No Worse Enemy (12 page)

That afternoon, four Special Forces soldiers who everyone knew had been on operation the night before, appeared, covered in mud and dripping with sweat. Marines shouted out compliments as they
went by. The two men I’d met in the truck walked past me without making eye contact. The rumour went round that they had twelve confirmed kills and many more unconfirmed. But the awe they
inspired wasn’t shared by all the marines: ‘They’re nothing but Rangers with a few skill sets and some extra assets, they ain’t special’, said one.

Some of that resentment could have been because the Special Forces went out and killed people within hours of arriving, whereas Echo now rarely saw the enemy. Local people were returning to
their homes; the marines were sure Taliban were among them, studying Echo’s movements.

The men in this tricky position were often no more than nineteen or twenty years old. Mostly from Florida, North Carolina or South Carolina, (their base is Camp Lejeune, NC), many had never
before left their home state. They’d been trained to kill; some openly fantasised about ‘dropping’ people. But now, they were under orders to hold back and concentrate on building
relationships with the local community.

I joined Lance Corporal Brady Bunch, a chubby-faced, frustrated young marine, and Second Platoon, as they went on patrol to a compound from where they’d been attacked several times. As we
prepared to leave, Bunch stroked his favourite weapon. ‘Big Tom – the best weapon in the Marine Corps. I’m gonna drop a raghead at eight hundred feet with this’, he said.
Then he looked away, laughing: ‘Probably not.’

As we approached the compound, a man dressed in black, carrying a bag on his back, ran away. Bunch got down on his belly and got the man in his sights. After a few tense moments, the platoon
leader decided they would approach the house slowly and try to talk to whoever was inside. So Bunch wasn’t allowed to take a shot. The man crossed a footbridge and disappeared into another
compound.

‘Fuck. Every fucking open shot I get. Fuck’, said Bunch as he stomped towards the house. He turned, grinning: ‘I could have waxed his ass.’

A small boy, about twelve years old, came out of the house. ‘No, I don’t want a kid. Where is his father?’ asked Bunch. The boy said he was alone. He and the interpreter
carried on talking, without translating. Bunch became more and more frustrated. A young girl appeared. ‘OK, this is a bullshit story, there’s another kid here. We’re going in this
house.’ Three men gathered on the other side of the canal. The boy kept changing his story. ‘This kid’s about to cry and all these people are trying to talk to him.
Something’s definitely going on’, said Bunch.

I followed him up to the entrance to the house. As he walked in, a sudden violent movement sent everyone darting backwards. Another small girl had appeared, startling Bunch into a firing
position. ‘That little girl almost got blasted’, he said. More girls appeared, then a woman who seemed to be their mother.

‘Now there’s a woman in the house. What the fuck is going on? There wasn’t supposed to be anybody here, now there’s a whole family. Tell the kid to stop lying and tell us
the truth’, said Bunch. ‘Ask him why he’s so nervous.’

Eventually, the boy said there were three women in the house, that his brother had ‘escaped the Taliban’ and that his father was ill in hospital.

Before they searched the building, the marines told the boy to get all the women into one room. We were ordered to turn our backs as they were ushered past. Any Taliban fighters could easily
have escaped or sprayed the whole platoon with bullets. It was odd to see one of the world’s most lethal fighting forces offering such a gift to the enemy. They had to be ready to blow
people’s heads off or walk into booby-trapped buildings, but they also had to be culturally sensitive. When all the women were in one room, the marines searched the rest, telling the boy to
go in first because ‘they won’t shoot if he goes in’.

The last place left to search was a side passage where animals were kept. The boy tried to block the entrance. ‘What’s he so worried about?’ demanded Bunch. Marines pushed
past. One shone a light into the chicken coop. He found a rifle, wrapped up.

‘You’re fucked, kid’, said Bunch. Everyone gathered at the doorway but no one was allowed in; the gun might have been booby-trapped.

‘What is this? What is this? Why is there a rifle in here? There’s probably a shitload buried in there.’

The boy was ordered to go in and pick up the rifle, which he was reluctant to do. ‘Right there! I know you see the rifle, kid.’ Eventually he picked it up. ‘Don’t fucking
touch it, put it down, put it down. Get away from the rifle.’

The interpreter picked it up, carried it outside and unwrapped it. Bunch opened it to check for ammunition. His shoulders dropped. ‘Are you kidding me? It’s a fucking BB
gun.’

‘Why was it covered up?’ he asked the boy.

‘I use it to kill some birds. I can’t kill somebody with it’, said the boy.

They told the boy not to cover things up, because it causes suspicion. ‘Tell him thank you for his time, we’re going to leave now, sorry.’

Outside, the three men still watched. Bunch asked the interpreter why they were so concerned with this house but he didn’t get an answer. Then, the man dressed in black, who we’d
seen running away earlier, joined them. One of the marines spat on the ground. They asked who the local elder was and were given a name they hadn’t heard before. Bunch went down on one knee:
‘They give a completely different answer every time you ask them.’ The boy had followed and was standing behind Bunch. Bunch turned towards him, discreetly pointing at the men across
the canal. ‘Talib? Talib? Taliban?’ he asked in a whisper. But the boy just stared.

‘He ain’t telling me shit’, said Bunch, after a few more attempts. He turned back to the men, who were being asked for help by the platoon commander. ‘If we help you the
Taliban will kill us’, they said.

Bunch was sure the man in black was Taliban, ‘eye-fucking’ the others into not talking. He sighed. ‘I wish the bad guys had uniforms.’

It was almost dark, so the men were told that if they did have any information, they should come and see the Marines at their patrol base. Then we started the long walk back.

Later, I approached the adjutant. ‘Is Brady Bunch his real name? Did his mother actually call him that?’

‘Yep. He gets a lot of shit for it.’

The next day, I joined First Platoon on another patrol. As one of the marines attempted to talk to an old man using a Pashtu phrase book, a few rounds from an AK47 popped over our heads. We
moved in the direction the bullets seemed to be coming from. Leaning against a low wall, we peeked over but no one could see anything. Staff Sergeant Funke, a recent divorcé, permanently
disgusted but with a sense of humour that made him instantly likeable, studied his map, simultaneously listening to his radio. The person at the other end identified two men with RPGs and AK47s.
Funke worked out where they were and laughed. ‘They’re right fucking there, gentleman. Right there’, he pointed. ‘They’re about ... ... Ha! Less than a hundred metres
from us.’

We heard the harmless-sounding whoosh of an RPG over our heads and everyone dropped to the ground. Everyone except the old man, who stayed upright, looking down at the marines. Then he turned
and slowly walked inside. The rocket didn’t explode but everyone stayed down, giving Funke something else to get annoyed about: ‘Can we fucking move on these people,
goddamnit?’

‘Does anyone see anything?’ shouted another marine. A heavy and constant burst of gunfire came from very close by. Everyone seemed to have someone ranked below them to shout at.
Funke yelled at one marine, who yelled at the marine next to me: ‘Get your fucking goddamn fucking muzzle up, pay fucking attention. See that window? Watch it.’

The marines ran into the next compound, kicking open doors and searching rooms as they went. AK47 rounds popped over our heads but never seemed to hit anything. We all ran, crouched, at the same
time; all except Funke, who stood straight, looking down at us impatiently. ‘The rounds are going over your heads. Let’s go.’

Everyone jogged towards the next compound. Funke strolled casually behind, until we started going in the wrong direction. ‘Gentlemen, the enemy is to the south. We are to the north. We
need to get through this’, pointing to a compound to the south. ‘They are there, we need to kill them. Let’s go.’

Someone shouted, ‘Incoming’. We all fell on one knee and put our chins on our chests. But whatever it was didn’t explode. We ran to the last compound, which had much higher
walls than the others. A rickety-looking ladder stood against one wall and a door led in to a field, beyond which were the trees from where we were being attacked. Everyone looked confused. No one
wanted to be the first through the door, because they would be an easy target for the as-yet-unseen enemy.

Funke marched to the middle of the courtyard. ‘Gents, listen up. They are waiting for us to expose ourselves in front of this tree-line. I need a three-man position on the outside of this
corner. I need a three-man position on the outside of that corner. I need two marines at the door and one person doing over-watch on this fucking ladder. It does you no good being inside. This is
what you wanted. You fucking got it. Now go get it.’

Lance Corporal Gomez, a dark-skinned Ecuadorian, was ordered up the ladder first, because he was carrying a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon), a bigger machine gun than everyone else’s. He
climbed the ladder very slowly, fully expecting it to collapse under his weight. Carefully, he eased his head above the wall. I asked him if he could see anything.

‘I see weed, man.’ There was a huge field of marijuana on the other side of the wall. ‘I want to jump in. But I see nothing else.’

Suddenly, he did see something. He started firing, showering me with dozens of hot bullet cases. Three or four other marines started firing, although asked for an exact location, all they could
say was ‘on the tree-line’, which we had known from the beginning.

Gomez fired a grenade. ‘Come on baby, hit, hit.’ He stared at the trees, so desperate to be on target that it looked like he’d be in physical pain him if he weren’t. I
heard the grenade explode on the far side of the field. He fired another but the grenade launcher came away from his gun: ‘Motherfucker’. The marines around us kept firing. Funke
ordered some through the door and into a ditch in the field. I ran after them, not realising until I jumped to the ground that it was just ploughed earth, not a ditch. A small bird could have
pushed the furrows aside to get a worm. It certainly wouldn’t stop bullets. The mud was so hot it burnt my elbows. Either side of me, marines looked through their sights at the trees hiding
our attackers. They couldn’t see any movement. Neither could I.

‘They’re in that tree line next to the building just in front of us?’ I asked the marine to my left.

‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

‘Asking’, I said, startled that he might actually listen to what I had to say. I ran back inside.

Gomez, drinking water, wiped sweat from his face. ‘I love this shit, this is what I re-enlisted for. Four deployments now, you can’t keep me down.’

A few marines sheltered in the narrow slice of shade offered by the wall of the compound’s one room. ‘If I move I’m gonna pass out’, said Staff Sergeant Paz, wobbling.
Some marines went inside and sat down. One, with a startled look on his face, started vomiting. It looked like his stomach was being pumped but nothing but pasty water came out. He vomited three
times, took a deep breath, and jumped to his feet, strapping on his helmet. ‘Let’s go, y’all. Let’s go, Bravo, GET ON YOUR FEET, LET’S GO.’

‘You sure?’ his platoon commander asked.

‘I got it.’ The two men bumped fists and marched outside. ‘Let’s go, gentlemen. ON YOUR FEET. FUCK THESE BITCHES.’

But the battle was over. Our attackers had either been killed – at least three marines claimed to have hit them – or fired everything they had and vanished. The marines searched the
trees but found neither blood nor bodies.

The marines continued to patrol daily but the Taliban remained invisible. ‘This is some Vietnam shit’, said Bunch. ‘Most of the time it’s like
we’re getting shot at by bushes.’

In the middle of another patrol, everyone settled down for a quick nap in a house they had just cleared. On the walls, children’s drawings showed fighters firing AK47s.

‘A fucking little kid drew a picture of his dad shooting down a fucking helicopter. These people are amazing. This country never ceases to amaze me. I drew pictures of my dad driving his
truck to work, not shooting a fucking helicopter’, said one marine.

‘This one got shot down’, said another, laughing. He’d found a drawing of a grounded helicopter lying on its side. ‘Sick bastards, man. Dude, have you even seen anyone
that lives here? They’re like hippies, because of all the pot. Except they’re not liberalish, they’re like, extremist. But they smoke a lot of weed. They should relax and be like
the hippies. No war! Just peace!’ He let his head drop, leaving his fingers in a V-sign in the air.

On another patrol, I was with PFC Janos Lutz when we found a huge field of weed. ‘Wow! That is by far the biggest pot field I’ve seen.’ Lutz was just twenty-one but already,
he’d done a tour of Iraq and time in prison for assault. Lutz was downbeat when I spoke to him. He’d been allowed to use the company sat-phone to call home. During the pep talk before
the operation, Echo Company had been told that ‘the world is watching’ but the people on the other end of the phone didn’t know there had been any fighting.

‘Our families know what’s going on. People in the military know, but the general population doesn’t. America’s not at war, America’s at the mall’, Lutz said,
visibly angry. ‘No one fucking cares. It’s “what’s up with Paris Hilton now? Britney Spears fucking this ...” The average American doesn’t fucking know when
people die over here.’

Bunch agreed. ‘There’s no way people back home could understand what this country is like. It’s like every day, we get shot at. I finally got to make a phone call today,
expecting it to be like “Oh, I miss you so much” and all kinds of stuff. No. I call home and it’s “everything’s fine, I’m partying, having a good life down
here”. Doesn’t even ask me how I’m doing. That’s when I realised that people don’t give a shit about what we’re doing here. No one even really mentions 9/11 any
more. To me, that’s the whole reason I’m over here, that’s why I went to Iraq, why I joined the Marine Corps. Now we’re here and I really don’t know why.’