Embedded Ones (eBook)

Chapter 1:
IRAQ

The heavily armed Humvee was leading a convoy of five, rolling along north on highway Tampa just south of Baghdad. I had been riding shotgun for a change. Ordinarily embedded journalists were given a seat in the rear vehicle, possibly to protect them, but who knows. An immediate halt was called as a warning came in over the radio. The driver slammed on the brakes just as a huge explosion erupted not a hundred feet ahead of our vehicle. The turret gunner, a gung ho Blackwater type began dripping blood.

“What the fuck”, yelled the driver. “Those motherfucking ragheads will nail us all, the cocksuckers.”

Lt. Raft, the CO in the following Humvee pulled up alongside to speak with the driver who had been warned via radio of a possible IED near the overpass a hundred yards ahead. He was accompanied by his driver, as well as his interpreter, a female from Baghdad named Anne who was remarkedly beautiful.

“Fuck me” yelled Lt. Raft. “If we hadn’t stopped when we had, they’d have taken out half the convoy.”

He quickly ordered a medic from the following Humvee to attend to the wounded gunner in our vehicle, then surveyed the occupants of the other Humvees to be sure there were no more casualties from flying shrapnel. The men were ordered to survey the area and stop any traffic that was still moving on the highway. A cloud of black smoke drifted off to the right as the men continued to search. The wounded gunner was bandaged up but left at his station. He said it would require more than that to take him out.

“See if you can find a wire leading from the blast.” said Lt. Raft to one of his men.

A wire was quickly located leading down below the underpass, along the bottom of a small gulley and toward a farmhouse, perhaps a quarter mile east of Tampa Highway. Lt. Raft quickly organized a small patrol to explore that area. Beyond the house in the distance a white car was slowly backing away and then disappeared down a narrow back road. The troops followed the wire along the gulley, which deepened before gradually leveling off on the terrain leading to the seemingly abandoned farmhouse.

Lt. Raft took the lead and entered the barn yard compound. He fired a couple of warning shots to let it be known that armed men were nearby.

A thorough search of the area turned up an empty wire spool, an old light switch along with a half empty water bottle. Further east of the abandoned house was a deep canal with very high reeds along each bank making a thorough search nearly impossible with the number of men that the LT had under his command.

“It looks like he may have panicked when he saw us stop, then blew it off and ran. That’s common procedure for these fuckers. They don’t want to leave any material behind that can be traced,” said Lt. Raft, who then ordered two teams of two men each to reconnoiter this side of the canal. After finding nothing but a trail through bent reeds the men returned to the farmhouse and rolled up the trip wire. Lt. Raft radioed his men who had remained on the highway to thoroughly search the area of the explosion to determine it was safe to let the traffic begin flowing.

I was thinking that we were damn lucky, that I was damn lucky. We could have been right over the explosion if there’d been no warning, and how often did that happen? I’d have to check that out with Maj. Webster, the Public Affairs officer for the 10th Mountain Division, when we returned to Camp Victory. And something else came to mind. If this keeps up I’d remain as lucky as I’d been in Viet Nam. Hardly a wound there that wasn’t self-inflicted.

I was damn lucky in another way. A good forty years had gone by since I left for Viet Nam back in the Sixties. Back then I always had in the back of my head to somehow work as a war reporter. I ‘d even bought two Miranda cameras at the PX in Saigon preparing for that dream. But they were long gone, worn out in the peacetime world. The digital age had arrived, so they’d been replaced by a basic Cannon. Not a high-end Nikon that’s expected of one on this trail, but it does the job. At any rate I had arrived in Baghdad as an embedded journalist and had to admit it was great to be back in the Army. I should say, with the Army, which in itself was something I could never have imagined. During those long-ago years I was anything but a true believer in the ’Green Machine’, or the cause it was fighting for. There were similarities with this present operation here in Iraq, but I enjoyed being a participating journalist none the less.

“I’ll tell you what Bill Collins, I’ll back you. In fact, I’ll back an old Viet Nam vet anytime.”

This from Maj. Jess Connors, the CO of the Public Affairs office in Baghdad who I was on the phone with, that credentialed embedded journalist for positions with the US military in Iraq in 2006. The credentialing procedures were taking so much time that I was growing impatient. I’d asked her if I should buy a ticket to Kuwait where military flights originated to the Baghdad Airport, since I had a cheap reservation in hand.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ll take care of things at this end. When you arrive in BIAP have them call this office and I’ll send someone over to pick you up. If possible, send me an email when you reach Kuwait.” And that was that. The Major had taken care of it.

Tampa highway I might add was a copy of the Interstates in the US. Four lanes with all the trappings. It didn’t resemble the roadways in the Viet Nam of the Sixties, or the Viet Nam of today for that matter. Baghdad resembled the new and changing Saigon, now appropriately renamed Ho Chi Minh City, more than my old stamping grounds in the small, off limits village of Tam Hiep, some miles to the north. Much of Baghdad resembled Los Angles more than say Deadwood, SD. The point I’m trying to make is, Baghdad isn’t a cluster of thatched roofed huts that can be napalmed away at will. This is a complicated metropolitan center in a modern country.

Lt. Raft radioed his men who had remained on the highway, which was returning to normal after the close call. That kind of day is normal for the people of Iraq and the American military men who travel up and down Tampa on a regular basis.

“Well, it turned out to not be as boring as it looked when we started out,” said Lt Raft to me, “Perhaps you made out better than those NY Times dudes who got you bounced from the flight to Yusufiyah.”

He was referring to Michael Kamber and Demian and Diana Cave who were covering the main story for that newspaper. Since they were from the Times, I was bumped from a scheduled Blackhawk flight down in the vicinity of Malibu Highway along the Euphrates River. A search was underway in that area for three men of the Tenth Mountain Division who were presumed captured days earlier when four of their compatriots were killed on an attack on their guard post on Highway Malibu, now considered the most dangerous roadway in Iraq. I was learning that a stringer for small town newspapers must learn to be humble.

The story of the missing men was becoming front page news worldwide. Lucky for me to have shown up when I did. This was my second embed with the 10th Mountain’s 2nd Combat Brigade commanded by Col. Keith Michaels. I’d entered Iraq on that first trip a couple of weeks before Christmas 2006 and was posted with the 25th Infantry up near Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.

During the Viet Nam war I’d been on patrols with the 25th when they were based in Cu Chi, so I had been looking forward to an interesting embed. It was, to a point. The unit was in some sort of Command-and-Control position, but mostly they guarded their perimeter. Nice people but I never could figure out what the hell they were actually doing there. The only way outside of the wire was by armed convoy. This seemed absurd to me, having a Viet Nam war background, where one could practically have run of the country if he half tried.

From Tikrit I flew up to Kirkuk and made short embeds from the Public Affairs office, which was somewhat interesting and informative, to a degree. Kirkuk was a junky town, but there was more opportunity to get out in public and see what was going on. One thing, it sure didn’t look like there was a lot of fucking going on, but you can’t have everything. There was no contact with the local girls and it didn’t appear as if much was going on either in the new ‘co-ed’ army. I’d heard that the Top Brass was tending toward evangelical which was too bad. I’d met some great girls who wore the uniform. Some beautiful girls.

Once while covering a local political upgrade by military ‘specialists’ who were promoting ‘democracy’ in Kirkuk, I met a couple of Kurdish girls who leaned toward the hot side…to say the least. They came to work in burkas but dropped the cover inside the building, wearing makeup, lowcut blouses and tight jeans. It did look like there was some life up here in Kirkuk after all…for the young guys.

Back in Baghdad I picked up a short embed with the 10th Mountain before flying home for Christmas. They’re headquartered at Ft. Drum in the States near Watertown, NY where I was able to sign on with their local paper as a stringer. I was fortunate in having had this short embed since it led to my being posted to this unit when returning in the Spring.

The next morning after checking in early I was sent along with the Brigade Commander, Col. Keith Michaels, on a Blackhawk flight to the nearby town of Yusufiyah for a closer look at the site where his four men were killed, and...