May 6: In the middle of our interview in an air-conditioned conference room of Alpha Company's outpost, Capt. Andrew Betson says:
"I'm gonna get it before it gets you."
Then he stands up, walks over to the wall behind my chair and steps on a cockroach the size of my thumb.
Just another day in the life of COP 821, a combat outpost in Baghdad's southwestern district of Saidiyah.
COP 821 is one of the 60 or so outposts created by Gen. David Petraeus, the top American military commander in Iraq. The purpose of these outposts, scattered throughout Baghdad's neighborhoods, is to help U.S. troops monitor city life more closely than before, when the troops made forays into the streets from their vast U.S. military bases. This one, occupied by Apache Company of the 4-64 Armor Battalion of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, houses about 100 men, a bunch of dusty armored vehicles and a dog named Goodie. Goodie is a mutt the company adopted and named after Cpl. James Gudridge, one of Apache's soldiers who was killed in January by an explosively formed projectile that cut his body in half.
The company lost four other men in March: Staff Sgt. Christopher Hake, Spc. Jose Rubio, Pfc. Andrew Habsieger and Pvt. George Delgado. They were burned alive when an explosively formed projectile pierced their Bradley fighting vehicle, incinerating everything inside.
Apache Company eventually detained the perpetrators.
"Small victories," Betson says, taking a swig from a bottle of cold water. "I'm glad we got these fuckers."
The soldiers don't know for sure what was in much of the compound before Apache Company moved in. Some say the giant hangar, which now hosts windowless sleeping quarters and a gym, was a warehouse; others say al-Qaida used it to store materials its members used to make explosive devices. The large mess hall, which has power sockets that stick up precariously from the floor, was said to have been an Internet cafe, but when the troops arrived here it was filled with rubble.
In the paved courtyard there are some pull-up bars and a basketball hoop. The gym has an infrequently used ping-pong table, weights and two treadmills. The treadmills were bought in Iraq and no one uses them, maybe because in order to plug them in the soldiers would have to unplug the water cooler.
Water coolers are everywhere, and a leaflet in the company tactical operations center reminds the soldiers to rehydrate all the time. Summer temperatures in Baghdad can reach 130 degrees, but this week the weather is mild: 100 degrees, partly cloudy.
Also, unlike bigger military bases in Iraq, which open their mess halls to the troops only at certain hours, COP 821 allows its soldiers to rummage through the mess hall any time they want. Granted, there isn't much to eat: a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs (from a packaged powder), pancakes and sausage, and a hot dinner. Today was meatloaf and rice pilaf. For lunch most soldiers subsist on potato chips and power bars, although sometimes they go to a new Iraqi restaurant that opened a couple of blocks away, Sun City Foods. The hamburgers there are legendary.
Behind the mess hall is a gravel-strewn yard with showers and latrines: plywood cabins with wooden seats over metal barrels. "We call them burn shitters," explains 1st Sgt. Jim Braet. When the morning comes I understand what he means. A half-dozen barrels stand in the middle of the yard, their contents aflame, and tall clouds of black smoke billow above the compound.
About the writer
Anna Badkhen has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, the West Bank and Gaza. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, David Filipov, and their two sons.
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