Force Protection

by Bruce Patterson

I recently exchanged some war stories with a GI just back from combat in Iraq. Actually, our conversation was more like shop talk. I asked him if they kept his unit in rations and he answered that they'd starved them. In that desert heat, did they keep you in water? "We bought funky water from the natives." What about sleep? "On our way to Baghdad we went days without anything you'd call sleep." How about showers? When the accumulated salts in your armpits started burning into your skin, did they give you a chance to shower? He looked at me like I was crazy.

I told him I was very sorry to hear this because, his being the new generation of GIs, I'd been hoping things had changed some since I was in Vietnam.

"We were just meat," he observed, bitterness seeping into his voice. He went on to explain that he was nearing the end of his second hitch and had been thinking about re-upping again and becoming a career soldier. But he saw no excuse for how they'd been treated in Iraq. So now he was getting out. He was going back to school to learn something worthwhile.

To lighten up the mood, I asked him what he thought about Iraqi marksmanship. I was glad when he burst into laughter. Turns out — something I'd surmised by reading the newspaper — the Iraqis are even worse shots than the Viet Cong were.

Thank God for small favors.

* * *

I'd been in the jungle only a couple of weeks when a platoon of Viet Cong took to "harassing" my company. Sometimes they'd be up ahead of us, other times they'd trail us — though always at an angle since we set ambushes for trailers — and sometimes they moved along our flanks. Using ambushes, booby-traps and well placed snipers, they were picking us off one by one.

Since there were 120 of us and maybe 20 of them, and because I was rapidly becoming sick of being a duck in a shooting gallery, and because we were American paratroopers who'd been trained to attack and only to attack, in frustration I asked my holemates why we didn't just take after these guys and kill them.

It didn't take my holemates long to lighten me up on that one. Bottom line, chasing the VC through the jungle was extremely dangerous. Send ten cherries out after one of them and, if he's a pro, he's liable to kill them all.

Moreover, if ever we let on to the VC that we would chase after them anytime they took some potshots at us, then before long we'd walk into the sort of ambush you don't walk out of.

And so it was that, when the VC opened up on us, we'd either stay put or fall back and call in our fire support, be it 155 Howitzers, helicopter gunships or fighter bombers.

That was our "force protection." Because it is difficult to win a war when you are dead, our top priority was to remain "intact" as a fighting unit; to avoid annihilation. So we used our fire support just about anytime we came into contact. Does this mean that we let our big guns do our fighting for us? Yes Sir, any chance we got. In fact, you could say that American maneuver battalions in Vietnam functioned essentially as bait for the American Air Force. But the key point is that it was our fire support that kept the enemy wary of massing against us and it was that wariness more than anything else that kept us "intact" as fighting units.

At the same time by making our infantry a function of our "massive fire superiority," we got locked into a stalemate. When it comes to killing people in the jungle, a ten dollar bayonet shoved into somebody's heart is a hell of a lot more effective than a gold-plated 500-pound anti-personal bomb dropped 100 yards away. If a VC guerrilla lived long enough to become seasoned, then he had a dozen ways to get lost before our red-hot shrapnel started flying. As incredible as it seems — imagine blasting a scattergun at a fly on the wall and missing it — some VC guerrillas survived the entire 15 year duration of the war.

And they did it by hitting us and running, hitting us and running.

Like these guys who were picking us off one by one. Unless we went after them, they might keep "harassing" us until they ran out of ammunition or decided they'd earned themselves a break.

That pattern — mouse bites cat's toe, cat spits at mouse — repeated itself over and over, year after bloody year. We Americans maintained our force protection, but so did the Viet Cong. We lived, but so did they.

* * *

Given the American style of war, the best thing about fighting in the jungle was that we could light it up any time we wanted. If we were taking incoming from so many directions we thought we might be encircled, we'd surround ourselves with a ring of fire. For close in fire support we'd call in B-52 bombers if we thought we could use them.

But when our GIs in Iraq come under attack, they can't just get on their radios and order the obliteration of everything in sight. The counter-insurgency war they find themselves in is urban. Just as we rarely chased the VC through the jungle, they are not pursuing their attackers through the streets and alleyways of Iraqi cities and towns. Nor are they able to level whole villages or neighborhoods once they've determined that they are filled with guerrilla sympathizers.

So the guerrillas hit them and run, hit them and run, knowing the Americans will rarely pursue and — if they do — then they will have the Americans right where they planned to get them.

Just as in Vietnam, force protection is reduced to staying alive. American offensive operations in Iraq consist solely of raids on specific targets and systematic sweeps of targeted neighborhoods. During these sweeps our GIs capture some weapons and, on their own authority, take into custody various "suspects," usually young boys with a rifle under their bed and — since you are in their house — fire in their eyes.

The rub is that our GIs risking their lives to conduct these sweeps know they may as well be pissing into the wind. If the prisoner truly is "guilty" of guerrilla activities, then you know his family is behind him and yet you leave them alone. And seeing you tongue-lash, bind, blindfold and take away their young boy is only going to strengthen their resolve to fill his boots; to see him set free.

Or suppose the boy is "innocent." Now what have you accomplished?

Since a homegrown nationalist insurgency requires no centralized Command and Control or "infrastructure," our GIs' raids on specific targets have also been like pissing into the wind. After six months of raids and sweeps, the rate of daily attacks on our GIs has more than doubled. As the insurgency continues to grow and evolve, it won't be long before our GIs conducting routine raids and sweeps will start walking into ambushes, tripping over booby-traps and drifting into the sights of well placed snipers. Since to stay in base is to invite military defeat, the counter-measures our GIs will be forced to take, the firepower they will unleash in the name of force protection, will cause an increase in civilian casualties that will further feed the insurgency.

* * *

Lately, as a counter-measure to our GI's body armor, the Iraqi guerrillas have taken to arming booby-traps with White Phosphorous. We Americans pioneered the use of weaponized "Willy Peter," as GIs call it. Using Willy Peter, my dad's generation barbecued tens of thousands of Japanese. Resembling pelletized napalm, Willy Peter burns so hot that if a glob lands on you it instantly melts your skin and sticks to you. Following gravity, it will burn right through your body and come out the other side. If in Vietnam we got hit with Willy Peter (sometimes we bombed ourselves), we were trained to immediately pack the wound with mud, lots of wet mud. While pouring water on Willy Peter only excites it, if you can deny it oxygen you can get it to go out.

Unluckily for this new generation of American GIs, Iraq has nothing much in the way of mud.

I mention this because facing the prospect of getting sprayed with Willy Peter is only one reason why, as time goes on, our GIs are getting more and more trigger happy. Fighting a counter-insurgency war in an alien land; fighting civilians surrounded by civilians — how many ways for you to die? How many ways to sundown?

In combat the temptation to become trigger happy is like water — any kind of water — to somebody dying of thirst. Living in a shooting gallery plays with your mind. Grinding fear becomes hatred and finally it mutates into murderous bravado.

"When the shit's coming down," we'd brag, "I'm shooting everything that walks, talks, flies or cries."

Unfortunately for ourselves and the Vietnamese, in most cases we were not bragging, either.

I was tempted to ask my young friend about just how trigger happy they were getting over there in Iraq. I was curious because, in a counter-insurgency war, the amount of ammunition you are expending is the inverse of the number of hearts and minds you are winning over. But I decided I didn't want to pry. Besides, to ask such a personal question when you already know the answer is rude, even cruel.

Once again, it is difficult to win a war when you are dead. Fuck a bunch of hearts and minds.