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March 21, 2006
Three Years Ago
A staff officer war story if anyone is interested. I'm sure someone will write in and say, "How dare you do this, when the Division was fighting!" Trust me. If I could have been in the Division I would have been. I had emailed General Mattis' personal account the night the war started and told him if he ever needed any Provisional Rifle Platoon Commanders, I was his man . . . That is not a lie. The Comm-O watched me press the send button . . .
*****
Three years ago today (and I may be off a day or two) I was in a convoy on the way to Jalibah Airfield, soon to be renamed "Landing Support Area Viper." We arrived around 3am, circled the wagons in the area staked out for our battalion, then after a headcount, my three staff officer compadres and I all crashed in our Hummer.
Around 6 we rolled out, with a lot of aches and pains. It was a beautiful day: Sunny and not too hot. You could see for miles.
About one hour later, the sandstorm hit. You know, THE sandstorm. The one that meant "quagmire." What it really meant was, "Oh my god. We can't see anything." And that's the truth. So, being good staff officers, my three compatriots and I went into the battalion CP to see what was to be done. There we found that the storm was wreaking havoc on equipment, since the sand had even seeped into our DRASH tent, supposed to be pretty tightly sealed. Nothing was happening. No radio messages, no missions to plan, no engineering to do. So, the four of us went back and sat in our four-door humvee and watched the desert.
The desert can have an entrancing effect. Wind is an inherently isolating force and lengthens the space between those who are walking right next to you or standing a few feet away, because you can't hear them. And the wind never stops. So in a sense, you are always alone to some degree in the desert.
Back in the humvee we developed a rhythm. We sat inside and bullshitted for awhile. Then the S4, who had thrown a ton of old Seinfeld episodes on the hard-drive of his Toughbook, would crank one up and we'd watch that. Then a couple of us would doze off. I had a copy of Albert Hourani's "History of the Arab Peoples" nearby, so I got that out and plowed through about 50 pages. Every hour or so, one of us would walk the 30 yards back to the battalion command tent, and see if they needed us. "No," was the answer. We were surrounded by a couple of companies of Marines -- who had gotten there earlier than us and had time to dig in -- but they were invisible because the sand had largely covered them. Every couple of hours, someone would step out of the four-door to take a leak, then return promptly splattered with his own urine, as the storm made a miniature tornado out of it, no matter how one tried to shield oneself.
Suddenly, word spread around the perimeter: "There's movement!"
Then, over the radio, "Go to 100% security! There's a dismounted infantry company outside our lines!"
Wow! Something was about to happen! We had prepared for this: the Division's plan had referenced the fact that company-sized elements of enemy forces would be bypassed and we FSSG warriors might have to clean them up.
From the Humvee, one of us went back into the command tent to see what was up. The other three of us dusted off our weapons, checked our magazines, and sat tight. We were all 1st Lieutenants or Captains, and we did NOT want to be in the Command Center if something went down. How boring! We watched as Staff NCOs went from fighting hole to fighting hole, rousing their Marines, and putting them in a rough defensive posture. It's tough to know what to do as a staff officer in that case. You want to go out there and get down with them and dig your own hole. But that of course is impinging on the freedom of the younger guys whose turn it is to lead the Marines. Plus, just jumping out there and hopping in the lines at that point would have been very dumb because no one would have known who exactly you were. We could have organized our own Marines into a defense of sorts but, well, we were staff officers. We had no Marines. For these purposes, our clerks and intel analysts were given to the H&S company staff, who were organizing them. Digging in would have been a pretty pointless affair too, due to the sand . . . I would have liked it though. Others laughed at me because I carried an entrenching tool on my buttpack. "This is an engineer battalion! We have bulldozers, sir!" they'd say. But I was only following Rommel's advice. Always be prepared to dig. You never know when the artillery willl come.
There the Marines sat, for some time, weapons pointed outboard, 2 full companies in a very tight perimeter (given the terrain) because the wind was such an isolating factor. Too far apart and we could easily have a firefight break out on one end and the other not even know about it.
Half an hour passed. Then another half hour. My friend came back from the Command Center.
"It was a false alarm. There's a shepherd moving a flock out there." Given that this base had been bombed with cluster munitions from Gulf War One through the present, the locals were probably surprised to see it now practically sprouting with Marines . . .
The companies stood down and the Marines hunkered back into their holes. We did the same in our Humvee.
It had been dark all day, but now it got darker. Time to find a place to lay down for the night. Most of the Marines just stayed right in their holes. In the Division, General Mattis had emphasized that every man, from PFC to General, would have no better than the Lance Corporal's standard of living. That meant nothing more than sleeping bags all around.
The FSSG had had no such directive. So every Marine's arrangements were different. Our battalion had two-man tents for all the enlisted Marines, but had run out.
I despised this whole affair: if we didn't have enough of something, let's just do without it and all use sleep systems and isothermal mattresses only. Oh well, our leaders didn't see it that way, I suppose. The government had paid for two-man tents and cots, and so we were going to use them.
But nobody was going to set up a tent in the storm. We staff officers had cots, but no tents. Our plan had been to just set up our cots immediately outside the command center and sleep under the stars (and this is what we later did, though for a few days we commandeered an empty ISO container and lived in that).
But no way were we going to sleep outside on cots this night. So two of us decided to stay in the humvee. Not me though. After 36 straight hours in the damn thing, I had to move.
As it got dark, I grabbed my pack off the back of the truck and started poking around the area for somewhere reasonably shielded from the sand. A few minutes later, I discovered an empty trailer, next to the command tent. Looking inside, I saw that it was pretty clear and nobody had claimed it. I threw my stuff in and trotted back to tell the guys where I was. Then I went back, got in my bag, and tried to sleep.
A few minutes later, someone threw a helmet into the trailer and it landed on my groin. I cursed and threw it back at them. Whoever it was apologized and moved on.
Not long after that, I began to feel wetness on my face. It was now completely dark. I sat up and felt around my head. Wetness everywhere. Looking up I saw the problem, which was twofold: there was a hole in the top of the trailer and the canvas was flapping back and forth. And, it was now raining in addition to sanding (I don't know if that's a word, but it should be). So my head was in a puddle under the flap. I readjusted out of the water and fell back asleep. Not long later I felt things pelleting my body. Sitting up again, I saw that the sand was now mixing with the rain and large gobs of mud were flying through the hole in the canvas. I shifted again and tried to sleep again. It was a series of false starts and such all night.
In the morning, we awoke to a nice day again. Marines were wiping sand from each other. Star Wars sand people jokes were prominent everywhere one could hear.
I found the guys and we headed into the Command Tent. Soon the whole battalion was engaged in building Viper into an enormous logistics throughput point.
Such was the nature of the war for me: lots of time in the command tent, punctuated by bizarre encounters with the environment, and all the while a forlorn and diminishing hope to somehow get in the fight . . .
Well, that's what all this three-year anniversary stuff reminds me of. Not exactly the "is it worth it" crap is it?
Posted by Chester at March 21, 2006 10:41 PM
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