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Paul Rieckhoff - Chasing Ghosts: Failures and Facades in Iraq: A Soldiers Perspective

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Paul Rieckhoff Chasing Ghosts: Failures and Facades in Iraq: A Soldiers Perspective
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*A Division is made up of anywhere from ten thousand to eighteen thousand troops. It is subdivided into three Brigades, and each Brigade contains three or more Battalions, with five hundred to nine hundred soldiers in each. A Battalion is further subdivided into three to five Companies, and a Company is made up of three or four Platoons. Finally, a Platoon contains two to four Squads. Mine had four, each with a Squad Leader, who was a Staff Sergeant or NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer). We were Third Platoon, Bravo Company, Third Battalion, 124th Regiment, First Brigade, Third Infantry Division.

CHASING GHOSTS
CHASING GHOSTS

A SOLDIERS FIGHT FOR AMERICA FROM BAGHDAD TO WASHINGTON

PAUL RIECKHOFF

Chasing Ghosts Failures and Facades in Iraq A Soldiers Perspective - image 1

Chasing Ghosts is a memoir and the events described within are what the author remembers to the best of his abilities.


NAL CALIBER

Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa


Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England


First published by NAL Caliber, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.


Copyright Paul Rieckhoff, 2006

All rights reserved


Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following copyrighted material:


Lyrics from Bullet and a Target by Citizen Cope.


NAL CALIBER and the C logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Rieckhoff, Paul.

Chasing ghosts: a soldiers fight for America from Baghdad to Washington/Paul Rieckhoff.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-1012-1101-4

1. Rieckhoff, Paul. 2. Iraq War, 2003Personal narratives, American. 3. SoldiersUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

DS79.76.R5 2006

956.7044'342092dc22 2006002301


Set in Garth Graphic Map by G.W. Ward Designed by Sabrina Bowers


Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.


PUBLISHERS NOTE

This book is a work of nonfiction. Because of the nature of its subject matter, however, in some cases, the author has replaced the actual names of persons with pseudonyms or otherwise masked identifying personal characteristics.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.


The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

To
the Soldiers of Third Platoon,
Bravo Company, 3/124th Infantry, 20034
and
the 44th President of the United States,
whoever that may be

CHAPTER ONE GEORGE BUSH HAD BETTER BE FUCKING RIGHT If you dont like - photo 2
CHAPTER ONE GEORGE BUSH HAD BETTER BE FUCKING RIGHT If you dont like - photo 3

CHAPTER ONE
GEORGE BUSH HAD BETTER BE FUCKING RIGHT

If you dont like obscenity, you dont like the truth. If you dont like the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.

Tim OBrien, The Things They Carried

George Bush had better be fucking right.

Thats how I began my journal on April 3, 2003. Writing in pencil in an Army-issue notebook with mint green pages, leaning in on deliberate, hard letters, I underlined better and penciled over the words again and again until they wore through the tactically colored paper.

On March 19, just two weeks earlier, the United States had launched the first air strike of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Troops on the ground had invaded Iraq the next day. And now I was off to war for reasons that I feared were bullshit.

I reclined in the first-class section of a civilian 747 bound for Kuwait with an M16 wedged between my legs and my gut firmly stuffed with all the Krispy Kreme doughnuts I could scarf down in twenty minutes, courtesy of the old Red Cross ladies who had seen us off at Hunter Army Airfield, Fort Stewart, Georgia. It seemed a bad omen that the Red Cross was the last organization to see us off to war: these are, after all, the people who send emergency notifications to deployed soldiers when something urgent happens back homelike when a sister is in a car accident or a grandmother dies. It was the soldiers equivalent of a knock at the door.

Sitting in a cracked faux-leather seat with In Flight magazines glossy pictures of Hawaii poking out of the seat pocket in front of me, I considered the absurdity of the situation.

Gentlemen, please ensure your seat backs are in the upright position, an older womans voice crackled over the PA system.

What? We were geared to the teeth with the essentials of combat: bullets, grenades, rifles, knives, rucksacks, scowls, Copenhagen chewing tobacco, cigarettes, hatred, the March 2003 edition of Penthouse , with Lilly Ann on the coverthe whole Army deal. I was cranked up and ready to run through hell, already bracing myself for incoming explosions, and going over indoctrinated checklists in my mind. And I had to worry about the seat back being upright?

I was going to war, with the greatest military force the world had ever seen, on a jet snagged from a recently bankrupted airline. I wondered if wed get the little bag of peanuts.

I slid my CD headphones over my ears. I tried to shut out the endless cacophony of yelling, farting, gear rattling, spitting, and snoring with headphones streaming System of a Down, Linkin Park, and Jay-Z. The emotional oasis of a temporary musical vacation helped all of us forget we were constantly surrounded by thirty-eight other men.

Funny. These headphones were just like every piece of equipment issued to my Platoon: old and held together with nothing but hope and some twenty-mile-an-hour tape (green Army duct tape). I hoped these suckers wouldnt break before we got there. I needed my music to keep me saneto buffer me from the men, if only for a song or two. Where the hell do you get new headphones in Iraq?

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