COP Callahan, Baghdad, Iraq
July – August 2008
The Enemy effectively blew us out of Joint Security Station Ur, located near Sadr City in Baghdad on July 8, 2008 with an IRAM rocket barrage. The ten successfully detonated rockets inflicted injuries, damaged armored vehicles, demolished sleeping quarters, our wooden latrines, the computer room, and the gym, disabled the showers, and most importantly, blew up our generator, our sole source of power and air-conditioning, in a massive Hollywood-style fireball. The next two or three weeks were miserable: an endlessly repeated 18-20 hour cycle of missions, guard, and IRAM patrols, punctuated with 2-4 hour snatches of sleep, all during the height of the Iraqi summer. The entire squad was ecstatic when we were finally told we were leaving that accursed place, the wretched and aptly named “Ur-Schwitz.”
Until we found out we were going to COP Callahan . . .
Rumor has it, Combat Outpost Callahan, or “COP Callahan,” had been deemed the worst permanent U.S. base in all of Iraq and was slated for demolition. The base consisted entirely of a single, four-story building, a former Iraqi shopping mall of all places, that served as the headquarters for our combined arms battalion and home to several hundred combat arms soldiers. The hideous, sand-bagged and boarded up structure defiantly dominated the immediate skyline. It was surrounded by a moat-like exterior parking lot containing packed with dozens of armored vehicles and enclosed by multiple layers of high-standing concrete blast walls.
Not only is COP Callahan exposed to enemy rocket and rocket-propelled grenade fire, but the place is an absolute s%^hole. Callahan is packed to the gills with hundreds of sweaty, dirty infantrymen, scouts, tankers, combat engineers, and support troops; crawling with rats; plagued by falling masonry, lacking in all but the most basic amenities; and unbearably hot in the midst of the “Black Days” of the Iraqi summertime.
Unless you are leaving the wire, wearing full body armor and going on mission with your platoon, you do NOT get to leave COP Callahan. You are effectively QUARANTINED. Pale headquarters soldiers and support troops who haven’t felt the sun’s rays in months run laps in tight circles around the third-floor balcony. They have been quarantined for months, rats in a cage.
Now, after the madness of the IRAM attacks and the last few hectic weeks at Ur, my squad can breathe again. We have no mission. We are on an indefinite holding pattern at COP Callahan, waiting to rejoin our platoon and our infantry company while they take over and establish themselves in a new area of operations further west, close to the Tigris. Sergeant Chewie gathers the squad together and lays it out straight.
“Guys, look. The last few weeks were rough. Now we’re stuck here with nothing to do for a few days, maybe a week, . . . maybe several weeks . . . I don’t know. All I’m asking you guys to do is to make the most of this opportunity to simply do nothing and enjoy some time inside the wire.”
After the hellish July we all just went through, I agree whole-heartedly with my squad leader.
“You’re all big boys,” Sergeant Chewie goes on, “so I’m not going to hold any formations, or make you do any PT, make sure you’re eating right and drinking water . . . Just don’t go anywhere without a battle buddy, don’t do anything stupid, and please, please . . . don’t get me in trouble.”
No mission. No accountability. Several days or even weeks to do nothing but pal around with my main man, Durkin. Hours of reading and lifting, eating hot chow, getting caught up on sleep, collecting a government check without truly earning it . . . sounds great. The only real requirement is that I merely survive. That, and don’t go crazy in the “Callahan Quarantine.”
Every day is the same. Wake up thirty minutes after sunrise due to the fast-rising temperatures and cracks of sunlight leaking through boarded-up windows. The Transient Housing Bay we call home holds forty-something bunk beds and cots. True to its designation, I wake up every morning in this room feeling like a transient. The thin and dirt-stained mattress I’ve been sleeping on for the last week holds the accumulated sweat and grime of dozens, if not hundreds, of scratching, sweating, heat-exhausted soldiers. My throat is raw, parched with thirst.
After slamming a luke-warm liter-bottle of lukewarm water, me and Durk descend to the first floor, just outside the building proper, to conduct the morning’s hygiene. A row of a half-dozen or so plastic porto-potties and soap-and-water stands support the sewage and hygiene needs of hundreds of soldiers. I’ve seen worse bathroom facilities, but not much worse, and not on a base of this size. It’s best to take care of business early in the day before the heat rises, the flies swarm, and the rest of the battalion runs through the “facilities.”
Teeth brushed and bowels purged, it’s breakfast time. It’s a hot meal, kind-of, and the powdered eggs are only a little green and plastic-hard today. I wash it all down with a diet citrus “RIP-It” energy drink nearly as hot as coffee owing to the fact that none of the four beverage refrigerators are actually turned on and working.
After the day’s first cigarette we are sufficiently nicotine’d, purged, fueled up, and caffeinated to do the one productive thing we are going to accomplish today.
“Durk, it’s time hit the gym.”
“Oh f&*k yeah! Let’s get pumped.”
We ascend the stairs to the fourth and highest floor of COP Callahan. The stairwells are the hottest places in all of COP Callaghan. The few working A/C units pump their hot exhaust air into the stairwells, where it then radiates back into the main building again. But while the stair wells are brutally hot, the gym itself is even hotter. It’s what I would imagine a prison gym in hell to look and feel like. Angry men dripping sweat and handling heavy weights throng the small, shabby gym. They bump shoulders frequently in passing and everyone is snappy, angry, self-absorbed, and pouring sweat onto the floor. It’s one of the few escapes here at COP Callahan and the men and women take it seriously. By 8:30 a.m. the place is packed, perhaps owing to the fact that later in the day it will be literally as hot as a sauna, and practically unbearable to work out in.
This place is intense, but me and Durkin don’t care. We’re stuck in quarantine. Nothing else to do but to embrace the suck, gulp down the sweat, lap up the tears of weakness.
“Oh . . . you weren’t done using that bench yet? Buzz off, bro! We got work to do.”
With Durkin at my back I’ll take on anyone. “F*^k these Pogs!” I say, “They can get out of OUR way, we’re infantrymen.”
Whoa! The heat and angry prison-gym vibes must be getting to me. Time to chug another liter of water the temperature of hot tea and head to Hajji shop for a refreshing orange drink before the heat madness takes full effect.
The day’s work being done, by 10:00 a.m. it’s time for a tortured heat nap until lunchtime.
Lunch is bread, cheese and cold-cut meat. Combined with the cereal and peanut butter me and Durk pilfer from the rat-infested storeroom, it’s a fine meal, despite the fact that the boxed milk I add to the cereal is room-temperature, meaning about 115 degrees.
After lunch, when you have nothing to do but ride out the quarantine, the best thing to do is sleep away the hot afternoon hours until dinner. Durkin can’t sleep today, so he starts counting the number of rats he sees scurrying past the doorway. He gets up to 23 before he gets bored and gives up.
Dinner is three lean chicken fingers, green beans that taste like dish soap, and a serving of mashed potatoes the size of a baby’s fist. Unfortunately, tonight the cooks catch Durk rustling around in their storeroom, so we are forced from the chow hall without securing extra provisions.
On the way back to the Transient Housing Bay we buy $5 worth of Wild Tiger Energy drinks for tonight’s poker game and scour the labyrinthian corners and burrows of COP Callahan for players. A handful of guys we served with previously are scattered about Callahan, crammed in tight with dozens of their fellows. We are merely tourists in Hell, many of the soldiers in our battalion actually have to live here. For them, other than missions outside the wire, there is no escape, no respite from the heat, no privacy, no solitude. Like prisoners, they erect sheets between their triple-stacked bunk beds for some semblance of personal space.
We’ve talked Brand, who is with headquarters now, and two random supply guys into joining tonight’s poker game. We bring them up to Transient Housing where we meet up with our former Company Commander, who has been joining us for games the last week. Gambling is forbidden by General Order #1 and in the Army generally, but hey, boys will be boys, and what else are we supposed to do during a quarantine?
We play poker for hours, long into the night. I get my adrenaline fix from the games’ highs and lows. Durkin is cleaning up tonight, mostly by putting the supply guys on tilt. While our former Company Commander is chain drinking mountain dews, I’m finishing my second Wild Tiger of the night. After nightfall, the temperature abates, a little bit, but not much. Whether it’s the caffeine or the heat, no wonder we can’t sleep until 2:30 in the morning . . .
After three weeks of this dissolute lifestyle, the men in my infantry squad are ready to get the hell out of COP Callahan. We are pale from lack of sunlight and soft from lack of wearing our body armor. Our weapons and night vision devices lie dusty, useless, and uncleaned, more often than not, shoved beneath our bunks while we sleep atop them. We have no purpose and we are out of the fight.
I’m wracked with insomnia, sick of the heat, sick of watching bootleg DVDs, sick of the guys in my squad, sick of this wretched, rat-infested building, sick of COP f&**ing Callahan . . . Give me a mission, give me anything! Hell, even an IRAM patrol would suffice . . .
But as is true with all things, eventually the quarantine ended. After three weeks of feeling abandoned, our platoon arrived to pick us up, to bring us to our new home. We said farewell to COP Callahan and its resident rats and vampire-like soldiers forbidden to leave its gates. We got to leave that accursed place, but hundreds of others, those posted there for the duration, were forced to stay. I counted my blessings as we pulled out of the serpentined-razor-wire gate and onto the mean streets of Baghdad, headed our new home, COP Apache, by the fetid, brown waters of the Tigris.
The lesson, maybe there isn’t one. Or maybe it’s this:
This too shall end . . . and it could always be worse.
Count your blessings.