It may not be flashy, exciting, or heart-breaking, but it was my experience. I was lucky.
In the first weeks of January, 2006, I became an Other. An outcast; there, but not there.
I was a pogue, or Person Other than Grunt. I was unimportant.
Three months into my tour in Iraq, I went home on mid-tour
leave. Upon arriving back in Baghdad, I was pulled into the command post (CP) to
monitor radios and do various and sundry tasks for the Battery’s First
Sergeant. (A Battery in artillery-land is similar to a Company, though smaller
than infantry companies at about 90 soldiers. The First Sergeant is the highest
ranking non-commissioned officer, and the one generally accepted as running the
Battery.) On a day-to-day basis, I spent much of my twelve-hour shift watching
movies on my laptop in an air-conditioned office. I will admit it’s something
of a travesty that I received Combat Pay during those remaining nine months.
But I had my days, too.
The opinion of “grunts” – those brave and lucky few who venture
“outside the wire,” into the thick of things; who put their lives in imminent
danger with only body armor, a gun, and God to protect them – toward those who
sit in air conditioned offices and collect combat pay is, to say the least,
diminutive. Having come off of three months of patrols under the hot sun with
40 pounds of ceramic, Kevlar, and ammunition strapped to my torso and head, I
understood the sentiment. And for a long time I sympathized, and made no
defense of my fobbithood.
Ah, the fobbit; a name concocted by combining “FOB” – Forward
Operating Base – with the then-popular “hobbit.” A couple of indie-rappers – I
believe who were soldiers – even wrote a song commemorating the epitome of the
fobbit: the officer or NCO who enforced all the rules and regulations with no
regard for the stresses of combat, or the enlistees who complained of
paper-jams and bad food at the dining facility while their
older-brothers-in-arms risked life, limb, and sanity under cruel conditions. I
may seem light-hearted at times, but there is no excuse, in context, for the
complaints of the fobbit. Life is good, generally air conditioned, and food doesn’t
come in thick plastic packs with the joke “Meal Rejected by Ethiopia.”
But part of my job was to prepare our Quick Reaction Force
(QRF). One unit of four trucks was always on stand-by if something happened
outside the wire and reinforcements were needed. When they got the call, they
came to the CP to draw weapons and equipment (our personal weapons were always
on us, but the trucks would need to be armed). On occasion, if they were called
to higher alert but not sent out, we of the CP would get a box of to-go plates
from the chow hall if they were held over lunch. And, once it was realized I
would stay in the CP indefinitely (it was supposed to just cover another
soldier’s leave, but he came back and I stayed) and I got the proper schooling,
I handled the mail for the unit. All jobs for which the “grunts” (infantrymen
had a special dislike for artillerymen of any stripe who dared consider
themselves Grunts – it is all relative) were vocally unthankful, but certainly
did not mind.
Tempering, too, the lofty view the soldiers on patrol had of
themselves over fobbits was the fact that we were all in Baghdad during the
occupation phase. “Outside the wire” meant villages outside our particular FOB,
but within some of the confines of the larger FOB that Baghdad had become. One
of the minor palaces within our FOB was rumored to be holding Saddam Hussein
during trial – not a defendant the U.S. will keep on just any “dangerous”
location. So “combat action” consisted once of hearing a single shot fired, and
all four trucks in the convoy opening with everything they had. A Mercedes a
street over might have backfired, and for that a stone, multi-story building
caught lead-hell.
But I’m not here to say their job wasn’t dangerous. Mine
certainly wasn’t. Except once. Our CP had the misfortune of having an alley
outside the walls like a gun-barrel pointing directly at it. One day, during the
civil war between Muslim sects that developed in Iraq after their government
was elected, that gun barrel became loaded.
It’s a common occurrence in untrained weapons-firers to shoot
high; during an act of “Spray and Pray” – crushing the trigger of an automatic
weapon until a majority of all 30 rounds are fired, and praying you hit
something – the muzzle of a weapon will climb from the recoil, until by about
the third shot and onward, the weapon is pointing generally up. Well, when only
a low wall stands between a shooter and a CP, and all those shots do eventually
return to earth, some of them may land around said CP. Like ours.
So, for one day, I got to experience the thrill of seeing puffs
of dirt springing from the gravel lot outside our door as spent rounds struck.
Of course, some jobs outside still needed to be done. That’s what the ceramic
and Kevlar were for, even though they didn’t quite cover everything.
But by and large, I had a schedule, and I stuck to it. I made a
lot of runs to the dining facility, whether by Gator, Ranger, SUV, or bus. I
transported and sorted mail for the unit. I answered the radio, took reports,
and kept First Sergeant and Battery Commander (or Executive Officer) informed.
I relayed messages that needed to be relayed. I picked up orders from the
Tactical Operations Center (TOC), or at Battalion HQ, also in either Gator or
Ranger. Once a week, usually, I would accompany our supply sergeant on one of
his runs. Sometimes, when my shift extended into the middle of the night, I
would take our Battery SUV (an ’04 or ‘05 Suzuki Grand Vitara) for a tour of
Camps Victory and Liberty (adjacent FOBs so smashed together that you could
drive from one into another without realizing it). Incidentally, that was how I
learned to drive. And on occasion I would pick up or drop off soldiers from
Baghdad International Airport who were going on or returning from leave.
Was it dangerous? Rarely. Was it important? I should think so.
Did I complain? Sometimes, quietly to other fobbits or to myself. And aside from
my Otherness, life was good, sometimes hot, but always well-fed. The movies
were generally great, too. But I didn’t have popcorn, and that was a shame. But
I didn’t say that.
