Generation Kill - Evan Wright [30]
Instead, the Marines begin having their first up-close encounters with Iraqis—small groups of shepherds and women in black robes outside square mud huts. A woman with something in her hands pops out from behind one of the huts a hundred meters back from the trail we’re on.
Colbert shouts up to Garza on the main gun. “Garza! Woman in black. What’s she doing?”
The Mark-19 fills the Humvee with a clattering sound as Garza swivels the gun toward the woman. “She’s carrying a bag in her hands,” he shouts from the turret. “No weapons.”
A moment later Garza shouts. “Hey!”
Colbert tenses on his M-4, pressing his eye against the scope. “Talk to me, Garza. What is it?”
“I just waved at an Iraqi and he waved back at me. That was cool.”
“Good, Garza,” Colbert says. “Keep making friends. As long they’re not doing anything where we have to shoot them.”
“Hey, it’s ten in the morning!” says Person, yelling at two farmers dressed in robes in the distance. “Don’t you think you ought to change out of your pajamas?”
BY LATE AFTERNOON First Recon has pushed fifty kilometers into Iraq, becoming the northernmost Marine unit in the country. Now no one has slept for thirty-six hours. It’s in the upper eighties outside, and cramped in the Humvee in plastic-lined MOPPs and rubber boots, everyone’s face drips sweat. Between calling out potential targets, Colbert and Person stay awake by screeching pop songs—Avril Lavigne’s “I’m with You” and “Skater Boy”—deliberately massacring them at the tops of their lungs.
Marines supplement their diets of caffeine, dip and ephedra (technically banned in the Corps, but liberally consumed) with candy and junk food. Military rations, called “meals ready to eat” (MREs), come in brown plastic bags about three quarters of the size of a phone book. Each contains a main meal like spaghetti, stew or “chunked and formed” meat patties in a foil pouch. You heat these pouches by shoving them inside a plastic bag with chemicals in it. When you add water, the chemicals immediately boil, emitting noxious and (according to warnings on the package) explosive fumes. The main entrées are prepared through a mysterious desiccation process. Even though your meat patty might be swimming in juices, when you bite into it, it’s dry and crumbly and brings to mind chewing on a kitchen sponge. In flush times like now, at the start of the invasion, when every Marine is rationed three MREs a day, most push aside the main meals and eat the extras. In addition to entrées, MREs are loaded with junk food—pound cakes, brownies, “Toaster Oven Pastries” (identical to Pop-Tarts), cookies, Skittles, M&M’s, Tootsie Rolls, Charms hard candies, Combos cheese-filled pretzels, and powdered grape-drink mix and cocoa powder, which Marines eat straight out of the packages, like the instant coffee.
The process of tearing through an MRE and picking out the goodies is called “ratfucking.” Colbert’s team maintains a ratfuck bag in their Humvee for all the discarded MRE entrées, saving them for a rainy day.
Though at times throughout the advance north, Colbert’s vehicle goes on point for the entire battalion, placing its occupants at the very tip of the Coalition invasion, as the heat and fatigue delirium sets in, the undertaking sometimes feels like a family road trip. Colbert is the stern father figure. Person is like the mom, the communicator, trying to anticipate his needs, keeping spirits up with his cheerful banter. Garza and Trombley are the children, happily munching candy, eager to please their dad.
As team leader, Colbert controls every aspect of his men’s lives, down to their bodily functions.
“Trombley,” Colbert shouts, leaning over his rifle, watching his sector. “Are you drinking water?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Are you pissing?”
“At our last halt, Sergeant.”
“Was it clear?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Good.”
A COUPLE OF HOURS before sundown, battalion radios explode with chatter. Several teams in our convoy spot a pair of new-looking white SUVs traveling along an adjacent trail at a high rate of speed. The trucks are