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Thursday, June 16, 2005
Passing time in a deadly Baghdad neighborhood
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Vianney Cornejo (left) of Marietta and Kevin Everett of Dallas man their post at a bridge overpass in Baghdad on Wednesday.
Baghdad, Iraq — At a bloodily contested highway overpass where a suicide bomber had incinerated himself and turned his car into shopping cart-sized hunks of twisted metal two days earlier, a trio of 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers look out from a machine-gun nest.
Their perch is a shabby, dusty, cement-and-sand bag lean-to on which someone has spray-painted Hotel California - an obvious reference to the “you can never leave” line in the song.
During a 12-hour watch on a blistering June day, they keep each other alert by swapping gun positions every hour while the third member of the crew rests on a cot. The off-duty soldier reads aloud tidbits from Maxim and NHM magazines and they endlessly compare the virtues of super-models, comic book figures and cruise ship destinations.
Although their mission is deadly serious - rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers are loaded and ready to fire and the soldiers suspiciously eye every approaching person and vehicle — their banal banter is typical of the ongoing military mission here: hours of stupefying boredom and discomfort mixed with ambiguity and seasoned with moments of stark terror.
“I’ll bet Mr. Incredible could kick Superman’s (butt),” says Spec. Leomar Jackson, 21, of Athens, a sunburned, square-jawed, mischievous member of the Lawrenceville-based 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment. “Throw Kryptonite at Mr. Incredible and he’ll throw it right back at you. Do that to Superman and he turns to Jell-O. Mr. Incredible doesn’t have any obvious weaknesses.”
Cpl. Kevin Everett, 27, of Dallas, Texas, a thin, taciturn soldier who is back in Iraq two months after finishing a year-long deployment on the Iran/Iraq border with an active-duty unit, originally backs Superman. But Jackson’s rant convinces him to switch to Batman.
Jackson slams that choice, too.
“You’ve got to have super powers to be a super hero,” he says, exasperated. “Batman can’t fly or spin spider webs. All he’s got is lots of money and an impressive tool belt. That’s no super hero.”
Everett, married for 10 years with three young children, gives Superman another lukewarm endorsement.
Everett’s a Dallas Cowboys fan and calls them “America’s Team.” The Man of Steel “is more all-American,” he says without conviction.
On the street below, soldiers in a pair of armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles discover a pair of rocket propelled grenades in a farm field about 100 yards from the highway. They call an explosives team to destroy the weapons.
Then Vianney Cornejo, 27, a glib El Salvador native who lives in Marietta and has a penchant for singing hip-hop tunes in Spanish, weighs in on the comics question.
“I like Batman because he’s a real man,” the machine gunner says, his weapon resting atop a pile of green, nylon sandbags. “He may not have super powers, but that just makes him more realistic. He doesn’t have to go out and fight crime. He could just stay home with Alfred and Robin and chase (skirts) all day. But he fights crime because it’s the right thing to do.”
A pedestrian approaches on the highway about 200 yards from the soldiers. That’s too close, they decide. Everett doesn’t want to fire a warning shot, so he raises and lowers his jet black M-16 rifle several times in a row, displaying it to the man on the street and then pointing the barrel in his direction. The pedestrian shrugs a sad, woe-is-me kind of gesture, then turns and walks away while the soldiers resume their conversation.
What about the Incredible Hulk? Would his temper help or hurt him in a fight against Superman?
All three of these soldiers had been at the same overpass 48 hours earlier when the car bomber struck. One of their fellow soldiers pumped the driver full of lead and suffered minor injuries when the car exploded. The part they all remember is the thunderous sound and concussion.
“I’ve never heard a sound like that,” Cornejo says. “It was so loud, and you could feel it as well as hear it.”
Another sound suddenly grabs the soldiers’ attention.
A series of five or six rapid rifle shots ring out from the highway about a half-mile away. The soldiers search with binoculars but can’t spot the shooter. They watch a blue pickup truck quickly reverse direction and drive away - but they can’t tell if the shots came from inside the pickup or not.
They all say the gunshots had the distinctive, popping reports of an AK-47, the rifle of choice among Iraqis - both insurgents and police.
Overhead, a pair of heavily armed Apache helicopters orbit noisily a few hundred feet above the highway. The two-person helicopter crews are searching for the shooters, too. But the helicopters depart after about 30 minutes, apparently without success.
The explosives team arrives and prepares to blow up the grenades. Two soldiers attach a long detonation cord to the weapons, and the grenades go up in a white, smoky fizzle — not a bang.
The gun crew is disappointed with the dud grenades. But Jackson soon engages them with another rhetorical question that promises to fill the next hour at least.
“If you could take a cruise anywhere,” he asks his fellow soldiers, “where would you go? Who would you take with you? And what would you bring?”
Curtis Compton/AJC
Vianney Cornejo of Marietta jokes with his fellow soldiers while he takes his break time at the ‘Hotel California’ post. At left is Arista Cowan of Jasper.
