David serves in Baghdad with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Lewis.
Some days you just get that feeling that something is going to happen during the day, and you just hope that whatever it is won’t have you going home early. Our job for the day was to be on quick reaction force, or QRF. QRF is a great opportunity for all of the men to relax and get some well deserved rest. Ordinarily, while on QRF, not much really happens, but on this day we would spend the majority of our time conducting combat operations.
Boom … Boom … Whizzzzzzzz … Crash… BOOM! I roll over in my bed and pull my covers over my head and say with a grunt of irritation, “Come on, it’s too damn early for this s@#%.” The booms just happen to be the regular rockets and mortars landing inside the forward operating base somewhere. I honestly believe sometimes you have a better chance of finding yourself in a predicament on the FOB rather than outside the wire. Since I am old and I like to maximize my sleeping time, I rack out early, which makes me the first one up at the crack of dawn. I usually go on top of the roof and just sit there on the cot, taking some alone time. When I look out at the city and see the lights and hear the sounds of gunfire and wild tracers followed by audible explosions, I just become increasingly irritated with the foolishness of this whole deployment.
I walk down to my room, and while I walk back, I take a glance at the platoon radio guard for QRF. My name is first on the list. Someone knows the old man would be up. I get my gear and make my way down to the truck at 6:55 a.m.
On guard with me is Spc. Turnage. From day one, Turnage and I have gotten along very well, so we go by first names. We both agree it helps us keep our civilian bearings and better yet brings a more nonprofessional friendship to the front. So I jump in the truck. I go to grab the hand microphone and what do you know: “QRF prep for SP; there’s a situation developing.” I look at James and shake my head in utter disbelief. I hit the glow button on my cool guy’s watch.
“We just started one minute ago. It’s going to be a long freaking day; I can tell.” James looked at me through his fogged up dirty glasses, which for some odd reason he just won’t clean. “Well, what can you say? We are second platoon. You had to know the insurgents knew we were on QRF.” We both laughed, and the long day began.
As we loaded the truck everyone seemed to be dragging a little, but after shaking off the bed blues, everyone seemed ready to get into the game. I am always impressed on how fast we get ready and go. We made it out to the trucks and ramped up in like nine minutes. The word as we left the FOB was that an element had come across an explosively formed projectile, or EFP. When you hear something like that you find that you go through your head and think what you would do if your truck just happened to get hit. I don’t like to incite bad luck, but I thought about asking the guys what would happen if one of those EFPs hit us — how do you think we would do. At first no one said anything, giving me the impression that the question was more of: “Who do you think would be taken out by it.” It took a little while for the guys to answer, but they did. Ray started: “Well, if it did happen, I think all would be a little shocked, but we would go into our medical training.” I was next. “I think it would be so fast and furious that we won’t even know what hit us,” I said. Sgt. Lawrence continued: “If this happens, we need to stay calm and get the guys that need immediate medical attention taken care of. If the VC is curled up in a corner crying like a little bitch because he’s scared, you can’t sit there and wipe his tears. Our job is to get the nine line out and save lives.” After going through the rest of the guys, the overall perspective was same: save the wounded, and then work on yourself. I know this conversation topic may seem inappropriate to even talk about, but that conversation may give men direction when the cloud of dirt fades and the wounded soldiers lie there depending on you to conduct yourself in a professional manner, regardless of your wounds or displeasure of the site of a comrade down. Someone needs to step up; the guy next to you is all you got.
So we made our way to where the other element wanted us to cordon. It just so happened that we had the best set in the house. The first thing we had to do was set up our concertina wire, cones and spike strips. When you put out these blocking devices you have to accept that the local nationals are going to test us; oh, and they always do.
It took about 10 minutes before cars started making the mistake of crossing the cones. No one got hurt, but we made sure they received the point with a pop. To make the blocking position more effective we made some adjustments, even doing that had cars almost crashing into each other, leaving the smell of burnt tire in the air.
After awhile, EOD showed up surprisingly fast and went to work. EOD has this cool little robot that can basically do the job, leaving humans out of the danger zone. While the robot was going to the EFP with the explosive ordnance, a bunch of wild dogs became interested and started walking by the robot. It looked like they were trying to take a bite out of the ordnance. After the robot dropped the ordnance, the dogs made themselves comfortable laying near the EFP. Over the radio came the countdown. We all got our digital cameras out and started to record. The dogs nearby hadn’t moved, so we all assumed we were about to see a flying dog. “One minute.” We all intently looked at the sight. Boom. The dust went flying, and when the dust settled, the two dogs that had plopped down by the EFP came running out like a bat out of hell. I think one was limping, but he then started to run normally. I love dogs, so I hoped that they would make it.
After that whole thing, another situation came over the radio that an element had discovered a house that had some buried, decomposing body. The person on the other end of radio asked for a description. “Well, we have a hand sticking out of the dirt as well as some body pieces elsewhere in the house. We might need some shovels over here; there’s a lot.” The person receiving the message seemed baffled by the whole thing. “Did you say a hand sticking out of the ground?” The other person responded in a low tone. “Roger, there’s a lot of work to be done over here.” The radio went silent and so did everyone in the truck. I sat there looking at the ground and started to think how I would deal with a hand sticking out of the ground. I am sure if I was there, to break the uncomfortable feeling, I would say something insensitive like, “Hey down there, do you need a hand?” Sometimes you have to say something like that just to break the whole ugliness of it.
After some time, the guys in the truck came to the conclusion that if we had to deal with something like that it would rank on the top five most disgusting things we’ve seen. After 20 minutes we received the word to return to patrol, or RP. Everyone just wanted to get back and relax.
We made our way back to the barracks and quickly went back to our favorite pastime — chilling. After about four hours of resting it was back on guard. James and I jumped in the truck, this time hoping that nothing crazy would pop up. We sat down on the bench and quietly looked at the radio as if bad news was going to jump out at us; it didn’t. We made our way back to the barracks. I managed to get all the way upstairs when I had the urge to use the restroom. “Damn.” I made my way downstairs, and as I made my way to the restroom, I saw a person running from where our trucks were staged. I yelled over to Spc. Balbag, the medic, “Man, did we get spun up?”
“Yep, as soon as I jumped in the truck,” he yelled back to me.
I smiled. “Hey, that’s what happened to me and James.”
I ran upstairs and started making an annoying siren noise that I am known for. Amazingly, everyone came out of their rooms like a bunch of hungry wolves. We all suited up, and we were out the door and outside the wire in no time.
This time the word was that there was a vehicle born improvised explosive device, or VBIED. The interesting thing was that there were no directions or description, so we could have been driving right by the car, or the car could have been parked off the road like many cars are. As we drove around the AO aimlessly, we all knew we were looking for a needle in a haystack. After 30 minutes, we received the word that we could return back to the FOB. I could understand the importance of the response, but I felt we could have received a little more direction. You really can’t blame anyone though, because usually these calls out are from people giving tips. You just never know what you’re going to get. It is like a kid playing a prank on the cops on a pay phone.
We returned to the FOB and went back to our previous relaxing positions. It was getting late into the afternoon, and there had been little word on the radio about activities in the AO. Just when we thought things would stay peaceful, word came over the radio that we had to go replace an element that had been pulling security on a grave site containing multiple decomposing bodies as well as scattered bones.
We made our way out to the site. It seemed like we drove forever, probably because I was plain irritated from jumping in and out of the truck every three hours. We finally arrived. We jumped out and went into a security position. Sgt. Lawrence and a staff sergeant went to get the lowdown on what the situation was. As they gathered the info, three Strykers made their way into our area. The ramp dropped, and out came what looked like the real CSI. The three men walked side by side like they do in the beginning of the show. I got Ray’s attention. “Hey, look at these dudes. They have the high-speed CSI briefcase and everything.” Ray looked over at them and laughed. “I guess life must be rough. I think one of the guys has the rubber piece on his 68 optics.” I took a better look and my jaw dropped. “Wow! He must be trying to keep it clean.”
As the group of men went into the small house that had no roof, we waited patiently outside. The sun started to drop, so this process was going to have to be quick because there was no way we would be digging for bodies in the dark. I can’t imagine what you could get your hands in.
After some time, they started bringing out the shovels, and that’s when I realized that I could possibly help in the building. “Sergeant, do they need any help in there? I am sure they could use some Joe power.” He looked at me and shook his head and smiled. “Hardt, Murray come here.” We walked quickly to him. “Are you guys up for this?” We both answered confidently, “Hell yeah.” He pointed to where we were to go. We walked in and made our way to where the voices were.
We entered the room. I started looking around, and then I looked down and there it was — the hand sticking out of the ground connected to a string. I wanted to say the joke I had thought of earlier, but Ray beat me to it. I looked at him. “Dude, that was my joke.” He laughed and said I wasn’t fast enough. The CID agents in the room looked at us like we were crazy. We grabbed a shovel and went to work.
As I was digging, I hit a hard spot. I looked up and said with a smirk, “S@#%, I think we hit gold.” Ray started to pull harder on the string that had the disfigured member on it. The noise of the cracking and snapping of bones was, to say the least, gut wrenching. We almost had it out, and then I shoved deeper. That’s when I hit something soft. I took the shovel out and looked at the tip. It was covered in blood and maggots. “Hell yeah, Ray, this s#% is awesome.” Covering his mouth from the nasty stench, Ray said that in golf the fresh are the whole area.
We finally managed to get the body out; it was the worst dead object I have seen while being here. The body part that we thought was a hand turned out to be a leg. The shin and half of the foot had been intact, leaving the blood stake look. Blood dripped off, and maggots swarmed the area. I had to take a step back just to get a breath. The CID agents took a swab of the blood and walked away. The explanation they came up with was that this person had been chopped up and stuffed like a rag doll in a bag. As the sun started to fade, I quickly looked around and saw that every corner of the house had what looked like a body in it.
I was glad that this gruesome task was done, but again I learned a lot from the experience. Ray and I have not talked once about what we did since there are just some things you don’t talk about.
We drove the CID agents back to their FOB. Unfortunately, the agents had a bag full of decomposing flesh in the bag, so that ride was not a good one to say the least.
Update on the EFP: The report was that the EFP was likely an intended secondary attack on a coalition forces response unit en route to the indirect point of origin position, or IDFP. Bait for EFP. The possible reason behind all of the action was because we had done some clearing operations in Abu Tshir. The finding of the burial site confirmed that the insurgents use houses for their extra judicial killings, or EJKs. Doing this allows them to fly under the radar.
I expect to see the insurgents starting to take up an offensive posture now. We will see. Every day brings something new.
I’ll conclude this by saying, Happy Thanksgiving and God bless. Remember those who have sacrificed their lives so that we actually have something to be thankful for — and that’s FREEDOM.
Mr. Hardt, Thank you for the articles over the last months- Our Rotary Club hosts the only Military Family Support March in the world & has raised $150,000 in the last 4 years- we've adopted 3rd BDE famliies as our cause- cheers to all serving over seas &
come home safe
Andrew Oczkewicz
360-789-2972
olympialakefront@comcast.net
www.MilitaryFamilyMarch.com
Posted by: Andrew Oczkewicz | 14 December 2006 at 13:18
Hey there Hardt, nice column. All I want to say is say hi to my brother James for me and all the family and happy holidays. Keep an eye out for him and keep safe.
Joe
Posted by: Joe Turnage | 23 December 2006 at 13:25