Generation Kill - Evan Wright [46]
The procedure when you’re getting shot at by rifles or machine guns is pretty straightforward. The Marines all hunt for muzzle flashes. If a gun is pointed toward you, even if the shooter is concealed behind a wall or berm, its flash will generally be visible. Every time an enemy gunman takes a shot, he momentarily reveals his position.
The men in Alpha and Charlie companies spot muzzle flashes coming from windows of apartments 250 meters or so across the river. But in their first twenty minutes at the riverfront, the Marines fire very few shots. There are civilians moving about in the streets of the city. Even during this low-intensity gun battle, some even stand still, trying to observe the Marines aiming at them.
The strangest, most unsettling spectacle Marines see, however, is that of armed men who dart across alleys, moving from building to building, clutching women in front of them for cover. The first time it happens, Marines shout, “Man with a weapon!”
Despite the newly aggressive ROEs, Marines down the line shout, “I’m not shooting! There’s women.”
One of the Marines witnessing this is the commander of Alpha Company, Captain Bryan Patterson, whose Humvee command post is set fifty meters back from the riverfront. Patterson, thirty-two, is from Indianapolis, Indiana, and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. With his medium build and dark hair he tends to keep a tad longer than regulation, he looks not a day over twenty-four.
Until this afternoon Patterson has always wondered how he would react under fire. Though he’s been in the Marines his entire adult life and before joining First Recon he commanded an infantry platoon, he’s never been in combat.
Now several mortars impact within 150 meters of his position. Patterson gets on his radio and calls the battalion. His fear is that these might actually be “friendly” mortars dropped by Marines, not aware that First Recon has moved up to the western side of the bridge. Several minutes later, the battalion radios back that these are definitely not Marine mortars.
While Patterson stands there out in the open by his Humvee, talking on the radio, the area around him is raked with enemy gunfire. Marines taking cover behind surrounding berms look up to see if their commander is hit and burst into laughter. Patterson seems oblivious to the shooting and keeps talking on the radio, periodically tilting his head back, gulping down Skittles from an MRE.
Whatever indefinable qualities make a good commanding officer, Patterson has them. Unlike Encino Man and Captain America in Bravo Company, Patterson’s men speak of him in the highest terms. Patterson hardly fits the image of the swaggering, barrel-chested Marine Corps officer. He is one of the most unassuming characters you could ever meet, almost shy. He admits, “I can’t give gladiatorial speeches to my men.” His reasons for going to the Naval Academy and becoming a Marine couldn’t be more prosaic. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life,” he says. His view of being an officer is devoid of romance. “As company commander, I’m like a midlevel manager at any corporation.”
His views on the war are equally temperate. “There is not a good thing that comes out of war,” he tells me later on. “I’m not going to pretend I’m this great American savior in Iraq. We didn’t come here to liberate. We came to look out for our interests. That we are here is good. But if to liberate them means putting a Starbucks and a McDonald’s on every street corner, is that liberation? But I have to justify this to myself. It’s Saddam’s fault.” Still, he says, “the protestors have a lot of valid points. War sucks.”
The reason his men look up to him is probably very simple. Aside from the fact that he’s calm and articulate,