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  The 5th Marines were still involved in heavy fighting around Al Aziziyah. “The enemy order of battle included T-55s, T-62s, mechanized vehicles, air defense artillery, long-range artillery, and mortars of the Republican Guard,” the regimental historian wrote. Enemy troops, dug into formidable positions, managed to destroy a couple of Marine tanks and some other armored vehicles, and several hundred fedayeen fools who had come in from other Arab countries prowled the countryside to ambush the unwary. But piece by piece, the 5th Marines took them apart-and killed a Republican Guard general in the process.

  Our unit, the 7th Marines, had spread out alongside the 5th to the east, and the 1st Marines came up beside us, which meant that the entire 1st Marine Division was now grouped together, ready for the final party.

  One of our forward air controllers, Captain Christopher Grasso, arranged a surprise for one persistent pocket of Iraqi fighters. We watched from a safe distance as a lethal pattern of bombs fell from a giant B-52 that was flying so high we couldn’t even see it. These huge bombers with their signature swept-back wings are older than the men who fly them but have been continually upgraded with advanced avionics over the years to remain weapons of immense power. A single bomb can cause incredible destruction, which means there are few things like a B-52 strike, when such bombs fall in strings like monstrous firecrackers.

  A towering fountain of dirt, debris, and dust rose into the air when the first Mk-82 bomb hit and exploded, followed in a heartbeat by another fountain overlapping the first, then another, and another, and another, and finally it seemed there would be no end to the entwined, ripping explosions, and a solid curtain of dust hung in the air. We were a mile away and still felt the wall of displaced air push against our faces and our clothes, and the dull grumble of detonations reached our ears. How could anyone survive that? The reeling Iraqis had to be wondering just how many different ways-tanks, bombs, missiles, artillery, helicopters, ships, grenades, riflemen, snipers-we could kill them. The answer was, a lot.

  Early on Saturday morning, April 5, our Bravo Company armor parked their tanks squarely on a busy intersection, and we took a security platoon out to deal with a huge crowd of civilians streaming around their position. Many of those traipsing past were men of fighting age who had thrown away their uniforms and donned droopy civilian robes. Only a short while ago, some had been the strutting members of the vaunted Al Nida Division; they were still recognizable by those signature red boots beneath their robes. After we made sure they had no weapons, we let them get out of the way of our advancing battalions, because it was easier to parole them rather than have to guard, feed, and protect them as prisoners of war. If they shed their uniforms, walked south through our lines, and had no guns, we considered that they had surrendered and let most of them return to their homes. To capture so many thousands of men would just have slowed our momentum, and we had the enemy reeling.

  We did take prisoner any men we thought might be dangerous or possess useful information. Just being in civilian robes did not earn them a free pass, but they were not brutalized. McCoy had written and distributed to his officers and staff NCOs before the war a printed list entitled “Expectations of Combat Leaders,” in which one element stated, “Treat prisoners with dignity but do not trust them and be forceful and firm. Do not abuse prisoners, it is cowardly.” In all, those of us on the front line treated them better than they had expected, and in accordance with the Geneva Convention. What happened to some prisoners later in some of the prisons, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib, startled us all. Torturing prisoners is dishonorable, no matter who does it, and it usually gains nothing of value, because a prisoner being tortured will say anything to stop the pain.

  One man Casey and I bagged that morning was a pretty friendly fellow who was a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi counterintelligence corps, and he sang as freely as a canary. He described in great detail one of those “sensitive sites” that our intelligence people had been hunting, places where it was hoped some of the weapons of mass destruction might be stored. The officer even built a model of it in the sand, like a kid at a beach, and helped us mark the position on a map. We passed him back to the rear for further questioning, although I would have preferred to keep him around as a consultant.

  We pushed on up the road from the intersection until we reached a peculiar area where a bunch of abandoned and heavily weathered buildings occupied the right side of the road, a run-down collection of structures similar to a light industrial park in some small city back home. On the left was a mysterious wall of sand, a thick berm that must have reached forty feet in height, with no entranceway facing the road. McCoy sent the Bravo tanks around to see if they could find a door in the dirt.

  In a little while, an ominous radio call came back from Captain Lewis. “Darkside Six, this is Bravo Six. I’ve got something up here that you may want to come see.” The tankers had found the site described by the Iraqi officer.

  Much of the argument put forward for America starting this war with a preemptive strike had hinged on Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear capability. So far, no such weapons had been found, although we still expected to be chemed or slimed as we neared Baghdad.

  Rumors had been flying that the 101st Airborne Division had discovered some chemical munitions and that the 82nd Airborne had also found some suspicious artillery rounds. Both of those reports proved to be negative. Perhaps we had finally turned up one of those mysterious caches.

  Behind that huge berm of sand, our boys had come upon a complex of modern buildings that were startlingly different from almost every other place we had seen in Iraq. While obvious neglect reigned almost everywhere else, this place had been carefully maintained. It was actually clean! Large pieces of industrial equipment lay in the yards, each neatly covered with a tarpaulin and protected by sandbags from the elements and American bombs. The air inside the buildings was cool, although the electricity was off and the air-conditioners idle. Computers with blank screens sat in neat ranks on desks, wooden cabinets lined the floor, and a picture of Saddam Hussein was in every work cubicle. It was obvious that this was a workplace for skilled technical personnel and needed a thorough search.

  Some of the Jackals did a search of their own and found that some of the buildings still had running water, a promise of bliss for the civilian media types who had been out in the desert with us for almost two weeks. Reporter Peter Maas later wrote about the incident in a New York Times Magazine story: “Along with the usual assortment of portraits of Saddam Hussein and outdated computers, Ellen [Knickmeyer of the Associated Press] discovered a shower with running water. I grabbed a bar of soap, raced inside, and stripped. Just then a Marine shouted down the hallway, The building is rigged with C4! Get out!’ I got out.” The Jackals hastily abandoned the booby-trapped building and stayed dirty, just like the rest of us.

  The site eventually gave us nothing. There was no evidence of WMDs, and the exact purpose of the place remained unknown. The best guess was that the abandoned factory complex was some sort of precision manufacturing facility.

  With only three hours of daylight left, Casey located a broad, tilled field about two kilometers away where we could spread out for the night. McCoy secured the sensitive site of mysterious buildings with an infantry company, plus the Bravo tanks and his tactical headquarters team. The Main, the CAATs, the trains, and other units set up in the field. That night, much of the combat power of the battalion settled down within the berm of the complex itself, among manicured rosebushes, while the rest of us stretched out on farmland that had the consistency of granite.

  The strange war just kept getting stranger. Enemy soldiers could become free citizens simply by dropping their guns and uniforms and walking away from their fighting positions. Their comrades up the road would still be trying to kill us, and some of those who quit made their military retirement temporary and would revert to their combatant ways in the cities and villages that we had bypassed. W
ho to trust?

  That night, India Company was marching back from a mission to join our position when they crossed a field that we had traversed earlier, sidestepping the bodies of some enemy soldiers. The “bodies” suddenly came to life, leaped up, and started firing, but the Marines reacted instantly and returned fire, so the enemy soldiers went back to being dead, this time for real. It was another lesson that we were close to the enemy’s heartland and sudden death could come from any quarter: suicide bombers in pickup trucks; fedayeen hiding in the bushes; soldiers who were dangerous one moment, then changed into civilian clothes at our approach and laid down their guns-but not their hatred. There were booby traps, deadly RPGs, roadside bombs, the threat of weapons that could deal death in massive amounts, and now people faking death to stage an ambush. It was dangerous to let down your guard.

  On the flip side were the friendly little mom-and-pop stores that could be found alongside almost every road in Iraq. Sometimes, when a trove of Saddam’s private cash was discovered, the intelligence guys we called the “Secret Squirrels” became our private ATM machines, spitting out money, as they distributed Iraqi dinars among the troops as unofficial bonuses so we could pump cash back into the local economies. We figured the dictator had stolen enough money, so we were happy to give it back to the citizens.

  We would step into those dark little shops and buy almost everything on the shelves-bottles of 7-Up and the Arab version of Pepsi-Cola, bubble gum, and local snacks such as an odd version of caramelized corn. There would be a lot of friendly jabber about prices, and the costs skyrocketed as more Marine customers showed up. A cold drink that went for only five dinars to the first customer was suddenly five thousand dinars for latecomers who were trying to shove ten-thousand-dinar notes into the hands of the shopkeepers. They could not believe the bonanza spilling from the wallets of the young men carrying guns. Those shop owners were friendly, exuberant, and happy to see us.

  Or were they? Who knew? How could you tell? To say we were on edge is an understatement.

  Artillery blinked against the night sky in the north, and mosquitoes hit us in swarms as I made myself as comfortable as possible among the hardpan ruts of the plowed field. I wondered what kind of crops could possibly grow in such desolation, other than sheaves of hardship and vines of misery.

  Suspense gripped us tightly, for the war was entering its final phase. All along the Marine lines on that Saturday night, recon teams were out, snooping to find ways through the last big obstacle, the Diyala River.

  Over the centuries, the swift green waters of the Diyala had dropped from a lake far to the north to carve a wide and deep channel that meandered for miles through central Iraq and the eastern suburbs of Baghdad until it bled into the Tigris River. In a country that was mostly desert, we now faced a natural geographic barrier that would be easily defensible by the enemy, a big, deep river with extremely steep bluffs at the sides. By any method, getting over it would be a bitch.

  The Force Recon boys can do wonders, but they can’t build bridges alone in the dark. They investigated every small road and muddy cow path leading down to the river and kept reporting back that no suitable crossings were available, except for the one place that was right in front of us.

  Headquarters types are nocturnal creatures who are not allowed to sleep at night, because they stay up reading tea leaves, preparing orders, and drafting plans for the following day. While the rest of us either loafed within the bermed complex of buildings or stretched out on the field, the planners filtered through the alternatives until, by default, and to the utter delight of Lieutenant Colonel Bryan P. McCoy, the primary assault on the Diyala fell to his Marines. The Bull got the job.

  Straight ahead on the road that we currently straddled was the bridge, two parallel spans across the river, about 150 yards wide. There was a slim two-lane span for pedestrian traffic, and the main bridge was a four-lane highway. Far below swirled the strong currents of the Diyala.

  Worse, the bridge was located in the middle of an urban area. That meant a house-to-house fight would be needed just to reach it on our side of the river; then even more urban fighting awaited us on the far side. But if we could take it, we would be only nine miles from downtown Baghdad.

  The captured Iraqi colonel had warned us that Saddam’s troops had been ordered to make a stand at this bridge. Nutty fedayeen and militiamen defended the town on this side of the river, and regular troops were well dug into positions on the far side, all with orders to fight to the death. The enemy commanders could read maps, too; well aware of the vital importance of the river crossing, they laced it with explosives. They planned to blow it up the moment they saw the first American approaching.

  Of course, all of this is very plain in hindsight, but at the time, I was blind as a bat and innocent as a lamb with regard to what tomorrow might bring. Nine times out often, the Tac, or tactical headquarters, would have been located with the Main, and I would have known what was going on. But with the discovery of the sensitive site, the Tac had stayed within the berms, and I was back at the Main, totally out of touch as the planners toiled through the vampire hours. At least four plans were debated about how to go get that bridge, and although I was oblivious to them all, I was confident that I would be in the thick of it. But when I asked Officer Bob about it, he told me there would be no attack at all tomorrow.

  So we slid into relax mode and caught some shut-eye, lulled by the distant bumping of our long-range artillery guns lobbing shells at the defenders of the Diyala Bridge. Nothing going on but a war.

  The next day, Sunday, April 6, began in an unhurried manner back where we were, with no sense of pending combat, although a lot of Marines and machines were moving about as the battalion lined up on the road, with the Abrams tanks up front. It is natural to have your stomach in a scramble of nerves before a fight, but this was a normal, piece-of-cake, let’s-get-our-shit-together kind of morning. Our combat power was strung out in a line long enough to cover the length of about eight football fields, and from our place at the rear, we couldn’t even see the front. I called Officer Bob again and was once again firmly told that the senior officers were getting together but there would be no attack. Specifically, I was to stay with the Main.

  The sun jumped into the morning sky and was already burning bright with a soaring temperature that had us sweating in our protective suits; MOPP meant HOT. I found a chunk of shade on a sidewalk and sat with my back against my Humvee. Wait. Sweat. Wait. Casey came by to say that he thought that getting shot at was “a bit of a rush” and that he was considering trying out for the CIA when the war was done. I told him not to make any decisions out here: Keep your head in the game. Wait. Wait. We were clueless.

  This just didn’t feel right, though, and I began to fidget. I got up, stretched, and looked up the road at the long line of vehicles. Something was stirring up front, and the combat power was on the move. Were they going into a fight or just repositioning?

  Little bells began to jangle in my head. Something was up. Something had to be happening! Are we attacking? I climbed inside my Humvee and sat there, staring through the window at the truck in front of us, as if the answers were written on the tailgate. In my gut, I had that sinking feeling again that I was in the wrong place.

  At nine o’clock in the morning, we suddenly heard the clear sounds of battle ahead and watched some rocket-propelled grenades ride their hot little tails into balls of explosions. I flipped the radio to the Tac-1 net and clearly heard gunfire behind the voices. Detonations erupted in the area of the sensitive site. I tuned to the Main net and got Officer Bob on the horn. Why had I not been told about the order to attack?

  His laconic reply was simply “The colonel said he doesn’t need you today.”

  Oh, my God! McCoy himself had told me that I would be taking my gun into a target-rich environment, and now I was once again on the sidelines, literally stranded at the very back of the line and intentionally left out of still another fight. Cursing loudl
y, I got out of the truck, found a scrawny tree, and sat beneath it in a brooding sulk, so plainly pissed off at the entire fucking world that no one dared say a word to me. The boys had questions but asked them only with their eyes, and for once, I had no answers.

  Then one of them screamed that there was some talk on the radio about me, so I walked over to the truck in time to hear the last part of the transmission. It was the unmistakable voice of Darkside Six roaring over the tactical net, shaded by a background of crackling gunshots, asking, demanding, none too politely: “Where the FUCK is Coughlin?”

  19

  The Baghdad Two-Mile

  Death was just beyond my windshield. Bullets whanged against metal, and rocket-propelled grenades zipped toward us. Marines were running and gunning amid the chattering pops of small-arms fire, and machine guns were firing full out, with a heavy, rhythmic stomp. Artillery shells exploded and shook the ground.

  On the map, this town was called Az Zafaraniyah, but on that April morning, it was hell for the United States Marines, a raging, brutal firefight that gave this new generation of jarheads a taste of what the Corps had faced on Guadalcanal in World War II, at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, and at Khe Sanh in Vietnam. It was not pretty enough to appear on TV, for our job was to heap casualties on the defenders, fast and with unrelenting force, and force them to withdraw. So time slowed down and I went on a killing spree.