Mood:
blueNow Playing: Joan Baez
Topic: Gin&Tonics on the Tigris
Even though I lived in war zone and heard the sounds of war on a daily basis, I didn’t interact with soldiers on a daily basis. During my first few months, I only interacted with soldiers when I entered Iraq through military base surrounding the Baghdad airport or passed through one of the various checkpoints inside the Green Zone.
Because my life in the Zone involved going from the USAID compound to Saddam Presidential Palace, the heart of the State Department’s present in the Iraq, I often had to drive pass a checkpoints manned by troops from the embassy’s Marine Security Guard Battalion. The checkpoints generally had less than 10 Marines. The main guard stood in front of large stop signs with writing in English and Arabic that warned travelers that the Marines could use deadly force. The Marines standing near the signs checked the IDs of everyone who wanted to get close to the Palace. A second group of guard generally sat a few yards back in a machine gun nests. If someone tried to force their way through the checkpoint, the Marine in the machine nets could open fire and lay down a intense hail of bullets.
Most of the time, the young Marines manning the checkpoints seemed miserable. I could sense that they didn’t understand why they were checking ID badges of people rushing to the PX or driving home slightly intoxicated after going to a party. They wanted to be out in the field fighting insurgents. Their job satisfaction slipped even lower during during the sweltering summer month when they had to stand on top of black asphalt as the temperatures climbed to slightly more than 120 degrees. In an effort to keep them happy in the waning days of the summer of 2005, someone had gracefully installed mobile air conditioners. I always wondered what the Iraqi who went through the checkpoint thought looking at Americans running mobile, outdoor air conditioners. My Iraqi coworkers lived in houses with less than 8 hours of power a day, while Americans soldier worked in front of outdoor air conditioners that had an endless supply of electricity.
Because I lived on U.S. government compound next to the official U.S. chancery, I also occasionally saw Marines walking through my compound making routine security checks. Although the hub of the State Department's activities in Iraq occurred within Saddam's old President Palace, the chancery, which was formerly a Baathist residence, had become the official seat of the U.S. presence in Iraq. To keep up the facade that allowed the Iraqis and the Americans to pretend that the Americans had not erected their seat of power in an abandoned palace once used by Saddam Hussein, the Marines had to guard the chancery, even though the ambassador probably never stepped foot inside it.
Unlike my compound’s contracted security guards who carried simple M-16s and pleasant smiles, the Marines generally had sterner faces, more intimidating presences, and frequently carried weapons that carried a larger punch in a close combat situation. Some walked around with M-4, though many walked through my compound with shotguns or high powered rifles slung over their shoulders. Even though my compounds’ guards were heavily armed, I always felt better knowing that the Marines also patrolled my compound. They were professionals, and in a firefight, they could probably inflict more damage that the contracted security guards.
Early in my tour, a few of my friend were sitting on Kirk’s porch drinking beers while the Marines were making their rounds. Seeing my friends enjoying a jovial evening while the Marines walked slowly through the compound wearing 20 pounds of body armor, I felt a little spoiled. I think everyone in the group felt the same way, but it was Kirk who actually tried to break down the barrier that existing between the military and civilians inside the zone. He called the Marines soldiers over and offered them some soda and snacks. They gladly accepted. These two Marines were happy to talk to someone besides the other Marines in their platoon. They were also glad to see that one member of our group, Tamara, was a woman. They tried to impress her by explaining how powerful their weapons were. Tamara could care less. Kirk on the other had, had already drank a few too many gin and tonics, and the idea of learning more about these weapons fascinated him.
“You are one mean motherfucker with that gun, but what is that?” Kirk asked while pointing to a telescopic baton.
“This is an asp,” the Marine said quickly expanded it with dramatic effect.
Everyone jumped back slightly in fear, but the action only encouraged Kirk. “Wow, you’re an asshole.”
He meant it playfully. Still, everyone in the group, including the two Marines, were taken aback by the comment. They didn’t know what to do until Kirk continued his diatribe and explained how being an asshole made the Marines way tougher than Army soldiers. At that point, everyone began to laugh again and make fun of the other services.
Standing there with two young Marines, I realized that back in the States I probably won't have had any real connection with them. I had only fired a gun once in my life, and when growing up I had constantly told my friends that I would never join military. In fact, I hated the war, did not trust military leaders, and avoided the young Marines who I meet in bars throughout Washington, DC. In Iraq, I learned that a lot of differences of background and points of view melt away during a war. We were all simple Americans trying to get through our tours in Iraq.
Despite these ties that existing in Iraq that could bring civilians the soldiers together, there were unavoidable differences too. Soldiers had a different perspective than diplomats. Most soldiers eventually spent time in the fields. Most days, nothing happened, but there were days that everything turned against them. Every day, or so it seemed to them, one or two soldiers died. If they didn’t lose a friend, someone got hurt. . The stress from thinking about death and maiming weighed heavily upon them. I, on the other hand, slept in an air conditioned hard house dinking gin and tonics
In early March, I had the opportunity to watch soldiers in the elements rather than inside the surreal Green Zone. I had the luck of spending hours with Army soldiers in one of their bases near the airport. I had arrived back in Iraq after a short rest break in Egypt and ended up stuck out at a military base for 14 hours while waiting for a midnight bus run from the airport to the Green Zone. Normally, I would catch a helicopter back to the Green Zone, but the military had closed down the helicopter terminal because of the weather. In the days preceding my return to Iraq, the weather had turn cold and unusually wet. It had rained so much that the military air terminal, which sat in a small dusty depression next to the runway, had turned into a small pond. The rainwater had no where to go, so it simply rushed into the area and completely flooded the waiting area. The water damaged all the electrical equipment so the military decided to close the terminal, and because there were no helicopter flights, I had to pass the days with the many soldiers unfortunate enough to work and live at Camp Stryker.
Camp Stryker was a dull, dry, and dusty camp right next to Baghdad International Airport. Because of the rain, the camp had become a large muddy swamp filed with knee high muddy ponds. The seemingly endless rows of canvas tents covered by large plastic tarps were resting in small depressions were inundated with water. The rain water had filled in every low spot surrounding the tents and turned them into mud pits. The walkways between different areas of the camp were nearly impassable. I resigned myself that to fact that I had to kill about 12 hours in the mud hole. I had no idea how the soldiers could live in that environment. At least in the Green Zone, I had a hole where I could have escaped the mud.
Being to newbie to Camp Stryker, I didn’t know where to find the morale-welfare-recreation (MWR) tent with its movies, video games, and ping-pong tables and due to the mud didn’t want to go wandering through the mud pits. I felt lucky that I could even find the mess hall and the bathrooms. Thus, I decided to stay in the staging area for the bus run to the Green Zone. I climbed on top of a nearby large concrete bomb shelter and proceeded to read my copy of Don Quixote. It didn’t lift my spirits, though somehow it felt right to sit in the middle of sea of mud, in the middle of a bogged down war, reading a book about a man who chased windmills.
When the joys of chasing windmills came to an end, I decided to hunt out the large military exchange that supposed lay at nearby Camp Victory. Soldiers and civilian veterans of the Green Zone constantly said that the PX at Camp Victory was much, much larger that the small 7-11 sized PX inside the Green Zone. I heard that one could buy almost anything at the Victory PX, even huge slabs of steak. In the early days of the occupation, before the insurgency had gotten so violent, people could drive from Baghdad to Camp Victory to buy a steak or visit the Burger King. By the time I arrived, the violence had gotten so bad and the IEDs so deadly that Americans living in the Green Zone could only get there by scheduling a ride on a helicopter or hopping on a military shuttle bus that drove around the airport every night. Since those were unrealistic options, people only went to the Victory PX when they had to kill time flying in or out of BIAP for their rest breaks.
Camp Stryker and Camp Victory were on opposite sides of the airport, so I have to jump on a shuttle bus. The bus ride from Camp Stryker to Camp Victory took almost an hour, but since I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I didn’t mind riding inside the converted school bus driven by an Indian working for KBR. When I arrived at Camp Victory, I felt that the long trip had been worth the wait. For some reason, the Camp Victory PX wasn’t muddy. The sun shown brilliantly on the large central plaza dotted with small gazebos. In one corner of the plaza, the military erected a small bizarre where soldiers could buy souvenirs, carpets, and paintings. On the opposite side plaza, there were a number of small buildings, which housed an odd array of businesses spanning from a barber shop to a company that could help soldiers buy a car. The main store had tons of junk food, clothing, stereos, books, magazines, video games, shoes, bicycles, games, and much more. And, in the far corner of the plaza, I found the Burger King. I stood in line for five minutes to order a Double Whopper with cheese. Sure it was gluttonous, but it felt good to have a little reminder of home sliding down into my tummy.
After finishing my tour of the super PX, I stood in line waiting for the next bus back to Camp Stryker. When it finally came, I was the only civilian on the bus, and no one paid any attention to me. I slid into a seat and glanced aimlessly at the rows and rows of tents that covered Camp Victory. Once we left the base, I stared at the landscape as the bus made it way past the abandoned buildings filling in the spaces between the bases. During that bus ride, I had begun to see more of Iraq than I had during the previous three month, though not a single Iraqi lived anywhere near the airport.
Partly because I sat by myself and didn’t draw attention to myself by trying to talk to a soldier, a pack of young soldiers who jumped on the bus as a bus stop sometime after I left the PX didn’t take any note of me. They began to talk freely about what made a good soldier, what they wanted to do after finishing their tour, and other typical things that come up when soldiers try to kill time in Iraq. The conversation eventually drifted to stories about what happened during their trips out into the Red Zone, a name for anywhere in Iraq other than the Green Zone or a U.S. military base. One of the soldiers, a young specialist with a slight western drawl, complained about a recent trip to local school. Their captain had sent them out to conduct a public relations mission. The soldiers thought the trip would be easy because all they had to do was stop by the school and hand out candy. Things went fairly well, but eventually a young boy stuck his tongue out at a sergeant and called him a homosexual in a thick Arabic accent that almost made the word incomprehensible. The sergeant, who not surprisingly didn’t enjoy hearing a young boy question his American manhood, tried to grab the boy. The boy, who obviously did not want to get into a fight with a large American with an M-4, dashed away from the soldiers as quickly as he could. The sergeant called out to the rest of the unit to catch the boy. The narrator of the story followed the order and quickly dashed after the boy. After catching up the boy, the specialist leapt onto him like a linebacker catching a quarterback at the Super Bowl. The two rolled to the ground, and when the specialist righted himself, he began to give the young boy a serious thrashing that would have given old-fashion Catholic nuns reasons to shutter.
When the specialist got to this point in the story, he had grown quite loud and animated. He almost sounded happy about what happened. That is when a major leap up from behind me, and moved up to the group.
“Who’s you sergeant major, son?” the major barked.
“I don’t know sir,” the soldier said with downcast eyes and dropping head.
“You don’t know?” The major said with disbelief. “I don’t know what’s worse, that pathetic lie or your story.”
The major firmly reminded the soldier that beating a young Iraqi boy was not a funny matter. He also pointed directly as me and warned the specialist that no one on the bus knew who I was. There was even a chance that I could be a reporter. The major did not want a story about Army grunts beating up your Iraqi boys appearing on the front page of the Los Angeles Times or the Washington Post. He explained that the U.S. military has had enough bad press regarding its treatment of Iraqis.
Everyone on the bus remained silent for the rest of the trip. The soldiers would occasionally glace at me to assess how I had reacted to the story. I wanted to be upset, yet somehow I felt more upset that someone in Washington had forced young kids like that specialist to go into Iraq and fight in a country filled with people who didn’t want them there. At the same time, I felt glad that everyone felt guilty. They had to remember how difficult it was to be one of the good guys while fighting a violent insurgency in a country sliding into a civil war. When I walked off the bus, I glanced down at the specialist’s nametag, just to keep him worried that I might actually be a reporter who would contact his commanding officer. Childishly, I wanted to teach him a lesson.
Every one of the soldiers wondered what I was doing on the bus and who I would talk to about what I had heard. It was at that moment that I realized how easy it was for young men in a foreign country and losing buddies on a regular basis to go too far and forget the military’s rules of engagement. I realized that a soldier could easily cross the line from tackling a young boy who mocked a sergeant and punishing him with an older brother style beating to torturing a nameless Iraqi thrown into a prison and accused of working for the terrorists. However, I felt just as bad realizing that I had somehow judged those soldiers by giving them a harsh stare down. I felt that I didn’t have the right to judge them. I was a foreign service officer living and drinking inside the Green Zone. .
