The Aerostat balloon is a large white blimp that sees everything. It’s equipped with a state-of-the-art camera that can see so far, it’s limited only by the curvature of the earth. It has outstanding clarity and is an invaluable intelligence asset. The Aerostat is the reason we live on this dismal slab of concrete; its security and continued operation are our primary standing mission. We’re not doing such a great job. The people of Ur hate the Aerostat, and several have gone down on our watch. Bullets literally fall out of the sky when the balloon takes off or lands. During a bad windstorm, the balloon takes out our base’s communications antennae, snaps its tethers, and drifts away toward Sadr City. Often the blimp is neglected and underinflated and sinks, forgotten, into the ground. One night, the enemy infiltrates our base and fires an RPG into the giant inflatable piece of rubber. Hajj could have chosen to blow up a trailer full of soldiers instead, but he hated the Aerostat more than anything.
It’s July, the height of summer in Baghdad. It’s hot as hell, but everyone must do their part to keep the balloon safe. Infantry patrol the city, talk to the people, get shot at and blown up. We guard the perimeter and lose our minds pulling two-, three-, five-, and ten-hour guard shifts in relentless heat. Other residents of Ur listen to the radio, fix vehicles, repair the showers, and stock the chow hall. There are ten thousand odd jobs in the mini city of Ur.
Command sent us here months ago—thought it would break us, but we had fun instead. Too much fun, and now people are getting hurt. Yesterday Corporal Craft shot Singleton, and in retaliation Command destroyed our base. He overturned tables in the chow hall, knocked over trash barrels, and cast laundry down into the dirt. Yesterday was a rough day, but life goes on. Today, like any other, we live the Ur-schwitz mantra: work, eat, sleep.
One soldier burns Ur’s shit in the bottom of fifty-five-gallon oil drums. It’s his only job, and he does it every day with a quiet dignity. The infantry respectfully leave him to his solemn duty. As he watches the last flight of the Aerostat balloon, the shit-burning soldier is the only one who knows what is coming. He doesn’t warn us—we wouldn’t listen anyway. “Fuck ’em.” He flicks a cigarette butt into a bucket of burning feces. “Wake these motherfuckers up!”
The sky tears apart, and the earth trembles. It’s one in the afternoon when tremendous explosions violently wake my room of eight sleeping soldiers. Two blasts give me some sense of the situation. I roll out of bed and hug the floor.
“Get on the ground!”
Soldiers leap out of bed and bury their faces in the floor. They’re calm, annoyed with being disturbed; their anger overrides fear. I’m proud of them.
“Are they hitting the roof?” The blasts are so intense, we figure they’re hitting right above us.
“Strong roof,” one soldier says nonchalantly.
The explosions stop, and we get up. This is bad, though we have no idea how bad. In the silence that follows, we figure the best thing to do is climb back into our bunks and go to sleep, but a moment later the second volley comes.
One soldier turns over in bed lethargically and decides not to hit the floor.
“Hey, motherfucker! Get on the ground!” I’m amazed at how quickly the infantry get used to such things.
“Not again!” A little girl’s cry squeaks out of a large man.
Images of mangled bodies and final glimpses of reality before annihilation add to the deadening silent fear. We can’t do anything but lie here and trust in chance not to die. The room is silent, terrified, but all are still masters of their fear. I’m proud of them. The second volley is shorter, only a few rounds, but we stand up more tentatively than before. Is it over? Once again we shrug our shoulders, crawl back into our bunks, and deny the reality waiting outside for us.
During the attack, Sergeant D’s room pile their furniture and body armor into a corner and jump beneath it. When the first volley ends, Sergeant D and Hunter run outside to embrace the adventure. When the second volley breaks out, a rocket plinks across the ground in front of Sergeant D and detonates behind him. In LT’s room, they collapse to their knees and fervently pray, and in Durk’s room they scream like little girls.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
“My wife—what am I going to tell my wife?”
“We’re going to die! We’re going to die! We’re going to die!”
Bob has no room after a rocket lands meters from his trailer. A nine-ton, twelve-foot-tall concrete blast wall between Bob’s trailer and the explosion is demolished and undoubtedly saves his life. The impact incinerates the walls of Bob’s home, leaving only strips of jagged metal and rubble. Bob lies exposed, half-naked, and miraculously unharmed. He won’t sleep for a month.
Outside is chaos, but we can hear Sergeant Todd’s frantic yelling above all else. The room has withstood the attack, whatever it was. We’re alive and our pants are dry, and in these circumstances that’s all we can ask for. It looks as if the room had been picked up and shaken. Gear is strewn everywhere and loose wires hang off the walls, but we’re all right.
IRAMs, improvised rocket-assisted mortars, have struck Ur. Wild Bunch told us about them and showed us the craters.
“Rockets made this hole? Unbelievable.”
“Hajj straps hundreds of pounds of explosives to Chinese and Iranian rockets. He weighs them down so much that the rockets can only travel a few hundred feet and are completely unguided. But that’s good enough to lob into the base, and these pack a punch.”
“That crazy Hajj—what’ll he think up next?”
“He launches them out of the back of trucks, big and small, but the bigger the truck, the more rockets he can launch.”
“How many have they launched at one time?”
“Only one, but that’s enough. Those things, I’ve seen ’em. They’re flying refrigerators of death. Hajj doesn’t mess around.”
Command told us this would happen. He warned, briefed, and placed us on numerous alerts, and nothing happened. But on this blazing-hot summer day, we know the power of the IRAM. Battle is joined.
After the second volley, Durk dresses quickly and throws on his body armor. He’s the only one in his room not screaming or whimpering. Durk’s movement snaps Sergeant Todd out of a stupor.
“That’s a good idea.” He looks around for his own armor, but his face is crestfallen when he realizes that he has left it outside in his Bradley.
“Quick! Durk, give me your armor!”
“Okay.” Under the spell of command, Durk complies with the order. He removes his armor and hands it over.
“Hey, wait a second . . .”
But it’s too late. Sergeant Todd is gone; there is need for a hero.
Sergeant Todd grabs Zschlitsky, his driver, and starts up the Bradley. Black, noxious smoke emanates from many different spots on base. Vehicles are on fire, and concrete blast barriers are smashed to pieces. Soldiers run around senseless, in every possible state of undress. Nobody knows what’s going on, whether anyone’s hurt, or whether people are dead. But Sergeant Todd is ready to meet the enemy hordes that are sure to storm the base. He patrols the base, intent on meeting the threat and saving the day. He doesn’t realize it, but he’s dragging the blown-up remains of the Aerostat balloon behind him. Sergeant Todd grinds the focal point of the enemy’s hatred into the dirt.
“Get to the perimeter!” Just like in the movies, the shouted words echo throughout the base.
There’s no time to dress properly. I plunge out the door with untied boots and carry my helmet, weapon, and ammo pouches in one jumbled mess. Everyone on base is running and screaming in full battle armor, weapons loaded and ready. Our interpreter is covered in dirt, bleeding from the head, and holding a loaded rifle and grenade launcher. Nobody knows where he got it and nobody tries to disarm him. He seems intent on using it on someone. He was in the bathrooms when a rocket hit right next to them. The blast demolished the entire row of porta-shitters while he sat on the toilet.
LT sees Durk without his armor and is furious.
“Durk! Where’s your armor?”
“Sergeant Todd has it.”
“What! Why does Sergeant Todd have your body armor?”
Durk can only shake his head.
“Just go to the perimeter. Hurry!”
Today the post exchange came to Ur. We’d been waiting on them for weeks. Captain Harris, a female, is in charge of the small store peddling tobacco, snack foods, and energy drinks to the feral soldiers of Ur. When the IRAMs come down she flees for the safety of bunkers and leaves her supplies unguarded. Infantrymen take turns playing the hero.
“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll keep you safe.”
“Yes ma’am. Nothing we haven’t seen before.” Boooom! “What the fuck was that!”
While they protect the lone female on Ur, Sergeant D and Hunter start looting the store. They walk off with cigarettes, dip, energy drinks, chips, and DVDs. Other infantrymen swarm the remaining goods like ants and take everything.
“I think the attack’s over. I need to get back to the store.”
“No ma’am. Far too dangerous.”
* * *
Ur is the recipient of the largest IRAM attack in Iraq’s history. Insurgents have launched ten improvised rocket-assisted mortars into our base from the back of a truck. The unguided refrigerator rockets succeed in destroying several soldiers’ rooms, our generator, computer room, armored vehicles, bathrooms, and the gym. The enemy films the attack and posts it on the Internet. Footage shows the massive explosion of the generator and the death spiral of the Aerostat balloon. Every amenity and trace of civilization is destroyed. There’s no power, but not a single soldier is killed or seriously wounded. It’s a miracle.
The IRAM attack changes everything. Leaders are scapegoated and fired, men are rewarded for small acts of courage, and a vicious schedule of guard, IRAM patrols, missions, and maintenance occupies every hour of the day. If there’s time for anything else, we’re wrong. Without the generator there’s no power, without power there’s no AC, and no AC means no respite from the heat. Sleep is more akin to collapse and hallucination than to rest and dream. And the base has to be rebuilt. Work crews are organized to cart away rubble and realign blast walls. We maintain an impossible schedule at a suicide pace in wretched heat. Eat, work, sleep (sleep optional). Welcome to Ur-schwitz where life is hard and, worse than that, stupid.
We must still be punished for Craft’s shooting of Singleton and have our weapons cleared by Command every time we reenter base. The humiliating and unnecessary twenty-minute ordeal has to be performed two or three times a day. The infantry are outraged by the degrading treatment for actions outside our control. We’re wasting time at a moment when time is very precious. The concentration camp-like atmosphere of Ur is reinforced, morale plummets, and an atmosphere of us-versus-them divides soldiers into warring camps.
Two Humvees with a skeleton crew of six half-asleep and severely disgruntled infantrymen drive an endless loop on roads considered too dangerous for anything but tanks only two months before. Six-hour IRAM patrols tempt death from suicide as well as from the enemy. In the very recent past, these roads have been the sites of massive and sophisticated roadside bombs and ambushes against tank platoons. One determined enemy attack could annihilate our entire patrol of sun-wasted zombies. We reconcile ourselves to inevitable violent death.
“Command is trying to kill us.”
“What’s that, Durk?” He’s on the gun, and I can barely hear him as we drive down a rough dirt road.
“Command’s trying to kill us, Goldsmith.”
“How’s that?”
“Weren’t these roads forbidden to drive Humvees on a few months ago?”
“I believe they were.”
“What happens when they blow up one of these trucks and we can’t drive away?”
“I guess the other truck will have to stop and help them.”
“And fend off the attack?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Do you remember what Command told us when he came to Ur a few days ago?”
“Something about how we’re all shitbags because we wear the wrong sunglasses and the IRAMs are our fault.”
“You know what he asked LT? He asked him, ‘Why weren’t your soldiers wearing their gloves during the attack?’”
“You know what I would have told him, Durk?”
“I would have told him, ‘Because refrigerators of death are falling out of the fucking sky on us!’ He launched the rockets. Command is trying to kill us.”
“Why?”
“For having too much fun, for not dying.”
“It sure was crazy when we first got here, huh, Durk?”
“Wild Bunch was killing people every day, and then we came. Ur calmed down, nothing happened, and we had fun. Command thought Ur would kill us, that we wouldn’t be able to take it.”
“Yeah! He sent us here to die and suffer, but what he didn’t realize is, this is how we like to live—this is home. Ur didn’t kill us, so . . .”
“So Command had to finish the job himself, but he didn’t count on one thing.”
“And what’s that, Durk?”
“We’ll never die.”
* * *
Command moves the pins in his map and announces we’ll be leaving Ur forever. Ur’s had enough of us. The city is shedding us like cockroaches. There’s too much history here, too much blood. It’s time to leave. Ur and its IRAMs become somebody else’s problem, and we are more than happy to say farewell. Happy to say good-bye to Ur and happy to say good-bye to July 2008. IRAM summer, when life was tough. Still, it was better than Ranger School.
