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Posted on 03/29/2003 6:30:45 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WITH THE 3RD INFANTRY DIVISION, in central Iraq -- It troubles him, now that the fighting is over. Sgt. Mark N. Redmond remembers shouting "qiff," the Arabic word for halt, but they did not halt. They kept coming.
Redmond's unit spent three days and nights fighting for the bridge at Kifl, a village on the Euphrates River. By any military definition -- the territory seized, the number of enemy killed, the mission accomplished -- the Americans' fight ended in victory. After victory, though, comes rest. And with rest comes reflection.
"I mean, I have my wife and kids to go back home to," he said, sitting atop a box of rations back at the unit's base camp, whiling away a lull as unexpected as it was appreciated. "I don't want them to think I'm a killer."
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The fighting around Kifl subsided Friday, officers here said, as it did around much of An Najaf, the holy city on the Euphrates that the 3rd Infantry Division struggled to encircle in an unexpectedly fierce battle that began late Monday night when Redmond's unit, Troop C, attached to the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry, first crossed the river.
The division's commanders said Friday that the withering effects of an expanding armored ring around the city, coupled with airstrikes and artillery barrages, had at last halted Iraq's efforts to reinforce An Najaf, though the situation in the city itself remains unclear.
By Friday evening, there was still no complete count of the enemy who died there, though soldiers and officers said there were scores, at least. And for some, like Redmond, the memory remained haunting.
"They just came up to us," he said, describing irregular Iraqi militiamen who began fighting as soon as Troop C crossed the two-lane bridge over the Euphrates. "It seemed to me they were trying to test us, but it was suicide."
By Friday, only skirmishes continued. Iraqi forces fired mortars late Friday morning at Kifl, but ineffectively, officers said. American artillery barrages quickly silenced them.
"They learned, if they get too close, bad things happen," Capt. Adam J. Morrison, the brigade's assistant artillery officer, said in the sand-infused tent where the brigade's tactical operations center is situated.
Much of the brigade's -- and the division's -- firepower concentrated instead to the north, firing rockets and calling in airstrikes on what officers said were artillery batteries and other Iraqi targets. The division's commander, Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount 3rd, said in an interview Wednesday that the Army's efforts were now focused on softening up Iraqi forces on the approaches to Baghdad.
In Kifl, the effort turned to the accounting.
The brigade's Graves Registration Team began to fan out across the village and its surroundings to collect the remains of Iraqi fighters, which they packed in black bags along with any personal items that might help identify them.
"Basically, we did the same thing with the Iraqi dead that we would have done with American dead," said Capt. Andrew J. Valles, the brigade's civil-affairs officer.
For Redmond, 26, it was a time to digest what had happened. He did not want to dwell on the details of the deaths his weapons caused.
"Other guys will tell you details -- maybe even embellish them to make a better story," he said.
He joined the Army three years ago after doing odd jobs around his hometown, a four-church and no-stop-light town outside Gainesville, Fla. He wanted to be a combat soldier, he said, but his wife told the Army recruiter that she wanted him to have a safer job -- or military occupational specialty, MOS, in Army jargon. The recruiter suggested he become a forward observer, calling in artillery and airstrikes.
"He said I'd be close enough to the front to see it, but not in the middle of it," he said. "Look at me today."
He was in his Humvee on the bridge when the Iraqis detonated explosives underneath it -- buckling, but not collapsing it -- and felt the sudden, wrenching fear of isolation.
In hindsight, he questioned the decision to send only an unarmored scout troop across the bridge. He understood why. Like many soldiers here, from the lowest private to the commander of the Army's V Corps, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, Redmond said he did not expect the Iraqis to resist so doggedly.
"I expected a lot more people to surrender," he said. "From all the reports we got, I thought they would all capitulate."
In the three days that followed, they did not, and he fired every weapon on his Humvee, including a 50-caliber machine gun, his M-4 rifle and a grenade launcher -- everything except the shoulder-fired antitank missile. Many of the Iraqis, he said, attacked headlong into the cutting fire of tanks and Bradleys.
"I wouldn't call it bravery," he said. "I'd call it stupidity. We value a soldier's life so much more than they do. I mean, an AK-47 isn't going to do nothing against a Bradley. I'd love to know what Saddam is telling his people."
"When I go home, people will want to treat me like a hero, but I'm not," he went on. "I'm a Christian man. If I have to kill the other guy, I will, but it doesn't make me a hero. I just want to go home to my wife and kids."
The brigade's chief chaplain, Maj. Mark B. Nordstrom, said he spent more than six hours with the troop's soldiers Thursday after they returned from Kifl. Redmond was among them.
Nordstrom belongs to a branch of the Mennonites with a pacifist theology. He has given this some thought. He cites St. Augustine's theory of just war: "War is love's response to a neighbor threatened by force."
"We're in the thousands now that were killed in the last few days," he said Friday. "Nothing prepares you to kill another human being. Nothing prepares you to use a machine gun to cut someone in two."
"They tell stories amongst themselves," he added of the soldiers. "When I come up, they tell different stories. It bothers them to take life, especially that close. They want to talk to me so that they know that I know they are not awful human beings."
Soldier - you are not a killer. You may have saved the lives of your wife and kids by eliminating these devils from this earth.
Our cause is just. Either kill them - or they will kill us.
Either that or I think they go around sticking a mic in every soldiers face until they find a squeaky wheel telling them what they want to hear.
Hopefully that's all it is - rather than have our soldiers bear a burden of guilt for doing the right thing.
A_R
Acts 5
1 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession,
2 And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet.
3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?
4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
5 And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.
6 And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him.
7 And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in.
8 And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.
9 Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out.
10 Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.
11 And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.
I would have imagined that command had drummed into these soldiers heads:
DO NOT TALK TO JOURNALISTS!
I would have assumed that journalists would be treated as social outcasts during lulls in the fighting. Conversations around the camp fire would cease when journalits were within earshot.
"It's an ugly planet. A bug planet."
David was perhaps the greatest warrior of all time, killing hundreds if not thousands of the enemy in close combat. Yet God called him a man after his own heart.
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