Sutherby doesnat think about much in the way of philosophical or spiritual matters when heas killing people. The only things going through his mind are ashot geometry, yardage, wind.a After his third kill, however, he does take pleasure in noting a marked decline in enemy mortar fire.

BY FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON, the smoke and dust are so thick, our position by the bridge at Nasiriyah is engulfed in a sort of permanent twilight. Finally, after being absent for the past two hours, helicopter guns.h.i.+psa"both Cobras and Hueysa"show up. They nose down over a palm grove across the road, taking pa.s.ses with rockets and machine guns, spitting out white smoke trails and red tracer streaks. Fireb.a.l.l.s bloom from the trees below. The 20mm machine guns fired by the Cobras are beyond louda"you can feel the buzzing sound they make deep in your chest. The Hueys, which are shaped like tadpoles, fire lighter machine guns operated by door gunners. Youave seen Hueys in just about every Vietnam War movie ever made, as they were a staple of the U.S. military in that conflict. Seeing them now, flying over the flaming palm grove, it suddenly feels like weave stumbled onto the set of Apocalypse Now.

As if on cue, Person leans out the window of his Humvee and starts singing a Creedence Clearwater Revival song, a Vietnam anthem. Then he stops abruptly. aThis war will need its own theme music,a he tells me. aThat f.a.g Justin Timberlake will make a soundtrack for it,a he says. Then adds with disgust, aI just read that all these p.u.s.s.y f.a.ggot pop stars like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears were going to make an antiwar song. When I become a pop star, Iam just going to make pro-war songs.a One of the helicopters fires a TOW missile. Flames splash up from the trees. For the first time today, Marines in First Recon punch their fists into the sky and scream aGet some!a The helicopters continue to vomit destruction.

Even Pappy, grim all day, smiles watching the helicopters. aI used to get a kind of semi-chubb when Cobras went past,a he says. aAfter today, seeing those birds overhead makes me so hard I could hammer nails.a In the midst of this, I look up and see a s.h.i.+vering, dazed dog wandering through the smoke on the road. A red rag is tied around his neck, indicating that he must belong to someone.

Fick still has no word on RCT-1as pending a.s.sault through the city. Enemy gunfire has dropped off. All we hear now is the continued booming of Marine artillery. Military ambulances are now parked across the street, picking up wounded from the field. A Humvee with loudspeakers crawls through the gloom along the edge of the palm grove, blaring surrender messages in Arabic. In the field thereas a lone captured enemy fighter, dressed in rags, sitting on his knees, hands bound behind his back. A half dozen Marines stand around him with their rifles pointed at his chest.

Colbertas team pulls back to a reed fence, edging the field to the south. We dig holes. As I labor over mine, aFruity Rudya Reyes comes up behind me and pats my shoulder. The guy is so strong his fingertips feel like ball-peen hammers drumming into me. aWork it, brother,a he says. aAll it takes is a little consistency every day to build those muscles.a Reyes is relentlessly cheerful and bright in a way that brings to mind the host of a morning talk show. Adding to this impression, he is the platoonas unofficial fitness guru, always ready with a helpful bromide. As I continue to huff and wheeze, he adds, aYou know what the best workout machine is? The human body.a Later, as we sit in the mud eating more MREs, a dirt-covered Marine from Task Force Tarawa walks out from the field. He stops in front of us, looking vaguely sh.e.l.l-shocked.

aHowas it going, buddy?a Colbert asks.

aThey shot one of my Marines in the stomach out there.a He gestures toward the field. aWe fired back. Blew a donkeyas head off. We didnat see nothing else.a aBuddy, you need anythinga"food, water?a Colbert asks.

aItas all good, bro.a He wanders off.

AT SUNSET FIRST RECON remains at the bridge. The whole reason the battalion came here was to serve as a quick-reaction force when RCT-1as ma.s.sive convoy crossed the bridge and entered the city. But RCT-1as commander, Col. Dowdy, who has been flip-flopping for the past thirty hours on how and when to enter the city, continues wrestling with indecision. Instead of sending the whole convoy through in the afternoon as head planned, a couple of hours earlier he sent a small force of Marines das.h.i.+ng through the city in special, high-speed armored vehicles. They reported meeting almost no resistance as they sped through to the other side of the city, where they are now waiting.

Despite some reports of light resistance in Nasiriyah, the Marines in Task Force Tarawa who entered the city the day before remain in their original positions, still under enemy attack. Their situation is so tenuous, they havenat yet retrieved the dead Marines still lying in shot-up Amtracs. Still taking heavy fire, their commander is asking Dowdy to loan him fourteen M1A1 tanks to reinforce their positions. Itas a situation common in combat: Two different sets of Marines operating in the same city a couple of kilometers apart are reporting radically different conditions.

After receiving a visit from Lieutenant General James Conway (Maj. Gen. Mattisas boss, commander of the entire First Marine Expeditionary Force in the Middle East), who urges him to take action, Dowdy finally decides he will send RCT-1 through Nasiriyah at midnight. First Recon is ordered back from the bridge. Their mission to serve as a quick-reaction force has been scrubbed. The six hours they spent at the bridge under fire was basically a waste of time (though Marines in Alpha and Charlie did take out perhaps two dozen or more hostile fighters, as well as the AAA battery). First Recon will now roll through Nasiriyah sometime after midnight, simply as part of the convoy with RCT-1.

TEN.

ITaS AFTER DARK and growing cold when First Recon pulls back from the bridge at the Euphrates River on the evening of March 24. Its convoy of seventy vehicles rolls south four kilometers from the bridge. They stop on the highway and maneuver into the single-file marching order they will take into the city. Everybody turns off their engines and waits.

When I get out of Colbertas vehicle, I smell the town trash dump we noticed earlier in the day. A bombed oil-tank storage facility blazes in the night sky about 300 meters in front of us. Marines wander out of the vehicles in high spirits. No one says so, but I think everyoneas pretty happy they didnat have to do the reaction-force mission into the city.

First Reconas Alpha Company Marines killed, by their most conservative estimates, at least ten Iraqis across the river. Some of these killer Marines come up to Colbertas vehicle to regale his team with exploits of their slaughter, bragging about one kill in particular, a fat Fedayeen in a bright orange s.h.i.+rt. He was one of those guys with a cell phone or radio. He kept stepping out the front door of a building directly across the river, then popping back inside. More than a dozen Marines, armed with an a.s.sortment of rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers, had been watching him, waiting to get cleared hot to shoot. When they finally did and the fat man stepped out his front door again, he was literally blown to pieces. aWe shredded him,a one of Colbertas Marine buddies says. aWe f.u.c.king redecorated downtown Nasiriyah.a Itas not just bragging. When Marines talk about the violence they wreak, thereas an almost giddy shame, an uneasy exultation in having committed societyas ultimate taboo and having done it with state sanction.

aWell, good on you,a Colbert says to his friends.

Person shares an observation about his own reaction to combat. He stands by the road, p.i.s.sing. aMan, I pulled my trousers down and it smells like hot d.i.c.k,a he says. aThat sweaty hot-c.o.c.k smell. I kind of smell like I just had s.e.x.a The lighthearted mood is broken when headlights appear in the darkness. Itas now about nine oaclock at night. Three civilian vans, coming from the direction of Nasiriyah, bear down on First Reconas position on the road. Initially, Marines just sit around gabbing and joking, paying them no mind.

By now, rumors have swirled through the ranks that yesterday in Nasiriyah Iraqi forces faked surrenderinga"came out with white flags, then opened up on the Marines. These stories are pa.s.sed by officers and picked up by the media. Later, some units that were supposedly attacked in this manner deny this ever happened. But the legends of these devious tactics, along with tales of Jessica Lynchas alleged mutilation and rape, gain wide credence.

Despite these fears, n.o.body lifts a finger to stop the approaching vans. Itas extremely difficult to maintain a combat mind-set twenty-four hours a day. After being under fire for six hours at the bridge, Marines just want to goof off and revel in the triumphs of having killed and survived.

Fick runs up to remind them they are invaders in a hostile land. aStop these f.u.c.king vehicles!a he yells.

Marines leap up, weapons clattering, and surround the vans.

The dome lights are on in the rear van. I see a man curled over in the backseat in a fetal position. Heas covered in blood-soaked rags.

A translator is brought up. He speaks to the driver of one of the vans, then tells Fick that the vans are filled with doctors and wounded civilians. They canat get to hospitals in Nasiriyah, so theyare driving south looking for one.

Fick radios the battalion requesting permission to send the vans south down the highway. Permission is granted, but itas a futile exercise. The Marine convoy these vans are attempting to drive through stretches for twenty or more kilometers. Since all the units are on different comms, itas impossible to pa.s.s word to them to allow these vans through. In the best-case scenario, the vans will be repeatedly stopped and wonat reach a hospital for a day or two. In the worst case, they will be shot up by nervous Marines.

aIt sucks,a Fick says as we watch the vans creep off south through the Marine convoy. aThis is what happens in war. For all we know, those wounded were the same guys shooting at us all day. They canat use the hospital up the road, because Iraqis were using it to fire on Marines.a But Fick has other concerns. In a couple of hours his men will roll through the city. Marines have dubbed the route through Nasiriyah asniper alley,a though within a few weeks the same nickname will apply to any street in an Iraqi town.

Colbert briefs his team inside the Humvee. aThe last friendly units that went through there were taking RPGs from the rooftops,a he says. aI want the Mark-19 ranged high. Trombley, anything that moves on the left that looks like a weapon, shoot it.a aGee, I hope I get to run over somebody at least,a Person says, growing petulant. As the driver, he doesnat have easy access to his weapon. This fact bugs him. aIam one of the best marksmen here. I can shoot people, too.a Colbert tells him to shut up. aLook,a he tells his team. aThereas nothing to worry about. Everyone just do your job. Weare going to have a lot of a.s.s rolling in front of us.a aa.s.sa in the Marine Corps refers to heavily armed units, such as tanks. The Marines have been told that some armored elements of RCT-1 will move through the city ahead of them.

Espera, who drives behind Colbert with his team in a Humvee with no roof or doors on it, is worried. aI can understand a mission to a.s.sault a city, but to run a gauntlet through it?a he says, leaning into Colbertas window. aI hope these generals know what theyare doing.a AT MIDNIGHT, Espera and I share a last cigarette. Marines, unable to sleep, stand around by their Humvees wrapped in ponchos to ward off the bitter cold, some of them jumping in place to warm up. Espera and I climb under a Humvee to conceal the light of the cigarette and lie on our backs, pa.s.sing it back and forth.

Espera reenlisted in the Marines on his way back from Afghanistan. While there, he and his squad of Marines spent forty-five days living in a three-meter-deep hole somewhere in the desert. The only action they saw occurred on the night their perimeter was overrun by camels. Espera and his men opened up on them with machine guns. aAfter three weeks out there, no sleep, living in those holes, I was f.u.c.king hallucinating,a he explains. aWe thought those camels were f.u.c.king Hajjis coming over the wire. When we lit those motherf.u.c.kers up, it was f.u.c.king raining camel meat. It was a mess, dog. Motherf.u.c.kers even did a story on it in the L.A. Times.a Now Espera admits he sometimes regrets reenlisting. aTo come to this motherf.u.c.ker?a He adds, aIave been so up and down today. I guess this is how a woman feels.a Though Espera takes pride in being a aviolent warrior,a the philosophical implications weigh on him. aI asked a priest if itas okay to kill people in war,a he tells me. aHe said itas okay as long as you donat enjoy it. Before we crossed into Iraq, I f.u.c.king hated Arabs. I donat know why. I never saw too many in Afghanistan. But as soon as we got here, itas just gone. I just feel sorry for them. I miss my little girl. Dog, I donat want to kill n.o.bodyas children.a NO ONEaS SLEEPING in Colbertas Humvee, either. When I get back in, Trombley once again talks about his hopes of having a son with his new young bride when he returns home.

aNever have kids, Corporal,a Colbert lectures. aOne kid will cost you three hundred thousand dollars. You should never have gotten married. Itas always a mistake.a Colbert often proclaims the futility of marriage. aWomen will always cost you money, but marriage is the most expensive way to go. If you want to pay for it, Trombley, go to Australia. For a hundred bucks, you can order a wh.o.r.e over the phone. Half an hour later, she arrives at your door, fresh and hot, like a pizza.a Despite his bitter proclamations about women, if you catch Colbert during an unguarded moment, heall admit that he once loved a girl who jilted him, a junior-high-school sweetheart whom he dated on and off for ten years and was even engaged to until she left him to marry one of his closest buddies. aAnd weare still all friends,a he says, sounding almost mad about it. aTheyare one of those couples that likes to takes pictures of themselves doing all the fun things they do and hang them up all over their G.o.dd.a.m.n house. Sometimes I just go over there and look at the pictures of my ex-fiance doing all those fun things I used to do with her. Itas nice having friends.a I WATCH THE ARTILLERY streak through the sky toward Nasiriyah. Marine howitzers have been pounding the city for about thirty-six hours now. Each 155mm projectile they fire weighs about 100 pounds. There are several different types, but two are most commonly employed in Iraq: high-explosive (HE) rounds to blast through steel and concrete; and dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) rounds, which burst overhead, dispersing dozens of grenade-size bomblets intended to shred people below.

The bulk of those flying into Nasiriyah are HE rounds. A single HE round can knock down a small building, send a car flying ten meters into the air, or blast a four-meter-wide crater in the ground. They spray shrapnel in a burst thatas considered lethal within a fifty-meter radius and has a high probability of maiming anyone within an additional 150 meters.

The Marinesa artillery guns have a range of thirty kilometers. But even in the best of circ.u.mstances, artillery fire is an imprecise art. Rounds can veer off by twenty meters or more, as we witnessed today when one burst overhead. Despite the improvements in munitions and the use of computers and radar to help target them, the basic principles of artillery havenat changed much since Napoleonas time.

For some reason reporters and antiwar groups concerned about collateral damage in war seldom pay much attention to artillery. The beauty of aircraft, coupled with their high-tech destructive power, captures the imagination. From a news standpoint, jets flying through the sky make for much more dramatic footage than images of cannons parked in the mud, intermittently belching puffs of smoke.

But the fact is, the Marines rely much more on artillery bombardment than on aircraft dropping precision-guided munitions. During our thirty-six hours outside Nasiriyah they have already lobbed an estimated 2,000 rounds into the city. The impact of this sh.e.l.ling on its 400,000 residents must be devastating.

Itas not the first time the citizens of Nasiriyah have been screwed by the Americans. On February 15, 1991, during the first Gulf War, George H. W. Bush gave a speech at the UN in which he urged athe Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.a The U.S. military also dropped thousands of leaflets on the country, urging the same. Few heeded this call more than the citizens of Nasiriyah. While the Iraqi army was routed in Kuwait, the mostly s.h.i.+a populace of Nasiriyah led a coup against Baathist leaders controlling the city. When Saddamas armed forces subsequently came in to put down the uprising, they did so with the tacit approval of the Americans, who allowed them to use helicopters against the rebels. (The American administration at the time didnat want to see Iraq torn apart by rebellion; Bushas call for an overthrow of the government had merely been a ploy to tie up Iraqas armed forces while the U.S. military prepared to battle them in Kuwait.) After the resistance was quashed in Nasiriyah, months of b.l.o.o.d.y reprisals followed, in which thousands of its citizens are believed to have been killed.

In this war Marine intelligence a.n.a.lysts will later estimate that their advance into Nasiriyah was stopped by between 3,000 and 5,000 Saddam loyalists. Despite Americaas dazzling high-tech capabilitiesa"the Marines move through Nasiriyah by blasting it to h.e.l.l.

As a reporter watching this bombardment from Colbertas Humvee, knowing we will be rolling through Nasiriyah soon, I feel relief every time I see another round burning through the sky. Each one, I imagine, ups the odds of surviving.

AT THREE IN THE MORNING, Gunny Wynn pokes his head in Colbertas window. We were supposed to move a couple of hours ago. But things are always delayed. aWeare going at dawn,a he says.

aThatas f.u.c.king asinine,a Colbert says. aMoving under cover of darkness is our primary advantage.a Gunny Wynn attempts to rea.s.sure him. aOne thing we saw in Somalia was no matter how hard the fighting, gunmen usually sleep between four and eight. They just conk out, like clockwork. So we should be okay.a Colbert spends his final sleepless moments in the darkness, fantasizing about all the custom gear he should have brought for his Humveea"extra power inverters to charge the batteries of his thermal nightscope, a better shortwave radio to tune in the BBC, a CD player.

aWe could hook up speakers and play music to f.u.c.k with the Iraqis,a Person says.

aWe could drive through Nasiriyah playing Metallica,a Trombley adds.

af.u.c.k that,a Person says. aWead play GG Allin.

aWho the f.u.c.k is GG Allin?a Colbert asks.

aLike, this original punk-rock dude,a Person says. aHe believes murder should be legalized. You should be able to kill people you hate. Heas f.u.c.king cool.a No one points out that this concept already seems to be the prevailing one in greater Nasiriyah.

ELEVEN.

ON THE MORNING of March 25, the men in First Recon, most of whom have been up all night in antic.i.p.ation of entering the hostile city, are finally told to start their engines. Colbertas Humvee rolls toward the bridge at about six-thirty in the morning. The smoke has cleared, but itas an overcast day. Just before the causeway onto the bridge, we pa.s.s Marines in gas masks standing by the side of the road. They gesture for us to don our masks, indicating thereas a gas attack.

aYou have got to be kidding me,a Colbert says. He points out the window. aThereas birds flying. f.u.c.k it. Weare not putting on our masks.a We drive onto the bridge. The guardrails on either side are bent and tattered. There are piles of empty bra.s.s sh.e.l.l casings and discarded steel ammo boxes on both sides. But aside from these signs of combat, it just looks like your average concrete bridge. Iam amazed that with all the gunfirea"especially mortars and artillerya"it wasnat hit. The Euphrates below is a flat ribbon of gray.

On the other side we pa.s.s several blown-up Amtracs. Marine rucksacks are scattered on the road, with clothes, bedrolls, and b.l.o.o.d.y sc.r.a.ps of battle dressing. Nearby are puddles of fluorescent pink engine coolant from destroyed vehicles.

The city ahead is about six kilometers across, a sprawling metropolis of mud brick and cinder block. Smoke curls from collapsed structures. Homes facing the road are pockmarked and cratered. Cobras fly overhead, spitting machine-gun fire into buildings on both sides of us. We see no civilians, just dogs roaming the ruins.

n.o.body talks in Colbertas vehicle. Reports fly over the radio that other vehicles in First Reconas convoy are coming under fire. Then we halt on the northern end of Nasiriyah. We are surrounded by shattered gray buildings, set back about fifty meters on either side of the road. The things you look at are the thousands of gaps everywherea"windows, alleys, doorways, parapets on the roofsa"to see if there are any muzzle flashes. You seldom see the guys actually doing the shooting. They hide behind walls, sticking the gun barrels over the edges to fire. All you see is a little flame spouting from the shadows. Colbert leans into his rifle scope, scanning the buildings. aStay frosty, gents,a he says.

We are stopped because Alpha Company has halted in order to pick up a wounded Marine from Task Force Tarawa with a bullet in his leg. The best they can do is put the Marineas stretcher on top of the Humvee. While attempting to load him, snipers in rubbled buildings on both sides of the road begin firing into the convoy. They concentrate their fire on Reconas support trucks. The driver of one takes a bullet in the chest, but itas stopped by his interceptor vest. An RPG round zooms over the nose of another support truck and explodes nearby. The Marines in the support trucks, derisively referred to as POGs (People Other than Grunts) by Colbert and others in the frontline units, begin launching Mark-19 grenades into a nearby building. Then a Cobra slices low and fires its machine gun directly over the heads of the men on the trucks.

SOME IN THE BATTALION are glad to come under fire and have a chance to shoot back. Few more so than the battalionas executive officer (XO), Major Todd Eckloff. Thirty-five years old, he grew up in Enumclaw, Was.h.i.+ngton, about an hour outside Seattle. He decided to become a Marine at the age of five. He says, aMy grandmother was big on patriotism and military books and songs.a She helped raise him, and Eckloff grew up singing the Marinesa Hymn the way other kids do nursery rhymes. When he was just a toddler, his grandmother partic.i.p.ated in an adopt-a-soldier program, serving dinners for Vietnam vets in their home. Eckloff still remembers the first time he met a Marine. aI was with my grandmother at the South Center Mall, and coming toward us was a Marine in his dress blues. Thatas when I knew what I wanted to be. I was a dork about becoming a Marine.a Eckloff adds, aIn high school I had a license plate that said aFirst Recon.a a But since graduating from Virginia Military Inst.i.tute and joining the Marines more than a decade ago, Eckloff has never had a chance to enjoy combat. He was deployed late to the Gulf War and simply aguarded s.h.i.+t,a then served uneventfully in the Balkans. Finally in his dream unit, First Recon, Eckloff nevertheless has one of the most frustrating billets. aAs XO, my job is really to do nothing but take over if the battalion commander is shot.a Now under fire in the convoy, he at last has his opportunity to taste combat. He rides in a supply truck, but in his mind, as he later tells me, aItas cool, because Iam able to shoot my weapon out of the window.a Eckloff carries a Benelli automatic twelve-gauge shotgun. As rounds pop off outside, he slides it out the window and blasts an Iraqi fifteen meters away in an alley. He sees him disappear in a abig cloud of pink.a The next instant he spots another guy running on a balcony area and gives him several blasts. Eckloff is certain he hit him. aMy aim is good,a he says.

Later, after I interview him and others riding in the support units, I tally that these Marines claim altogether to have killed between five and fifteen Iraqis during several minutes of shooting in Nasiriyah. Itas a high number given the fact that during six hours of sometimes extremely heavy gun battle by the bridge yesterday the commander of Alpha Company believes his unit of eighty Marines got somewhere between ten and twenty kills.

Kocher, the team leader in Bravoas Third Platoon, doubts there was much of a gun battle through Nasiriyah. aA lot of this was just some officers and POGs who think itas cool to be out here shooting up buildings,a he says.

Kocher tells me this just after weave cleared Nasiriyahas outer limits. Initially, I dismiss his opinion as Recon Marine sn.o.bbery. The fact is, Reconas Support and Headquarters elements did come under fire in Nasiriyah. At the same time, there are some in the battaliona"a very small number of mena"who seem to develop a penchant for driving through towns and countryside firing wildly out of their vehicles.

FIRST RECON remains on Route 7 after leaving Nasiriyah. The Marines will take this road, two lanes of unmarked asphalt, all the way to Al Kut. Aside from the berms rippling a meter or two above the surface of the land, central Iraq tends to be as flat as Kansas. Route 7 parallels the Gharraf River (which the Marines refer to as a aca.n.a.la) connecting the Euphrates in the south with the Tigris in the north.

While traveling on paved roads, First Recon rolls in a single-file convoy, vehicles s.p.a.ced roughly twenty-five meters apart. The average convoy speed out of Nasiriyah is about twenty miles an hour, though we tend to stop every ten minutes or so. Currently, other units from RCT-1, convoys of fifty to two hundred, are advancing on the same road, or pulled off beside it, with Marines dismounted in fields firing at targetsa"huts or bermsa"in the distance. These forces, along with First Recon, are the first Americans to invade this portion of Iraq.

Just north of Nasiriyah, we pa.s.s through a light industrial zone of cement factories, machine shops and yards full of tractors and excavating equipment. It almost looks like the outskirts of a Midwestern farm town, except for all the dead bodies. Corpses are scattered along the edges of the road. Most are men, enemy fighters, some with RPG launchers still in their hands, rounds scattered nearby. A few hours earlier, just before dawn, while the Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) units Col. Dowdy sent through the city the previous afternoon had been parked out here waiting for First Recon and the rest of the RCT-1 to clear Nasiriyah and catch up with them, waves of two- and three-man RPG teams had come out of the surrounding fields and industrial buildings to attack them. Few ever got off a shot.

LAR units ride in eight-wheeled amphibious, black-armored vehicles that resemble upside-down bathtubs. Each has a Bushmaster 25mm rapid-fire canon mounted in a top turret. Unlike the open turret in a Humvee, which requires a man standing in it to fire the weapon, the Bushmasters are fully enclosed. They resemble small tank guns and are operated by a crewman sitting below inside the vehicle, controlling the weapon with a sort of joystick. Not only do the Bushmasters lay down devastating firea"hundreds of explosive, armor-penetrating rounds per minutea"but the guns are also linked to Forward-Looking Infrared Radar scopes, which combine both thermal imaging and light amplification to easily pick out targets 1,000 meters distant in the darkness, well beyond the effective range of Iraqi RPGs and AKs. When the Iraqi RPG teams attempted to a.s.sault them in the hours before dawn on the road north of Nasiriyah, the LAR units decimated them, killing an estimated 400 to 500. Because it was dark, many of the Iraqis kept coming out of the fields, apparently unaware that their comrades were being cut to pieces all around them.

Corpses of the Iraqi attackers who fell in the road have been run over repeatedly by tracked vehicles. They are flattened, with their entrails squished out. Marines in First Recon nickname one corpse Tomato Man, because from a distance he looks like a smashed crate of tomatoes in the road. There are shot-up cars and trucks with bodies hanging over the edges. We pa.s.s a bus, smashed and burned, with charred human remains sitting upright in some windows. Thereas a man in the road with no head and a dead little girl, too, about three or four, lying on her back. Sheas wearing a dress and has no legs.

Twenty-one-year-old Lance Corporal Jeffrey Carazales from Cuero, Texas, has a profound realization as he cruises through the destruction at the wheel of a Humvee in Bravoas Third Platoon. aEverything in life is overrated except death. All that s.h.i.+t goes out the windowa"college, nice cars, p.u.s.s.y. I just donat want to end up looking like that dude who looks like a box of smashed tomatoes.a COLBERT HAS his own problems. His radio is on the same network with Bravoas Third Platoon under the command of Captain America. All morning Captain America has been tying up the network shouting that his vehicle is coming under fire. aI am so sick of him spazzing out,a Colbert yells, throwing down his headset. aHeas running over rocks and reporting itas enemy fire.a The enlisted Marines riding with Captain America are becoming alarmed. Several days ago, back at the railroad tracks, he picked up weapons discarded by the surrendering Iraqis, among them a small East German machine gun. Now, rolling north of Nasiriyah, heas begun firing out the window of his Humvee, even when n.o.body else in his platoon sees any enemy threats.

While driving past an Iraqi home with an unoccupied Chevy Suburban parked in front, he sprays it with machine-gun fire.

One of the enlisted men in his vehicle challenges him. aWhat are you shooting at?a he asks him.

aThe enemy uses SUVs all the time,a he answers. aAny chance to take one out, I will.a The Marines donat necessarily disagree with his logic. Itas the random unexpectedness of his firing. They are trained to call in targets over the radio, not just to verify them but to alert everyone else. Marines arenat just supposed to run around the countryside shooting guns out the window. One of the Marines who ride in the Humvee with him concludes, aThe guy is not right in the head.a BUT WHATEVER FAULTS emerge among some commanders and enlisted Marines, everything about racing up a highway in a country youare invading is baffling. You pa.s.s three dead men by the road, surrounded by weapons, then shepherds in the field behind them waving and smiling. Thereas a car with a dead woman shot in the backseata"no hint why Marines or helicopters shot hera"followed by a burned-up SUV packed with AAA guns in the rear. Many houses we pa.s.s have white flags hanging over their front doors, which Marines take to be surrender flags. Then we pa.s.s homes with black flags on them. The radios up and down the battalion come to life. Everyone wants to know, are these special flags used to signal enemy fighters? Marines train their weapons on homes flying black flags until word is pa.s.sed down the net that these are flown by s.h.i.+a households.

Marines in Alpha Company spot a BM-21, an Iraqi mobile rocket launcher, moving toward First Reconas convoy. The battalion halts and calls in an air strike on it.

While theyare waiting, two men pop up from a berm in the field beside Colbertas vehicle and take off running. Marines train their guns in on them to shoot, but neither of them have weapons, so they let them go.

Gunny Wynn spots two men lying down in another berm about 300 meters distant. One seems to be holding something in his hands that glintsa"binoculars or a gun sight. Pappy and Reyes, who serve as one of the platoonas sniper teams, set up by the road, with Reyes spotting.

They observe the two men for about ten minutes. An object continues to glint in one of the menas hands. Pappy is cleared hot to take him out and fires a single shot. Pappy doesnat dwell much on the details of his kill. When I ask him about it a short while later, he says, aThe man dropped down and did not come up.a For his part in the killing, Reyes says, aI pray Iam making the right decisions. My fate is all in the Tao Iave tried to live by.a WHILE WE REMAIN HALTED, waiting for the air strike on the Iraqi rocket launcher, Corporal Michael Saucier from First Reconas Charlie Company is helping pull road security on the convoy. Saucier, a twenty-year-old from Savage, Minnesota, operates a .50-caliber heavy machine gun and is one of several young Christians in the battalion. In bull sessions with other Recon Marines, he freely talks about his belief in aG.o.d, Jesus, the whole nine yards.a At the same time, heas not really a big Bible-thumper. He counts among his closest friends one of the most profane nonbelievers in the battalion, and plans, when he gets out of the Corps, to go with him on a aFear and Loathinga tour of Europe. Despite his relaxed att.i.tudes about doctrinea"Saucier believes aChristianity should be about sincerity, not a bunch of rules and denominationsaa"heas come to war covered in kick-a.s.s Christian tattoos. Thereas a cross on his back, a dove on one leg, and the face of Jesus adorns his chest.

When the convoy stops for a ashort haltaa"typically one expected to last less than twenty minutesa"the vehicles split into two columns. They park on both sides of the road, with the rear wheels of the Humvees in the dirt, the front wheels on the pavement, all of them facing the road at a forty-five-degree angle. The parking maneuver is called a aherringbone.a At both ends of the herringboned convoy, two Humvees pull ahead of the others, park side by side in each lane of the road and face out, orienting their main guns forward to stop traffic from approaching. The procedure for stopping vehicles is for the .50-cal gunners on the Humvees to cart their weapons up and fire warning shots high over approaching cars.

Saucier is on his teamas .50-cal, mounted in the center of their open-top Humvee, when he and other Marines see a pa.s.senger car about 350 meters down the road aacting funny.a The car stops, and four clean-cut young men step out of a nearby field and approach it.

Of all the little clues Marines are hunting for to determine whether the people and objects in this alien environment are hostile or benign, some facts begin to emerge: Fighters tend to be clean-cut or have mustaches, and farmers usually have beards. The four young men Saucier observes walking up to the car are all clean-cut. They get into the car, and it begins to drive toward Saucieras Humvee.

Rules have changed since last night when Marines allowed three civilian vans to roll through their lines unchallenged. Now Marines are under orders to keep all civilian traffic at least 200 meters from their convoy.

Saucier aims his .50-cal high over the pa.s.senger car now approaching and thunks off several warning shots, sending bright tracers coursing over it. The car keeps coming.

aLight it up!a Marines shout nearby.

Saucier rips a ten-second burst, riddling the car with 100 armor-piercing incendiary rounds. The vehicle bursts into flames about 150 meters away, then rocks up and down as secondary explosions erupt inside. n.o.body gets out.

Saucier and the other team members who also fired have just killed five men. The day before, by the Euphrates, Saucier fired into buildings in the city where he saw muzzle flashes, but he never saw any people. This is the first time he has seen a bunch of guys, then helped kill them.

Saucier stares at the burning car as explosions continue to burst inside, and he is relieved. aIt means they must have been carrying weapons in there,a he concludes. aThose must have been bad guys.a AFTER CHARLIE COMPANY destroys the white car, the battalion resumes its advance.

Bravoas Third Platoon pushes in front of us and immediately comes under fire from a sniper hidden somewhere in a gas station. Marines saturate the suspected sniper position with fire and continue north. While they roll, Captain America spots an Iraqi man running through the field outside his window and cuts him down with his East German machine gun.

After being up all night, then experiencing the adrenaline-fueled ride through Nasiriyah, the morning has a dreamy quality. Charred or colorfully mashed-up people along the road just add to the surreal impression. The mood in Colbertas Humvee is eerily relaxed.

Next to me, Trombley opens up an MRE and furtively pulls out a pack of Charms. aKeep it a secret,a he says. In full violation of Colbertas ironclad no-Charms-because-Charms-are-bad-luck policy, he unwraps the candies and stuffs them into his mouth.

TWELVE.

BY TEN IN THE MORNING on March 25, First Recon has covered about twenty kilometers since pa.s.sing through Nasiriyah. Neither Lt. Fick nor the Marines in Second Platoon knows what they are doing here on Route 7. Maj. Gen. Mattisas grand scheme of sending the 6,000-strong RCT-1 from Nasiriyah to Al Kuta"now about 165 kilometers north of herea"is completely unknown to the men in the platoon.

Right now the only order the men are operating under is to turn off Route 7 onto a dirt trail winding through an area of dry ca.n.a.ls. The trail loosely parallels Route 7, runs for about ten kilometers through a series of small villages and ends outside a town called Al Gharraf (named for the ca.n.a.l). At this point most Marines donat even know the name of the town, or if it indeed is their final destination for the day. While the 6,000 troops in RCT-1 will continue on Route 7, the 374 Marines in lightly armed First Recon will be invading this little chunk of Mesopotamia all by themselves.

Another essential piece of information the Marines in the battalion havenat been given is that the purpose of driving onto this trail is to draw enemy fire. Today marks their first day of serving as ambush bait in central Iraq. They will spend most of the next ten days moving north, either on Route 7 or on parallel dirt trails, frequently ten to twenty-five kilometers ahead of RCT-1, trying to scare enemy forces into attacking. The rationale makes sense when itas explained to me by Mattis after the invasion: The small force races up back roads ahead of the big force rolling behind on the main road. The enemy orients their troops and weapons on the small force (not realizing itas the small one), and the big force hits them where theyare not looking for it. Itas a trick that works best when youare going up against an army like Iraqas, which has no air a.s.sets and bad communications and will have a tough time figuring out that the small force is just a decoy. I admire the plan when Mattis and others explain it to me. And in a way, Iam glad I didnat know about it in advance, because it would have been scarier to remain with Second Platoon. Perhaps this is why they didnat tell the Marines in the platoon about this plan either.

Colbertas Humvee is in on point for the company when we make the turn off Route 7. Thereas a dead man lying in a ditch at the junction. Two hundred meters past the corpse, thereas a farmhouse with a family out front, waving as we drive by. At the next house, two old ladies in black whoop and clap. A bunch of bearded men shout, aGood! Good! Good!a The Marines wave back. In the span of a few minutes, they have gone from kill-anyone-that-looks-dangerous mode to smiling and waving as if theyare on a float in the Rose Bowl parade.

A kilometer or so onto the trail, we are surrounded by lush fields of grain, then small hamlets nestled beneath palm groves. Rays of sunlight poke through the clouds, turning the dust in the air silver. Fickas impression is that the awhole place tingles.a And not in a bad way. More villagers run out from their homes, cheering. Grinning fathers hoist up their babies By one house, teenage girls in maroon dresses sneak out from behind a wall. Defying tradition, their heads are uncovered, displaying pretty faces and long black hair. They jump up and down, laughing and waving at the Marines.

ad.a.m.n! Those girls are hot,a Person says.

aLook alert,a Colbert warns.

The road dwindles to a single, rutted lane. We crawl along at a couple of miles per hour, then stop. Several boys, about nine or ten, scramble up from a dry creek bed on our right. They come within about five meters of the Humvee and start yelling, ah.e.l.lo, America!a Some of them put their hands to their mouths, begging for food.

Colbert tries to ignore them. One of the kids, however, stares him down. He makes clownish faces at Colbert, trying to make him laugh.

af.u.c.k it,a Colbert says. aBreak out the humrats,a he says, referring to humanitarian rations. aLetas feed the ankle-biters.a We throw several bright yellow humrat packs out the window. As kids run up to grab them, Colbert says, aYouare welcome. Vote Republican.a He gazes at them, now yelling and fighting each other for the humrat packs, and adds, aI really thank G.o.d I was born American. I mean, seriously, itas something I lose sleep over.a By now, a shamal dust storm has begun to brew. Obliteration of sunlight in a true shamal, as this one is, is nearly complete. A typical Iraqi shamal produces a dust cloud that extends three to six kilometers from the Earthas surface into the upper atmosphere. The sky turns brown or red or yellow, depending on the complexion of the dust. Our sky is the color of bilea"brown tinged with yellow. Winds now gust up to fifty miles an hour. We hear thunder.