AJC.com > Iraq coverage > Blog > Archives > 2005 > July > 08
Friday, July 8, 2005
Killing field belies pastoral setting
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mahmudiyah, Iraq — The droning sound of swarming flies gave the soldiers their first sign they were approaching a human dumping ground.
As a group of 10 Georgia Army National Guard soldiers walked along a narrow dirt road at the edge of a farm field near sunset, the pastoral setting was reminiscent of just about anywhere in the central or southern part of their home state.
Doves and swallows flitted overhead and a white egret walked stealthily along the overgrown edges of an irrigation canal, looking for frogs, fish or other prey.
These soldiers couldn’t be sure whether they were the hunters or the hunted on this orange evening. Earlier Thursday, soldiers patrolling this same area became targets for insurgent mortars and guns.
Now, with their own weapons drawn, they followed a set of fresh tire tracks along the canal. The tracks ended where the cloud of black flies began.
“This one looks like he’s been here for awhile, maybe a few weeks,” said Staff Sgt. Sean Sibert, 36, a leathery-skinned former landscaper from Martinez, as he surveyed the headless, decomposing body of an adult male on the muddy bank of the canal below.
Then, turning to his left, he pointed out another shallow grave. A few steps beyond, he knelt at a fresh pool of blood and a knotted leather belt.
“They bound this guy’s hands with his own belt before they killed him,” Sibert said. “Then they dumped him in the canal, too.”
The soldiers found eight bodies before dusk. They suspect scores more may be concealed by tall grass and weeds in the rural killing field south of Baghdad. Other soldiers aren’t so sure and guess the corpses they saw are the only ones they’re going to see at this quiet, horrid place.
They planned to go back the following day, or the day after that, to perform a more thorough search. But this isn’t CSI Baghdad, and no one really expects to solve the mystery of what happened to these people, or even identify them.
Two months into their year-long deployment in the so-called Sunni Triangle of Death south of Baghdad, soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment have already recalibrated their internal cruelty meters to the point that a mere eight executions is all in another day’s work.
In the United States, such a grisly discovery would be national news.
In Iraq, it’s a Thursday.
On the short drive back to their military home at Forward Operating Base Michael, the soldiers debated whether their find amounted to a “mass” grave.
How many bodies does it take to reach the “mass” threshold?
Do the bodies have to be buried to be a grave, or does just dumping them count?
They agreed 100 would qualify. Maybe 50. At least double figures. Probably not eight.
The mood on the ride home was strangely upbeat, as if the soldiers weren’t affected by the horror they had just witnessed.
Spc. Jeremy Greer, the irreverent scout driving the lead Humvee, smiled and waved at Iraqis congregating outside their homes near the execution site.
“How you doing, neighbor!” he’d say as the four-vehicle convoy drove past. “Betcha didn’t know about all the killing going on right in your own neighborhood. Did you?”
The Humvee’s bullet-proof windows were up, and no one could have heard Greer’s sarcastic comments over the din of their diesel engines.
Unlike other soldiers who load their vehicles with ice chests full of cold drinks, Greer and his fellow scouts stuff theirs with extra weapons. A spare shotgun, a rocket launcher designed to destroy suicide car bombs, even a sling-shot, jostled around the rear of their Humvee as it sped along rutted, rural roads.
The gunner, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Davison, tried to use the sling-shot as a non-lethal means of warning Iraqi drivers to stay away from U.S. convoys. But the toy didn’t have enough range, so he’s reverted to using heavy-duty weapons like the .50-caliber machine gun mounted in a turret atop the vehicle.
Each shot sounds like a lightning crack, and Davison, 35, of Marietta, let fly with about six single shots during the 40-minute round trip to the killing field and back.
“I wanted to use the sling-shot for warning shots,” he said. “But it can’t keep the cars far enough away. The gun sure gets their attention, though.”
Sibert, the sergeant who led two different groups of soldiers to the dead bodies Thursday, said concentrating on the military mission keeps his mind off questions like who the murdered people were, what their lives were like, or who misses them after their lives were taken so mercilessly.
Was each of them somebody’s everything?
“If you don’t personalize it, you can do your job and go on,” Sibert said. “It hurts to know that there’s nothing we can do to help the people at the bottom of that ditch. But the security of my people is paramount. Everything I do in this country is meant to bring them all home alive.”
