There were special detachments created for
Medical, Construction, and Intelligence. The Medical detachment people were a little older and were led by Captain Miller, a no-nonsense captain who acted like she knew what she was doing. The Construction guys looked like the most fun and I figured that most of them had worked in either building or engineering in civilian life. The Intelligence detachment looked okay but spent most of their time reading through reports from Central CommandâCENTCOMâor listening to radio intercepts. Some of them had been through language school for Arabic. Captain Coles said that the rest of us, a dozen or so soldiers, would be working within the villages as part of the flex team.
“That means we'll be doing anything that helps,” he said. “And we'll get blamed for everything that goes wrong.”
Sergeant Harris, a black soldier who had switched to Civil Affairs from Quartermaster, along with Captain Coles, sorted the dozen of us into three Humvee squads, giving us a choice of who we wanted to ride with. Jonesy said he wanted to ride with me, and Coles said he would, too. That still left a space in our vehicle and Kennedy was assigned to it. I didn't know if I liked her, but I didn't care all that much, either.
“The squads and assignments will change according to the situation,” Captain Coles said. “You're assigned to a vehicle mostly so we can hold you responsible for keeping it in good order.”
First Squad was Jones driving, Kennedy on the squad gun, me, and Captain Coles.
Second Squad was Sergeant Harris driving, Darcy, another girl, on the squad gun, and Evans.
Third Squad consisted of Love driving, Danforth on the gun, Pendleton, and a really quiet guy named Corbin who had worked in a rehabilitation center in civilian life.
Ahmed Sabbat was our field interpreter. He was American, but his parents were from the Middle East.
We were all up for whatever happened, and everyone had an opinion about what that might be.
“You know, the Iraqis are talking about how they let the UN inspectors in and how their people are suffering from the sanctions,” Evans said. “If they were getting ready to fight they wouldn't
be doing so much talking. This is March. I'm betting by the Fourth of July I'll be home fishing.”
“There's no use watching the news to see what's going on.” Sergeant Harris had his feet up on his foot locker. “Saddam is getting ready for us and we're getting ready for him. That's all there is to the thing, man.”
“Saddam's clever.” Captain Coles's voice was soft, measured. “He has to remember the Gulf War and he's savvy enough to understand that he can't stand up to the United States. No Iraqi general is going to give him a different take on things. If he lets it get to the point where we start going in, he's going to be taken out.”
“Okay, I hear what you saying,” Harris answered. “But you tell me this, sir. The president is telling him to step down and get out of Dodge. Where's Saddam going to go? Everybody over here hates his butt. He had a war with Iran, so he can't go there. The Egyptians don't like him. Everybody in Kuwait hates him for invading them. Where's he going to go? If he ain't got no place to go, he's got to stay and fight.”
“He going to stay and get smoked!” a guy named Lopez said. He was olive-skinned with dark short-cropped hair. The dude looked dangerous. I had asked him what the initials tattooed on his handâalknâmeant and he just looked at me and laughed.
“You know where Saddam could be safe?” Sergeant Harris was on a roll. “In the United States. We could put him in the witness protection program. Give him a million bucks so he could live
goodâmaybe a little businessâthat would be funny. Yeah, he could sell pictures of Elvis on black velvet.”
“You really want to get into this war bad, don't you?” Marla Kennedy was playing solitaire on the foldout table.
“Look, Miss Molly. These people need to learn what's going on. You see what I'm talking about? What they understand over here is power.” Sergeant Harris glanced toward Captain Coles to see how his remarks were being taken. “They got to see your power. They got to see you take out their cities, kill a few folks. In a way, we're teachers getting ready to let them know what American power is really all about. That's why I'm here.”
“What I think”âJonesy put talcum powder in his boots and shook themâ“is that Saddam got a tune in his head and he wants to play it real bad. And when it don't go right he just play it louder. A lot of dudes do that. They call it music, but it could just be war.”
“Jones, what are you talking about?” Coles asked.
“Hey, Captain, why are you over here?” Kennedy looked up from her cards.
“I joined the army when I was twenty-two and trying to figure out what to do with my life,” Captain Coles answered. “I kept thinking I was going to make up my mind on some career path and then get out. Haven't quite got around to making up my mind or getting out. I feel good about defending my country, about being in Civil Affairs. You know, we bring a human face to war. I feel good about that.”
I couldn't tell if Captain Coles really felt good about it or not. He didn't share much with us.
“You think we're going in?” Evans asked.
“As you say, Saddam's backed himself into a corner.” Captain Coles nodded as he spoke. “He understands power. If he backs down now, every gunslinger in the Middle East will be after him. So he might as well stay and fight it out.”
“Stay and get wasted, you mean.” Harris did seem anxious.
Captain Coles stood up. He looked uncomfortable. “I'm going to go speak to Sessions,” he said. “She was talking about us pulling guard duty, but I think I can talk her out of it.”
“Tell her that Sergeant Harris will take a shift by himself,” Kennedy said. “They won't need the rest of us.”
“Yo, woman, you got a lot of mouth for a chick!” Harris said.
“Glad you noticed it, Sergeant.”
Captain Coles left and Sergeant Harris started flipping through the television channels, seeing if any of them came in clearly. I knew the military channel would, but I didn't want to watch another rerun of the latest speech from the White House. I got up and went out into the clear spring air.
Before arriving at Doha I had imagined being on a desert with camels wandering by and palm trees swaying in the wind. It had taken seven hours to fly from Newark, New Jersey, to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, and another seven to reach Kuwait. The place blew my mind. The whole city of Doha was squeaky clean and beautiful. Almost everything was new or nearly new. I arrived
on a Saturday morning and went with a bunch of guys into the city. There was every kind of department store you could think about and the street hummed with SUVs. When I saw the Grand Mosque with its golden dome, it took my breath away. One of the guys I was with, a civilian contractor, told me that I would never get used to the architecture in the Arab countries.
“It changes your whole perspective about the people over here,” he said.
Nine o'clock this morning we marched to the CENTCOM theater and saw a film about Saddam Hussein. There were at least a thousand guys there, most of them 3
rd
Infantry dudes and a lot of Marines and Special Ops. Saddam looked like a sweetheart of a guy. Always calm looking, distinguished. In most of the pictures there was no change of expression on his face. In the film he was always seen either shaking hands or shooting a pistol into the air. Then the images changed to the Kurds who were gassed. A woman still had her arm out toward her child. The whole scene looked unreal, as if it had been staged. I wanted to turn away from the bodies lying on the ground. Some looked as if they might move at any moment. Just get up and walk off. I didn't want to see these people lying dead. I tried to get myself mad, but I only managed to feel scared.
The thing was that nobody else seemed scared. A lot of guys acted as if they were pissed and were anxious to get the war thing started. A guy from the 3
rd
Infantry, kind of small, with almost a baby face, kept talking about facing the Iraqis.
“We need to think about winning this thing and checking ourselves out to see if we really want it. You know what I mean? Because if we really want it we can make it happen,” he said. “Those people, the Kurds, laying on the ground, they didn't have a chance. We got the chance. We got to do a gut check and see if we got the will to win.”
I didn't know if I had the same will to win as the guy from the 3
rd
. What I did know was that I wanted to do my part. The officers let us sit around and talk up the war and I thought that they did it on purpose. It was like being in a locker room before a big game.
“I seen a 240 take a guy's leg off from a hundred yards,” a bigheaded corporal said. “The whole leg came off and the sucker was just laying there on the ground, looking at his leg as he died.”
I felt a little sick.
After the movie we went back to our quarters. We had settled down into card games and the usual BS when we got called out to formation. Captain Coles saluted the two officers, a colonel and a lieutenant, who gave us a quick inspection. The colonel had enough gear on to be burning up in the heat. He was making sure he looked tough. I thought about his getting heat rash and smiled but wiped it off my face before he passed by me.
“You people represent the United States Army, and you represent our country and our way of life as well,” the colonel said, sounding like he was making a formal speech. “If we go into Iraq the people there will be watching the combat troops, seeing how
well they perform their duties as well as how we treat the local population. But the most lasting impression will be of you soldiers working Civil Affairs. You can do a great job over here or you can undo any gains we make by acting without thinking, acting out of fear instead of logic, or acting in a manner that betrays American principles. Years from now, when the people in the cities and villages remember this operation, it will be your faces and actions that they will recall.”
Colonel Rose ended the talk with a recording of “The Star Spangled Banner.” It was a little hokey, but standing there at attention with all the other soldiers, I did feel a sense of pride.
“I think Civil Affairs is going to be the most interesting thing about this war,” Captain Coles said when we returned to our tent. “And maybe the safest if I can convince Major Sessions to keep you guys off patrols. I'm passing out the official vehicle assignments. You're responsible for routine maintenance and cleanliness and you each have to sign for your assigned vehicle. Look over these assignments and memorize them. If we go in you won't be allowed to take any documents with you except maps and your personal identification. I'm assigning the first three security squads.”
He handed out the papers and we looked them over. The assignments were the same as he had put on the blackboard earlier.
“We'll have different leaders depending on what assignment we're on,” Captain Coles said. “Regardless of the mission and who the leader is, we need to think of ourselves as a team. If we reach a posi
tion in which we're not only seeing each other but actually sensing what each member of the team is feeling, there's a good chance we'll all come out of this war in one piece. Any questions?”
“So you want to break it down to us one more time?” Danforth asked. “We're supposed to go out and kill the Iraqis and blow up their stuff. Then we help them find their arms or legs, or whatever we've blown off, and patch them back together. Then we all sit in a circle and sing campfire songs, right?”
“You might not be taking this seriously, Danforth, but the Operations people are and they're going to make it work. What this war is going to be aboutâand we're still not positive it's going to happenâis regime change and destroying the Iraqis' chemical and any nuclear weapons we find. It's not about making the people suffer and it's up to us to let them know that. If Saddam does step down and they turn over their weapons, we can avoid a lot of bloodshed.”
“Yeah, okay.” Danforth shrugged. “It's definitely good on paper.”
The way Captain Coles laid it out, each squad would have one Humvee, consisting of a driver, a gunner, and two other guys. Marla outranked me but she wanted to be the gunner. I liked her and I liked Captain Coles. Jonesy was okay, too. Coles said he would ride with us most of the time, which was why we only had three in our crew.
What we did for the next three days was to sit around and wait and talk about whether or not anyone was going to start shooting.
Most of what we learned was from the television news. There was a VCR in the dayroom and we watched a lot of flicks. They had every war movie ever produced, including three copies of Tom Cruise in
Top Gun
, which I liked. We also watched a lot of training films and spent hours practicing putting on our gas masks. I also noticed that the teams were hanging out more together.
“Hey, Birdy, you know why the mess hall is so empty this morning?” Marla brought her tray over to my table and plunked down across from me.
“How long you going to call me Birdy?” I asked.
“It's empty because half the Hoodlums sneaked out in the middle of the night,” she answered. The Hoodlums were what we called the Special Ops guys who went on secret missions in enemy territory. We had asked a few what they did, but they weren't talking. Actually, most of them just grunted.
Marla continued, “Some women from the Engineering Battalion near the post exchange told me. They got them up around two in the morning. They were all blacked up and in every kind of uniform you could mention.”
“What were those women doing up?”
“Had to go pee,” Marla said. “Did you know women did that?”
Captain Coles came by with a cup of coffee in each hand. “Mind if I join you?”