Willy's mother is dying. She has cancer and it has moved to her lungs. What especially sucks about his mother dying is that his grandmother, whom he had shared an apartment with in The Bronx for years, also passed away during this deployment. His grandmother, the tiniest cute-little-old-lady who couldn't have weighed more than 85 pounds, seemed to always be sitting in her recliner-- engulfed by her recliner would better describe what I saw whenever I entered Willy's apartment-- watching TV, flipping channels, looking like a delicate sculpture more than a person. Until she spoke. From that tiny throat came a voice so enormous it was like a kick in the shins for having dared think she might be feeble. "WILLY! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? DO YOU WORK TONIGHT?" (She was always very interested in where Willy was going and when he planned on being home and whether or not he was going to take it easy on the alcohol.) The first time I met her, I think my fight-or-flight response kicked in when I first heard her speak, and if I knew karate I would have popped into a fighting stance. I was like, Holy Shit! Where the fuck did that voice come from! Jeezus! I think I just crapped my pants a little bit!
When his grandmother died, it was sudden and unexpected. The evening she died she had complained of a cough and Willy's parents were going to take her to see a doctor in the morning. She sat down at the dining table in a chair she never normally sat in, then apparently just gave up the ghost. She was 89. I've always been fascinated by the way she passed. To me it seemed dignified. It's like she knew she was about to die, so she said to herself, Well, I guess I better sit down for this. This sort of brusque grace runs in Willy's family.
When I first moved to New York City, I was a bit apprehensive about my new National Guard unit. I knew it would most likely be populated with city kids who grew up in the streets, tough in ways that a mewling suburbanite like myself could never convincingly replicate. And although I had been to infantry school, I hadn't done any real infantry work in years and was a little nervous that I wouldn't remember the battle drills properly.
The groups that soldiers hang out in tend to be divided down racial lines, so when I arrived it was basically assumed that I'd hang out with Willy since he was the only white guy. The platoon was mostly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans with a handful of bruthas and the occasional random ethnicity like Moroccan, Guyanese, or Venezuelan. One of the first things Willy told me when I met him was, "Yo, I didn't show up last drill. I didn't call the First Sergeant or anything. Oh well. Fuck it." He told me this while we were smoking in front of the armory on Lexington Avenue, hiding out from whatever was going on at the moment. I remember thinking, Okay, this guy is a shitbag, I need to find someone else to hang out with before this guy gets me in trouble. I was in a slight panic thinking that I'd just shown up to a new unit and I was already shamming out of work and associating with this lazy bastard.
But once Willy was in the field, he was an entirely different animal. The guy was hard working, tough, and a clear thinker. For one of my first drills, our platoon went up against some West Point cadets. We were in the rocky wooded training area at Camp Smith, New York in a standard defensive perimeter and the cadets were an assaulting element, or OPFOR as they're called in training for "opposing force". I remember Willy had set up some early warning devices outside our perimeter consisting of tin cans and a trip-wired chem light, something that is perfectly natural to want to employ, but I would never have though to do it. I was so concerned with following plain-vanilla doctrine as closely as possible while Willy was thinking only in terms of practicality. Before this drill he was just this portly rookie cop from The Bronx with an Irish last name that I could never seem to remember how to pronounce. But after seeing how he worked in the field, I became immediately attached to him. I remember thinking that as long as I stuck by this guy, I'd always be safe. I was doing my best to hide the fact that I didn't know what the fuck I was doing on so many different levels-- as an infantryman, as a New Yorker, and (to be perfectly honest) as a man. I had moved to New York City several months after my relationship with Heather came to its indescribably horrific end and the only way I was able to cope with it all was to strip everything away from my life except the most basic elements of myself and start over. There's no better place than New York City to reinvent yourself and the solidness that was Willy could not have been better timed at this point in my life.
I think it was George Carlin who said he never really understood prayer. He said when people pray, they basically are just telling God all the things they want. He said it would make more sense if you told what you wanted to someone like Joe Pesci, because Joe Pesci seemed like someone who could get things done. I don't believe in God and I don't know Joe Pesci, but I'll tell you what-- Willy knows how to get things done.
When the Red Cross message came through about his mom, Willy was granted emergency leave to return to the United States. Normally the trip from Iraq to the US is this three-day ordeal, but Willy managed to do it in twenty-one hours despite numerous obstacles. He's the compressed version of the story:
Willy pulls a guard shift from midnight to 3am. Goes to bed but can't sleep so watches Die Hard. Falls asleep around 5:30am. Is woken up at 6:15am, told that the Red Cross message came through. Catches a ride to the Balad Air base at 9:30am. Sits in traffic as an enormous convoy slowly makes its way into the gate. (Think traffic jams suck? Try being stuck in traffic worrying about being blown up or shot.) Finally makes it to the airport, but the base gets hit with mortar fire, impacting right in front of him near the air strip. His flight indefinitely delayed, he makes friends with some pilots and plays a game of whiffle ball with them while they wait for air traffic to be restored. Mentions his predicament which is overheard by a Lieutenant Colonel, next thing he knows he's on an empty C-17 by 2pm with some pilots bound for Germany for training. (He was supposed to get a flight in the morning to Kuwait.) Lands in Germany at 6:30pm. The logistics rep tells him he can catch a flight in the morning to JFK. Screw that. Notices some soldiers on their way to Atlanta for R&R. Unsurprisingly he talks his way onto the flight, but is told he'll have to pay his own way to New York. Right, whatever. Is told to check in at 3am. Drinks three German beers, returns to his room to shower and get ready but is more drunk than expected and instead passes out on the bed. His infantryman's internal alarm clock goes off, but he hits snooze a few times apparently and wakes up on the floor at 3:45am (he does this for some reason when he's drunk-- sleeps on the floor). Freaks out, runs to the terminal but finds to his relief that boarding doesn't begin until 6am. Notices he's hung over. Gets on the flight and sleeps through most of it. Once in Atlanta, with his Jedi-like gift for bullshitting convinces the Delta ticket guy that he was supposed to be on a flight to New York who diligently finds a "fund code" to pay for the flight. Visits the USO in the airport. He's still wearing body armor so attracts a lot of attention. Patiently answers questions from well-wishers despite a splitting headache. Has a conversation with a Special Forces guy who says 12-month complacency-inducing deployments are too long. At the ticket counter is upgraded to first class (bear in mind that he never paid for this flight). Has a stiff Jack and Coke and passes out in the plush leather seat. Lands in New York and from the airport goes straight to the hospital where his mother nearly goes crazy when she sees him.
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Just before the transfer of power took place in Iraq, we had a very big operation planned in the small town where we work. One of the most powerful men there was a cleric who lived in a Mosque in the center of town. He had ties with Al Qaeda and pulled a lot of political weight in town. I'm not involved in the intelligence process so I can't tell you all the details about who he was and what he had his hands in, but I know he was considered a "high value target" and had to go. We had hoped to nab this guy from one of the town meetings, but he never showed, so it was decided that we would raid the mosque in which he lived.
This operation was by far the biggest thing we've been involved with on this deployment. There were a few homes in town that were going to be raided at precisely the same moment that we'd perform the raid on the mosque. Willy's platoon would do one of the homes and it was my platoon's job to do the mosque, but eventually the raid itself was given to the Special Forces. This was a bit of a disappointment, but I suspect the politics of the situation were a consideration. The raid was actually performed by Iraqi National Guard, a team trained by the Special Forces, with only a few A-Team guys actually taking part. My platoon was given the task of providing a cordon of the mosque. What this means basically is that my platoon would prevent anyone from leaving or getting near the mosque during the raid.
I don't normally get very nervous before operations, but this one had a recipe for disaster. There was a lot of suspicion that enemy activity would increase as the transfer of power neared and I couldn't imagine the townsfolk taking too kindly to us barging into the mosque in the center of their town. In this case, the raids would take place about an hour before dawn. That way the streets would be uncrowded and if things got funky, there would be daylight shortly. When we heard that the raid on the mosque was going to be done by the ING, we all sort of collectively groaned. Most all the ING soldiers we've seen were such utter shitbags (the platoons we trained were actually half-decent), the idea of a complicated raid being performed by them was completely preposterous. In the mission briefing when we were told that an ING team was doing the raid, we were advised that their faces would be wrapped. This is a key bit of information because normally we are told to shoot people carrying rifles who have their faces wrapped. Then the rumor got started that the guys doing the raid would actually be Army Rangers dressed to look like ING, that way the spin on the story could be that the raid was done by Iraqis, not American infidels ignoring the transfer of power, hellbent on soiling sacred places of worship.
Once all the vehicles and units were staged early in the morning prior to the mission, I took a walk to the truck the raid team was on to see if they really were Americans dressed up to look like Iraqis, but alas, they were all Iraqi. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. Then I took a walk over to Willy's vehicle. He was with Cesar and a few other guys I know from our original unit in New York. I have to admit that it makes me jealous when I find him bullshitting with the guys in his platoon and I have to step in like some fucking outsider because I'm in a different platoon. Normally he and I were inseparable, but our commander made it a point to put us in different platoons when they made up the platoon rosters before out deployment. At first I thought that maybe this was a good thing, to let us "grow" separately with different soldiers under our leadership, but I've since changed my mind about that and I'm just plain resentful that I finally got to go into combat with Willy and had to be in a different platoon than him. Anyway, I forget what we talked about, but when I left to go back to my vehicle he told me, "See ya later, little buddy." For years it would drive me up a wall whenever he called me "little buddy", like I was some sort of subordinate to him. But when I finally told him I hated it when he called me that, he told me it was supposed to be a Gilligan's Island reference. After thinking about this I realized that it was pretty goddamned funny. After all, his resemblance to The Skipper and mine to Gilligan were somewhat uncanny. I don't mind it so much anymore.
Once all the vehicles left our base, I have to tell you it looked pretty impressive. Normally when we go out on missions, we usually take between four and eight vehicles. For this operation, we had an absurd amount of firepower. We rolled out with Abrams, Bradleys, more Humvee gunships than I could count, five-ton trucks full of additional dismounted guys, along with Apaches and Kiowas as overwatch. Most the brawn that tagged along was for in the event that things went sideways, a la Black Hawk Down.
Once we came to the town, each team of vehicles broke off in different directions. My platoon was going to approach the town from a small dirt road off the highway, but we got a little lost trying to find the turn, something that really sucks where you have several vehicles all following the same lead. I couldn't help but think that if we couldn't do something as simple as find the right turn-off on the way to the raid, we were in for a world of hurt once things actually got more complex.
Synchronization between all the teams was an important aspect of this undertaking and we were a few minutes ahead of schedule, so we quietly parked all the vehicles on the dirt road just out of town. We could see the mosque's tower, only a few hundred meters away. I was pretty amped and having to wait gave me time to think about all the things that could go wrong. I thought about a mob of people with torches and pitchforks blocking the road. I thought about an IEDs exploding beside us on the way in. I thought about all the homes clustered around the mosque crammed full of women and children and the men who all had AK-47s under their beds. So I did an idiot check on my rifle to make sure there was a round in the chamber. Checked my Aimpoint to make sure I could see the red dot through my night vision (which appeared green). Checked my night vision to make sure it was mounted securely on my helmet. Put my hand where I had the 40mm illumination flares in my vest, then where I had the high explosive 40mm grenades (although the two look completely different, you wouldn't want to mix them up and load HE when you wanted illumination). I visualized exactly how I'd load a round into the tube. I visualized changing magazines. I visualized a man on a roof pointing a rifle at me, putting the green dot on his chest and squeezing the trigger.
Two minutes out. The vehicles started up and we made our approach into town. There were more trucks on the roads in town than I expected. There were a few men here and there doing god-knows-what at this insane time of day. The area around the mosque was clear, no legion of activists performing a human shield sit-in, no candle light vigils, no platoon of Sadr's men. My Humvee stopped next to the front gate of the mosque and I dismounted along with Kirk and Whiskey. The three of us crept down the tight alley adjacent to the outer wall of the mosque, our sector for the duration of the raid. I peeked into a window of a home and saw six people sleeping side by side on the floor. The alley opened up to the left. I scanned around the corner. Multiple doors, multiple windows, an area around the wall to the left that I couldn't see behind, two spaces between buildings I couldn't see down either, a half-stripped car. The buildings in front of us had two levels and each level had a roof. The alley continued between an apartment complex and another house. To our right was the back door out of the mosque courtyard. We were to kill or capture anyone that might try to engage us from any of these buildings, anyone approaching through the alley, or anyone fleeing out the back door. For three guys in a small alley, this was a total shit sandwich. With my thumb on the safety, I was scanning door, window, door, window, roof, door, roof, window, alley, roof, door. It was unnerving.
Then CRASH! A Humvee rammed the front gate of the mosque, pulled back and the ING team poured into the courtyard. A few shotgun blasts (to breach the inner door), some yelling, then footsteps on the roof of the mosque. I couldn't really watch any of this, all I could do was listen. An SF guy came out the back door, looked around, nodded to us, then went back in. It looked like the ING guys got their guy without incident. So far so good.
Then not far away there were a few bursts of automatic fire and some tracers streamed into the night sky. At first I thought it might be one of the vehicle in the cordon, but it was a little farther than that. There were a few more shots, then silence. I looked back at Whiskey and said, "Who the fuck was that?" Then I remembered that third platoon's objective was in that direction. I thought to myself, That motherfucker. If Willy made contact before me I'm gonna be so pissed. It had to be Willy. Shit. Since our deployment began, Willy and I have been competing to see who would make enemy contact first. I was part of the convoy that drove up from Kuwait, so I thought I'd win for sure with that movement, but it ended up being a completely uneventful trip.
A minute or two later and we were back in our Humvee and on our way out of town. I was impressed that the raid went as quickly and smoothly as it did and surprised that the target individual was even there. I had bet Kirk five bucks that he wouldn't be and when we were back in our seats, he yelled at me, "Ha ha! Pay up, motherfucker!"
There was no word of any casualties over the radio, so I was at a loss as to what the deal was with the shots fired. Once I finally had a chance to talk to Willy and some of the other guys in his platoon, I got the whole story.
It went something like this: Willy's platoon has a thing for performing breeches on outer gates by hooking them with a chain to a Humvee and pulling them down. So like they normally do, Willy's squad is stacked on the outer wall by the gate and it's hooked to the Humvee. But this time when they let 'er rip, instead of the gate coming down, the whole goddamned wall came down. Onto Willy and Cesar. Willy said that he could see the wall coming down on top of him, like it was in slow motion, but there wasn't anything he could do, there was no way to move out of its way fast enough. Willy is one big motherfucker and there isn't much by way of physical force that can phase him and his tolerance for pain is completely ridiculous, but he told me, "That brick wall coming down on me rocked my world. That shit really hurt." Cesar is not a big guy but is smart enough that when he stacks, he's right on Willy's ass. Willy says this sometimes really bothers him, to have this little guy basically crawling up his butt when they're on raids, but I can understand the desire to want to be as close as you can to Willy when you know things are going to get hairy.
"Man down, man down!" Willy and Cesar's squad leader was freaking out. Although the wall had rung his bell, Willy managed to summon his retard strength and force his way out of the rubble with Cesar. When he realized that the "man down" shit was in regards to him, he got pissed and just kept yelling, "I'm good! I'm good!" The body armor we wear can really suck sometimes, but Willy said what really saved his ass were the ceramic plates in the armor and his knee pads. And what saved Cesar's ass was going down next to Willy. Once they got it together, the raid continued, even though Willy said he doesn't remember the next several minutes. Willy's squad leader tried to get him to sit the rest of the mission out, but he just kept saying, "I'm good, I'm good!" Willy kicks in the front door and stumbles in with his team, reeling like a drunk. Once inside there was a large door that the other team was unable to kick open. "Get the ram!", someone yells. Willy, still pissed about the wall and not about to let some stupid door ruin his flow, he runs into it full-force with his shoulder and it bursts open. Willy has been perfecting the one man breach-entry technique.
(Quick character introduction: Doogie. He's the resident bleeding heart liberal of third platoon. Once, while out in the western part of our area of operations, a no-man's-land desert, there was a rabbit. Willy asked it he could shoot it, and his platoon sergeant said Okay. Then Doogie whined, "Doooon't kill the buuuuuunyyyy!!!" Damn it, Doogie! Another time, some Iraqis fishing in a large canal offered Willy some of their catch. Willy graciously accepted the offer. Then Doogie whined, "Doooon't take the fiiiiish! That's their foooooood!!!" Damn it, Doogie!)
After the building was cleared, Willy and Cesar came back out to the front of the house. Then from the rooftop of an adjacent building, a man fired a burst at them with an AK. Cesar immediately returned fire with his SAW (arguably saving Willy's ass), rounds zipping off the low wall around the roof barely missing the guy, and Willy took cover behind an outhouse. Since the rounds were directed toward Willy and he didn't want to expose himself too much, he put his rifle over the top of the shitter, Vietnam-style, and shot back blindly. Then one of the Humvee-mounted M240s opened up, raking the roof with a stream of 7.62mm. This deterred the guy enough from firing again. But on the roof of the cleared building was Doogie. He had clear line of sight of the guy with the AK and looked right at him. Doogie yelled, "Freeeeeeze! Don't mooooove!" The guy then ran across to another roof, dumped the gun, and disappeared into the dark. Damn it, Doogie!
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When I asked Willy to give me all the digital photos he had so I could include a picture of him for this story, I found that he and his platoon had spent an incredible amount of time posing for the most wonderful collection of contrived soldier-glamour shots ever. I was tempted to do an entire post with nothing but photos of Willy posing like the raging narcissist that I never knew he was, but instead I'll just end with this one. All Hail Willy!
The whole point of this story that took me three parts and two months to finish is that Willy got into a fire fight before I did. That bastard!
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(If this were a movie, this is the short scene that would be shown after all the credits had run:)
A few days later, third platoon raided the same house again. The demolished brick wall had been replaced with a spanking brand new super-strong cinder block wall. This time when the gate was pulled by the chain, the entire wall came down in one solid piece, missing flattening a soldier by a few inches. Damn it, Doogie!
