Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War

by Evan Wright

THE DEBATE over questioning orders from superiors becomes far less abstract the evening of April 22, at First Recon’s camp south of Baghdad. This night a battalion watch officer, whose job is to sit in for Lt. Col. Ferrando and, in effect, babysit the battalion when he’s indisposed, mistakenly issues an order for Marines to go out in the darkness and mark the location of a minefield by the highway north of the camp. The watch officer radios Capt. Patterson and asks him to send some of his men in Alpha to escort combat engineers on the mission. The mines were discovered a few days earlier by Patterson’s men along the highway a kilometer north of the camp. Combat engineers have been removing mines all day, but hundreds remain. The watch officer erroneously believes there’s an order to mark the location of the remaining mines with chemlites. Patterson tells him that he must be mistaken. There’s a division-wide order banning Marines from operating in minefields at night. Besides, thousands of American military vehicles have passed by the mines in recent weeks without incident. The job can wait until morning, Patterson tells him, declining to execute the order. But the watch officer persists. He radios Encino Man and asks him to send Marines out in the dark to mark the minefield. Encino Man promises to push Marines out immediately. He later tells me, “I didn’t want to send Marines out there, but the watch officer is the voice of the battalion commander [Ferrando]. I couldn’t sa...