by James Mason

Created on: December 06, 2009   Last Updated: December 12, 2009

I want to talk about killing. I'm not going to mention the first man I ever killed, because everything happened so fast and I moved on in an instant, due to more enemy fighters rushing to meet us. I scarcely had time to dwell on it, and afterwards I tried to dredge up some inkling of emotion, but felt nothing. So while it may sound degrading, especially to that man's family, he doesn't count. I'm going to talk about the beginning of April during my first year in Iraq. My squad was position on the roof of an Iraqi police station, which intelligence had somehow found out was going to be attacked that night. It was a rectangular building three stories high, with a large courtyard roughly double the size of the station itself. We had used our armored personnel carriers to block side streets and other avenues of approach that the enemy might use. My company was responsible for three sides of the building, with my squad on the roof to provide sharpshooter support and standing by to reinforce whichever part of our defenses might need us. The LT had set up a casualty collection point within the yard, along with a communications track. The southern wall of the station was guarded by Iraqi police, and that was where I expected my squad to be called, if at all. I could go into all the reasons why, but bottom line, you couldn't trust the IP's. There were a few good ones here and there, but you always had to keep an eye out.

Anyway, the majority of the night was spent waiting for the enemy, which had the foresight to wait until almost morning to attack. The temperature dropped rapidly, and I was constantly going inside the station to look for soldiers that had decided to get warm or take a nap. Returning to the roof I made the rounds, talking to my troops, mostly cracking jokes or asking if they needed anything. I was lucky to have been place in charge of such a squared away squad. They made my job easy, both on and off the field. It was on one of these rounds that it began. I had just got done telling our medic, affectionately called Doc (like all medics are), that he wasn't supposed to be on the line to fight, and if that he got hit we would be in trouble. After convincing him to move towards the stairwell leading downstairs and stay out of the way, I heard a loud, brief hiss, followed by an explosion that rocked the building. I saw PFC Casper, who was covering the North East corner quickly duck down just in time to avoid a good size fireball which rolled up the side

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