Carnivore Read online

  Between the intersection Broadhead and I were watching and Williams’s palm grove, the rest of Crazy Horse Troop was seeing small groups of enemy dismounts attacking their positions. There was no shortage of concealment for soldiers who wanted to fight in an urban environment—ditches, walls, vehicles—but none of it provided cover for the soldiers when we started lighting them up with our heavy weapons. Whether they were on foot, in vehicles, or in sandbagged observation posts (OPs), we had the right medicine for the job. If 7.62 or .50-cal coax wasn’t enough, we had 25 mm HE and DU. If that didn’t do the trick, the M1’s 120 mm HEAT rounds proved quite effective. When all else failed, or the distance was a bit much, it was only the matter of a few minutes to call in mortars.

  Sergeant Christner, standing in the hatch of his Bradley early that evening, spotted an Iraqi OP (Observation Post) on a hilltop to our front. He couldn’t tell if it was occupied, but he couldn’t leave it alone. He called in a fire mission for Bennett’s mortars, and after fifteen rounds the OP was no more.

  I was on the command net when I heard a contact report of tanks moving on Apache Troop. It looked like they were in for the big tank battle we’d all been expecting since we started rolling on Baghdad. Iraqi armor was finally going to stand and fight. We could only listen on the radio, and while Apache had their work cut out for them, the engagement was almost completely one-sided.

  The Iraqis had the numbers, and they had equipment enough to do us serious damage, but they didn’t seem to have the skill or training to do battle with us. I don’t know if a T-72 main gun round can get through an M1’s armor, but it will sure as hell kill a Bradley. RPGs were flying around like mosquitoes during some of the fighting I saw, and a direct hit by one of them probably would have taken us out, but the Iraqis couldn’t shoot worth a damn. Those 17 or so RPG warheads that did hit us directly didn’t do much at all, because they hadn’t been armed—the Iraqis firing them had forgotten to take the pins out. We fought an army in Iraq, but it wasn’t a very professional or well-trained one.

  CHAPTER 17

  IRAQI BULLFIGHTING

  White 4, let’s check out the vehicle for intelligence,” I said to Broadhead on the radio. The last troop truck we’d shot up on the road was still in good shape, and there was a chance we’d find some useful documents. We weren’t any busier during the night than when the sun was out, but our night vision and thermal sights gave us a definite advantage.

  “Copy that.”

  We moved up carefully, side by side, tank and Bradley, and just as we got to the truck, a guy inside jumped up and aimed an AK.

  “Contact!” Broadhead yelled reflexively and shot him with his own AK. M4s work very well, but we never had any shortage of loaded AK magazines lying around. Broadhead and I had been just about out of ammo for our vehicles more times than we would care to remember, so it was good having at least one gun on board for which there was always a ready supply of ammunition.

  There was nothing of intel value in the troop truck, so I saddled back up and we returned to our checkpoint. As soon as we got there, a round whinged off my turret.

  “Sniper!” I called out and tried to spot him. Gunshots echo weirdly when there are walls for sound to bounce off, so it wasn’t a simple thing to pinpoint even the direction from which the sound came. I looked across the road at Broadhead, but he just shook his head. With all the trees and houses in the area, it was going to be hard to find this guy. As I was scanning the area, looking for movement or a muzzle flash, trying to get my eye on him, another round cracked past my head and hit something very close. I turned to see that my matching unit was gone.

  I could only stare. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  That’s right—I’d lost my radio antenna. Another one! How many did that make? I’d lost count. Now he had me pissed.

  “Soprano! Get on the thermal and find me this fucker so I can kill him. He took out our matching unit. I’m gonna see if I can fix it.” While I worked on the radio using an equal amount of tools and cursing, Soprano used the thermal sight to scan the area.

  “Sergeant Jay, got a guy on foot walking toward us, about two hundred yards out. He’s moving slow and creeping along.”

  “He armed?”

  There was a pause, then Soprano was back. “I can’t tell.”

  I sat and thought for a second, then got on the thermal sight myself. “Sperry,” I said to my driver, “cut the engine.”

  As soon as the engine died the guy hit the ground. He was in a large field, cutting directly across it toward us.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t look suspicious at all.” I got Broadhead on the radio. “White 4, I think I have the sniper on foot, moving toward us, but so far I haven’t spotted a weapon.” I gave him direction and distance.

  The Iraqi stayed down until I had Sperry start up the engine again. Through the thermal sight I saw him get back up to his feet and start slowly walking our way. I smiled. “Sperry, kill it again.”

  When the engine died a second time, the Iraqi was about 100 yards out in the dark, and he immediately dropped to the ground again. I tried not to laugh. We waited for five minutes, but the soldier was patient.

  “Okay, start ’er back up,” I told Sperry.

  This time, when the Iraqi climbed to his feet and started heading our way again, I could see that he had a rifle.

  One man with a rifle, who probably couldn’t even see us yet, wasn’t an immediate threat, so I had the time to call Captain McCoy on the radio. “Sir, I have ID’d a man with a rifle, and he is working his way to me.”

  We weren’t in the middle of nowhere, we were right outside Baghdad, so McCoy wanted to give the guy every opportunity to prove he was drunk, or lost, or planning to surrender if that’s what his intention was. “Red 2, wait as long as you can before engaging him, to verify he has hostile intent.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Ten minutes later the Iraqi was within 40 meters of my position, and both Broadhead and I were watching him through our thermal sights. I watched him bring his rifle up and fire it at my Bradley. The clink of the bullet bouncing off the armor was barely audible over the sound of the engine.

  Time to call McCoy back. “Sir, the dismount has just fired on my vehicle.”

  McCoy came over the radio net in a very tired voice. “Red 2, roger that. Take him out, quickly.”

  I called Broadhead. “White 4, I’m going to take this knucklehead out, you watch the rest of the area to make sure he didn’t bring any friends to the party.”

  “Copy, Red 2, I’m tired of watching this show anyway, time to change the channel.” By this time everybody in the platoon in view was watching this guy doing his best ninja-in-the-dark, you-can’t-see-me impersonation. Hell, there was nothing else to watch.

  With Broadhead providing overwatch, I gave Soprano the order. “Go to coax, range less than one hundred, and fire.”

  “Finally.” Soprano fired a 10-round burst and the soldier hit the ground. There was nothing for two seconds, then the Iraqi climbed to his feet. He took one step toward us—gotta admire the balls or wonder at the lack of brains—and I was about to tell Soprano to give him another burst, when suddenly there was a smear of white (heat) across the thermals.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Charging from out of nowhere, a bull rammed the Iraqi at full speed and flipped him up in the air with his horns. The Iraqi landed hard. That was the second of the cattle-initiated ambushes I saw in Iraq.

  “Holy crap. Did you see that?” I asked Broadhead.

  The bull came nosing back to check out his handiwork as the soldier got unsteadily back to his feet, and when the bull came close enough he stabbed it. The bull ran off with a snort, and the Iraqi, using his rifle as a crutch, started heading for us again. He’d barely taken two quivering steps when the bull charged up again and hit him sideways, flipping him into the air like a rag doll. That bull was pissed off, and as soon as the Iraqi landed the bull proceeded to stomp him.
Everybody in the troop was in hysterics, laughing all across the radio net.

  The Iraqi started crawling toward us and the bull gored him, flipped him up, and carried him around on his horns for a while, until there was no doubt the man was dead. The bull then flipped him off his horns and stomped him again. I had tears running down my cheeks, I was laughing so hard. The bull kept at it for hours—it would stomp him and snort, then run around the field for a while, then come back and stomp him some more. Note to self: never stab a bull, it’ll just piss him off.

  The next morning that soldier was all of about three inches thick. Our medics were able to approach the bull and treat his stab wound, and for the rest of the time we were in that area we kept him around as a kind of mascot and protected him. We wouldn’t let Iraqis or the other soldiers mess with him—he was an honorary member of Crazy Horse Troop. We gave him all the water we could and any vegetables we could find.

  The rifle that soldier had been carrying was a really nice World War II–era .303 British Lee-Enfield, so I kept it for a while. The Lee-Enfield SMLE was the main battle rifle of British troops in World War II, a 10-shot bolt-action rifle that many experts thought was the best of its type. Later in the war I was shooting RPG guys at 200-plus meters with it. When that .303 bullet hit them they stayed down for good.

  That morning Sully and Sperry were at each other’s throats. I’d been watching it build for four or five days and kept intervening, hoping that they’d burn each other out. It didn’t happen. Sully was a teenage smartass and Sperry was a bit of a punching bag, so Sully would always take jabs at him. The fact that we didn’t have people trying to kill us every second meant that they had time to fight each other.

  I got up to do my watch in the turret, and Sperry was up front where he was supposed to be. Sully decided to talk some shit to him and was walking around the front of the Bradley talking to him through the driver’s hatch.

  “Asshole.”

  “Fuck you, you’re a piece of shit,” Sperry shot back.

  Well, Sully then decided to spit on him. I froze.

  When Sully spit on him, Sperry went red, screaming and yelling, and climbed out of his hatch, ready to commit murder. I had to jump off the top of the vehicle and put my hand on Sperry’s chest, push him back.

  “Knock this bullshit off!” I told him, and shot a murderous look at Sully, too. “The two of you have to stop fucking fighting, you’ve got to depend on one another. We’ve got people out there trying to kill us. I don’t have time for this schoolyard shit.”

  Sperry took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay, Sergeant Jay, I’m sorry, I lost my head, I just hate him sometimes.” He was still shaking.

  I said, “Relax, Sperry, it’s not that bad.”

  So Sperry sat back in his hatch, and I got back on top of the turret. Sully walked by Sperry on the ground and said, “Good thing he stopped you, I was about to fuck you up, fat boy.”

  Sperry grabbed the hatch to the Bradley, started slamming it up and down as hard as he could, banging his head against the periscope, screaming at the top of his lungs.

  Boys.

  That afternoon First Sergeant Grigges called and ordered us to pull back to the Crazy Horse Café, our supply point. We didn’t need much ammo at all, but we were low on fuel from idling our engines to power our vehicle. The first place we headed was the fuel truck. There we saw Sergeant John Williams and the Casanova; it was the first time I had a chance to talk to him in person since the war started.

  Our two crews sat down under a palm tree and talked about home—what we missed and what we were going to do when we got back. The longer we talked, the more people showed up, sat down, and started reminiscing. Other than family, beer, and women, food was what everyone missed. MREs will keep you alive and aren’t bad if you only eat one or two, but after months of nothing but MREs we hated the fucking things. We once went two days without eating the main courses, because all we had left were MREs with Chicken à la King entrées—and they were just horrible. The worst.

  “What I miss is the Hooters in Savannah,” Sully said with a smile. “I really miss those wings.” He was the one who’d grabbed the Hooters flag for us to display proudly across the Carnivore in the photo taken at As Samawah.

  “What you miss is Lulu,” I told him. Lulu was one of the hotties working there that he’d mentioned more than once. “And it wasn’t wings, I think it was breasts and thighs.” That got a laugh.

  My eatery of choice was Sonny’s Bar-B-Q in Hinesville, Georgia, and their Big Deal, a pulled pork sandwich to die for. Several of the guys sitting around gave Sonny’s raves.

  “Y’all don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sergeant Jason Raab told us. “The only place to go in Hinesville is Gilly’s. Now that’s a country bar.”

  “Any of you guys ever go to Doc Holliday’s in Jesup?” John Williams asked us. “I want one of their big fat T-bones. That’s real food.”

  Sergeant First Class Bennett wandered away from his mortar track long enough to join the conversation. “Food? Naw—all I want is to get back to the new Bass Pro Shop in Savannah,” he told us. We passed as much time as we could, talking about home, good food, and loose women.

  We actually got to bathe, then, for the first time since the war had started. There was a canal nearby, so we all stripped down and washed ourselves as best we could. Soprano ended up riding around on the shoulders of one of Christener’s guys, both of them completely naked, blowing off steam like drunk frat boys. We tried to clean our uniforms a little, get the stink and dirt and sweat out of them, because when all the washing was over we were going to have to put back on the same uniforms we’d been wearing for a week straight. Why?

  Remember how I mentioned that all of our duffel bags were strapped around the outside of the Carnivore’s turret as we rolled into Iraq? Well, when the bullets and RPGs started flying in As Samawah, none of us ended up with a piece of spare clothing that didn’t have 10 bullet holes in it. We wore the same uniforms for weeks, and seeing as my toiletries were also in my duffel bag, I didn’t shave for three months.

  Before long it was time to head back to our checkpoints. Williams would head back north and I would move south and set up with Broadhead again.

  For two days Broadhead and I and our crews sat out in the sun and had only limited contact. Having to shoot up charging vehicles or dismounted soldiers several times a day was practically a vacation after what we’d been through. Most of the vehicles we saw, however, were civilians just trying to get from one part of Baghdad to another. Before we let them through our checkpoint, we would search their vehicle. I don’t know whose idea it was, but before too long, to indicate that the vehicle had been searched and the occupants were okay, we began spray-painting Nowatay, our Indian-skull insignia, on their vehicles. That pissed off the Iraqis at first, but before long they stopped putting up a fuss. Turned out that our insignia on their vehicle saved them a lot of hassle at subsequent checkpoints, because the other units knew we didn’t fuck around. If we spray-painted a vehicle, it was okay. Soon, we had Iraqis driving up in brand-new Mercedeses and BMWs, asking us to spray-paint Nowatay on them. I wonder if any of them are still driving around Baghdad.

  We spent a while doing “blocking moves,” setting up checkpoints in different spots around the city to control access. Command sent Broadhead and me out to an intersection one day, and as I rolled up toward the position we were supposed to secure I saw an Iraqi BMP with some dead guys hanging out of it. I could tell just by looking at them that they stunk, badly, and we scared away some dogs that were chewing on them.

  When I had Sperry pull the Bradley up just far enough for Broadhead to do overwatch with me, Broadhead had to park next to the BMP.

  “Red 2, you want to move forward, I’ve got some dead bodies over here stinking up the whole street,” he called.

  “Negative, sorry. I’m where I need to be in case anybody rolls up and we need to engage them.”

  It was a hot day, and it w
asn’t very long before he called me again on the radio. “Red 2, you need to move up, we can’t sit here.”

  “White 4, Red 2, that’s a negative. I’m in the right position. I cannot move forward.”

  The stench must have been incredible, because finally Broadhead sent out a couple of his guys. They pulled the bodies out of the BMP and buried them in shallow graves, covering them up with enough sand to cover the smell. I waited until they had them covered up, and then I moved forward. As I may have mentioned, sometimes I’m an asshole. But it was funny.

  So I moved forward, and Broadhead moved up behind me. We were sitting off to one side of what would be an Iraqi freeway. There was a big truck sitting nearby, a tractor trailer with a sunroof and a flat nose. It had been shot up and disabled, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

  After a couple of hours, Sperry announced that he had to take a dump. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle does not have a toilet. We had an ammo can to use if we had to, but we hated to use it. Considering our cramped interior was already filled with sweaty, unwashed bodies, the last thing we needed was someone doing that. There weren’t any convenient Porta-Johns, and I wasn’t about to let him go inside a building, out of my sight. So he headed for the disabled truck.

  Sperry climbed on top of the cab of the truck and took care of his business, which fell through the sun roof onto the driver’s seat. He finished up, wiped himself with whatever he had at hand there, and walked back to the Bradley.

  That afternoon, two Iraqi guys came walking up. “Mister, Mister,” they called to us, and pointed to the truck.

  “Yeah, sure, help yourself,” I told them, waving them on. They walked over to the truck and started checking it out, seeing what was damaged, maybe what they could steal from it or strip off it. Baghdad was pretty much a free-for-all at that point and we were letting the locals do whatever they wanted to as long as they weren’t trying to kill us. The two of them were wearing the traditional outfit a lot of Iraqi men wore. I’m sure there’s an Arabic name for it, but I just called it the Iraqi man-dress. Usually white, it draped down to their shoes and looked like a baggy dress.