![]() Their job will be to screen the advance of a Marine battle force, the 7,000-strong Regimental Combat Team One (RCT I), through a 115-mile-long agricultural-and-urban corridor that runs between the cities of An Nasiriyah and Al Kut filled with thousands of well-armed fedayeen guerrilla fighters. Colbert’s team in First Recon will reach Baghdad by fighting its way through some of the crummiest, most treacherous parts of Iraq. The vast majority of the troops will get to Baghdad by swinging west onto a modern superhighway built by Hussein as a monument to himself and driving, largely unopposed, until they reach the outskirts of the Iraqi capital. ![]() The Killer Elite Part Three: The Battle for Baghdad He is the last guy you would picture at the tip of the spear of the invasion of Iraq. He is passionate about gadgets – he collects vintage videogame consoles and wears a massive wrist-watch that can only properly be “configured” by plugging it into his PC. Though he considers himself a “Marine Corps killer,” he’s also a nerd who listens to Barry Mani-low, Air Supply and practically all the music of the 1980s except rap. Wiry and fair-haired, he makes sarcastic pronouncements in a nasal whine that sounds a lot like David Spade. Brad Colbert, one of the most respected Marines in First Recon and the team leader I would spend the war with, engaging in any moto displays. Marines call exaggerated displays of enthusiasm – from shouting “Get some!” to waving American flags to covering their bodies with Marine Corps tattoos – “moto.” You won’t ever catch Sgt. Nearly every Marine I’ve met is hoping this war with Iraq will be his chance to get some. Get some! expresses in two simple words the excitement, fear, feelings of power and the erotic-tinged thrill that come from confronting the extreme physical and emotional challenges posed by death, which is, of course, what war is all about. It’s the cry of exhilaration after firing a burst from a 50-caliber machine gun. It punctuates stories told at night about getting laid in whorehouses in Thailand and Australia. It’s shouted when a brother Marine is struggling to beat his personal best in a fitness run. ![]() “Get some!” is the unofficial Marine Corps cheer. Later that first day, when a pair of Cobra helicopter gunships thumped overhead, flying north, presumably on their way to battle, Marines pumped their fists in the air and screamed, “Yeah! Get some!” These Marines had been eagerly anticipating this day since leaving their base at Camp Pendleton, California, more than six weeks before. Marines sleeping in holes dug into the sand twenty miles south of the border with Iraq sat up and gazed into the empty expanse, their faces blank as they listened to the distant rumblings, There were 374 men camped out in the remote desert staging area, all members of the First Reconnaissance Battalion, which would lead the way during considerable portions of the invasion of Iraq, often operating behind enemy lines. The war began twenty-four hours ago as a series of explosions that rumbled across the Kuwaiti desert beginning at about six in the morning on March 20th. The Killer Elite Part Two: From Hell to Baghdad We don’t want to be in this shit-hole country, We don’t want to invade it. “Then we left him go, and he spends the next twelve years pissing us off even more. But in their eyes, one retard reigns supreme: Saddam Hussein – “We already kicked his ass once,” says Person, spitting a thick stream of tobacco juice out his window. There are the hopeless retards in the battalion-support sections who screwed up the radios and didn’t bring enough batteries to operate the Marines’ thermal-imaging devices. There’s another officer, a classic retard, who has already begun chasing through the desert to pick up souvenirs thrown down by fleeing Iraqi soldiers: helmets, Republican Guard caps, rifles. Brad Colbert-both Afghan War veterans-have already reached a profound conclusion about this campaign: that the battle-field that is Iraq is filled with “fucking retards.” There’s the retard commander in their battalion who took a wrong turn near the border, delaying the invasion by at least an hour. Joshua Ray Person, and the vehicle team leader, twenty-eight-year-old Sgt. While watching for enemy fire and simultaneously belting out Avril Lavigne’s “I’m With You,” the twenty-two-year-old driver, Cpl. The four Marines crammed into this vehicle – among the very first American troops who crossed the border into Iraq – are wired on a combination of caffeine, sleep deprivation, excitement and tedium. Oil fires burn on the horizon, set during skirmishes between American forces and pockets of die-hard Iraqi soldiers. The invaders drive north through the Iraqi desert in a Humvee, eating candy, dipping tobacco and singing songs.
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