You Own Every Bullet

In the midst of a tense ambush in Iraq, a soldier recalls his father’s valuable lesson

- Matt Susko

I remember the first time I ever pointed a weapon at someone with the intent to kill them. The experience was very different from how I had imagined it would be—far more ambiguous, confusing, and subjective. The training scenarios and exercises had never really covered situations like the one I found myself in.

I hadn’t been in Iraq that long, maybe 60 days. My assignment: gunner for a troop transport vehicle known as an MRAP. There were 30 or so troops in the platoon, and our mission this evening was a reconnaissance patrol taking us to the edge of our battle space, the dividing line between the areas of responsibility for military units. That was where the bad guys tended to collect, much in the same manner that the space between tiles in a bathroom collects mold and grime.

For this assignment, we were the Mr. Clean. The plan: look around, talk to the locals, try to winkle out some actionable intelligence, and then start kicking the hornets’ nest. Depending on where we went, this was either super successful (quite a few of the locals actually hated the insurgency) or a total bust.

The village had only one road in. Just like so many other stories in Iraq, bad things happen when you are at the far end of your leash, late at night, on the only ingress/egress route. As we mounted up to head back to camp, I heard some of my buddies muttering, “Ugh, we are getting hit tonight.” I tried (and failed) to play it cool. We’re getting hit? I was excited and nervous.