An Approaching Storm

In the week preceding the attack on Hit, during which we were told we would be mopping up for 1/8 after their initial assault, we in Second Platoon were assigned to set up a vehicle checkpoint for traffic headed north while truck after truck filled with families and crammed with their belongings headed south.

Because I now had in my possession a powerful spotting scope my father sent me, I set up and manned an observation post with my fire team south of the checkpoint, charged with picking out suspicious vehicles headed north to search during times when the other squads were not conducting 100-percent checks.

It was relaxing work, I had the scope trained on the farthest bend in the road, about two miles south, so I had time to pick my vehicle and radio in for our Marines to set up a snap checkpoint. With just four Marines and one unarmored Humvee, we were rather vulnerable from where we watched the highway, not 200 meters off to the east. Some of the civilians even waved, without us waving first, which surprised me.

I felt sorry for them. They looked as though they were evacuating for a hurricane, like we had to do every few years back home, living on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and some hurricane this was promising to be.

We set up defensive positions and I went over scenarios with Rod, Lopez and Gunner in case we were attacked by RPG or small-arms fire. For three days while the situation developed, we sat in our OP in an area notorious for vehicle-based suicide bombings, not more than twenty miles northeast of Ramadi, the next big town over.

Huey Air Cobra attack helicopters and F-18 fighter jets had been busy, noisily hammering away on the old city 10 kilometers north of us. The mornings were filled with most of the activity, the booming of 500-pound bombs reverberating like thunder from squall lines in a hurricane’s outer bands. I despaired over the upcoming mission, alternately feeling sorry for myself and trying to enjoy the strange combination of what I can only describe as “tense relaxation,” unique to my time in Iraq.