Grunts (72 page)

But, like it or not, in the modern age, a story would be told in the mass media. “The question is whose story is it gonna be?” Funk rhetorically asked. “You can ignore the media, get pissed off at ’em and say you’re not gonna engage these guys anymore or you can try your level best to get the truth out to them.” Even though Funk understood the importance of media relations, he too reached a point of exasperation in the wake of the accidental killing of the teacher. He was outraged by one story in particular, written by a reporter who spoke with the Iraqis at the scene of the shooting but had never patrolled with 3-7. “I should have been suspect when she was interviewing me over the phone. Well, when the article came out . . . it really, really, really painted us in a bad light.” Lieutenant Colonel Funk challenged the substance and accuracy of the story. He also decided that, from then on, he would only deal with reporters who actually spent time with his soldiers. “I . . . made it clear to her that I would not be talking to her on the phone anymore but . . . if you want to join us on a patrol, I welcome you down anytime. Of course, she never took us up on it.” Nor did many others, and that was fairly standard for most reporters in Iraq.

So, for 3-7 Infantry, the media gap was never really bridged. The battalion did not control the modern information war well enough. The soldiers continued to nurture the anger and mistrust they felt toward media members, in effect choosing to isolate themselves. This was a dysfunctional and self-defeating choice. In that sense, they were very typical of most combat units in Iraq at that time. Fair or unfair, the print and electronic media reported the war as they saw fit. That often did not work to the advantage of the American position in Iraq.
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What, if anything, did 3-7 accomplish during its year of counterinsurgent warfare in Baghdad? On the face of it, they had many successes. By and large, the soldiers comported themselves with discipline and compassion. The Iraqi Army and police in Rashid clearly got better over the course of 2005. The Cottonbalers of 3-7 participated in several large raids and operations that captured dozens of insurgents. The soldiers forged many positive relationships with sheiks, imams, and everyday people in southwest Baghdad. The Americans improved the schools, dispensed food and medical care, and generally enhanced the lives of some in Rashid. Route Irish improved dramatically on 3-7’s watch. The battalion also presided over two peaceful and successful elections in October and December.

On the downside, there were accidental killings, raids that targeted the wrong people, and everyday insults dispensed by culturally ignorant GIs. The isolation of living on an FOB and commuting to war only served to deepen that ignorance. It also undermined the security of those Iraqis who wanted to help the Americans. A significant amount of bad will also came from the heavy-handed presence of military vehicles on the crowded streets of Rashid. Many civilians were terrified of the American convoys. At times, the heavy Bradleys and tanks could damage infrastructure. The American concern with standoff and force protection sometimes led to traffic snarls and overly aggressive driving by Cottonbaler drivers. To some locals, the mere presence of foreigners was offensive, no matter how well or poorly behaved they might have been.

Overall, 3-7 Infantry left Rashid a better place than they found it, but this was not good enough. By the time the Cottonbalers went home in early 2006, the American position in Iraq was deteriorating, mainly because of the poor strategic decisions made by American leaders. The political and military decision makers still did not understand that counterinsurgency war requires a saturation, troop-intensive presence, cultural outreach, and a willingness to sacrifice troop safety for the security of the population. This sort of war, like most, could not be won the easy way by technology and long-range weaponry. Political will, and everyday engagement, human being to human being, counted for much more.

Both 2-7 and 3-7 did the best they could within the confines of the flawed American strategic outlook in 2005-2006. Venturing forth from their FOBs, operating with pathetically small numbers, there was only so much they could do. Both units enjoyed some level of success, but this hardly mattered because their efforts did not lead to victory in the overall war effort. Their experience was actually a cautionary tale. Although nowhere near as bloody, the 7th Infantry’s tour of duty was quite similar, in one sense, to the bitter experience of the soldiers at Masher/White Wing and Dak To: even the success of grunts on the ground can mean little in the face of the flawed strategies of generals and politicians.

EPILOGUE

A Plea for Change

I WILL END WITH A plea, extended to whoever has the power, or even casual interest, to heed it. We must learn from the lessons of recent history. For the United States, from World War II onward, technology has been a major asset, but not a magic-bullet solution to all security problems. Warfare remained what it has always been—an elemental, wasteful, tragic contest of wills. Contrary to the predictions of techno-vangelists, ground soldiers have done almost all of the fighting and dying in America’s modern wars. Upon their overworked shoulders, the outcome of those wars rested. There were rarely enough of them. Nor was there, in general, enough national emphasis on them as the leading weapon in the American arsenal. Instead, the United States invested the bulk of its power and resources in technological weaponry, too often at the expense of the ground pounders. This must change, or we risk more Pelelius, more Dak Tos, and more Iraqs.

In the early twenty-first century, with wars raging in Afghanistan and Iraq, stretching both the Marine Corps and the Army to the breaking point, politicians of both parties talked of placing a new emphasis on building up the ground combat services. They spoke of expanding the Army to over 700,000 active duty soldiers and the Marine Corps to a strength of over 200,000. This was a step in the right direction, although only barely adequate to meet the considerable global responsibilities of the soldiers and leathernecks. The budget appropriations for the Army and Marines did rise, if only out of the sheer necessity that resulted from the two vexing wars and the obvious fact that these two services were doing almost all of the fighting and dying. Plus, the Air Force and Navy were both working diligently to assist the ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, the good intentions for expanding ground combat forces did not survive the recession that began in 2008. With the Obama administration seeking to curtail defense spending, the Army took a 17 percent cut in its projected 2010 budget, while the Navy got a nice increase and the Air Force stayed more or less the same. By this time, after eight years of tough ground warfare, the Army and Marines still accounted for only about 31 percent of the defense budget, the Navy and Air Force over half of the rest. The historical pattern that had held true since World War II had not, then, really changed by the twenty-first century, even in the face of bloody ground wars. “Our prime weapon in our struggles with terrorists, insurgents, and warriors of every patchwork remains the soldier or Marine,” Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters wrote. “Yet, confronted with reality’s bloody evidence, we simply pretend that other, future, hypothetical wars will justify the systems we adore.”

In the wake of the cuts, the Army now had to reconsider its plan to create three new combat brigades. I do not pretend to be an expert or an insider on the intricacies of Washington budget policies. But I do think it is fair to say that any cut in the Army’s operating expenses is not likely to achieve the goal of adding to the number of ground combat soldiers in America’s defense arsenal. S. L. A. Marshall once wrote that “we in the United States . . . have made a habit of believing that national security lies at the end of a production line.” This indeed has been the American way of war—the material over the corporeal. Marshall understood that infantrymen cannot be cranked out of a production line or hatched from a lab. Not just anyone can become a combat soldier. They are a unique group, always the minority within their society, even within the armed forces, too. They represent the ultimate weapon of war for the mundane reason that no technology has yet eclipsed the human brain, the human will, and the human spirit in potency.
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The explosion of information-age technology since Marshall’s time has only exacerbated American material predilections and techno-vangelism all the more. If that does not change, then the Americans risk more unhappy reality checks amid a troubling world that continues to rapidly urbanize, an internationalist media whose Net-centric, anti-U.S. hostility seemingly hardens by the day, and the power of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and FARC grows. These are the lessons of recent history, from Guam to Baghdad. In the absence of any meaningful change, the grunts, as always, will pay the steepest price, for it is they who most fully experience war’s unforgiving cruelty.

To them, war is personal, animal, disturbing, and affecting beyond description. For them, war cannot possibly be seen as clinical, calculating, or material. They view it only through the prism of “the blood-soaked bandages, the smell of gunpowders, the horrendous din of the weaponry, the pain and numbness of a wound and the medic’s syrette, all never to be forgotten, but to play forever within the memory of a ‘Grunt,’” in the estimation of one Dak To veteran. As one Marine grunt put it, “Until you have physically experienced looking an enemy soldier in the face and pulling the trigger, the sensation in your hand as the k-bar [knife] cuts [through] the windpipe, the actual smell of burning flesh, or the human rage, and competition for life that allows a soldier to kill another soldier, you will never fully be able to feel or describe, or convey the emotions” of modern war.

They know, firsthand, the unhappy reality of war’s viciousness—the anger, the desperation of small, frightened groups of men trying to kill one another, the survivor’s guilt, the lust for revenge and destruction, the intensity of living with fear, boredom, physical discomfort, and danger for days, weeks, years on end. “Men get blown to bits, or shot, men that you know, men who are your friends,” a World War II rifle platoon leader wrote. At the same time, the grunts experience “near shell hits, so close that you hear the fragments screaming, while you wonder . . . why you weren’t hit; closing so near to the enemy that you can see his body jar under small, precise blows as somebody empties a BAR magazine into him; disappointment, maybe, at the difference between what Hollywood has taught you a battle should look like and the seemingly disjointed series of action that the thing really is; and somewhere in the middle of it, the desire to lie down in sheer disgust . . . and forget the whole business.” Through it all, they come to know firsthand the strange nobility that sometimes grows, like a beautiful flower in the wild, out of the desperate, horrible world of combat. They see that, amid the worst of circumstances, human beings are capable of decency, honor, and amazing selflessness. They understand to their very core that all grunts fight primarily for one another, nothing more, nothing less. This brotherhood marks them forever. For many, it is the most powerful phenomenon they will experience in their lives.
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Some say that humanity is divided into three groups—sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. The majority are sheep. They are peaceful, compliant, with small capacity for violence and not much ability to defend themselves. The minority are wolves or sheepdogs. Wolves will always prowl, plunder, and defile the sheep. They thrive on destruction, domination, and bloodshed. Only the sheepdogs can protect the flock from these preying wolves, men like Hitler, Zarqawi, and their ilk. The sheepdogs’ job is to protect the sheep. To do so, they will use violence if necessary. They must maintain constant vigilance. Robots and machines cannot stand in for the sheepdogs. Technology can only assist them. They are a special breed. Theirs is a self-sacrificial struggle to the death to keep the wolves at bay. If necessary, they will lay down their lives so that the sheep might live. Without the sheepdogs, the wolves would rule. The grunts are America’s sheepdogs. May they never go away. May there be peace on earth . . . but don’t count on it.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was a monumental undertaking. It is the product of much travel, research, study, and quite a bit of plain old-fashioned listening. I could not possibly have written it without the considerable assistance of a great many people. For every individual I mention here, there are probably several others I am omitting, so I apologize in advance for those omissions. I also would like to make clear that any mistakes or errors of judgment are mine alone.

At the World War II Museum in New Orleans, Marty Morgan and Tommy Lofton were kind enough to guide me through the museum’s extensive collection of firsthand accounts from World War II veterans. The 99th Infantry Division memoirs were especially useful. The staff at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, was persistently patient and professional during my many visits. Rich Boylan went above and beyond the call of duty to access some excellent Masher/White Wing and Dak To material for me. Mark Reardon at the U.S. Army Center of Military History parceled out much good advice and guidance, for which I am very thankful. At the Cantigny First Division Foundation library in Chicago, Eric Gillespie and Andrew Woods went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. Thanks to Andrew, I was able to find a rich vein of excellent material on the 26th Infantry at Aachen, plus some first-rate photographs. The redoubtable Cynthia Tinker was her usual dedicated, insightful self during my visit to the Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Tennessee. The same was true of Bill Eigelesbach and the staff at Special Collections down the hall. During my extended visit to the United States Army Military Institute at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, David Keough and the research staff did everything they possibly could to help me. David’s knowledge of the modern U.S. Army and the archival collection at Carlisle is a potent combination. He was kind enough to share both realms of expertise with me. At the Library of Congress Veteran’s History Project, Alexa Potter did a fine job of accessing a treasure trove of memoirs, oral histories, and diaries for me. This material was especially useful for the World War II chapters.