I Was the First Soldier to Blog from War

That’s what I’ll tell my hypothetical grandkids someday. And it’s true.

Grandpa fought in the war and even helped capture the evil man responsible for the whole thing.

They won’t make me go into details because that’s one grace we still extend to old folks; we assume they can’t remember anything.

So I won’t have to tell them that yes, I was there, a part of Operation Red Dawn, that I was roughly 100 feet away from the hole, sitting in the driver’s seat of an A113 ambulance, staring intently through my night vision goggles. And Saddam didn’t emerge; he more or less emerged against his will. And even though President Bush would credit my division, the 4th Infantry, with his capture the next day, the truth is we were only there for security.

The men who captured him weren’t from my unit or division. They weren’t stationed at any army installation in Iraq. They lived among the people, speaking their language, eating food, and being active in the community.

I knew this because they’d rappelled from a helicopter a minute or two earlier instead of driving through a hellacious sandstorm for an hour.

Soldiers who rappel out of helicopters unannounced aren’t the same kind of soldiers I was. The last time I’d been on a Medevac chopper, I threw up all over the pilot and nearly shit my pants.

The drive would have been shorter for everyone, too, but I lost sight of the convoy at a roundabout and drove in the wrong direction for five minutes before finally grouping up with my unit. True story. I delayed the mission to capture the world’s most wanted man because I couldn’t see the road through my night vision goggles and the clouds of sand.

Or maybe because I wasn’t paying attention. I did that a lot. I still do.

I didn’t know it that night, but the soldiers who captured Saddam were from a unit called Task Force 121. It was a special ops unit comprising 1,500 or so of the scariest and best soldiers from Delta Force, the Army Rangers, SEAL Team Six, the CIA’s Special Activities Division, and others.

The United States government took our best elite soldier units, separated the wheat from the chaff, and then assembled a new unit using only the best of the best. Then they set them loose in Iraq, with the sole mission being to capture or kill (mainly kill) High-Value Targets (HVT).

I was just a soldier.

These guys? They were like the Golden State Warriors, except with dead bodies instead of championships.

I was a writer. By the time I stepped foot in Iraq, I’d been writing professionally (and unprofessionally, often simultaneously) for eight years.

Before I deployed to Iraq, I kept a blog, primarily for my Mom to read and document what I would experience. Blogging was still new, confined to early adopters and people with no social skills. I was both of those things. I glommed onto any new technology I could find. I was a Web 2.0 fanatic.

I also thought it might be neat to have something to look back on, provided I didn’t get blown up.

So, I wrote about everything I experienced daily. And I mean everything.

How I was feeling. The movies we were watching at night. The last time I’d taken a shower. I posted photos of the barrel of shit I’d just burned with jet fuel. I wrote post after post, day after day, using any free time I had to document the experience. Reading it now, it’s clear I also intentionally excluded the bad stuff. I didn’t want my Mom to worry.

Maybe I wanted to start the process of forgetting, too.

I also blogged about our missions, past and present. If I knew something about something, I wrote about it, including details, locations, and actions we took. My blog was for my Mom and me, so I didn’t think twice about writing whatever I wanted.

You see where this is going.

When we returned to camp from Operation Red Dawn, I grabbed my tiny Sony Vaio and set off to the internet tent. I couldn’t wait to get on AOL Instant Messenger and tell my Mom the great news. But when I got there, an E-6 sternly told me to turn the fuck around and go back the fuck from whence I came.

The internet tent was closed, and no, I could not fucking use the satellite phone, either.

We were in a blackout.

President Bush wanted to announce the news himself, which was reasonable. He was the President, after all.

But until he did, I couldn’t tell anyone what I’d just experienced. So I took my laptop back across the base to my tent, attached to our medical supply truck. I sat in the back of the car, opened the computer, and started writing a blog post about the mission, figuring I’d post it whenever they opened the internet tent. I split it into two parts because it started feeling a little long. I wrote for hours, right up until it was my turn to burn the shit again.

Two days later, they opened the internet tent, and I made a beeline for it. You have never seen me move so fast. I jumped online and quickly posted the first part of the story, then giddily chatted with my Mom about the whole thing. I was part of history.

And then I made history by myself, and not the good kind.

A day after I posted the first blog entry, my first sergeant visited my tent first thing in the morning. By this, I mean he exploded into the living space like a middle-aged anger hurricane.

I’d never known how creative humans can be with vulgar language until that moment; it just needs the right inspiration, and I was his inspiration.

Between the fucks and the fuckings and you stupid asshole fucker and the shits, I managed to piece together that the Captain wanted to see me right now.

I pulled on my DCU while walking out the door and across the berm to the CO’s quarters, and the only thing I could think was: He’s going to kill me. I am dead. I am going to die because not just of my own stupidity, but because of my writing

He didn’t kill me, but he sure did politely rip me a brand new one right next to the fresh one Sarge had just not-so-politely opened.

And then he told me I was no longer allowed to write things on the internet, especially not stories where I wrote exactly what we were doing, where we were, where we were going, and what we were doing next. I kid you not; this was the first time I realized I’d been doing something dumb.

I couldn’t write anymore, at least not until they figured out what I was doing (blogging, which they’d never heard of), who could read it (literally anyone), and if I’d jeopardized our mission in any way (maybe, but only if I had insurgent readers who were really into long posts about how much I missed showering).

I wondered how they’d found my little blog so quickly. Nobody reads this except my Mom. Or so I thought.

What happened? Who could care? A few hours later, I was stunned when I checked my traffic logs. My little blog, which averaged 1–2 pageviews a day, had somehow amassed over 250,000 views in one night.

Every major news organization in the world linked to my story, and CBS News and The Guardian asked me for interviews. My entire reason for joining the Army was that I wanted to stay anonymous and not be singled out.

Fuck.

There goes that idea.

Strangely, I never received any discipline for my writing in Iraq. Like Colby Buzzell and others, those who came after me weren’t as fortunate. Some were busted down in rank; some were discharged entirely. I kept on writing, with the only difference being that I had to run everything by my chain of command. I think it was because I was doing something the Army had never heard of and had no idea how to classify or address it. They realized quickly how dangerous it could be for operational security (you’re welcome?), but they also learned what a public relations opportunity it presented.

Journalists have reported from war zones for centuries. But a soldier writing first-person accounts of an ongoing war, instantly transmitted to millions worldwide? It wasn’t even possible. When I went to war, I had the technology to do what had never been done before, and I did it. I didn’t think of it that way then, and if I had, I probably would’ve quit immediately.

But I know now that while I was making trouble for the Army, I was also making history. It was not the kind of history people will remember in a hundred years or even now, but it was a certain kind of history nonetheless.

I’d like to say I wrote because of noble ambitions or maybe because I wanted a book deal.

But the truth is: I wrote because I was scared to death that tomorrow or the next day might be the day I’d randomly drive over a dead cat on a dusty road, and then I’d just be gone, poof, vaporized, a human in full one instant, a pile of body parts heaped in a ditch the next; my mother answering the door to a pair of grim soldiers and just knowing; a father who was the greatest, kindest, most honorable man that ever walked the earth, but who had never heard those words from my mouth.

When I got home, I stopped writing about the war. I didn’t like talking about it. And the thing about that is, you can hide it down inside, but it never goes away. This is why I’m still sometimes haunted by the things I saw there and the things I did there. It’s why the VA says I have a hefty case of PTSD to go along with the back injuries that make up my 90% disability rating.

And it’s why, in the middle of random nights, I am still there, raging against the fear and the sound, yelping and sometimes screaming until my wife’s gentle hand on my chest in the dark reminds me that I am still a whole person, that I am safe. That I am loved.

And that even if these things I carry never leave me, it is okay. Because they’re part of me now. Most for the better.

But usually for worse.