Letter from Baghdad - Dispatch # 3
Dec. 19, 2006
Life here has for the most part been fairly uneventful and routine since last I wrote, believe it or not. To say that, though, leaves out two particularly notable events, and it would be a disservice if I didn’t mention them.
It was just about two weeks ago to the day that my platoon was waiting as a Quick Reaction Force to respond to events out in our area. The QRF, or Quick Reaction Force, is a unit of soldiers that sits at the base on standby in case another unit comes under attack.
It had been a largely uneventful day when we got a call that there were reports of an attack involving small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, and incoming mortar rounds in part of our area and that we needed to move to that location and attempt to neutralize whatever was going on. As it turns out, the reports of a coordinated attack were somewhat overblown, as we later came to find out. All of those things had happened at some point throughout the day, but there wasn’t any kind of planned, complex attack on a position.
In any event, when we were close to the area we certainly did hear a lot of gunfire, but we couldn’t identify where it was coming from until we were practically on top of it. When we figured it out, well, I’ve got to hand it to my gunners for being disciplined—they didn’t shoot anyone until they figured out exactly who was doing the shooting. You need to have reasonable certainty that someone you’re thinking about killing is either in the process of committing a “hostile act” or clearly showing hostile intent, so that you can justify taking action against him—i.e. shooting or blowing him up. There’s an endless catalogue of “what if?” scenarios that comes into play when you’re talking about situations that could potentially involve using lethal force.
Thankfully for me, this time a guy on a rooftop raised his AK-47 and began firing at us. So that much was more or less cut and dried. We returned fire, and within minutes there were helicopters overhead, another patrol was on its way to aid us, and of course, by the time they got there, all shooting had stopped.
If you were under the impression that there are hour-long firefights these days, I think, for the most part you’re mistaken. That was certainly not the case with us, when after a few minutes everyone had stopped firing and we’d secured the area. Bold though the anti-Iraqi forces may be, I can’t blame them for not wanting to stick around when multiple bulletproof trucks with machine guns are firing at them and helicopters overhead can potentially see their every move.
Brief though it was, that was by far the most action our platoon has seen yet.
—Lt. Josh Arthur