Okay, in the summer of 2003 it wasn’t uncommon for the locals to show their appreciation. We had mostly taken over the role of policing and maintaining order until local, non Baathist police could be trained. We had an older gentlemen in the neighborhood near us who took it upon himself to feed us at night. This lasted several nights and the food was way better than our MREs. Things had also calmed way down, so we felt safe to take our body armor and eat with him in front of the small cement hut we slept in. Any soldiers reading this aren’t going to make sense of this happening without realizing that we weren’t in the secured perimeter of our patrol base. Leadership didn’t mind because we were having positive interactions with the locals and that was the priority at the time. Even after this, things didn’t heat up again for several months. It really was this peaceful summer where we all thought it was going to work out easily. Iraq would quickly get a new government and we’d be home by August. Well, we all know how that went.

So one night, unbeknown to us the last night we’d have this guy at our little camp, we’re sitting around and enjoying falafel and some kind of sour cream with the ever present flat bread. It wasn’t Greek pita but it was also too thick to be Indian naan. And this stuff was awesome. Later on we got the local bakers enough money to buy cheese and other halal toppings and create mini pizzas for us. At any rate, about 15 minutes in, after we were done eating, the world’s most polite ambushers rip off an entire magazine from an AK in our general direction. They also shouted something in Arabic but we weren’t exactly stopping to ask questions. We immediately ran into our hut where we had left our body armor, (I know, bad infantryman, bad, but remember we were trying to look friendly) and threw it on as quick as we could. We cut the cords on the poncho over the Humvee and the machinegun and got it into action and the dismounts charged right up to the elephant grass under the cover of the gun. Our buddy was fine thankfully and had sensibly gone home at a high rate of speed.

As we discussed how to handle the elephant grass we heard more Arabic on the far side and the dismounts moved in slowly. The Iraqis most have known somehow because they came bolting out the other side and were visible for about a second before disappearing into the alleys. We decided chasing Iraqis in the dark without back up was a great way to end up on an Angel flight. So we settled for checking the elephant grass for any explosive devices or traps they may have left behind. After all the local kids played there.

We never did figure the why or wherefore of that ambush. They could easily have killed the five of us if they had fired controlled bursts or in semi-auto. Were they the first blush of Al Qaeda? Did they just not like our friend giving us food? (the food situation at the time was still recovering, but not to where we needed to give them humanitarian aid anymore) Had we unknowingly wronged their honor and this was them reclaiming it? Never found out. But I do think that to this day where we might have trouble as Americans in Mosul or Kirkuk, in that town we’d just had have to tell them what unit we were with and we’d get fed again.