Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [188]
Al Asad is a hundred miles west of Baghdad. It was once used as an Iraqi air base during Saddam’s regime, and there are several carcasses of Russian-built fighter jets scattered around the base. One of the protective revetments at Al Asad was given over to an Army Special Forces company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group. The company’s headquarters constituted a Special Forces advanced operating base, or AOB. The function of this AOB is to provide logistics, intelligence, and operational support for their five operational ODAs.
My first team visit was to an ODA located at a U.S. Army outpost well northwest of Baghdad. They share the facility with a battalion of mechanized infantry from the 1st Armored Division. The bases at Balad and Al Asad are large, secure installations with lots of creature comforts—chow halls, modern toilets, modular living quarters, and clean office spaces. The operational ODAs, however, live quite differently. The team house is an abandoned concrete Iraqi army barracks served by outdoor Porta-Pottis and a single crude shower. They cook in a makeshift kitchen, which means a lot of stove-top and microwave eating. They have their own generator, which affords them air-conditioning for their communal berthing and team spaces, but the generator noise is a constant companion. The single-room tactical center where the team does their operational planning is a crude concrete cubicle and has the look of a team planning bay at Camp Mackall—work tables, wall maps, and lots of laptop computers. Temporary wiring is strung everywhere. Those in the detachment live a lot like Phase II and IV students in the Q-Course. It was much hotter in western Iraq than in central North Carolina, but a dry heat with little humidity.
Getting to their location was a forty-five-minute high-speed run from Al Asad by armored Humvee. “It’s game on when you leave the gate,” the Special Forces major who commanded the company told me. There were five vehicles in our little convoy—two AOB Humvees and the three Humvees belonging to the Iraqi army. The latter were manned by Special Forces–trained Iraqi army scouts. The movement was briefed by our convoy NCO, a former 18 X-Ray and staff sergeant assigned to the AOB. He reviewed convoy standard procedures, including vehicle intervals, hand and arm signals, and various courses of action—actions on enemy contact, actions if we were hit by an IED, actions if one of the Humvees were to become disabled, and so on. On the roads in western Iraq, speed is life, and we drove at the top speed of the slowest vehicle. Most American casualties in Iraq today are from IEDs. Improvised explosive devices in the form of buried explosives or vehicular suicide bombers are on everyone’s mind. They were certainly on mine as we left the gate at Al Asad. Our convoy NCO, riding in front of me in the passenger’s seat, passed over the radio, “We’re now in Indian country—everyone go hot!” The .50-cal gunners in the turrets cycled their weapons to chamber a round and everyone inside my Humvee with an M4 rifle did the same. That is, everyone but me. Eighteen months ago, this staff sergeant was an 18 X-Ray in Phase IV; now he was in charge of twenty-five Americans and Iraqis going into harm’s way. On most of my Humvee runs, a junior team sergeant took charge of the convoy. Driving our Humvee in the lead vehicle on his run was the company command sergeant major. It’s the way of Special Forces; when possible, senior sergeants put the junior sergeants in positions to learn and lead. We drove fast and occasionally