Read Online Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival by Anderson Cooper - Free Book Online
Authors: Anderson Cooper
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began to spit, I’d buckle up.
The last time I came down the Mount Igman road, I caught a glimpse of myself in the side-view mirror. “Charlie Don’t Surf” was blaring from the cassette player and my face was completely drained of color; my eyebrows were furrowed, my mouth frozen in a lunatic grin. When we finally made it into the city, I was so relieved, all I could do was laugh. The driver looked at me as if I were the one who was crazy. Then he started laughing too.
FROM THE HEADLINES and pictures you’d think Iraq was complete chaos, but the truth is much more complicated. I learned this during my first trip here for CNN. It was June 2004, and I’d come to cover the handover of power from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an interim Iraqi government. I went on patrol with the U.S. First Cavalry in charge of Route Irish. A routine recon—buttoned-down Bradleys, up-armored Humvees.
“It’s nowhere near as bad as you see on TV,” a young soldier said to me. “Sure, you get shot at sometimes, but mostly it’s real boring.”
On TV they fast-forward to the most dramatic images; they rarely mention the downtime. On patrol it’s the opposite: the hours tick by slowly; it’s easy to become complacent. It was 110 degrees, and the young reservists were drenched in sweat, their skin wet under camouflage vests and behind wraparound glasses. In Baghdad you can’t see anyone’s eyes.
“I’m sweating more than an E-six trying to read,” Ryan Peterson joked, poking fun at his staff sergeant, his hands never far from the machine gun mounted on the back of the Humvee. Peterson had been on a patrol that was ambushed two months before, and he knew damn well there was nothing he could do to stop it from happening again. The truck’s armor plating reached only up to Peterson’s waist, so standing in the back together, we were partially exposed. We didn’t have much choice.
“What do you think about Iraq?” I asked him.
“This place?” he said, shrugging and looking around as if he’d just noticed it for the first time. “Could go either way at this point, either way.”
I didn’t bother asking him if he cared.
“When the bullets start flying,” Master Sergeant James Ross told me, “all that ‘Huah,’ ‘Army of One’ stuff goes out the window. All you care about is the soldiers around you, that’s it.” Ross should know: during the ambush he had had to run across an open field under fire. Now he’s convinced he’ll get out of here alive.
“I don’t know why,” he told me quietly, “but I just got this feeling.”
That day, the patrol was looking for IEDs and delivering water to a neighborhood near Route Irish. The kind of mission they went on every day.
“Is this part of the plan to ‘win hearts and minds’?” I asked one of the officers.
He laughed. “We’re not trying to win any hearts and minds,” he said, making fun of the phrase as he spoke it. “That dog ain’t gonna hunt. Right now we’re just trying to co-opt as many of them as we can. At this point, that’s about all we can do.”
The army was giving money away to local leaders, creating construction projects to keep men working. They handed out comic books for kids, and for adults, cigarettes with toll-free numbers printed on the packs, so they could easily inform on their neighbors.
After ten hours, the patrol ended. The soldiers cleared their weapons as they pulled into their heavily fortified base. They’d grab a few hours of sleep and do it all again the next day. I went back to the CNN office in the Palestine Hotel feeling as if the day had been a waste. The patrol had been uneventful. When I stepped inside, phones were ringing, producers were yelling into satellite phones trying to confirm information. There had been multiple coordinated attacks against Iraqi police stations in several cities. Dozens were dead. The headlines that night on American TV and in the newspapers the following day would be IRAQ
The last time I came down the Mount Igman road, I caught a glimpse of myself in the side-view mirror. “Charlie Don’t Surf” was blaring from the cassette player and my face was completely drained of color; my eyebrows were furrowed, my mouth frozen in a lunatic grin. When we finally made it into the city, I was so relieved, all I could do was laugh. The driver looked at me as if I were the one who was crazy. Then he started laughing too.
FROM THE HEADLINES and pictures you’d think Iraq was complete chaos, but the truth is much more complicated. I learned this during my first trip here for CNN. It was June 2004, and I’d come to cover the handover of power from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an interim Iraqi government. I went on patrol with the U.S. First Cavalry in charge of Route Irish. A routine recon—buttoned-down Bradleys, up-armored Humvees.
“It’s nowhere near as bad as you see on TV,” a young soldier said to me. “Sure, you get shot at sometimes, but mostly it’s real boring.”
On TV they fast-forward to the most dramatic images; they rarely mention the downtime. On patrol it’s the opposite: the hours tick by slowly; it’s easy to become complacent. It was 110 degrees, and the young reservists were drenched in sweat, their skin wet under camouflage vests and behind wraparound glasses. In Baghdad you can’t see anyone’s eyes.
“I’m sweating more than an E-six trying to read,” Ryan Peterson joked, poking fun at his staff sergeant, his hands never far from the machine gun mounted on the back of the Humvee. Peterson had been on a patrol that was ambushed two months before, and he knew damn well there was nothing he could do to stop it from happening again. The truck’s armor plating reached only up to Peterson’s waist, so standing in the back together, we were partially exposed. We didn’t have much choice.
“What do you think about Iraq?” I asked him.
“This place?” he said, shrugging and looking around as if he’d just noticed it for the first time. “Could go either way at this point, either way.”
I didn’t bother asking him if he cared.
“When the bullets start flying,” Master Sergeant James Ross told me, “all that ‘Huah,’ ‘Army of One’ stuff goes out the window. All you care about is the soldiers around you, that’s it.” Ross should know: during the ambush he had had to run across an open field under fire. Now he’s convinced he’ll get out of here alive.
“I don’t know why,” he told me quietly, “but I just got this feeling.”
That day, the patrol was looking for IEDs and delivering water to a neighborhood near Route Irish. The kind of mission they went on every day.
“Is this part of the plan to ‘win hearts and minds’?” I asked one of the officers.
He laughed. “We’re not trying to win any hearts and minds,” he said, making fun of the phrase as he spoke it. “That dog ain’t gonna hunt. Right now we’re just trying to co-opt as many of them as we can. At this point, that’s about all we can do.”
The army was giving money away to local leaders, creating construction projects to keep men working. They handed out comic books for kids, and for adults, cigarettes with toll-free numbers printed on the packs, so they could easily inform on their neighbors.
After ten hours, the patrol ended. The soldiers cleared their weapons as they pulled into their heavily fortified base. They’d grab a few hours of sleep and do it all again the next day. I went back to the CNN office in the Palestine Hotel feeling as if the day had been a waste. The patrol had been uneventful. When I stepped inside, phones were ringing, producers were yelling into satellite phones trying to confirm information. There had been multiple coordinated attacks against Iraqi police stations in several cities. Dozens were dead. The headlines that night on American TV and in the newspapers the following day would be IRAQ
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