Once we reestablished ourselves in a safer position, I drew up the nine-line EOD report while Gaines helped the Iraqi convoy commander organize the convoy. When Gaines returned he asked, “Jamal, you got that nine-line ready?” I replied, “Roger, Sir. One problem though. Our comm sucks balls here!”
We were sandwiched between two hills on both sides of the road and our communications equipment was unable to operate. As a workaround we sent a vehicle in the rear of the convoy farther up the road and had them relay the message to checkpoint eleven, which could relay the message to the 2/3 headquarters in the dam.
The response we received from checkpoint eleven was ridiculous: “Shadow, this is checkpoint eleven; expected time of arrival for EOD is at least four hours. How copy?” How copy? How about EOD get off their ass and help us out! We were stuck with 171 unarmed jundi in civilian clothes prepared to go on leave and sitting in the middle of the desert with a large bull’s-eye on our chests. We were not waiting four hours for an EOD team. If one insurgent mortar attack landed near our convoy, it might destroy 60 percent of the Iraqi battalion.
We sent a message back to checkpoint eleven, highlighting our inability to wait four hours for an EOD team. We sat and waited for a response. Meanwhile, the Iraqis were getting restless. Garbled Arabic came over Martin’s radio. Nuts asked Martin, “Martin, what did they say?” Martin responded, “Basically, the jundi are tired of waiting and have decided to go investigate the IED themselves.” Gaines hollered, “What? Why would they” Before Gaines could finish his sentence, we noticed the Iraqis were already sending out jundi-bots to investigate the IED.
Sermen and Juwad were halfway across the bridge. There was no convincing them to return to safety, and none of us was crazy enough to drag them back to the Humvees. This was an Iraqi solution to a problem—not a Marine solution. Was it the safest solution? Not quite. Could it work? Yes. So we let them go with it. Sermen, standing on top of enough explosive force to turn him into a pink mist, relayed in colloquial English over the Iraqi radio net, “Cooool, man. Dis a really, really, really big one!” Major Gaines quickly asked Martin, “Did he just say, ‘Wow, this is a really big one?’” Martin laughed and said, “I think so.”
Talk about having a high level of risk tolerance. I wish I could say this was a sign of Iraqi bravery, but I think it was more a sign of dumbassery. All the same, his actions were not very surprising. To the Iraqis, when and how they die is a matter of insha’allah. Thus there is no problem with standing on an IED, because God is going to choose when to kill you anyway. There is no point taking precautions against death. I guess this could also explain why the jundi never wear their protective gear in combat.
After dancing on the live IED for a few minutes, Sermen and Juwad came to their senses and jogged back to the Humvee to give us their full report. Their estimate was that there were two propane tanks with three hundred pounds of PE-4 explosives per tank and fifteen 155-mm artillery shells set up to ensure the death of any vehicle that happened to stumble upon them. This was a huge IED and one that EOD needed to address. We decided to wait a bit longer for a response from checkpoint eleven on the status of the EOD team.
We sat, and sat, and sat. I drooped into the driver’s seat of the Humvee, cranked up our defunct air-conditioner, and prayed EOD or a relieving unit would show up soon. I was about to go insane with boredom when I captured a glimpse of a sheep farmer walking through the wadi. He was slowly moving his way toward the IED.
I figured the sheepherder would not approach the IED. After all, it was likely he had played a part in providing the reconnaissance for the insurgents who actually placed the IED in the ground. I was wrong. The sheepherder slowly pushed his herd up the hill and headed directly toward the intersection of where the bridge met the road. He was about to turn his flock of sheep into one large shish kebab. I woke up Martin, who was in deep slumber. “Martin, dude, call Lieutenant Abass and tell him to yell at that herder before he blows himself up!”
After Martin’s warning, Lieutenant Abass hopped out of the vehicle and hollered at the sheep farmer, “You are heading directly for an IED. Please move away. It will destroy your entire flock!” The sheepherder obviously did not get the message. He pushed his sheep to a small grassy area almost directly on top of the IED. Abass continued to yell to the sheepherder, to no avail. The herder was simply too far away to understand the message. Thankfully, the man found out the news for himself. The sheepherder started running in circles. He realized he could lose his entire livelihood if the insurgents decided to detonate their IED. He jumped back and forth within the herd trying to get his flock to respond. The sheep were fixated on the grass. Every time the herder moved a few sheep away, they would sneak around him and run to get more grass. The scene was hilarious. Eventually, the sheep got the message after the herder smashed them on the face with a stick a few times and they exited the area. Phew, no shish kebab tonight.
Three hours later a unit from 2/3 arrived to relieve us. We regrouped the convoy and decided to create our own trail through the wadi so we could continue on the route. We had to go off road if we wanted to get through the three-hundred-meter-wide riverbed. For the Humvees this would be an easy task; however, our convoy had five Leylands full of jundi going on leave, a wrecker vehicle, an ambulance, and a BMW sedan we had confiscated from suspected insurgents the prior week. This was going to be quite a challenge.
We snaked the convoy down the steep edges of the wadi along a makeshift cart path. Things were proceeding smoothly. We reached the wadi floor and cautiously drove a few miles per hour, on the lookout for any command wires leading to the IED on the bridge. Suddenly Doc yelled, “Gents, you see that shit? I see it glimmering in the sunlight!” I replied, “What are you talking about Doc?” He replied, “Look twenty feet on your left.” I glanced in the direction of where Doc mentioned. Sure enough, a thin bronze wire was on the ground, leading to the IED on the bridge. I slammed the gas pedal and crossed the wire safely. We were good to go.
The entire convoy had almost made it through the wadi when Mark frantically yelled over the radio, “IED! IED!” Because they were in the rear Humvee away from our view, we assumed something bad had happened. The Marine and Iraqi radio nets sparked to life and the convoy started moving faster. Mark had triggered everyone’s survival mechanisms. Mark came over the radio again, “Uh, sorry. Actually, I just saw some command wires. Sorry about the confusion, I’m an idiot.” Doc, Gaines, Nuts, and I all looked at each other and said the same thing, “God, I want to kill that terp!”
After some more drama the entire convoy made it along the bypass route and we continued along Route Bronze. We would make it to Al Asad, but we would be more than four hours late.
IED Jackpot
I called EOD to get a report on the IED the Iraqis found on the bridge. The EOD tech on the phone answered, “Sir, we didn’t find much of anything. Granted, it was dark when we got there. All we found was a few strands of copper wire and that’s it.” I could not believe what I was hearing. I could still see the outline of the IED in the bridge when we were crossing the wadi the other day. I responded to the EOD tech, “Listen man, I know there is an IED out there. The longer it sits there, the longer it has a chance to blow up Marines. Ask your boss when you guys are free. We’re going to lead you out there and show you the IED.”