I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, right near Fort Stewart, and I've always remembered what a big deal it was when 3rd ID came home in '91. I of course wanted to do the same thing.

Well, after basic I was in Germany for about two weeks before I suddenly found myself in a tank in Iraq, feeling pretty ridiculous for getting myself into whatever it was I had gotten into. Everything I’d ever heard or read in my life had told me that war was fucking terrible, but I guess none of it could quell my subconscious human yearnings for mortal conflict. So there I was.

We were on a nice little post called Camp Slayer. It was infested with civilian contractors, MI people, special forces, and some Army engineer unit who we called “Gator” for some reason. I guess it was a pretty snazzy post if you were one of those people, all of whom lived like kings on the nice part of the base, but if you were a 'Cav soldier' then it sucked. We were tucked away in the shittiest part of the base, behind two concrete walls and a canal, about a mile and a half from all the luxurious MWR facilities that we either weren't allowed in or never had time to visit. We occupied old Iraqi Army barracks that besides being poorly built were of course plagued by rats and giant camel spiders who pestered us relentlessly. We lived off of junk food, MRE's, and the rancid, fly ridden slop from our DFAC when we were desperate. A health inspector actually came by one day and demanded that our DFAC be shut down, but the Squadron Commander and Sergeant Major fought it and they stayed open. There was a state of the art Kellogg Brown & Root DFAC about a mile away that served cheeseburgers and ice cream; all the good stuff with the finest trimmings. But we weren't allowed to eat there and would be thrown out if caught. If we wanted to eat there you had to go in PT's so people would think you were National Guard or MI, or anybody other than 1/1 Cav, anyone but us was allowed to eat there. They even allowed Iraqi interpreters and ICDC guys in there, but it was too good for 1/1 Cav soldiers. I got so fed up with the situation that I cut the 1st Armored patches off one of my jackets and would wear it so I could get a decent meal once in a while. Our command also threatened us with Field Grade Article15's if they caught us in there.

My squadron lost three soldiers, one killed by an EID, the other two in a vehicle accident. They were riding in a humvee and a tank was coming down the road. Each vehicle had a headlight out and in the darkness they couldn't tell where the edge of the tank was. The two vehicles went right into each other and the tank killed them both. The guy in the passenger seat was unharmed. There wasn't a whole lot of action for us, each platoon ran two 4 hour patrols a day, and 6, 8, or 12 hour gate and tower guard (yes we had to guard the same elitists who looked down on us from their Jim Crow pedestals). Occasionally we would take a few random shots from haj when he was drunk enough to conjure up the courage to do it, and we did find a hell of a lot of poorly made and implaced IEDs. We were also mortared frequently, they often landed meters from our house, one night the house next door took a direct hit from a 60mm but it failed to detonate and there were no injuries. One of the most eye opening experiences I had took place just before the big change over when we would relinquish control of the City to the 1st Cavalry Division. One of the duties my platoon was tasked with was to go around collective all sorts of information from local officials. We went to schools, water plants, gas stations, local police, etc. and had them fill out surveys and tell us what was going on and how we could help.

Well, during this time we were supposed to go around interviewing imams at all the local mosques. An 'imam' being the muslim equivalent of a christian preacher. The first imam we spoke to was murdered the next day. There had been a large crowd watching the whole thing as we did not enter the mosque for the interview. Well we went out the next day and interviewed two more imams in the same manner. They too were murdered the next day. I realized what was happening and told everyone what I thought. These men were being murdered by the insurgents for collaborating. I couldn't realize why, none of them were particularly cooperative, they were blatantly not happy about us being around their mosques, but they were killed just for speaking to us. We went out again several times that week with same results. Finally my lieutenant (a fresh fish butter bar just out of OBC) decided to tell our CO about this and these missions were put to a stop. The fifth imam was murdered that night.

Occasionally we would knock down a gate with a Bradley and raid a house, usually the wrong house, and when it was the right house the bad guys would already have caught wind of us and be long gone most of the time. Then we would just snoop around till we found one or two young males and we'd zip strip them and haul them back if they looked suspicious. We beat the fuck out of a lot of people but we rarely shot them. They threw rocks at us a lot, and so we took to carrying rocks with us to throw back at them, there were some serious cave man fights going on in the early days, but they seemed to spend more time shooting into the air and at each other than they did at us. All that changed in April '04 of course.

Our division was pulling out, being relieved by 1st CAV. These guys came in with true Cavalry style, guns blazing and all. I remember the day when they pulled up; brand new vehicles, everyone had souped up M4's (they didn't have the new kevlars yet), I wasn't too impressed with them. Then there was the day when they drove a Bradley into a canal after our officers warned them not to take tracked vehicles down that road. Then they sent a tank down there to recover it and it fell in too, one guy broke a leg and the other slipped off the tank and broke his neck. Finally they sent us down there with a couple of 88's and we got them out, took two days of straight work.

So we actually weren't too surprised when we got to Kuwait and they told us that 1st CAV had lost control of the city and we had been ordered back to Baghdad. I remember driving back down that long highway. As we were coming in we saw all the blackened and gutted 1st Cav vehicles being shipped back. Humvees, 5 tons, etc. and I even saw one M1A2 tank, all burnt and beat up, that scared me more than anything. The insurgents blew up every bridge and overpass between us an Baghdad to try and slow us down and they succeeded; by the time we got back to Baghdad the fighting was mostly over. We started to see more action though. Our first mission was to do a 'recon in force' of some part of town where Sadr's boys had really been putting up a fight.

The 1st Cav guys who had been engaged there were on a routine patrol when first attacked, they'd been stuck out there for ten days, waiting for us to come back and reenforce them. They were filthy, ragged, they hadn't brushed their teeth or shaven the whole time. Then we went into the town and were totally shocked. Every building had at least a few holes in it, everything was burned or crushed or shot up. There were dead animals all over the place, most of the estimated 600-900 human corpses had already been cleaned up.

During this time one of my duties was to drive intel reports and S2 information to and from the Squadron HQ. One night I was given some new photographs of an IED type that we had not yet encountered and told to drive them to squadron. I hopped in the 1SG's humvee and sped off, it was about a 3 mile drive round trip. On the way back the post came under mortar attack. A couple had exploded just off the road so I accelerated to try and get through the impact area. Then one hit right next to the humvee. I swerved off the road and nearly wrecked, it took me several seconds to regain my orientation. My right ear sounded like it was full of water for a couple days and every now and then to this day it rings for a few seconds.

By the time I finally made it back to Florida I wasn't able to cry and kiss the dirt in my front yard like I'd planned. I just couldn't make myself feel happy about it, I guess partly because I knew it was only a matter of time before I would see Iraq again. I couldn't sleep either, at first I just thought it was jet lag or something to do with the time zones, but jet lag doesn't last for 4 months or make your face twitch. After a while I was sitting up all night, not even trying to sleep, watching the muscles in my face jump around in the mirror, then sleeping all day when my family was awake and wanting to see me. I'll feel guilty about that for the rest of my life.


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