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23 SPECIALIST KARL MULLING ONE HELL OF A LONG DAY Fifth Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, was out on a mission to patrol the streets of Baquba to establish a presence in the neighborhood. It might have been Tahrir or Buritz. I can’t remember anymore. The days were running together in my mind even before they were over. Now it’s all a violent blur that permeates my daily life. Baquba is a decimated city about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad on the Diyala River, just outside Iraq’s so-called Sunni Triangle. The site has been inhabited continuously since ancient times as a center for agriculture and commerce. The name means “Jacob’s House” in ancient Aramaic, and it has been known throughout history to have excellent fruit groves. In fact, the area is still the biggest orangeproducing region in the country and currently the capital of Diyala Province. Baquba had been a great city in its prime. When I was there, it was the declared headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq, a ghost town of pockmarked bricks and broken windows; hence the need for us to conduct daily missions. The day begins at 0-dark-30 with the standard preparations, checks, and briefings. Subordinates are looked over by their leaders , and noncommissioned officers check each other. Everyone is inspected for extra batteries, ammunition, equipment, some food, and lots of water. You never know how long you could be out. We make our way to the objective—out through the gates, lock and load weapon systems, and head down the decrepit main supply route into the downtown area—only to wait an eternity for EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) to arrive and blow an IED (improvised explosive device) with a robot. The EOD guys are almost done setting their explosive charge, so we position our Stryker vehicles in a cleared area. Everyone stays inside the vehicles to prevent unintentional casualties from the controlled detonation of the recently found roadside bomb. Meanwhile, we burn daylight and cigarettes. Soon we hear a teeth-rattling roar, and the sky goes black with debris. The explosion is big enough to shake the dust off of every- 24 ONE HELL OF A LONG DAY thing. We laugh nervously, curse, cough, and joke about how close it had felt. Now we can finally get on with our day. Someone yells out on the radio, “Your truck is on fire!” We look around for the raging inferno, and my squad leader answers, “This is Blue 2. We’re fine.” Just then, the back door vibrates with frantic knocking. Bam bambam! Someone pops out of one of the back hatches, checks out the scenery, and drops the ramp. Beaver (sans helmet) is screaming at us, “Get the fuck out of there! Now!” A shower of 7.62mm tracer rounds burns through the air. Then we notice it isn’t the EOD team that has triggered the bomb. Weapons Squad’s truck is crawling like an anthill freshly kicked. Harris is caught on top of the truck in the camouflage net, screaming. Hilliard and Mathison also huddle on top, screaming over the RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) roars, calling out distance, direction, and description while blasting through their bullets at about 600 rounds per minute. Hilliard cuts the M240B machine gun out of the camo net with his knife when he can’t locate his own weapon. And later, after the guy from CASEVAC (casualty evacuation ) realizes the M240 had been recovered by 1st Platoon, Hilliard runs to their position. He planned on retrieving the weapon, but he collapses from his injured leg and is taken to the FOB. Matty fires all two thousand .50-caliber rounds during the firefight. He keeps on reloading until the brass casings cover the top of the Stryker and flow down to the floor of the troop compartment. Beaver crawls into the relative safety of our vehicle, with what we would later learn was a compressed spine, while Helms runs straight in without any visible physical injuries. He never goes out with us again. Cebreros, who had lost his helmet, is dripping blood from his mouth while dragging a shrieking, shrapnel-filled Kindell past me up the ramp of our vehicle. Kindell’s femurs are shattered and protruding from his thighs, and the wooden buttstock of his M14 rifle has exploded into body-jamming splinters now lodged in his torso. I can’t tell wood from bone. About this time Cebreros returns to...

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