I
remember the first time I ever pointed a weapon at someone
with the intent to kill them. The experience was very different
from how I had imagined it would be—far more ambiguous, con-
fusing, and subjective. The training scenarios and exercises had
never really covered situations like the one I found myself in.These guys had been here longer than
I had and clearly knew what was up,
but they seemed strangely uncon-
cerned by it. “Getting hit” was spoken
of in the same tones as “It’s gonna
rain” or “We’re gonna be late.” An
inconvenience, but not the end of
the world. For a green kid on my first
deployment, “getting hit” was a pretty
big deal! I hopped into my turret,
checked my machine gun, secured all
my other gear, and settled in.
It turns out the grunts were only
half right. About one mile out of the
village, our lead vehicle slammed
to a stop. It missed running over a
pressure-detonated IED (think of a
mousetrap wired with three artil-
lery shells) by mere feet. The pla-
toon sergeant prepared to call for
the explosive ordnance disposal
unit to come remove the bomb, but
the platoon leader cut him off. The
leader had had enough. Too many
IEDs, too many broken vehicles,
too many broken men. He issued a
new order: Dismount a squad, to be
led by the leader, to take cover and
watch the site. He then ordered the
vehicles pushed back half a mile and
hidden in a ditch beside the road
with the engines and lights off. WeI hadn’t been in Iraq that long,
maybe 60 days. My assignment: gun-
ner for a troop transport vehicle known
as an MRAP. There were 30 or so troops
in the platoon, and our mission this
evening was a reconnaissance patrol
taking us to the edge of our battle
space, the dividing line between the ar-
eas of responsibility for military units.
That was where the bad guys tended to
collect, much in the same manner that
the space between tiles in a bathroom
collects mold and grime.
For this assignment, we were the
Mr. Clean. The plan: look around, talk
to the locals, try to winkle out some
actionable intelligence, and then start
kicking the hornets’ nest. Depending
on where we went, this was either su-
per successful (quite a few of the lo-
cals actually hated the insurgency) or
a total bust.
The village had only one road in.
Just like so many other stories in Iraq,
bad things happen when you are at
the far end of your leash, late at night,
on the only ingress/egress route. As
we mounted up to head back to camp,
I heard some of my buddies mutter-
ing, “Ugh, we are getting hit tonight.” I
tried (and failed) to play it cool. We’re
getting hit? I was excited and nervous.100 dec 2018 )jan 2019
Reader’s Digest Military Life