The Death of a Pro-War Conservative -or- The Day I got Away with Murder

Vividly I remember the 15th of May, 2004. It had been business as usual and we were heading home from FOB Warhorse in Baquba. By "home" I mean FOB Normandy in the small town of Muqdadiyah, and by "we" I mean Support Platoon, 2-2 Infantry. Ramrods!

We had gone to Warhorse to fill our fuel trucks and pick up a two-day supply of food. We did this every other day for almost the entire year we were in Iraq and so that day was nothing new. Improvised explosive devices (IED) were the norm, as was small-arms fire. It had been two months since we started our convoy operations and we had learned how to avoid, or at least minimize, the damage done to our vehicles by IED.

Our strategy was to drive as fast as possible down the center of the road. Ok, so we had to force the local drivers off the road at times. We weren't concerned about them, just ourselves.

And for the record, I still credit this technique for the survival of everyone in the platoon, but I'm digressing.

I was driving the rearmost vehicle with the convoy commander, my platoon leader, and I was dozing off behind the wheel again (those of you who were drivers in Iraq can probably empathize) when

***BOOOOOM***

I looked up in time to see the largest fireball I had ever seen in my entire life engulf one of our fuel trucks just ahead of my vehicle. Our fuel trucks had been filled while we were at Warhorse and each truck was carrying 2,350 gallons of diesel fuel and it was my belief, at that moment in time, that one of our trucks had exploded.

I was in such a state of shock that I didn't realize that the driver of the 5-ton gun truck in front of me had slammed on the brakes. I hit mine too late to stop in time and had to swerve sharply to the right to avoid smashing into the gun truck, but my rearview mirror was ripped off by the 5-ton's bumper in the process and I ended up coming to a stop to the right of the truck and not in a position to pull the rear security that the rear vehicle is responsible for.

From here it starts to get hazy and I lose track of when exactly certain events took place. So much was happening at the same time and these events took place two-and-a-half years ago this month. But I do remember it was total chaos.

And I remember every weapon in the convoy coming to life. Bullets were flying at everything and nothing at the same time. I was firing my M16 at a house near where the IED had detonated. I didn't really have a target, I was just shooting at the house for the sake of shooting. I saw a white horse in a field and shot at it twice, but it didn't go down and I questioned whether I was actually hitting it. I shot at some clothes on a clothesline and at a satellite dish on one of the houses. All for the sake of making a statement.

Now an IED had gone off in our convoy a few days before all of this and we didn't fire a single round. It was the belief of the chain of command, as well as me at the time, that if we responded to these attacks violently, then the citizens would eventually get fed up and not allow the insurgents to place IEDs in front of their homes or in their neighborhoods.
And like that, the phrase "make a statement" became our unwritten Golden Rule.

I don't remember how long we were shooting, but .50-caliber machine guns, an Mk-19 Automatic Grenade Launcher, an M240B and several M16s were firing at everything while the convoy was stopped. I guess a white pickup truck was trying to speed away and it got shot up. I didn't see it.

I saw the horse I had shot was running around in circles, dragging its rear legs.

During the time when all the shooting was going on, our medic was trying to treat the two soldiers who were in the fuel truck. Now, sometimes you have to give your enemy credit, you really do. This particular IED was something we hadn't encountered before (and ended up not encountering the rest of our tour - thank God). It was simply a 55-gallon drum full of gasoline that was wired to explode. The fireball I saw wasn't the fuel truck, it was the IED itself. With artillery shell IEDs, you always stand the chance that the fragmentation will simply miss you. We had a lot of our trucks scarred by shrapnel, but the soldiers driving those trucks typically came out unscathed.

However, all the armor in the world isn't going to save you when a tidal wave of flaming fuel comes splashing through your window.

But both soldiers were able to evacuate the fuel truck and were being treated by our medic. And here's where it really starts to get fuzzy and I completely lose track of what happened but I remember a Special Forces team showing up to assist us with security and aid of the wounded soldiers. I remember seeing one of the SF guys with this huge head of hair and I remember thinking to myself how I wanted his hair. They came, did their thing, and left.

And at some point one of our Fuel Section non-commissioned officers yelled for everyone to get away from the burning fuel truck. That was pandemonium. Every vehicle started backing up at high rates of speed and anyone who has ever driven any military vehicle knows that rear visibility is always an issue. The gun truck quickly backed up, and I started to follow suit in my humvee, but I didn't realize soldiers were trying to climb in the back and I ended up hitting one and knocking him down. He was fine, but I ran over his M16 and destroyed it. I started yelling for the people behind me to either get in the truck or get the out of the way. I looked forward just in time to see our second fuel truck slam into my humvee.

My humvee's front left tire was blown out, the front end was crushed and since I never bothered to get into the vehicle completely, my door slammed onto my leg, pinning it as the fuel truck started pushing my humvee back. Humvees are big trucks, but those fueler HEMTT (Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck) are bigger trucks. The driver had hit me and didn't even realize it at first. He let off the gas long enough for me to free my leg and back up my vehicle, but the damage was done. The humvee couldn't be driven back to our FOB and had to be towed.

At some point, another soldier and I started pulling rear security when a vehicle started coming up behind our disabled convoy at a high rate of speed. He wasn't that far away and I knew he could see an american military truck in flames or at least all the black smoke. I raised my weapon and aimed at the vehicle hoping that he would see the gesture and get the idea to stop, but he didn't. I knew I had to fire a warning shot but if he couldn't see me aiming at him, how would he see (or hear) me firing into the air? I aimed at the windshield.

I knew better than to aim at the driver. I didn't want to kill him, just give him a warning. So I aimed at the center of the windshield about the time I heard someone behind me yell to shoot.

And so I fired my weapon.

The vehicle fishtailed a little bit and came to a stop. Good. But then a woman jumped out of the rear seat and started screaming. Not screaming in anger, but more like wailing.

“Oh no,” I thought to myself. I turned to the other soldier pulling rear security.

“I think you got someone,” he said to me.

In all, about four people piled out of the car and I realized that the vehicle was full and that my bullet must have hit someone. Going over where the bullet went through the windshield, we figured the bullet hit the person in the neck or face. The woman kept screaming and even though she was between 150 and 200 meters away, she might as well have been in my head. They pulled the man out of the back seat by his legs and stared at him as he lay on the ground. No one just stands around watching someone bleed like that unless they are certain nothing can be done.

My first instinct was to run out there and apologize profusely while trying to render first aid, but I knew I needed a team to wander that far off.

“Doc!” My voice was trembling as I called out for our medic and went to find him. “Doc, I think I hurt someone!”

But I was told that we were going to worry about us, and then worry about them. The medic was still patching up the passenger of the fuel truck, though not much can be done for burns in that type of environment.

I went back to the rear of the convoy in time to see the vehicle speed off. The other soldier who was pulling rear security said they put the man in the trunk and turned around. That's it.

And I remember seeing the horse lying lifelessly on its side.

Immediately afterwards, I remember thinking that I was going to go to jail, that I had just murdered someone who posed no particular threat to me and I was angry. Why didn't they stop? Couldn't they see all the black smoke and the burning vehicle? Didn't they see American soldiers firing weapons at everything? They weren't that far away. Word of my shot had gotten around and one of my superiors even gave me the nickname “sniper.”

At first the guilt was almost debilitating. I told a few friends and a few family members about the incident. I wanted to confess but also wanted to be judged, but at the same time I was also glad to be alive. As time wore on, I was able to put the incident behind me. Even though my first thought was of myself and how I was going to go to jail, it turned out that I had done the right thing, given the circumstances.

So that left me with nothing to think about except the man I had shot.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I shouldn't, but I couldn't help it. Who was he? He was probably just someone who woke up that morning in his bed and assumed that he would end his day in the same place. When he ate lunch that day, I'm sure he thought he'd have dinner too. Isn't that what we all assume?

Instead, he got into a car (was he heading home?). He was alive, and then in the course of less than a second, he wasn't, and lives were destroyed. And who was the screaming woman? Was it his wife? His sister? His mother? Was he old enough to have a daughter that age? I never got a good look at him. Who was the driver and the other people in the car? Friends? Relatives? I felt (and still feel) that I owed him a certain something so that his life would not be lost in vain.

Many times have I visualized myself in that vehicle when the bullet went through the windshield. I don't think it would have made much of a sound. Just a small hole would have appeared in the windshield, maybe there would have been a slight cracking sound... and then someone's head explodes.

And it made me think about life in general and how senseless something like war is. After all, don't we all wake up at the beginning of the day assuming we'll go to sleep at the end? When we eat breakfast, don't we think we'll eat lunch and dinner that day too? Don't we all assume we'll live to “old age?” Or at least long enough to see 40? 30? 25? 20?

My mother once pointed out how funny it was that all war is... is people killing each other. I went over possible definitions for the word war in my head, and every single one of them could be dispelled. I think Websters defined war as “Armed conflict between two nations,” but that's not always true. I came to realize that my mother coined the definition for the word "war." War is simply people killing each other. What a silly concept!

When I took my two weeks of mid-tour leave, I went back to the college campus where I had worked on the college newspaper. My former instructors asked me if I wanted to do a guest opinion piece on my experiences overseas and I agreed. I wrote about the above incident because, again, I wanted to confess. While in the newsroom, I was looking over the archives and I came across the last article I had written for the paper. It was another opinion piece about how proud I was to be going back into the Army to fight the good fight. It was a sharp contrast to the piece I ended up writing while on leave.

People are quick to disregard the Vietnam-Iraq comparison by saying that this is an all-volunteer Army. This is true. But most of our soldiers were mislead or simply flat out lied to in order to volunteer. A lot of soldiers enlist out of a baser need (money for school, economic security, job security, the desire to kill another human being) than for patriotism. But for those of us who believed in the war at first (like most of the country), we enlisted to be defenders of the American people, not storm troopers in an American-run police state in a country across the planet. And I believe it's the soldiers/seamen/airmen/marines who enlisted with patriotism in mind that feel the most like I feel.

It's almost ridiculous to hear generals and armchair generals say that we need to put the Iraqis first and things of that nature. When I was still in Iraq, word came down from higher that we were going to start driving the speed limit and stop driving down the center of the roads. My platoon consciously made the decision to ignore that order. To the average combat arms soldier in Iraq, it is quickly realized that they are set up for failure and the idea that he is going to survive at any cost quickly becomes his priority.

"Better to be judged by twelve than carried out by six" becomes his new maxim, and I don't see any of these new policies spouted by politicians and generals trickling down to the lowest rung of the military ladder where the single most thought in a soldier's mind is "Please God don't let me die."

In hindsight, it's almost scary how quickly after leaving Iraq that I had forgotten everything I realized while I was there.

It didn't come back to me until I learned I was going back.

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