My memories on Memorial Day

I first met Bob Zangas in Kuwait at the start of the war. He was a Marine Corp Lieutenant Colonel, a Reservist, and part of the civil affairs contingent for the First Marine Division. He and I were waiting in Kuwait while the invading army sliced through the hapless Iraqi Army on the way to Baghdad. We worked on a project together and I got to know him. After I moved to Camp Babylon Bob moved to the provincial capital of Al Kut. I was able to see him a few more times before he rotated home in September 2003 with the rest of the Marines.

I first met Fern Holland at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) South Central Office at the Hotel Babylon in Hilla in the fall of 2003. Fern, a lawyer from Oklahoma, was assigned to the office to promote women's rights in the south central region of Iraq. Fern came across to me as a very attractive, very intense young woman. We were going in different directions during the day so I rarely spoke more than a few words to her, and that was mostly in passing, in places like the dining facility. Such a woman, assigned to perform such a mission, caused some eye rolling among some of the men at the Office. But, since the promotion of women's rights in Iraq was a priority for Ambassador Bremer and the CPA, such editorial comments were limited.

Salwa Oumashi was an Iraqi translator who worked for Fern. According to a New York Times article on these two women, Salwa had lived in the United States. One evening, during a social function on the third floor of the Hotel Babylon, I was able to have a nice, long discussion with Salwa. I took away the impression that she was very committed to her job.

In December 2003 I was standing in the CPA compound when I saw Bob Zangas, dressed in civilian clothes. After Bob completed his initial tour and the Marine Corp Reserve returned him to civilian life, Bob volunteered to return to Iraq as a civilian employee of the CPA. He was assigned to our South Central Office with the task of building the capacity of the Iraqi media. Although I could not imagine volunteering to return to Iraq the act seemed to go along with the boundless enthusiasm Bob had for his new job and the unlimited optimism he had for the future of the Iraqi people.

The CPA South Central compound where I worked from October 2003 to February 2004 was comprised of primarily civilian employees of CPA or Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), the contractor responsible for providing our logistical support. Most of the cooks and servers in our dining facility were Pakistanis who lived right there in the compound. The men who protected our perimeter and guarded us while we slept were contracted Nepalese, former Gurkhas in the British Army.

Other than a small contingent of Military Police, my Team of five civil affairs soldiers were the only other soldiers on the compound. This became important because we were armed, and could provide our own protection, and we traveled frequently to the five provincial capitals in our area. KBR would often check our schedule and ask if we would escort truckloads of supplies to one of the outlying CPA offices. I didn't want my job to be escorting supply convoys, but I saw no reason that we couldn't occasionally lend a hand.

So it was that one day in January 2004 Bob Zangas came to me and asked if he could accompany us to Ad Diwaniyah and would we stop by a dairy in the area? The dairy was a beneficiary of a CPA project, and Bob wanted do a media story on the project. I thought the task supported the war effort and I agreed to help. In February 2004 Fern asked if she and Salwa could ride .along with me on a trip to check on the progress of the construction at the Karbala Women's Rights Center. Later that month Ambassador Bremer came to Karbala to the inauguration of this center.

On February 28, 2004 I left CPA South Central to return to Kuwait and eventually an airplane ride home. With our departure Fern, Salwa and Bob were forced to decide whether they could do their jobs inside the compound or be forced to travel outside, unprotected. I had already observed by their actions that Fern and Bob were prepared to take more risks than I was. Any risks that I took, of course, subjected my soldiers to the same risk. Bob was responsible only to himself. Where ever Fern went she was accompanied by Salwa. I was not privy to any conversations that these women had about the risks that they were taking.

Some could argue that they were braver than I was, or more foolish. Others would say that both sides of the argument are correct. The net result was that on March 9, 2004, ten days after I left Iraq, while returning from a visit to the Karabala Women's Rights Center, Fern Holland, Salwa Oumashi and Robert Zangas were ambushed and killed in their vehicle by a hail of AK - 47 bullets.

February 2004. The Women's Rights Center in Karbala. I am showing the ladies a picture of my family. Fern Holland, far right and Salwa Oumashi, second from right, pointing to the picture, were killed in Iraq in March 2004.

In a commentary in last week's Wall Street Journal  entitled "They also serve who contract out," Peter J. Woolley said that an estimated 3,200 individuals, most of who were American nationals, have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan since these wars began. I know that Memorial Day is to honor fallen American soldiers, but whenever I think of someone who was killed in Iraq, Fern, Salwa and Bob come to mind. They and their families sacrificed for this war. 

January 2004. I am translating the Spanish spoken by the Iraqi policeman to my right into English for Bob Zangas, seated to my left. Bob was killed in Iraq in March 2004.

Not a Memorial Day has gone by that I don't think of them.

On the movie "American Sniper"

Eleven years ago next month, on February 28, 2004, I led a convoy of 2 HummVees from Al Hillah, Iraq into Kuwait. The ride took longer because one of the vehicles broke down on the way and we had to wait by the side of the road while one of our mechanics replaced a hose. Except for the mechanical problem the ride was 10 good, boring, windblown hours of staring at concrete and desert. In a combat zone boring is good and most any excitement is bad. Plus, we missed the unpleasant company of the summer heat.

When we crossed into Kuwait we were met by two U.S. Army military police. They told us to clear our weapons and take off our body armor and helmets. In other words, we were safe now. I remember feeling as if a great weight had been lifted off me, a weight that I had not fully realized was there. This was followed by a tremendous sense of relief. I had made it. We had all made it. I unloaded my rifle and pistol, took off my body armor and helmet, and climbed back into the vehicle. I would never return to Iraq again.

This would not be true for some of my fellow Active duty and Reserve soldiers. I retired with 30 years of service the following year but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued. The one year that I had served in a war zone began to pale in comparison to the multiple tours (some as long as 15 months) that the Active Army endured. Some Army Reservists that I knew even went on a second tour, if not in Iraq then in Afghanistan.

And as the wars and the tours continued I began to feel guilty that I had not done enough. I didn't talk about this with many people because it was illogical. When I was called I went. The retirement at 30 years was mandatory and I couldn't have stayed in the Active Reserves even if I had wanted to. But I still felt guilty. There's the guilt about the multiple tours that I didn't have and there's the guilt about the ones who didn't come home and the ones who returned maimed in body and/or spirit.

I'm not looking for sympathy or understanding. I'm not crippled or impaired by these feelings but they exist. The bottom line was that I didn't go again so someone else had to.

In this way, I identified with Chris Kyle, the protagonist in the movie "American Sniper." He kept going back to the combat zone because he knew that he would feel guilty if he didn't. If he didn't go someone else would have to. This was illogical but he felt it anyway. He couldn't be sure that whoever took his place would do the same job that he did.

This was a hard movie for me to watch, but I knew it would be. I felt that I had a duty to go see it. I had to see it for Chris Kyle and and those who went back. I had to see it for all those Army Reserve soldiers who did the tours because I didn't go.

Comparing "The Hurt Locker" to "The Green Zone"

I finally saw the movie "The Green Zone" (TGZ) on DVD a few weeks ago and could not help but compare and contrast the film with "The Hurt Locker," (THL) which I watched in the theater when it was released last year. I don't write many movie reviews, but the "The Hurt Locker" had such an effect on me that I wrote a review, which you can read here.

THL was nominated for nine Oscars and won six, including Best Picture and Best Director. The movie was well done and well acted but, as I stated in my review, was not an accurate representation of what it was like to be in Iraq. I'm not just talking about minor details. There were major errors in the representation of the soldiers and the war and this ruined the movie for me.

TGZ didn't get any Oscars and didn't make enough money to cover the expensive production costs of recreating the Iraq war in 2003. Yet, that expensive recreation made the movie for me. If you want to know what it looked like, down to the most minor detail, in the Green Zone during the first year of the war, then you should watch this movie.

The Green Zone was a collection of Saddam's palatial buildings along the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad. Inside these buildings were the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Combined, Joint Task Force 7, the political and military nerve centers of the Coalition's efforts in Iraq. The perimeter of the Green Zone was fortified with blast walls, barbed wire, sandbags, Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting vehicles and sweating, irritable and nervous American soldiers.

The rest of Baghdad (and Iraq, for that matter) was the Red Zone, known in previous wars by such names as Indian Country and No Man's Land. Personally, I breathed a sigh of relief whenever I passed the checkpoint and entered this oasis in a surrounding desert of violence. Below is a picture of me, Bede Strong and a CPA employee who's name I don't recall in the Green Zone in front of a giant bust of Saddam Hussein. This bust was one of several that were removed from atop the central Palace in the Green Zone. This picture was taken December 7, 2003 (my daughter Lindsey's birthday).

Paul Greengrass, the Director of TGZ, also directed two of the Bourne movies, as well as "Flight 93." As a fan of all those movies, and of Matt Damon, who played a Chief Warrant Officer in TGZ, I was expecting a thrilling action-adventure flick. I wasn't disappointed. Reviewers said that all the wonderful things (acting, script, cast, direction) that go into making a good movie weren't as good in TGZ as in THL.

But the Green Zone carried me back to Iraq. The Hurt Locker didn't.

The Hurt Locker - a movie review

The Hurt Locker is a movie about a team of soldiers in Iraq who disarm Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs. The movie took a while to drift from Opening Day to Tallahassee, so I had a lot of time to read rave reviews of the movie in the NYT and Wall Street Journal. I was really looking forward to seeing this flick but left profoundly disappointed on a number of levels.

Mark Boal, the screenwriter, evidently spent a few weeks with a bomb squad in Iraq in 2004 as a journalist and decided to turn the experience into a movie. Neither he, nor Kathryn Bigelow, the Director, knew much about the Army nor what it was like to spend a long tour in Iraq, based on the scenes that were portrayed in the movie.

If you don't care about any of that, then the movie has a lot of tense action sequences and tremendous explosions. They didn't quite meet the action-adventure movie standard, being a little short in car chases and scantily clad females, but the bomb squad trio did engage in plenty of arguing and fighting (mostly with each other).

I understand how difficult it can be to properly depict a different culture like the Army, but Ridley Scott did a fabulous job of it in "Black Hawk Down." Yes, yes, Ridley probably had a lot more money the Kathryn, but it wouldn't have taken much more to address the major errors that I found in the movie. First, and most importantly, our terrible trio spend entirely too much time wandering through Iraqi cities and deserts all by themselves, either in a single Hummer working its way through Iraqi traffic, or driving in spectacular, solitary, splendor across the desert landscape.

At this time and place in the war, nobody loved unless they were in convoys of at least four vehicles. Moving in a single vehicle through urban Iraq was at least as dangerous, if not more so, than disarming bombs. Plus, think about it: what if your Hummer broke down? Believe it or not, this single aspect of the script, repeated in numerous scenes, ruined the movie for me. Other parts of the movie, including the way the Iraqis were depicted, also bothered me.

Jeremy Renner, the actor who played the wild man Sergeant James, who led the team, did a fabulous job. I also enjoyed the performance of Anthony Mackie, who played Sergeant Sanborn, James' assistant. Both men kept me interested in the movie.

"The Hurt Locker" reminded me of the old TV series from the sixties, "Combat." It was a one hour show about an infantry squad in WW II, staring Vic Morrow. It gave me one of my favorites lines in early television ("Checkmate King Two, this is White Rook, over." says Vic Morrow as he calls his platoon leader on the radio). This squad wanders around through Europe, mostly six or eight or ten guys, all by themselves except for the occasional civilian or German soldier who happens along to provide drama for the show.

Don't get me wrong - this kind of thing happened in WW II. But not all the time. Every day. For days and days. In my opinion, Combat was as much like WW II, and The Hurt Locker was as much like Iraq, as MASH was like the Korean War.