September 24, 2003
One Night in Baghdad
Routine has settled in: Day=Patrol in the Sun. Night=Raid Houses.
It's getting a little intense. The other night, while raiding the home of suspected bomb builders, one of the suspects started talking to me as he was detained. He pleaded to me, "I'm a journalist. You get this wrong. They call this freedom?"
His words jarred me. Could this guy--no different than me--be a bomb builder? I somehow wanted to clear up what I thought could be a case of mistaken identity. I wondered if it was just bad intel: wrong house, wrong family. Nothing was found in the house--and all of the brothers were detained. His mother and sister were left alone in the living room crying.
Later, as a young officer was telling me how he records lullabies for his new baby, an IED went off outside the gate. Both of us were nearly knocked off our chairs from the shock of the blast. I went into the TOC and the duty officer was on the radio trying to figure out who was hit. Over the radio, you could hear a patrol calling in--trying to stay calm as a firefight erupted. I ran outside and tracers were streaming over the palace roof.
Iraqi Police and American MPs were wounded. I joined the Quick Reaction Force lining up to investigate the scene. As we waited for the order to roll, the wounded came in. One was a young female National Guard soldier. The IED exploded right in front of her. She took shrapnel everywhere—including one eye. Her fellow MPs spent the night in the Palace. In normal life they are policemen, mechanics and lawyers. Here, as they staggered into the Palace to bed down, they were soldiers—their T-shirts covered in blood, many of them shaking with grief.
I rolled out with Survey to look for IEDs on the road. Dumb or brave, I don’t know. I’ll never do that again. I’m wearing my helmet now.
