Generation Kill - Evan Wright [122]
When they finally get around to searching the rest of the fighters, every one of them has a Syrian passport. After news spreads of the foreign identities of the enemy combatants, the Marines are excited. “We just fought actual terrorists,” Doc Bryan says. After nearly two weeks of never knowing who was shooting at them, the Marines can finally put a face to the enemy.
Later, intelligence officers in First Marine Division will estimate that as many as 50 percent of all combatants in central Iraq were foreigners. “Saddam offered these men land, money and wives to come and fight for him,” one officer tells me. He adds that foreign fighters were simply dropped off at intersections by Iraqi Fedayeen, given weapons and told to attack the Americans when they came up the road. At times, the foreign jihadis were simply used to buy time for Iraqi soldiers to change out of their uniforms and flee.
Given the Syrians’ poor performance at the bridge—trying to use skinny eucalyptus trees for cover, being wholly unaware that they could be observed through American night optics—Eckloff concludes, “The concept of being a guerrilla fighter was like something they’d gotten out of the movies.”
Encino Man walks up, gazing at the dead Syrians. “I wonder if President Bush will ever find out about this,” he says, his voice full of awe. “This is what the president’s been talking about with the war on terrorists. This is why we’re here.”
FICK AND I DRIVE TOGETHER to the platoon’s position down the road from the bridge (actually the same wadi they’d encamped in before attempting to take the bridge the night before). Sunlight streaks through his filthy windshield. “It’s a beautiful morning,” he says, gazing at the surrounding fields, where shepherds are now walking among sheep and cows.
It’s among the most beautiful mornings I’ve ever seen. It’s exciting to see daylight after getting shot at.
Nevertheless, Fick is grim. Unlike the others who’d been cheered by capturing a foreign jihadi, Fick thinks it’s an ominous development. While Fick had never been avidly pro-war, he’d always radiated quiet confidence about the Americans—at least the Marines—reaching their basic objective: regime change. The arrival of Syrians has shaken him. “Isn’t this the absolute opposite of what we wanted to have happen here?” he asks. “I can see this effort”—as he refers to the war—“becoming seriously complicated.”
We drive in silence. Fick sinks deeper into his state of morbid reflection, turning over the events of the previous night. “We should never be in that position again. We rolled into a three-sided ambush. That was bad tactics.”
When he stops the Humvee near Bravo’s position, Fick drops his head toward his chest and shuts his eyes. A moment later, he looks up, smiling with a profound realization. “I know what we did last night,” he says.
To explain his epiphany, Fick brings up an incident that occurred several weeks earlier at Camp Mathilda between Pappy and some other Marines. Part of the reason Marines nicknamed Sgt. Patrick “Pappy” was his style of dressing. In Camp Mathilda, he invariably wore his physical-training shorts with combat boots and socks pulled up to his knees. His fellow Marines thought the look was “old-mannish.” As he was walking past a group of them one day in his customary attire, a Marine stopped him and said, “Pappy, give us some old-man wisdom.” Pappy turned, waved his finger and said, “Don’t pet a burning dog.” It was the sort of nonsense wisdom for which Pappy is famous. In Afghanistan, he and Kocher were sitting in a Marine camp outside Kandahar when a female Marine walked past. Gazing at her, Pappy said, “If she sees something without a purpose she could chuck a stone at it.” Generally, no one knows what Pappy means when he comes up with these odd pronouncements, but this morning after the ambush on the bridge, Fick believes he’s deciphered the meaning of Pappy’s warning against petting a burning dog.
Fick turns to me and says, “Last night on the bridge we petted a burning dog.”
At around eight in the morning