Generation Kill - Evan Wright [135]
Dead cows, bloated to twice their normal size, lie in ditches. Human corpses are scattered about as well. It’s the now familiar horrorscape of a country at war. Just before reaching the final Marine camp outside Baghdad, Espera’s vehicle swerves to avoid running over a human head lying in the road. When the vehicle turns, he looks up to see a dog eating a human corpse. “Can it get any sicker than this?” he asks.
Person, however, has an entirely different reaction. Set back from the highway, gleaming like some sort of religious shrine, there is a modern-looking glass structure with bright plastic signs in front. It’s an Iraqi version of a 7-Eleven. Though looted and smashed, it gives Person hope. “Damn!” he says. “It looks almost half-civilized here.”
BY THE EARLY HOURS of April 6, some 20,000 Marines have begun gathering on the outskirts of the city for their assault. The Army has already begun breaking off pieces of Baghdad to the south and west. Two days earlier, elements of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division seized Baghdad Airport, fifteen kilometers south of the city. The Marines, now moving to within about ten kilometers of the eastern edge of Baghdad, are gearing up for their assault to begin within the next forty-eight hours.
First Recon settles into a field of tall grass next to some blown-up industrial buildings. Marines stretch out in the greenery, resting after their two days of nonstop movement. American artillery booms continuously, a distant, throbbing rhythm. Towers of smoke rise over Baghdad in the distance. Following this last stretch of the journey, where everyone had seen the wild dogs chewing on the entrails of dead humans and livestock alike, Marines now discuss their rechristening of Iraq. They call it “Dog Land.”
Reyes explains, “For the wild dogs, war is a feast.”
It’s a feast for some commanders as well. Later in the day, after the teams have set up their positions on the perimeter and dug their holes, Ferrando circulates among the men. He drops in on Colbert’s team and offers rare praise. “They’re speaking pretty highly of First Recon at division headquarters,” Ferrando says. “The general thinks we’re slaying dragons.”
“I’m pleased to hear it, sir,” Colbert says.
Ferrando turns to leave, then hesitates. He has something to confide in Colbert, one of his top team leaders.
“Ferrando thinks tanks are going to lead the way into Baghdad,” he says, reverting to a habit he has of speaking of himself in the third person. “But we want to get in the game, too. That’s the million-dollar question. How do we get into Baghdad?”
Ferrando walks off, working on this puzzle.
After he leaves, Espera offers his own assessment of the battalion’s performance thus far in the war. “Do you realize the shit we’ve done here, the people we’ve killed? Back home in the civilian world, if we did this, we would go to prison.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
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THE MEN SLEEP WELL outside of Baghdad. It is late in the morning of April 7, and Colbert is sitting in the sun behind his Humvee, staring at the grass, which in the center of the encampment is more than a meter tall. Like everyone else, Colbert is required to wear his helmet and flak vest at all times, unless he is underneath the cammie nets by his Humvee. There are times like today—when the sky is clear, the sun is shining and enemy mortars are only falling about once every couple hours—that the requirement to always wear a helmet and flak vest seems a crime. Some Marines routinely flout the rule, but not Colbert. Suddenly, he stands up, throwing his helmet down, ripping off his flak vest and stripping down to his T-shirt. “You know what?” he announces. “I’m going to run through that field waving my arms like I’m an airplane.”
Colbert runs through the grass, making jet sounds, banks into a loose