these to themselves. "Everybody under Saddam is silent," he says. "If Saddam say we have war with America, we say, 'Good!' If he say no war, we say,'Good!'"
The Marines, who were so angry with the man a moment ago, have now warmed up to him. One of them says, "We can't put our weapons down, either."
"He was just doing his job," another Marine adds, now sounding almost impressed with the guy's tenacity in hanging on to his rifle.
The Marines smile at him and feed him more pound cake.
Al-Khizjrgee fails to catch on to the newly festive atmosphere. He leans forward and confides in me that he is desperately afraid. "How can I go home now? What if my sergeant finds me? He will know I did not fight."
About half an hour earlier, Colbert tuned in the BBC and picked up the report that Baghdad had fallen. I pass this information on to Al-Khizjrgee. "There is no Saddam. There is no Iraqi army. You have no sergeant anymore."
Al-Khizjrgee stares in disbelief. "It's true," I tell him.
He begins to cry again, only now he smiles. "I am so happy!"
The news is only getting better for Al-Khizjrgee.
Fick walks up and tells Al-Khizjrgee he will be driving him to a detention facility near Baghdad tonight.
"For free?" he asks, as if unable to believe his good fortune.
The battalion's final enemy contact outside Baqubah occurs an hour before sunset, when the men in Alpha's Second Platoon spot a T-72 tank near their roadblock south of the city. T-72s are the most formidable tanks in the Iraqi arsenal. As soon as the Marines call it in to their platoon commander, he orders them to attack it with an AT-4 missile. Ordinarily, Marines would call in an air strike on a T-72, but no aircraft are immediately available, and Second Platoon's commander wants this tank stopped now. One T-72 could wreak havoc on the whole battalion.
Burris, whose team led the way through the ambush at Al Gharraf, volunteers to lead the AT-4 strike on the tank. It's potentially a highly risky mission. The shoulder-fired AT-4 missile isn't really designed to defeat a T-72. At best, Marines believe an AT-4 can score a "mobility kill"—blowing a track off the tank—and to do this Burris will have to get in close to the tank, within 150 meters.
Nearly every engagement Burris has been in since the invasion started has somehow turned into his own personal, comic mishap. From the time he tripped on his rifle stock at Nasiriyah, giving himself a shiner, to the ambush at Al Gharraf, where he was sprayed from head to toe with human excrement when his Humvee plowed into the town's open sewer puddle, Burris has concluded almost every firefight he's been in knocked on his ass, laughing.
Now he approaches the T-72, with several Marines and his platoon commander by his side. They reach the stepping-off point, where Burris will continue on alone to get in close to his target, and his platoon commander, Capt. Kintzley, slaps him on the back. "Burris," he says. "Don't miss."
Burris ducks down, runs across the road, dives into a berm and creeps up behind the tank. He gets even closer to the monster T-72 than his superiors had ordered him to go, crawling to within 125 meters. He sees an auxiliary fuel pod on the back of the tank and aims for it, figuring it will multiply the effects of his relatively puny AT-4 missile. He fires the missile.
Initially, Burris sees only a small flash where the missile hits. He's worried that perhaps the missile glanced off the armor (believed to be nearly invincible on the T-72) and berates himself for not aiming at the track. An instant later, it feels like a giant fist comes out of the sky and pounds Burris on his back, slamming him to the ground. The tank erupts in a massive explosion.
Down the road, his platoon commander can actually see individual pieces of the tank—flywheels and gears—flying overhead. Several hundred meters farther back from the blast, twenty-three-year-old Corporal Steven Kelsaw, standing by a headquarters vehicle, is struck in the helmet by a piece of the tank and knocked down. It feels to him like someone just hurled a bowling ball at him. His Kevlar helmet is partially shattered, but all he suffers is a bad headache.
Burris's hit on the T-72 produces one of the biggest explosions many Marines have seen in the entire war.
When Burris walks back to rejoin his team, Capt. Patterson, his company commander, walks up to congratulate him. Patterson wants to commend "this kid"—as he refers to each of his Marines—for going out there all by himself against the T-72. But as soon as he sees Burris's dirty face and his dazed, somewhat confused-looking smile, Patterson is seized by a fit of laughter. Finally, he manages to say, "Burris, I was worried sick about you."
"Sir, what's so funny?" Burris asks, still shaken up, his ears still ringing from the explosion.
"Nothing, Burris," Patterson says. "Good job."
After the destruction of the T-72 tank, ten Humvees from Charlie Company race into Baqubah, with A-lOs flying overhead as escorts. The roads are blockaded with rubble and concertina wire. Abandoned Iraqi military positions are everywhere. The Humvees snake through the barricades and make their way toward two military command centers— headquarters for a Republican Guard division and a brigade. The division headquarters is in ruins from repeated American airstrikes. The brigade headquarters is still partially standing. A team of Recon Marines speeds up to the building. They jump out, run inside and steal the Iraqi "colors"—the enemy's flag.
The Marines have reclaimed, in part, their honor, sullied after the loss of their own colors in their truck burned outside Ar Rifa. The Americans hightail it out of the city, and the battalion prepares to drive back to Baghdad. With hundreds of Iraqis killed or wounded during the operation, the most serious injury sustained among Marines in First Recon is Kelsaw's headache. For the Marines it feels as if the entire mission to Baqubah has ended as an extremely bloody game of capture the flag. Weeks later, Baqubah emerges as a key center in the "Sunni Triangle" insurgency against the American occupation. But for the Marines pulling out, the mission stands as one of their more clear-cut triumphs. They seized forty kilometers of highway, probably killed more soldiers than civilians and captured the enemy's flag.
We drive back to Baghdad in darkness. Person, at the wheel, navigating with NVGs on his helmet, begins to sing, "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys."
"Hold on, buddy!" Colbert shouts. "No goddamn country music." "That's not country," Person insists. "It's a cowboy song." "I hate to break it to you, but there are no cowboys," Colbert says.' "Yeah, there are," Person says, his voice simultaneously flat yet defiant. "There's tons of cowboys."
"A cowboy isn't some dipshit with a ten-gallon hat and a dinner plate on his belt," Colbert says. "There haven't been any real cowboys for almost a hundred years. Horse raising is a science now. Cattle raising is an industry."
A report comes over the radio of enemy fire on the column. "Hold on," Colbert says, reluctantly putting the argument aside. "I'd like to hear about this firefight."
War Pig, driving ahead of us on the same highway the battalion fought its way up earlier, is again taking fire from both sides of the road. Tracers stream through the night sky. We drive into the gunfire. Enemy muzzle flashes jet toward us from the right side of the road no more than five meters from my window. Colbert opens up on the position, his rifle clattering. Spent shell casings ejected from the side of his M-4 rain down inside the Humvee. If his past performances in these types of situations are any guide, there's a strong likelihood he hit his target. I picture an enemy fighter bleeding in a cold, dark ditch and feel no remorse—at this time.
We drive the next ten kilometers in near silence, while the Marines search for additional targets, until we leave the ambush zone. Colbert pulls his weapon back in from the window and resumes his discussion with Person. "The point is, Josh, people that sing about cowboys are annoying and stupid."
By the night of April 9, offensive U.S. military operations in Baghdad have ceased. The city is taken. Crowds have toppled Saddam statues. American military units are pouring into the city to begin the occupation. We reach the outskirts of Baghdad at about eleven o'clock, having driven straight from Baqubah. We arrive in the same industrial suburbs we passed through the day before. The looters are gone, the streets are empty, the city is black. A few fires rage in the distance, sending columns of flame over Baghdad, but given the level of destruction Marines have witnessed recently, the place seems relatively tranquil. The American artillery that was pounding continuously for the past several days is silent. We pass construction sites where military bulldozers, with floodlights mounted on them, are laboring in the night. The military machine that crushes everything in its path is quickly followed by armies of worker-ant battalions, who've already marched up and begun smoothing out the rubble and building infrastructure. We drive into a sprawling supply depot and fueling station erected in the past several hours to service thousands of American vehicles. There's a sense in the air tonight that Baghdad is pacified, the Americans are now quietly, efficiently in control. It's perhaps the only time things will ever appear this way to the men in First Recon.
First Recon enters central Baghdad on April 10, at about three in the afternoon. Colbert's team drives with Hasser at the wheel, singing the hobo classic "King of the Road." We approach the city from the east. The striking thing about the outskirts of Baghdad is how green everything is. We pass through a wealthy neighborhood of spacious stucco homes perched atop small hills, shaded beneath palms, sycamores and eucalyptus trees. Occupants of some homes sit outside in gardens, watching convoys belonging to the American invaders rumble past on streets below.
We cut down a dirt embankment and approach a temporary pontoon bridge over the Diyala River, the eastern crossing point into the city. When we reach the other side, Fick reports over the radio that American forces in Baghdad are experiencing "intermittent sniper fire and attacks from Fe-dayeen in trucks."
The eastern side of Baghdad is a shantytown. We drive on dirt roads past corrugated tin and mud-brick huts jumbled together amidst a patchwork of open spaces, with cows and chickens roaming everywhere. We round a corner and two enormous bulls, each seeming more powerful than the Humvee we're in, stand in the road. Hasser gingerly veers around them.
We pass donkey carts pulled over on the side of the road, intermixed with Toyotas, ancient Chevys and BMWs. Barefoot, scruffy kids line the edges of the shantytown. Some shout, "Go! Go! Go!" while pointing toward the city center and dancing like cheerleaders. One kid we pass comes right to the point: "Money! Money! Money!" he chants.
The battalion drives onto a massive berm, about five meters wide by five meters high. The Marines laugh. There are berms even in Baghdad. The battalion stops. Marines get out. The berm offers a commanding view of the city—a sprawl of low-slung apartment blocks, homes, offices, avenues, canals, freeways that stretch beyond the vanishing point. It spreads across nearly 800 square kilometers and has a population of about six million people.
"Jesus Christ!" Colbert says. "That's a lot of city."
Gunny Wynn walks over to Colbert's vehicle. The two of them study maps and detailed satellite images of the city, marveling at the thousands of streets and alleyways. Gunny Wynn shakes his head. "And we thought those little towns a kilometer long were tough. I don't know how we're going to control this."
Person stands by the Humvee, urinating on the berm. "Hey!" He calls out triumphantly. "I wrote U.S.A. with my piss."
First Recon's destination in Baghdad is a working-class slum called Saddam City (since renamed Sadr City). More than two million Iraqis live here in an expanse of vaguely Stalinist-looking apartment blocks spread out over several kilometers. We drive down the main road that edges Saddam City and are greeted with a blend of enthusiasm tinged with violence. Thousands of people line the street, pressing up against the sides of Colbert's Humvee. Sniper rounds periodically crack in the air. The side streets into Saddam City are barricaded with rubble, trunks of palm trees and scorched cars.
When Colbert's Humvee momentarily stops, along with the rest of First Recon's convoy, we're swamped by young men in threadbare clothes who zombie-shuffle up to the windows. Many smile, but their faces have a hungry, vacant look. They resemble a crowd from Night of the Living Dead. Several grab at the Marines' gear hanging off the sides of the Humvee—canteens, shovels and rucksacks. Colbert pushes his door open, jumps out and cows the crowd of perhaps 300 people into backing away from the vehicle. He paces from side to side, weapon out, establishing his territory.
Colbert is ordered back into the vehicle. The convoy circles around, driving over some traffic islands, and snakes into a gated industrial complex across from Saddam City. Inside, vast warehouses are spread across several acres. Most of them are bomb-smashed, with smoke and flames curling out of missing roofs. Piles of bright silver paper flutter on the ground like leaves. A familiar aroma wafts from the smoldering warehouses: tobacco. Someone in the Humvee figures out the silver paper on the ground is from cigarette packs. We have rolled into Iraq's central cigarette factory. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of burning cigarettes fill the air with what is likely the world's biggest-ever cloud of secondhand smoke.
The convoy stops by a loading dock next to a warehouse untouched by bombs, the battalion's first camp in Baghdad. Nicotine-addict Marines immediately loot the nearby structure. Inside, cases of Iraq's "Sumer" brand of filter cigarettes are stacked ten meters high. Marines emerge with cartons of them, then lie back by their Humvees and smoke the spoils of conquest.
Gunny Wynn paces uneasily up to Fick. "Do you realize how fucking weird this is?" he says. "When we set up in Mogadishu, we spent our first night in a cigarette factory. I hope this turns out better."
There's a ten-story glass-and-steel office tower on the west side of the complex, perhaps 500 meters from the warehouse where we've stopped. Every few minutes, loud bangs emanate from the upper floors of the office tower. Navy SEAL snipers occupy the top of the building, and are busy taking out targets across the city. Judging by the pace of their shooting, they're killing Iraqis at a rate of about one every five to ten minutes. We on the ground below them have no idea who they're shooting at. Only later do we discover there are Iraqis spread out around this complex, taking random shots at American troops, and the SEALs are attempting to eliminate them.
Fick gathers the men for a briefing. "Marines have been here for more than twenty-four hours," he says. "They're set up on the other side of this warehouse. They've had one killed and one wounded from sniper or mortar fire." He then adds, "Compared to where we've been, I think it's pretty safe here. We should all get a good rest tonight."
A few minutes after his pronouncement, the complex is rocked by a powerful explosion. Someone has set off a car bomb outside the main gate. A furious firefight ensues outside, involving Marines from other units. The gun battle is only a couple hundred meters away, but the complex is surrounded by a three-meter-high cement fence so we can't see anything. We just hear a torrent of shots.
Fick walks up to me and smiles, deeply amused by the crescendo of gunfire. "I was wrong about that good night's rest," he says. Moments later, a random bullet falls from the sky and skips onto the concrete, sparking behind Fick's back. He laughs. "This is definitely not good."
We both watch a casevac helicopter flying past the complex. Skimming low over rooftops, it suddenly rears up to avoid enemy tracer rounds fired at it from the ground. We watch the life-and-death drama playing out in the sky for several moments. The helicopter escapes. "Not good at all," Fick says.
But to the men, racking out on pavement—no holes to dig here—surrounded by concrete walls, with all the gunfighting being handled by Marines from other units, this war-torn complex represents five-star luxury. They lie back, eating, talking, smoking. For many, it's the first time they've rested since the mission to Baqubah started seventy-two hours ago.
While most got to sleep, Espera leans against the wheel of his Hum-vee parked by Colbert's, composing a letter to his wife back home in Los Angeles. He uses a red lens flashlight, which emits a dim glow, not easily spotted by potential enemy shooters, to write on a tattered legal pad. Espera's wife was a sophomore at Loyola Marymount College when they met. At the time, he was a nineteen-year-old laborer with no future. They married shortly after she got pregnant, and much of Espera's life since has been an. effort to better himself in order to meet her high standards. "You see, dog," he explains, "my wife is smart, but she fucked up big-time when she married me. I was a piece of shit. I remember my wife talking about all the books she'd read, and it hit me there was a whole world I'd missed. Before I met her I used to think, I've got a shitload of hand skills—welding, pipe-fitting—any pussy can read a book. See, I didn't grow up with no understanding. My mom tried, but my dad is a psycho ex-Marine Vietnam vet."
Espera uses the term "psycho ex-Marine Vietnam vet" with the utmost respect. He aspires to possess warrior skills equal to those of his father, who won a bronze star in Vietnam, and believes if he's lucky, he himself will retire one day as a "proud, psycho ex-Marine." Despite his reverence for his father's combat valor, the man abandoned him at a young age (after an incident, according to Espera, in which his dad was shot in their home by a jealous girlfriend), and their relationship remains rocky.
Espera bitterly recalls a past incident. Several years ago, when his father tried to patch things up by taking him on a fishing trip, his old man ended up stopping off at porn shop on their way to the lake. While Espera waited
outside for his dad to finish his business in the private viewing booths, he got into an altercation with a man he believed was trying to cruise him in the parking lot, and Espera threw a brick through the windshield of the man's car. "That was our father-son trip," he says.
Since meeting his wife, Espera has become an avid reader, voraciously consuming everything from military histories to Chinese philosophy to Kurt Vonnegut (his favorite author). In the Middle East, he spends every free moment either reading or writing long letters to his wife, who works at an engineering firm in the San Fernando Valley. Tonight, at the cigarette factory, Espera reads me the beginning of a letter to his wife. "I've learned there are two types of people in Iraq," he reads, "those who are very good and those who are dead. I'm very good. I've lost twenty pounds, shaved my head, started smoking, my feet have half rotted off, and I move from filthy hole to filthy hole every night. I see dead children and people everywhere and function in a void of indifference. I keep you and our daughter locked away deep down inside, and I try not to look there." Espera stops reading and looks up at me. "Do you think that's too harsh, dog?"
Gun battles rage all night long in Baghdad. Marines sleep soundly on either side of me. I watch tracer rounds rising almost gracefully over the city. Some of this is probably just celebratory fire. But every fifteen minutes or so, powerful explosions go off, followed by furious bouts of weapons fire. During the lulls, ambulance sirens wail through the streets.
Occasionally rounds snap into the complex. You hear them zinging, then cracking as they strike nearby buildings.
After one of them hits, I hear a Marine in darkness say, "Is that all you've got?"
Ripples of laughter erupt. Between the gun battles and ambulance sirens, we hear singsong Arabic blaring through loudspeakers. It's either muezzins calling prayers—unlikely after dark—or American psychological operations units trying to calm the people down by playing messages urging them to stop fighting. It's not doing much good.
At around midnight I decide to use the toilet facilities. About 200 meters from where we sleep, Marines have set up a designated "shitter"—a grenade box perched over the open storm drain that encircles the cigarette factory complex. I creep over to it in the darkness. A solitary Marine is perched on the shitter. I wait a long time. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I finally make out what's keeping him. His right arm is moving up and down. He's getting in a late-night combat jack.
I leave him in peace and go over to another section of the storm drain. As I'm about to settle over it, I notice that on this side of the complex the wall separating us from the street is an open-stake fence. Marines had been told the complex was surrounded by a solid concrete wall, but in this corner you can look through to the street and shops just a few meters beyond. I decide to perch down anyway, but as I'm about to do so, a gun battle erupts on the street, maybe ten meters in front of me. Red lines of tracer rounds zoom past, skipping low over the pavement on the street directly before my eyes. You can't see who's shooting, how far away they are or what they're aiming at. I retreat back to the Humvees.
I fall asleep to the sound of pitched street battles in Free Baghdad.