First Skirmish with Insurgents, Part II

After Rod and I "set," that is, having dashed around the corner of the house and taken our covered positions, I yelled the word and the two snipers came up, followed by Lopez and Salinas.

As I came to the threshold of the house whose rooftop the snipers wanted to be up on, I saw the door was open and a man was sitting in front of it.

"Good American soldiers?" the man asked, fear tightening his face as he sat.

"Yes, good, good," I said, and wiped my feet on the doormat he had at the front doorstep. The mud that came off my boots was the same mud that had stuck the LAVs and prompted the attack.

"Wipe your feet guys," I commanded. I thought it was a thoughtful request. At this point in the war, having lost no friends except for Capt. Ford's shrapnel wound that had sent him home, I still felt we needed to do as we were told as far as the smiling and waving bit.

"Is there anyone inside the house?" I asked the man.

"No, no one," he said anxiously.

He told me he taught English in Fallujah but had left recently to work in Hit and that the home was freshly built for his bride-to-be. It had just been finished judging by the construction material around the courtyard and the newly moved furniture and applianceseverything out of the box.

"Ani Abu Boutros," I said, proud of my cultural awareness training. "Abu Boutros," is what my name should be properly in Iraqi Arabic, where a man very often identifies himself as "father of so-and-so," so-and-so being his eldest son. Because my eldest boy was Peter (Boutros in Arabic), I called myself "Abu Boutros."

As I shook his hand, I noticed the man was shaking almost convulsively from fear. He was terrified. I felt sorry for him.

The man expressed his intention to leave his house.

I radioed Lieutenant McKinley and told him I had a man in the house who wanted to leave. He OKd the deal, and I told the man to scoot.

"You come with me," he said.

I laughed. "Hell no, you go on by yourself."

"Tell American soldiers no shoot."

"Americans won't shoot," I said.

"Come with me," he said again.

At this point I suspected ulterior motives and started to get frustrated.

"You can stay here if you'd like, but I'm not going into the street with you."

Hesitantly, he walked into the street, looking like he was afraid to get shot.

Meanwhile, the snipers had been up on the roof, accompanied by Lopez and Salinas. Rodriguez had stuck with me, checking the first floor.

"All right, Rod, let's clear the house."

We cleared the thing, looking under beds, in the man's new wardrobes, and it was a fancy house.

Up on the roof, we scanned targets with the snipers while the Huey Cobra and its counterpart Huey Gunship flew protection for the LAV crewmen, who were still digging out of the mud.

The snipers watched intently in every nook and cranny of the city, finding nothing to kill.
Suddenly, SGT Scheele started cracking up, laughing.

"Now I know what those women wear under all those clothes," he said.
SGT Morales looked through the spotting scope and laughed.

"That's a hot-pink thong!"

I looked, and there it was, hanging out on the rooftop about 100 meters away, along with a bunch of more conservative looking clothing: a hot pink pair of thong panties.

It was a cultural experience.

The sun was beginning to set when the 7-ton trucks came from the FOB with tow ropes and commenced pulling the LAVs out of the mud.