had died at 55. Both were young Black men, handsome junior noncommissioned officers marked out for better things. A few short months later, Hurricane Katrina would batter and smash their hometowns. Denise Godbolt, Lee’s mother, would lose his medals and the flag that draped his coffin in the disaster. The 141st would redeploy from a year in Iraq and without rest go straight into disaster relief on an epic scale. This one hurt. The unit was crushed.
When we lost a soldier, the unit would hold a memorial service whenever possible. On a crude stage, the soldier’s helmet would be placed atop a rifle, which was stuck into the platform by the bayonet, along with a pair of boots. The soldier’s dog tags would be hung from the rifle and a picture of the soldier in uniform would be placed nearby. As many soldiers as we could spare from the unit would attend. A chaplain would offer a prayer. The company commander would speak, often accompanied by short remembrances by the soldier’s close friends. Taps would be played.
Often, no bugler could be found, and Major Shoults would do the honors. As he had in Bosnia and Liberia, as his forebears had done in both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, Hugh would play the mournful notes of the Army’s most beautiful song on his battered instrument. Soldiers would file by for a last goodbye, caressing the dog tags, often leaving small mementos. Always, there were many tears. From general to private, to say goodbye forever is heart breaking. For me, the experience would never become easier. We would bury our dead as full-grown men or women. But I often recalled an epitaph, written on a child’s grave: “Walk softly, stranger, for here lie dreams.” Everyone was some mother’s child. For her, the world would never, ever be the same.
Later, at the airfield, a separate ramp ceremony would take place. An honor guard would solemnly carry the flag-draped casket into the transport plane. The general, the colonel and the captain would follow, disappearing up the ramp behind the metal box containing the remains. Again, the chaplain would pray. It was an intimate experience, deeply moving and always wounding. I hoped the families would know that we had done all we could to honor their soldier.
The war ground on. On April 2, 2005, the detention facility at Abu Ghraib, about 15 miles to our west, experienced a major coordinated attack unlike any we had seen before. The assault itself involved dozens of al Qaeda attackers, who attempted to breach the main gate with a massive truck bomb. Thirty-six Marines, soldiers and civilian detainees were wounded or injured in the attack, which continued for some hours. Aerial and ground quick reaction forces sent from VBC encountered fierce resistance on the main routes leading to Abu Ghraib. Several Apache gunships were forced down at Baghdad International Airport with battle damage, and for the first (and only) time our forces encountered surface laid antitank mines on the highways. Route TAMPA, the MSR leading up from Kuwait, was closed during the attack and many large convoys were diverted into VBC for safe harbor. Our situation maps exploded with SIGACTs, which crackled all around the western part of the huge perimeter. All of our 20 QRFs were stood up, and we directed the entire base complex and its 30,000 soldiers to go to Force Protection Condition (FPCON) Delta, the highest stage of alert meaning “combat is imminent.”
In this instance all of our training and rehearsals paid off handsomely. Every tenant unit command post reported in and maintained constant communication with the BDOC. Medical treatment facilities went to full alert, empty towers were manned, and a dense network of patrols scoured the area. It was, in a sense, a full-dress rehearsal for a major attack.
Abu Ghraib, unfortunately, lay astride the boundary between the Marines, who owned Anbar province, and the Army, who controlled the Greater Baghdad area. Because the Marines were not formally task organized under the XVIII Airborne Corps (they reported instead to the senior Marine at USCENTCOM in Tampa and were only required to “coordinate” with the Army), the attempt to synchronize a response proved difficult. A service boundary is a non-trivial thing. Secure radio “fills” (cryptological codes) are different, disrupting communication. Jargon and terminology also differ, while flying and shooting across service boundaries (never mind unit boundaries) can be problematic. All of these sources of friction happened during the attack, and it began to dawn on us that the enemy might be more than just brute terrorists. A major attack (undoubtedly intended to free prisoners) conducted right along a major coalition “seam” was highly intelligent and well prepared. We resolved never to underestimate the opposition and redoubled our training and planning.
Shortly after the Abu Ghraib attack, in May 2005, Lieutenant Colonel Ken Hara, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 299th Infantry (Hawaii National Guard), came to see me. “Sir,” he said, “we’re confident we have a bad guy right under our nose, inside the wire. He runs a small shop, approved by the last regime. We’ve had him under surveillance for some time. We assess he’s a genuine threat, and I’d like to raid his place and search it.” We went over the details, and I approved the operation. I listened to his briefing and was impressed. Hara’s troopers often operated in the city, but this time the enemy was closer to home.
A few days later, the “Two Niner Nine” moved in and hit pay dirt. The small trailer was cordoned off, the target was detained, and the unit began the search, assisted by members of the Army’s CID and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Led by First Lieutenant Charles Neumann, the members of the search team fanned out, videotaping the operation as they went.
What they found was staggering. Inside the trailer were classified documents, drugs and a prohibited cell phone. On it were phone numbers, some of which later traced to known al Qaeda affiliates and insurgent personalities. And cash. Lots and lots of cash—$750,000 in all—in bags and backpacks and safes. The Iraqi vendor was hustled off for interrogation and detention, and the inventory began. The lieutenant and his team began to painstakingly count the money.
Suddenly, a CID agent intervened. “This will take forever. We have a machine back at headquarters. We’ll do it there.” The bags of money were loaded into his vehicle, and he pulled away. A few hours later, I received a call from the CID commander. “$50,000 is missing and my agents are initiating an investigation. Right now, it’s focused on the 299th.” I was dumbfounded. The operation had been thoroughly supervised—even filmed—right up to the point that CID intervened. No one had ever been alone with the cash, except for the CID agent. I objected but was warned brusquely not to interfere. As I briefed general officers to express my concerns, I was warned: “Be careful. CID is talking about obstruction of justice.”
