bad guys, if they were still there, were most likely to be in one or two of the four structures, so we broke up the unit into two assault squads and two support squads and decided to hit the buildings simultaneously. When everyone was clear on the plan, my squad began maneuvering toward the first building. I was uncomfortable from the moment we entered the village. The walls were low-cut and close together, with very little space between buildings. We had to walk in single file, making it tactically challenging to maneuver. We immediately found ourselves in a compromised position, and that is no way to start your approach.
Our target was a rudimentary Iraqi village house. It was 1,200 to 1,400 square feet at most, the walls were made of mud-based concrete, and the floors inside were almost certainly going to be filthy, hard-packed mud as well. We decided to set an ECT (explosive cutting charge) and go in loud while 2nd Squad took down the other building. As far as we knew, no one had any idea we were there.
As we entered the first room of the house, an enemy combatant bolted toward a bookshelf in the corner. I cut an angle on the room to clear my barrel from Sgt. Brehm and moved to squeeze the trigger to engage. Then, in what felt like milliseconds before I let the first round go, he suddenly stopped, put up his hands, and kneeled on the floor.
For some reason I couldn’t explain, I didn’t fire immediately. I felt like I still needed to give these people the benefit of the doubt, no matter who they were. This guy was giving up, so I had to let him give up. Saying those words again to myself more than a decade later, they sound so foreign. Twenty-two-year-old Mat would have blown this fucking guy’s head off. But for nineteen-year-old Mat, even for all of his obsession with war and with killing bad guys, it wasn’t so black-and-white. Plus, when you’re confronted with this crazy situation for the first time, it’s completely unnerving. You aren’t thinking about the lights going out on the enemy or how you are going to tell this story in a book someday. All you’re really trying to do is to see the full picture and make the correct decisions so that you and your brothers can get back home safe.
When I got up closer, that’s when I saw the AK-47 on the shelf, well within arm’s reach. Fortunately, Brehm saw it first and tackled the guy, then beat the shit out of him until I grabbed the weapon, locked and cleared it, and had a teammate zip-tie him so we could continue moving through the rest of the building.
The main guy we were looking for was not in this first building. We quickly moved outside and cordoned off one of the other buildings where we thought he was most likely to be. With the exterior secured, we began conducting a callout. A callout, in the most basic form, is when you have your interpreter yell out to anybody who might be in the building that shit is about to go down and they have two choices: Give up or die.
“Come out of the house!” the interpreter shouted. “The soldiers will kill you if you don’t. Come out of the house or you will die!” He repeated himself four or five times for good measure. “This is your last chance before we begin firing!”
Those were the magic words. In a matter of seconds, it was like Ali Baba and all forty of his thieves came filing out of that house. It was the most bizarre thing I’d ever seen. Usually you see four, maybe five people—the normal size of an Iraqi family—come out of a structure this size. In this instance it was an Iraqi clown car. I counted sixteen of them before I lost track.
“Is there like eight bunk beds in each room,” I asked one of the older men, through our interpreter, as he filed past me, “or are you guys just physically sleeping on top of each other?”
He just looked at me. No response. Typical.
“Is there anyone else inside this house?” my platoon sergeant asked a girl he had pulled aside.
“No,” she responded via the interpreter.
“If there’s someone in there, we’re going to fucking kill them. Do you understand? You have to tell me if there’s anyone else left inside.”
“No, there’s no one else inside.