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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Scenes from Iraq: Life in the war zone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Reporter Dave Hirschman (left) and photographer Curtis Compton meet an Iraqi policeman.
Baghdad, Iraq — My older brother asked me halfway through this assignment whether Iraq has changed me. I answered in all sincerity at the time that one hot shower and a cold beer would cleanse me of this place forever.
After all, I’ve only been with the 48th Brigade Combat Team about three months, not the full year that soldiers must spend in the war zone. And I’m an observer, a bystander, not a combatant.
While soldiers carry rifles and kick in doors, I scribble in a notebook, usually from the safety of a distant tent, an armored Humvee or a Bradley fighting vehicle with steel sides as thick as a bank vault. But certain images — some horrible, some hilarious — won’t go away with a shower and a drink.
Georgia’s citizen soldiers, at once magnificent and petty, generous and profane, have won a special place in my heart. My mental pictures from this place come in no particular order:
— Sgt. Tim Hass, an irrepressible Cobb County motorcycle cop who recovered from a life-threatening traffic wreck just in time for military deployment, standing at the machine-gunner’s position as his Humvee enters Iraq. “Yeah! I eat pork!” the former Marine bellows in his thick Southern drawl. “Whatcha gonna do about it?”
— Maj. Matthew Saxton, the serious professional soldier from Cedartown, calmly humming the 1980s Boy George tune “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” as tracers from insurgent rifles arc over his Humvee in the middle of the night.
— The casual reaction of Cpl. Rodney Bettis, one of my tent mates, to the whistling sound and thunderous explosion of a rocket aimed at Forward Operating Base Michael. “Missed us by a mile,” he yawns.
— The popping report of an AK-47, the rifle of choice among Iraqis — insurgents, soldiers and police.
— Iraqi drivers speeding the wrong way on the highway shoulder, directly toward oncoming traffic.
— A little girl with penetrating brown eyes nobly standing by the side of the road in a vibrant, handmade yellow dress, hoping a soldier will toss food or water from a passing convoy. She looks about the same age as my daughter.
— A yellow puppy with a black face walks up to Spc. Leomar Jackson’s machine-gun nest and playfully chews on the muzzle of his rifle, then lies down and falls asleep in the shade.
— A smooth-skinned, 20-something Iraqi man with a stylish haircut, hands bound behind him, executed on a dusty, rural road. There are two gunshots in the back of his head. His fingers are broken, shoulders dislocated, burns on his arms and welts on his back. He’s wearing a red golf shirt and tan corduroys with a black leather belt cinched tight around his waist. The pants are obscenely ripped in front — a final desecration.
— Sitting in an Iraqi army general’s office with a group of heavily armed Iraqi soldiers, watching the interior minister smoke from a water pipe that looks as if it comes from a Cheech and Chong movie and wondering, “Do these guys know I’m Jewish?”
— A dozen Chevy pickups loaded with suspected insurgents, all blindfolded, heads bowed, awaiting interrogation by the Iraqi army. Jubilant Iraqi soldiers strutting like tuna fishermen unloading a bountiful catch.
— Standing at an insurgent’s abandoned lookout in a crumbling roadside hut, a stack of empty water bottles, metal cot and wood stove attesting to his patience and solitary determination. Wondering if he truly expects to find salvation by killing in this desolate spot.
— The wreckage of a suicide bomber’s white Chevrolet Suburban, no piece bigger than a shopping cart. The bomber’s charred torso, ripped from the vehicle, resting on a highway overpass 30 feet above the road where he ended his life vainly trying to kill Americans.
•— The smell of a corpse rotting on the roadside in 115-degree heat.
— The droning sound a cloud of black flies makes while swarming over a decapitated, decomposing body on the muddy bank of an irrigation canal. Not only will this crime not be solved, but the identity of the dead man — and at least seven other corpses in the same field — probably will never be known.
— An Iraqi woman carrying a water jug on her head, so accustomed to gunfire that she doesn’t flinch or alter her step when a nearby soldier fires an ear-splitting .50-caliber machine gun.
— Hundreds of youthful soldiers running the Baghdad edition of the Peachtree Road Race on a steamy July dawn. The route takes them around one of Saddam Hussein’s ornate palaces — as well as the high-walled prison where the former dictator now resides.
— nconsolable grief and despair on the tear-streaked face of a young Bradley fighting vehicle driver who accidentally veered off a narrow road at night, causing the death of his friend and mentor, Sgt. Chad Mercer of Waycross.
