Packed for the wrong trip : a new look inside Abu Ghraib and the citizen-soldiers who redeemed America's honor / W. Zach Griffith.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781628726459
- ISBN: 1628726458
- Physical Description: 233 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations ; 24 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York : Arcade Publishing, [2016]
- Copyright: ©2016
Content descriptions
Formatted Contents Note: | Fire for effect -- The way life should be -- The 'Graib -- Packed for the wrong trip -- Welcome to the Mortar Café -- Why? -- The Broiler -- Siege -- April -- Eating bees -- HUMINT -- Lenny the Lobster, Haji-Pussy, and Frank -- Generals, Coed showers, and tampons -- Groundhog's Day -- Smokes and sandbags -- Kamal -- R&R -- Troop greeters. |
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Available copies
- 2 of 2 copies available at Evergreen Indiana.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 2 total copies.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greensburg-Decatur Co PL - Greensburg | 956.704 GRIFFITH (Text) | 32826014010680 | Adult Non-Fiction | Available | - |
Mooresville PL - Mooresville | 956.704 GRI (Text) | 37323005260917 | NONFIC | Available | - |
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Packed for the Wrong Trip
A New Look Inside Abu Ghraib and the Citizen-Soldiers Who Redeemed America's Honor
By W. Zach Griffith
Arcade Publishing
All rights reserved.
FIRE FOR EFFECT
"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."
â President George W. Bush, May 1, 2003
ONE THOUSAND one ...
Dizl saw the inside of a human head.
Another explosion ripped open the ground like a thunderbolt from a vengeful deity.
The head belonged to an Iraqi man who had recently â very recently â departed this earth and was now moving through the air between sky and sand. If death separates a human soul from the body, then this man's soul had certainly gone on to better things by the time Dizl turned and saw the body cartwheeling on the upward thrust of explosives-displaced air. The man's head, transected laterally, opened and closed like a Pez dispenser, and his brain slid out toward the dusty ground.
William "Kelly" Thorndike was a sometime clam digger, blueberry raker, offshore fisherman, hotelier, elementary school gym teacher, emergency services dispatcher, preschool teacher, prison guard, and longtime artist. But at that moment he was a US soldier affectionately called Dizl by his comrades, two of whom were weathering the storm of shrapnel with him.
Dizl was a Fort Benning soldier by trade: a ground-pounding infantryman, a grunt who'd found himself attached to an artillery battalion filling the role of untrained military police officers.
The other soldiers had taken to calling him "Private Major" The title was a mash-up of the lowest-enlisted rank (private) and the highest (sergeant major). When they stepped off to Iraq, he was one of the oldest men with the lowest ranks among those shuffling onto the plane. The allusion to the prestigious rank of sergeant major came from Dizl's ability to think above his rank, to take past experience and apply it to the clusterfuck that was their time at Abu Ghraib. He also had kids older than the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old privates he bunked with.
Dizl, middle-aged and a father of four, was a private in the 152nd Maine Army National Guard Field Artillery Battalion. Mobilized just before Christmas and sent to the Middle East, Dizl's unit had arrived in Iraq in February of 2004. Field artillery refers to those units in a modern army that use large-caliber guns (originally catapults, more recently cannons, missile launchers, and howitzers) for mobility, tactical proficiency, and long-range, short-range, and extremely long-range "target engagement." Basically, a FAB (field artillery battalion) exists to support the infantry from twenty miles out with things that go boom.
For various reasons Dizl and his unit been sent to war with orders completely different than the unit's original training and purpose. The 152nd FAB had been sent to a detention facility in Iraq that none of them had ever heard of, where they would serve as military policemen (MPs).
Dizl's unit was trained to drop ordnance on enemies from a distance. On what should have been the bright side, "detainee operations," unlike field artillery, is supposed to be an MOS (the acronym for "military occupational specialty," their way of making "job description" sound more impressive to prospective recruits) that does not expose one to battlefield conditions. Detainee facilities are not supposed to be sited anywhere near areas of active combat â one reason women are permitted to serve as MPs. But during the year of their deployment, the American detention facility at Abu Ghraib would come under fire from mortars, rockets, snipers, and suicide bombers virtually every day.
They would also be subjected to two assaults that resulted in what the military calls mass casualty events; so many people, soldiers, and detainees were injured that medical personnel had to triage survivors â find those who had a chance at survival, and separate them from those on the losing end of a mortal wound.
When the first of these mas-cas attacks began, Dizl was on duty with fellow soldiers Turtle and Sugar. The three men were up in the Hawk's Nest, Tower G-7-1, which overlooked the portion of Abu Ghraib prison known as Camp Ganci.
Predominant among Ganci's detainees were thousands of Iraqis picked up by Army and Marine units during missions throughout Iraq in the fall and winter of 2003 and 2004 and dropped off at Abu Ghraib. Many were undoubtedly Bad Guys â die-hard Saddam loyalists, native religious fanatics, or specimens of the Syrian, Yemeni, or Saudi jihadists who had come over the unsecured borders of Iraq after the invasion.
According to later US military intelligence, however, most (estimates ranged between 60 and 90 percent depending on the political leanings of those making said estimates) of the detainees shoehorned into Ganci were noncombatants with little or no intelligence value. Thus, statistically speaking, it is probable the man who flew and died in front of Dizl's eyes was an ordinary citizen who, whatever his personal feelings about the end of Saddam's regime and the presence of American troops on his home soil, had merely been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had cost him his life.
Picked up and plunked down at Abu Ghraib, where no reliable mechanism yet existed for sorting the relatively innocent from the definitely guilty, he and his fellow detainees had shared their tents and dismal days with strangers, supervised by Americans who had recently acquired a worldwide reputation for brutality, torture, and sexual abuse. As if all this weren't enough, the detainees were sitting ducks for insurgent attacks, targeted with no evidence that the attackers wished to spare their lives.
On this particular morning â April 6, 2004 â the insurgents were firing 120 mm mortars into the middle of Ganci from a position beyond the multi-lane highway that ran along the southern perimeter of the facility. The attack itself lasted perhaps thirty minutes, but time doesn't fly when mortars do.
One thousand two ...
Dizl saw the man's brain falling, and he glimpsed the underside of the empty brain cavity. Then the body landed head down, like a lawn dart. The force of the explosion had dislodged the man's legs from their sockets at the hip and they were flapping freely before falling to rest on either side of the remains of the torso and forming a disfigured tripod of human flesh and bone.
Dizl took his eyes off the body in time to see another mortar explode and shouted at Turtle and Sugar, "Hit the deck!" He crouched over them, using his body to shield theirs from the chaos.
The mortars were "walking" toward the tower with the heedless, unstoppable power of a striding giant in a nightmarish fairytale. Between explosions Dizl raised his head and peered over the edge of the tower wall and watched the impacts burn orange in the center as high explosives threw rocks, air, and shrapnel outward through flesh and bone faster than the speed of sound.
One thousand three...
Turtle and Sugar, their views restricted by Dizl's body, demanded details.
"What's going on?" Sugar shouted from beneath Dizl.
It was what the military calls "fire for effect." After a round landed and exploded, spotters on the rooftops in the town of Abu Ghraib would use their cell phones to report the results and offer suggestions for targeting adjustments to the mortar team, who would be set up well downrange and out of sight. Rules of engagement (ROE) prevented soldiers from taking out these spotters, a skill each could have performed without scratching through the surface of their abilities.
Krump
Krump
Captain Morgan's tower, down near Ganci 2-4, was bracketed by a pair of explosions.
"What's going on?"
"Morgan is ... Ganci 2 just got smoked."
One thousand four ...
Two mortars landed in the center of a detainee tent about 150 meters from the tower â Krump â and a gaping hole opened up in the ceiling of the tent as smoke billowed out of both entrances and shrapnel tore ragged holes through fabric and flesh alike.
"What is ...?"
Krump
The hajjis are flying ...
It wasn't just the man with the opened skull; the air was full of people and parts of people, along with metal, stones, and dirt. A five-ton army truck and the detainee water tower in the center of Ganci took direct hits. Rocks and shrapnel chewed up the thirty yards between the impact and Dizl, striking the tower's walls with a loud whap while the truck burned, belching greasy black smoke into the sky.
The mortars were carving a destructive path through Ganci in twenty-five- or thirty-meter intervals. Fire for effect. The cell phone spotters would be calling it in: "Give it another thirty meters ..
Krump
"... another thirty ..."
Krump
"On target. Allahu akbar!"
The Hawk's Nest was next in line.
Dizl saw the inside of the man's skull. He heard the rocks knocking at the tower door. He crouched over the two younger soldiers, the older GI carrying on the timeless tradition of the grizzled warrior protecting the young guys. Reflexively, he closed his eyes tightly and gritted his teeth. Gazing up into his face, interpreting his expression, Turtle and Sugar understood; the giant was walking closer. They were screwed.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Packed for the Wrong Trip by W. Zach Griffith. Copyright © 2016 Arcade Publishing. Excerpted by permission of Arcade Publishing.
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