Twenty-one in Iraq

In my life there have many defining moments, but few had an impact like the time I spent at war. In the early 1990’s I was a soldier in the first war in Iraq. It was a time that would change my perspective on things for all my days that followed.
I had just turned twenty-one back then, a few weeks before our trip. I had been in the U.S. Army for a couple of years at that point. The only real military conflict had been a short skirmish in Panama, and that hadn’t involved my unit. The 101st Airborne Division was where I called home. 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry was my unit. Not much seemed important to a bunch of young guys like us. But by the time our little trip to the desert was over, that wouldn’t be the case.
From the moment we had to line up in formation outside the plane, I knew it was going to be rough. Those first few days we stayed in Saudi-Arabia, the temperature peaked at 129 degrees. Outside the sweat would evaporate right off your skin. Inside the tents it would pour down your face like you were in the shower.
Six months we stayed there, just waiting for something to happen. We read books, played cards, ran and ran some more. We got in fights, made up with each other and then found new things to fight about. We haggled and traded our food and beverages so we could get our favorites, unless you were lucky enough to have yours given out to you that day. All meals came in a bag with different assortments of foods and snacks in each one. At the end of each day we got gifts from King Fahd. Everyone got a Pepsi, some kind of snack cake, and sometimes banana milk.
We trained of course as we always did. Trained until we were bored of it. The rumors reached our ears of protests at home and of how most of us would die on the first day of conflict. It mattered little. Either way we all wanted the end to come. We knew there was only one way to speed-up our return home. That way was to fight through a battlefield to get there. Of course some were more worried than others. I can’t say it really bothered me or that I ever really thought of myself of being in any true danger until the day we invaded Iraq.
For some time we had known the date of the invasion and when it came we loaded up on our blackhawk heliocopters and headed over the border. We landed a lot further north than most would have expected us to be. We were only 150 miles from Baghdad itself. Just off the main highway we set down, right into knee-deep mud. It wasn’t easy moving all our gear through mud like that, but we did it just the same. Upon a small ridge overlooking the river we all lay in wait for our enemy to come riding right up that dark road.
The orders were to shoot tracer rounds at anyone driving on Highway 8 that night. Tracer rounds are usually every third shot and they light up so you can see where you’re shooting at night. We were going to use them to let someone know they had reached the end of the road. The U.S. Army had installed a new rest stop on that lone Iraqi highway, and you were going to pull in whether you wanted to or not.
The first few vehicles were civilian truck drivers. That was pretty uneventful stuff. My squad of course was the one chosen to actually walk out on the road and take prisoners. This came with the territory of being known as the best squad in the company. One of our new conquests was a truck full of 50 lb. Flour bags. We used those to build a wall in the middle of the road. However, the next person who came down the road got so scared they thought they would try and jump our flour wall instead of stopping for our little incursion. The little Toyota pickup he was driving must have flown twenty feet in the air over that wall. You could hear him screaming the whole way. He actually made a safe landing and drove on. We couldn’t help but look at each other and burst out laughing.
Eventually a couple of soldiers came our way. They spotted us and pulled off the road a few hundred yards up. Out of the blue shots rang out. Now we saw tracer rounds pierce the nights’ darkness. One that I’ll never forget zipped by right in front of my face. I turned to look where it had come from. Somewhere down there in the darkness, a man I did not know had just tried to shoot me. I wondered if it could all be real. Most of my fellow soldiers were running and jumping for cover on the roadside. Just the lieutenant and I remained. He had been in Special Forces and combat was nothing new to him. He called for the rest of our platoon to open fire on the enemy soldiers and asked me to shoot an illumination grenade in their direction. I gave it my best shot but the mud from earlier had done a number on my M16/M203 rifle and grenade-launcher. It worked well enough for us to see them though and that night they paid the ultimate price for taking a few shots at our guys. Later we pulled back off the road as an Iraqi tank regiment was headed back up our way.
I could say I tried to sleep but that would not be the truth. The little sleep I got late that night was only from exhaustion. The tank battle that ensued just a mile or two away put all thunderstorms to shame. The next morning we returned to the scene of our crime on the highway, strewn with empty vehicles whose owners were our prisoners. Later we were told there had been a cease-fire. The war for us was over.
Before we left some children came out. From where, we never knew. We threw them candy bars and other small things and they smiled and waved to us. A woman walked by with one of the flour bags we had used for our wall. Trudging along with the bag on top of her head, she exposed one breast to try to tell us, this was food for her children.
A few weeks later we were back in Saudi Arabia, and a few after that back home. But I never forgot the time I spent there or the things I had missed while gone. It put into perspective so many small things, some too miniscule to describe. But the one thing it changed, the one impact it had was for me to never take for granted how pleasant, safe and peaceful life can be back here in the U.S., and how lucky I am to be in it.