Generation Kill - Evan Wright [125]
With Graves on the M-40 rifle and Jeschke spotting, they see him 175 meters off. They’re not absolutely sure he’s an observer—the man has no radio or weapon visible—but they’ve been cleared hot to hit him. Graves fires a shot. The man drops out of view. Neither is sure if they hit him until a few minutes later when several women file out of a nearby hut and go over to the berm. They are joined by two men dressed like farmers, who drag the man out of the dirt and load him into a pickup truck. In the process, Graves observes an AK rifle tumble out of his victim’s robes. He believes he made a good kill.
Up the road, Saucier isn’t so sure of the military value of his next kill. Saucier is manning the .50-cal for his team on a hasty roadblock when a white car approaches on the highway. Saucier fires high warning shots. The car accelerates. When it comes within 200 meters of his position he lowers his weapon at it and blips off two rounds. Though the .50-cal is an extremely powerful weapon, it’s not the most accurate gun used by Marines. The gun employs old-fashioned iron sights, and the mounts used in Recon’s Humvees are notoriously wobbly. Nevertheless, Saucier’s marks-manship is another testament to Marine Corps training. Of the two rounds he fires into the speeding car, one strikes the head of the driver. The car stops. Three young men jump out. One of them, who had apparently been sitting behind the driver, is covered in gore. They throw themselves down by the road. Marines who examine the driver report that Saucier’s hit was perfect—hitting the guy in the center of his head and scooping it out in a V shape. No weapons are discovered on the young men or in the car. But by the Marines’ roadblock rules, this kill was legit. The car wouldn’t stop.
When I talk to Saucier about this shooting later, he says he never in his life imagined he would be called on to fire on unarmed people. “Words can’t describe how I feel about it,” he says. “When we came over here, I expected we would do what you would read in history books. We would go through the desert and fight armies. But all we’re seeing are random tactics, guys shooting at us with civilians everywhere, which makes sense from their point of view. Their guerrilla tactics don’t make me feel better about or justify the civilian deaths we’re causing, but these Marines are my brothers. I’ll do anything to defend them. All I try to do is put this bad stuff out of my mind.”
AT ABOUT THREE in the afternoon, Colbert’s team finally creeps into Al Muwaffaqiyah. The rubble has been pushed to the sides of the road by tanks in RCT-1, which entered earlier. A hundred meters back, partially destroyed buildings yawn open. Beds hang off their upper floors. Marines from RCT-1 report seeing an undetermined number of bodies on rooftops—people killed by the DPICM artillery rounds, which spray shrapnel down from the sky. The Marines fired 100 such rounds into the town, saturating it with a total of about 7,000 submunitions. Statistically, about 15 percent of these submunitions fall to the earth without exploding, which means there are approximately 1,000 unexploded bombs scattered throughout the town and buried in the rubble. They are highly unstable and will blow up if stepped on or picked up. The town is a lethal place.
Colbert’s vehicle is ordered to stop part of the way into Al Muwaffaqiyah. We’re within view of the bridge and the eucalyptus trees across the river where we almost got killed the night before. Now, in the glare of the midday sun, the rubbled town looks deserted. Everyone’s nerves are hinky. Colbert leans out the window, observing likely sniper positions through his rifle scope, and starts singing that Gordon Lightfoot song again.
Originally, the Marines in Bravo were told they were going to speed through the town, but there is a delay. While we wait, young adolescent boys trickle out of the deadly ruins. They come to within thirty meters or so of the Humvees and wave. One kid, probably about eleven, stands in the wreckage of a building destroyed