Tales from the Sandbox - Holmes - Military Times

Outside the wire

I keep hearing support soldiers, sailors and Marines say, “I wish I could go outside the wire.”
And I think to myself, “You have no idea.”
When I go out, I hear guys say, “If I could, I would never go outside the wire again.”
They mean it. They’ve seen friends die; they’ve rolled over IEDs — just enough of a blast to spark thoughts of the possibility of a bigger blast; and they know 120 degrees in full body armor doesn’t make for a great day.
But the fobbits back in the forward operating bases mean it, too. They’re bored senseless.
They won’t whine about it, but I have no qualms about whining for them. (My photographer Rick Kozak says I don’t whine so much as just glaze over.) Hanging out at the FOBs just isn’t as stimulating as going outside the wire. Everyone says they joined the military to travel and see the world, but they don’t actually get to see more than the base, and it’s totally American.
Al Asad is an airbase surrounded by seven miles of sand, so what you see there is only what the military has set up: Lots of concrete barriers, a big dining facility, a gym, a hospital and a Subway shop.
When people think of young service members not wanting to go to Iraq, I think they picture blood and fear and sweat. And it is scary here. The 28th Combat Support Hospital just lost a nurse — the first since Vietnam — to random mortar fire in the Green Zone.
So yes, they’re scared. But the boredom is its very own kind of hell. The movie “Groundhog Day” is frequently mentioned; every day is the same.
Most people here don’t have days off — at least those in the medical profession who, if they’re not on shift, are always on call.
But they all say, “What would I do with a day off?” It’s so hot it’s hard to get motivated to go walk around post. Hell, at 120 degrees, it’s hard to get people to walk to the dining facility. And, the dining facility, gym and PX can be as far as a mile from your hootch. And when you go there, depending on the base, you must be in full uniform: Long pants, boots, T-shirt, long shirt, hat. It’s like walking around in a plastic baggie.
Once you get to the PX, pickings are slim. Candy and snacks, mainstream music, some clothing (but no female-sized socks) and DVDs. They have gift shops, too, all offering the same selection.
Some FOBs have fast food: Pizza Hut, Subway, Burger King and Cinnabon. But if you don’t eat fast food in the rear, why would you do it here? The morale, welfare and recreation folks try really hard with dances and poker tournaments and such. But sometimes, after spending every waking hour — and sometimes sleeping hours — with your co-workers, you’re not necessarily looking for something social.
Many people stand in line every night to call home. Or stand in line to spend a maximum of 30 minutes on the Internet. Or stand in line for the treadmill at the gym.
Every day.
There is no variety.
They can’t leave. They can’t pop in the car to visit friends. They can’t go to a local restaurant and sit at a table. They can’t experience the local culture.
They all crave a taste of something else: that latte from their favorite coffee shop. A bookstore that carries more than adventure and romance paperbacks. A Saturday morning spent reading a big newspaper — which they can’t get here — wearing their pajamas. A shower without shoes. A bathroom closer than two blocks away. Petting the dog, dinner with real silverware, a long walk by a stream.
A beer.
And everything looks the same: 12-foot-high concrete barriers that block views of anything. Rows and rows of small trailers — or “cans” — that make suburban housing look original. Humans in uniforms.
That boredom can quickly morph into depression, or anger, or anxiety.
You won’t hear them whine about it. But you might see that glazed-over look.
Maybe I learned it when I was in the Army?

Surgery, Old Town and the first IED

We’re in Mosul now. Our first day here, we found dead pigeons every few feet. I thought maybe somebody was poisoning them, but one of the interpreters told me it was heat exhaustion.

It’s hot. 122 degrees today. But dead pigeons falling out of the sky? Yeesh.

Watched a couple more surgeries yesterday. A 6-year-old boy was “collateral damage” when U.S. troops attacked an insurgent’s home. Shrapnel tore his bowels out and left a wound in his back that’s leaking urine. His dad was there — handcuffed and under guard.

Worse, he went to the Iraqi medical system first, but rather than stapling his belly back together, they used silk thread, which wasn’t sufficient, and then they left some of his organs hanging out. The American docs weren’t sure why.

A doctor there told me he thinks all of the Iraqis are insurgents because they’re not patriots. When he asks them why they joined the army or the Iraqi police, they all say they did it for the money, not for some ephemeral notion of democracy.

Then again, the American Revolution was launched by Americans; nobody started it for us. So why are we expecting deep-seated patriotism from Iraqis?

But even after saying all Iraqis are insurgents, the doc helped reassemble an Iraqi army soldier whose tibia had been pushed out the bottom of his foot. They called it the “puzzle case” because they had to figure out where all the pieces went, and then they went to the tool shop and had metal pieces crafted for the guy’s leg. That was intense to watch. For some reason, I’m still OK with all the blood; it’s the noises that get me. This time, it was the doc drilling screws into bone.

My photographer Rick Kozak leaves today, so in honor of his going, we went out with the 2-7th Cav today in Old Town. So cool — the city, I mean. So old. Old enough that there’s a monument to Jonah, the Biblical figure who found himself in the belly of a whale.

The guys, as always, teased and played with the kids. As we were leaving, the soldiers started hooting: “Whoooo!” And all of the kids — and there was a herd of them — started yelling “Whoooo!” back. Pretty funny.

But we took the short route back, past Saddam’s Mosque. They call it something else now.

Just after passing it, we heard an explosion, and Staff Sgt. James Sink, sitting in the passenger’s seat, started yelling, “Where is it? Where is it? Now! Where is it?” Finally someone realized it was up amid three trucks ahead of us, and then we heard gunfire. The Humvees all pulled into battle positions as we saw dust ahead of us. But we didn’t stop — they realized the vehicle could keep going, and they just drove faster. Traffic all over the place.

I said, “What was that?”

Sink said, “First IED, ma’am?”

Oh.

It blew out the tires on the Humvee it hit — obviously remotely detonated because there was so much traffic on that road. No injuries.

I’ve talked to guys who say, “I’ve been blown up 15 times,” and that’s what they mean: They’ve hit an IED.

It also means hearing loss, brain injuries, broken bones, shrapnel wounds and plain old fear for the next time out.

Most of us don’t realize how often they happen because we only hear about them when someone dies.

Wait. Is that bacon? It is.

I’m a vegetarian.

I know, I know — the most-feared words in the military.

Whatevah, meathead.

I’m perfectly fine with being an egghead.

Except in Iraq.

I’d pretty much reconciled myself to the idea of eating meat while I’m here if that was the way for me to stay healthy. I didn’t stop eating chickens and cows because I think they’re cute. I stopped eating chickens and cows for health and environmental reasons: Cows take up a lot of land and water resources, and their owners tend to shoot them up with hormones. Chickens have the same issues and eat all sorts of things I won’t eat — like cows.

Just a heads up: Chickens don’t eat cows naturally.

And I read Fast Food Nation. It wasn’t the stories of animal abuse that got me, though it’s safe to say it wasn’t a turn-on. It was seeing that meat packers who used to have good benefits and pay, as well as a little more time to clean the e coli-laced entrails from the carcasses, have been replaced by immigrants with low pay and benefits and mere seconds to clean out a cow. Or that the demands of fast-food burger joints mean that every hamburger comes from a mix that includes bits of hundreds of cows. That’s why your burgers have to be cooked all the way through: Everyone knows one bad cow spoils the herd.

I do still eat fish, for health reasons and because they put them in sushi. And I’ll even have meat occasionally if it’s grass-fed or free-range with no growth hormones and no pens enabling chickens to crap on other chickens’ heads. Ew.

As it turns out, Taji has no fresh eggs because of bird flu in Kuwait. A sign in the dining facility tells service members the chickens are, in fact, on medical hold. I wonder if they have their own special building at Walter Reed?

Before I left the States for Iraq, I heard from numerous dieticians that the food here is great for the troops — they have everything from Hooah bars to all the vegetables they can eat, though the dieticians worried the young men and women here may be adding too much sugar to their water bottles in the form of drink powder. They call it “liquid candy,” and said people don’t realize how many calories they drink as they try to hydrate.

As it turns out, getting vegetables without meat is harder here than I thought it would be. Yay, spinach salad! Wait. Is that bacon? It is.

Woo-hoo! Black bean soup! With bacon.

Greens? Bacon.

Egg burritos? Yeah. Bacon.

I’ve learned to pick it out.

Because I don’t eat meat for health reasons, I actually try to eat healthy food. That means French fries don’t fit on my pyramid. My whole family on my mom’s side is diabetic, so I obsess. A little. My world is brown rice and beans. Lentils with huge doses of garlic or ginger or cayenne. Salmon. Mounds of oatmeal with blueberries.

If it’s white, it’s probably not in my kitchen: No potatoes, white bread or sugar. Did I mention I obsess? I stay away from processed food and make up for it with processed thoughts. Over-processed.

Beer, of course, is in a special group: Like fruits and vegetables, I can have all I want. Unless I’m in Iraq.

But since I’ve gotten here, I’ve begun to wonder if General Order No. 1’s banishment of booze also includes booze ingredients: whole grains. They’re not here. It’s a meat-and-potato world in the same sense as it was in the 1950s subdivision or the fifth-grade cafeteria: meat, starch, mushy vegetable.

I’m going to starve to death. Everything’s white or processed at the dining facility. Mashed potatoes. Potatoes au gratin. Grilled cheese on white bread. Macaroni and cheese.

I thought I’d try a Hooah bar for protein and grains. First ingredient? Corn syrup.

They have wheat bread, but it’s the wheat bread that’s the same consistency as Wonder bread and can’t possibly count as a whole grain.

I’m not saying the food tastes bad. It doesn’t. And the salad bar looks lovely most days — and has a vat of tuna included. It’s easy to see that people work hard on presentation and variety, even when they run out of eggs, lettuce, fruit and tomatoes as they did at Taji. And they try to make is special. At al Taqqadum on the Fourth of July, someone created with an American eagle made of bread and a life-sized butter swan surrounded by rolls. At Easter, I’m told, they had a butter Jesus.

But the dining facility is missing one layer of the pyramid: whole grains. It’s not healthy, and avoiding meat doesn’t make it more so — though a freelance photographer we ran into in the Green Zone swears he saw a box of steaks marked for “prison or military use only.”

I’m surrounded by people who spend great amounts of time sitting in Bradleys covered in Kevlar, or at the gym, or in the PX buying supplements — that aisle is usually packed. They blow through calories, yet what they get in the mess hall are simple starches. It takes nothing to process them — the guys may as well slurp “liquid candy.” And they don’t have the same nutrients and cancer-fighting benefits as brown rice or grainy bread.

I’m only here for eight weeks, so I’ll probably suffer through it. I’ve hit the PX for whole-grain nutrition bars and I grab the bags of trail mix whenever I see them. I’ll keep picking out bacon and eating tuna every day for lunch. And when I get home, I’ll splurge on quinoa and spelt and barley.

And maybe I’ll organize a food drive.

Another day in Taji

Another day in Taji. As we wait to roll into Baqubah with the 4th Brigade, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, we’ve done some garrison-type interviews with medics, soldiers and psychologists, as well as some writing more stories and editing more photos from Apache.

It’s the down time that gets you.

Down time gives me time to think. Down time gives me resources to read e-mails from soldiers’ mothers. Down time gives me the opportunity to read e-mails from my own mother — and she’s not terribly happy with me right now.

“What were you doing out on patrol?” she asked, because I had told her that Military Times photographer Rick Kozak and I would be doing medical stories. And we were, but I skipped the part about how we might be doing it from the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle.

According to the soldiers’ mothers, their sons are doing the same thing.

Rick and I have been so saddened by what happened June 21 that we haven’t given ourselves any chance to think about our own role in it — not as a photographer and a reporter, but as human beings.

We went out on patrol the day before with the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry. Then we went out on another patrol at 6 a.m. We had intended to go out on a second patrol later that morning, but were planning to leave that day, so we stayed behind to do more interviews.

Only two Bradleys went out on the second mission. One of them was destroyed by an IED, which killed four soldiers and an interpreter. Had we gone on that patrol, we would have been in one of those two Bradleys. Not good odds.

I keep hearing soldiers say, “It gives you a new perspective and makes you thankful for what you have.” It does, even as what we’ve lost feels like a constant kick in the gut. How can you be thankful to be alive when someone else isn’t?

One issue we’ve been looking at while we’re here is post-traumatic stress disorder. Docs will tell you it’s not their own injuries that leave soldiers traumatized; it’s the injury to others. That comes in a couple of ways: Soldiers who have to harm someone as part of their job, but also soldiers who watch their friends get hurt or die.

“Why wasn’t it me?” is a common guilt reaction. Another: “If only I’d reached him faster/sat on the inside/been paying attention to that tower.”

For Charlie Company of the 1-26 that day, there were too many possibilities — possibilities that will leave those soldiers wondering what could have been done differently, what kind of lives their friends would have lead if they had made it, or how they can live their own lives to honor those lost.

In a way, Rick and I are lucky. We are forced to process through some of this stuff at least a little. It’s not often that I cry when I write a story, but thinking about Charlie Company medic Pfc. Timothy Ray’s world was too much for me. Getting an e-mail from Spc. Gerry DeNardi’s mother saying how relieved she is that her son is still the man she loves — the charmer who looks out for others — also made me think about that day.

But as a service member, it’s hard to break out with your feelings to your buddies — especially when they’re all wearing game faces and trying to deal with their own issues. Add to that the stigma of a macho fighting force, and some guys will never open their mouths. They don’t want to tell their moms or dads or wives because they know what they’ve experienced is terrible, and they don’t want to expose others to it. Families have to ask and let them know they’re open to hearing it. And then, they may have to be open to hearing it several times as their soldier tries to process it.

Charlie Company, fortunately, seems to be handling things well. Their chaplain immediately pulled them into the dining room with hugs for everyone and a debriefing about what happened that day. Talking about events can help make them less traumatizing, according to psychologists, but it’s hard for me to see a time when June 21 won’t be hard — in ways impossible — to think about.

They’ve had the opportunity to talk to the brigade psychologist, and it sounds if Charlie’s going to be rotated out of Forward Operating Base Apache back into Taji where they should find time to think.

As I was coming out of the post exchange a couple of days ago, I ran into one of the Charlie Company soldiers.

He asked if we would be coming to the memorial service for the soldiers who died June 21.

“It’d mean a lot to the guys,” he said.

I wonder if he knows how much that means to us.

Patrolling Adhamiyah

The day started out calmly enough. But it wouldn’t stay that way long.

At 6 a.m. Thursday, June 21, Military Times photographer Rick Kozak and I went out on patrol in Adhamiyah, Iraq, a town near Baghdad, with 2nd Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry. Four Bradley Fighting Vehicles rolled into town, and the soldiers all tumbled out of the back to go door-to-door to make their presence known.

Ostensibly, the guys were tasked with reassuring local Iraqis that they were there to help, as well as to talk about the Sunni-on-Sunni violence that was making the neighborhood unsafe for families.

But the soldiers also knew their timing was bad; nobody wants soldiers at their door at 6:30 in the morning. Iraqis wandered into their living rooms in their night clothes rubbing their eyes. A small child atop a mound of blankets on the floor cried at the interruption of his sleep. The civilians looked decidedly annoyed, but they knew the drill.

The soldiers, most of them in their early 20s, did the best they could to reassure the Iraqis as they joked, checked out a toy M16 that shot darts, carried in cases of water and looked for possible explosive devices. A civil affairs soldier working with an Iraqi interpreter had chem lites attached with large rubber bands to the butt of his rifle. He cracked one and handed it to a girl dressed all in pink who looked to be about 7-years old. She smiled shyly and turned it side to side to watch the fluorescent liquid flow.

The goal is to build trust, and in some ways, it appears to be working. When Charlie Company first started going on patrol in the east Baghdad neighborhood a year ago, they found about 350 dead civilians a month. Now they find about 30 per month. They used to live at a bigger base — Forward Operating Base Taji — but now live in the neighborhood in a building that also houses Iraqi Army soldiers at Forward Operating Base Apache.

But as the numbers of deaths go down — and, according to battalion officials, enemy weapon technology decreases as a result of a decline in arms coming in from Iran — the insurgents aim more attacks at U.S. troops. So the soldiers don’t see the area as safer. Just how unsafe it is for American forces would soon become clear.

Second platoon drove back to FOB Apache to recover before the next patrol going out at about 10 a.m. Rick and I were following a medic, Pfc. Timothy Ray, for a story about the soldiers who have to work on their buddies when they get hurt.

We had also gone out with him the day before — Wednesday — on a miserable patrol. It was a good 111 degrees outside; seven people sat shoulder-to-shoulder outfitted in body armor and Kevlar helmets in a Bradley, a vehicle that has no air conditioning. It was like sitting in a tin can that had been left on a sunny beach, and sweat soaked everyone’s pants and shirts. During that patrol, the soldiers found one IED and intentionally detonated it.

Ray, known to his team as “Outlaw Stitches,” grinned constantly through his sweat — a sideways smile that popped a dimple in one cheek.

Rick and I had originally requested another day with these guys, but we decided to head up to Old Mod — a nearby forward operating base — Thursday afternoon to talk with a physician’s assistant known throughout the area as being the best. Soldiers see him as almost godlike because, the story goes, if he works on you, you’re going to live. So rather than go on the 10 a.m. patrol as we had planned, we hung back to talk with the other medics so we could leave for Old Mod between noon and 2 p.m.

About an hour after the patrol left, the call came in: A Bradley had rolled over an IED, which was powerful enough to flip the vehicle upside-down and leave a hole in the ground large enough for a Humvee to fit inside. The guys in the Bradley were trapped as it caught fire, and the gunner was also caught beneath. He tried to get out, but couldn’t.

At Apache, everyone remained hopeful on the outside. But an hour passed and the soldiers were still trapped inside.

“It shouldn’t be taking this long for them to get them back,” a soldier said.

The whole platoon hadn’t gone out, and the guys who had stayed behind desperately needed news. Some soldiers hovered around a Humvee radio.

Spc. Gerry Denardi, who carried a guitar everywhere and grinned always as he sweetly sang the raunchy songs he made up about his co-workers, stalked past the aid station and threw a magazine at a wall. Others rushed madly to set up cots and shade. They had to do something.

Ray said he jumped out of his Bradley — which was right behind the one that had flipped — but the Iraqis immediately opened up with small-arms fire. Ray still tried to get to the other Bradley, but the flames were too high and hot for him to get near.

A man dressed in shorts and a T-shirt walked up to me. I thought he was a soldier. He said, “I hate this country. Why can’t they understand that we’re trying to help?” I wondered about his accent and asked where he was originally from: Iraq.

He said he had spent three years with the soldiers as an interpreter.

“They’re like my brothers,” he said.

As Black Hawk helicopters hovered nearby, we all heard another explosion. A second IED had hit a vehicle, shearing off a soldier’s legs, though he would live. Soldiers began driving in with their buddies who hadn’t made it through the attack, and Charlie Company was sent inside the building until they were done. Ray walked past, his face a map of what had just happened. Within seconds, he was helping at the aid station. An Iraqi girl had burns over 60 percent of her body. Two Iraqi interpreters had gunshot wounds.

Black Hawks sent out flares as they continued to take small-arms fire. F-16s flew in fast for fire support.

Sgt. Erik Osterman had also been ordered inside, but he never goes. He insists on organizing the teams that clean out the vehicles — or he does it by himself.

“I can handle it,” he said, and then checked himself. “Well, I can’t. But I have to do this.”

It seemed as if he checked in with everyone, handing out water — including to Rick and me — and watching for stress signals. He sprinkled water on the roadway to try to keep the dust down.

“Are you OK?” he asked, and I was, until he made me think about it. My eyes filled, and then I went back to work. I needed to make it through the day, and Osterman didn’t need to deal with a weepy reporter — though he was willing.

We had been with these guys for only 24 hours, but even in this pit of a place, we saw that they had made a home. In some rooms, soldiers lined up their cots head-to-toe to sleep. They had port-a-johns in 111-degree heat. Every day, they went out on at least four patrols, and they had already lost about half a dozen people.

But, a soldier gave haircuts every day at 2 p.m., and completed the job with typical barbershop banter. The sergeant major brought out Girl Scout cookies and stacked boxes on all the tables in the mess hall. Denardi organized a karaoke night, and we could hear warbling even at 3 a.m. And medics and squad leaders made sure everyone had someone to talk to when they needed it, which, in this unit, was often.

Not only had they made a home for themselves, they tried to make us feel at home, too.

When the call came in about the Bradley, I thought we’d lost Ray. In the small amount of time we’d spent with him, he’d earned his way to the top echelon of people I admire. And he’s the medic — they needed him.

Rick learned that a soldier with whom he had spent some time, taking photos of the soldier’s cool tattoo, hadn’t made it.

Twenty-four hours in, we mourned men we’d met only briefly. But Charlie Company had been living together at Adhamiyah for a year. It almost felt as if I didn’t have a right to cry because I couldn’t relate to losing a brother.

In their grief and anger over the loss of their friends, the soldiers didn’t want us around to witness their pain. An aide-station medic asked us to go inside, saying the soldiers were on edge and didn’t want us taking pictures or writing about what would happen next.

At a moment like that, you don’t talk about freedom of the press or the importance of recording history or that our stories could help people understand what they face every day and why they are courageous. And as reporters and photographers, we can’t say, “This is what we do. We do this often, and we know to stay out of your way and to be unobtrusive. We’ve done this before.” It doesn’t matter how many tragedies we’ve covered well and thoughtfully, with an eye toward the feelings and well-being of those we’re following.

This was their tragedy, and on this day, anything we’ve done before didn’t matter.

We stood far back. As a human, I would have gladly went inside and left them alone. As journalists, this day showed why soldiers come back home with mental health issues and why there should be no stigma attached to seeking help for those issues. This day showed the courage and skills of 20-year-old line medics who perform tasks most civilian doctors haven’t done on their worst days, as well as soldiers who jumped in vehicles to go help their buddies even as they were attacked. This day showed that the enemy figured out a bomb under a Bradley is effective.

And this day showed that there is much work to be done in building trust in Adhamiyah. A soldier told us the bomb went off two meters from an Iraqi Army checkpoint, yet no one had noticed anyone digging a large hole in the road to bury it.

We heard another explosion. An RPG instantly killed an MP from the 630th MP Company. A second was injured and brought back to the FOB. The MPs had been coming by chance and immediately joined in to help.

Charlie Company came running back outside when they heard more injured were coming in. Several lined up against a wall, heads in hands. Others stood to the side for a solitary cigarette.

Some talked to us, and they let us in closer to work. Two apologized for trying to get rid of us earlier, and others added details because they wanted to make sure we had the story right. Others glared and still wanted us gone.

And another soldier said, “Please write about this and let them know what we’re dealing with.”

A medic from the aid station handed me a bottle of water and took me inside the aid station, and I realized I felt cold and had stayed out in the sun too long. He put me in a room by myself, and I wrote a little about what we had seen. As I wrote, the medics worked on the company chaplain, who was left bruised when shrapnel hit his leg but did not penetrate. They filled out casualty paperwork.

Finally, everyone was back inside the forward operating base. Charlie Company had lost five soldiers. The MPs had lost one. Several were injured.

Back inside the main building, a platoon sergeant who laughingly told everyone, “I’m just the driver,” took me aside. Sgt. 1st Class Tim Ybay quietly takes care of his soldiers with jokes and a willingness to listen. Thursday, his soldiers surrounded him to offer the same. He had been in the second Bradley, and he had lost his boys.

“Please say good things about these guys,” he said, working to remain composed. “They’re better than anyone.”