Generation Kill - Evan Wright [35]
Now, while the Marines search and interrogate the surrendered Iraqis, Captain America draws the ire of his top team leader, Kocher. The sergeant and his men are guarding several Iraqis not far from Colbert’s team when a wild dog pops over a berm, barking and snarling. Behind them, Captain America races up, shouting, “Wild dog! Shoot it!”
Kocher quietly tells his men, “Don’t shoot.” Instead, they open up a beef-and-mushroom MRE dinner and lure the dog, who gratefully eats and is soon allowing the Marines to pet him. It’s a small act, but by making it, Kocher directly contradicts his commander. “I don’t care who he is,” says Kocher. “The guy turns the smallest situation into chaos. We’re surrounded by Iraqis, some with weapons nearby. Some we haven’t grabbed yet. If my men start lighting up a dog, the Iraqis might panic, other Marines might open fire. Anything could happen.”
Before First Recon’s campaign is over, Captain America will lose control of his platoon when he is temporarily relieved of command. Already, some of his men are beginning to fantasize about his death. “All it takes is one dumb guy in charge to ruin everything,” says one of them. “Every time he steps out of the vehicle, I pray he gets shot.”
A WHILE AFTER THIRD PLATOON’S dog incident, First Recon’s commander orders the Marines to begin releasing the Iraqis. Prior to the war, Maj. Gen. Mattis had told reporters that surrendered enemy prisoners “will be funneled to the rear as soon as possible. Some people get their heart back after surrendering and want to fight again, so we want to get them out of the way as quickly as possible.”
But First Recon doesn’t have the resources to ship the hundreds of Iraqis surrendering by the tracks back to rear units. The battalion’s support company trucks only have room to transport about seventy of them.
Under the Geneva Convention (articles 13 and 20), once you’ve accepted the surrender of enemy forces you are obligated to provide food, water and medical attention, and to take “all suitable precautions to ensure their safety during evacuation.” Here, those provisions are dispensed with through a simple expedient. The Iraqis taken by the Marines are unsurrendered and sent packing.
Unfortunately for the Iraqis, First Recon’s commander orders his Marines to tell these men who have just walked some seventy kilometers from Basra to go back the way they came. (From the American standpoint, a wise order, given the fact that these Iraqi soldiers had been heading to Nasiriyah, where in a few days the Marines will first confront urban war.) The prisoners are unhappy with this news. They have been saying all morning that Fedayeen death squads where they have come from have been capping their friends. And the Marines have dismantled and tossed all of their weapons into a nearby canal so they can’t defend themselves. Several wave the slips of paper promising safe passage if they surrendered. But most are too exhausted to protest and start the trek back toward the Fedayeen death squads.
Person and I sit in the Humvee, eating cheese Combo snacks, watching the Iraqis limp back along the tracks.
“That’s fucked,” Person says. “Isn’t it weird to look at those Iraqis and know that some of them are probably going to die in the next few hours?”
SEVEN
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LATE IN THE AFTERNOON on March 22, First Recon leaves the railroad tracks at Burayyat An Rataw and pushes northwest to take up a new position along a canal. Fewer than forty-eight hours have elapsed since the invaders blew through the breaches at the border. After a few light skirmishes, Marine and British forces have captured the key oil facilities around Basra. Now, approximately 20,000 Marines in the First Division are heading west, then north onto highways that will take them into central Iraq.
First Recon’s job this early evening is to move about fifteen kilometers north of the route on which the bulk of the First Division will be rolling.