When I think about it in passing, the first thing I remember about COP Blackfoot is the tan color of the bricks and the way the light made them glow when the sun was dipping below the Western horizon. I remember the squat guard towers and the antennae that bristled from the roof; our tentative lifeline to the outside world. The chow hall was on the ground floor, along with a makeshift gym we put together from mis-matched equipment found inside forgotten connexes on the fringe of the base.
I think about the piss tubes out back. Right along the perimeter wall and well within sight-line of houses on the other side. Those 2nd story windows loomed large when you were standing there, dick in hand and utterly defenseless.
I think about the courtyard. We’d congregate there, smoking cigarettes and playing with the dogs. At night we hung a bedsheet from the 2nd floor and projected Movies like Apocalypse Now and Blackhawk Down. We watched an idealized version of the reality we were living and felt secure, safe inside our scratch-built fortress.
There was the shooting range out back, where a local, who was passing by at the wrong time, caught a ricochet from an M240b and slumped over. Instantly dead, just beyond the Southern wall. The shitters and burn barrels were back there too. JP8 and human waste wafting up to choke the guys in tower 4.
The first weeks out there, we had no water except what little was rationed for drinking. There was no food except the rat fucked MREs–by literal rats–that were stockpiled in a filthy supply closet. We washed ourselves out of empty ammo cans and subsisted on unfrosted pop-tarts, muffins and MRE remnants.
More than anything, I remember the ever-present feeling that the city was pressing in on us from the other side of our thin perimeter. The enemy was out there. Watching and waiting among the ruins. We were in his backyard. Unwelcome guests, who were out nightly, kicking the hornet’s nest to see what came out.
On the 2nd day in-sector, Ryan caught a round to the gut which rearranged his insides and sent him home. Not long after, Pruzner lost his leg. And after that, Milo was taken. Through it all, Blackfoot remained.
Tamim Fares is a storyteller and Army veteran chronicling the stories of the Iraq War during the Surge. You can follow him here.
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