Band of brothers in Samarra

(PFC Brett Slaughter and a local Sons of Iraq leader at a SoI processing and payment day.)

Samarra, Iraq-
In the Infantry your brother understands you. He might be your squad leader, your bunkmate, the guy you went to basic with.

He's the guy you’ve been through the most with, the one who you sometimes feel closer to than your family. He sees what you see, does what you do. He is the one you trust your life with.

Brett Slaughter, 20, of Sullivan IN, shrugs when I ask him why he joined the infantry. He figured it would be the best way to be right up there in person. “It sounds cheesy,” he said, “but I always knew I wanted to come here (to the 101st Airborne) after watching Band of Brothers.”

But even in his most bad-a-- fantasies, it would have been difficult to imagine that he’d be fighting street to street in Samarra, periodically cleared throughout the war, but never really taken from insurgents before Charlie Company of the 2nd/327th was able to stand up Sons of Iraq forces and erect T-Walls. Earlier this year Gen. David Petraeus called Samarra the most dangerous city in Iraq.

Slaughter’s a tall, wiry kid with a tendency to make funny faces for laughs. About two months after finishing basic training, he got shipped to the 2nd/327th stationed in Samarra. The soldiers of Charile Company had already been fighting to quell the violence there for months. It made for a rough induction into the infantry brotherhood, Slaughter said.

The first time Slaughter rolled with his platoon out of Patrol Base Olsen they got caught in a firefight. Slaughter earned his Combat Infantry Badge, for taking fire and shooting back, which pretty much everyone in his platoon had already earned.

“At first it was scary,” Slaughter said, to dismount from the safety of a 14-ton vehicle to the sound of the rounds bouncing off the armored plating of their MRAP and to immediately provide cover fire.

At first I was thinking, “F----, they’re shooting at me. But you got to expect it.”

He returned fire, aiming at the roof of a house while Specialist Anderson fired heavier rounds from the turret 50. Cal. Then they ran to enter the house. Sgt. Eric Shaw “fragged” the entrance with a grenade, but by the time they took the stairs, the insurgents had already escaped by jumping from roof to roof.

As one of the younger guys at Patrol Base Olsen, an old casino in the heart of Samarra’s government center, Slaughter said the experienced soldiers have taught him a lot about firing his weapon.

“It’s thrilling going on raids, making sure the house is clear,” Slaughter said. “The last raid we had to wade through a creek of chest-high water. We found a weapons cache of 12 Ak-47s.”

When his roommate Specialist Joseph McKenzie went on leave, Slaughter became the platoon’s radio transmission operator. He now carries a large radio on his back and is the lieutenant's communication link to all the vehicles and back to the base.

“It’s hard at first not knowing anything," he said. "Once you get used to it, time goes by fast.”

His mother is remarried in Sullivan, and the one Slaughter keeps up with regularly. “You don’t want to talk too much. I talk to her about once every two weeks.”

And he's expecting to see his newborn daughter when he goes on leave in September. "I want to be there for my kid, unlike my Dad," Slaughter said. “It’ll be a learning experience.”

“This is my family, 3rd Platoon. I trust these guys more than I trust anybody.”

Specialist Joseph McKenzie, 22, a Californian transplant to South Chicago is one of Slaughter's good buddies. McKenzie sleeps on the bunk below Slaughter in their 4-bed hut and regularly subjects his younger roommate to wrestling holds when Slaughter talks too much trash.

(McKenzie and Slaughter play fighting in their room, something they often do to relieve boredom.)
“McKenzie helps out a lot,” Slaughter said. “He’s real squared away. If something needs to be done he’ll take the initiative.”

McKenzie, a stockier infantry prototype with Asian style tattoos on his arms loves to get the guys involved in killer work outs in Olsen's weight room their company rebuilt.

“I didn’t have a plan when I got out of high school,” McKenzie said. “I was going to go to college, but I was running wild. I was into the Chicago club scene. I needed structure.”

One day McKenzie went to the Army recruiting station and said he scored pretty high on the battery of tests they gave him.

“I picked infantry. My Grandfather was a Master Sergeant in the Ranger Battalion," McKenzie said. "I told my mom, she was like, ‘if you got to learn the hard way.’”

McKenzie left for basic training a week later. After basic he got sent to Korea with the 2nd Infantry Division. “I saw a lot of cool stuff. I dated a Korean girl who’d come and pick me up. We went to Seoul, all the way down south to the beaches.”

McKenzie tried to stay longer in Korea but came up on orders that sent him to the 101st Division.

"If you're in the infantry everyone hates you," he said, "but nobody can say you didn’t do s--- on your deployment.”

(Spc. McKenzie pulling security on a routine patrol in Samarra.)

His first taste of combat in Samarra was of an Iraqi Police truck in front of them blowing up, of seeing the mangled police in the back of their truck, then shooting off a 200 round drum of bullets. McKenzie remembered picking up a hand and putting it back in the truck.

“I got blown up a couple of times,” McKenzie said casually. He said his first time he got lucky. Only one of the three artillery rounds planted underneath their Humvee went off. The second time they got hit by a landmine, but he said the MRAPs are so well-armored he barely felt it, the bomb just blew the axles off.

McKenzie said in the biggest firefight of their deployment they took fire from multiple rooftops. “I laid down 900 rounds with a .50 Cal,” he said proudly.

Now that they haven’t made contact with the enemy in several months, McKenzie, Slaughter, and one of their other roommates PFC Anderson, are either lifting weights or glued to their Playstation at night. They still do daily and longer night patrols, but they only carry an ounce of the adrenaline of the early months now that Samarra is almost a 180 degrees more secure.

“The tours basically over,” McKenzie said. “We have five months left and in the past four months nothing’s happened.”

The only question is the big one- to stay in or get out. McKenzie said the pros are free food, free living, dental and medical in the Army. “You get taken care of,” he said. “The cons are if you ever have a family, I don’t think Iraq’s slowing down. You live two lives, the civilian and the Army. The longer you stay in the Army, the longer you drift from your real family. You don’t want to hang out with your mom on leave, but you miss it.”

Part of him wants to go back to Chicago to become a normal college student who can party when he wants to. “I want to go to University of Illinois Chicago on the G.I. Bill," McKenzie said. "It sounds weird to say you’re a veteran when you’re young.”

“I want to get my major in business and minor in marketing. (But) It’s hard looking into it over here. When I get online I end up looking at my MY Space for two hours.”

“We should get paid more,” McKenzie said. “We do 18 mile road marches. I got my Expert Infantry Badge. Our Company wants a 270 PT score." McKenzie said his best PT score is 365.

One of their buddies, Sgt. Eric Shaw, 29, popped in and said he just got the approval from his wife to re-enlist for 3 years.

“Oh man,” McKenzie said. He had promised Shaw that if Shaw re-upped he would too.

“You don’t have to,” Shaw said, half joking, “You can go back on your word.”

McKenzie shook his head, all the talk about giving the “world” a two-year trial swirling around in his mind.

“You get out and people tell you what to do,” he said. “They sit around on their couch playing Rainbow 6, while I do Rainbow 6.”

“I flirt with the idea of staying in. My buddies say you did your time… You do some retarded stuff over here,” McKenzie said shaking his head and smiling, “38 hours with your gear on. It doesn’t bother you anymore.”