Suddenly, one Marine came out of the house, saying he’d found no weapons, but had discovered a stash of Victoria’s Secret undergarments.

That’s when I figured we were winning the war—seeing evidence that properly veiled Iraqi ladies were collecting lacy, U.S. lingerie and, later, watching as Iraqi kids started swarming the LAVs, hawking Iraqi cigarettes, $1 per pack, $10 7-Ups, and bootleg gin. On a bridge outside Al Kut, some 400 people marched on two LAVs, ecstatic and chanting, “BUSH, BUSH, BUSH,” locals I interviewed who said they did not know what freedom felt like. Some even showed their scars from Saddam. “Biologie! Biologie!” shouted one man, pointing to his pockmarked face from what he said was a chemical attack years ago.

Panicked that they were getting too close, Sergeant Phinney fired a concussion grenade into the air, scaring back the crowd long enough for his men to lay concertina wire across the bridge. When I pulled out my video camera, the crowd came to life again, tearing up bills with Saddam’s picture on it. To join the celebration, I handed one Iraqi a $20 bill for a case of Pepsi. We waited. Two hours later, the case arrived, to much Marine jubilation. My young merchant said I owed him $20. “But I already paid your friend. You saw me give him the money,” I said.

“ But he took it,” said the Iraqi, “you owe me twenty dollar.”

It was getting ugly. I figured retreat was the better part of valor and climbed back into the LAV, Marines blocking his shakedown move—the free-market hustle. Now I knew the war was won.

With the help of a Marine translator, I interviewed Iraqis wherever possible. One father of three, who said local Baath party thugs had shot him and left him for dead when he refused to join the army, still had Saddam’s photo on his wall. I asked him about it and he tried to rip it down, embarrassed.

“ It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”

“ They will kill you, if they think you are against Saddam, or if you don’t pay them,” he said.

I said it sounded like the Mafia.

“ Mafia?” he asked.

The translator explained.

“ Yes, yes, Mafia, Mafia,” he said. “Only worse.”

Later, I was asked, How could you live with the military and still report the war objectively? Look, when you’re traveling with the team, like a sportswriter, it’s more fun if the team wins. You’re rooting for them, of course. But if they get bloody noses or shoot one another in the foot, that’s to be reported, and we did. Unlike sportswriters, though, most of us understand we won’t be traveling with The Team forever, and so we don’t have to walk on the same eggshells for access. We’re eating and sleeping together, breathing the same air, 24-7. That naturally brings you close—and can open a window on the soul that is rare. Imagine researching The Red Badge of Courage. Except it ain’t fiction. It’s the human condition you’ve got to report. And you are there.

Toward the end of the war, Charlie Company pulled out of Nasiriya. That was the day the unit lost a Marine, Lance Corporal Brian Anderson of Durham, North Carolina. He was twenty-six. Losing even one was too many. A machine gunner who planned to reenlist, marry his fianc?e, and become official stepfather to three children, Anderson was the life of the party, always smiling, cracking up pals over dominoes, taking minds off the war. As we left the town, heading north, Anderson’s truck stopped at a low power line. “He thought it was dead, like the others he had been moving,” one friend told me later. Anderson reached up to lift it out of the way. The shock knocked him off the truck. His body was raced to the LAV where I was riding with “Doc,” as they called the Navy corpsman. We turned around and sped back to headquarters, Doc doing CPR all the way.

“ Hey, we got a Marine down over here,” shouted the gunny sergeant. Medics put the body on a stretcher and vanished into a tent.

Ten minutes later, the sergeant walked back to the LAV, tears in his eyes. “Didn’t make it,” he said. “Doc said the shock was too much.” Anderson’s rucksack, his personal gear, his flip-flops were unloaded, to go home with his body. I was strangely sad and tearful, mourning someone I’d barely known. We headed back to the war.

Everyone asks, What was it like? War is long stretches of boredom punctuated by adrenaline highs and a sort of nitrous-oxide terror—stomach-acid angst when you realize someone is trying to kill you that dissolves into slow-motion giddiness when you realize you’ve survived. Was I afraid? C’mon, I had nowhere to hide, except in my prayers, and a few times wondered if I’d ever see my family again. No different from the fears young Marines confessed they had—tough young grunts who made me laugh, asked me to help them write love letters home, wondered why I wanted to be there, but thanked me for it, kept me from being stupid and out of harm’s way—most were eighteen, nineteen, twenty, just a few years older than my two teenage sons. Were they afraid?

“ Mr. Harris,” a young Marine said, “I once heard a general say, ‘If you’re not scared, you’re either lying or suicidal.’ ”

So how do I feel now? Every day is different: less stressed from little things; grateful for everything. Or as one Marine put it, “Every day above ground is a bonus.” Amen.

Harris ’70 is an investigative correspondent for CNN, based in Atlanta.
He’s won two Emmys—for his coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing and the Olympic Park bombing—and eleven National Headliner Awards for investigative reporting, breaking news, documentaries, and feature writing.