Posted on 12/01/2004 5:50:22 PM PST by Former Military Chick
Short on sleep but long on memories, the soldiers of Alpha Company had brief moments of confession before snatching a few winks or during pauses between firefights in Fallujah.
FALLUJAH, Iraq - 11.11.04, Thursday.
Despite heavy gunfire outside, Sgt. Randy Laird popped open the Bradley armored vehicle's rear hatch a few inches for fresh air. Alpha Company was pushing through southern Fallujah, a maze of factories and empty buildings they called Queens. Hard-core insurgents were rallying there, some of them swimming across the Euphrates River to join the fight.
A pack of Marlboros, one of the last good packs of cigarettes left in the platoon, was passed around. There was no moon in the sky, the crescent having disappeared a few nights before.
The battle had pushed 72 hours straight, and the soldiers had gotten, maybe, seven hours sleep.
Spc. Arthur Wright began to talk about his past in a jumble. He'd joined the Army after the state of New Jersey sentenced him to probation for marijuana possession. His mom was an administrative assistant at a Harlem hospital.
The Army made him a supply clerk. He hated it -- passing out notebooks and pencils while others went out on field exercises. So he'd asked Capt. Sean Sims, the leader of Alpha Company, if he could switch with a guy who was leaving the infantry unit. He got his wish. The two were close -- when Sims heard Wright wasn't getting care packages, Sims called his own wife, a teacher, who got a class to adopt him. Wright would walk into the captain's room, sit and talk about ``girls and what I want to do with my life.''
Touching his hand to his gaunt face, his voice softened.
''I've gotten so skinny since I've been in Iraq,'' he said. ``I mighta lost 30 pounds.''
In the glow of his night-vision goggles, perched on his helmet, the high cheekbone of his ebony face glistened with sweat.
VOICES FROM DARKNESS
Throughout the week, most of the soldiers had moments of confession -- in the back of a Bradley, lying on the ground just before closing their eyes, taking a break between firefights. Their voices came out of the darkness, tired and usually directed at no one in particular.
Some were sweet. The men missed their girlfriends and wives, and they took their pictures out of notebooks to look at them one more time. Some stories were hard. One guy talked about guard duty in Kosovo one day and getting angry about being there, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of nothing. He saw a mentally ill child who always came to the gate, asking for candy. The soldier told him to come over, and then he punched him as hard as he could, over and over, just to see if the kid would come back the next day. When he did, the soldier beat him again, laughing.
After that story, Laird told the soldier he was a coward and an ass.
Laird's father committed suicide when Laird was 12, and he dropped out of school when he was 14. Laird spoke often about his own son, 2-year-old Brayden, at home in Germany with his mother.
''Every time he sees somebody in uniform, he thinks it's daddy,'' Laird said. Brayden would run up to soldiers and hug their legs, thinking he'd found his father.
''I'm sure after a while, he'll understand that I killed people, that I've seen dead bodies,'' Laird said. ``It's emotional now when I see a war movie because I know what they're going through. Especially when guys in full dress uniform go to a mother and say her son is dead and she falls to the floor. It makes me think about my mom getting that call.''
`MOST TERRIBLE THING'
Sitting a couple of men over on the bench of a Bradley was Sgt. Dave Bowden, whose father was in the 82nd Airborne Division and who grew up knowing he would join the military as soon as he turned 18. His father later became a sheriff's deputy in Pike County, Pa. His mother got a job at a local factory.
''When people say that war is the most terrible thing, they ain't wrong,'' Bowden said. ``The things it does to people. You think that killing people for your country is cool, but when you do, it just numbs you.''
Bentley re-enlisted last October because he knew his unit was headed to Iraq and he didn't want them to go without him.
''I remember every face I see out there, every moment out there,'' he said. ``I can't forget it. I can't make it go away.''
House-to-house fighting puts U.S. troops to supreme test(part 1 of 6)
Battle for Fallujah intense, often `overwhelming' (part 2 of 6)
'Spraying and praying': Tired troops press on (part 3 of 6)
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Part 4 ping
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Please ping me on these
Thanks for the ping FMC.
Thanks for the ping. Reading this makes me sad and also so very grateful for men such as these. May God bless them and watch over them.
Ping me on these, thanks.
bttt
war story ping!
hehe, BTW this is probably going to get old really quick, me pinging you all the time.
wow...thanks for the ping on this one too Dan:) Feel free to keep it up- my schedule changed a little and I'm not as apt to find ones like this that interest me!
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