The Embedded Ones: Viet Nam - Iraq - Afghanistan

By John W Conroy

Private Bill Collins did not make it back to Viet Nam after his discharge from the US Army in the late Sixties to take up a career in journalism. Life interfered. However, he was back with the US Army in that capacity in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s.
He befriends a group of young journalists, among them Stars and Stripes reporter Jess Wagner as well as the beautiful and talented Dae Larson who's with CNN. There is an older journalist closer to his age, Lisabeth Newberry who reports for the Canadian paper, The Renfrew Times There are none left from the war in the Sixties.
From Baghdad to Kirkuk and points in between, from Bagram to Kandahar to Jalalabad and the inner depths of the Pech Valley he travels through these new wars all the time comparing them to his time with the military in the Viet Nam of the Sixties. He travels back to Viet Nam between Embeds, accompanied by his new friends from the present wars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350938425

John W Conroy

John W. Conroy is a freelance writer and farmer who is married with four children. He has been embedded with the US Army six times in Iraq and five times in Afghanistan, producing a series of published articles. He was a soldier in Viet Nam in 1966 and 1967. Since returning to Viet Nam in 1989, he has written numerous articles concerning the war in that country, and some focused on veterans of the conflict. He has also served as a consultant to the East Meets West Foundation. His published novels are 'The Girl from Tam Hiep' and 'The Disillusioned'.

Book preview

Chapter 1:

IRAQ

The heavily armed Humvee was leading a convoy of five, rolling along north on highway Tampa just south of Baghdad. I had been riding shotgun for a change. Ordinarily embedded journalists were given a seat in the rear vehicle, possibly to protect them, but who knows. An immediate halt was called as a warning came in over the radio. The driver slammed on the brakes just as a huge explosion erupted not a hundred feet ahead of our vehicle. The turret gunner, a gung ho Blackwater type began dripping blood.

What the fuck, yelled the driver. Those motherfucking ragheads will nail us all, the cocksuckers.

Lt. Raft, the CO in the following Humvee pulled up alongside to speak with the driver who had been warned via radio of a possible IED near the overpass a hundred yards ahead. He was accompanied by his driver, as well as his interpreter, a female from Baghdad named Anne who was remarkedly beautiful.

Fuck me yelled Lt. Raft. If we hadn’t stopped when we had, they’d have taken out half the convoy.

He quickly ordered a medic from the following Humvee to attend to the wounded gunner in our vehicle, then surveyed the occupants of the other Humvees to be sure there were no more casualties from flying shrapnel. The men were ordered to survey the area and stop any traffic that was still moving on the highway. A cloud of black smoke drifted off to the right as the men continued to search. The wounded gunner was bandaged up but left at his station. He said it would require more than that to take him out.

See if you can find a wire leading from the blast. said Lt. Raft to one of his men.

A wire was quickly located leading down below the underpass, along the bottom of a small gulley and toward a farmhouse, perhaps a quarter mile east of Tampa Highway. Lt. Raft quickly organized a small patrol to explore that area. Beyond the house in the distance a white car was slowly backing away and then disappeared down a narrow back road. The troops followed the wire along the gulley, which deepened before gradually leveling off on the terrain leading to the seemingly abandoned farmhouse.

Lt. Raft took the lead and entered the barn yard compound. He fired a couple of warning shots to let it be known that armed men were nearby.

A thorough search of the area turned up an empty wire spool, an old light switch along with a half empty water bottle. Further east of the abandoned house was a deep canal with very high reeds along each bank making a thorough search nearly impossible with the number of men that the LT had under his command.

It looks like he may have panicked when he saw us stop, then blew it off and ran. That’s common procedure for these fuckers. They don’t want to leave any material behind that can be traced, said Lt. Raft, who then ordered two teams of two men each to reconnoiter this side of the canal. After finding nothing but a trail through bent reeds the men returned to the farmhouse and rolled up the trip wire. Lt. Raft radioed his men who had remained on the highway to thoroughly search the area of the explosion to determine it was safe to let the traffic begin flowing.

I was thinking that we were damn lucky, that I was damn lucky. We could have been right over the explosion if there’d been no warning, and how often did that happen? I’d have to check that out with Maj. Webster, the Public Affairs officer for the 10th Mountain Division, when we returned to Camp Victory. And something else came to mind. If this keeps up I’d remain as lucky as I’d been in Viet Nam. Hardly a wound there that wasn’t self-inflicted.

I was damn lucky in another way. A good forty years had gone by since I left for Viet Nam back in the Sixties. Back then I always had in the back of my head to somehow work as a war reporter. I ‘d even bought two Miranda cameras at the PX in Saigon preparing for that dream. But they were long gone, worn out in the peacetime world. The digital age had arrived, so they’d been replaced by a basic Cannon. Not a high-end Nikon that’s expected of one on this trail, but it does the job. At any rate I had arrived in Baghdad as an embedded journalist and had to admit it was great to be back in the Army. I should say, with the Army, which in itself was something I could never have imagined. During those long-ago years I was anything but a true believer in the ’Green Machine’, or the cause it was fighting for. There were similarities with this present operation here in Iraq, but I enjoyed being a participating journalist none the less.

I’ll tell you what Bill Collins, I’ll back you. In fact, I’ll back an old Viet Nam vet anytime.

This from Maj. Jess Connors, the CO of the Public Affairs office in Baghdad who I was on the phone with, that credentialed embedded journalist for positions with the US military in Iraq in 2006. The credentialing procedures were taking so much time that I was growing impatient. I’d asked her if I should buy a ticket to Kuwait where military flights originated to the Baghdad Airport, since I had a cheap reservation in hand.

Don’t worry about it, she said. I’ll take care of things at this end. When you arrive in BIAP have them call this office and I’ll send someone over to pick you up. If possible, send me an email when you reach Kuwait. And that was that. The Major had taken care of it.

Tampa highway I might add was a copy of the Interstates in the US. Four lanes with all the trappings. It didn’t resemble the roadways in the Viet Nam of the Sixties, or the Viet Nam of today for that matter. Baghdad resembled the new and changing Saigon, now appropriately renamed Ho Chi Minh City, more than my old stamping grounds in the small, off limits village of Tam Hiep, some miles to the north. Much of Baghdad resembled Los Angles more than say Deadwood, SD. The point I’m trying to make is, Baghdad isn’t a cluster of thatched roofed huts that can be napalmed away at will. This is a complicated metropolitan center in a modern country.

Lt. Raft radioed his men who had remained on the highway, which was returning to normal after the close call. That kind of day is normal for the people of Iraq and the American military men who travel up and down Tampa on a regular basis.

Well, it turned out to not be as boring as it looked when we started out, said Lt Raft to me, Perhaps you made out better than those NY Times dudes who got you bounced from the flight to Yusufiyah.

He was referring to Michael Kamber and Demian and Diana Cave who were covering the main story for that newspaper. Since they were from the Times, I was bumped from a scheduled Blackhawk flight down in the vicinity of Malibu Highway along the Euphrates River. A search was underway in that area for three men of the Tenth Mountain Division who were presumed captured days earlier when four of their compatriots were killed on an attack on their guard post on Highway Malibu, now considered the most dangerous roadway in Iraq. I was learning that a stringer for small town newspapers must learn to be humble.

The story of the missing men was becoming front page news worldwide. Lucky for me to have shown up when I did. This was my second embed with the 10th Mountain’s 2nd Combat Brigade commanded by Col. Keith Michaels. I’d entered Iraq on that first trip a couple of weeks before Christmas 2006 and was posted with the 25th Infantry up near Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.

During the Viet Nam war I’d been on patrols with the 25th when they were based in Cu Chi, so I had been looking forward to an interesting embed. It was, to a point. The unit was in some sort of Command-and-Control position, but mostly they guarded their perimeter. Nice people but I never could figure out what the hell they were actually doing there. The only way outside of the wire was by armed convoy. This seemed absurd to me, having a Viet Nam war background, where one could practically have run of the country if he half tried.

From Tikrit I flew up to Kirkuk and made short embeds from the Public Affairs office, which was somewhat interesting and informative, to a degree. Kirkuk was a junky town, but there was more opportunity to get out in public and see what was going on. One thing, it sure didn’t look like there was a lot of fucking going on, but you can’t have everything. There was no contact with the local girls and it didn’t appear as if much was going on either in the new ‘co-ed’ army. I’d heard that the Top Brass was tending toward evangelical which was too bad. I’d met some great girls who wore the uniform. Some beautiful girls.

Once while covering a local political upgrade by military ‘specialists’ who were promoting ‘democracy’ in Kirkuk, I met a couple of Kurdish girls who leaned toward the hot side…to say the least. They came to work in burkas but dropped the cover inside the building, wearing makeup, lowcut blouses and tight jeans. It did look like there was some life up here in Kirkuk after all…for the young guys.

Back in Baghdad I picked up a short embed with the 10th Mountain before flying home for Christmas. They’re headquartered at Ft. Drum in the States near Watertown, NY where I was able to sign on with their local paper as a stringer. I was fortunate in having had this short embed since it led to my being posted to this unit when returning in the Spring.

The next morning after checking in early I was sent along with the Brigade Commander, Col. Keith Michaels, on a Blackhawk flight to the nearby town of Yusufiyah for a closer look at the site where his four men were killed, and three presumed captured. Col. Michaels wears the ring. He’s a West Point man.

I couldn’t afford college he told me, I was a poor boy from west Texas, but was lucky enough to obtain an appointment to West Point. A damn good deal so far.

I’ll tell you what Colonel, I was a private in Viet Nam and that turned out to be a pretty good deal for me too. So who knows? I made it out from there in on piece, and hopefully we’ll both make it out from here.

He sat on that for a time. After boarding the chopper conversation was impossible at any rate. They make a hell of a lot more noise inside than I remember from riding in a Viet Nam era Huey. In Yusufiyah we boarded a five-vehicle convoy of Humvees for the trip to Malibu Highway and Patrol Base Inchon, then traveled farther along that route to Combat Outpost Malibu, where the assault took place in a roadside bunker. Down here along the Euphrates River the countryside resembles the wetlands along the Dong Nai River just above Bien Hoa, a few miles north of Saigon. Tall reeds and palm trees…man, it looked like ‘home’.

The Euphrates River is less than a mile south of Malibu Highway. From the far shore it’s clear sailing to Syria and Saudi Arabia. This direct route is used by most of the foreign insurgents from the outside world who have joined the Sunni opposition fighting the US, along with the present Iraqi government.

I’m not giving up on my men Col. Michaels said as we drove along on Malibu. "We’ve heard from what we believe are reliable sources that at least two of them are still alive, and possibly all three.

We spent the better part of the afternoon at one site or another here but can’t seem to turn up much that’s pertinent to the situation. Col. Michaels says that we’ll head back to Yusufiyah for the night then hopefully will be able to access a Blackhawk tomorrow morning for an aerial search of the whole Shakaryah Triangle, the so called Triangle of Death, which is the area southwest of Baghdad, bordering on the Euphrates River.

In the mess that evening for dinner I met two interesting and quite beautiful young women. I do have to state again though, a good number of female soldiers met that same criterion. These two girls were sitting alone at a table eating and talking.so I approach cautiously.

"Do you girls mind if I join you’ I ask politely, thinking that at least they won’t be feeling I’m putting the moves on them or worse, which is always a possibility in the modern era. More than likely I’m older than their fathers. The slimmer, prettier one asks what I’m doing here in Iraq. I assume she figures I’m way too old to be in the military.

Pictures and print I answered. I’m a stringer for a couple of newspapers in northern New York.

Really, I went to school in Saratoga Springs, Skidmore. You know the place.

Sure do, I answered, We breed Thoroughbreds, New York Breds that race there when they’re good enough. If not we’ve usually a couple in training at the Oklahoma Track in the off season. But about yourselves. What do you girls do here? What are your names, if I may ask?

I’m Dae Larson said the slim one. I’m with CNN. I cover Iraq for them. Just me and my camera man for the moment. We’re the whole show.

I do the same as Dae, only for Fox News said the other. Kelly Carter, and I’m not from New York. Sunny California. I’m on contract for another month as an on-camera reporter. After that, who knows? This place is a cluster fuck…as you’ll soon find out.

Well let me introduce myself….Bill Collins. Just breaking into the business but I find it fascinating so far. Especially when I run into girls like you who have made it. I had intentions of trying this line of work 40 years ago when I left Viet Nam. You know how it goes. Kids, wives, businesses…up and down over half a lifetime. That’s why I’m here actually. Trying for another one.

‘Well why not? said Dae smiling a little, You’re not dead yet."

I thought I’d let that go. This kind of company perks up one’s blood. Eventually Kelly tells me that they’re both hoping to catch a ride with Col. Michaels in the morning as he makes his observation run along Malibu and the Euphrates. I tell them I’m on with him also, hoping like hell they make it too. You couldn’t ask for better company.

It turns out neither of the girls were newcomers to Iraq. Kelly, based in New York had been in and out of the middle east for the last two or three years. Dae grew up in this part of the world. Her parents worked as educators in various middle eastern countries over the years. Apparently, she only lived in the states while at school for university at Skidmore. After graduation it was back to the middle east. She speaks Arabic like a native and has lived in Iraq mostly full time for the last four years. It occurred to me that she must be about the stiffest competition amongst the many news people in the country.

I left them and returned to headquarters to find a place to sleep for the night. Col. Michaels was there saying that he had to fly back to his unit and that I should go with him. Said he’d be back first thing in the morning on a Blackhawk. It was all arranged.

By eight o’clock the next morning a Blackhawk showed up at the Brigade landing pad. Shortly thereafter the colonel and I were airborne heading to Yusufiyah to pick up two TV news people that he’d never met. I mentioned that I was one up on him, that I’d met them last evening having dinner. He got a kick out of that.

How did they look Collins, beauties?

I told him they were both knockouts, especially Dae Larson from CNN. The engines made it too loud to continue the conversation. We landed in Yusufiyah, picked up the news girls and their camera men, climbed less than two hundred feet where we leveled off. From that altitude it’s possible to gain a wide view of the landscape below, but still low enough to spot anything useful regarding the search for the missing men.

The aircraft banked in one direction, then the other, then dropped a bit lower as the croplands and villages passed below. More and more, especially from that vantage point, it was looking like the Viet Nam gig all over again. Michaels has the chopper circle the battle position of the missing men that was over run, then out to the Euphrates River. One theory was the possibility that the three soldiers were quickly taken to the river, then crossed to the wide-open desert to the west that stretches as far as the eye can see. All the way to Syria. Webster from the PA office believes that if this were the case, they’d have appeared by now on Al Jazeera or some blog or web site. So far though, nothing along those lines. Both of the girls were wearing helmets equipped with communication so were talking with Michaels or interviewing him throughout the flight. Being a lesser newsman, or more to the point, not being a beautiful woman, I was left out in the cold….without a mic…or a set of earphones.

It took longer than expected for Col. Michaels to complete his aerial inspection. The presence of the girls might have encouraged him to stretch it out. On the flight back to Yusufiyah, Dae, Kelly and I returned to the PA facilities of the brigade detachment to write up the day’s story. By midafternoon the heat had built up to 130 F. Consequently, we all hunkered down until the evening meal.

On entering the mess, I grabbed a coffee. Hot as it was outside, it tasted great. Dae and Kelly were sitting alone so I joined them. At this point we were something like compatriots. Compatriots, with at least one generation of separation. Wasn’t bad considering. I asked Dae what she thought of the afternoon.

I didn’t learn anything new, but the ride was enjoyable. Not much from the Colonel either. I mean, what the fuck are we going to see way up there. You’ve gotta be on foot, tracking to gain ground here. I’m not new to this outfit, I know how they operate.

How so, I replied, for me I had an aerial view of the territory and can visualize what happened and what the possibilities were in the aftermath. Plus, I love flying around low in helicopters. Reminds me of the past, you know, Viet Nam

You know what Collins. Viet Nam is so far from us it doesn’t even register. This from Kelly Carter who looked to be a few years older than Dae.

Well, I’ll tell you what girls, reading a little history might help the boys running this war here. There are similarities.

Such as? chimed in Dae Larson.

Well, I began, without getting into present politics, many of the views from the flight today looked like the same territory. Palm trees, rivers, tall grasses, green everywhere. At times I glimpsed what appeared to be rice paddies surrounded by dikes.

That’s not enough old man, Dae chimes in, you’d better get into politics if you’re trying to make a point.

Same, same. The US comes in, sets up a government that doesn’t have popular support, calls it a democracy and tries to defend it to the end. Plus keeps it going financially. I know the ending.

Don’t get senile on us says Dae. Going to take more than that. It’s 40 years away for you isn’t it. You can’t even remember that far back.

When you’ve a few more years under your belt girl, you’ll be surprised what you can remember. That time is as clear in my head as if it happened yesterday. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t mind forgetting some of it.

You mean the young girls there said Kelly, not really joking. I’m well read on the great Viet Nam war.

Why would I want to forget them? They were the best part…and they were all of age if that’s what you’re inferring to.

I’d be curious to know what ‘of age’ means shot back Kelly.

It means they were all our age. We had a couple of 17 year old soldiers in our unit, I told her. For the most part, we were all teenagers sent over there to save the country from the great communist invasion. That was a crock of shit from the get-go but what have you. We were there and we lived for the day, some of us. Others went with the program. Maybe we should get back to Iraq for now. We can take ‘the great Viet Nam war’ up at a later date. I’ve got a feeling we’ll be running into each other now and then and I’m not heading home any time soon.

Fair enough, said Dae. Tonight it’s surf and turf. Let’s see what the surf is. It’s always steak for turf.

I know we were going to leave Viet Nam alone for the time being, but I can’t let this go. Who ever heard of surf and turf in a mess hall…in the middle of a fucking war? I drew rations for a time in Viet Nam and we never, ever had surf and turf. Sometimes steak, many times mutton, more often than not C rations.

Drop it says Kelly, I don’t give a good fuck what you ate in Viet Nam a hundred years ago, I’m going to load up on surf and turf. If you’ve got any brains, you’ll follow me.

They’re tough, these two, but I did fill up and I must say it was quite delectable. Steak with king crab and all the fixings. I might add that the mess hall in Yusufiyah is a shack compared to those back in the vicinity of Baghdad. However even in this outback town the mess was operated by a civilian company…six figure cooks. At the mess in Viet Nam we paid the girls a dollar a day and they were glad to get that. The world moves on.

I think there’s a chopper leaving for Victory at eight o’clock said Dae. We’re going to take it. You too?

I took her up on it and we all flew back to headquarters with the Colonel. I figured to check in with Maj. Webster at the PA office in the morning to find out what was up for the day.

By eight the next morning I’d lost my news girls. They both had caught a Blackhawk to the Green Zone to check in with their bosses.