This past Monday night, five U.S. soldiers died in a friendly-fire incident in Zabul Province’s Arghandab District. Reading about it reminded me of the day I stopped believing in God.
Fratricide is what caused this erosion of belief. On the morning of November 11, 2004, three days into the Second Battle of Fallujah, I was leading a rifle platoon, forty-six Marines. We’d fought our way about a kilometre deep into the city. Holding a defensive position in a three-story house, I leaned against a cinder-block windowsill next to a machine gunner, a corporal named Benjy. The sun had just risen, and it was quiet. We were smoking Marlboros, waiting for the day and the fighting to begin. As I talked, Benjy balanced his machine gun on a table by its bipod, just behind the open window. He was supposed to be covering the street below us, but I’d distracted him with some small talk. Then, outside, a voice calling in Arabic got our attention. An insurgent in black warm-up pants, a black t-shirt, and carrying a rifle had been about to sprint past us, his sneakers crunching against broken glass and shards of cement. But he’d heard the shouts, too—one of his compatriots, beckoning him from an unseen place—and had stopped in his tracks. He looked over his shoulder, about to bound in the direction of the voice. Before he could, Benjy shouldered his machine gun and fired, felling the insurgent like a sack of potatoes. We heard the same voice gasp; then, from countless positions, insurgents started shooting at us.
What I witnessed that morning didn’t upset me because it was the first bloodshed I’d seen—the day before, a sniper had killed my friend Dan Malcolm, and, after five months in Iraq, our infantry battalion had lost several Marines. It upset me because of the extent to which it was a matter of chance. The man was there in the street, alive, running. His friend called out to him. Then he was dead. That you could go from running to lifeless on the ground that quickly laid bare the randomness of death and its converse: the fragile randomness of life. If there was a God guiding our collective fates, I couldn’t see or feel Him anymore. He wasn’t with us there. It was just Benjy and me, smoking cigarettes, talking, and his machine gun.
But I somehow didn’t feel like we’d killed that man. I felt like his friend had killed him, the one who’d called out and thus exposed him. His death seemed like a strange type of fratricide.
* * *
With fratricide, the tragedy is an unnecessary death, one which doesn’t further the mission. Details of this week’s incident in Arghandab are murky: a group of Afghans advised by special operators came under fire the night of Monday, June 9th. Close air support was called in, a B-1 Bomber. The resultant air strike left five U.S. soldiers dead. The episode is currently under investigation.
One possible scenario is that there was a breakdown in communication between the pilots of that B-1 Bomber and the troops on the ground. As much as we’ve come to expect a certain level of precision in war, it’s still a human endeavor. Mistakes are easily made. For instance, when calling in an air strike, a forward air controller works with the planes overhead, passing along grid coordinates from a G.P.S. to the aircraft, never giving his own position, only the enemy’s; otherwise, a pilot could mistake the grid coordinate of a friendly position for an enemy one, incorrectly entering them into his flight computer. This was the case in December, 2001, when a two-thousand-pound G.P.S-guided bomb killed three American and five Afghan soldiers. Many others were wounded in the attack, including President Hamid Karzai. The investigation that followed revealed that the forward air controller had accidently passed on the grid coordinates of his own location.
Coordinates aren’t the only confusing aspect of calling in airstrikes. A forward air controller often uses a large infrared pointer to ‘laser’ a target, especially at night. When seen from the air, this pointer is simply a beam on the ground. On one end is the enemy, on the other are friendly forces. Those are two ends of a line one doesn’t want to confuse. Air controllers are taught techniques to reduce the possibility of this happening: Lasso the target by raising your spotter in the air, circling it around repeatedly so the pilot won’t get mixed up; talk the pilot onto the target by describing the terrain around it; mark your position with infrared strobe lights. But in the end air strikes are just two people speaking on the radio—one in the air, one on the ground—trying to figure out where to drop a bomb.
Now and then, the wrong thing gets said. Like the insurgent’s friend calling after him: just a misplaced word.
* * *
The most infamous victim of fratricide in the 9/11 wars is Pat Tillman, who died in April, 2004, in Khost Province, Afghanistan. No aircraft were involved. In the aftermath, it was alleged that members of his Ranger platoon shot him. The war was young then; a certain sentimentality still surrounded its losses.
On May 3, 2004, several hundred mourners gathered in San Jose, California, to remember Tillman. Little was said about the suspicion of fratricide. He would soon be awarded both a Silver Star and a Purple Heart, medals that were meant to add meaning to his sacrifice. At the service, he was eulogized by Senator John McCain, who said, “And you will see him again when a loving God reunites us all with the loved ones who preceded us in death.” California’s then First Lady, Maria Shriver, said, “Pat, your family doesn’t have to worry anymore. You are home.”
Flanked on either side by portraits of Tillman in his Arizona Cardinals and Ranger uniforms, his little brother, Richard, took the stage, a pint of Guinness in hand. He raised the glass to the portraits, toasting his dead brother. “He was always giving gifts. Thanks, Pat,” he said, taking a drink. He went on: “Thanks for coming. Pat’s a fucking champion, and, uh, always will be. Uh, just make no mistake—he’d want me to say this—he’s not with God. He’s fucking dead. He’s not religious, so thanks for your thoughts, but he’s fucking dead.”
When someone is killed due to friendly fire, the family cannot take comfort in the idea that their loved one died for some greater mission. After Tillman’s memorial service, his family channelled its grief into a crusade to hold the Defense Department responsible for an accurate accounting of the events surrounding his death. Their struggle has since been well documented in books like Jon Krakauer’s “Where Men Win Glory” and the film “The Tillman Story.” Watching Tillman’s eulogy, it became evident that, after his family’s loss, the only solace to be found was in the truth. If the truth was that Tillman’s death was meaningless, there would be meaning in that meaninglessness. On March 26, 2007, the Defense Department released a final report on the incident, concluding that Tillman had in fact been killed by friendly fire.
Details about the deaths of the five soldiers killed by friendly fire on Monday will likely emerge at some point. By then, our attention will have shifted elsewhere. Thirteen years into this conflict, it’s difficult to imagine that the “truth” of this accident will offer solace to the families and to those left behind. But there is meaning in just knowing. Sometimes, that’s enough. I still wish I knew what that insurgent’s friend called out to him as he crossed the street that day. Maybe it was something worthwhile. Instead, I just remember that he chose to stop, and look back.
Photograph: Rahmat Gul/AP.
