Among other jobs, I am the Battalion Interpreter manager, which means I spend part of my day talking to our Iraqi interpreters, arranging who goes on what missions, who lives in what room, and who gets a few days off to move his family to a new neighborhood to avoid the death threats they've been getting. So as a part of that, I sat around sipping thick, sweet Iraqi tea while 'Smith' and 'Mike' smoked on a hookah, settling who got assigned to the mortars and who went to the scouts. At 2125, I said goodnight, as I had to reach the PX before it closed at 2200.
All of which put me in the middle of an intersection when the alarm sounded, giving me maybe three seconds to reach shelter before the 107mm rocket hit the T-wall 20m to my right.
I hadn't quite made it to cover. The blast threw concrete chips and dust all over me, and gave me a grade I concussion.
More inside.
I couldn't hear very well, and wasn't sure I'd escaped more. My head rang, but I got my flashlight off of my belt and ran into the dust cloud looking for wounded, two medics right behind me. I helped a staggering sergeant take off his rifle while the medics worked on the bloody puncture on his back. When I finally made the Battalion Aid Station 5 hours later, the medics told me that I had a concussion, and asked if I wanted to be put on quarters. I said I had too much work to do. My interpreters told me the next day I should thank God and call my wife. My sergeant told me I was now in for a Purple Heart, or a 'Iraqi Marksmanship Badge' as he put it.
Working with the interpreters has been like herding cats, but fascinating. My closest link to the people of a country I have spent a year and a half in so far, but never really visited. Some are sketchy, guys here to possibly spy on us for the ones shooting at us. Some pass info out of fear. Some just want a relatively well-paying job in a country with 40% unemployment in the good parts. And some are amazing products of an education system and culture that has only recently been smashed. 'Mo', a recent hire, has such good, nearly accentless English you'd be hard pressed to tell he wasn't American-born. 'Wiseman' and 'Mike' are both desperately waiting to turn girlfriends into wives. 'Wiseman' has been burning to ask her for months, but worries about how they can get married when his job keeps him here most of each month, and how they can live in Iraq when it is like this. 'Mike's' girlfriend is of the wrong sect, and already promised in an arranged marriage to another man. 'Rich' asked my opinion of all the huge Shi'a religious marches we see regularly around here, thousands of followers of Ali marching along whipping and slashing themselves, carrying posters of venerated Imams. He seemed glad when I agreed with him that it was all a man-made-up display, not a divinely ordained commandment being fulfilled.
They're real people. They tell me things about the city and Iraqi life now that are by turn interesting and horrifying. 'Rydar' needs the time off to move his family. He's far from the only one with stories like that. All of them, to a man, wish for the day the war is gone.
But as I said to one of my joes when we were discussing GEN Petraeus's report next month, what are we supposed to do when all the options are bad? PM Maliki just put together a coalition government that excludes the Sunnis altogether. The surge has brought moderate increases in security to some parts of Baghdad, but not others, and hardly to the country at large, so staying the course does not hold much promise. Pull out at full speed? And the mess we've left will only crumble further, leading to a independent Kurdistan that will immediately face war with a Turkey that cannot accept its existence, and a Iranian client-state in the south. Increase out commitment? With what extra Army we've been saving? All we've got left at this point is trying to find the 'least-bad disaster' we can.
And I and my comrades are going to have to do the pushing for it no matter how it falls out. And my interpreters will have to live in it, for as long as they can; we had another interpreter a month ago, 'Khalid'. He was a nice older guy, a major in the Iran-Iraq war, which he fought in from beginning to end. His English was very good, and he gave me an extra sheet of paper when he saw me writing a letter to my wife on the hood of a HMMWV as we waited for a night mission to start. He went home on leave for a few days and was killed in his home by insurgents for the crime of working with the Americans. Someone in his neighborhood had found out. They did some pretty nasty things to him before they finally shot him.
They all want the war to end. They fear the power the militias have gained , and what the results will be for their country in the long run. I honestly want to help them. But when they ask me what will happen, and what we will do, all any of us can say is 'Inshallah'.
Soldier Boy, from FOB Rustamiyah, Baghdad.