Generation Kill - Evan Wright [97]
“Man, I’m glad I didn’t see any dead little children,” Garza says.
“How do you think we would feel if someone came into our country and lit us up like this?” Carazales says. “South of Al Gharraf I know I shot a building with a bunch of civilians in it. Everyone else was lighting it up. Then we found out there were civilians in there. It’s fucked up.” Carazales works himself into a rage. “I think it’s bullshit how these fucking civilians are dying! They’re worse off than the guys that are shooting at us. They don’t even have a chance. Do you think people at home are going to see this—all these women and children we’re killing? Fuck no. Back home they’re glorifying this motherfucker, I guarantee you. Saying our president is a fucking hero for getting us into this bitch. He ain’t even a real Texan.”
Carazales slumps back in the dirt. No one says anything. Then he brightens. “I just thought of a tight angle. All the pictures Captain America’s taking of shot-up, dead Iraqi kids? I’ll get my hands on those. I’m going to go back home and put them in Seven-Elevens and collect money for my own adopt-an-Iraqi-kid program. Shit, I’ll be rolling in it. A war veteran helping out the kids. I ought to run for office.”
For whatever reason this night, Ferrando allows his men to sleep in the open beside their Humvees. It’s the first time in two weeks we haven’t dug Ranger graves. At about midnight, I awaken to see the fields and palm trees across from our Humvee lit up by illumination flares. Suspended from parachutes, the chemical flames drift slowly down into the field.
I wake Person, who is sleeping next to me, and ask him what’s going on.
“It’s illume,” he mumbles. “Ours.”
“Why are we lighting up our own position?” I ask.
Person snores.
I fall back asleep. Then I awaken again a few minutes later to the sound of artillery or rockets shrieking through the sky, exploding a few hundred meters directly in front of us. The blasts turn the field into a sea of molten orange and blue liquid, with waves splashing up against the palms in the background. In my effort to roll underneath the Humvee for cover, I bang into Person.
“Shit!” I yell, panicking about the explosions.
“Don’t worry about that,” Person says over the continuing roar. “That’s our artillery.” He lifts his head up and observes the firestorm. “It’s just danger close.” He falls back asleep.
The next morning, we are informed that we are lucky to be alive. “That was an enemy artillery strike from a BM-21 multiple-launch rocket system,” Fick says, delivering the news with a grimly amused smile. “That system kills everything in an entire grid square”—a square kilometer. “They knew our coordinates and came within a few hundred meters of us. We got lucky, again.”
TWENTY
°
ON THE MORNING OF MARCH 31, at about nine, Colbert’s team and the rest of First Recon, leave their encampment at the intersection of Routes 7 and 17 in central Mesopotamia to begin the next mission. Today’s objective is a town of about 50,000 called Al Hayy. It’s a Baath Party headquarters and home to a Republican Guard unit of several thousand about thirty kilometers to the north.
RCT-1’s force of 6,000 Marines is planning to assault through the center of Al Hayy sometime in the next twenty-four hours. But the Recon Marines will go there first. As it did on its movement to the town of Al Gharraf, the battalion will leave Route 7 and use a dirt trail hugging the edge of a canal. Initially, RCT-1 will parallel First Recon’s movement on the other side of the canal. Then First Recon will race ahead, cross a series of canal bridges into Al Hayy, speed north and seize the main highway bridge out of the city in order to block the retreat of enemy forces during RCT-1’s attack.
On this mission, First Recon will