They’d lob a bunch of mortars or rockets over the concrete, and, to increase their odds of actually hitting something, they wouldn’t aim at just one place.Ĭloser.
You see, insurgents wouldn’t attack the world’s most powerful military with just one shot. In the low light cast by the lamp of an early riser tying his running shoes, I could see that we were awake to a man, frozen like rabbits, ears perked, waiting for the next bass rumble. Now, it was stone quiet in the shipping container. Usually I just heard the insurgent alarm clock I didn’t feel it. Nor could the snores of the seven other men in the corrugated-metal containerized housing unit keep me awake. But that didn’t keep me from sleeping once I got some earplugs. Even on the ground they kept their rotors spinning for quick liftoffs, and there was a landing zone near my bed. Blackhawks patrolled the perimeter in pairs. Afternoons featured “controlled dets.” A boom here or there as soldiers detonated duds, blew up UXO (unexploded ordnance). When the mortar and rocket attacks did come, it was usually early morning, between 5:45 and 6:00 a.m. It sounded like disorganized fireworks, only without the happy spectacle. Gunfire, though, still prickitypricked the night, every night, out in the “Red Zone,” that wild yonder of the country beyond those T-walls. Mortar and rocket attacks, which had once been repeated daily occurrences, were now plummeting. It was October 2007, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and General David Petraeus was the rising star of the moment with his “surge” strategy. The next day I’d learn that those explosions had blown up several people in front of the chow hall, right where we had exited just minutes earlier. Then a piercing cry from loudspeakers in the distance: INCOMING! INCOMING! INCOMING! As we arrived at the shipping container that was to be my new temporary home: explosions. That first night, after we finished dinner at the DFAC, the Dining Facility, my supervisor and I drove our rental Ford Explorer through the concrete T-wall jungle of the curiously named Victory Base Complex, the giant American encampment at the edge of Baghdad International Airport. To a lawyer and policy wonk, a man whose boyhood had been consumed by all things military, the combo was irresistible. My project fascinated me: to figure out what exactly was going on at a weird camp in Diyala Province where American troops were sort of detaining, sort of babysitting an Iranian cult group that was then on our list of foreign terrorist organizations. I had never bought into it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t eager to be there.Īnd then there was the work itself. And if I were lucky, I might even catch a glimpse of how much more idiotic the Iraq War was than I already assumed. I’d get to learn more about the whole war thing, which had always obsessed me, as it does so many Americans. I’d get to pal around with the troops and fly in helicopters and wear body armor. People would ask me, Why go? For typical reasons: Adventure. I was 32 years old, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, a nervous, excited, frightened policy wonk. I had just made it “in theater,” as they said, with a plane-load’s worth of contractors coming for this or that bit of danger pay. My first day in Iraq ended with an explosion. This is a story of how little it can take.
Our idea of what used to be called “shell shock” tends to be limited to terrible battles, not just the daily stress of living in a war zone or surviving a couple of close calls. The thing is: It doesn’t take much to develop the symptoms of PTSD. government, contractors, and of course the inhabitants of the countries caught up in America’s wars have gotten even less notice. Less notice has been given to the huge numbers of veterans who suffer some PTSD symptoms but not quite enough to be diagnosed as having the disorder. Studies estimate that at least 1 in 5 returning vets-possibly as many as 1 in 3-have it. I spent just three and a half weeks as a contractor in Iraq, when the war there was at its height, rarely leaving the security of American military bases.įor several years now, Americans have become increasingly aware that a large number of veterans have gotten post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Iraq and Afghanistan. It didn’t take much, that’s what surprised me.
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