“Islam is Peace” is spray painted on the wall in green, red and yellow respectively.  A four man assault stack led by Drill Sergeant Jacobs is crouched below it prepared to breach the building.  I’m the third man in the second stack and behind us are two medics.

In the second spot behind the drill sergeant is Roids, a recent art school graduate who is better at PT than any of the males.  In the third slot behind her is my bunk mate, Akiva, and the word is, is painted above him and now looks black rather than red.  He is followed by Waffles who is carrying the squad automatic weapon (a heavy machine gun known as the SAW) and he is the designated door kicker.

Waffles moves past the drill sergeant and knocks the door in.  We hear a double shot from the room and scuffling.  The building consists of several shipping containers bolted together to form the layout of a typical Iraqi structure.

The first team calls out a status report, tells us that the room is clear and that we are to stack left to go through a door on the front wall.  We file into the room stepping over the body of a dead insurgent, assault rifle just out of reach, lying just inside the door.  An unarmed civilian is curled up and hiding in the back corner.

There are open windows on both sides of the room and the first team is covering the door just in case someone comes in after us.  We duck beneath the window to avoid possible sniper fire either from the burned out hulk of a bus in the courtyard or from the second floor of the building beyond that.  I roll my weapon from Safe to Semi, my finger hovers of the trigger, ready.

The number one man on our team is a tall kid who used to fix computers at Circuit City.  The number two is an ex professional video game player who has all the motivation of a piece of paper.  Behind me is Easy, a laidback kid from Iowa, big enough to be a good door kicker.

Experience in other kill houses has taught me that being the third in the stack means that if the on and two men are shot, I end up taking out the contact.  My adrenaline is pumping as my barrel comes up.  If I have to shoot in the next room I’m terrified of taking out a civilian bystander.

Easy looks at me, scans the door for booby traps and moves the barrel of his weapon up and down three times to signal the count before he kicks it open.  Speed and violence of action are key to clearing a building and we have to leap from one team past the other room by room to get the job done.  The door kicks open and Firedog and Gameboy rush in to separate corners.

Firedog will take the path of least rresistance moving as far into the space as possible.  Gameboy will take the opposite direction if he follows his training- at times I think he can’t quite separate reality from his hours of exercising his thumbs.  I will follow the direction taken by Firedog and Easy will be behind me stepping into Gameboy’s shadow.  It will all happen in less than one second.

The room is empty.

We cover ourselves going by the open windows.  We yell out our status and call for the first team to stack right against the wall in front of us.  They slip in and move around behind us so that they are never in front of our line of fire.

Back in the first room the two medics, Scrapdog and Hooters are pushing the civilian out of the door.  Scrapdog likes to fight and eat and pass gas.  Hooters padded up her A cups to make huge mad money tips as a waitress before becoming a soldier.  They will set up a Casualty Collection Point in case any of us are hit and have to be drug out by the squad coming behind us.  They will also make sure that we aren’t ambushed by insurgents trying to sneak in on our six.

The drill sergeant calls us forward to stack right in the next room.  We pass civilians that are huddled under a window and again follow each other through the breach opened by Easy.  This room is like a long hall with a closet and as Firedog pies his weapon in an arc across that opening I get ready in case he’s jumped by an insurgent hiding inside.

Nothing happens.

We leap frog the other team around us and get ready to exit the building.  Outside I hear machine gun chatter from the second floor of the building I had seen earlier.  Drill Sergeant X is leading an eight man unit like ours, coming in from the opposite side of the village.  Apparently they taking fire.

Our drill sergeant gets his team ready to clear the burned out bus in the courtyard between the building we are in and the machine gunner’s position.  I can’t see it but I hear Waffles SAW open up inside the old Greyhound.  Akiva opens up his M16 in a pair of controlled doubles and I hear the referee tell the insurgent machine gunner that he is dead.

Our team is called out of the first building and we run up against the Greyhound for cover.  I crouch low to see civilians moving in the open chaos.  The team led by Drill Sergeant X has discovered some suspicious characters and his second squad is detaining them at the cemetery, our designated pickup point.

Easy is the only one on our team that has any athletic experience; used to football pads he actually runs smoothly as we sprint across to the next building.  Firedog, Gameboy and I are all slim and with all the weight of our battle rattle are carrying at least an additional twenty fiver percent of our normal body mass.  I hear gunfire as we enter the room we’ve been called into.

There are no dead civilians or insurgents and I realize that the fire is coming from the floor above us.  We breach past first team, into the next room to find it empty except for a stairwell.

Suddenly Drill Sergeant X appears from nowhere.  An experienced infantryman he has earned the nickname Ninja because of his stealth.  On more than one occasion he has appeared as if from thin air with blinding speed and slit my throat with a red marker.

He and Drill Sergeant Jacobs talk briefly and then send a fire team up the stairs that consists of Akiva, Roids, Waffles and Firedog.  Halfway up Roids lets off two round before her M16 jams and she has to yank the charging handle to clear it.  Akiva spins around, one step above her and lays open a series of shots at someone.  I pray he’s not hitting a civilian.

The two drill sergeants yell at the shooter who keeps firing.  Apparently the machine gunner we killed earlier was ignoring the referee and is now coming after us with an assault rifle.  I’m called up the stairs with Gameboy and Easy to help pull security.  The room is empty except for windows overlooking the courtyard and it’s now our turn to be the snipers.

Above the door are the remains of a booby trap simulator.  From above I can see slogans painted on the bus; Vive Sadam, USA is our friend, Yankees go home.  Civilians are throwing rocks at our soldiers and yelling at them as they mop up behind us.

My adrenaline levels are dropping and I’m now aware that my feet are hurting and I’m drenched in sweat.  Unless an insurgent tries to sneak up on us, our fire team is done.  Outside the drill sergeants call for us to come down.

“Friendlies coming out,” we yell at every opening on our way down the stairs and through each door.

In debrief we learn that only one of our team was killed.  The rules of engagement stipulated that we were not to shoot civilians.  Two civilians had grabbed him and then slit his throat when he had tried to resist.

Later I will be marched back at such a rapid pace that one fifth of our platoon will fall out and be given IV’s to rehydrate.  Later I will cross a place where previous soldiers were attacked with CS gas and as the dust kicks up for fifty meters, invisible particles will fight my nervous system.  Later, I will sell the M & M’s and Hooah Bar from my MRE for twenty dollars.

For now, I haven’t fired a shot at an insurgent or a civilian.  For now, “speed and violence of force is peace.”  For now, my weapon is rolled from Semi to Safe.