My Life and Times

Posted on Tue, Nov. 30, 2004
REPORT FROM IRAQ THIRD OF SIX PARTS'Spraying and praying': Tired troops press onBy TOM LASSETERKnight Ridder News Service
FALLUJAH, Iraq - 11.10.04, Wednesday.
Joshua Franqui, a big kid with a tooth missing from the bottom of his smile, grew up in Augusta, Ga., and had never been farther than Louisiana before he signed up with the Army. Now he was fighting in Fallujah with the 1st Infantry Division's Alpha Company commanded by Capt. Sean Sims.
His uniform was stiff with sweat and dirt, and he'd become quiet over the past few days. No one asked why. Maybe it was all the noise from the gun he manned from his Bradley's gunner seat: the M242 25mm ''Bushmaster,'' a weapon capable of shooting 200 high-explosive rounds a minute.
Maybe it was seeing what his ''25 mike-mike'' did to human bodies.
A buddy walked up and asked, ``Hey, Franqui, how many kills you got?''
Franqui looked down, the smile slipping off his face.
''I don't know, man,'' he said. ``Sometimes they sort of vaporize when we hit `em.''
Franqui was standing in the front room of the house where he and his First Platoon mates had been catching off-hours of sleep for the past few days.
Many of the men wore skull and crossbones patches sewn onto their vests.
But Fallujah was not the place for bravado. It was constant, pounding violence, the sort that left the heat of passing bullets on a young soldier's face, and the crack and boom of rocket propelled grenades ringing in his head.
SURVIVED CLOSE CALL
On Tuesday, about eight men from the platoon had been trapped on the roof of a schoolhouse, with RPGs thudding into the walls and bullets coming down on them. A Bradley shot smoke rounds, and the soldiers jumped off the roof to escape slaughter.
Soldiers didn't discuss it when sitting around and sharing cigarettes.
Resting against his SAW machine gun -- a large gun with a tripod that weighs more than 16 pounds -- Spc. Sheldon Howard, 20, listened as his platoon commander gave orders to move out in a few minutes. Dark rings formed below his eyes. Dirt showed in thick bands across his forehead when he took off his helmet.
`I'M TIRED'
Howard, who wore glasses and had a round face, grew up near a Navajo reservation outside of Farmington, N.M., and usually didn't speak much.
''I'm tired and I don't want to be here,'' Howard said. ``I don't want to take all of this back with me, but I probably will.''
Picking through a box of Meal Ready to Eat rations, Sgt. Scott Bentley, 22, said he didn't mind killing insurgents in Fallujah because it would keep them from coming up to his base north of Baghdad. ''I'm tired of my buddies dying,'' he said.
Bentley, of Philadelphia, allowed that the past few days had been rough.
''Every place we take a roof, the RPGs come flying,'' he said. At times, he said, he and his men were ``just kind of spraying and praying.''
The lieutenant walked in and said it was time to go. Howard hefted up his weapon and jogged outside to his Bradley, the one with the number ''16'' written on an orange tarp hanging off the back of the turret.
The vehicle began taking fire almost immediately. Its 25mm gun roared.
A group of fighters darted from one house to the next, launching RPGs, which were exploding all around.
`BODY PARTS ALL OVER'
Spc. Arthur Wright watched out of the porthole-like windows of the Bradley.
''They killed somebody,'' he yelled. ``There's body parts all over the streets. Yes! Yes!''
The back of the Bradley lurched open, and the men scrambled toward a house where insurgents had fled.
A shotgun blasted the front door, a kick and then another shotgun blast. Smoke filled the house.
''Don't touch anything,'' said Sgt. Isaac Ward. ``They may have deliberately broken contact to lure us in.''
M-16 fire rang through the next room. Ward ran that way, only to find soldiers staring at an open back door. The soldiers went through the door and down an alleyway, scanning the roofline for movement. Gunfire started a few blocks away.
Ward wiped sweat from his eyes.
''They've got this shit figured out,'' he said. ``They're running around the back of a house as we bust in through the gate.''
Outside, the bodies Wright had seen were lying in the street.
One of them had been run over by a Bradley, leaving a mound of meat and bones in the sunlight. A large green bag lay next to the remains.
Ward took out a camera and clicked a few pictures.
Bentley ran over to grab the bag. He gave it a yank, and an arm rose out of the pile, but the strap would not give. With his friends looking on, Bentley pulled harder and harder, and the arm flapped in the air. Another soldier joined in the tug of war, and the arm leapt up, disgorged from its body, and Bentley fell back a little, bag in hand.
''F-----g Hajji,'' he muttered, using grunt slang for Iraqis.
BLOODY BILLS
Inside, a stack of $100 and $20 bills was covered with gore. Bentley flipped through quickly, and counted about $800 in all.
Back in the Bradley, Wright asked if Bentley would get to keep the money. No, said Sgt. Randy Laird. It was being put in a plastic bag and handed over to an intelligence officer. Laird, a 24-year-old from Lake Charles, La., with dirty blond hair, paused.
Besides, he said, who would want cash with all that blood on it?
Sgt. Dave Bowden laughed.
''It's just a little bit of Hajji blood,'' he said. ``What's the problem?''
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