This is the second in an occasional series of letters from UT economics junior Seth Harp. He is currently stationed in Iraq and has agreed to share a few letters he sent home to friends and family.
Our gun trucks arrive at noon. Nine soldiers and three armored Humvees courtesy of the 1st Infantry Division, each with a swiveling turret mounted with .50 caliber machine gun on the back. As one soldier synchronizes our radio frequencies, a young, soft-spoken staff sergeant passes out satellite maps of downtown Samarra. Copenhagen snuff is smeared around the corners of his mouth. He leans over and spits a stream of brown juice in the sand and takes out a clipboard from his rucksack.
"Rules of engagement" he says in a quiet, monotone voice. "Real simple. If someone points a weapon at you - kill 'em. If you see anyone with an RPG that's not Iraqi National Guard - kill 'em." He flips through pages, muttering to himself. "Car bombs" he says, looking up, emphatic, his voice rising. "I will not lose a man to a car bomb. If a vehicle tries to get into the convoy, light 'em up. You don't even got to worry about that because my gun trucks aren't going to let anyone get close."
His three gunners are lounging in the shade beside a humvee. One is smoking and the other two are swabbing the bores of their rifles. "Today is the first day of Ramadan," he says. "That means if they die while taking you out, they go straight to heaven. Plus they get twice the virgins when they get there. Kind of a two-for-one deal."
A dozen soldiers from my reserve company have been ordered to convoy from our base just north of Baghdad to a small FOB (Forward Operating Base) south of Tikrit and north of Samarra, by way of Main Supply Route Tampa. MSR Tampa runs from Kuwait through the southern deserts to Nasiriyah, to Baghdad, to Mosul in the north, and up into Syria. On average, American troops are attacked 80 times per day in Iraq, most frequently on MSR Tampa. Two soldiers from my unit were killed in an ambush on a convoy headed to Kuwait by way of Tampa last May. It is the most dangerous road in the world.
Once we get there, we have orders to transport supplies from the FOB to a besieged police station in the center of Samarra where our infantry and Special Forces are holed up.
In the days of the first Shi'ite insurrection inspired by the fiery sermons of the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr last spring and summer, the United States lost control of four major Iraqi cities: Al-Fallujah, Samarra, Ar-Ramadi and Sadr City (north Baghdad). These areas became "no-go" zones for US troops - safe havens for Iraqi insurgents where no troops patrolled. Eight days prior to the mission I was now being assigned, five thousand 1st Cavalry and 1st Infantry troops moved into Samarra.
My partner and I each have 16-ton 10-wheel-drive trucks capable of crossing any terrain while hauling massive loads, which is why both of us were picked for this highly undesirable mission. Right now I can think of no worse place in Iraq to be than Samarra. But an order is an order.
The two-hour convoy to the operating base is uneventful. As we are pulling in, the guard towers are firing over our heads into the fields beyond with .50 cals mounted with enormous scopes, lenses as wide as dinner plates, their two-foot-long barrels bucking with each shot. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. Pause. Thump-thump-thump.
The base itself is tiny, a lopsided rectangle just off the side of the MSR, surrounded by earthen barriers topped by razor wire, a tank or Bradley Fighting Vehicle parked in each corner facing out at the countryside. The base exists to protect stores of grain from looters and thieves. A few living tents are set up between concrete storage bins, each the size of half a football field, nearly overflowing with wheat and barley. We fuel up our trucks and carry our rucksacks into one of the dank, dimly lit tents to get a few hours of sleep. Our first convoy into Samarra is scheduled for dawn...
Morning. We pull out of the gate firing. One of the gun trucks parks blocking the road to let the rest of the convoy pass by. A small truck barreling down the highway comes to a skidding halt just short of the gun truck. A tall, heavyset soldier jumps down from the humvee and runs up to the white Toyota. He points his M4 carbine at the driver's head and kicks the door with all his strength, leaving a large circular dent.
"Back the fuck up! Back the fuck up!" he shouts.
The truck reverses 10 meters. In the other lane, a sedan does not appear to be stopping, and a soldier in the second humvee rises from the turret and puts a single bullet - BAM - into the hood of the car then raises the muzzle of his rifle towards the driver. The sedan slams to a halt so fast it's front bumper hits the pavement and sparks. The driver, a fat man in a white robe, holds up two thumbs as if to say "OK, OK, I'm stopping, see?" We roll on down Tampa towards Samarra.
As we're turning off the highway, before we get to the Tigris River, we can already see the Mesopotamian tower emblematic of the city of Samarra; a 20-story cone-shaped edifice constructed from burnt orange mud brick with spiraling stairs winding around it up to the peak, a windowless pinnacle draped with a black flag emblazoned with white Arabic script. To me, it looks like the Tower of Babel from Sunday School picture books.
Around the outskirts of the city, children are already up and working, laboring in the dusty, barren fields sown with meager rows of vegetables. Dry stalks of corn rattle in the wind. The children drop their hoes and rush up to the convoy, hands outstretched in expectation of candy thrown out by American GIs. Their faces are dirty, and the boys are clothed in long linen shirts, the girls in sackcloth dresses.
As we round a bend, we slow long enough for me to hear one small boy say "Mistah mistah, give me sweet!" Without taking my eye off the farmhouse behind him or taking my finger off the trigger of my M16, I reach into a bag of rations beside me and toss out a bag of Skittles. He deftly intercepts it midair with his foot. Little soccer player, I think.
A checkpoint is set up at the entrance to the bridge. A single Bradley idles behind spools of concertina razor wire. Two concrete blast walls - those ubiquitous symbols of post-Saddam Iraq - are erected on either side of the approach. A small concrete and earth bunker sits off to the side. A red-and-white sign in English and Arabic reads: MILITARY FACILITY. UNAUTHORIZED APPROACH WILL RESULT IN DEATH.
We pass through without slowing. On the northern side of the curving dam the river Tigris is a wide, slow, greenish-brown lake. Beyond it's banks a seemingly limitless marsh stretches to the horizon. On the other side a gorge is between us and the city. Far below us, small canoes and hand-paddled skiffs loiter around the dam's floodgates, drawing their nets in; the morning catch. Across the river, I can see the main avenue of the city leading up to the Golden Mosque of Samarra, an ornate oriental building overwhelmed by a gleaming gold-laquered dome.
The dome has several gaping holes from artillery fire, and the entire structure is shelled by a latticework of rebar and plywood catwalks. The street that terminates at the entrance to the mosque is jammed with traffic. Somewhere behind the mosque, a mortar shell hits and a plume of dust and smoke billows above the skyline. Gunfire follows.
I am sitting in the passenger seat of my truck. I sit sideways in the seat with my back against the wide metal center console so that I can fire my weapon right-handed. The side mirror is pushed forward against the side of the truck. No need for it. Better to have an unobstructed line of fire. I have an M16, ammo and a few fragmentation grenades. The gunners stand in the back of the gun trucks gripping the swiveling machine guns with both hands. Each gunner has an M16 or an automatic pump-action shotgun slung across his back, as well as a pistol strapped to his thigh. The M60 gunner has bandoliers of 7.62 mm bullets draped over both shoulders. Every soldier wears bulky body armor, ammo vests, helmet, dark-tinted visors, kneepads, elbowpads, gloves and a bandana tied across the nose and mouth. Not an inch of skin uncovered. We roll into this biblical town looking like gunslinging astronauts from some bleak, dusty future.
We careen through the narrow city streets at 40 miles an hour, bouncing and jostling, barely able to stay on the road. The faster we go, the less damage the inevitable ambushes will inflict.
Storefront dioramas flash by. Ramshackle shops where workmen stand patching tires, welding, hammering, repairing cars and motorcycles. Viscous oil drains into the streets. Vegetable booths line street corners. Baskets of melons, plums, bananas. Stacks of tires in the median for sale, no two alike. Graffiti scrawled on every flat surface, Arabic and English. "DOWN USA" in crude block letters on a leaning water tower. A small meat market of five butcher stands, the reeking flyblown carcasses of skinned goats and rams strung up by their ankles from iron teepees, blood draining into five-gallon buckets which overflow into the gutters. Piles of swept trash smolder in the corners of intersections. A tangled ball of razor wire rolls down an alley like some nightmare tumbleweed. Haggard flocks of goats graze on garbage heaped in empty lots.
The road is torn up from explosions and heaps of rubble block the sidewalks. Every walled house front, without exception, is pocked with bullet holes. An emaciated bony-shanked cow high-steps through the trash, led on a string by an old woman in a solid black burqa. The sounds of hammering, honking, backfiring, yelling and the tinny wailing of Arabic pop music is intercut with the sound of automatic gunfire.
The air is thick with dust, fumes from burning plastic, the smell of burnt meat and the acrid bite of cordite and gun smoke. A motorcycle darts between my truck and the gun truck ahead of us.
My driver lays on the airhorn and swerves. The gunner ahead of us looks back. He punches his gloved palm with one hand and then twirls his finger in a circle. Hand signals. Hit 'em and keep rolling, he is saying.
Just then, a white and orange taxi hurtles out of the traffic toward the Humvee. The gunner swings his M60 around 180 degrees and leans into the buttstock with his shoulder. When the grill of the taxi is less than ten feet from the humvee he unleashes a burst of 7.62 rounds, blasting the front end of the taxi. The radiator explodes, a geyser of fluid erupting from the hood. The tires are shredded. As I pass, the car sinks to the pavement with a pneumatic hiss.
Clutching the pistolgrip of my rifle with one hand, I retrieve the crumpled satellite photo of Samarra from my cargo pocket. I spread it on the console and try to discern our location in the black and white photo of the twisting city streets. I turn to my driver.
"How far did they say this place was?"
The conclusion to this letter will be published in Monday's Texan.
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