Walk in My Combat Boots Read online

  The general in charge of the prison gets very nervous when he finds out what’s happening. “Don’t talk about anything,” he tells me repeatedly. “And do it real fast.”

  “It’s fine. I know what I’m doing.”

  The dental smock I’m wearing doesn’t show my name or rank. When Saddam comes in, I’m surprised at how short he is—five eight, maybe. He’s well groomed and holding a Koran.

  “Hello,” Saddam says.

  I have a translator with me. Fortunately, I know a little Arabic. When Saddam asks a question in Arabic, I answer it before my translator translates it—which surprises Saddam.

  “You know Arabic?” he says.

  It’s clear he knows English. “Why don’t we get rid of the translator, and we’ll speak English because your English is better than my Arabic?”

  After the translator leaves, I check his tooth. He needs a crown.

  “I can do this fast, have you out of here in half an hour,” I tell him. “Or we can spread it out over a couple of appointments.”

  “Oh, spread it out.”

  Which isn’t a surprise, as I’m sure he wants to get away.

  He’s relatively friendly but a bit aloof in the beginning. I speak to him very matter-of-factly—none of this “sir” stuff. He starts talking about the history of the Middle East, how Iraq was won, the king before him. It’s not so much a discussion as a lecture.

  When I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, my major was ancient history. I know a lot about the Middle East. When Saddam says something that’s wrong, I tell him he’s wrong.

  “How do you know?” he asks.

  “I studied this stuff.” I quote him books and authors.

  He realizes I know what I’m talking about and stops lecturing me.

  “You have a mistress?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “A woman.”

  “I’m married.”

  “You’re too happy,” he says. “You must have a mistress someplace.”

  “I don’t.”

  “When I get out of here, I’m going to get myself a new wife, another wife. A younger one.”

  We talk about that for a bit.

  “What’s with the Koran?” I ask. “You’re not religious.”

  “Yeah, I know. But it’s good for show.”

  The next day, Saddam and I get into a discussion about Camp Victory. I tell him that I live in a nice home in a palace. I tell him which one and ask if he lived there. He says he did, but it didn’t mean anything to him.

  Then he blurts out, “Do you think I killed a lot of people?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He pauses for a moment.

  “You’re right, I did,” he says. “But if you want to control this country, you have to kill a lot of people.”

  We start talking about current events. I ask him, “What’s the story about weapons of mass destruction?”

  “I wanted them.”

  “Did you get them?”

  “No.”

  “So why did you kind of lead everybody on that you had weapons of mass destruction?”

  “Well, that was for the Iranians. I never thought you, the Americans, would believe it.”

  It’s the last conversation I have with him. He doesn’t come back for the next appointment because the Iraqis hang him.

  Contrary to popular belief, we treat our prisoners well—treat them to the same level of medical care given to our own soldiers. When the International Committee of the Red Cross comes to me and says I have to provide cataract surgery for a guy who’s incarcerated, I tell them no.

  “We don’t do cataract surgery,” I say. “By law, we have to do everything we would do for our soldiers, in country.”

  “But he needs it.”

  “We don’t do it. Nobody gets it. And we’re not going to medevac him to Germany.”

  A group from the UN comes to see me, wanting to inspect our hospitals in Baghdad. The UN had an office there that was bombed, and the bombing killed a lot of people. The UN left Iraq, and before they come back, they want to evaluate the hospitals to see if they meet the UN’s standard of care for their staff.

  “We’re the US Army,” I tell them. “Our military hospital system is the best.”

  “Well, we have to check.”

  “You’re not checking. If you don’t want to come to us, feel free to go to the Iraqi hospital. We’re happy to treat you, whatever you want, but I’m not being critiqued by you.”

  They go to our hospitals.

  The general in charge of the prison rotates out and is replaced by another guy. I have him over at my house for dinner one night and tell him the story about Saddam.

  “Oh, my God,” he says. “Did you take notes? Write everything down?”

  “No.”

  “You could have got more information out of him than anybody else.”

  “I would have, but the guy before you kept calling me all the time, telling me to hurry up.”

  The general sighs, looking dejected. “I could have given you great questions to ask.”

  “Too late now,” I say. “It’s over.”

  This is what happens when command changes: so do policies.

  My sleeping habits in Iraq were horrendous. We worked 24/7, literally. We had to monitor all area hospitals and all the helicopter traffic, including Kuwait and Qatar. I had a total of about five thousand people working for me. Although I was stationed at Victory, I was on the move four to five days a week. I would sleep no more than three hours at a time. When I would wake up in the middle of the night, most times in the bed in my office, I would walk into the operation center and check out what was going on.

  When I finally get back home, to Palm Beach, I often find myself wide-awake at two o’clock in the morning. I do a lot of walking on the beach.

  I was the first Army Medical Department major general to ever deploy in combat in the history of US warfare. During my command in Iraq, I had the highest survival rate in the history of warfare—93 percent. My rank helped. It allowed me to make decisions on the ground. The trauma board we conducted, where we reviewed what worked, what didn’t, the best ways to care for a patient, the drugs we were using—all these decisions were implemented immediately in theater. Because of my rank, I had the authority to directly implement changes.

  Tonight, as I’m walking along the beach, the sky is beautiful and clear, the moon glistening over the calm, still waters. It’s very serene. I think about how, for over a year, I couldn’t go anywhere alone—I certainly couldn’t walk anywhere by myself at night.

  And here I am outside, walking along this beach in freedom, and it brings tears to my eyes. Most people don’t recognize or understand what we have here, in the United States.

  PART THREE:

  IN COUNTRY

  STEVEN DOMOKOS

  Steven Domokos grew up in Rochester, New York. He and his sister were raised by their grandparents and were the first in their family to get college educations. He joined the Army in 2004 and served for thirteen years. He left the service as a sergeant first class.

  My first night in country and we’re lost in Iraq.

  Fifteen trucks, about half of which are tractor trailers, are stuck at a dead-end road. I get out of my vehicle, remembering all the security training I got beforehand—looking at your five meters, looking at your ten meters, and then looking at your thirty meters because the last thing you want to do is get out of your vehicle and walk onto a roadside bomb.

  It’s pitch-black outside. I’ve got my M249 light machine gun locked and loaded. I’ve got no idea what’s going on. The only thing I do know is that there are ten-story buildings on either side of us. There are a lot of windows in those buildings, a lot of places for the bad guys to hide.

  If you want to ambush an American convoy, what better opportunity than right now, when we’re stuck at a dead end?

  I’ve got my weapon trained on the windows, waiting to hear the snaps and crack
s of gunshots.

  Then I start thinking about that blown-up tanker we saw on the side of the road, on our way here. It sat there, destroyed, smoldering. If someone here shoots an RPG at the convoy, we’re screwed.

  I’m twenty years old and absolutely terrified.

  We’re there for a total of maybe two minutes. It feels like two hours. We drive on to Abu Ghraib without incident.

  Three days later, I’m standing in the chow line at our forward operating base when I hear something tumbling rapidly toward us. I look up and maybe fifteen, twenty feet above my head is a stream of smoke.

  Then I hear this deafening explosion.

  It doesn’t take long to find out what happened: an RPG hit a storage area packed with ridiculously large and heavy US government shipping containers holding various equipment and supplies we need to deliver all over Iraq. If that RPG exploded five feet short of its destination, it would have killed me and everyone else standing in the chow line.

  That’s when I realize that I may not be going back home. That there are things here that are out of my control. Random. For all I know, I could die while taking a shit in a porta-john. If that happens, what will they tell my family? Your kid died in combat. Well, sort of. Not really.

  But it’s a reminder of something I thought a lot about right before I left, which is that I need to be safe. Precautious. That’s why when I wake up to take a leak at 0130 in the morning, I don’t leave the hooch without my flak vest, Kevlar, and weapon.

  We start getting mortared. Then we receive word that a group of Al-Qaeda fighters is approaching our base. I’m ordered to go with Sergeant Heath Jewitt to a designated tower.

  Our FOB is roughly the length of one and a half football fields and probably just as wide. The towers, about twenty-five feet tall, are on the corresponding corners of the base. I run, dressed in full battle rattle, and I’m carrying three hundred rounds of ammo—and I’m all of a whopping 160 pounds. By the time I reach the tower, I’m tired.

  We start receiving gunfire.

  We get a call on the radio that there’s a firefight between the local police and Al-Qaeda. I can see it; the firefight is happening about fifty meters from our location. Our quick reaction force, we’re told, is responding.

  We start receiving gunfire.

  We don’t return it. We haven’t been given the green light yet. It’s 2006, and at this point in the war, we’re under strict protocols when it comes to the rules of engagement.

  The bad guys keep shooting at us.

  I can see the muzzle flashes. I know exactly where the gunfire is coming from.

  “Sergeant Jewitt, I’m locked and loaded. What do you want me to do?”

  “We have to wait,” he replies.

  We don’t want to do the wrong thing, so we wait.

  For an hour.

  Sitting there as it turns dark, unable to return fire and waiting for one of these freaking AK bullets to go through my head because we’re all wearing these bullcrap helmets—it’s the scariest moment of my life.

  Holy shit. I’ve just got here, and I’ve got a year of this.

  MIKE EVANS

  Mike Evans grew up on the South Side of Chicago. In 1987, during his junior year in high school, he dropped out, wanting to join the Army. Because he was seventeen, his mother had to sign enlistment paperwork. Mike served in the Army as an 11 Bravo infantryman and left the service as a staff sergeant. He now works in law enforcement.

  Captain Flowers is doing paperwork when I enter his office. He’s got a TV on top of his filing cabinet, and it’s turned to the news, to the civil unrest unfolding in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. It’s 1992, and the country is gripped by famine and conflict.

  While two warlords fight each other for the role of dictator, dozens and dozens of smaller factions are thwarting the United Nations’ humanitarian efforts, hijacking and looting food convoys. The pictures of the starving Somalis—I’ve never seen anything that horrible. It’s like the worst nightmare courtesy of National Geographic.

  I’m watching a Somali manning a weapon mounted in the back of a pickup truck when the captain says, “We’re going to wind up over there.”

  He’s probably right. In fact, I know he is.

  I’ve been trained to fight a conventional ground war against the Russians. During training, we shot at plastic targets dressed in green uniforms and green helmets with a red star on the front. If I’m sent to Somalia, I’ll be fighting guys dressed in civilian clothing and running around with guns and guys firing guns mounted in pickup trucks.

  “Sergeant,” he says, leaning back in his chair, “I’ve got an anti-tank section that I want to turn into a reconnaissance section, for my company. The battalion commander has already signed off on it.”

  That last part doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Gordy Flowers, Alpha Company, 2/87 company commander, is a fireball of energy and charisma. Whenever you debate him on a topic, you best be squared away because he’ll find a chink in your armor and crush you. He wins a lot of arguments.

  “I want you,” he says, “to take it over.”

  That surprises me—and not in a good way. His anti-tank section has got a bad reputation as a dumping ground for problem soldiers or those who are struggling. I have a good reputation, and it comes from the best platoon in the battalion.

  And now he wants to send me there?

  “So,” he says, smiling. “Can you fix this thing for me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I’m barely twenty-two years old.

  I grew up on the southwest side of Chicago in this very, very tight-knit Irish community where young people were expected to be able to handle themselves. Dad wasn’t around much, Mom was struggling to raise three kids. I wasn’t a good student. I had problems focusing in class; I daydreamed a lot, fought even more. I knew the college life wasn’t for me—one of several reasons why I dropped out of my junior year in high school.

  I needed to do something real—in the real world. Something as far away from my past, my neighborhood—and from Chicago—as possible.

  From a young age, my dad introduced me to military movies and documentaries. I’d watched a story on 60 Minutes about the Army’s Ranger school and thought, Now that is real courage. That is a real challenge. And the guys, how they carried themselves, looking larger than life and sharp in their perfect uniforms—something about that personality type, that life, attracted me.

  So I joined the Army. That day on the bus, driving away from home, I was scared to death, but I also realized that this was my chance to start over, turn myself into the person I wanted to become.

  After basic training, I decided to go out for one of the riskiest jobs in the Army: a scout platoon in a light infantry company. These were the guys who acted as the eyes and ears of a battalion commander. You went out in five-man squads, anywhere from three to five klicks, and reported back. Out there on your own on the battlefield, you had to be extremely resourceful. Nobody was coming to help you.

  I went out for it, got it, then got assigned to the scout platoon 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry. I was seventeen.

  And I still felt I had something to prove. The Army sent me to Ranger school, and I graduated at nineteen. Now I’m twenty-two, a doggone staff sergeant, and I’ve been asked to turn around thirteen men, whip them into shape.

  I have no idea how to do it.

  I seek out a previous leader of mine, a guy who is one of the hardest people I’ve ever worked for: Archie Spinner. I tell him about the section I’m about to take over and ask him what I should do.

  “What you’ve got to be,” he says, “is a Bic lighter. You’ve got to be able to light these guys up and then shut it off. You’ve got to ask them how their day is going and how things are at home and really care. You go in there with standards so high they can’t possibly reach them, and then you slowly lower them until they do. Then watch how their pride changes.”

  A week later, in early December, we receive word that we
’re going to deploy to Somalia. I’m given some early intel—aerial photography from satellites showing a bunch of bandits setting up roadblocks in an African town called Wanlaweyn. Hardly anyone can pronounce it, so we call it Wally World.

  “Roadblocks aren’t uncommon there,” Captain Flowers says, surveying the photos. “As to whether or not they’re preparing for our arrival, we don’t know.”

  I nod, studying the roadblocks and the bandit patrols and the fortified positions the Somalis have set up in Wally World. My unit will be flying into an airfield southeast of Mogadishu called Baledogle. We’re told that Somalia’s most powerful warlord, General Mohamed Farrah Aidid, is using the airfield to supply his troops with weapons and plants called khat. The leaves contain a stimulant that causes excitement and, supposedly, euphoria. Aidid’s soldiers chew on them to stay awake and alert.

  “We’ve gotta get your boys on the ground first,” Flowers tells me. “We need to scout all this stuff here, to figure out what’s going on in the city.”

  For the next two weeks, I train my men and plan and prep recon missions. We don’t know what the topography is like, and we don’t know how we’re going to infiltrate this town after we land our C-130 on the airstrip ten miles away.

  The day we fly out, Lieutenant Colonel James Sikes, 2/87 Battalion commander, delivers his speech. “This isn’t some humanitarian mission like you boys did in southern Florida after Hurricane Andrew. This is a combat deployment. You’re watching the news, you see what’s going on—you know there’s a recipe for something bad happening here. We’ve got to be on our toes.”

  My men are lined up and dressed in what we call battle rattle—they’re wearing their full gear. As I do pre-combat inspections, I remind them to take the humanitarian stuff out of the mission because the news is reporting more and more violence. I’ve got to get them in the right mindset because we’re going in hot.

  I climb aboard the C-130, feeling anxious. Showtime, I think. If you’ve got something to prove, this is where you prove it.