The World According To Chris Brewer

WARNING: The following post contains a graphic description of the reality of war, and daily life in Iraq for many. Read the entire article at your own discretion.

I’m back, and I am here today by the grace of God.

Yesterday we convoyed from the International Zone to a local town in which soldiers from FOB Mahmudiyah handed out Beanie Babies to kids. Of course, I went along to gather some footage for a news story.

If you’ve ever seen The Matrix Reloaded then you no doubt have seen the freeway scenes in which Neo, Trinity and the Keymaker dodge the police and the agents in their Escalade. Riding down crowded Baghdad highways can feel just like that…especially when traffic stops and the convoy drivers have no choice but to drive in lanes of oncoming traffic. What a surreal scene…oncoming drivers dodging and pulling over to the side of the road while the convoy barrels through. Then before you know it, the traffic jam’s over so you go back to the correct lanes again.

Traffic rules are completely thrown out the window when it comes to military convoys. You drive to save your life, not to obey the laws.

After we got out of Baghdad, I was absolutely shocked and stunned at what I saw. I’ve left Baghdad many times, and I know Iraq is a nation that lives in utter poverty and squalor, but I had never seen ANYTHING like what I saw yesterday on our trip to Mahmudiyah. We traveled down side streets, and we saw garbage everywhere…lining the streets outside of homes, piled up in people’s yards, and making its presence known wherever we looked. Kids played in it, dogs licked it, and adults just stood there looking at their neighborhood overcome by garbage, and another foul presence that we encountered…

SPLASH. Our humvees hit a muddy area, covering the windshield with a grayish-black liquid and filling the vehicle with a foul stench. All along the piles of garbage, running into a canal, was a small stream of raw sewage. Next to the sewage, walls serving as boundaries for houses in the neighborhood prominently displayed graffiti reading messages such as “Stand Up And Fight” and “Long Live Sadr,” and other calls for ordinary citizens to take up arms.

But we got to hand out the beanie babies to grateful kids. It was the usual…we show up with the gifts, the kids mob the soldiers and then they walk back home. It was sad, because the kids mobbed us whenever any of us held up a beanie baby…just like a pack of hyenas would go wild over raw meat. The kids don’t care who they hit or trample to get to the gifts…all they care about is themselves and what they get. I can sort of understand why the kids want to get the beanie babies so bad, they’re poorer than the dirt they walk on…but still there needs to be some sort of human decency going on. It’s tough for the soldiers to keep order in a situation like that, and save for a couple occasions, they did pretty well.

We packed up and went to another town, and more sewage and garbage flowed through the streets. The people here have nowhere to throw their stuff away, and the sewage they do get rid of gets pumped right back into the canal for them to drink. It’s horrible and it’s proof that this country will take decades to fully rebuild.

Apart from the inhumane living conditions, there was also a danger we faced as we drove right next to an IED along our route. By the grace of God it didn’t explode. I didn’t know it at the time — I didn’t see it and I don’t think many other people did, but we were told by the convoy commander earlier today before we headed up to FOB Falcon. I seriously think it was God keeping us all safe…I don’t want to speculate as to the reason it didn’t go off, the only thing that matters is that it didn’t and we just rolled along as normal.

Another danger was very present as well. Many locals were marching down the road to a city that contained the tomb of a great Islamic prophet, and the marchers were waving flags….and some of them had AK-47s. Not good. Let’s just say we rolled along without incident…again by the grace of God.

Later on that day we found out that the civil affairs team we were traveling with had gone inside some apartments just a few days ago and found the dead bodies of a family of four, brutally murdered by suspected insurgents or religious extremists. They spared no detail in telling us what had happened (but I’ll keep the graphical description low-key here): the father and son were shot in the back of the head and killed instantly, while the women of the household were raped then shot as well. The CA team had to notify other family members and you could tell even during the mission we were on, even though it was a few days after what they had seen, it still shook them up pretty good.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I am an American and have a great life back in the States. My gratitude is multiplied when I see people living in poverty like they do in this nation. I have photos and video of it….words cannot describe the life many of these people live in Iraq. I don’t even have the right words to describe what it’s like. Stunning doesn’t begin to speak of what my own two eyes saw.

I can’t wait to come home…and I think I’ll actually relish the task of taking out the garbage when I get back to the States.

Thanks for all your prayers for safe travels…..I needed it yesterday, as you read. God bless.