Roberto T. Cast
05-07-03, 09:28 AM
A Hell Of A Story, Life With Marines as reported by an embedded reporter------------Part II
The prisoners weren't treated gently, and the Marine was demonstrating
how
the guards would give them a string of contradictory orders the Iraqis
didn't understand anyway, making their point by aiming their rifles at
the
prisoners' faces.
"We're like, What's your name! Shut up! Stand up! Sit the hell down!"
The Marine was waving his loaded M-16 around wildly and finally Sgt.
Rob
Anderson told him, "Put your damn rifle down."
The Marine sat down and, after a few seconds, he said, "When I get
home, I'm
taking an anger-management course."
Everybody cracked up, mostly because they knew he was completely
serious.
I found that even officers who had been studying Marines for years
still
scratched their heads over them.
One fascinated by their quirks was Maj. Jeff Eberwein, an oil-company
executive in civilian life who has a degree in medieval literature from
Boston College. The books he'd brought to read during the war included
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Eberwein liked to joke about how Marines did things the hardest way.
Since
they'd arrived at Camp Saipan in January, the Marines had to wear their
full
battle gear -- flak jackets and helmets and carrying their weapons -
even to
the mess hall and latrine.
I thought the conditions at Camp Saipan were bad, with tents that
didn't
keep out the dust storms and foul-smelling portable toilets. But it was
luxury compared to conditions after the war started.
And the Marines, who had assumed they would be using holes for toilets
and
eating standing up even in camp before the war, thought it was great
they
had toilets and a mess tent with chairs.
Eberwein did a hilarious version of a sergeant's reaction to any Marine
who
complained about the mess hall food, which was actually awful.
"Do you think they had strawberry jam on Tarawa, Marine?! Did they have
orange juice at Iwo Jima?!"
One day at the big Marine base south of Baghdad, Eberwein and I watched
a
Marine take a wrong turn with his LVS, a monster all-wheel drive truck,
and
come up to a ditch with a berm beyond it. The Marine could have backed
up a
little and turned to avoid the obstacle. But the shortest path was
straight
ahead, and after sizing it up the driver just gunned the motor and the
big
truck plowed over it, tires spinning and steel groaning.
Eberwein liked to say that Marines think finesse is a French sports
car.
But the truth is he admired their single-mindedness to getting the job
done.
That day as the truck disappeared through the cloud of dust, he just
shook
his head and said, "Mission accomplished."
But while Eberwein tended to be more reflective than most of the
Marines, I
came to realize he was one of them.
We were at a camp late one afternoon when one of the Cobra helicopter
gunships patrolling outside the Marine positions suddenly began firing.
Marines grabbed their rifles and ran over the berm, hoping for a fight.
In a few minutes, they all came back grumbling: The Cobra gunner must
have
been only clearing his weapon, and there was nothing out there to shoot
at.
Afterward, Eberwein joked about how only Marines would be disappointed
that
they couldn't get into a firefight.
But he'd been the first one over the berm.
If we reporters often puzzled over Marines, there were things about us
that
didn't make sense to them, either.
The first two questions Marines would ask us when they found out we
were
reporters were: Did you volunteer to come, and do you get paid extra
for
covering a war?
They acted like we were crazy when we said we'd volunteered, even
though
they were all volunteers, themselves, for the Corps if not for this
particular war.
They also thought we were crazy when they found out we weren't paid any
more
to cover a war than to cover a city council meeting. But I always
pointed
out that the extra pay the Marines were getting in Iraq was only a
couple of
hundred dollars a month, scant compensation for being shot at.
A surprising number of Marines, unaware that journalists were forbidden
to
carry weapons, asked if we were armed.
When we told them the rules prohibited weapons for journalists, more
than a
few assumed our denials were just to make it seem we were complying
with the
rules, and that we really had some sort of weapons.
Others seemed almost alarmed for our sakes that we were unarmed. Many
insisted on showing us how to fire their M-16s.
After one long, scary night on a convoy in southern Iraq, Sgt. Joseph
Gomez
had asked me if I could throw. I knew Gomez played baseball last year
on the
Marine Corps team, so I answered that I could throw about like a girl,
why?
He held out a green ball printed on the side, "Grenade, Frag, Delay."
You
pull the small pin first, he said, then the larger pin, and throw it.
I couldn't imagine ever using the thing, and tried to stay away from
the
spot in the bed of the truck where Gomez kept it tucked in between the
sandbags.
At first, when we'd climb into a truck we'd wait for one of the Marines
to
move the weapons that were lying around. But after a while we'd just
pick up
the rocket launcher or M-16 and move it ourselves. Most of the Marines,
after we'd spent some time riding with them, would hand us their rifles
to
hold while they climbed in or out of the truck, and it became so second
nature I never thought about it until later.
Maybe that would have made us fair targets. But on the convoys, one of
the
biggest dangers was snipers, and there was no reason to believe they'd
have
any idea we were reporters rather than Marines, or that they'd avoid
shooting us even if they knew.
The reporters I knew, myself included, didn't expect any Geneva
Convention
niceties if we were captured, noncombatants or not.
In any case, my sense of security was directly in proportion to my
confidence in the Marines around me.
We spent the first week of the war with Marines I came to trust
completely
-- Gomez and his crew on a truck that provided security for the
convoys,
driver Lance Cpl. Robert Kissmann and .50-caliber gunner Scott Stasney.
Gomez, whose parents live in Sanford, was only 23, but the others on
his
squad had the same sort of confidence in him. "He's my daddy," was how
one
Marine in Gomez's squad described him.
Gomez called his M-16 Marie, after his wife's middle name, and even his
choice of wife I regarded as a sign of his bravery, since he'd married
his
platoon sergeant's daughter, a thought that made even the toughest
Marines
cringe.
I always figured nothing bad could happen until Gomez had fired his
last
round, but I was with him during my scariest moment of the war.
On an Iraqi highway south of the Euphrates, during a blinding dust
storm,
our security truck stopped to guard a stalled truck full of ammunition
and
guided missiles while the rest of the convoy drove ahead.
The dust and howling wind cut visibility at times to only 50 or 60
yards,
and Iraqi trucks and cars would suddenly appear out of the dust, often
turning to speed off.
We felt like a whole Iraqi army could be 100 yards away in the dust and
we
wouldn't know it.
The wind blew dust in my eyes even with my goggles on, and I was
standing
behind the truck, out of the wind. I wasn't particularly worried until
Gomez
came back and told me he couldn't see and asked me to take a look at
his
eye. That was when I realized all my confidence was tied up in him.
His eye was bloodshot and full of sand, and I dug out the worst of it
with
my fingernail, then washed it out with a bottle of water. It still
looked
bad but he said it felt better, and he went back to the road.
The mechanics were still working on the truck, and a few more Marines
had
joined us, when we heard a loud squeaking clatter coming up the road
behind
us.
We all knew what it was even before someone said it was tracks, which
meant
armored vehicles.
A day earlier, American Cobra gunships or F-18s would have massacred
any
Iraqi tanks that dared to venture out, but now nothing was flying in
the
dust storm.
Eberwein yelled at a Marine to grab the AT-4 rocket launcher from one
of the
Humvees, but I had no confidence in the little rocket.
Besides, you could tell there were several sets of tracks coming up the
road. And I already had a vision of a column of Iraqi tanks coming up
the
road and was trying to figure whether it would be better to run north
or
south and how long it would take to get out of sight of the road in the
dust
storm. I was about to disembed myself on foot.
But when they clattered into sight, the tracks belonged to four U.S.
Army
Bradley Fighting Vehicles, which were as surprised as we were by the
encounter. They stopped suddenly, backed up and crossed the road,
keeping
their cannons trained on us even as they rolled past and disappeared
into
the dust.
I managed to snap a photo of the Bradley's just as they came out of the
dust, but when I looked at it later the image was blurred, as if I'd
moved
when I took the shot. I don't think I could blame the wind.
Aside from the fact that the Marine's inclination was to fight and mine
was
to run, another difference between the press and the Marines is we
tended to
see things as black and white, sometimes in ways that seemed comical to
the
Marines.
One night, some Marines had dropped me off after dark at an advance
camp for
our unit. I was fumbling around trying to unroll my sleeping bag when I
startled a Marine who came walking around the command tent, which I was
sleeping next to so I wouldn't be run over by a truck in the dark.
The prisoners weren't treated gently, and the Marine was demonstrating
how
the guards would give them a string of contradictory orders the Iraqis
didn't understand anyway, making their point by aiming their rifles at
the
prisoners' faces.
"We're like, What's your name! Shut up! Stand up! Sit the hell down!"
The Marine was waving his loaded M-16 around wildly and finally Sgt.
Rob
Anderson told him, "Put your damn rifle down."
The Marine sat down and, after a few seconds, he said, "When I get
home, I'm
taking an anger-management course."
Everybody cracked up, mostly because they knew he was completely
serious.
I found that even officers who had been studying Marines for years
still
scratched their heads over them.
One fascinated by their quirks was Maj. Jeff Eberwein, an oil-company
executive in civilian life who has a degree in medieval literature from
Boston College. The books he'd brought to read during the war included
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Eberwein liked to joke about how Marines did things the hardest way.
Since
they'd arrived at Camp Saipan in January, the Marines had to wear their
full
battle gear -- flak jackets and helmets and carrying their weapons -
even to
the mess hall and latrine.
I thought the conditions at Camp Saipan were bad, with tents that
didn't
keep out the dust storms and foul-smelling portable toilets. But it was
luxury compared to conditions after the war started.
And the Marines, who had assumed they would be using holes for toilets
and
eating standing up even in camp before the war, thought it was great
they
had toilets and a mess tent with chairs.
Eberwein did a hilarious version of a sergeant's reaction to any Marine
who
complained about the mess hall food, which was actually awful.
"Do you think they had strawberry jam on Tarawa, Marine?! Did they have
orange juice at Iwo Jima?!"
One day at the big Marine base south of Baghdad, Eberwein and I watched
a
Marine take a wrong turn with his LVS, a monster all-wheel drive truck,
and
come up to a ditch with a berm beyond it. The Marine could have backed
up a
little and turned to avoid the obstacle. But the shortest path was
straight
ahead, and after sizing it up the driver just gunned the motor and the
big
truck plowed over it, tires spinning and steel groaning.
Eberwein liked to say that Marines think finesse is a French sports
car.
But the truth is he admired their single-mindedness to getting the job
done.
That day as the truck disappeared through the cloud of dust, he just
shook
his head and said, "Mission accomplished."
But while Eberwein tended to be more reflective than most of the
Marines, I
came to realize he was one of them.
We were at a camp late one afternoon when one of the Cobra helicopter
gunships patrolling outside the Marine positions suddenly began firing.
Marines grabbed their rifles and ran over the berm, hoping for a fight.
In a few minutes, they all came back grumbling: The Cobra gunner must
have
been only clearing his weapon, and there was nothing out there to shoot
at.
Afterward, Eberwein joked about how only Marines would be disappointed
that
they couldn't get into a firefight.
But he'd been the first one over the berm.
If we reporters often puzzled over Marines, there were things about us
that
didn't make sense to them, either.
The first two questions Marines would ask us when they found out we
were
reporters were: Did you volunteer to come, and do you get paid extra
for
covering a war?
They acted like we were crazy when we said we'd volunteered, even
though
they were all volunteers, themselves, for the Corps if not for this
particular war.
They also thought we were crazy when they found out we weren't paid any
more
to cover a war than to cover a city council meeting. But I always
pointed
out that the extra pay the Marines were getting in Iraq was only a
couple of
hundred dollars a month, scant compensation for being shot at.
A surprising number of Marines, unaware that journalists were forbidden
to
carry weapons, asked if we were armed.
When we told them the rules prohibited weapons for journalists, more
than a
few assumed our denials were just to make it seem we were complying
with the
rules, and that we really had some sort of weapons.
Others seemed almost alarmed for our sakes that we were unarmed. Many
insisted on showing us how to fire their M-16s.
After one long, scary night on a convoy in southern Iraq, Sgt. Joseph
Gomez
had asked me if I could throw. I knew Gomez played baseball last year
on the
Marine Corps team, so I answered that I could throw about like a girl,
why?
He held out a green ball printed on the side, "Grenade, Frag, Delay."
You
pull the small pin first, he said, then the larger pin, and throw it.
I couldn't imagine ever using the thing, and tried to stay away from
the
spot in the bed of the truck where Gomez kept it tucked in between the
sandbags.
At first, when we'd climb into a truck we'd wait for one of the Marines
to
move the weapons that were lying around. But after a while we'd just
pick up
the rocket launcher or M-16 and move it ourselves. Most of the Marines,
after we'd spent some time riding with them, would hand us their rifles
to
hold while they climbed in or out of the truck, and it became so second
nature I never thought about it until later.
Maybe that would have made us fair targets. But on the convoys, one of
the
biggest dangers was snipers, and there was no reason to believe they'd
have
any idea we were reporters rather than Marines, or that they'd avoid
shooting us even if they knew.
The reporters I knew, myself included, didn't expect any Geneva
Convention
niceties if we were captured, noncombatants or not.
In any case, my sense of security was directly in proportion to my
confidence in the Marines around me.
We spent the first week of the war with Marines I came to trust
completely
-- Gomez and his crew on a truck that provided security for the
convoys,
driver Lance Cpl. Robert Kissmann and .50-caliber gunner Scott Stasney.
Gomez, whose parents live in Sanford, was only 23, but the others on
his
squad had the same sort of confidence in him. "He's my daddy," was how
one
Marine in Gomez's squad described him.
Gomez called his M-16 Marie, after his wife's middle name, and even his
choice of wife I regarded as a sign of his bravery, since he'd married
his
platoon sergeant's daughter, a thought that made even the toughest
Marines
cringe.
I always figured nothing bad could happen until Gomez had fired his
last
round, but I was with him during my scariest moment of the war.
On an Iraqi highway south of the Euphrates, during a blinding dust
storm,
our security truck stopped to guard a stalled truck full of ammunition
and
guided missiles while the rest of the convoy drove ahead.
The dust and howling wind cut visibility at times to only 50 or 60
yards,
and Iraqi trucks and cars would suddenly appear out of the dust, often
turning to speed off.
We felt like a whole Iraqi army could be 100 yards away in the dust and
we
wouldn't know it.
The wind blew dust in my eyes even with my goggles on, and I was
standing
behind the truck, out of the wind. I wasn't particularly worried until
Gomez
came back and told me he couldn't see and asked me to take a look at
his
eye. That was when I realized all my confidence was tied up in him.
His eye was bloodshot and full of sand, and I dug out the worst of it
with
my fingernail, then washed it out with a bottle of water. It still
looked
bad but he said it felt better, and he went back to the road.
The mechanics were still working on the truck, and a few more Marines
had
joined us, when we heard a loud squeaking clatter coming up the road
behind
us.
We all knew what it was even before someone said it was tracks, which
meant
armored vehicles.
A day earlier, American Cobra gunships or F-18s would have massacred
any
Iraqi tanks that dared to venture out, but now nothing was flying in
the
dust storm.
Eberwein yelled at a Marine to grab the AT-4 rocket launcher from one
of the
Humvees, but I had no confidence in the little rocket.
Besides, you could tell there were several sets of tracks coming up the
road. And I already had a vision of a column of Iraqi tanks coming up
the
road and was trying to figure whether it would be better to run north
or
south and how long it would take to get out of sight of the road in the
dust
storm. I was about to disembed myself on foot.
But when they clattered into sight, the tracks belonged to four U.S.
Army
Bradley Fighting Vehicles, which were as surprised as we were by the
encounter. They stopped suddenly, backed up and crossed the road,
keeping
their cannons trained on us even as they rolled past and disappeared
into
the dust.
I managed to snap a photo of the Bradley's just as they came out of the
dust, but when I looked at it later the image was blurred, as if I'd
moved
when I took the shot. I don't think I could blame the wind.
Aside from the fact that the Marine's inclination was to fight and mine
was
to run, another difference between the press and the Marines is we
tended to
see things as black and white, sometimes in ways that seemed comical to
the
Marines.
One night, some Marines had dropped me off after dark at an advance
camp for
our unit. I was fumbling around trying to unroll my sleeping bag when I
startled a Marine who came walking around the command tent, which I was
sleeping next to so I wouldn't be run over by a truck in the dark.