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A Soldier Tells of Election Day

I've linked before to the stories of my friend Patrick Campbell who is an ARMY medic in Baghdad. Today, thankfully, his story continues. He survived the extremely dangerous days around the election. Here is his story of his four-day election mission to guard the 14 July Bridge in downtown Baghdad. It's a very long entry, but more than worth a read. I've said before and I will say again that we need to understand what these soldiers are doing. We need to understand the sacrifices they have made and the real danger they are in every day.

For those who have not seen my former entries... I met Patrick when a college friend e-mailed saying a friend of hers was moving to St. Louis to work on the Jean Carnahan campaign and he didn't know anyone. We met a few days later at Coffee Cartel in the Central West End. We became fast friends. He joined my Monday night prayer group and a solid friendship developed. Even though Patrick left St. Louis shortly after Carnahan lost, we have stayed in touch. Mostly, we are the type of friends where the passage of time and lack of eye contact doesn't seem to matter. We will always care.

When Patrick left law school and volunteered to be a medic on the front lines in Iraq, it was hard pill to swallow. But he felt that it was his duty, despite his objections to the war, to apply his skill to the effort of bringing every possible soldier home alive.

Through terrifying fire fights, long cold nights, a small pox scare, tearful phone conversations with his girlfriend and endless hours of patrols that could be hit at any minute with an IED, Patrick has proven to me that he's one of the best this country has. And he's only one of many. So let's remember that.

Click to see more pictures and read Patrick's update on his election mission including his search for a blanket, a stand-down with the interim president, little ali babbas, a child's insight, a scary fire fight, drinking games, ink-dipped fingers and reflections on the elections and his role in the war on terror.

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Dear Friends,

We survived the elections, Baghdad did not erupt into flames and I hope the world is now a better place overall. The last 5 days have been a rough journey physically, mentally and emotionally and need less to say I am exhausted. It is by the grace of god and with the help of all your prayers… that I am happy to report that no one in my battalion was even injured during our 110 hour Election Day mission. Although I have no idea how voting went, or who won, or
even what happened anywhere else… this is what I saw. (This is a link to all my election day pictures http://patrickmcampbell.com/v-web/gallery/elections)

Our platoon was specially picked to be attached the 10th Mountain Division. We were assigned to guard the 14th July Bridge in downtown Baghdad. This bridge had been the site of numerous VBIED (Vehicle Borne IEDs) and RPG attacks. It was supposed to be a 4 day mission… Guard the bridge, search all traffic (vehicle and pedestrian), provide general support to the 10th Mountain Division (we were the only Bradley platoon), and shut down the bridge on Election Day.

In our briefing we were told that we were picked because we are the best platoon in the brigade and this was the most dangerous mission. Right after that briefing, we all had a gut check… I sent out my last Campbell Watch (which sounded a little ominous I know), called my parents and scared my girlfriend, almost away. I was filled with an ominous feeling about the mission… I heard that we had lost some soldiers that day and little things kept going wrong. For example, my laundry wasn't ready, which meant all the sniffle gear I had turned in would not be available for my mission. I had a restless sleep on Wednesday night.

Thursday – 27Jan05
Our mission was supposed to start at 0700, but thankfully it was moved back an hour… which meant that I was able to secure my sniffle gear from the laundry service. I had no idea how important this would become… We loaded up 4 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, tanks that double as a troop transports. We were filled to capacity with ammo, gear and food and water. We were told only to bring our assault packs (desert colored backpacks) and sleeping bags only if we could fit them in our bags. So I brought one change of clothes, 4 pairs of socks/underwear, my fleece, 2 beanies, 2 pairs of gloves and my medical aide bag. I couldn't fit the sleeping bag… so I decided to rough it, BIG MISTAKE!

We first went to Camp Bonzai, in downtown Baghdad and waited to get our assignments (http://patrickmcampbell.com/v-web/gallery/elections/E_CampBonzai). I found out that our convoy of about 20 vehicles had been hit with an IED along the way and the Humvees sped away leaving the Bradleys by themselves without any idea of where were going. No one was hurt… I didn't even know it happened! At Camp Bonzai, I felt like I was back in HS… the 10th Mountain soldiers stood together staring at us and we stood together staring back at them. I was tempted to break the ice… but this was a big iceberg. Two Bradleys were sent to recon the bridge… needless to
say that tanks were not designed to be driven down crowded busy streets and we tore up a lot sidewalks and traffic circles.

We arrived on the Bridge at about 2200 and went to work immediately securing it and preparing it for our 4 day stay. We set up Jersey barriers, constantina wire (circular barbed wire), warning signs and our fighting positions. Despite our initial briefing… we found an Arkansas National Guard unit guarding one side of the bridge so we set up on the far side.

The 14July Bridge is a suspension bridge over the Tigris river. (Bridge - http://patrickmcampbell.com/v-web/gallery/elections/E_14July_Bridge)(Tigris River - http://patrickmcampbell.com/v-web/gallery/elections/E_TigrisRiver) It was named by Saddam Hussein after an Iraqi revolution in the 1960s, where the sitting monarchy was toppled and replaced with a Democracy. It spans almost 550 feet and is elevated in the middle (meaning we could not see the other side or the other unit). We were at the foot of the bridge, which was still elevated about 50 feet above the streets below. We were surrounded by houses on either side, which meant snipers were a constant worry. There was a small IP (Iraqi Police) outpost below us and there were 4 concrete mortar boxes on the sidewalks.

Friday 28Jan05
2nd platoon has been divided in two patrol teams since we arrived in Iraq, so each team took a different side of the bridge (incoming and outgoing traffic). As soon as all was set, they implemented the work/rest plan. 6 hours shifts… 6 on and then 6 off. It all started at midnight on the 28th and I was put to sleep because they wanted the medic to be up when the action started in the morning. Some people slept in the back of the Bradleys, while others like myself bedded down on the sidewalk under the mortar bunkers. I put on all my sniffle gear and pulled out the casualty litter as a cot http://patrickmcampbell.com/v-web/gallery/elections/E_SniffleGear). To my dismay, everyone else pulled out their sleeping bags and I felt like I had been duped into not bringing my own.

I was asleep quickly… At about 0230 I heard screaming from the soldiers on duty that a fire fight was breaking out and I saw tracers shooting through the air. Once I shook off my sleepy daze, I quickly suited up my IBA (body armor), only to realize that the fight was somewhere else. It was only when I was fully awake that I realized how cold it had become. The fog had rolled in and the wind was whipping across the bridge. My teeth were chattering and I had trouble feeling my feet. I put on another pair of socks and lay down to sleep, but my whole body was shivering… it was freaking cold. I was in and out of sleep all night. At 0530, I was woke up and told to get ready for my shift. I was miserable and determined to not let myself be that cold again.

At 0600 we opened the bridge to traffic and began our TCP (Traffic Control Point) http://patrickmcampbell.com/v-web/gallery/elections/E_TCP). We searched every car and every person that went over our bridge (http://patrickmcampbell.com/v-web/gallery/elections/E_SearchingPedestrian). I didn't expect to find much because once people saw our TCP many of them turned around and went another way. We searched traffic going and coming. And even though the Arkansas Guard was searching all the cars coming from their side… we searched them again just to be sure. If we searched a car that had blankets in the back I would use my broken Arabic to offer them money for their blankets. Unfortunately almost everyone who had blankets was because they were going to be sleeping at their work during the elections.

When you stand in one spot long enough you usually get to see a little bit of everything… At one point we stopped a couple of unmarked vehicles. When we got the occupants to exit the vehicle they all had AK-47s. Everyone freaked and it turned into a little bit of a Mexican standoff with everyone pointing weapons at each other. A man in a suit pointed to himself and said quietly… "prime minister." I recognized him immediately as the interim Prime Minister of Iraq and with many apologies we sent them on their way.

At noon it finally started to warm up enough to remove one layer of sniffle gear. Although it was my time to bed down; I still hadn't acquired any blankets. The guys with me kept offering to steal them for me, but I didn't want anything to do with things like that. I saw some kids off the side of the bridge and with the help of my handy dandy Arabic phrase book… I told the kids that I was willing to pay for a blanket. After two hours… one of the kids brought me out a blanket and I lowered a rope down to him and pulled up the blanket. The kid would not take my money, despite my protests. Finally I sent down on the same rope a pair of yellow tinted sunglasses. Soon I had two more blankets and I knew I would not freeze that night.

Later in the afternoon some kids came up to the TCP just to hang out and talk with the soldiers. I was able to convince them they wanted to go buy us some bread from the local market. They charged $5 for a bag of 20 and I bought 4 bags for everyone to share. "Hoebez" and "Seemon" are both types of Iraqi bread that are served fresh. "Hoebez" is like pizza dough and "Seemon" is more like a roll. It was our first warm meal in 2 days and it tasted so much better then MREs.

My shift started again at 1800 and we closed down the bridge to all types of traffic, supposedly until after the election. So all we did was pull security. Pulling security, especially at night is an exercise in focus and staying awake. Just like CG.ing back at Berkeley… we just sat there and waited for something to happen. At about 2200 we heard small arms fire down the river about 500 meters away. We had heard intermittent small arms fire all day, so at first no one was alarmed or even concerned. That is when the light show started. All at once tracer rounds erupted from both sides of the river and I was sure we were about to be attacked. Rounds were shooting in every direction (except ours) and we had no idea who was firing whom. So we hunkered down and just watched the show. I wanted to film it, but I remember my resolution to all of you and thought better of letting my guard down. It died down about 20 minutes later and everyone was pretty excited about seeing such a show force. It was like watching a war movie on TV… except you could feel vibrations from each round down to the bone.

At 0001 I bed down under my three blankets and got a solid 5 ½ hours of sleep. I was still really cold, but at least I had protection from the moisture and the wind.

Saturday 29Jan05
I was jostled from my sleep at 0530… "CAMPBELL, GET UP!" I was freezing, shaking and I was still having trouble feeling my toes. I ate a quick MRE breakfast and I was back at searching pedestrians crossing the bridge. The transportation ministry had decided that we needed to open the bridge back up to traffic… so like all good soldiers we do what we are told. The morning went on much like the day before, except this time we had a much bigger crowd of kids hanging around and chatting with us.

I spent the whole morning learning new Arabic phrases and refining my accent. I met two young adults nick named Rod & Mr. Bean, who told me that the bread actually cost $1 for a bag of 20 "Hoebez" (not $5). Mr. Bean worked for the river police below us, spoke pretty good English and spent the day just chatting with me and interpreting for us. They started making bread runs, soda runs and even did a run to purchase an extremely overpriced phone card for my Iraqi cell phone. Aside from the interpreter back at the unit, they were my first Iraqi friends.

By noon, I had an almost 15 local kids joking around with me. We joked that we were going to arrest the little "ali babbas" (thieves) who had swindled us on the first bread run. One of the original "ali babba" kids asked me what I though about the Iraqi people (http://patrickmcampbell.com/v- web/gallery/elections/E_Little_AliBabbas), I said I thought they were good hearted people… at least most of them. The little kid put his hand and pointed to 3 of his 5 fingers… meaning 60%... saying that most Iraqi people are good and then pointed to the other two saying that the others are bad. It struck me as an insightful and rather creative way to convey such a thought with such a limited mutual vocabulary between us.

Due to some poor planning… we realized that both medics were working the same shifts and that meant someone had to pull a double. I will give you one guess on who it was! After a twelve hour shift of being on my feet, shouldering my 50 lbs of body armor, and interacting with the little kids… I passed out when my shift was over. I slept from 1800 till 2330.

Sunday – ELECTION DAY – 30Jan05
At midnight the road was closed and all we needed to do was pull security. We had jerry rigged a shelter from the wind and sat down and just began talking. First was a round robin of political issues… For two hours I defended, explained and argued the liberal point of view on almost every controversial topic to a very conservative audience. It was one of those great conversations where people knew they weren't going to offend anyone and people were actually listening to each other. Then we moved onto playing drinking games (without the booze of course) that lasted well into the night. When I felt myself getting sleepy I would just pace up and down the bridge.

As I reflected on the elections… I thought how odd it was for me to be spending all my time here on Iraq on a bridge. Everyone in the ARMY has a role and although not every role is as glamorous as one would like it to be, each role is still vital to the success of the whole. In that same vain, I was having trouble seeing how guarding one edge of a bridge was going to help prevent the spread of terrorism and encourage the spread of Democracy in the Middle East. Right before dawn, it hit me… I couldn't imagine being at a better place… then guarding a bridge that symbolized the transformation from a monarchy to a democracy. I also remembered the countless convoys of Iraqi soldiers that crossed over our bridge, being escorted by US soldiers so that they could be placed at the various polling sites. There must have been thousands of them hanging out the side of their pick up trucks with no armor plating (or seat belt I might add), wearing a ski mask for fear of reprisal against their family and carrying an AK-47 rifle. Each of those soldiers were counting on that bridge being a safe route of passage and I began to understand my piece in the bigger picture of things.

My shift was supposed to be over at 0600, but our leadership implemented an old ARMY infantry tactic called a "stand two" which dates back the earliest origins of the US ARMY. It is a common tactic to attack a fortified position like ours in the early morning right before a shift change when everyone is still groggy and not awake. So the theory is to wake-up everyone a little earlier and have everyone pulling security… literally standing two people in every fox hole. So everyone was awake at 0500 and we were bristling like a porcupine with our weapons preparing for the worst. Dawn came and I finally got off shift around 0700.

Right before I passed out I had a very emotional and intense phone conversation with my girlfriend about the challenges we face with our long distance relationship. I do not want to get into any specifics, other then afterwards I was sure that our relationship was going to end. Thus instead of sleeping, my mind was racing at a thousand miles a minute about what we had talked about. I had so many phantom conversations with her that morning that I never really fell asleep before it was my shift again.

At 1000 I admitted to myself that I wasn't going to be able to fall asleep. I had to distract myself by being busy, so I volunteered to go on a foot patrol of the surrounding area. I strapped on my aide bag (another 60 pounds of gear) and set off with 9 other soldiers. No cars were allowed on the roads, so it seemed as the whole city was milling about. Kids were playing soccer in the streets, old men were sitting on their chairs on the sidewalks and families were walking in the middle of the road. We were all business as we walked past everyone; it must have seemed an odd sight seeing soldiers being so serious when everyone else was being so festive. (http://patrickmcampbell.com/v-web/gallery/elections/E_FootPatrol)

We marched for about a click and a half, when we pulled off the road into an abandoned lot on the river. We were about to set up an OP (observation point), when we heard an eruption of gun fire near the bridge. I heard one shot and followed by 20-30 shots being fired in return. We doubled time back to the bridge, preparing ourselves for a full battle. When we got back to the bridge, we found out that the shots being fired were further down the river and everyone on the bridge was just sitting there in awe.

With the bridge closed to everything except foot traffic and the sun out… there were moments when we were just basking in the heat, like lizards on a rock, finally thawing out. We searched a few people who wanted to cross the bridge to go vote, but they soon returned saying that the Arkansas unit had turned them back. For some reason we had not been able to raise the other unit on comms (communications) since we arrived, so Sgt. Hedge and decided that we were going to personally escort this one voter across the bridge so he could vote. Although I never saw a polling site or engaged any of the Iraqi people in a conversation about the historic proportion of this day or saw dancing in the street… I did escort this one man across the bridge to go vote. We convinced the Arkansas unit to open their side up to foot traffic and we searched pedestrians the rest of the day.

You could tell those people who voted because their right index finger was covered with ink from the finger printing they did with each ballot. The finger dipped in ink was a cross between an "I voted" sticker and the ash mark on the forehead on Ash Wednesday. All we could do as soldiers was to thank those people who had the courage to vote, in their native language "Shorkran!"

From our bridge we heard numerous fire fights break out and mortars land throughout the city. But we went the whole day without having a single shot fired in our direction. It was as though we had a bubble around us shielding us from the fight. The Arkansas boys were constantly being engaged while we never once fired our weapons. In post script, I believe full heartedly that we had been buffeted by all the prayers said on our behalf over our journey. For that I am truly, truly thankful! Election Day came and went and we were still on this god forsaken bridge.

Monday 31Jan05
We all had hoped to leave our post at 0600… but word came down that we had to leave at 1200. However right around 1130, we received word that we couldn't leave till 1800. We were tired, cranky and extremely agitated. People were yelling at each other and tempers flared. It is a wonder that a fist fight did not break out between people.

All I wanted to do was cry… I hadn't eaten or slept in two days, because my mind was so preoccupied with thoughts about my girlfriend. Even the little kids knew something was wrong… They kept trying to cheer me up… But nothing worked. I was feeling sorry for myself. I kept thinking about why I would ever leave someone like my girlfriend to volunteer to come to Iraq and guard a bridge. I had thought about how much I had already sacrificed to be here and just lost it when I thought that I would lose my girlfriend on top of it all. At 1800 we said our goodbyes and loaded the Bradleys… only to have to wait another 2 hours in belly of the Bradley for our escorts to link up with us.

Everyone seemed to step on each other's last nerve and after a lot of yelling, we finally arrived home after being on mission for 116 hours. Although I wasstarving, filthy and tired I spent the whole night back working on repairing my relationship with my girlfriend. Thankfully for both of us, we were able to work it out and I think we are going to be stronger for the experience.

Election Post-Script
My good friend Dallas Lawrence likens this election to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I am much more reserved in my opinion of what happened here in Iraq. I believe a free election in any country that has come out from under the shadow of tyranny is a historic occasion. However, in my humble opinion, this election did not signal the collapse of the Iraqi insurgency like the Berlin Wall signaled the collapse of Communism in Germany.

Our work in Iraq is far from over and although more then anyone I want to be home with my family and my loved ones, we can't leave till we ensure this experiment in democracy has been given every chance to take root. But what do I know… I spent the election guarding a bridge!

Posted by kristen at February 3, 2005 10:47 AM | TrackBack