Carnivore (36 page)

There were too many troopers in Crazy Horse to mention everybody, but one soldier I did want to credit was Jerrod Fields. Early in 2005, when I was in-country, he got the lower part of his left leg blown off when an IED hit his Bradley. He was so concerned with getting his crew out of the kill zone that he continued to drive even though he'd lost his leg, for which he received a Bronze Star. Jerrod went back and got a prosthetic and stayed in the Army. In fact, he was reenlisted by Vice President Dick Cheney. Not just that, he'd always been a great athlete, and he continued with that, ending up in the Army's World Class Athlete Program. He was featured on the cover of the April 23, 2008, issue of
ESPN The Magazine
. Jerrod is still a Bradley gunner, a Crazy Horse trooper through and through.

C
arnivore
is my story. Maybe 5,000 soldiers saw direct combat in the first few months of the war, and every one of them has a story. This is what I saw and did. There were a lot of things that went on that aren't in the book, but this is what I felt was important to show the effect that armor had on the war.

I can't speak for what anyone else saw and did. I know I was just a small part of a huge effort—and also lucky as hell. My nickname should be Lucky Jay, not Crazy Jay, because I should have died a dozen times over. That's how I know there has to be somebody up there looking out for me. I was blown up—or almost blown up—so many times that a lot of my memories of the war are jumbled or completely gone. I don't know how many concussions I received, because I never had the time to get them diagnosed, much less treated—I was too busy shooting back. I don't think the super-ultra-mega-chemo did anything positive for my brain cells, either. A spoken word or something I'll see will jog my brain, and all of a sudden I'll remember something that happened in Iraq that I'd completely forgotten about.

Right about the time I finished this book I found out that my cancer was back. There have been a lot of medical advancements in the almost nine years since I last beat it, and I'm confident I can beat it again. It's not going to be fun or pleasant, but chemo is better than the alternative.

Large numbers of soldiers and Marines have gone to combat, but only a small number have stepped into the mouth of hell, shed blood, and experienced the loss of friends. The fighting men and women of this country put everything in their lives on hold for the freedom of another people and some have given their lives for this true and just cause. We must never let our fallen friends be forgotten. Going to Iraq I think has made our military stronger and made our country stronger. Far too many of our citizens have forgotten that freedom isn't free. I lost good friends. The old saying that what does not kill you makes you stronger is not true. What does not kill you leaves you in pain for the rest of your life.

Contrary to what a lot of people who have never been to Iraq think, I believe it was a good thing for the United States to go over there. From what I personally observed, I feel that the Iraqi people are better off now than before. There has been no change of heart on my part, even after all I've been through.

For those who lost a loved one in Iraq, know that they died winning freedom for the Iraqis. I am truly sorry for your loss and hope that you are not bitter about it. Your loved one has done the greatest thing any human can do in their lifetime, and there is a very good chance that he or she changed someone's life for the better.

As for myself, all the combat I've seen has changed me. You can't go through what I and my crew went through and not be changed in some way. I've seen too much death, caused too much death.

I try to remember the good things, the brave things, the funny things, but I have a lot of memories that aren't so great. At As Samawah, the second day, when the Commander told us to go back across the bridge and hold it, I was stopped next to the little guard shack. That shack was the first thing Broadhead and I had shot up, and there were 15- and 16-year-old kids going inside the building and stealing Iraqi weapons. The Lieutenant's gunner was right next to me, and he opened up on the guard shack with HE rounds. They passed right in front of my face, and he killed or maimed those kids as they were coming out. I don't think they were getting the rifles to fight, I think they were just going to sell them, but he saw them as weapon carriers on a battlefield and thus fair game.

Iraqis from the village came out, crying and screaming, and a woman holding one of the boys ripped her clothes, showing us her breast, signaling to us that he was her kid. I got out and was trying to put pressure dressings on them—we didn't have tourniquets back then—whatever I could use out of my vehicle's combat lifesaving kit, trying to help those kids.

That was a horrible thing for me to see, because I'm a father of three boys. I try not to think about it, and the memory fades over time. But it still happened.

Before heading to Iraq in 2003 I hunted a lot in Kentucky. Now, when I hear guys talking about going deer hunting or bagging a big buck, I just sort of snort. How hard is it to kill a deer? Did he have an AK or an RPG? Was he shooting back? I don't really hunt anymore, because I get nothing out of it. Something Ernest Hemingway wrote I have found to be completely true for me: “Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. You will meet them doing various things with resolve, but their interest rarely holds because after the other thing ordinary life is as flat as the taste of wine when the taste buds have been burned off your tongue.” It takes a lot to get my adrenaline going.

We went over as liberators, not conquerors, but it's like when a bully has kids under control on a playground. When you take that bully out, all of a sudden you have 30 little bullies instead of that 1 big bully. That was what happened in Iraq. We took out the big bully, Saddam, and then we had a bunch of little groups to deal with who didn't respect us. They thought we were weak because we were helping them, so they were particularly brutal to us. I wasn't the “hearts and minds” guy, because I realized early on that the only way we'd be able to do our mission and survive was for us to be brutal right back. So I was brutal.

Some people may ask, why did you and your men drag that guy out of the car and smack him around? Because we never had a problem with that guy again. Why did you blow that truck up with 10 pounds of plastic explosives? Because we never had a problem at that checkpoint again. I protected those who needed protecting, I gave medical treatment to those who needed to be treated, and I punished those who needed to be punished. I did not rob, I did not rape, and I did not pillage, and neither did anyone under my command. I took care of my men and my unit, up front and to the utmost. I brought every one of my soldiers home from every tour.

It has taken a long time to put my story down in ink. After years of combat and one too many traumatic brain injuries, I find it hard to remember some things now. I still get flashbacks and try to write them down when I can. For some things in here, I had to rely on the book
On Point
and friends who were there, as some of my memories are still fuzzy. We are all a product of the choices we have made, however, and I wouldn't do anything differently. I did what needed to be done, and because I was there and made the tough decisions that had to be made, my men went home to their wives and their children.

^*
“3/7 Cavalry: Fighting the Good Fight, Part 2,” by SFC Dillard J. Johnson,
Soldier of Fortune
, August 2006, p. 22.

First Platoon, Crazy Horse, 3/7 Cavalry. On the eve of battle along the Iraq-Kuwait border, 2003.

Crazy Horse in Baghdad, 2005. Back row, left to right: Rodriguez, Dejesus, Cochran, and myself. Front row, left to right: Williams, Taylor, Liesbish, and Sowby. I'm carrying my M14 EBR, the rifle I used to take the 852 meter sniper kill, my longest shot. On the ground to my left is my Barrett M82, the weapon I used for most of my sniping. This photo would appear on the cover of
Soldier of Fortune
in August 2006.

Posing with the first AK and Iraqi flag I captured at As Samawah, where one of the bloodiest engagements of the invasion took place.

Riding around Iraq in the early days of the invasion, waiting for people to try to kill us. We usually didn't have to wait very long.

We counted the tanks, artillery pieces, and planes that we'd destroyed with the Carnivore and painted them on its side like a World War II fighter plane.