FOB Prosperity, International Zone, Baghdad, Iraq
March 2008
The soldiers of Pacesetters Field Artillery Battalion are negligently discharging their weapons left and right. They are falling asleep and dropping 240B machine guns out of guard towers and showing up to guard shifts completely black (without) ammunition. The real bad apples are getting drunk and high and even leaving the base to visit local Iraqi prostitutes in the “International Zone.” Others have barricaded themselves in their trailers and threaten to blow their brains out.
“What the hell is wrong with these guys, Durkin? How is it possible to have so many negligent discharges? Aren’t they supposed to be soldiers, what the hell!”
“I’ll tell you this, Goldsmith,” in the infantry a negligent discharge or accidently firing a round from your weapon when you did not intend to shoot anything, is a cardinal sin and capital crime, “if that were me, you’d hear two gunshots. One right after the other. The second one would be me putting myself out of my f*&%ing misery.”
The infantrymen of Attack Company cannot figure out what the deal is with the men and women of Pacesetters, who just cannot get their act together. More importantly, we wonder who we pissed off so bad as to get us stationed here, at FOB Prosperity, helping Pacesetters Field Artillery act as “Guardians of the IZ,” in the newly dubbed International Zone. We are not hardened combat soldiers here, we are glorified security guards dwelling in one of the safest environs in the country, the government section of Baghdad formerly known as the “Green Zone.”
This is a raw injustice. We are infantrymen in Iraq. We should be out there taking it to the enemy, engaging in firefights, getting hit by IEDs, capturing or killing the bad guys in daring raids . . .
Instead, our primary mission is to pull eight-hour guard shifts at the checkpoints and entrances to the International Zone, manning our Bradley Fighting Vehicles, cursorily searching vehicles, and standing there like Mad-Max versions of mall security guards, armed to the teeth with bullets and high explosive grenades that will never be fired in anger. The luckier members of First Platoon get to periodically ride along on a once-weekly logistics run to Al-Hillah, a city about 70 miles south of Baghdad. They ride on well-cleared, rarely mined roads, that haven’t been the site of vehicle ambushes for months. At least these lucky soldiers get to pretend to look good and be real soldiers, if only for a few hours.
Forward Operating Base or “FOB” Prosperity is Attack Company’s home. FOB Prosperity rests securely inside the International Zone, which itself resides within a larger, secure perimeter. FOB Prosperity is built-up, luxurious, and incredibly safe. There is no danger here, no connection to anything that could remotely be called a “war.” If it wasn’t for the thousands of uniformed soldiers, the steadily building spring heat, and the smell of burning trash fires, I hardly knew I was in Iraq.
The real danger here is clogging your arteries at the KBR chow hall, like an all-you-can-eat buffet, only better because it’s free and open for four sumptuous meals a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even midnight chow. Pakistani, Filipino, and Nepalese migrant workers cook our food, bag our trash, and do our laundry. Ignorant pogs call them “Hajjis.” We live like pampered princes in the desert.
The other danger here is spending all your money. Not only is there a Hajji Store, there’s a Hajji strip mall and bazaar, a whole section of the base set exclusively aside for local merchants to hawk U.S. soldiers and contractors cigarettes, bootleg DVDs, souvenirs, and Boom-Boom energy drinks. And they’re making a killing.
FOB Prosperity has everything but a swimming pool. (Well, it actually has one, it’s just not filled with water at the moment.) Saddam had a palace here, now the base’s main headquarters. The palace roof has a few holes in it from U.S. missile strikes in 2003, but is otherwise none the worse for the wear. The monumental structure is enormous and towers over the FOB. Soldiers come from other bases in the International Zone to take pictures with the pair of giant Saddam heads that look out upon the vehicle motor pool. FOB Prosperity has an excellent gym, ample computer and phone rooms, and enough soldier housing to require only two soldiers share each housing trailer.
Best of all, FOB Prosperity has two resident attractive female Iraqi interpreters who are minor celebrities and FOB princesses when they are spotted dining in the chow hall or utilizing the treadmills in the gym. The lonely and chaste infantrymen can literally smell the women’s sweet scent coming from a hundred plus meters away.
In short, life is about as good as it can get here, at least for an infantryman in Iraq. More often than not, we find ourselves living in rough and squalid conditions out in sector, in small firebases and outposts strewn about the cities and countryside. Our usual living and operating conditions are shorn of creature comforts, hot food and a decent place to sleep a rare luxury, not a necessity.
FOB Prosperity should be paradise on earth, a luxurious and safe place to crank out a fifteen-month “combat” tour in Iraq.
But we all f*&%ing hate it, especially the younger privates for which this is their first “combat” tour, their first and maybe only chance to experience some combat and test their mettle in Iraq. Instead, there are no bombs, no bullets, just guard and driving trucks. The new men and their hard charging team leaders have nothing to look forward to, on the whole, we are sour and morose and morale is low. We want to get in on some infantry action, we want to get blown up, we want to get shot at . . .
“We just want to do our jobs, Sergeant: close with and destroy the enemy.”
“Quit complaining, Goldsmith. You’ve had your fun. I know you and the new guys want to get out there and take it to the enemy, but that’s not the mission that we’ve been given. So ease up a bit, enjoy yourself. There’s good chow here, you have plenty of time to lift and get strong, none of our guys are going to get hurt or killed, and we’re still earning combat pay. Relax and enjoy it . . . and that’s an order!”
But that’s something I cannot do. Me and most of the other infantrymen are going stir crazy here. We’re quarantined here at FOB Prosperity, we’re infected with the Rear-Echelon Virus and Command will not let us out. Crammed inside the wire, with little to no escape. I understand more and more why the soldiers in Pacesetters are so slack and why some of them are losing their grip on reality. The enemy is out there operating freely, getting stronger, and here we are, living like pogs.
To compensate for my busted ego and frustrated dreams of leading an infantry fire team in combat, I have the fire team start bounding to the chow hall, one buddy team covering for the other as we maneuver under simulated fire towards the enemy. The other soldiers on base think we are insane or just being a%@holes. We sneak around the FOB surreptitiously, out of uniform, not wearing the required gloves and eye protection, seeking to get away what little uniform rebellions we can. We flip a 300-pound tire in the dirt and hit it with sledgehammers, shirtless and dripping sweat.
We would resort to stealing things, if we could, because we are infantry surrounded by decadence, because we can, but there is no need. Everything we could ever want and desire in Iraq, other than female companionship and booze, is provided to us. We want for nothing.
Spoiled and surly, we mouth off to non-infantry leaders who outrank us and respond loudly and sarcastically to the questions of the Field Artillery Sergeants conducting guard inspections. They dread having to work with the a%$hole infantry guys with chips on their shoulder.
“What is that?” A Pacesetters staff sergeant asks Hunter one day while pointing to Hunter’s tricked out M-14 rifle. He’s showing some interest, hoping to elicit a friendly reaction from a fellow soldier.
Hunter is stone-faced and gives his best impression of a thousand-yard stare. “Death, in a bucket.”
“Okay, then.” And the sergeant moves right on down the line.
Some of the squad leaders with multiple tours under their belts are more than happy to whittle away as many months as possible at FOB Prosperity, but our wise and salty LT is nervous about the men growing soft and complacent. He too is going a little stir-crazy sitting here in the lap of luxury. First platoon starts training regularly, filling much of the downtime with classes on setting up vehicle checkpoints, searching homes for intelligence, conducting moving and stationary vehicle checkpoints, and more. I’m glad LT is ordering the training, and it’s the right thing to do, but we did not expect this.
“Sergeant Goldsmith, this is some bulls*&t. We’re training for Iraq, in Iraq. When are we going to get to do the real thing? We’re never going to get our CIBs!”
“Your probably right, M_____s, and I feel for you young guys, but what can I do?”
“. . .”
“I want to get out there just as much as any of you, but this is the job. So . . . get up and get your PT uniform on, it’s time for the Company PT test.”
That’s right, conducting the Army Physical Training Test, as a Company, in Iraq. They have us running circles around the FOB Prosperity perimeter like hamsters in a cage. Stuck inside the wire, going crazy, wanting to kill something, anything . . . Get us out of here!
It’s that terrible quarantine feeling you get when you feel like a prisoner, stuck in lock down, whiling away the hours, longing for freedom and action but not finding it. Living a non-genuine, inauthentic, non-productive life. That feeling of being trapped inside of life for days and weeks and even months at a time, with nothing to do, no progress no show. Killing time, one of the greatest sins, trading youth and experience for dollars.
We forgo alcohol, women, and all the comforts of home in exchange for nothing: no machine gun battles, no adrenaline rushes, no freedom in chaos. Life consists of one long, endless day punctuated only by formations, inspections, classes, large and too frequent meals, and eight to ten hours a day of peonage as a heavily-weighted security guard.
The FOB Prosperity quarantine saps my potential and does not allow me to be myself: a hardcore infantryman ready and eager to engage with and destroy the enemy. Me and all the other young infantrymen, we are dying inside because we are losing out on the chance to be real infantrymen. We don’t own any streets or dominate any territory. The enemy is not afraid of us, they don’t even know us. In fact, by now, we’re probably indistinguishable from all the other rear-echelon-motherf&%$#@s surrounding us.
It’s hard to live authentically when your growth and action potential is frustrated by circumstances outside of one’s control, by the powers that be, by the Rear-Echelon virus slowly infecting us all. Because of the unknowable vagaries of fate, because of some decision by the Brigade Commander to place us here, at FOB Prosperity, instead of where the action is, we are getting soft and turning into god-damned pogs. The quarantine life, although filled with luxury and ease, is devoid of meaning, a true wasteland of the warrior soul.
***
But nothing lasts forever. After weeks of living the easy life on FOB Prosperity, in early March 2008, the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed Shia militias are getting uppity again. They’re launching rockets into the International Zone, and that, U.S. and Iraqi forces cannot abide. It even gets personal when rockets nearly take out and J______ and B______ while they are on guard duty one unlucky (or was it lucky) day.
Early one Mid-March morning, as me and Durkin are relieved from the overnight guard shift, Smoke M_____ from Pacesetters gives us the good news.
“You f%$king infantry guys can quit your whining and your s*&t talking. You’re getting what you want, you’re leaving this place. Hope you’re happy.”
Me and Durkin are in fact so joyous we actually skip our way back to the guard Humvee and laugh and clap each other on the back as we clear our M-4 rifles in the clearing barrels at the entrance to FOB Prosperity. A Pacesetters soldier is getting chewed out by the Sergeant of the Guard because he forgot to replace the return spring in his SAW machine gun after cleaning and reassembling his weapon last week. The soldier has spent a week on guard with a non-functioning weapon.
I’m too happy to shake my head, roll my eyes, or otherwise process this remarkable lapse in judgment and competence. Goodbye, Pacesetters. It will be so nice to leave the wire again . . . off to more interesting environs in Northeastern Baghdad, to an urban jungle filled with EFP roadside bombs and militiaman, where the men of Wild Bunch take no prisoners, where we will learn to live, and suffer, like real infantryman again.
Quarantine is over.