![]() There is no reason to believe that Wuterich’s men were pumped up for the drive home. Nonetheless, for individual soldiers even in places as threatening as Haditha, most days are quiet, and weeks can go by with little sign of the enemy. As a result, one of the basic facts of life for those troops who are actually in the fight is that the return to base is the most dangerous trip in Iraq: if the mujahideen are going to hit you at all, the chances are they’ll hit you then. Routes can be varied, but the choices typically are limited, especially if the patrols must stick to the roads and the distances are short. The pattern is well known to the insurgents. Because the conflict in Iraq is a guerrilla war without progressive front lines, and American combat troops operate from immobile forts with fixed zones of responsibility, most patrols consist of predictable out-and-returns. After a brief delay the squad headed up River Road for Sparta Base. The Iraqis were armed with the ubiquitous Iraqi weapon, the banana-clip, Russian-designed AK-47. Sergeant Wuterich’s squad unloaded the hot breakfasts and other supplies, and picked up several Iraqi soldiers from the apprentice Iraqi Army-trainees attached to the company, who lived in their own compound adjoining that of the Marines. It was a 15-minute drive from Sparta Base to the outpost south of town. Even the newcomers to Kilo Company, for instance, had spent at least six months together already, and had grown so close that they could identify one another on sight, from behind, when all geared up and walking on patrols at night. They know one another as individuals and friends. But the men on the receiving end of an attack have a different view of the effects. This was the experience of Resistance fighters when slaughtering hapless German conscripts during World War II in France, and presumably also of the mujahideen when killing Russians in Afghanistan. Over the years on the streets of Iraq, living outside the American protective bubbles, I have often imagined that killing Americans is easier for their anonymity, because it allows insurgents to take on the machines or the uniforms without dwelling on the individuals inside. Any insurgents watching them from the houses-and there likely were some-would have perceived the men behind the top-mounted guns as robotic figures swaddled in protective armor and cloth, and would barely have glimpsed the others through the small panes of thick, dusty, bulletproof glass, or above the armored high-back sides. They rolled south toward the outpost, rattling through sleeping neighborhoods in single file, spaced well apart. McConnell was a can-do guy, more of a believer than a thinker, disciplined, moderately religious, somewhat moralistic, and deeply invested in his beloved Marine Corps. The company commander was a captain, an Annapolis graduate named Lucas McConnell, who was 32 and, like all but one of his lieutenants, was on his first tour at war. Because of normal rotations, however, only about two-thirds of its current members had been to Iraq before. It had participated in the invasion, in the spring of 2003, and again in the hard-fought battle for Fallujah in the fall of 2004. This was Kilo Company’s third tour in Iraq. It was manned by the roughly 200 Marines of Kilo Company of the Third Battalion, First Marine Division, out of Camp Pendleton, California. Marines had established a forward operating base they called Sparta. November 19, 2005, is the date people remember. Charged with murder in the deaths of two Iraqis, negligent homicide, and assault. Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, 25, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. ![]() Now, all through Anbar, and indeed the Middle East, Haditha is known as a city of death, or more simply as a name, a war cry against the United States. Before the American invasion, it was known as an idyllic spot, where families came from as far away as Baghdad to while away their summers splashing in the river and sipping tea in the shade of trees. Snipers permitting, you can walk it top to bottom in less than an hour, allowing time enough to stone the dogs. It has a market, mosques, schools, and a hospital with a morgue. It extends along the Euphrates’ western bank with a population of about 50,000, in a disarray of dusty streets and individual houses, many with walled gardens in which private jungles grow. On that short list, Haditha is the smallest and farthest upstream. These are among the places made famous by battle-conservative, once quiet communities where American power has been checked, and where despite all the narrow measures of military success the Sunni insurgency continues to grow. It meanders silently through the desert province of Anbar like a ribbon of life, flanked by the greenery that grows along its banks, sustaining palm groves and farms, and a string of well-watered cities and towns. ![]()
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