Enduring Freedom, page 8
A few days later, Joe sat in one of Fort Hood’s auditoriums as the lights dimmed and Staff Sergeant Connors switched on the screen to start the PowerPoint. “Good morning. This next block of instruction will concern Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs.” The slide advanced to a photo of a destroyed Humvee, shredded wide open in the front like a blown-up firecracker. Sergeant Connors began to read from the next slide in the same slow monotone he used on all his PowerPoints. “Some of these slides, I will read for you. Others you can read for yourself.”
Joe, and probably everybody else, was done reading the slide long before Connors finished.
Joe rubbed his hand over his face. It’s the same dumb PowerPoint that we saw last week.
“Explosive compounds such as claylike C4 or gun powder can be reshaped so that they may be placed into many different containers. Such as . . .” Connors advanced to a picture slide for each item. “A Pepsi can. A Coke can. A beer can. Or even a can of chew.”
Joe jabbed himself in the leg with his pen to stay awake.
As the weeks went by, Joe adapted to Army life. Except on the toilet, he was never alone, always surrounded by hundreds of other soldiers. Living, working, eating, and even sleeping close to these men, Joe soon let go of the rhythms of college and learned to measure life not in midterm exams and semesters, but in marches and ranges for rifles and machine guns. He especially grew accustomed to, if not comfortable with, Sergeant Paulsen, PFC Baccam, and Corporal MacDonald, the guys in his own fireteam.
One morning First Squad gathered near a pole barn outside of which was parked a Humvee, its back in open configuration like a pickup, with benches along either side.
“I wonder what this is supposed to be about,” PFC Baccam said to Joe. “Maybe some driving training.”
Joe spotted a pile of sand and some shovels about twenty yards away. “I don’t know. Doesn’t look good though.”
“Man, none of this is ever good,” Mac said.
Staff Sergeant Connors climbed out of the Humvee and smiled.
“Just got worse,” said Sergeant Paulsen.
“Oh goodie,” said Z. “Here comes Captain CONUS.”
Someone in the company had been talking to Connors and learned the man had never deployed. He hadn’t even been stationed some place like Germany, never left the continental United States, hence CONUS.
“Morning men!” said Captain CONUS. “Ready for some more high-speed training?”
“Huuuuuaaaaaaah!” Corporal MacDonald shouted the stupid old enthusiastic cry that was only used in Army basic training and nowhere else.
The guys laughed. CONUS didn’t seem to understand Mac was making fun of him.
“Roger that! Kudos on that enthusiasm, trooper. Now as you may remember from my IED PowerPoint presentation, we are having lots of problems with IEDs over there.” CONUS slapped the side of the Humvee. “Now we can armor these to withstand bullets and some blasts. But where we’re having trouble is the underside. If an explosion goes off under the vehicle, it blasts up through the interior.” CONUS paused for a moment to let that sink in. Then he smiled and nodded. “But don’t worry. In this block of instruction I’ll show you how to better protect yourself from IED blasts from below by hardening your vehicle.” A quick pause. “‘Hardening? What’s that?’ Is that what you’re asking?”
“That’s just exactly what I was about to ask!” Mac said.
Sergeant Paulsen bit his lip to hold back a smile as he elbowed Mac.
“Now what you’re gonna wanna do when you’re over there in Iraq—”
“Afghanistan,” said PFC Zimmerman.
“Oh, right,” said CONUS. “But when you get there, what you’re gonna wanna do is fill up sandbags, see? Now not too full because you want them somewhat flexible. OK? Three to six inches thick. Then, you’re gonna wanna place those sandbags on the floor of your Humvee. That will provide an extra layer of protection from any IED blasts.”
Joe looked from the Humvee to the pile of sand. This didn’t make sense. Humvees were already a cramped ride. How would they all fit if they took off up to half a foot of room from the floor?
“This country has flown to the moon,” Corporal MacDonald said quietly.
“Say again?” Captain CONUS asked.
“This country has sent men flying all the way to the moon,” Mac started.
“If you believe that really happened,” PFC Zimmerman said quietly with a smirk.
Mac ignored him. “We have the best military in the world. And that’s the plan? Sandbags?” Mac pressed the side of his rifle barrel against his forehead. “Sandbags! They couldn’t, I don’t know, build a Humvee with a tougher bottom, or weld some extra steel down there? So now, we have to stand here and listen to you . . . people . . . tell us that we’re all going to die from IEDs blowing up our trucks—”
CONUS held up a hand. “Well, now hold on there. You’re not going to die because as soon as you get to Iraq, you’re gonna wanna get some sandbags and—”
“Afghanistan!” Mac shouted. “They are actually two different places! This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. The absolute best America’s most gifted minds could come up with is filling the bottom of our vehicle with dirt.”
“Well, now,” said CONUS. “Actually, what you’ll use is sand, and you’re gonna wanna—”
“I can’t handle it!” Mac shouted.
“Hey, take it easy, Corporal MacDonald,” Sergeant Paulsen said. “We’ll figure this out.”
Alpha Team’s leader, Sergeant Hart, joined in. “Excuse me, Sergeant Connors, but if we line the bottom of our Humvee with sand, and a bomb goes off underneath it, won’t that just basically make the whole thing a giant sand Claymore mine?”
“Well, now, kudos to you, Sergeant Hart, for thinking of that. See, the idea is that these sandbags will become very firmly packed by everybody walking on them. That will make a kind of wall. So it won’t be quite, you know, loose sand. Now, let’s all try this out. I have some sandbags here in the vehicle, and a pile of sand and shovels over there. Let’s practice hardening this Humvee.”
Joe shook his head. There was no way anyone needed to practice shoveling sand into bags. Corporal MacDonald complained too much and was easily upset, but he was right about this sandbag Humvee situation. Joe wanted to throw up. This was the stupidest, scariest thing he’d learned in the Army so far.
“What is this supposed to teach us?” Mac asked, several days later. Joe’s squad was riding in the back of a Humvee configured like a pickup with sandbags lining the floor. His team sat on the passenger-side bench pointing their rifles out from the vehicle’s right. Alpha Team covered the other side. Sergeant Cavanaugh drove. They’d been doing a lot of training in Humvees and five-ton trucks through the last few weeks. Right now they were conducting a simulated patrol during which they would be evaluated on how well they identified and reacted to IED threats.
“We could do this in a video game,” Mac said.
Joe didn’t mind this training as much. At least they could sit down instead of marching.
“Come on, guys,” said Baccam. “This training might save our lives.”
PFC Zimmerman craned his neck to look over the Humvee’s cab. “What’s that? In the tree up there?”
“Oh you gotta be kidding me,” Mac said.
Up ahead, at eye level, a Coke can hung from blue inert det cord.
“Hey, Sergeant Cavanaugh,” Joe called down into the open-backed cab. “I think maybe that’s supposed to be the IED.”
The Humvee stopped. Three more halted behind them.
“We need to move,” said Sergeant Paulsen. “If this were a real IED in Afghanistan, the enemy would probably have an ambush ready for us.”
“I’d call it in on the radio, if this rig had a radio,” said Sergeant Cavanaugh.
“Sergeant Cavanaugh?” Specialist Shockley spoke up. “If I may suggest. This IED is hanging there, which means it has to be command-detonated by a trigger man. If we sent one highly motivated individual, such as myself, out into the woods to find and neutralize the trigger man, the IED would be rendered useless, and we could drive through, no problem.”
Joe looked at Specialist Shockley. Was he serious? This was just a training exercise.
“That’s the dumbest idea I’ve heard yet,” Mac said.
“I can do it!” Shockley insisted. “I have the military knowledge and experience.”
“Knowledge and ex— This is all pretend,” Mac said. “Don’t you get that? There’s no trigger man to neutralize because this isn’t a war and that’s not an IED, but a pop can tied to a branch.”
“Some of us are taking this seriously, Mac,” said Shockley. “You know, because our lives depend on it.”
“Even if this were real, sending you out into the woods by yourself would be the stupidest plan. You’d be shot and killed. Four or five of us would have to carry your fat body back to the vehicle, and we’d all be shot in the process.”
“I wouldn’t get shot, because I have superior field-craft and infiltration skills.”
Corporal MacDonald laughed and was about to reply when Sergeant Hart interrupted. “What if we just go around it?”
“Whatever we do, we need to get out of the kill zone,” said Sergeant Paulsen.
“We’re going around.” Sergeant Cavanaugh cranked the wheel and hit the gas.
“Weapons up,” Joe said, pulling his M16 back inside the Humvee as tree branches swept the side of the vehicle. The convoy followed their improvised bypass and returned to the dirt road, driving on. Finally the route bent around a corner to a more open area where the tree line pulled back about fifty yards.
Joe spotted him first. A white guy, with his BDUs turned inside out and a towel wrapped around his head, was rushing out from the woods. “Allah Ackbar!” He ran down the hill with a plastic AK-47. “Abu jabba doodaaa woodaa!”
“This is really pathetic,” said Baccam.
Sergeant Paulsen shook his head in disgust at the terrible terrorist impersonation. “Go ahead and shoot off all your blanks.” He raised his rifle and pulled the trigger.
“They’re blanks,” Mac protested. “It’s not like we have to aim. It’ll just mean we have to clean our weapons forever.”
“First Sergeant will make you shoot ’em all off anyway,” Joe pointed out. He and Baccam had tried to keep their weapons clean on the last training exercise by not firing their blanks. When they’d attempted to return their sixty blank rounds to the armory NCO, First Sergeant Dalton yelled at them and forced them to fire off every blank they had.
In seconds, Joe’s magazine was empty, that warm whiff of gunpowder rising from the ejector port.
“Well,” Mac said when the fake shooting was done. “That was pointless.”
“This is crap,” Specialist Shockley said, for the fourth time. Or was it the four hundredth? First Squad was returning from a shooting range in the back of a five-ton truck, on the first warm sunny day in a long time. “I mean, if this is the kind of support we can expect from our leadership, we are all going to die over there.”
Joe sighed deeply, adjusted his position, and put his chin on his chest, trying to sleep. Save for the regular rumbling of the truck’s engine, it was a nice, quiet day, perfect for a quick snooze. His eyes began to droop for a moment.
“Those were my magazines!” Shockley started up again. Joe jerked awake. Shockley continued, “I cut the five-fifty cord and taped the loops on the magazines myself. I specifically asked if I would get my magazines back, and First Sergeant Dalton said ‘Sure.’”
Joe spoke before thinking. “Please stop!” His tone was a little harsh. Technically, Specialist Shockley outranked Joe, who was still a private first class, but in the National Guard, rank didn’t really count for much until a soldier made sergeant. “Nobody is going to die because of your stupid magazines, Specialist! They don’t matter.”
When Shockley was surprised, he’d do this thing where his chin would double up, his mouth would fall open, and his eyes would go wide.
“Why would you even buy your own ammo magazines anyway?”
“I didn’t buy them,” Shockley said.
Joe frowned. “They were just regular magazines that aren’t even secured items?”
“They were mine!” Shockley said. “I taped on loops of five-fifty cord.”
Mac was laughing now. Sergeant Hart smiled and sat up.
“Are the magazines listed on your official inventory of gear?” Joe asked. “Do you even have a hand receipt from supply for those magazines? Do you know the serial numbers for those magazines?”
“No, but you see, I—”
More of the squad was laughing now. Joe was relieved they were finally coming to their senses and not taking Shockley’s crap anymore.
“I didn’t write the serial number down, but anyone could see the five-fifty cord that I—”
Joe imagined himself as a hard-hitting TV journalist. “So last night you obeyed orders and forked over two ammo clips like we all did, so they could be loaded before we shot today. After shooting, we all got two magazines back. Just tape on new loops if it bothers you that much.”
“No,” Shockley cut in. “Not if they’re just going to be stolen again, and—”
“Or don’t tape on stupid loops,” said Joe. “Either way, shut up about the stupid magazines! Nobody cares!”
“Boom!” Mac shouted. “PFC Killer comes alive! I like it! Better watch out, Shockley.”
Specialist Shockley squinted his eyes and pressed his lips together. For the rest of the ride back to the barracks Joe could finally enjoy some rare peace and relative quiet.
By mid-May, the monotony of their training started breaking up. Rumors of impending travel to Afghanistan began to fly. One day, their entire task force, several entire infantry companies, shed their green BDUs and donned the much lighter tan tones of the Desert Camouflage Uniforms.
“This is finally starting to feel real,” Mac said to Joe and Baccam. “The official uniform of war.”
“I’m just glad for these new tan boots that we don’t have to polish,” Joe said.
All soldiers were ordered to ship everything home that they didn’t plan to take with them, and all incoming mail would now be stopped until they were issued a new mailing address in Afghanistan.
One day they lined up to draw their weapons from the armory. “Guard this M16 with your life, Private,” said the armory NCO. “From now until the end of your deployment, it will be with you, a part of you, at all times.”
This was a holy commandment, a rule that must have been written down somewhere in the Army regs, but which was so strictly enforced that it didn’t need to be written down. In the Army, no matter what else happened, a soldier never ever lost control of or misplaced his weapon. He would sleep next to it, take it to chow, take it to the latrine. Maybe when he took a shower, he could ask a trusted fellow soldier to keep watch over it. But outside of that, this M16 was to be with him, under his control, at every moment.
By the third week in May, their training burdens lightened. There were no more firing ranges, no more patrols through the woods. Finally Joe and his fellow soldiers had some extra time to themselves. Even Sergeant Cavanaugh couldn’t fill every second of every day with redundant training. Joe used most of his free time for reading, devouring the Ernie Pyle book Mr. Kane had given him. Ernie Pyle wrote story after story of soldiers enduring impossible hardships and horrors. The accounts were never gory. They didn’t have to be. The details about all the debris washed up on the beaches after the D-Day invasion were enough to give the reader at least some understanding of the horrific scale of the death on that day. Reading the war accounts made him nervous.
Afghanistan is nothing like World War II, he told himself. And they’d send Special Forces or a big active duty unit into the most dangerous places. And yet, Joe was uncertain how he felt about that. He didn’t want to go to war, but he knew his country had been attacked and it was his duty to fight. If he had to fight, he might as well face the worst of it and make a real difference destroying this Muslim terrorist army.
But even when he thought this way, his heart beat heavy and he had to wipe his clammy hands on his uniform. The night before, during the end-of-day squad briefing, they’d been told they would leave for Afghanistan very soon but, for security reasons, would not be informed of the exact day or time.
Then, at last, the day came when there was nothing left for his company to do but go to war. Everything had been packed up and shipped out. They were all transported to Fort Hood’s airfield, M16 rifles or M249 squad automatic weapons in hand, and there before them waited a massive charter jet.
Finally, months of training are over. Three of the longest months in history.
Joe stood in line with his squad, waiting to board the jet. Corporal MacDonald in front of him. Baccam behind him.
“This must be the most unusual flight in America today, hundreds of people carrying knives and guns boarding a civilian passenger jet with no security screening,” Mac said.
Shockley huffed. “I don’t think the Army is too worried, Corporal. It’s not like one of us soldiers are going to hijack the plane.”
“I know that, Shockley,” Mac fired back. “Take it easy. I wasn’t trying to point out a security risk, just noting the weirdness of it all.”
Joe pulled one of his half dozen disposable cameras from his cargo pocket. He didn’t want to waste all the film here in the States, but this was a big moment. “Baccam, stand here next to me. Hold your M16 up all tough-guy style.” Joe put his arm around his friend and, with his rifle slung, held the camera up with his other hand.
“You’re going to take a picture of yourself?” Baccam asked. “Hope it looks OK when you finally get it developed.”
