Generation Kill - Evan Wright [16]
AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN on March 20, the Marines in the staging area are awakened by the thundering of distant artillery. It confuses everyone because the night before, commanders in First Recon told the men the invasion wouldn’t start for a couple more days. Colbert keeps a small shortwave radio in his Humvee, and I join him in the gray morning light while he tunes in the BBC. They announce that the Americans have bombed Baghdad—in what we later learn was a failed attempt to hit Saddam. The explosions we hear in the desert are American strikes on Iraqi positions just over the border. Colbert clicks off the radio. He looks up with a grave expression. It’s probably how he looks when he opens his eyes under the ocean for the first time on a dive. “Well,” he says. “We kicked the hornet’s nest. Now we better kill all the fucking hornets.”
At about ten in the morning, Fick gathers the platoon for a briefing. This is held, as all future ones will be, around the hood of his Humvee. It’s one of those weird desert days, chilly in the shade, blazing hot in the sun. All Marines now wear full battle gear—bulky chemical-protection suits, Kevlar helmets and flak vests, which have ceramic plates in the front and back to stop AK-rifle rounds, and utility vests covered in hooks and straps for carrying rifle cartridges, grenades and radios. All of this weighs about sixty pounds and gives the Marines a puffed-out appearance, like partially inflated Michelin Men. They jostle together, leaning on each other’s shoulders, trying to get as close as possible to Fick.
“This is our forty-eighth day in the field,” Fick says. “And last night President Bush started the war. We can expect to roll out of here tonight.”
He allows a tense smile. He, like everyone else, seems to be wrestling with excitement and a profound awareness of the seriousness of this situation. “You’re being called on to kill,” he says. “You’re going to be shot at. The Iraqis will try to fuck you up. Don’t be a trusting American. Leave that at the border. Think like a devious motherfucker. Be suspicious. Be aggressive.”
The Marines have drilled for weeks, studying the Rules of Engagement (ROE). The ROE lay out all the conditions regarding when a Marine may or may not fire on Iraqis. The problem is, some Iraqi soldiers will presumably change out of their uniforms and fight in civilian clothes. Others will remain in uniform but surrender. There might be some in uniform surrendering, and others in uniform fighting. On top of this, large segments of the civilian populace are expected to be armed with AKs, so these armed but not hostile civilians will be mixed up with enemy fighters dressed in civilian clothes. Therefore, the usual battlefield rules—shoot guys wearing enemy uniforms; shoot guys with weapons—don’t apply. What the ROE boil down to is that if the Marines come across a bunch of armed Iraqis, they generally can’t shoot them unless the Iraqis shoot at them first.
Fick has two big concerns about the ROE, which he brought up to me earlier in private. “If we kill civilians, we’re going to turn the populace against us and lose the war. But I don’t want to lose Marines because the ROE have taken away their aggressiveness.”
Fick repeats a mantra, echoed by every commander throughout the Corps. “You will be held accountable for the facts not as they are in hindsight but as they appeared to you at the time. If, in your mind, you fire to protect yourself, you are doing the right thing. It doesn’t matter if later on we find out you wiped out a family of unarmed civilians. All we are accountable for are the facts as they appear to us at the time.”
Following Fick’s talk, Gunny Wynn addresses the men. Gunny Wynn serves as Fick’s loyal executive. He is thirty-five, making him the oldest man in the platoon. He’s also among the more experienced men in the platoon. In Somalia he headed a sniper team and scored numerous confirmed