Time for a War Story
A Tale of Disillusionment Because of Shitty Soccer Balls and Cheap Ass Water Filters
In 2009, I was deployed to Iraq for the second time—this time with a Joint Expeditionary SIGINT Tactical Reconnaissance (JESTR) group. JESTRs were two-man teams attached to maneuver units (i.e., infantry, artillery, mechanized infantry, etc). We used our fancy intel to kick down doors, collect intelligence, and detain bad people, and we also did other jobs to support those we were attached to (EOD escort, show of force, patrols, etc.) My partner and I were first with Army 1-5 Cav scouts, then 2nd Division Infantry. My callsign was Carnage (Yes, his was Venom. Yes, we are nerds; no, it was not our choice of callsigns).
I freaking loved it. I could write pages just on this mission, from working with Special Operation Forces (SOF) to peeing on a frog I found to cool it off. But I won’t because I am lazy and only want to write this one, and I want to be cynical, so here we go.
Taji area, Salah Ad Din Governate, Some Random Villages We Tore the Fuck Up, Iraq, “Winter” 2009.
The Mission: Render Humanitarian Aid, Show of Force/Do Our Tactical Intel Gobbledygook, and Search Every Date Grove and Busted Ass House.
It was, to put it mildly, a long fucking day fueled by anger, nicotine, about 13 Rip-Its (energy drinks), and maybe two bottles of water.
It started before dawn. We fast-chow-ate those cat turd sausages and a fistful of boiled eggs and Rip-its. We did all the vehicle checks. Then we stocked up on water filters, soccer balls, pumps, cigarettes, candy, chocolate, and, I kid you not, f’ing beanie babies. Like, OODLES of them. Like all the 90s moms sent them to us, realizing they weren’t worth a dime now.
We are all squeezed into our MRAPS (Google it) with everything, like being stuffed into a turkey for Thanksgiving. We were so scrunched up in the back that we looked like building blocks of camo and anger. Oh, and my MRAP’s AC didn’t work, and we weren’t allowed to fix it. It's a joke on us since the Air Force loves its AC. HAR fuckin’ HAR, Platoon Sergeant Billings.
We arrive and dismount and start setting up perimeters and traffic routes. Among many things, we start handing out water filters and giving up pretty much all our cigarettes to the Iraqi adults and telling them we have things for kids, which sparks the coming fiesta of children. Half the gremlins didn’t even have shoes on. They mobbed us to the point we had to elbow them to keep them from grabbing knives/ammo/personal stuff off of us. Like, hard. And yet they kept coming. I guess the need for Jolly Ranchers, f’in Beanie Babies, Soccer balls, and chocolate knows no bounds.
We weren’t the only company wanting to show up and play. At least two others did. The amount of traffic, chaos, miscommunication, orders, and counter-orders it created was beyond stupid. Quickly, even walking or finding people became a slog. Finding our own people became impossible, being spread everywhere. If you think you were gonna pee in private somewhere, forget it. The traffic jams got so bad that every other Iraqi male claimed he was a doctor on his way to the hospital; I kid you not.
I think we shot at least four cars’ engine blocks that wouldn’t stop quick enough. Either that, or my infantry guys got grumpy after the hours trickled by. Imma go with grumpy. My partner did find one bad guy, kind of by accident. I don’t remember how; he was in the other nearby village, so good on him. He also hated every moment and returned and passed out in our Platoon Sergeant’s vehicle for hours afterward without telling anyone.
Me and an Lt. (infantry Lt’s are typically competent and reliable in my experience) who I didn’t even know got stupidly bored and decided we would search houses. Alone. Not our most brilliant move, but we were angry at what was about the 6th hour in and bored, and at that point, getting shot at or exploded seemed more of a viable experience than the current cluster fuck. On the other hand, we found a small cache of AK-47s and didn’t get killed! So, yay?
We ran out of food for ourselves as the locals kept begging us for ours or stealing it, so we started gorging on dates in one of the groves when we took a break, praying any weapons caches would be found in the groves. Now, that was one of the most peaceful moments of the entire tour. I was just sitting under a tree, eating them straight off the ground. I did get to watch from my tree an out-of-shape public affairs officer fall off a berm and push their M-16 into the mud, which was so bad that it had to be dug out with a shovel, so that was funny.
No weapons were found. You could say the search, however, that it was not…Fruitless. Because…You know…The dates…Oh, never mind.
I gave this one girl, one of the first kids, chocolate before it melted. My interpreter spoke to her for me; it was her first time having chocolate. Let that hit you in the feels. This child followed me EVERYWHERE for the rest of the day. We didn’t speak. Every once in a while, I gave her more. At some point, she just disappeared, probably after realizing I didn’t have any more candy.
I think of her to this day. I cynically doubt she’s alive.
One kid with a cute bright pink sweater, also barefoot (it’s weird how starkly we will remember some things), was getting his ball inflated. When my partner was done filling up the ball, we decided to play with some kids. I kicked the soccer ball as hard as possible for the kid while he ran down the street in preparation.
It was a perfect kick. And it landed perfectly. Right into the back of the small child’s head, knocking him down and busting his face into the concrete and filth. Our combat medic had to stop the bleeding. And there was a lot. The town elders were laughing. I won’t lie; we laughed a little. (I never said I wasn’t a horrible person, and his own dad was laughing for the love of Pete). His kid friends laughed, too, stealing his ball and running away. Ha ha, jokes on you, brats. That ball's gonna deflate soon.
About 20 minutes later, I think after I went David Beckham on the kid’s skull, I sat on the hood of a vehicle, had a smoke, and took it all in as it was mercifully winding down, and the sun started to go down. And it hit me harder than the ball to that noggin’: What the hell is any of this accomplishing? Water filter systems that are almost or already expired, and soccer balls holding themselves together less than my ex? Candy that’s melted to the point of liquid, and f’in Beanie Babies?! WHAT AM I DOING?! Oh, yay, we got one bad guy and 5 Aks… To use the current kid’s slang, I am not going to be very demure, but whoever put this shitshow together wasn’t very mindful.
But the top Brass back home says it’s a good thing we were there because, you know…Liberation? I mean, why, though??? Retribution against the Taliban for the attack? That’s Afghanistan. We were told there were chemical weapons! (Uh, where?) Saddam is on an axis of evil and buddies with Al-Qaeda (which, by the way, Bin Laden hated Saddam); they want freedom and democracy! (In the form of bullets and bombs apparently, and a very now cheap housing market, but hey, fixer uppers!) Notice how liberation often goes hand in hand with someone else’s livelihood going to shit or death?
So why am I here, again for the second time within a year, trudging along this hot-ass dystopian nightmare, breaking my shoulders, knees, lungs, and all around everything exactly? Why are any of us? For fun? Money? Adventure? Brotherhood? A sense of duty to…Something? Sure, but does that shit matter compared to a global scale fuck up? Does that fuck up even matter 50 years from now?
Existential Crisis, Engage!
That was the day I went from this is messy, but I guess we know what we are doing, so we had no fucking idea what we were doing there except trying the best we could with what we were given. NO ONE. Not me, kicking a busted soccer ball into someone’s head, to the Suits in D.C., knew what that best was anymore, though.
It was all bullshit. It was all a band-aid. It was all a disillusioned mess. All we did was give away things that would end up in the garbage already on the street, from the balls to candy wrappers. No one’s life improved in the long run. No infrastructure was fixed. No democracy was handed out. That child may have loved the beanie baby I gave, but blowing up a building in her village had more of an impact—in a bad way.
I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. But the dilemma is, I think I would if it meant we didn’t bomb a country to shit for nothing. Is the good I did (among all my teammates, let alone the military as a whole) and the experiences and things that changed for us worth what it cost the Iraqis? I don’t believe so.
Yeah, I am an intel badass. I have street cred and respect and have done what very few in my career will do. I know what it cost me.
Fuck it, only the vets who were there and Iraqis care now anyways.
Technical Sergeant (retired) Jason McCroskey spent over twenty years hunting America’s most lethal terrorists.
You know how to tell a story that makes me laugh and breaks my heart...both.