company commander.
“Upstairs, here,” he replied motioning toward the building we were
in front of.
I walked upstairs and found the company commander hunkered down
on the roof of a building. “Everyone OK?” he asked.
“It was a blue-on-blue,” I replied bluntly.
“What?” he asked, stunned.
“It was a blue-on-blue,” I repeated. “One Iraqi soldier KIA,^4 a few
more wounded. One of my guys wounded, fragged in the face. Everyone
else is OK, by a miracle.”
“Roger,” he replied, stunned and disappointed at what had transpired.
No doubt, as an outstanding leader himself, he felt somewhat
responsible. But having operated in this chaotic urban battlefield for
months alongside Iraqi soldiers, he knew how easily such a thing could
happen.
But we still had work to do and had to drive on. The operation
continued. We conducted two more back-to-back missions, cleared a
large portion of the Ma’laab District, and killed dozens of insurgents.
The rest of the mission was a success.
But that didn’t matter. I felt sick. One of my men was wounded. An
Iraqi soldier was dead and others were wounded. We did it to ourselves,
and it happened under my command.
When we completed the last mission of the day, I went to the
battalion tactical operations center where I had my field computer set up
to receive e-mail from higher headquarters. I dreaded opening and
answering the inevitable e-mail inquiries about what had transpired. I
wished I had died out on the battlefield. I felt that I deserved it.
My e-mail in-box was full. Word had rapidly spread that we had had
jeff_l
(Jeff_L)
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