The Ragged Edge by Michael Zacchea & Michael Zacchea & Ted Kemp

Author:Michael Zacchea & Michael Zacchea & Ted Kemp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Part III

FALLUJAH

11

THE ROAD TO FALLUJAH

DRIZZLE. A RARE THING.

The clouds came down, wet and close. They rode on gray-blue light. Throngs of helmets bobbed about, men unsure how committed they should feel to this rote drill, wary of getting faked out again.

I hoped my expression revealed nothing different to them than it had during dress rehearsals. Probably it did, to men like Ahmed Nuʾuman, or my warrior messenger Abdel-ridha Gibrael. Certainly to Arkan and Abdallah. Engines awakened here and there into idle. A smell of diesel infused the damp air. Saʾad cut a look at me under bushy eyebrows, then whipped his gaze back out over his bobbing charges. Iskander glimpsed Saʾad sideways for a millisecond and then returned to shouting at his sergeants. Reflecting on it now, it’s amazing how much shifted in those few hours. If my time in Iraq had a midpoint, that morning was it: We would not see Curt again; he dropped in from the Taji administration center to give a formal farewell to the men earlier that morning. Gunny Webster had made a grudging departure only a few days before. That left Villa and me as the last remaining advisers from the battalion’s earliest, blind hustle. We tried to make something grow in the desert, and here it was, donning Kevlar, clambering onto truck beds. This thing we stood up was going into the biggest battle of the new century.

By 8:30 AM, most of the soldiers were aboard their vehicles. Many sat in open pickups. They seemed naked in the open air, exposed, their knees up against their chests. It remained wet out, around fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Men pulled balaclavas or kaffiyeh over their faces. They shivered as they hugged their rifles. I hated it, but the open trucks would have to do.

I had a lot of worries. A headache that started at my temples began stretching across my forehead. The idea of taking a hit from an IED bothered me. IEDs eradicate human bodies. They wipe them out. But if we took losses, it was critical that the right body be returned to the right tribe as soon as practical. In Iraq, as in most Islamic cultures, the rituals concerning corpses are sacrosanct. The Muslims believe that a human being takes out his or her body as a sort of loan. When you’re dead, your corpse belongs to Allah. It’s something that many Americans have a hard time grasping. Under most circumstances, giving corpses for medical research is forbidden. Bodies are bathed, enshrouded, prayed over, and buried with the face pointing toward Mecca. All those things are done as quickly as possible—preferably within a day of death. Failure to get a body back to its family and tribe promptly shows a serious lack of respect.

Warner, a giant among the Iraqis, tromped through the cool rain and checked each vehicle, verifying by name that everyone was seated according to our plan. He laughed, poked fun, teased with words most of them didn’t understand. Each man lifted his medical ID for Warner to see.

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