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Letter No. 14: Unexpected stay leads to 'hurry up and
wait'
CAR BOMBING
IN BAGHDAD: Two Iraqi
nationals were killed and two injured in the detonation
of a "vehicle-borne improvised explosive device."
/ Photo by David J. Jenkins
By
David J. Jenkins, USU class of '98
February 17, 2005 | Hello,
everyone. Greetings from Baghdad.
Suffice for me to say, we are, in fact, still here.
We were moments away from loading our bags, right along
with everyone else from HHC, 2-162, onto trucks and
moving to Camp Taji, when the order came down for us
to stay put "for now."
Somewhere in the land of logistics someone determined,
a half-hour before our move, that if everyone moves,
there won't be anyone left in this sector representing
the First Cavalry.
So here we are in Downtown Baghdad, acting as the QRF
(Quick Reactionary Force) for every other unit in this
sector. We are providing support to the 301st MP Battalion,
82nd Airborne as well as a smaller unit which just arrived
from Germany.
Our days are made up of endless waiting. We are in a
constant waiting mode; waiting for "something"
to happen. Our second day on QRF, I was assigned to
stand radio watch from 4 - 6 a.m. I went into the radio
room, relieved the man before me, and stood a very uneventful
watch.
Once my radio watch was concluded, I meandered back
to my room, and began working on yet another David Baldacci
novel. What would be considered very uncharacteristic
for me, I then wandered back to a state of slumber.
I suppose I needed it, because it felt good to get the
extra sleep—until 9 a.m. when our lieutenant came
busting into our room kicking doors and yelling, "why
isn't anyone up, yet." It would figure, the one
day I go back to sleep, we receive a call. "Come
on," the lieutenant yells, "we're spinning
up."
I jumped out of my sleeping back, slid into my Desert
Camouflage Utilities (DCU), grabbed my gear and managed
to stumble, half-asleep, out to the truck and get it
started. The rest of the team was right behind me. We
piled into the rig and managed to make it out to the
dust bowl, file into our order of march and make it
out the gate. From the time the lieutenant kicked the
first door until we rolled out the gate, only seven
minutes had passed.
We made it to the site of the VBIED (see attached photo).
After a quick assessment, the lieutenant decided there
were no military personnel involved. We set up a perimeter
security element and the lieutenant and his dismounted
patrol moved toward the blast site. Part way there,
he turns around and yells, "where's Jenkins?"
Staff Sergeant Cummings, my squad leader, ran around
our truck opened my door, and stated, "The L-T
wants you." From across the square, the lieutenant
could be heard once again. "And tell him to bring
his camera."
I took several shots of the blast site, the two decimated
vehicles and the damage to the nearby buildings. There
were two deceased and two injured local nationals, all
of which were whisked away before we could make it to
the scene. The vehicles had already been pulled out
of the main flow of traffic, and I have to assume that
the crater caused by the explosion was covered in the
process.
Generally with this type of explosion, I would expect
to see at least a 3-by-5 crater, measuring somewhere
in the ballpark of about 2-feet deep. Try as I might,
I could not find a hole caused by the twisted metal
carcass that was strewn about and lay quietly in the
traffic circle in the midst of Baghdad.
We have been called out for several situations much
like this one. Yesterday, however, as we were sitting
in the dust bowl awaiting our SP time (the time to roll
out the gate), we were told to "stand-by"
until further notice. Our SP time came and went, and
we continued to "hurry up and wait."
Roughly 20 minutes passed and one of our Staff Officers
approached our convoy. As they proceeded toward our
group, each of the soldiers began readying his gear
for the inevitable go ahead to move out.
I was watching the lieuntenant through the 2-inch ballistic
glass on my Humvee. He began donning the Individual
Body Armor (IBA) that was issued to him back at Fort
Hood, Texas. He slid his arms into the openings and
was ready to heave forward to get the 36-pound vest
up and over his shoulders, when the officer approached
him, said something, then turned around and left. The
IBA never quite made it beyond the small of his back,
before it was dropped and thrown back into the Humvee
without having done its job.
At this point, each of the squad leaders began to exit
their respective vehicles and rushed to the lieutenant's
rig to find out what the word was. Staff Sgt. Cummings,
having received word from the Lieutenant, did an about
face and made his way back to the truck. He opened his
door, peeked his head in and said, "…back
to the house, there's a hostage situation at Taji."
Knowing Staff Sgt. Cummings, he is good about passing
on whatever information he has been made privy to. If
that was what he told us, then that is all he knows.
It does no good to question him: Who is it? What happened?
Are we going to roll on this? It would do no good, so
we all just rode back to the house in silence.
We found out later into the evening, that a U.S. soldier
had been found doing something wrong. They threatened
him with an Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), and
in the midst of "discussing" it, he apparently
took a young lady hostage. One can only begin to speculate
what was going through his head and how he thought that
this was going to improve his situation.
For those of you unfamiliar with military life, I believe
it is safe for me to say that the military is its own
culture. There are things that happen in the military
that just wouldn't fly in the "real world."
I've heard people (or, for better clarification), soldiers,
say that if they ran their business back home the way
the government runs the military, they would go out
of business. They would go broke in a month from over-spending,
lose all of their customers due to poor customer relations,
and all their employees would quit due to poor management
practices (no wonder the military is adamant about having
contractual obligations).
A cultural phenomenon particular to the military is
this concept of "hurry up and wait." The mere
thought of it eludes all reason, and yet, there it is.
And, what amazes me, is that it has been around for
quite some time. I'm certain that my father endured
the practice while awaiting orders in the Chosin Reservoir,
surrounded by 300,000 irate communist Chinese. Or, while
he sat on a rocky mountain top watching his comrades
in arms, as they raised an American Flag following the
invasion on Iwo Jima.
This to me begs the question, why did they raise the
flag on Iwo Jima? I can only conjecture, that it was
because the Marines got tired of "hurrying up and
waiting." Quite simply, it gave them something
to do.
So, over time, and generations later, the military looks
at its processes and says: 'It might not make sense,
but it works. And, don't fix it if it ain't broke.'
This concept of hurry up and wait is definitely a cultural
phenomenon. Where else can you find a group of people
who can accomplish so much with so little information,
so little resources and so little direction?
I believe that it is this lack of information, resources
and direction that inspires and motivates soldiers to
do "something." And, that something, in the
face of the unknown, is the fire where our heroes are
forged.
Best wishes,
David J. Jenkins
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