Generation Kill - Evan Wright [75]
Marines with mortars jump off a tracked vehicle in front of us, yelling and cursing. They’re in such a rush to attack the village, one Marine falls off the vehicle, landing on his ass. They launch a volley of 60mm mortars, which fall short, exploding in the field immediately in front of us.
Colbert throws down his radio headset and stands outside his Humvee, screaming, “Cease fire!” The Marines shooting into the village 100 meters up from us continue unabated.
Then, behind us, Encino Man races up in his Humvee. He jumps out, so eager to get in the fight, it seems, he forgets to unplug his radio headset, which jerks his head back as the cord, still attached to the dash unit, tightens.
“Jesus Christ! There’s fucking civilians in that house! Cease fire!” Colbert says.
Encino Man pops off a 203 grenade that falls wildly short of the house. Colbert, like other Marines in Bravo, is furious. Not only do they believe Encino Man is firing on civilians, but the guy doesn’t even know how to range his 203.
Colbert gets back in the Humvee, trying to rationalize the events outside that have spiraled beyond his control: “Everyone’s just tense. Some Marine took a shot, and everyone has just followed suit.”
Outside, Marines’ heavy 81mm mortars begin to land on the homes. They make a sort of crunching sound as they detonate, sending black plumes over the huts.
“They finally got good effects on target,” Kocher says, watching them obliterate the hamlet.
THERE’S NO TIME to sit around contemplating the destruction of the little village. First Recon is ordered north again toward a town called Ar Rifa. We pass forty or fifty refugees streaming south, some on bicycles. A massive fire about a kilometer up the road sends flames and black smoke 100 meters or more into the sky. The day is chilly and gray. There’s no wind, but the air is heavy with dust particles. They coat the windshield like frost. If you wipe your finger on it, a few minutes later the mark is covered over again with powder. Through this fog we hear AK rifles cracking off rounds ahead. The convoy bumps to a halt. We are several hundred meters south of Ar Rifa.
The two Marines who ride in the back of Fick’s Humvee, which is configured sort of like a pickup truck with a canvas top over the back, stand by the tailgate singing Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” over and over.
One of the combat-stress reactions not discussed in their training is singing. A lot of Marines, when waiting for minutes or hours in a position where they expect an ambush or other trouble, will get a song stuck in their heads. Often they’ll sing it or chant the words almost as if they are saying Hail Marys.
The Marines’ choice of a Nelly song in the back of Fick’s vehicle shows the hip-hop influence of Q-tip Stafford. He rides there with nineteen-year-old Private First Class John Christeson, the newest guy in the platoon. The two of them spend twelve to twenty hours a day bouncing around in the back of the truck. Neither is sure when they both hit upon “Hot in Herre” as their combat song, but they were singing it yesterday while rolling into the ambush at Al Gharraf.
Now waiting on the ground by Fick’s truck outside of Ar Rifa, Christeson observes a house 500 meters in the distance, barely discernible across the haze and scrub brush. He’s chanting the lyrics, “Cuz I feel like bustin’ loose and I feel like touchin you/And can’t nobody stop the juice so baby . . . ,” when he spots three to four men moving low. They’re at least 300 meters away, moving closer to the Humvee, using the vegetation for cover. One seems to be carrying an RPG tube.
Other than a family cruise through the Caribbean, this is Christeson’s first trip out of the United States. He grew up in Lebanon, Illinois, with parents still married—a dad who works for the state college and a mom who works at a title loan company. Even though he was shot at yesterday in Al Gharraf, the whole place seems unreal to him. It’s the mud huts. He can’t believe people in the twenty-first century actually live in huts with goats