Another Crazy War Story IV: Tip of the Spear

Previous installments of the series here.

Major General Mattis, the commander of the 1st Marine Division during the Iraq invasion, liked to refer to the Division as "the tip of the spear."  The metaphor was apt for Marines in general, as we have always been the first sent into a battle zone, and it was especially apt of Mattis's Division during the invasion.

But it never should have applied to me personally.

If you've kept up with the series, you already know about how I was in the 1st Marine Division Band, and what the band did when deployed.  Part of being perimeter security for Headquarters Battalion entailed securing the Battalion's new location when they had to move.  To this end, the band was split up.  About four or five fire teams would drive ahead of the Battalion to the new location and set up a skeletal perimeter that the rest of the band would fill in upon their arrival.

I was part of the advanced party, as we were known.  Along with the band fire teams, a small contingent of Battalion members accompanied us.  One of these was Major Savid.

Major Savid was our company commander, a position that trumps band leadership.  The band was simply a platoon in Savid's company.  He was a massive, hulking, 6'7" slab of a black man who told me he played football for the Naval Academy when I met him.  He must have been some form of lineman, because he was sure built for it.

Though he cut an imposing figure, Major Savid was still a POG (person other than grunt, pronounced with a hard "O").  He was an administrator thrust into a position he wasn't fully prepared for.

So we're hauling ass down Iraqi freeway, heading to the next empty field the Battalion would occupy.  We must have been making great time, because there was no way Major Savid was going to allow the massive snarl of US military vehicles on the highway to slow his unit down.  No fucking way.  So we pass them.

About ten minutes after we get ahead of traffic, we abruptly pull over to the side of the road and stop.  The first thing any convoy does when they stop for a length of time is set up a hasty perimeter, and this was no different.  We all hop out of our humvees, run for the nearest cover in all directions, and bellyflop, weapons pointed outward toward potential enemies.  Then we wait.

Now, I didn't find this out until later, but the reason Major Savid pulled us over was because we had passed all of the combat units when we bypassed that traffic snarl, making a bunch of band geeks and a few POGs the northernmost force in Iraq.

At the time, I had no idea what the fuck was going on.  I never did.  All I knew was that we were waiting to move again for some reason, keep your eyes on the horizon.  However, the important word always passes down eventually and minefield is a pretty important word, especially when you're laying in one.  

Major Savid hadn't even gotten us out of the goddamnded frying pan, and still managed to get us into the fire.

Now, we didn't have any maps or equipment to tell us this slightly alarming nugget, because fuck, when was the band ever going to encounter a minefield, right?  The only reason we knew about the mines was the Army Special Ops guys that traveled with us for some reason.  Now, those Army Special Ops guys pretty much get to do what they want and go where they want whenever they damned pleased.  They were cowboy types, and it occurs to me now that they may have been fucking with us, which would amuse them to no end.  

Still, when minefields are even possible one does not fuck around.  The proper procedure when you find yourself among the mines is to get a long, hard, thin instrument (a pencil or pen would do) and prod the ground, inch by painstaking inch feeling for mines.  You might just trip one doing this, and the best you can hope for in that situation is a toe-popper, re-purposed to remove your hand.  Getting out of a minefield can take hours of painstaking, nerve-racking peril.

We do none of this.

The way we escape this particular minefield?  Major Savid literally walks up to me and utters, "Step where I just stepped."

To be fair, they might have been anti-tank mines, in which case they posed little to no threat to us, but I swear to you Major Savid was big enough to trip one of those too, so his plan was still not the preferred method.  But I went with it, because he had the gold oak leaf.  Somehow, we got out of that minefield, and the actual warriors showed up to retake the lead in the push north to Baghdad.  I guess the tip of the spear was just a little too sharp for us.

The punchline to this sad joke of a military action is Major Savid may have gotten a Bronze Star for getting us out of there alive.  Remember, this fucker is an administrator who leads a company, so he can put himself up for Battalion level awards.  I picked up hearsay later he did just that.  I imagine the citation reads, "For outstanding bravery in the face of one's own incompetence."

Come back next post for my fun night with no light.