Fraternally,
Dean Markley, Worshipful Master

BROTHERS IN UNIFORM

Brother Sergeant Michael O’Connor of Lakeside Lodge No. 258 is serving in the United States Marine Corps as a combat engineer. A West Coast Marine, his permanent base is Camp Pendleton, CA, where he is currently training for his second Marine Expeditionary Unit WESTPAC tour. He has served two previous combat tours in Iraq and will deploy again in early April for his third tour in the region. Depending upon what happens politically and diplomatically over the next three to four months, this tour could include another stint in Iraq or Afghanistan, or it could involve disaster relief somewhere on the Pacific Rim, or it could simply represent a military presence in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
In his most recent tour he participated in Operation Steel Curtain in the western Iraqi desert, in the Al Anbar Province, then in Operation Iron Hammer near Hit, west of Baghdad. He finished out the tour as part of the security force in one of the red zones of Baghdad. These operations successfully engaged and contained Al Qaeda and insurgent forces that attempted to cross the Syrian border in an effort to disrupt the Iraqi election of December 2005. Apart from dodging RPGs and small-arms fire in slit trenches, for which neither he nor his dignity has yet been able to offer up much in the way of forgiveness for the insurgents, he routinely located and disabled the ever-present IED roadside bombs and booby traps, and the occasional unexploded friendly ordinance, in clearing areas, mostly urban areas, for the follow-on infantry operations.
One of the friendly ordinances was a Hellfire missile that had burrowed itself into the sand in the city of Husaybah. Husaybah (spelled Qusaybah on some maps) is the westernmost Iraqi city, ordinarily housing 300,000 souls, on the southern shore of the Euphrates River, literally within spitting distance of Syria. Hellfires are lasar-guided rockets with high-explosive shaped charges and impact fuses. They measure about five-and-a-quarter feet in length, they weigh ninety-nine pounds, and they fly at 950 miles per hour. Whether they explode or not, they make a big hole when they slam into the ground. The crater that this one had left is what Sergeant O’Connor’s platoon encountered while clearing the city.
The platoon commander sang out, “O’Connor, get up here.”
Marines, if not all soldiers, sailors, and airmen in combat, have a love affair with surnames, not with given names or ranks. Given names are too affectionate, and ranks are too dangerous. In fact, any kind of special designation is dangerous. It sets the Marine who is wearing it apart from all the rest. The insignia for combat engineers is a castle with two battlement towers flanking a drawbridge. One of the first things that O’Connor noticed when he arrived in the western desert is that he was being shot at more than everyone else. As soon as he removed the castle from his cammies, he blended in with the rest of the men and only got shot at the same as everyone else.
“I’m not a bomb disposal tech,” he said to his commander. “I’ve only got the T-shirt.”
The T-shirt that he was talking about is black with a message emblazoned across the front in bold white letters that says, “I am a bomb technician. If you see me running, TRY TO KEEP UP.”
“Improvise,” his commander said.
Unexploded ordinance is risky in any case but more so when you don’t know what kind of ordinance it is. So the first thing that O’Connor did was try to determine what he was dealing with. He climbed into the crater for a closer look.
“Lieutenant,” he said. “I need your help.”
In spite of the battlefield protocol, even urban-combat conditions are unable to overcome good training. It’s the old Hollywood joke. The drill sergeant scolds his recruit not to call him sir—he works for a living—to which the recruit replies with a salute, “Yes, sir!” O’Connor is nothing if not well trained.
His commander shot a quick glance over his shoulder as if either to call up somebody else or to spot a previously unnoticed insurgent within earshot. However, all but one other troop in the platoon had already moved on, and no insurgents seemed to be lingering in any of the nearby buildings. At any rate, no AK-47 muzzles appeared to be hanging out of any of the windows. Besides, the lieutenant had his schedule to keep, so he, too, climbed into the crater.
“Hold the tail steady while I dig away some of the dirt.”
It didn’t take long to uncover the markings on the side of the missile: “U.S. ARMY, AGM-114.”
“Great,” O’Connor said with a sigh of somewhat bitter irony. “One of ours.” He unpacked a brick of C-4 and a fuse, which he cut to fifteen seconds, from his pack. “The good news is that it’s an early model Hellfire—an A or a C version. They have smaller HE charges than later versions—only eight kilos.”
“So we only get blown to hell and not back again. Is that what you’re saying? I thought you didn’t know anything about these things.”
“I said that I’m not a tech; I didn’t say that I didn’t know anything about them.”
He was kneading the C-4 plastic explosive like bread dough into a long baguette while he expostulated on the design specs of the bomb in front of them. Now he began wrapping it around the center of the canister. He wasn’t so much talking to his commander as simply talking to relieve the tension of the moment. “The bad news is that it’s an early model Hellfire—an A or a C version. They were the original Army versions without the safety arming device that the Marine Corps version has. They aren’t exactly Vietnam-era stuff, but they’re close? Late 70s, early 80s?”
“So it’s more likely to blow us up than a later version?”
“We’ll know that,” O’Connor replied, “if this fuse burns all the way to the detonator. Fifteen seconds will tell the tale.”
He poked the detonator into the C-4, which made his commander shiver a little, then packed dirt back under the canister to support its weight so that his commander could let go. They were both sweating profusely. Later they would both say that it was because of the desert heat.
“Okay,” he said. “Clear a straight line to that APC. As soon as you’re behind it, I’ll pull smoke and run.”
Pulling smoke means lighting the fuse. The armored personnel carrier was about a hundred yards away—by his best reckoning at the time. He didn’t do the arithmetic until later, but at a four-minute-mile sprint he could cover a hundred yards in a little over thirteen-and-a-half seconds. Marines never run only a mile; they run three and four miles at a pop, often more. He didn’t know if he could sprint a four-minute mile—had never done it, had no prior measurement for comparison—and even if he could do it under idle conditions, in shorts and running shoes, around an oval track, he certainly would never be able to do it in full battle gear—boots, utilities, and thirty pounds of sappy plates, along with his pack of C-4, fuse line, and detonators. But he wasn’t running a mile here, only a hundred yards—by his best reckoning at the time. His heart was pumping pretty hard as he lit the fuse, but it was only later, after he had made his run-time calculation, that he admitted to having been scared shitless.

Editor’s Note: When I called O’Connor recently on the phone to clarify a couple of details, including where the incident had occurred and during which operation, he remembered the name of the city but not the operation. He hollered to one of his buddies, “Hey, Chez, when were we in Husaybah? Was that Steel Curtain or Iron Hammer?” It had been just one more day in one more operation.

Awaiting Entered Apprentice Degree
David D. Alexander

Lakeside Member

BROTHERS IN UNIFORM