The military hires Iraqi interpreters, but I would estimate that our platoon had an interpreter with us about 1/3 of the time. Even then, the interpreter can only be in one place at one time, usually with the LT. The rest of the time we got by with gestures, broken Arabic, and what few words of English the locals might speak. Obviously no deep communication could take place, but it’s surprising what one can convey with his hands and facial features.

The Iraqis are kind of like American cowboys in that they love to shoot their guns off in the air for pretty much any reason. Weddings, funerals, births, sporting events, these are all worthy of at least 30 7.62mm rounds fired at full auto out of an AK-47, which, by the way, is nearly ubiquitous in Iraq. Every household has at least one. This practice is relatively disconcerting to the newly arrived American soldier in Iraq; he tends to jump at the sound of any gunfire while out on patrol, because he believes it to be directed at himself. With time, however, the sound of sporadic gunfire becomes background noise.

I distinctly remember one night on guard at the United Nations compound in Baghdad. The compound had been car bombed many months earlier, but it was still guarded by a small force of US soldiers to ward off looters and preserve the property as much as possible, in case the UN ever decided to come back. Seemed like a waste of manpower at the time, and looking back, it still does. That night I was on guard, sitting in the gunner’s hatch of a humvee at the front gate. We had been observing gunfire to our south, a little more than usual.

Suddenly the whole night sky lit up with tracers. The noise of automatic rifle fire surrounded the complex from all sides. It looked like a thousand anti-aircraft batteries were shooting at phantom bombers. Tracers arced high over the compound. I couldn’t understand what was happening. It seemed as though the whole of eastern Baghdad had gone mad and was assembled in the streets shooting off their rifles in the air. I frantically called on the radio to the sergeant of the guard and relayed that a large armed mob had assembled in the streets and was firing into the air. I gripped my rifle tightly, said a prayer to whoever was listening, and prepared to die defending an abandoned building.



The sergeant of the guard came on the radio several minutes later and informed all the guard towers that the Iraqi national soccer team had just beat Saudi Arabia, and that had prompted the spontaneous celebration in the street and all the gunfire. We don’t do that in America, we just loot stores and turn over police cars when our favorite sports teams win (or lose). That night, besides being a surreal experience which I will never forget, impressed upon me just how well armed the populace of Iraq is.

On patrol in Al-Tamar, a small neighborhood located just east of Sadr City, we heard gunfire coming from our direct front, very close. I hopped out of the humvee and saw a man firing a pistol. I trained my rifle on him and flicked off the safety, waiting to see if he was firing at us, although I didn’t think he was. For about three seconds I had him perfectly sighted, waiting to pull the trigger. Some sick part of me wanted to kill him, even though I was pretty sure he had been firing into the air. He would have the pistol on him, and I could have claimed that he had pointed at me, and then I would have been authorized under the rules of engagement to use deadly force.



I don’t know why I wanted to kill the stupid bastard, probably because I was sick of hearing gunshots and wondering if they were directed at me. The better angels of my nature won out, and I didn’t pull the trigger. The shooter walked back off the street and into the courtyard of his home, and I ran after him, yelling for the truck to follow. Our lieutenant had also dismounted, and was covering me from the other side of the street. I ran into the entrance of his courtyard, and saw him raising the pistol in the air again to fire it. I lifted my rifle, trained it on him, and began screaming, “Stupid Fuck, Drop the gun!” over and over. There were other men and a few women in the courtyard with him, and one of the men finally saw me and started frantically motioning for the shooter to stop. The guy was still firing his pistol with a big shit-eating grin on his face, and apparently could neither hear nor see me, although I was standing about ten feet away from him. Finally the man who had seen me was able to get the shooter’s attention. The shooter turned his head, saw me, and dropped the gun to his side. I immediately rushed him, head butted him with my Kevlar helmet, and simultaneously karate chopped his gun hand with my rifle. He dropped the pistol. I pushed him back, picked up the pistol, and tossed it out in the street for one of the soldiers in the truck that had just pulled up in front of the courtyard gate. Just about this time the lieutenant came running in, tripped, and fell on the shooter, knocking him to the ground.

The women in the courtyard had vanished inside the home, but the men were frantically spitting words of broken English at me. I heard the letters, “IP, IP,” repeated several times, as well as the word “Wedding.” I quickly inferred the obvious, that the occasion I had broken up was a wedding party, and the gunshots had been celebratory in nature. I relaxed my guard a bit, helped the large gentlemen lying on the ground to his feet, and was quickly offered a glass of some kind of juice . Just a minute before I had been ready to shoot this guy if necessary, pointing a rifle in his face and screaming at him, and now he is giving me refreshments, and everyone is laughing.

Some of the men produced ID cards identifying them as IPs, Iraqi police officers. It appeared as though one of the policemen was getting married or had just gotten married, and was celebrating with his coworkers, including the chief of police in that neighborhood, who happened to be the one I had head butted and taken the pistol from. We contacted Battalion headquarters, and they told us to confiscate the pistol, since it was technically illegal for the chief of police to have discharged it on the street, and to give him a note which he could bring the next day to our camp and exchange for the confiscated weapon. The men were not happy that we were confiscating the pistol, but they seemed to understand that they would be able to get it back. Who knows what they really understood; we didn’t have an interpreter with us.

Later I reflected on the public relations fiasco that would have occurred if I had indeed shot and killed the chief of police of Al-Tamar at a wedding party. Incidents like this are the rule, and not the exception in Iraq. And it is usually not the fault of the grunt on the ground. He is thrust into a situation for which he is neither properly trained nor equipped, in a hostile and foreign culture, and is expected to make life or death decisions within a matter of seconds. Bad things are going to happen, and it is a miracle that they don’t happen more often.

Read Brian Van Reet's Blog, One Veterans Voice


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