"Shock Troops:" The Truth About Iraq

Each morning I methodically check the blogs and the news. There are always a few mildly interesting stories — a cat who can sense death, for example.

Today, though, I came across this story

It began:

“As we’ve noted in this space, some have questioned details that appeared in the Diarist ‘Shock Troops,’ published under the pseudonym Scott Thomas. According to Major Kirk Luedeke, a public affairs officer at Forward Operating Base Falcon, a formal military investigation has also been launched into the incidents described in the piece.

Although the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published, we have decided to go back and, to the extent possible, re-report every detail. This process takes considerable time, as the primary subjects are on another continent, with intermittent access to phones and email. Thus far we’ve found nothing to disprove the facts in the article; we will release the full results of our search when it is completed.”

I immediately wanted to find out what the original story was. Without reading “Shock Troops” but seeing such an intense investigation and reaction from the U.S. Military, I could come to only one conclusion: the entire story, “Shock Troops,” was true.

The article continued with a statement from the author of “Shock Troops:”

“My Diarist, ‘Shock Troops,’ and the two other pieces I wrote for the New Republic have stirred more controversy than I could ever have anticipated. They were written under a pseudonym, because I wanted to write honestly about my experiences, without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, my pseudonym has caused confusion. And there seems to be one major way in which I can clarify the debate over my pieces: I’m willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name.

I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

My pieces were always intended to provide my discrete view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier’s view of events in Iraq.

It’s been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

–Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp“

I was hooked. I wanted to know immediately what he had written and why it was under such scrutiny. After finding the article in question, disgust rose like bile in the back of my throat.

Read on:

“I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq. She wore an unrecognizable tan uniform, so I couldn’t really tell whether she was a soldier or a civilian contractor. The thing that stood out about her, though, wasn’t her strange uniform but the fact that nearly half her face was severely scarred. Or, rather, it had more or less melted, along with all the hair on that side of her head. She was always alone, and I never saw her talk to anyone. Members of my platoon had seen her before but had never really acknowledged her. Then, on one especially crowded day in the chow hall, she sat down next to us.

We were already halfway through our meals when she arrived. After a minute or two of eating in silence, one of my friends stabbed his spoon violently into his pile of mashed potatoes and left it there.
‘Man, I can’t eat like this,’ he said.
‘Like what?’ I said. ‘Chow hall food getting to you?’

‘No–with that fucking freak behind us!’ he exclaimed, loud enough for not only her to hear us, but everyone at the surrounding tables. I looked over at the woman, and she was intently staring into each forkful of food before it entered her half-melted mouth.
‘Are you kidding? I think she’s fucking hot!’ I blurted out.
“What?” said my friend, half-smiling.
‘Yeah man,’ I continued. ‘I love chicks that have been intimate–with IEDs. It really turns me on–melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses … .’

‘You’re crazy, man!’ my friend said, doubling over with laughter. I took it as my cue to continue.
‘In fact, I was thinking of getting some girls together and doing a photo shoot. Maybe for a calendar? IED Babes.’ We could have them pose in thongs and bikinis on top of the hoods of their blown-up vehicles.’
My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing. The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall, her half-finished tray of food nearly falling to the ground.”

It doesn’t end there. What is most compelling about this article are not the shocking descriptions of the terrible things soldiers have done, but how this particular soldier, Beauchamp, felt as he was taking part in or witnessing something he considered monstrous. It’s not entirely surprising to me that he has a conscience, what was shocking was that his conscience was seemingly being chipped away at, day after day, and though he was completely aware of it, it didn’t seem to change his actions.

“Am I a monster? I have never thought of myself as a cruel person. Indeed, I have always had compassion for those with disabilities. I once worked at a summer camp for developmentally disabled children, and, in college, I devoted hours every week to helping a student with cerebral palsy perform basic tasks like typing, eating, and going to the bathroom. Even as I was reveling in the laughter my words had provoked, I was simultaneously horrified and ashamed at what I had just said. In a strange way, though, I found the shame comforting. I was relieved to still be shocked by my own cruelty–to still be able to recognize that the things we soldiers found funny were not, in fact, funny.”

Beauchamp defends what he said, and defends the things he allows to happen by remembering a time when he actually cared and had compassion. Clearly the care and compassion is gone. He recalls those times as though they are very far away, as though he cannot believe he once did those good deeds, just as he cannot believe the deeds he is doing now. He is “relieved to still be shocked” — he knows that to laugh is wrong, but the fact that he knows he is wrong is relief enough to keep laughing. To me it seems a vicious circle.

Beauchamp goes on to describe two more memories of his time in Iraq. One recounts digging into the ground and finding children’s graves — finding piles of clothes and eventually bones. He describes one incident in which a fellow soldier decided to don a child’s skull:

“It even had chunks of hair, which were stiff and matted down with dirt. He squealed as he placed it on his head like a crown. It was a perfect fit. As he marched around with the skull on his head, people dropped shovels and sandbags, folding in half with laughter. No one thought to tell him to stop. No one was disgusted. Me included.”

Not disgusted? How sad. Just reading about it disgusts me. I suppose I should consider myself lucky — and so should you — that I am disgusted by a child’s skull being worn by a man who couldn’t give a shit about the life, or death, of that child.

The next incident is of a soldier who drives Bradley Fighting Vehicles “because it gave him the opportunity to run things over.” The soldier driving the vehicles had a particular interest in running over dogs. He even keeps tabs on how many dogs he hits per day. Beauchamp recalls with sickening detail each dog he saw killed, run over, sometimes cut in half by the heavy armored vehicle.

“Funny? Of course not. But many of my friends were laughing anyway. That is how war works: It degrades every part of you, and your sense of humor is no exception.”

This is where Beauchamp gets me. We can all say with great ease, “if I were in Iraq I would never do something like that. Ever. I would never laugh at that woman. I would never wear someone’s skull or laugh at someone who did.” Or, “I would never take joy in running over innocent animals.”

But the fact is, no matter how good a person you are, war can destroy you from the inside out. In war, I imagine there are very few things that will give you a laugh. I’m not attempting to defend what Beauchamp wrote about, but I am trying to understand it. We are, after all, going to have many many Beauchamp’s returning to this country soon, shocked and unable to deal with years of instances like these (and much worse). Though Beauchamp was aware that what he was doing and saying, and what his fellow soldiers were doing and saying, was wrong, he continued to go along with it. He participated in it, encouraged it. His piece describes ” one soldier’s view of events in Iraq” and it is for this reason that what he writes is so incredibly important.

There are some soldiers who really do like killing, who like war. It’s unfortunate, but true. There are those who hate war, who will do anything to avoid killing another human being, and who do not run over dogs but adopt them instead. There are those who do their best to obey both their orders and their conscience. I have a feeling, though, that the majority of soldiers in Iraq are just as Beauchamp described them — they laugh at “IED Broads,” skulls of children that fit perfectly onto their heads, or even running over dogs, and while they still have some understanding that what they are doing is wrong, they just can’t stop themselves.

The final lines of the piece are these:

“‘Did you run over dogs before the war, back in Indiana?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ he replied, and looked at me curiously. Almost as if the question itself was in poor taste.”