From Baghdad with Love by Jay Kopelman (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .TXT) 📕

It’s like Lava is everyone’s kid. It gives them something to be responsible for above and beyond protecting their country and one another, and getting their brains blown out or worse in the process. He gives them a routine. And somehow, I become part of it.

Every morning we feed Lava his rehydrated Country Captain Chicken with Buttered Noodles and then pile out of the house to various posts across the city. Some Marines patrol the streets, some clear buildings looking for weapons, and some get killed and don’t do much of anything after that.

Me, I have to patrol the streets with three wide-eyed Iraqi soldiers who, in their brand-new, US-issued, chocolate-chip cammies, wave their rifles around as if clearing the way of spiderwebs. Most still haven’t figured out how to keep their rifles safely locked.

They are untrained, out of shape, and terrified. They’re members of the Iraqi Armed Forces (IAF)—stouthearted doublespeak for “conquered and unemployed”—who were coaxed by the United States to help root out insurgents in Fallujah before the upcoming national elections.

Several days before we bombed the city, the new Iraqi recruits reported to Camp Fallujah, a few miles southeast of the city, with plenty of promising bravado. When Prime Minister Iyad Allawi made a surprise visit to the camp and urged them to be brave, to go forth and “arrest the killers” in Fallujah, the young Iraqi soldiers cried back with newly developed devil-dog gusto, “May they go to Hell!”

Things deteriorated quickly, though. First we built a tent camp for them just outside the walled safety of the main camp. We called it the East Fallujah Iraqi Camp and hoped the name and the handful of American advisers and liaison officers who also stayed there would boost their courage. The Iraqi soldiers endured both regular mortar shelling of their tents by insurgents and verbal bombardments from the Americans who only had one week to prepare them for their first-ever combat experience. So they were prone to the jitters and often woke up in the middle of the night shooting their un-safed rifles wildly. Thank God they didn’t know how to aim.

It didn’t help that influential Iraqi clerics publicly threatened the IAF soldiers with banishment to Hell, and the insurgent council that controlled Fallujah promised to behead any one of them who entered the city to “fight their own people.” In a statement issued by the council just before we attacked, the insurgents stated: “We swear by God that we will stand against you in the streets, we will enter your houses and we will slaughter you just like sheep.”

More than two hundred Iraqi troops quickly “resigned,” and another two hundred were “on leave.” My job now is to babysit some of the few who remain.

One afternoon about a week after I arrived at the compound, a few other Marines and I are patrolling one of the main streets with them. We’re in front of a mosque, right? And they’re all bug-eyed and waving their guns around and I’m a little strung out myself about what’s going on around us only I can’t let on, because I’m their example of what they’re supposed to do and feel and be. But they’re so freaked out, they’re clearly about to shoot me or one of the other Marines by accident, so I figure the best thing is to make them more afraid of me than they are of the streets—you know, take their minds off it for a little while—so I start yelling.

“Knock that shit off.”

And I keep yelling.

“Safe your weapons.”

And they keep jerking their eyes one way and their rifles another way.

“I said knock that shit off!”

Until I see they’ve gone into another zone of fear that even I don’t have access to, and one of the other Marines, I don’t remember who, Tim O’Brien, Dan Doyle, or Mark Lombard, says to me, “Take it easy on them, man, they don’t understand English,” which kind of ruins my whole show.

“Yeah, well, they better learn fast.” But I stop yelling and give them a look instead.

Then something rips past us in the air and we freeze. Just like that. It comes from nowhere but explodes a few yards away. Now we’re moving fast. Fast.

A second rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) comes screaming our way, and I assess the situation in staccato—taking fire from two directions; small arms, medium machine gun, and rocket-propelled grenades; two men wounded; Iraqi soldiers running for cover; outnumbered in more ways than one.

I maneuver behind the hood of the Humvee to direct the men as Tim O’Brien, up in the turret, opens up with the MK-19 turret gun laying down a base of covering fire so the rest of us can position to fight.

Dan Doyle picks up a squad automatic weapon and fires toward the southwest.

Tim’s a primary target in the turret, especially when his MK-19 jams and he has to fight with his M4—a shortened version of the M16A4 assault rifle—while he’s trying to clear the MK-19 and make it ready to fire again. But it’s Dan who gets hit. Blood runs down the inside of his left leg.

“Dan, get into that mosque,” I order, but he ignores me and takes off running to get the Humvees positioned so we can evacuate the rest of the wounded, including Mark Lombard, who’s bleeding all over the place but is on the radio calling in our situation report anyway.

Bullets and shrapnel ricochet from the hood of the Humvee inches to my right. Blood soaks Dan’s pant leg.

“Get your ass into that mosque,” I yell again, but he, get this, looks over at me and grins.

“Just a flesh wound.”

Two armor-piercing rounds hit the vehicle and tear through its quarter-inch steel plate easier than needles through skin. I fire my M16A2 and yell for the Iraqi soldiers to direct their fire to the south.

Only I don’t see them. Where the hell are they? I have to get the wounded to safety,