None Left Behind (10 page)

The barbecue and games ended at sunset, everyone having stuffed himself with fresh meat. Mayhem watched the Iraqi sun go down from the flat
roof of the house and listened to the calls for the faithful to come worship at the 109 Mosque down the road. Other than the thousand-pound spontaneously ignited bomb, which didn't count as an attack, no one had shot at him all day, and no vehicle had got blown up. It was therefore a good war. The land lay quiet and peaceful all around as though it had never been touched by violence.

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Infanti was a Mustang officer, a former enlisted man who had worked himself up through the ranks to earn a commission. As such, he brought with him a special affinity for young soldiers that kept him constantly on the move circulating among his companies, checking on the men, letting himself be seen taking the same risks they did, reconfirming with deed and word the spirit and letter of their mission in Iraq—that the 4
^th
Battalion would live among the people, in the midst of danger, in order to prove it was here to stay until peace and stability returned to the AO. There would come that turning point, he insisted, when it would begin to come together.

A job in the military was one of only a few that entailed ordering someone to go out and possibly die. To Infanti, the lives of his men were his sacred responsibility, a truth the casualty cards he carried in the breast pocket of his ACUs never allowed him to forget. Casualty cards kept a running account of the soldiers of the 4/31
^st
who were either killed or wounded in action. The longer the 2
^nd
BCT remained in Iraq, the thicker grew the deck of cards. He sometimes took out the little stack and shuffled through it, trying to remember the boyish faces that went with the cards.

Although Infanti was too young to have served in Vietnam, he remembered hearing 'Nam vets speak resentfully of how colonels and general officers would live in air-conditioned mobile homes while their troops dug holes and huddled in the rain. He swore his men would never talk about him like that.

At FOB Yusufiyah, he lived in an old steel shipping container that had previously been used by ocean-going freighters, although other facilities offered better accommodations, even with one of the buildings
having been gutted by fire. His TOC (Tactical Operations Center)—communications, operations, Intelligence—was housed next door in a GP (General Purpose) Large tent that allowed easy access. He insisted on being awakened any time something happened day or night within the AO.

His battalion second-in-command, Executive Officer Mark Manns, and Battalion Command Sergeant Major Alexander Jimenez, who bore the same name as Specialist Jimenez in Delta Company but to whom he was not related, worried about their commander. After all, due to his penchant for sharing danger, Infanti's was one of the first trucks in 4
^th
Battalion to hit an IED.

It occurred on Sportster Road while the Colonel, as he was generally called, and his PSD (personal security detail) were on their way back to Yusufiyah following an impromptu inspection of Delta Company's Inchon on Malibu Road. Infanti's hummer triggered an IED whose blast bent the frame of the vehicle and slammed it against his knee. He ended up in a support brace that he would have to wear for at least a year or until the Polar Bears returned home and he took the time for more definitive medical treatment.

“Sir, you don't have to be out there
every
day,” Major Manns argued.

Infanti was a stubborn man. “The soldiers have to know that we don't talk the talk while they're out there walking the walk,” he said.

Infanti had had that same obstinate unbending streak during the previous 2004–2005 deployment when he was Brigade Deputy Commander. Manns and CSM Jimenez had heard all the stories from Corporal Shane Courville, a medic who had been with Infanti then and returned with him as his PSD medic this time.

Courville was big enough to toss a wounded man over each shoulder and jog off the battlefield with them. The big man had in fact carried soldiers out of harm's way on at least six previous occasions, one of whom was Infanti on a November afternoon in 2004.

Infanti's convoy was speeding down the overpass leading into the city of Abu Ghraib to distribute blankets to a local school before winter set in
when Captain Jennifer Knowlden noticed that the streets were suspiciously deserted. The disappearance of children was always a warning.

An IED went off underneath Knowlden's lead vehicle and sandblasted out the windows. Infanti heard the whooshing report of an 85mm rocket-propelled grenade belching from the mouth of an alley to his right. It caught the commander's truck near the right front door, the concussion tossing it sideways in the street and popping open the doors.

Although disoriented and almost unconscious from injuries to the back of his head, Infanti leaped out of the smoking truck with his M-4 blazing against black-hooded RPG gunners hammering the stalled convoy from the alley and from the cover of a nearby wall. Rockets crisscrossed the street, screaming and etching smoke. One struck the pavement and skidded underneath a hummer where it detonated in a ball of red flame, jolting the truck completely off the ground. Another targeted the last unscathed vehicle in the convoy and ripped off a tire. A third penetrated the rear hatch of Captain Knowlden's disabled truck and lodged in its cargo of blankets without exploding.

In the midst of all the smoke, noise, and confusion, Knowlden saw Colonel Infanti collapse in the street next to his truck, seemingly unconscious or mortally wounded. His adrenaline had finally worn off. Knowlden got on the radio, yelling for the medic who always accompanied a commander's patrol. The call was unnecessary. Courville was already racing through the smoke toward Infanti.

Even though Captain Knowlden had herself been injured in the IED explosion, she scrambled out to help the big medic. Just in time, it seemed, for a second IED detonated underneath her truck, ripping off the back hatch and sending it flying end over end through the air. Fortunately for the other passengers, they had abandoned the truck to return fire against attacking insurgents.

Still under fire, Courville hoisted his unconscious commander off the pavement and stuffed him into the back seat of his damaged vehicle where, at least partially protected by side armor, he began to treat him for head injuries.

As usual, the contact didn't last long. The ambushers hauled ass, leaving in their wake four damaged or disabled humvees, two wounded Americans, and a number of injured civilian bystanders caught in the crossfire. Colonel Infanti suffered from a serious concussion and other cuts and bruises, but, characteristically, insisted on staying with the brigade until it was recalled to Fort Drum.

During his battlefield treatment of the wounded officer, Courville used scissors to cut off Infanti's clothing to check for additional injuries. Infanti had put on a new uniform that morning. From then on, every time the Colonel got ready to circulate, he lifted an eyebrow at the medic in mock rebuke.

“Corporal,” he joked, “this is a brand-new uniform I'm wearing.”

“Yes, sir. I've got a brand-new pair of scissors.”

Each patrol base had its obligatory coffee brewer operating on a generator in the common area. Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery started stripping off his battle rattle as soon as he entered the big house at Inchon; Delta's four platoons rotated periodically among the three outposts. Somebody had propped Brenda the Bitch on a chair at the card table. She was a blow-up, anatomically correct, life-sized doll one of the Joes had ordered from
Hustler
magazine as a joke on Joe Anzak. Montgomery poured himself a cup of coffee, tasted it, and made a face. Guys were always receiving exotic coffees in care packages from home. A half-dozen or so different brands sat at the table among spilled creamer and empty sugar packets.

“Is it too much to ask that we stick to just one kind of coffee?” he grumbled. “An average cup of coffee shouldn't be too much to ask for.”

He seized Brenda by the tit and tossed her at a worn-out sofa salvaged from only God knew where. He collapsed in her chair at the table and was scowling at his coffee cup when the rest of Second Platoon straggled in from maintenance on their hummers. Second had been out most of the night on a wild goose chase over in Kharghouli, nothing but dry holes.

Joe Anzak grabbed Nathaniel Given in a quick headlock as soon as Given came through the door. Second was currently sharing Inchon with First Platoon and Delta's HQ element.

“What's up, faggot?” Anzak said. “Anything exciting happen last night?”

Given slipped free and rained fake punches into Anzak's midsection. “Naw, man. Same ole same ole. You know, rescuing damsels in distress and saving the world from the manticore. I got to get some sleep. If you guys are going out, wake me for chow when you get back, okay?”

“You have it. See you in a few hours.”

“No
feaky-feaky
with the ladies.”

On his way through, Specialist Dar-rell Whitney (spelled Darrell, but pronounced Dar-rell) rescued Brenda from the floor where Sergeant Montgomery had tossed her. He copped a feel.

“Ain't
feaky-feaky
the reason we got Brenda?” he said.

Joe Merchant grabbed
him
in a headlock. “What's with you black boys, always fucking with the white girls?”

“That's
African-American men
to you, honky,” Whitney shot back, slipping free.

“Whatever. Get your hands off Brenda. It's my turn to sleep with her.”

“She is such a whore.”

Soldiers in an all-male environment could be remarkably disgusting. Day-to-day life at the forts was an eclectic mixture of
Animal House,
Doctor Phil, and
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
. Life might be more or less expendable outside the walls, but inside existed at least a modicum of security where guys could let down a little.

The patrol bases were never really quiet, not with soldiers working 24-hour shifts and always coming and going—on-going shifts walking doggedly out to their vehicles to replace soldiers who staggered in to their bunks looking drained from the bone-deep weariness of day-after-day tension, but nonetheless gamely trying to keep up each other's spirits. The forts had about them the feel of old bus stations coupled with the odd stench of occupation most would always associate with the war—the putrid odors of burning garbage and human excrement, of diesel fuel, open MRE packets, sweat, and musty clothing.

The bunkrooms were mostly kept near pitch dark because of shift work. They resembled cluttered and fusty caves strewn with resting bodies as from some apocalyptic disaster scene. Sandbags, sheet metal, and planks of wood barricaded the windows against the enemy as well as against sunlight. Only a few diligent rays found their way through cracks to the sleeping soldiers within.

Off-time, what little there was of it when men weren't sleeping or eating, was consumed with taped music, reading, cards, Nintendo and computer games, laptop music, and the grabassing and clowning around of young men away from home, some for the first time. Men got tight
with others they might not have even spoken to under different circumstances, forming a closeness and loyalty that time and distance would never break.

Guys like Anzak and Jimenez had the capacity to raise the mood of entire squads and platoons. They were always joking around, never seeming to let things get them down, seldom a bad word to say to or about anyone. A bunch of guys back from patrol would start comparing stories about whatever action may have occurred, debating about who shot what and how close they had come to getting wasted. Before the mood had a chance to get dark and the guys started brooding, Jimenez might flash one of his million-dollar grins, throw himself onto the old torn-up sofa, and plunge into a joke that only he could tell to its fullest benefit.

“These two Arab fuckers boarded a flight and sat down in the window seats with a 10
^th
Mountain soldier in the aisle seat. The Polar Bear kicked off his shoes and was settling down when one of the Arabs says, ‘I need to get up and get a Coke.'

“ ‘Don't get up. I'm in the aisle seat. I'll get it for you.'

“As soon as the soldier got up, one of the Arabs spat a goober in his shoe.

“This happened twice more. The soldier knew immediately what had happened when the plane landed and he put on his shoes. He leaned over to his Arab seatmates.

“ ‘Why does it have to be this way?' he asked. ‘How long must this go on? This fighting between our nations? This hatred? This animosity? This spitting in shoes and pissing in Cokes . . . ?' ”

Joe Anzak remembered being away from home as a kid and some of the other kids bawling at night, wanting to go home. He hated that pussy shit, but he wanted to go home now and he could imagine how badly homesickness affected some of the other guys. It became his personal mission to take their minds off it, to keep them going. He could be a real character, making a big show of heading off to the latrine with a wag bag and a
feaky-feaky
magazine.

“I'm going to be busy for a while. Don't bother me.”

Sometime, for the amusement and edification of the platoon, he would
lean back on his bunk clad only in his underwear and light his farts with a cigarette lighter, shooting out blue flame. “
Incoming!”

“Man, you're gonna burn your nuts off.”

“Come on over here, sweets. I can hold you if you like. Lie down next to me and spoon.”

In order to compensate for the isolation, to bring in a little order and civilization, everyone went all out in celebrating holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. On Halloween, some of the guys camouflage-painted their faces and went trick-or-treating in their underwear and combat boots, dashing from bunk to bunk soliciting leftover MRE chocolate bars or care package candy. Birthdays and anniversaries required exchanging little gifts—a clean pair of socks, cherished MRE oatmeal cookies, somebody's last pack of American cigarettes . . .