On Patrol in Muhollah Mediya
A day in the life of Private DePetris of East Hampton, stationed in Iraq
 Ralph Dayton Photos |
(5/15/2008) Gunshots rang out — the distinctive, “crack, crack” of an AK-47 assault rifle. You hear gunfire and explosions on and off all day, every day, in Baghdad. You just hope the next one doesn’t have your name on it. But these shots were close and intended for Sgt. Clint Atchison’s unit.
“Those bastards are shooting at us!” he shouted in disbelief. He sprinted down the gravel slope of a railroad bed, barking orders as he ran, and leaped onto the roof of one of the Humvees to get a better view. The other soldiers in the patrol turned outward, rifles at the ready, forming an immediate defensive perimeter.
“Well, whoever it was, they’re not hanging around,” said Sergeant Atchison after a few minutes of scanning. “Let’s keep going.”
The unit was on a “dismounted patrol,” outside the protective armor of their Humvees. Only drivers and turret gunners remained inside, following the men who were on foot. They were sweeping an area referred to as the Gap, a sort of no man’s land between two regularly patrolled neighborhoods, what the soldiers call “muhollahs.” The dusty, rocky Gap is a place where, the soldiers say, insurgents stash weapons, hoping their cache goes undetected.
The patrol was made up of members of the Army’s Second Battalion, Fourth Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, a unit with a long, distinguished history including engagements in the French and Indian War, the Civil War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and both world wars. Pvt. Antonio DePetris, a native of East Hampton, was among these men, in Charlie Company, Third Platoon.
The 10th Mountain Division is an infantry unit. They are what the Army refers to as “line troops,” placed on the front lines of any battle. You may have heard them referred to as “grunts,” “ground-pounders,” and “gunfighters” — all terms they are perfectly comfortable with. They take pride in being tough as nails.
The 10th Mountain Division has been deployed more times in the last 10 years than any other division in the Army. More than half of the present Charlie Company served a 2006 tour in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan’s Zabul Province, where they regularly engaged in brutal firefights with the Taliban. Charlie Company is now stationed at Forward Operating Base Falcon, commonly referred to as “FOB Falcon,” 13 kilometers south of central Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Private DePetris’s Third Platoon is stationed several kilometers away from the FOB in a command outpost (or COP) in a neighborhood they call Muhollah Mediya. The COP is a three-story concrete apartment building that the Army rents from the owner. The soldiers have constructed three heavily fortified guard posts on the roof, each with a commanding view in a different direction.
Every window in the building has been sealed with green sandbags. The building is surrounded by 12-foot-high concrete T-walls, which the Army has installed like giant Lego pieces. You see these T-walls all over Iraq, but they’re particularly prevalent in Baghdad, where they separate virtually every neighborhood from the next. Within the walls the entire grounds are covered with fist-size rocks. There is a small outbuilding that serves as the chow hall. No cooking is done here; a convoy makes a run to the FOB twice a day to fetch precooked breakfasts and dinners packed in Mermite containers. Some basics are kept on hand: bottled water, milk, Gatorade, cereal. The building has hot water for showering. The soldiers sleep in bunk beds, six men to a room.
Lt. W. Allen Jenkins spoke to a school official through an interpreter as Specialist Mario Barrera took notes and Cpl. Jeffrey Hurst posted security.
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Private DePetris is 21 years old. He and his brother, William DePetris — both graduates of East Hampton High School — enlisted in the Army the same March day in 2007, and went through basic training together. Tony was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, Billy to the First Infantry Division, “the Big Red One.”
Tony enlisted with the expectation of gaining life experience, self-discipline, and marketable skills. He figured he would serve one contract of four years and then return to civilian life. His plan was to return home, obtain a criminal-justice degree, and work with either the East Hampton Town Police or the East Hampton Village Police. Although this remains a distinct possibility, he is now giving serious thought to re-enlisting with the hope of qualifying for the Special Forces and attending Ranger school. He is highly motivated and enthusiastic.
Private DePetris’s usual role on patrol is that of a turret gunner. Each Humvee has a mounted machine gun atop a turret that the gunner rotates with a hand crank. The gunner enters through a rear door and then props himself between the two back seats, his upper torso sticking up through the open hole of the turret. He stands there for the entire eight hours of the patrol, resting only occasionally by sitting briefly on a nylon sling suspended from hooks below the opening. He urinates in a used water bottle or Gatorade bottle, screwing the cap back on and saving it to throw away later.
The turret gunner uses one of three machine guns mounted on a swivel: a 50-caliber (the “50 cal”), a 240B (the “40”), or a squad automatic weapon (a “SAW”). Before getting into the Humvee he straps himself into a harness like a racecar seatbelt, with a buckle in the center of his chest and straps cinching each of his arms and legs. Up in the turret he clips a fifth strap from that harness into a ring on the floor of the vehicle. All this is to prevent him from being thrown out in the event of a bomb blast or rollover.
The gunner is flanked on all sides by steel plates, part of the Humvee’s 10,000 pounds of retrofitted armor and two-inch-thick bulletproof windscreens. To prevent a grenade from being lobbed inside, a canvas-covered wire canopy is suspended above the turret. The rest of the crew is armed with M-4 automatic rifles, today’s generation of the famous M-16 lineage. And, usually, one soldier in each Humvee will have a 203 grenade-launcher attachment mounted to his rifle.
The average day starts at 6 a.m., with the staff sergeant patting everyone awake. “Time to get up, let’s go, time to get up,” he says. Without speaking, the exhausted soldiers get out of bed, pull on their uniforms, lace up their boots, raise their 50-pound body armor over their heads and lower it onto their shoulders, grab their rifles and Kevlar helmets, and head out the door.
They assemble by the Humvees for a short briefing by the platoon leader, Lt. Allen Jenkins, who details the day’s objectives. They then mount up and roll from the COP into Muhollah Mediya to patrol the streets. The patrol patterns are random, and change every day.
There is only one way in and out of each neighborhood, past a checkpoint manned by the Iraqi police. The platoon’s mission is to maintain security in the muhollah by assisting the Iraqi police and a local militia called the “Sons of Iraq.” They also do quite a bit of public relations work, meeting with business owners, schoolteachers, and homeowners. Where needs are seen, financial grants are made to encourage the success of the schools and businesses.
Pvt. Antonio DePetris, on guard duty in Baghdad, grew up in East Hampton. |
The air temperature is not bad, 65 to 70 degrees, when the patrol first rolls out just after 6 in the morning. But as the sun rises in the sky, the heat rapidly spikes into the 90s. During July and August temperatures will reach 110 or even 120 degrees. The air-conditioning in the Humvees seldom works properly, the soldiers say.
They each wear a five-pound Kevlar helmet, 50 pounds of body armor, long sleeves and pants, flame-retardant gloves, and eye protection. They are not permitted to crack a window to get some air. When they are ordered to dismount and patrol on foot, stepping out into the 95-degree air is actually refreshing.
The average patrol is boring. Scanning, scanning, scanning — looking for roadside bombs, weapons caches, snipers, suspicious activity. This goes on hour after hour, day after day. The men talk about every subject under the sun and try to stay awake: movies, food, ice cream flavors, girlfriends, hometowns. Never politics.
The monotony goes on and on until, when they least expect it, a sniper’s bullet, a roadside bomb, or an incoming mortar wakes everyone up.
“We’ve been really fortunate so far and suffered no casualties,” Lieutenant Jenkins said. “Maybe we’ll make it through the whole tour like this.”
Standing nearby, Sergeant Atchison, who has served two previous tours, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq during uglier times, said, “Sooner or later someone’s gonna get blown up.”
The next day it happened. The squad was on guard duty, manning the observation posts on top of the COP. Everything was routine and then there was an explosion so loud and powerful everyone in the COP heard it. Felt it.
“What the hell was that?”
“Something just blew up!”
Smoke could be seen from the roof. It was close, less than a kilometer away along Route Jackson, the main highway they travel twice a day to and from the FOB. Route Jackson has been designated “black,” due to the high incidence of roadside bombs.
Echo Company of the same battalion had been traveling Route Jackson in a convoy when the lead vehicle, a Humvee, was hit by an “explosively formed projectile,” or E.F.P. It entered the driver’s-side door just about calf level. The driver lost one leg below the knee and half of his other foot. The soldier in the right seat suffered severe shrapnel wounds to the chest.
The next day, the platoon escorted a special investigation team to the blast site. Witnesses were interviewed, photos taken, but there were not many clues.
There are basically two types of roadside bombs used by the insurgency in Iraq, the I.E.D. and the E.F.P. The I.E.D., or “improvised explosive device,” is the less lethal. It consists of an explosive charge, a detonator, and some sort of triggering device. It contains either a projectile designed to pierce armor, or shrapnel such as ball bearings or bolts. For the most part, the current retrofitted Humvee and the new MRAP, or “mine-resistant ambush protection” vehicle, can withstand the blast of the average I.E.D.
The E.F.P., however, is a devastating weapon. Last year, military officials repeatedly charged that they are being manufactured in Iran. The E.F.P. consists of a tube containing an explosive charge, sealed at one end and capped with a concave copper plate at the other end. When detonated the copper plate is blown out and inverted, melting into a molten projectile slug. The impact of this slug can rip through one side of virtually any armored vehicle and out the other, making shrapnel of everything it passes through.
For coalition forces, the race is on to get ahead of the E.F.P. with detection and retarding devices. Details of how the anti-E.F.P. systems might work are kept quiet.
The E.F.P. is the major threat in the mind of most of the soldiers.
The day after Echo Company was hit, one private talked about how he coped. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I just wake up every day and I lie to myself. I say, ‘It ain’t gonna happen to me today!’ — and that’s how I make it through every day.”
Private DePetris said, “Hey man, you know, this is part of the deal. You just wake up every day and do your job. If it happens, it happens. You just keep your eyes open, look for roadside bombs. What else can you do?”
After a patrol the guys return to the COP. They can’t leave without an armored convoy. They can’t go out for a few beers; they can’t even get their hands on a beer in Iraq. (This is a Muslim country, and the U.S. forces respect Iraq’s prohibition of alcohol.) There’s no grass to lie down on. The entire grounds are covered in rocks, so they can’t ride a bicycle or go for a jog.
Private DePetris’s company has adopted two dogs, Tigris and Euphrates. The soldiers have pieced together a small gym with weights and a few exercise machines. Some have video games; “Madden’s NFL” seems to be the favorite. They have Internet access and can phone home.
War is 90 percent boredom and 10 percent sheer terror, you hear people say. Yet a front-line soldier’s boredom is not boredom as we know it in the civilian world. It’s a dead space in which the soldier cannot do what he’s been trained to do. He must try to remain hyperalert. “Kinetic action,” as President George Bush has famously called it, could be right around the next corner.
Most of the time nothing happens. The soldiers try to relax. They joke around, play with the dogs, work out, catch some sleep, but the tension is always right there.