SIX.

COLBERTaS FIRST IMPRESSION of Iraq is that it looks like af.u.c.king Tijuana.a Weave pulled onto a two-lane asphalt road rolling through a border town north of the breach. Thereas a row of shops on one sidea"cinder-block structures with colorful hand-painted signs and steel shutters pulled over their fronts, with a smashed-up Toyota truck pushed off on the side of the road, probably by a tank. Itas ghostville.

All of the major Marine combat forces are racing east or hugging the border, leaving no other friendly combat forces in First Reconas area of operation. The battalion pushes north in a single-file line alone on unpaved trails through what has become open, almost lunar desert, periodically dotted with mud huts, small flocks of sheep and cl.u.s.ters of starved-looking, stick-figure cattle grazing on scrub brush. Once in a while you see wrecked vehicles: burnt-out tanks and car frames, perhaps left over from the first Gulf War. Plumes of smoke clog the horizon to the east from the oil fires in Rumaylah.

At the small-unit level, everyoneas survival boils down to simple human observation. Each Marine in the vehicle is charged with watching a specific sector. To my left, Trombley keeps his SAW machine gun trained out his window. In front of me, Colbert rides leaning into the scope of his M-4 pointed out the pa.s.senger window on the right. The Humvees are vulnerable to small armsa"AK rifles, RPGs and light machine guns from up to about 600 meters distant, and heavier weapons beyond this range. With each vehicleas main guna"the Mark-19 grenade launcher or the .50-cal machine guna"accurate to about 1,000 meters, the goal is to identify and destroy any hostile threats before they come within range of the Humvee.

The Marines chatter constantly, calling out everything they see in the surrounding deserta"a pipe 300 meters off that could be the barrel of a gun, a shepherd in the distance whose staff could be an AKa"while pa.s.sing binoculars back and forth, and trading information with the other Humvee teams over the radio.

Berms are the dominant feature of Iraq, whether here in the southern desert or in the greener farmlands north of the Euphrates. Berms are man-made piles of sand or earth, ranging in height from a couple of meters to a couple of stories. They are built on the sides of the dry ca.n.a.ls, which are scratched throughout the desert. They are built as walls, to contain pastures, to demarcate grazing lands, as windbreaks or as military fortifications. They go in all directions. People have been digging berms here pretty much continually for the past 5,000 years.

The newest berms, which seem to have been excavated in the past few months, hide deep bulldozed pits called revetments, intended to conceal tanks. Every few hundred meters along the berms in some stretches of the desert there are two-meter-high conical towers capped with sandbags, to serve as machine-gun nests. All fortifications appear to have been abandoned.

Colbertas team pa.s.ses through them warily. Small groups of hostile forces could be concealed anywhere. In addition, Fick keeps pa.s.sing down reports heas receiving from higher-ups in the battaliona"rumors of stray Iraqi tank units allegedly operating somewhere in the desert. But no one sees any signs of tanks or hostile forces.

Instead, the Marines begin having their first up-close encounters with Iraqisa"small groups of shepherds and women in black robes outside square mud huts. A woman with something in her hands pops out from behind one of the huts a hundred meters back from the trail weare on.

Colbert shouts up to Garza on the main gun. aGarza! Woman in black. Whatas she doing?a The Mark-19 fills the Humvee with a clattering sound as Garza swivels the gun toward the woman. aSheas carrying a bag in her hands,a he shouts from the turret. aNo weapons.a A moment later Garza shouts. aHey!a Colbert tenses on his M-4, pressing his eye against the scope. aTalk to me, Garza. What is it?a aI just waved at an Iraqi and he waved back at me. That was cool.a aGood, Garza,a Colbert says. aKeep making friends. As long theyare not doing anything where we have to shoot them.a aHey, itas ten in the morning!a says Person, yelling at two farmers dressed in robes in the distance. aDonat you think you ought to change out of your pajamas?a BY LATE AFTERNOON First Recon has pushed fifty kilometers into Iraq, becoming the northernmost Marine unit in the country. Now no one has slept for thirty-six hours. Itas in the upper eighties outside, and cramped in the Humvee in plastic-lined MOPPs and rubber boots, everyoneas face drips sweat. Between calling out potential targets, Colbert and Person stay awake by screeching pop songsa"Avril Lavigneas aIam with Youa and aSkater Boyaa"deliberately ma.s.sacring them at the tops of their lungs.

Marines supplement their diets of caffeine, dip and ephedra (technically banned in the Corps, but liberally consumed) with candy and junk food. Military rations, called ameals ready to eata (MREs), come in brown plastic bags about three quarters of the size of a phone book. Each contains a main meal like spaghetti, stew or achunked and formeda meat patties in a foil pouch. You heat these pouches by shoving them inside a plastic bag with chemicals in it. When you add water, the chemicals immediately boil, emitting noxious and (according to warnings on the package) explosive fumes. The main entres are prepared through a mysterious desiccation process. Even though your meat patty might be swimming in juices, when you bite into it, itas dry and crumbly and brings to mind chewing on a kitchen sponge. In flush times like now, at the start of the invasion, when every Marine is rationed three MREs a day, most push aside the main meals and eat the extras. In addition to entres, MREs are loaded with junk fooda"pound cakes, brownies, aToaster Oven Pastriesa (identical to Pop-Tarts), cookies, Skittles, M&Mas, Tootsie Rolls, Charms hard candies, Combos cheese-filled pretzels, and powdered grape-drink mix and cocoa powder, which Marines eat straight out of the packages, like the instant coffee.

The process of tearing through an MRE and picking out the goodies is called aratf.u.c.king.a Colbertas team maintains a ratf.u.c.k bag in their Humvee for all the discarded MRE entres, saving them for a rainy day.

Though at times throughout the advance north, Colbertas vehicle goes on point for the entire battalion, placing its occupants at the very tip of the Coalition invasion, as the heat and fatigue delirium sets in, the undertaking sometimes feels like a family road trip. Colbert is the stern father figure. Person is like the mom, the communicator, trying to antic.i.p.ate his needs, keeping spirits up with his cheerful banter. Garza and Trombley are the children, happily munching candy, eager to please their dad.

As team leader, Colbert controls every aspect of his menas lives, down to their bodily functions.

aTrombley,a Colbert shouts, leaning over his rifle, watching his sector. aAre you drinking water?a aYes, Sergeant.a aAre you p.i.s.sing?a aAt our last halt, Sergeant.a aWas it clear?a aYes, Sergeant.a aGood.a A COUPLE OF HOURS before sundown, battalion radios explode with chatter. Several teams in our convoy spot a pair of new-looking white SUVs traveling along an adjacent trail at a high rate of speed. The trucks are marked with red circles on the doors and are loaded with clean-shaven young Arab men armed with AK rifles. The Recon Marines request permission to stage a as.n.a.t.c.h missiona on the trucksa"to go after them, grab the occupants and find out who they are. The request is denied. The vehicles are allowed to pa.s.s. The Marines are infuriated. Later, theyall find out the armed men who ride in civilian trucks, especially those with markings on the side, are Fedayeena"paramilitary guerrilla fighters. At this stage in the campaign, top U.S. commanders are concerned only with fighting regular Iraqi forces, defeating them en ma.s.se as they did in the first Gulf War. It will take a few days before American commanders realize their most dangerous opponents are the Fedayeen, who are gearing up to fight them in a guerrilla war. So for now, the Marines are ordered to simply let these guys pa.s.s right by them.

At this point in the day, the Marines in Colbertas vehicle are pretty much in the dark as to what theyare doing. Theyave been pus.h.i.+ng north for hours, but theyare not heading in the right direction to begin the mission they have all trained for: seizing the bridge on the Euphrates.

Colbert tries to tune in the BBC during a brief halt. The BBC will emerge as the best source of information on the invasion in which the Marines are partic.i.p.atinga"even Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Ferrando relies on it. But during this stop, reception is too spotty to pick up any news. aI have no intel, no big picture,a Colbert tells his team.

Fick approaches the vehicle and tells Colbert that the battalion isnat going to the bridge tonight. Instead, everyone will be heading to an elevated train track at a place called Burayyat An Rataw. He has no idea why.

The desert leading up to the tracks is littered with industrial trasha"shredded tires, old fence posts, wrecked machinery, wild dogs and, every thirty meters it seems, a lone rubber flip-flop. Person calls each one out, a aNother flip-flop. aNother dude walking around somewhere with one sandal on.a aShut the f.u.c.k up, Person,a Colbert says.

aYou know what happens when you get out of the Marine Corps,a Person continues. aYou get your brains back.a aI mean it, Person. Shut your G.o.dd.a.m.n piehole.a At times, the two of them bicker like an old married couple. Being a rank lower than Colbert, Person can never directly express anger to him, but on occasions when Colbert is too harsh and Personas feelings are hurt, his driving becomes erratic. There are sudden turns, and the brakes are hit for no reason. It will happen even in combat situations, with Colbert suddenly in the role of wooing his driver back with retractions and apologies.

But late this afternoon, nearing the tracks, Colbert doesnat have the patience to play games. Heas wrestling with profound disappointment. Since the night I met him head been talking about how excited he was to carry out this bridge-seizure mission. His platoon and his team had been slated to lead the way to the bridge for the entire battalion. Colbert was going to be one of the first Americans to reach the Euphrates. Back at Camp Mathilda, he had told me that this task was going to be athe recon mission of a lifetime.a But now itas off.

We stop in the chalk-white desert about a kilometer south of the railroad tracks at Burayyat An Rataw. They run east-west along an elevated roadbed that stretches as far as the eye can see. We are now approximately seventy kilometers north of the border. The next-closest American unit is more than thirty kilometers away. First Recon is very much alone here. Earlier in the day, there were some overflights from Cobras, but thereas no air cover now.

Like a lot of civilians whose memories of the first Gulf War were shaped by gee-whiz Pentagon camera footage shown on CNN of U.S. bombs and missiles striking Iraqi targets with pinpoint accuracy, I had a.s.sumed that American spy planes and satellites could see everything on the ground. But in this war, an intelligence officer in the First Marine Division tells me, aWe think we know where about seventy percent of Saddamas armor and weapons are. That still leaves thirty percent thatas an unknown, which is a lot.a Dust and cloud cover inhibit the ability of spy planes and satellites to see on the ground, as do berms, huts and revetments. aPart of First Reconas job,a the intel officer tells me, ais to uncover ground. Despite all the high-tech a.s.sets we have, the world is blank until you put people on the ground.a On the ground here, the first and last lines of defense are these Marines, who havenat slept all night. They can spot approaching hostile units from a kilometer or two out, which will only give them a few minutes to prepare. Not much time if itas a sizable force.

Colbertas team and the rest in the platoon are ordered to cover their Humvee in cammie nets and dig in facing the tracks. The battalion spreads out in a defensive perimeter across a couple of kilometers. Fick tells the men their job is to observe the tracks tonight, but not even he knows what theyare really supposed to be looking for, or why theyare doing it.

It amazes me, as the only civilian among them, how little these guys actually know at times about what theyare doing or what the future holds. But the more time you spend with a combat unit, the more you realize n.o.body cares too much about what theyare told is going to be happening in the near future because orders change constantly anyway. Besides that, most Marinesa minds are occupied with the minutiae of survival in the present, scanning the vista in this land theyave just invaded, searching for signs of the enemy.

Still, some of the men are deeply disappointed by the apparent cancellation of the bridge mission. aNo mission?a Garza asks. He steps down from the Humvee turret after spending approximately eighteen hours therea"through the night and much of the day under a blazing sun. aIall be mad if we donat get in this war.a aMissions are always getting fragged,a Colbert says, resigned. aThe mission isnat important. Just doing your job is.a His team spends forty minutes digging Ranger graves about 800 meters from the elevated train tracks. The desert pan is so hard here, where a few inches beneath the sandy topsoil itas interlaced with vestigial coral from the era when this was underwater (specifically, as part of the Persian Gulf, which used to be a sea covering all of Kuwait and southern Iraq), that every inch has to be hacked away with pickaxes, the blades sparking with each blow to the stoney crust. As soon as we are finished, the battalion orders everyone to move forward to within thirty meters of the tracks.

aThe dirt will be better where weare going,a Colbert rea.s.sures his weary men.

But the dirt is the same. We chop a new set of graves as oil fires some twenty-five kilometers distant compete with the sunset. With the sun dropping, the temperature plummets and sweat-drenched MOPPs now feel like theyare lined with ice, not merely hard plastic. The Marines cover the Humvee in cammie nets. Half the Marines go on watch; the other half settle in for two hours of sleep.

Sleep is a sketchy proposition. Marines are not permitted to take their MOPP suits or boots off, even at night. They crawl into the Ranger graves fully dressed, with their weapons and gas masks at their sides. Some wrap themselves in ponchos. Others sleep inside abivy sacksaa"zippered pouches that have an uncanny resemblance to body bags.

After dark, the oil fires make the night sky flicker like itas illuminated by a broken fluorescent light. American planes fly overhead, too high to be seen, but they throw out flares to repel missiles, which flash like lightning. One thing about war Iave learned: It produces amazingly colorful night skies.

Trombley, now on watch, spots wild dogs. aIam going to leave some food out by my hole tonight,a he says. aIam going to shoot me a dog.a aNo, youare not, Trombley,a Colbert says, his voice rising from his Ranger grave. aNo oneas shooting any dogs in Iraq.a IT RAINS AFTER MIDNIGHT, turning my Ranger grave into a mud pit. Temperatures have dropped into the forties. Everyone is awake, s.h.i.+vering cold but excited. Clumps of Iraqi soldiersa"six to twenty at a timea"walk along the elevated tracks in front of us. The railroad line runs from Basra to Nasiriyah. The soldiers, we later find out, are deserters whoave apparently walked from Basra, about seventy kilometers east of this position, and are heading toward Nasiriyah, the next-nearest sizable city, about a hundred kilometers northwest of here.

The Marines watch the Iraqis through NVGs and night-vision rifle scopes. an.o.body shoot,a Colbert says. aTheyare not here to fight.a Sergeant Steven Lovell, one of Colbertas fellow team leaders in the platoon, walks over to consult with him. Lovell, a twenty-six-year-old who grew up on a dairy farm outside Williamsport, Pennsylvania, has a bowlegged farmeras gait and a sly, rural wit. Before joining the Corps he attended college to study chemical engineering, but found he didnat like being around the aeggheadsa on campus. aSee how theyare walking all jacked-up, sore foot?a he says, pointing at the Iraqis. aTheyare in a bad way.a After sunrise, Bravo Companyas two platoons are sent over the tracks to s.n.a.t.c.h groups of surrendering Iraqis. By nine oaclock, itas already becoming a hot day. The work of stopping and searching all the enemy soldiers is stressful and tedious.

The Iraqis stream along the tracks and a ca.n.a.l that runs behind them. The Marines set up positions to intercept them, and the Iraqis walk right into them with their arms up. Then the Marines herd them into groups, put them on the ground and search them. Quite a few of the Iraqis carry miniature Tabas...o...b..ttles and candiesa"from MREsa"which means theyave already been captured, fed and let go by other American forces. Most seem eager to surrender again, hoping to get more food and water. Theyare dressed in a combination of military uniforms and civilian clothes. Behind them thereas a trail of discarded Iraqi fatigues and AK rifles.

Over the course of the morning, the Marines grab about 200 of them, putting them down and searching each one. There are so many Iraqis coming, the Marines wave off dozens, perhaps hundreds more, who cut a wide swath around them and continue on their way.

Through a Marine translator, the Iraqis say theyave come from units in Basra and started fleeing two days ago as soon as the American bombardment began. They say because they surrendered, they are being hunted and executed by Fedayeen death squads east of here, and ask for protection. Many carry colorful slips of paper dropped by American planes promising them safety in return for surrendering.

Several of the men claim they worked in special units in charge of launching chemical-filled missiles. They say they were moving these missiles just a few days ago, getting ready to launch them. These men have atropine injectors, used to counteract nerve agents, which normally would be carried by those handling such chemicals. One of the more baffling aspects of the invasion is that the Marines will encounter numerous Iraqis, both soldiers and civilians, who claim to have firsthand knowledge of chemical weapons. At times, Marines will speculate that Iraqis are fabricating these stories in an attempt to curry favor by telling the Americans what they want to hear. But farther north, they will encounter village elders who seem quite sincere, pleading with the Marines to remove weapons stocks they believe Saddamas military buried near their farms, which they fear are poisoning their water. Given the fact that no such weapons have been found, you get the idea Saddam or someone in his government created the myth to keep the people and the military in awe of his power.

The surrendered soldiers are a wretched lot. While most are in their early twenties and look decently fed, quite a few donat have shoes and have swollen, bleeding feet. Doc Bryan, the corpsman, treats more than a dozen who have infected sores, dysentery and fevers. Even the healthiest are severely dehydrated. Some are old men. As a group, they seem dazed and numb as they accept the water and humanitarian rations the Marines hand out. A couple of them are crying. I walk among rows of them, offering anyone who wants one a Marlboro Red. Quite a few decline, patting their chests and coughing. Some say in halting English, aIam sick.a Apparently, the continual dust of southern Iraq gets to them, too.

Several Marines pa.s.s around a photo pulled from the wallet of a surrendered Iraqi. Most of the Iraqis have ordinary pictures of familiesa"children, wives, parents. But one guy has a picture of himself holding hands with another man. Both wear gaudy, effeminate-looking Western s.h.i.+rts, and one seems to have makeup on. The Marines canat believe theyave captured a gay Iraqi soldier.

But the funny thing is, most of the Marines pa.s.sing the photo around arenat making the h.o.m.o jokes they usually make among themselves. Some of them just look at it, shaking their heads. After spending several hours with the surrendered Iraqis, the Marines seem taken aback, almost depressed by their misery. A Marine staff sergeant canat get over the fact that so many are attempting to make a 170-kilometer trek through the open desert with rags tied to their feet and antifreeze jugs filled with water. aI knew from the first war theyad surrender,a he says. aBut I didnat expect how beaten down theyad be. I wish we could do more for them, give them more water.a aWeare not the Red Crescent society,a Colbert says. aWe barely have enough for ourselves.a ON WHAT IS ONLY their second day in Iraq, the Marines in Bravo Companyas Third Platoon have concluded that their platoon commander has lost his mind. The men in Bravoas Second and Third platoons are extremely close. Not only did they share the same tent in Kuwait, but here in the field the two platoons are usually right next to each other. Unlike the men in Second Platoon who universally respect, if not adore their commander, Lt. Fick, the men in Third Platoon view their platoon commander as a buffoon. While he is a highly rated Marine Corps officer, with stellar fitness reports and no signs in his record that he is mentally unstable or incompetent, some of his men have mockingly nicknamed him aCaptain America.a When you first meet Captain America, heas a likable enough guy. At Camp Mathilda, when he still had a mustache, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Matt Dillonas roguishly charming con-artist character in Thereas Something About Mary. Captain America is thirty-one years old, married, and has a somewhat colorful past of having worked as a bodyguard for rock stars when he was in college. If he corners you, heall talk your ear off about all the wild times he had doing security for bands like U2, Depeche Mode and Duran Duran. His men feel he uses these stories as a pathetic attempt to impress them, and besides, half of them have never heard of Duran Duran.

Twenty-four hours ago, when the invasion started, Captain America revealed another side of himself, which further eroded his standing among his men. Heas p.r.o.ne to hysterics. Before crossing the border, he ran up to his menas Humvees parked in the staging area and began shouting, aWeare in the s.h.i.+t now! Itas war!a All morning since the Iraqi army deserters first appeared by the railroad tracks, Captain America has been getting on the radio, shouting, aEnemy! Enemy! Enemy!a While itas perfectly fine for officers to shout dramatically in movies, in the Marines itas frowned upon. As First Reconas commander, Lt. Col. Ferrando, will later say in an apparent reference to Captain America, aAn officeras job is to throw water on a fire, not gasoline.a One of Captain Americaas team leaders, twenty-three-year-old Sergeant John Moreno, says, aSomething twisted in him the night we crossed into Iraq. He gets on the radio and starts shouting about how weare going to take on Iraqi tanks. We didnat see any tanks. Itas like he just wants to exaggerate everything so heas a bigger hero. Itas embarra.s.sing for us.a While rolling up to the train tracks yesterday, Captain America provoked Colbertas wrath for leading his men on a treasure hunt for discarded Iraqi helmets. aWeare in an area suspected to have mines, and the most obvious thing to b.o.o.by-trap is a helmet lying on the ground,a Colbert fumed. aItas completely unprofessional.a Now, while the Marines search and interrogate the surrendered Iraqis, Captain America draws the ire of his top team leader, Kocher. The sergeant and his men are guarding several Iraqis not far from Colbertas team when a wild dog pops over a berm, barking and snarling. Behind them, Captain America races up, shouting, aWild dog! Shoot it!a Kocher quietly tells his men, aDonat shoot.a Instead, they open up a beef-and-mushroom MRE dinner and lure the dog, who gratefully eats and is soon allowing the Marines to pet him. Itas a small act, but by making it, Kocher directly contradicts his commander. aI donat care who he is,a says Kocher. aThe guy turns the smallest situation into chaos. Weare surrounded by Iraqis, some with weapons nearby. Some we havenat grabbed yet. If my men start lighting up a dog, the Iraqis might panic, other Marines might open fire. Anything could happen.a Before First Reconas campaign is over, Captain America will lose control of his platoon when he is temporarily relieved of command. Already, some of his men are beginning to fantasize about his death. aAll it takes is one dumb guy in charge to ruin everything,a says one of them. aEvery time he steps out of the vehicle, I pray he gets shot.a A WHILE AFTER THIRD PLATOONaS dog incident, First Reconas commander orders the Marines to begin releasing the Iraqis. Prior to the war, Maj. Gen. Mattis had told reporters that surrendered enemy prisoners awill be funneled to the rear as soon as possible. Some people get their heart back after surrendering and want to fight again, so we want to get them out of the way as quickly as possible.a But First Recon doesnat have the resources to s.h.i.+p the hundreds of Iraqis surrendering by the tracks back to rear units. The battalionas support company trucks only have room to transport about seventy of them.

Under the Geneva Convention (articles 13 and 20), once youave accepted the surrender of enemy forces you are obligated to provide food, water and medical attention, and to take aall suitable precautions to ensure their safety during evacuation.a Here, those provisions are dispensed with through a simple expedient. The Iraqis taken by the Marines are unsurrendered and sent packing.

Unfortunately for the Iraqis, First Reconas commander orders his Marines to tell these men who have just walked some seventy kilometers from Basra to go back the way they came. (From the American standpoint, a wise order, given the fact that these Iraqi soldiers had been heading to Nasiriyah, where in a few days the Marines will first confront urban war.) The prisoners are unhappy with this news. They have been saying all morning that Fedayeen death squads where they have come from have been capping their friends. And the Marines have dismantled and tossed all of their weapons into a nearby ca.n.a.l so they canat defend themselves. Several wave the slips of paper promising safe pa.s.sage if they surrendered. But most are too exhausted to protest and start the trek back toward the Fedayeen death squads.

Person and I sit in the Humvee, eating cheese Combo snacks, watching the Iraqis limp back along the tracks.

aThatas f.u.c.ked,a Person says. aIsnat it weird to look at those Iraqis and know that some of them are probably going to die in the next few hours?a

SEVEN.

LATE IN THE AFTERNOON on March 22, First Recon leaves the railroad tracks at Burayyat An Rataw and pushes northwest to take up a new position along a ca.n.a.l. Fewer than forty-eight hours have elapsed since the invaders blew through the breaches at the border. After a few light skirmishes, Marine and British forces have captured the key oil facilities around Basra. Now, approximately 20,000 Marines in the First Division are heading west, then north onto highways that will take them into central Iraq.

First Reconas job this early evening is to move about fifteen kilometers north of the route on which the bulk of the First Division will be rolling. The battalion is to set up along a waterway and watch for Iraqi forces to make sure that they donat drop down unexpectedly and attack the First Division on the highway.

Colbertas team drives along a winding ca.n.a.l, watching for enemy forces, while Person discusses the band he formed after high school, Me or Society. A heavy-metal rap group, his band once opened for Limp Bizkit at a show in Kansas City. aWe sucked, but so did they,a Person says. aThe only difference is, they became famous right after we played together. I became a Marine.a Colbert brings up a mutual friend in the battalion who listens to death metal and hangs out in vampire clubs in Hollywood.

aYou remember that time he went out dressed in diapers and a gas mask?a Person says, laughing appreciatively.

Trombley, who seldom jumps into conversations between Colbert and Person, canat hide his disgust. aThatas sick. Can you believe weare defending peopleas freedom to do that?a Colbert corrects him, delivering a sharp civics lesson. aNo, Trombley. Thatas good that people have the freedom to do that. Weare even defending people like Corporal Person, too.a The land is fertile along the ca.n.a.l. There are scruffy pastures, as well as little hamlets, each consisting of two or three mud huts bunched together. aKeep your eyes on the swivel,a Colbert reminds his chatty team. aThis is backcountry.a But villagers who come out by the trail greet the Marines with smiles. A teenage boy and girl walk ahead on the trail, holding hands.

aKind of cute,a Colbert observes. aDonat shoot them, Garza,a he adds.

As they roll past the hand-holding teens, Colbert and Person wave at them and start singing the South Park version of aLoving You,a with the lyrics aLoving you is easy acause youare bare-chested.a We b.u.mp onto a set of rail tracks and follow them toward a narrow bridge across the ca.n.a.l. The battalion has chosen a train bridge as its crossing point over the ca.n.a.l. According to Colbert, spy planes have observed the train bridge for several days, and everyone is reasonably sure that no freight trains will appear around the bend on the other side. The Humvee jiggles so intensely on the railroad ties, it feels like someone is sawing my teeth. We pull onto the bridge. Itas about seventy-five meters long and just wide enough for the Humvee. I look out my window and see pebbles kicked up by the tires tumble into the water five meters below.

aJust think how easy it would be to drive off the edge right now,a Person says.

aYeah,a Colbert says. aYou could have an epileptic fit, a bee could sting you or one of your zits could explode.a aThatas why I popped them all this morning, so we would be safe.a WE REACH THE OBSERVATION POSITION by the ca.n.a.l after dark. Lights twinkle from a town several kilometers west. Obviously, electricity still works in parts of Iraq. When the Humvee stops, we hear crickets and frogs. The place seems untouched by war. Colbertas team sets up in line with the platoon along a low berm running in front of the ca.n.a.l. The men prepare for another chilly, sleepless night. Through their night optics they observe villagers moving around huts a few hundred meters away on the other side of the ca.n.a.l. Iraqi armored forces are suspected of being on the move somewhere beyond the villages. At about nine oaclock, orange flashes burst on the horizon several kilometers northeast of the ca.n.a.l. U.S. warplanes are bombing targets.

Greater numbers of Iraqis appear on the other side of the ca.n.a.la"bunches of them movinga"and the Marines judge them to be military deserters fleeing the American bombing. But some Marines grow edgy.

A few vehicles down the line from Colbertas, Doc Bryan is nearly shot by a nervous Marine, a senior enlisted man. Doc Bryan rides with Lovellas Team Three. He is crouching by his teamas vehicle, observing the village on the other side, when he feels a burning sensation in his eyeball. It takes him a moment to figure out: Someone is pointing an infrared-laser aiming device from a rifle into the side of his eye. The laseras invisible, but he feels its heat. Just as Doc Bryan turns, a senior enlisted Marine tramps out of the darkness, aiming his rifle at him, cursing. aJesus, I thought you guys were enemy,a the senior enlisted man says. aI almost shot you.a The senior enlisted man, a company operations chief, tells Doc Bryan he had trained his weapon on him and almost fired, believing he was an enemy infiltrator.

In the layers of incompetence Recon Marines feel they labor under in the battalion, this company ops chief is nearly at the top with Captain America and Encino Man. They call him aCasey Kasem,a because of his warm, gravelly voice, which over the radios sounds like that of the old rock DJ.

In his late thirties, lean and dark-haired, Casey Kasem usually rides with Encino Man. Casey Kasemas job is to ensure that the Marines have enough suppliesa"fuel, water and batteries for their night optics. Like Encino Man, heas one of those rear-echelon men in a support position, who ordinarily wouldnat have deployed with the Recon Marines.

One of the things that burn everyone up about Casey Kasem is the fact that he failed to bring enough batteries or adequate rechargers to operate the platoonas only PAS-13 thermal-imaging device. Unlike their NVGs, which amplify existing light, the PAS-13 uses heat and can see through dust and foliage. The PAS-13 gives the platoon a critical advantage and means of survival in night operations, but largely because of a supply snafu they blame on Casey Kasem, the platoon only has enough batteries to operate the PAS-13 for a couple of hours each night. Within a few days, when they are at the height of their operations in ambush country, the men will sometimes go whole nights without any batteries at all for their PAS-13, and in at least one instance, this deficiency will nearly kill them.

Adding insult to injury, while Casey Kasem apparently failed to bring enough batteries for the Marinesa critical night-fighting gear, he did have the presence of mind to bring along a personal video camera. He is constantly sticking it in everyoneas face as part of his effort to make a war doc.u.mentary that he hopes to sell after the invasion. aHeas just another king-size jacka.s.s making life more dangerous for us,a Doc Bryan says.

Tonight Casey Kasem is highly agitated because he and Encino Man have concluded that aenemy infiltratorsa have moved into the Marinesa position and are preparing an attack.

aOver there. Enemy infiltrators,a he tells Doc Bryan, pointing toward the village he and others on the team have been watching.

While Doc Bryan is not technically a Marine, he is a product of the Navyas most elite special-warfare training and could have chosen to have been placed with either Navy SEALs or a Marine Recon unit. Doc Bryan, who arguably has better combat training than many Recon Marines, is supremely confident of his judgment. aThatas a village,a Doc Bryan says.

aNo. Over there,a Casey Kasem whispers excitedly, pointing along the ca.n.a.l. aLooks like a squad-size group of Iraqis, maybe an RPG hunter-killer team observing us.a aThose are f.u.c.king rocks,a Doc Bryan says. aTheyare not moving.a aNot moving,a Casey Kasem says, abecause those are the most disciplined Iraqis weave seen so far.a Casey Kasem sounds the alert up and down the line. Marines are pushed out with weapons and optics to observe the Iraqi asquad.a Only at first light do the Marines definitively prove to Casey Kasem that the adisciplined Iraqisa are indeed rocks.

Through the heightened alert, Colbert spends the night calming his team. When Garza takes the watch on the Humveeas Mark-19, Colbert tells him, aGarza, please make sure you donat shoot the civilians on the other side of the ca.n.a.l. We are the invading army. We must be magnanimous.a aMagna-nous?a Garza asks. aWhat the f.u.c.k does that mean?a aLofty and kinglike,a Colbert tells him.

aSure,a Garza says after a momentas consideration. aIam a nice guy.a

EIGHT.

THE MARINES ARE ALMOST EUPHORIC the next morning, March 23, when Fick briefs them on the next leg of the invasion. He doesnat know for sure yet where they are going, but higher-ups in the battalion have insisted that today is the day all men must shave off their mustaches. aGiven the Battalion Commanderas previous order regarding mustaches, I think we can all take this as a clear indication that weare crossing the Euphrates soon,a he tells his men just after sunrise.

Later, after theyave refueled the Humvees, Fick issues specific orders. aOur objective is a town called Nasiriyah, a crossing point on the Euphrates. The word is the Army pa.s.sed through it twenty-four hours ago and declared it asecure.a a At the time Fick is delivering his sunny a.s.sessment on conditions at Nasiriyah, an Army maintenance unit has just been ambushed outside of town, about four hours earlier, sustaining numerous casualties.

(Fick later speculates that the optimistic a.s.sessment he was given on the state of Nasiriyah stemmed from a foul-up fairly typical of military communications, which can take on the aspect of a game of telephone. aThe Marine Corps had been expecting the Iraqis to blow the bridges in Nasiriyah,a he explains. aSomeone probably reported that the bridges were aintact,a and this got changed to athe bridges are secure,a to athe whole town is secure.a a) Colbertas team pulls back from the ca.n.a.l with the rest of the battalion and drops onto a freeway, bound for Nasiriyah. They join several thousand U.S. military vehicles driving north at forty-five miles per hour, which in military convoys is lightning speed. aLook at this, gents,a Colbert says. aThe First Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton rolling with impunity on Saddamas highways.a Itas a bright, clear day. No dust at all. Several hundred Iraqi children line the highway, shouting gleefully. aYes, we are the conquering heroes,a Colbert says.

Everyoneas spirits are up. Colbert seems to have gotten over his disappointment at the scrubbing of his teamas bridge mission. The sense is that this campaign is unfolding like the last Gulf War, an Iraqi rout in battle followed by an American race to gobble up abandoned territory as swiftly as possible.

aAs soon as we capture Baghdad,a Person says, aLee Greenwood is going to parachute in singing aIam Proud to Be an American.a a aWatch it,a Colbert says. aYou know the rule.a One of the cardinal rules of Colbertas Humvee is that no one is permitted to make any references to country music. He claims that the mere mention of country, which he deems athe Special Olympics of music,a makes him physically ill.

Along the highway, they pa.s.s columns of tanks and other vehicles emblazoned with American flags or moto slogans such as aAngry Americana or aGet Some.a Person spots a Humvee with the 9/11 catchphrase aLetas Roll!a stenciled on the side.

aI hate that cheesy patriotic bulls.h.i.+t,a Person says. He mentions Aaron Tippinas aWhere the Stars and Stripes and the Eagles Fly,a then scoffs, aLike how he sings those country white-trash images. aWhere eagles fly.a f.u.c.k! They fly in Canada, too. Like they donat fly there? My mom tried to play me that song when I came home from Afghanistan. I was like, af.u.c.k, no, Mom. Iam a Marine. I donat need to fly a little flag on my car to show Iam patriotic.a a aThat song is straight h.o.m.os.e.xual country music, Special Olympicsa"gay,a Colbert says.

By noon the battalion cuts off the freeway to Route 7, a two-lane blacktop road leading into Nasiriyah. Within an hour Colbertas team is mired in a ma.s.sive traffic jam. We stop about twenty kilometers south of Nasiriyah, amidst several thousand Marine vehicles bunched up on the highway. We are parked beside approximately 200 tractor-trailers hauling bulldozers, pontoon sections and other equipment for building bridges. Among these are numerous dump trucks hauling gravel. One has to marvel at the mighta"or hubrisa"of a military force that invades a sand- and rock-strewn country but brings its own gravel.

UNBEKNOWNST TO THE MARINES stopped on the highway on this lazy afternoon, twenty kilometers ahead of them the American military is experiencing its first setback of the war. Marine units are bogged down in a series of firefights in and around Nasiriyah. A city of about 400,000, Nasiriyah lies just north of a key bridge over the Euphrates. (The bridge First Recon originally planned to seize is located in a remote area far east of Nasiriyah; that mission was called off in part because planners erroneously believed the bridge over Nasiriyah was wide open for the taking.) Several hundred Marines from a unit dubbed aTask Force Tarawaa attempted to cross the bridge into the city earlier in the day, and are now pinned down by several thousand Fedayeen guerrilla fighters around the bridge and inside the city.

Nasiriyah marks the spot where the terrain in Iraq changes dramatically. At Nasiriyah, the desert land, watered by the Euphrates, turns almost tropical in places. There are dense palm groves, fields of tall gra.s.s, even rice paddies. These predominate south of the bridge, where Marines from Task Force Tarawa are dug in taking heavy machine-gun, mortar, artillery, RPG and AK fire.

The fighting in Nasiriyah started at about three in the morning after an Army maintenance convoy that had been rolling on the superhighway far south of the city took a wrong turn onto Route 7 and drove toward the town. The soldiers in this unit, including most famously Private First Cla.s.s Jessica Lynch, had no navigation equipment and poor maps. They were ambushed a few kilometers outside Nasiriyah, with eleven killed, six captured and five missing.

A few hours later, after dawn, the Marines from Task Force Tarawa, which includes a total of about 5,000 troops, arrived. Their original mission had been to secure the bridge and the route through Nasiriyah for other Marine forces, which would then move through the city and continue north. But having received word of the ambushed soldiersa"and seeing with their own eyes the blown-up, burned Army vehicles from the maintenance units smoldering by the side of the roada"the Marines from Task Force Tarawa began a search-and-rescue mission. They pushed up to within a kilometer of the bridge aboard lightly armored vehicles and dismounted into the surrounding fieldsa"a patchwork of dried mudflats, berms, gra.s.s and palm trees. While the Marines called out, yelling for any American soldiers to show themselves, they started to take rifle and machine-gun fire from surrounding huts and berms. They also heard American voices calling out to them. They found nine soldiers, several of them wounded, from the lost convoy hiding in the foliage, and rescued them.

Still taking sporadic enemy fire, the Marines in Task Force Tarawa regrouped on the highway and prepared to roll onto the bridge into Nasiriyah. They started before noon, about the time First Recon pushed up Route 7 and became mired in the military traffic jam twenty kilometers south of them.

The lead Marines in Task Force Tarawa crossed onto the bridge into Nasiriyah aboard tanks and Amtracs. Amtracs are ungainly, tracked vehicles designed to swim over the ocean as well as drive on land, but are not really designed for heavy combat. Each holds roughly twenty Marines. About a dozen vehicles made it across the bridge, then cut east, hoping to find a route bypa.s.sing the center of Nasiriyah.

But the tanks quickly ran into one of the worst features of Iraqi cities: unpaved streets running with open sewer water. They bogged down in the muck, unable to move any farther.

More Amtracs, containing a total of about 150 Marines, raced across the bridge and drove straight into the heart of the city. Central Nasiriyah is a warren of two- to four-story brick and concrete structures, most of them surrounded by walls. As the Marines sped into the center of the town, they began to take hostile fire. Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes, hiding behind walls and windows of the buildings lining both sides of the streets, fired AK rifles, machine guns and RPGs into the Amtracs. The Marines continued on and had made it three kilometers into the heart of Nasiriyah when an Amtrac was. .h.i.t by an RPG, wounding several. The column pressed ahead to seize a ca.n.a.l bridge on the north side of the city.

Additional Amtracs attempted to cross the Euphrates but were attacked by Iraqis dug in on all sides. Marines jumped out and fanned into the surrounding terrain to fight them. Some tried to call in fire support from Marine mortar units, but their radios went down. Three Marines were killed and four wounded in the first moments of fighting.

Then Army A-10 attack jets, sent in to support them, appeared in the sky, swooped down and began strafing Marines. How the A-10 pilots, flying low, mistook Marines for hostile forces is one of those mysteries of battle. The A-10sa strafing runs shredded Amtracs and killed as many as ten Marines.

As the firefight intensified by the bridge, Task Force Tarawa pushed more Amtracs forward to evacuate the wounded. One was blown to pieces when an enemy round penetrated the armor and detonated the stocks of ammunition inside, killing the Marines in the rear of the vehicle.

By the end of the afternoon on March 23, pockets of Marines from Task Force Tarawa are cut off along several kilometers of the route into and through Nasiriyah. Eighteen Marines are dead, four are missing and more than seventy are wounded.

TWENTY KILOMETERS SOUTH of the fighting, the mood on the highway is almost festive. Itas a clear, warm afternoon, with dazzling blue skies. No one knows about the firefights ahead or the Marines dying. Though all afternoon weave seen Cobras and acasevacaa"casualty evacuationa"helicopters shuttling back and forth toward Nasiriyah. Marines who havenat slept or stopped moving in days loll about in the shade of Humvees and trucks stopped on the road, dozing with their flak jackets off. Others lie in the sun, MOPP suits partially opened, heads back, trying to soak up rays.

There are nearly 10,000 Marines parked on the road, as well as a sprinkling of British troops who appear to be lost. Everyone defecates and p.i.s.ses out in the open beside the highway. Taking a s.h.i.+t is always a big production in a war zone. Thereas the MOPP suit to contend with, and no one wants to walk too far from the road for fear of stepping on a land mine, since these are known to be scattered haphazardly beside Iraqi highways. In the civilian world, of course, utmost care is taken to perform bodily functions in private. Public defecation is an act of shame, or even insanity. In a war zone, itas the opposite. You donat want to wander off by yourself. You could get shot by enemy snipers, or by Marines when youare coming back into friendly lines. So everyone just squats in the open a few meters from the road, often perching on empty wooden grenade crates used as portable as.h.i.+tters.a Trash from thousands of discarded MRE packs litters the area. With everyone lounging around, eating, sleeping, sunning, p.o.o.ping, it looks like some weird combat version of an outdoor rock festival.

Shepherds, undaunted by the American military might ama.s.sed on the highway, walk through the lines. Flocks of sheep and herds of goats zigzag between the rows of tanks, trucks and Marines. Only a few Marines notice. They point at the animals and laugh. Collectively, they seem lulled into a sense of security by the sheer volume of troops and equipment jumbled on the road. No one is up on the vehicle guns. Few, if any, are on watch.

Colbert returns from taking a dump, and Trombley, whom Colbert has relentlessly pestered about drinking enough water to maintain clear urine, turns the tables on him.

aHave a good dump, Sergeant?a Trombley asks.