The retrans site, otherwise known as a retransmission site, was a communications post set up on a plateau overlooking the town of Al Qaim. This communications site was there to provide communications between the main base at the railroad station where we were stationed and an outpost in Husaybah, Iraq, where Bravo Company’s area of operations took place. We would encounter mortar fire on a daily basis. Most of the time, we would return this fire with mortar fire of our own. Some of the time, the counter-battery would call in a specific location for us to exchange fire. On occasion, when the counter-battery could not call in a specific location, our unit would fire upon the town anyway, sometimes in the hills off to the west of the town where we thought the mortar fire was coming from and other times straight into the town of Al Qaim itself, onto buildings, houses and businesses. Because of the lack of personnel at the retrans site, very rarely, if ever, did we conduct a battle damage assessment report to report civilian deaths and destruction. So almost all the time these incidents went unreported and not investigated. This was not an isolated incident, as well.


Another mission our platoon was tasked to take on was that of transporting prisoners from our detention facility on base back to the desert. The reason I say the desert and not their town is because that is exactly where we would drop them off, in the middle of nowhere. Now, most of these men had obviously been deemed innocent, or else they would have been moved to a more permanent detention facility and not released back into the local population. Our unit engaged in punching, kicking, butt stroking or generally harassing and abusing these very prisoners until the point at which our unit would be take them in the middle of the desert, miles from their respective homes, and at times throw them out of the back of our Humvees, all the while continually punching, kicking and at times even throwing softball-sized rocks at their backs as they ran away. This, once again, was not an isolated incident.


Possibly the most disturbing of what took place in Iraq was the mishandling of the dead. On several occasions, our convoy came across bodies that had been decapitated and were lying on the road, sometimes for weeks. When encountering these bodies, standard procedure was to run over the corpses, sometimes even stopping and taking pictures, which was also a standard practice when encountering the dead in Iraq—this, along with neglecting to account for many of those who were killed or wounded. On one specific occasion, after I had personally shot a man attempting to flee while planting a roadside bomb, we drug his body out of the ditch he was laying in, and we subsequently left that body—slide please—we subsequently left that body to rot in the field, where we saw this man up to a week later.


These are just a few of the disturbing and unacceptable stories I could share with you from my time in Iraq. Others would include continually dehumanizing Iraqis by referring to them as “hajis” or “sand niggers.” Even the racist and sexist nature that exists within the military itself, which was obviously—overtly obvious on a daily basis. I could also tell story upon story of families being destroyed as a result of an occupation that unfortunately should have never taken place. Several members of my platoon—several members of my platoon went through divorces and/or separations, many of the time with children involved.


I could also testify to the overwhelming majority of those I served with who did not think dying in Iraq was honorable or acceptable, nor did they enjoy or want to go back to Iraq a second or third time. Unfortunately, because of personal circumstances, whether they be financial or family issues, many indeed were deployed up to three times during their four-year enlistment. In fact, many, including myself, at times did not have intention of helping the Iraqis. Because of the hostile intent, as well as the loss of lives close to us, our best friends, our unit had a general disdain and distaste for Iraqis and their country. Further, our unit, for the most part, did not trust our command and had a general mistrust and distaste of this occupation from its inception onward.


I could also speak to the personal attacks veterans, including myself and many others, had to encounter once we were willing to be treated for PTSD within our unit. The idea of being a real Marine that does not complain when coming back home and who sucks it up and just does the job that we were tasked to do, this mentality resulted in many of the Marines I served with, including myself, turning to drugs and alcohol to cope with the horrors of this bloody occupation.

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When An Elder Passes On To Higher Life , Its Like One Of The Library Have Shut Down