Generation Kill - Evan Wright [109]
Not only are the men in Alpha thirsting for payback, they’re so hungry that when their convoy pauses on its journey to Ash Shatrah, they jump out and ratfuck trash piles along Route 7. POG supply units passing by in recent days have left mountains of MRE litter beside the road. Marines in Alpha, having endured reduced rations for several days, dig through them, hunting for uneaten Tootsie Roll or peanut butter packets.
Alpha Company’s commander is dealing with a whole different set of problems. The mission has gone through so many permutations in the last several hours that it’s now clear to Capt. Patterson that finding the body of the lost Marine is a distant secondary objective. In fact, Patterson’s orders now verge on the fantastic. His Marines in Alpha, along with a much larger force from RCT-1, will link up outside the city and join a CIA-controlled operation to liberate Ash Shatrah, assisted by an indigenous army of “freedom fighters.”
According to the portions of the plan Patterson has been let in on, the CIA has spent months training and equipping a small army of Iraqi “freedom fighters” in an unnamed foreign country. Now these freedom-loving patriots have been flown into Iraq, where they will face their first test, liberating Ash Shatrah.
The Marines will not be leading this mission. Their role is simply to be there to help out the Iraqi freedom fighters in case they get into a jam. Once the CIA-controlled exiles have liberated the city in the name of Free Iraq, the Marines will enter, brave the crowds who some are now predicting will be dancing in the streets, and search for the lost Marine.
Patterson has been careful in the past several hours to try to tone down the mood of his men. He later says, “I didn’t want some dramatic idea of revenge to be motivating everybody.” Even so, as his company rolls up to Ash Shatrah, Patterson experiences what he later describes as a “feeling that there is a heroic aspect to what we’re doing, that we are going to go into this town, getting one of our fallen brothers, and we’re going to be the saviors of everyone.”
IT’S OVERCAST when Alpha Company arrives on the northern outskirts of Ash Shatrah at about six in the morning on March 31. The ground is wet from recent rains, and the place smells like decay. First Recon had passed through Ash Shatrah on March 26 on its thrust up from Nasiriyah, and the town had been exceptionally foul smelling then. This morning, Patterson realizes the odor comes from the corpses of shot-up Iraqi fighters rotting in nearby ditches. Ash Shatrah runs for about two kilometers north down the eastern side of the road. Alpha Company sets up along the north end of the town. Several hundred infantry Marines from RCT-1’s Third Battalion are deployed farther down the road, bolstered with tanks and armored vehicles.
Patterson realizes just how big a deal this mission is when he sees General Kelly, Maj. Gen. Mattis’s personal emissary, arrive by helicopter to consult with high-level Marine officers and the CIA officials running the show. The CIA guys, three young men who look to be in their late twenties, arrive in an armored vehicle, and emerge wearing jumpsuits, flak vests and black caps. The CIA men ratchet up the anticipation level of the mission with exciting new intelligence: One of Saddam’s top henchmen, General Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali,” is believed to be holed up in the town.
AFTER FAWCETT’S TEAM gets into position by the highway at the north end of Ash Shatrah—using the road’s elevation to provide cover—they notice the town is filled with military installations. Just a couple hundred meters away, they spot barracks, artillery pieces, stockpiles of munitions, an obstacle course for training soldiers and, most amazingly, Iraqis in uniform walking around outdoors in broad daylight. Fawcett can’t believe that Marine convoys have been driving up and down this road for nearly a week next to a sizable, heavily armed force of Iraqis. Watching this,