Posted on 04/13/2008 3:32:39 PM PDT by RDTF
In the off-season we raced our boats across the world. Some crews raced to England. Others, Maine. We always raced to Bermuda. That first summer we were 19. Our skipper was 22. A newly commissioned naval aviator-select. Phil was his name. I remember he had long sideburns and drank too much. Navy's sailing team had a reputation for drinking as hard as we ailed.
On the morning of my first open ocean Bermuda race we crossed the starting line upwind of the fleet in a perfect start right off Newport, Rhode Island's New York Yacht Club. I had nothing do with our position at the start. Phil put us there. I gunned the starboard trim. Every ounce mattered, so we sailed light. We had a few charts. A satellite phone. Top Ramen, a waterproof stereo. Moby's Play album was always our preferred artist at the start of any race. Then Paul Oakenfold. Sometimes a symphony by Grieg if Phil was feeling particularly cinematic. Even sober he maintained a certain charm. I had complete trust in our 10 man crew. In our boat. Her hull. Her speed. Our connection with the wind. Sailing is transcendental; a sport that requires as much of a link with your crew as the individual's own connection to himself and nature. To that end, sailing is a lot like combat. I remember not worrying about anything that morning. Except maybe that we'd lose the race to one of the investment banker crews from the New York Yacht club. They'd buy out all of the rum in Hamilton's bar before we got there. At least that seemed to be Phil's biggest concern.
On the third morning I was at the helm fighting deep swells as the sun broke over an increasingly violent Atlantic. There's something about a sunrise at sea. Much different than a sunrise on shore, a more gradual event. morning light surrounds you all at once. Like how the stage lights in a playhouse fill the theater at the start of a show. Beautiful. The storm grew worse every hour. We the sails yet again, shrinking our sail area to such a size that would allow us to remain upright, yet still give us forward way.
In storms you sacrifice speed for control. We strapped into hard points on the deck from harnesses we wore over-weather gear. If we got washed overboard we'd remain tethered to the boat, though we all knew the force generated from a fall into violent sea at 13 knots would deck. It was a safety, sur e. But Phil preached nothing worth a damn in life, love or sailing is ever completely safe. Sailing teaches a young man a lot about life. Even more about leadership.
As the storm built, the fleet slowed. It was miserable. Dangerous. Their tactic was clear: "hang in there". Not used the wind and the weather that was distracting the other crews to our benefit. We screamed at the gale. We shook our fists at the waves that crashed over our bow. We sent our tacticians down to the chart board and our crew to the bow and mast. We made some adjustments. We took some risk. We took the lead.
The intriguing thing about a storm at sea is sometimes you can see it coming from miles away. You ready yourself for violence. Other times it hits you all at once. And you deal with the mess before you. As with life and as in war, sometimes you see trouble, sometimes you don't. In either case, you never really know when you'll have to sacrifice speed for control. I always thought just one thing during storms at sea, something one of our coaches, a retired Vietnam Air-Cav pilot, would say: "fellas, here's where we see if you've got bitch in your heart". I liked that. Still do.
Later that morning I went forward to lay down a new foresail. A wave came over the bow, swept my legs from under me and sent me half-overboard. I grabbed onto a halyard and a stanchion for dear life. A buddy grabbed me and pulled me back on-board. It wasn't until we reached the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club many days (and many drinks) after that first big storm that we all realized just how dangerous all that was. It didn't matter much. We were just happy we didn't have bitch in our heart. We were young, confident, well- trained and in desperate need of adventure. We sailed into storms because that's what sailors do.
My war in Iraq has been a lot like sailing through a storm...
Last I reported we were on the verge of our last operation - one that had the hairs on the back of our neck standing on end. We were to clear some villages along an east-west running canal west of Karmah, a nasty enclave that remains one of the last strongholds of a desperate insurgency chased from Fallujah and Ramadi. We were well briefed on these villages which previous week's battles had claimed dozens of killed and wounded Marines and soldiers. We were not excited about the exercise. Most of us, half-jokingly, called it: Operation Last Cal l. No one likes the notion of losing a leg, or a life, in the final hours of a deployment.
But we did this one right. We went in heavy. Very heavy. Half the battalion along the canal each company in their own population center. Two more battalion's within 10 square miles. We had air on station every hour throughout the three days we were there. I had my village completely isolated by armored vehicle sections, aircraft stacked at various elevations according to their tactical function, snipers, and terrain. I was confident no one would pick a fight if we rolled in with all that ass. But rolling with ass meant negotiating tricky terrain (reference attached picture of downed truck). The risk paid off. Ass meant the enemy might stay home. It meant instead of evacuating blast victims, or trading small caliber rounds with some asshole in a palm grove, we could do our job - engage the local leadership, identify sources, and secure the village, as our sister battalion cleared through villages and palm groves to our south. I cleared my objective, a narrow but long village of a couple hundred homes, with 60 dismounted Marines, two sniper teams (set as book-end overwatch), 10 combat engineers and 30 Iraqi soldiers, in an exhausting and hot six hours. Land mines were a big threat, so we stayed in others tracks as we could, lead with Iraqi soldiers as we could, held our breath as we could.
We went firm in an abandoned home, set up security and launched patrols. We took some mortar fire. Came close to our sniper hides. Missed us. A good day. The Iraqi Army performed well. Though to say they "relaxed" once we went f irm would be an understatement. They threw off their gear and started chasing chickens and preparing chai as if they had just taken normandy and had accepted armistice. I felt like a circus leader. Their security was awful. One soldier in a chair with a PKC before him trained along the road. The other guard asleep on the roof. I started hyper- ventilating. The kind of "I've lost control of this situation" breathing I remembered from my first deployment. Then, as I watched these happy Iraqi soldiers with chicken heads in their hands, embracing each other after a hard day's work, I realized something: they did good. My defense was tight. My men were safe. I'll just regard the Iraqi Army as one more tactical barrier between us and any attack. Fine. Done. Enjoy your chicken and chai! I breathed easier, went into our pat rol base and from behind a secure window stared at the scene. I lit my cigar I was gnawing on all afternoon.
Beneath me: A palm tree lined canal was patrolled by Iraqi police dressed in Jeans, t-shirts and armbands with automatic weapons and face masks; attack helicopters circling us and the surrounding villages for miles to see, the sound of intermittent mortars and gun fire, children kicking a soccer ball in a dirt yard, some Iraqi soldiers praying on rooftops others laughing over chai and cigarettes, the evening call for prayer echoing over it all, my Marines on watch, others inside chain smoking Iraqi cigarettes, pouring water over themselves and removing their boots to let their destroyed, rash ridden feet breathe some fresh air. You can never have enough socks. It was complete chaos. It was...the way it should be. I breathed easy. And laughed. Something I wouldn't have known how to do two years ago. Tactical control is relative.
The only reason you establish a defense is to facilitate offensive operations. So we put together our offense. A 3 day package of patrolling, census gathering, security efforts, ambushes, and coordinated searches. We made some sources, developed some relationships. Gathered intelligence. And patrolled. That night I set in with a squad in an L-shaped ambush along a corn field. No signs of movement. Bugs feasted on our exposed skin all night, even though we bathed in industrial strength repellant before we stepped. We returned at dawn. Itchy. Tired. That morning I ate my ritual breakfast of peanut butter and two crackers, a cigar and a cup of black coffee and briefed my squad leaders on the day's objectives. During one of our afternoon patrols one of my most clumsy Marines, Lance Corporal Hamuvalez, "Hamu" for short, fell into a shallow canal and started flailing his arms violently. He couldn't swim. The water was waste deep, he yelled for help. We told him to stand up. He stood up. His face turned red. We helped him out and laughed. Not a nice laugh either. A laugh only Marines know. A devious "my day is better for your misfortune" kind of laugh. I love that laugh. For his superb performance in the water, "Hamu" was now "Shamu".
We continued to patrol, ask to search homes, engage the head of each household, courteously, ask about their needs. Electricity, mostly. Medical care was given when needed. The most awkward house call we attended to was a woman complaining of an excruciating vaginal pain and yelling at her husband. Poor guy. I ordered "corpsman up" and sent him into the room with the woman's husband and my interpreter. He came out white as a bedsheet, which is something else because my doc's blacker than a stick of dark chocolate. We think it was a yeast infection gone wrong. I didn't see it, but my doc says he can still see it when he closes his eyes at night. He wasn't sure what to tell her. Neither was I. So I told him to give her some Aspirin and I wrote her husband a note that would get them through the gauntlet of checkpoints we had set up from the villages to Ramadi. The woman couldn't have been more grateful. She smiled at her husband. Her husband looked at us with that universal: "you have no idea how grateful I am that my crazy wife is no longer cursing my name fo r something completely out of my control" look. We made a friend in him that day.
I made it only a few meters before I was engaged by man after man, story after story. It's hard to tell people "no" to their requests for face time, money, or help. Most just want to talk. So as I waded through them, I told them what I've found always works in their culture, "I'll try" or "I'll see what I can do"...anything, but no. that always wins you an "en shallah, shukran" ("if god wills it, thank you"). I wrote some promissory notes to a few vehicles that had been destroyed by hellfire missiles. Collateral damage during one of the previous week's battles. One man wanted to meet Michael Jackson. Another wanted a dirty magazine. One of my finest lance corporal's obliged with a magazine pulled from shoulder carried beneath a belt of ammunition.
I have got to get more detailed in my pre-combat inspections.
Our honest engagement of the locals that week served us well. One square jawed man told us he wanted to give us some information but that there were enemy among us and we must come back at night, and in secret. We set out that night, small, light, quietly to his house. My team leader set in perimeter security as I moved with my entourage into his home. The informant ushered us into a back room. We sat in a circle on a beautifully hand woven dark maroon carpet. The light from a lone gas lantern filled the small cave shaped room filled as a few Iraqi officers, our intelligence chief collector, our famed interpreter, "Hamoudy", myself, my security man and a nervous informant exchanged the obligatory pleasantries ;> and small talk before we could get to business. We sat in this circle for hours, collecting information on local insurgents, and past attacks on our forces. My foot fell asleep. I chewed on some beef jerky I kept in my pocket. They chain smoked hand rolled cigarettes. I lit a cigar. The informant's son ran into the room and into his father's arms. He looked at my Iraqi lieutenant counterpart squarely. "This is why you have my information sir," he said to him. "You bring us the hope of safety. They bring us violence." My point man looked over at me, "T.I.I., sir...T.I.I."
"This is Iraq." Lifted from this summer's blockbuster, "Blood Diamond" in which "T.I.A." ("This is Africa") is used to articulate all the madness, beauty, tragedy, pain, and soul of Africa. "T.I.I." ("This is Iraq") was adopted by our Marines as the appropriate way to articulate the natural order and disorder of things in Iraq. For example, an artillery shell base plate from an illumination round flies into the chest of his rooftop. There is a one in a billion chance of this happening. In Iraq, this shit happens all the time. A squad moves to investigate, meets his mother who explains she had a dream her son would die this week. "En Shallah," she says with a shrug. No anger. Only acceptance that Allah willed it so. T.I.I. 14.5mm rounds impact within inches of you, destroying your vehicle, but leaving you unscathed. T.I.I. You watch beautiful sunsets while you defecate into a cat hole as explosions crash in the distance around you. T.I.I. Iraqi soldiers dance in circles, cutting off chicken heads and singing folk songs in the middle of a restive enemy controlled village. T.I.I. It all makes perfect sense to us now. All the madness. Beauty. Pain. Sorrow. Hope. Tears. Soul. All of this...T.I.I.
Can democracy work in Iraq? If it's going to happen anywhere, we all agree, it will happen here. Why? T.I.I.
This is Iraq.
We returned to friendly lines after 73 hours. Mission accomplished. All that was left was just one more week on the beat, then a drive through Fallujah. Then T.Q., ice cream, phone calls home, internet, and the promise of a cozy ship and a ticket home...
The Captain greeted us as we boarded his ship. He granted us extended showers and double even triple helpings at evening meal. No one could help keep the smile off their face. Most of them are still smiling. Maybe they'r e still smiling because we're on our way to Australia for a much deserved week on the beaches and bars of Perth. Maybe it's because they're able to talk to their mothers, girlfriends, and wives. Or maybe it's because deep down they know they left Iraq a little better than when they found it. As a unit, we've come full circle. From this battalion's first deployment [toppling sadam's regime], to the second [leveling fallujah], to the third [taking haditha and enabling the country's first democratic election], to this fourth [preventing al qaeda from entering baghdad as an infant electorate tries to takes hold], these Marines have experienced the full range of combat & nation building, life & death. It's a meditation I tell them, the implications of which they won't fully realize for years to come...
Standing on the deck of this great big ship this morning I could see a classically composed Indian Ocean gale building, probably two miles out. Big brooding clouds stirring the sea beneath. I wondered what sailors were beneath her. You should always say a prayer for sailors at sea. Especially when you see a storm. The sight reminded me of sailing to Bermuda. 7 years past. Doesn't it go by in a blink? This morning's storm, these past deployments, reminded me what it means to trust your crew, your equipment, your mission, and yourself. It reminded me that during storms you sacrifice speed for control. Time is relative to the violence around you. You reef your sails to regain control. The success of this summer's "surge" operations (and there has been marked success) reminded how good it feels to sail into rough wea ther and do more than just "weather the storm". The lessons of sailing are clear on this: Take some risk, make some adjustments, scream and shake your fists at the gale, pull ahead.
I think we're pulling ahead.
It's been 25 days since we left Iraq. I returned with all but one of my Marines, a forward observer with Lima Company medevaced after sustaining injuries from a blast, now being fed ice cream in Germany by a busty and beautiful Army nurse. The rest of the Battalion was not as fortunate. 98 wounded, 7 killed in as many days of sailing. Storms always get worse just before they quell. My guys asked for a moment of silence on our last hour in Iraq, before we boarded our C17, "freedom fortress." They humble me. That day they reminded me we honor our fallen by praying for those still at sea, beneath the storm. They reminded me that we honor these young men by not cursing the storm, because storms are a natural state of things (T.I.I., afterall), but by accepting that despite even the best of crews and fastest of hulls nothing worth a damn in life, love and war is ever completely safe. It reminded me that we all knew about storms before our adventure began. And that we chose to sail anyway. Because that's what sailors do...
Sail into storms.
A.STEWART MARTIN, AMERICAN. 2,000 Miles West of Australia, & Still Sailing Forward.
enjoy
you too
You can never have enough socks.
Ahem.
Great piece. Thanks!
Gonna save this one.
To all those, “Still at sea.”
Beautiful.
One of the best posts of the year....
One of the best posts of the year....
Or two...
That was great! It was worth the double ping.
Very beautiful. Thanks for sharing. Sending it to off to all my boys right now.
Ahem.
See? It's sort of universal around theater. ;-)
This guy is a great writer.
And the T.I.I. thing has caught on. We've been using it to explain away various weirdnesses at the FOB in Baghdad.
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