Yellow Green Beret : Stories of an Asian-American Stumbling Around U.S. Army Special Forces by Wong Chester

Author:Wong, Chester [Wong, Chester]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Yellow Green Beret
Published: 2011-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

STORY XIV

DRUNK AUSTRIAN PILOT

CIRCA AUGUST 2007

During my first trip to Northern Iraq, I lived with my Special Forces A-Team (plus up to fifteen guys) in a sweet five-house pad in the middle of Ankawa, a Christian, ethnically Assyrian17 enclave in the northwestern portion of Irbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. I prefer to call this area “Kurdistan” by itself because it really is like its own country up there as the northern autonomous region of Iraq. Kurdistan was essentially the only stable portion of Iraq, which allowed us to live pretty normal day-to-day lives. Besides the weekly trips across the Green Line into Arab Iraq to go snatch up al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents in the middle of the night, we lived pretty chill lives and were a functioning part of the community. I knew the mayor of Irbil, socialized frequently with the local French NGOs down the road, and even knew the pastor at the Chaldean Orthodox church in our hood. Our lives were so integrated into the community, I found out years later that some of the guys on our team were actually secretly dating some Ethiopian waitresses at the local German restaurants, as odd as that sounds.

On top of that, even though we were armed to the teeth, ready for World War III with stockpiles of antitank missiles, various foreign and U.S. heavy-caliber machine guns, and entire rooms lined floor to ceiling with ammunition, we had thirty round-the-clock Kurdish guards patrolling our perimeter, two daily maids, and even an Assyrian cook, along with his son. The only thing that the Assyrian cook would say to us was, “Habibi, habibi!” which, in Arabic, means “my love” and is a term of endearment, and we would just say, “Habibi!” right back at him. We actually eventually called him Habibi as his name, since we were too lazy to find out his actual name. Seriously, all communication with him was just exchanging heartfelt “habibis” over eight months of daily, regular contact.

Overall, in Kurdistan, it didn’t even feel like we were in combat out in Iraq, and we used to joke that we were “Irbil Hostel” as various American special operations organizations who figured out that Kurdistan was a bit of an oasis from the hell that was Iraq at the time would come crash with us and we would play host. Life was very quiet back in Kurdistan, and the only way that we participated in any real combat was when we geared up and were targeting terrorists and insurgents south of Kurdistan’s notional “borders” across the Green Line around Mosul and its surrounding rural areas. Nothing really ever happened around our houses except for maybe a scare every once in awhile that the Iranians were taking photos of our house or a suspected Turkish agent was seen nearby our compound.

One day, an unfamiliar car parked on our street, near our houses in Kurdistan. Since vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED), or in normal speak, car bombs, were a serious weapon of choice in Iraq, our neighbors were freaking out and came to get us since they didn’t recognize the car.

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