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08/08/2004:
"The Price of Valor"
by Dan Baum New YorkerWe train our soldiers to kill for us. Afterward, they’re on their own.
Carl Cranston joined the Army in 1997 when he was still a junior at Sebring McKinley High School, not far from Canton, Ohio. He and his girlfriend, Debbie Stiles, had just had a baby, and the thought the Army offered the easiest path to job security The country was enjoying what President Clinton liked to call “the longest peacetime expansion in history, and Carl’s duties as an infantryman, the thought, would largely be a matter of his getting into shape shooting awesome weapons, and learning skills like rappelling and land navigation. The Army allowed Carl to finish high school and, once he’d completed basic training, sent him to Schofield Barracks outside Honolulu. Debbie gladly accompanied him. “The Army was the best choice we could have made, and I’d do it again,” she says. “Suddenly we were on our own, paying our bills. Eighteen years old, our first time away from home.
The attacks of September 11th changed everything. The Cranstons were moved to Fort Benning, in Columbus, Georgia, so that Carl could join the 3rd Infantry Division’s 3rd Brigade, a mechanized unit known as the Sledgehammer Brigade. He and his men were assigned to accompany Bradley fighting vehicles—the fast, heavily armed personnel carriers that became the backbone of the attack on Iraq. Seven soldiers, or “dismounts,” would squeeze into the Bradley’s stifling rear compartment, and Carl, by now a sergeant, was their team leader. The Sledgehammers were among the first units to cross into Iraq after the war started, in March, 2003, and Carl was involved in eleven firefights, seven of them “major,” by his reckoning. They fought from the Kuwait border to central Baghdad, and finally rotated back to Fort Benning last July.
I met Carl and Debbie in February, at a Red Lobster restaurant in Columbus. He’s a big man of twenty-four, with a high-fade military buzz cut and a well-padded face that relaxes into a wide smile. She is small and blond, with a sharp chin and a quick, alert look honed by rimless glasses. Carl tends to be guileless and cheerful, Debbie more clipped and wary.
Carl still marvels at the lethality of the Sledgehammers. Iraqi soldiers, believing they were concealed by darkness or smoke, would expose themselves to the Bradley’s thermal sights and the devastating rapid fire of its twenty-five-millimetre cannon. Carl and his squad would tumble out the back of the Bradley and attack Iraqi soldiers who had survived. “We killed a lot of people,” he said as we ate. Later, Carl and his men had to establish roadblocks, which was notoriously dangerous duty. “We started out being nice,” Carl said. “We had little talking cards to help us communicate. We’d put up signs in Arabic saying ‘Stop.’ We’d say, ‘Ishta, ishta,’ which means ‘Go away.’” But people would approach with white flags in their hands and then whip out AK-47s or rocket-propelled grenades. So Carl’s group adopted a play-it-safe policy: if a driver ignored the signs and the warnings and came within thirty metres of a roadblock, the Americans opened fire. “That’s why nobody in our whole company got killed,” he said. Debbie stopped eating and stared into her food. “You’re not supposed to fire warning shots, but we did,” Carl said. “And still some people wouldn’t stop.” He went on, “A couple of times—more than a couple—it was women and children in the car. I don’t know why they didn’t stop.” Carl’s squad didn’t tow away the cars containing dead people. “You can’t go near it,” he said. “It might be full of explosives. You just leave it.” He and his men would remain at their posts alongside the carnage. “Nothing else you can do,” he said.
Debbie watched the waitress clear our plates, then she leaned forward to tell about a night in July, after Carl’s return, when they went with some friends to the Afterhours Enlisted Club at Fort Benning. Carl had a few drinks, Debbie said, and started railing at the disk jockey, shouting, “I want to hear music about people blowing people’s brains out, cutting people’s throats!” Debbie continued, “I said, ‘Carl. Shut up.’ He said, ‘No, I want to hear music about shit I’ve seen!’” Carl listened to Debbie’s story with a loving smile, as though she were telling about him losing his car keys. “I don’t remember that,” he said, laughing. Debbie said, “That was the first time I heard him say stuff about seeing people’s brains blown out. Other times, he just has flashbacks—like, he sits still and stares.” Carl laughed again. “Really, though, I’m fine,” he said. Beside him in the booth, Debbie shook her head without taking her eyes from mine and exaggeratedly mouthed, “Not fine. Not fine.” full article
