Iraq Story #1

Yesterday I was helping my brother go through some of his old papers - college notebooks, newspaper clippings, class handouts, that sort of thing. He held up an old USA Today, which featured a full-page picture of a bearded and bedraggled Saddam Hussein under the headline "Captured!"

It reminded me of where I was when news of Saddam's capture first came out. I was a few hundred miles away, on a Forward Operating Base (FOB) near Iraq's border with Syria. Specifically, I was in a former rail-employee cafeteria that we had taken over and converted to a mess hall, and I was watching Armed Forces Network news on our 60" tv with a few dozen other soldiers. We had heard that Saddam had been caught, and that video would be shown on the news that night. Those of us who were free gathered to watch.

After much hype, the news broadcast showed the first grainy images of Saddam, with his grizzled hair and beard, undergoing a physical exam. It was the same footage you saw back in the States. The junior soldiers in the room hooted and whooped and clapped. I looked at one of the other officers with me and said, "Y'know, he could have driven right through one of our checkpoints, and I wouldn't have recognized him." He looked back at me, laughed, and said, "Yeah, and he probably did." And he was probably right. We watched the rest of the broadcast, and heard how Saddam had been found in a "spiderhole" not far from Tikrit. The program wrapped up, and we dispersed, wondering if this meant we could go home now.



My commander was not in the mess hall at the time. He was up at Squadron headquarters, and watched the broadcast there. When he got back to our area, he practically burst into the TOC (tactical operations center) and shouted "Spiderholes!" The two soldiers on radio watch and I looked up at him quizzically. "What?" I asked. "Spiderholes," he said, eyes wide and glittering with enthusiasm. "That's where they've been hiding."

A digression: my commander was not a smart man. He was usually nice, and had an "aw, shucks" manner, but his flatlining intellect earned him the nickname "The Rock With Lips" among the junior officers. We called him Rock for short, which he loved because he was an amateur boxer, and he thought we meant it like Rocky Balboa. I have dozens more dumb Rock stories, but back to the narrative:

Up until Rock's arrival, I had been looking forward to a quiet evening in the TOC. We had no missions planned, I had just made a pot of coffee (Peet's Holiday Blend - thanks, Mom) and turned up the heat (Iraq is cold in December), and I was hoping to see if Prof. Umbridge would catch Dumbledore's Army. I saw my humble plans disintegrate in Rock's eager smile - he had something on his mind, which meant I would have to do something, and it would probably be unpleasant and would certainly be dangerous.

"Who's hiding in spiderholes?" I asked. "Them," Rock said, gesturing westward at the nearby town. "All those hajjis. [FN 1] That's why we can't find 'em, they're hiding in spiderholes!" He smiled at us expectantly, clearly thinking we'd praise his insight - maybe a "Wow, sir, we're gonna get 'em for sure now. What's the plan?" Instead, we sat in uncomfortable silence. The soldiers had spent six months trying not to die as a result of Rock's "ideas," and I had designated myself as the keep-us-all-aliver-in-chief. None of us were pleased to hear spiderholes as another justification for kicking in Iraqis' doors and ripping up their yards with gigantic vehicles. But Rock just kept smiling, shifting his M-4 strap, and scratching his receding hairline.

"Whew, I don't know," I offered. "I mean, these houses that we hit aren't that big. And we usually have at least twenty or thirty guys, I think we'd have found one by now."

"Well, we've had 100,000 guys looking for Saddam, and it took us this long to find him," Rock said. True. 1 point to Mr. With Lips. "Ok," I said. "So you want me to just tell everyone to look for spiderholes the next time we go out?" I asked, hoping it would end there.

"Hell no!" Rock said. "I wanna go out right now, before they figure out we know about the spiderholes." "I don't really know about this," I said. "I don't think this is some widespread tactic that they're using. Wasn't it just, y'know, Saddam in a hole?"

"No way. We've been chasing these fuckers for months, and now we know where they're hiding." he said. "I wanta do a sweep tonight. The SCO [squadron commander] already signed off." [FN 2]. Well, that sealed it - can't argue with the colonel. "Ok, we better wake up First Sergeant," I said, trying not to look overly glum.

Three hours later, at something like 1:30 in the morning, I was standing next to my humvee, which was parked in the spacious yard of a farmhouse. I hopped up and down to keep warm. I looked up at my gunner, who was scanning the lonely stretch of road we'd come in on. "Hey Rob, any sign of 6?" I asked, referring to Rock's callsign. "No, sir, I don't see him. I think they're all over by the side of the house there," he said, pointing over his shoulder.

The radio beeped. "5, this is 7." [FN 3] It was First Sergeant. I grabbed the handset through the humvee's open window. "7, 5, go head," I answered. "Sir, you really need to get over here, over" he said. "What's up?" "Just get over here, you need to see this, and hurry, over." "Roger, on my way over...over." I tossed the hand mic back onto the front seat, told my driver where I was going, and headed over to First Sergeant's location.

I jogged quickly the 50 or so yards up a slight rise to the house, and then around the corner to the side yard. We had rolled in with the humvees in blackout, but now that the area was secured, there were a half-dozen flashlights gathered in an area about 10 yards from the farmhouse. I went over.

First Sergeant and Rock and a few NCOs were standing around, looking at a hole in the ground. Well I'll be, looks like Rock found a spiderhole. "Whadya got?" I asked. First Sergeant said, "Well, sir, [Rock] wants to jump in and see what's inside." I shined a light in the hole, which was smaller than a man-hole cover in diameter. I could just about see the bottom, and it looked brown, like everything else in Iraq.

I should note that the insurgents had discovered the American soldier's penchant for shiny things. In the early months of the insurgency, they'd put a shiny object on the side of the road. A humvee patrol would stop to investigate, and then get blown to smithereens after an insurgent remote detonated the bomb underneath the shiny object. I tell you this because by December 2003, the insurgents were become ever more adept at booby trapping, and the Rock was about the biggest booby you could trap.

"Did you check for booby traps?" I asked. "I tossed a couple of rocks in," the Rock said. "Nothing happened. I'm going in." He took off his body armor, grabbed his sidearm, and stood over the hole. First Sergeant, the NCOs and I backed away and stood behind First Sergeant's armored humvee. First Sergeant grabbed the radio and called for the medic. "We may need Doc up here," he told me, and I nodded.

Rock straddled the hole, then got down on one knee. Bracing himself with his hands on either side of the opening, he lowered his legs in. Shooting us one (last?) look, he grinned, dropped in and disappeared.

We tensed for the explosion.

No explosion. Instead, we heard "Ohhhh, shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!" We ran back to the hole, First Sergeant yelling for Doc to move his ass. We looked down, expecting to see Rock impaled on a punji stake or something equally nefarious. All I could see is him, about two feet below the surface, hands over his head, looking up for help.

"What is it?" First Sergeant shouted. "Shit!" Rock screamed. "I know it hurts," First Sergeant said. "Just tell me what's wrong, Doc is coming."

"No, the problem is shit," said Rock. "I'm standing in shit."

I clapped my hands over my face. Rock had not found a spiderhole. He found a rural family's outdoor toilet. It was 2 a.m. and freezing cold. I was in the middle of the Iraqi desert where angry men plotted my messy demise. And I could not stop laughing. Rock was thigh-deep in Iraqi farmer shit, and all was right with the world - once we got Rock back to base and burned his clothing.


[FN 1] I apologize for using "hajjis" in this context. The term should be an honorific to those devout Muslims who have made the hajj. The US military, in but one of its many culturally insensitive mistakes, corrupted it to mean Iraqis generally, and anti-American fighters or sympathizers specifically. I preferred "mooj" or "moojes" for the insurgents. That probably wasn't much better, but was the American shorthand for "mujahadeen," which at least was how the insurgents referred to themselves.

[FN 2] The SCO loved the Rock With Lips. Loved him. I cannot figure out why.

[FN 3] Callsigns vary from unit to unit, and there are different systems. On our internal radio network, or net, we used numbers and letters. I was 5, First Sergeant was 7, the TOC was X-ray. Now you know.