Part 13 (1/2)

Our ROEs when the war kicked off were pretty simple: If you see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and they're male, shoot 'em. Kill every male you see.

That wasn't the official language, but that was the idea. Now that we were watching Iran, however, we were under strict orders not to fire, at least not at Iran.

Every night someone on the other side of the river would stand up and take a shot at us. We would dutifully call it in and ask for permission to return fire. The answer was always a very distinct, ”NO!” Very loud and clear.

Looking back, this made a lot of sense. Our heaviest weapons were a Carl Gustav and two 60s. The Iranians had plenty of artillery, and they had the position dialed in. It wouldn't have taken anything for them to hit us. And, in fact, what they were probably trying to do was suck us into a fight so they could kill us.

It did p.i.s.s us off, though. Somebody shoots at you, you want to shoot back.

After the high of the start of the war, our spirits sagged. We were just sitting around doing nothing. One of the guys had a video camera and we made a video poking fun at it. There wasn't much else to do. We found a few Iraqi weapons and gathered them in a pile to be blown up. But that was it. The Iraqis weren't sending boats our way, and the Iranians would only fire a single shot then duck and wait for us to react. About the most entertaining thing we could do was wade into the water and p.i.s.s in their direction.

For a week we took turns on watch-two guys on, four guys off-monitored the radio and watched the water. Finally, we were relieved by another set of SEALs and headed back to Kuwait.

THE RACE TO BAGHDAD

By now, the so-called Race to Baghdad had begun. American and allied units were streaming across the border, making large advances every day.

We spent a few days hanging around our camp back in Kuwait, waiting for an a.s.signment. As frustrating as our stay at the border station was, this was worse. We wanted to be in action. There were any number of missions we could have accomplished-eliminating some of those ”nonexistent” air defenses farther into Iraq, for example-but the command didn't seem to want to use us.

Our deployment had been extended so that we could take part in the beginning of the war. But now the rumor was that we would be rotated back to the States and replaced by Team 5. No one wanted to leave Iraq now that the action was getting hot. Morale hit rock bottom. We were all p.i.s.sed off.

To top things off, the Iraqis had sent some Scuds over just before the war started. Most had been taken care of by Patriot missiles, but one got through. Wouldn't you know it took out the Starbucks where we'd hung out during our prewar training?

That's low, hitting a coffee place. It could have been worse, I guess. It could have been a Dunkin' Donuts.

The joke was that President Bush only declared war when the Starbucks was. .h.i.t. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay.

We stayed for three or four days, grousing and depressed the whole time. Then, finally, we joined the Marine push in the area of Nasiriya. We were back in the war.

NEAR NASIRIYA

Nasiriya is a city on the Euphrates River in southern Iraq, about 125 miles northwest of Kuwait. The city itself was taken by the Marines on March 31, but action in the area continued for quite some time, as small groups of Iraqi soldiers and Fedayeen continued to resist and attack Americans. It was near Nasiriya that Jessica Lynch was captured and held during the first few days of the war.

Some historians believe that the fighting in the area was the fiercest the Marines encountered during the war, comparing it with the most ferocious firefights in Vietnam and later in Fallujah. Besides the city itself, the Marines took Jalibah Airfield, several bridges over the Euphrates, and highways and towns that secured the pa.s.sage to Baghdad during the early stages of the war. Along the way, they began encountering the sort of fanatical insurgency that would characterize the war after Baghdad fell.

We had an extremely small part in the conflict there. We got into some very intense battles, but the bulk of the action was by Marines. Obviously, I can't write about most of that; what I saw of the overall battle was like looking at an enormous landscape painting through a tiny straw.

When you're working with Army and Marine Corps units, you immediately notice a difference. The Army is pretty tough, but their performance can depend on the individual unit. Some are excellent, filled with hoorah and first-cla.s.s warriors. A few are absolutely horrible; most are somewhere in between.

In my experience, Marines are gung ho no matter what. They will all fight to the death. Every one of them just wants to get out there and kill. They are bad-a.s.s, hard-charging mothers.

We inserted into the desert in the middle of the night, with two three-seat DPVs, driving off the back of a 53. The ground was firm enough that no one got stuck.

We were behind the tip of the U.S. advance, and there were no enemy units in the area. We drove up through the desert until we came to an Army base camp. We rested a few hours with them, then took off to scout for the Marines ahead of their advance.

The desert wasn't entirely empty. While there were long stretches of wilderness, there were also towns and very small settlements strung out in the distance. We mostly skirted the towns, observing them from the distance. Our job was to get an idea of where the enemy strongpoints were, radioing them back so the Marines could decide whether to attack or bypa.s.s them. Every so often we'd reach high ground, stop for a while, and take a scan.

We had only one significant contact that day. We were skirting by a city. We obviously got too close, because they started engaging us. I fired the .50-cal, then swung around to the 60 as we hauled a.s.s out of there.