Generation Kill - Evan Wright [165]
When Colbert hears of the good news after watching the service from his Humvee in the distance, he cannot conceal his outrage. To him, religion is right up there with country music as an expression of collective idiocy. “Give me a break,” he says. “Marines getting baptized? This used to be a place of men with pure warrior spirit. Chaplains are a goddamn waste.”
But Colbert’s disgust this morning isn’t merely about religion. He and others in the platoon are annoyed by continued threats from Encino Man and Casey Kasem to punish Fick and Gunny Wynn for disobeying orders. Encino Man remains angry at Fick and Gunny Wynn for questioning his plan to call in an artillery strike nearly on top of their position at Ar Rifa. Since that episode, Fick and Gunny Wynn have persisted in questioning Encino Man’s orders, most recently in Baghdad when Fick declined to send a patrol out at night.
Casey Kasem has complained vociferously about the “lack of obedience to orders” displayed by the leaders of Second Platoon. “Their job is to execute whatever the commander tells them,” he’s fumed, “and they don’t.”
While following orders is at the heart of good military discipline, the men have no faith in the layer of command above Fick, starting with Encino Man and his loyal enlisted helper, Casey Kasem. “Those two incompetents are dangerous out here,” one of Colbert’s friends in the platoon says. “ ‘Obedience to orders’ to them means they don’t want to look bad to their commanders. They’re afraid to question orders. Fick and Gunny Wynn are great men because they have the courage to do the right thing.”
THE DEBATE over questioning orders from superiors becomes far less abstract the evening of April 22, at First Recon’s camp south of Baghdad. This night a battalion watch officer, whose job is to sit in for Lt. Col. Ferrando and, in effect, babysit the battalion when he’s indisposed, mistakenly issues an order for Marines to go out in the darkness and mark the location of a minefield by the highway north of the camp. The watch officer radios Capt. Patterson and asks him to send some of his men in Alpha to escort combat engineers on the mission.
The mines were discovered a few days earlier by Patterson’s men along the highway a kilometer north of the camp. Combat engineers have been removing mines all day, but hundreds remain. The watch officer erroneously believes there’s an order to mark the location of the remaining mines with chemlites. Patterson tells him that he must be mistaken. There’s a division-wide order banning Marines from operating in minefields at night. Besides, thousands of American military vehicles have passed by the mines in recent weeks without incident. The job can wait until morning, Patterson tells him, declining to execute the order.
But the watch officer persists. He radios Encino Man and asks him to send Marines out in the dark to mark the minefield. Encino Man promises to push Marines out immediately. He later tells me, “I didn’t want to send Marines out there, but the watch officer is the voice of the battalion commander [Ferrando]. I couldn’t say no.”
The operation gets into full swing when Encino Man contacts Captain America and issues the command for his men to accompany three engineers into the minefield. In the wake of the episode in which Captain America taunted an EPW with his bayonet, he was reinstated to command of his platoon following a brief suspension but is still awaiting final disposition on possible disciplinary action from Ferrando. The enlisted men, Kocher and Redman, were cleared of wrongdoing in that matter, and Captain America now orders their team and another to transport the engineers up the road to the minefield.
The Marines reach the minefield at about nine-thirty that night, parking two Humvees on the highway, leaving their headlights on. Kocher steps onto the road with three engineers, among them Gunnery Sergeant David Dill and Staff Sergeant Ray Valdez. The