My Last War: A Vietnam Veteran’S Tour in Iraq

By Charles M. Grist

Charles M. Grist is one of the few Vietnam veterans to have served as an enlisted soldier in the Iraq war. In 2004, he volunteered to be the sergeant-in-charge of the Protective Service Detail for an Army Reserve general in Baghdad.

Grist and his unit, the C.O.B.R.A. Team, were based inside Baghdads Green Zone, but their travels with the general led them along the deadly roads of Baghdad, to the throne of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, and through the picturesque hills of Kurdistan. It was a fast-paced life of high adventure, filled with convoys, mortar or rocket attacks, and the constant threats of ambushes or improvised explosive devices.

As a Vietnam veteran, Grist knew that Operation Iraqi Freedom would be his last war. He used his daily journal to record his team's wartime experiences, to document the events that shaped Iraq in 2004, and to preserve the heroic deeds of some of the Army Reserve and National Guard warrior-citizens with whom he served. That journal became the basis for this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440152696

Charles M. Grist

Charles M. (Chuck) Grist is an Army veteran of both Vietnam and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He retired from the Army Reserve in 2009 and as a police officer in 2010. He earned his BA in Communication from the University of Central Florida. He and his wife, Debbie, live in Central Florida where they are the parents of four and the grandparents of five.

Book preview

Contents

The Soldiers Creed

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter 1

Of Patriot Blood

Chapter 2

Forging the Sword

Chapter 3

The Insurgent Enemy

Chapter 4

The New Road Warriors

Chapter 5

The First Mission

Chapter 6

Blood in the Sand

Chapter 7

It’s All About the Odds

Chapter 8

The Streets of Baghdad

Chapter 9

To Protect, Serve, and Defend

Chapter 10

The Baghdad Sting

Chapter 11

To Face the Elephant

Chapter 12

The Rise of the Mahdi Army

Chapter 13

Can’t We Just Get Along?

Chapter 14

Arabs & Infidels

Chapter 15

The Cradle of Civilization

Chapter 16

The American Spirit

Chapter 17

Iraqis Take the Reins

Chapter 18

Journey to Babylon

Chapter 19

Flight to Kurdistan

Chapter 20

To Lead or Not to Lead

Chapter 21

Eighty Days to Go

Chapter 22

Close Calls Get Closer

Chapter 23

The Gold Convoy

Chapter 24

Rockets, Mortars, and Hurricanes

Chapter 25

Farewell to Baghdad

Chapter 26

Homecoming

Chapter 27

Letting Go of the Sword

Epilogue

Glossary

Military Acronyms

The Soldiers Creed

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I am an American Soldier.

I am a Warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the Army Values.

I will always place the mission first.

I will never accept defeat.

I will never quit.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills. I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.

I am an expert and I am a professional.

I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.

I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

I am an American Soldier.

(Source: United States Army)

Acknowledgments

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All of the men and women in the American and Coalition forces who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the global war on terror;

The men of the C.O.B.R.A. Team: Staff Sergeant Aaron Self, Sergeant Chad Higginbotham, and Sergeant John Actis II, for keeping me alive;

Staff Sergeant Kristi Self, Cobra Five, for her support and for being the source of constant inspiration to her husband, Aaron;

The members of General David Blackledge’s Protective Service Detail for providing a detailed After Action Review of their ambush before they left Iraq;

Edward Eversman for his friendship and leadership as the trainer and mentor for the C.O.B.R.A. Team and for his detailed account of the ambush of his convoy;

Colonel Daniel Magill for selecting me as the NCOIC of General Davidson’s Protective Service Detail;

R. Clarke Cooper for his leadership and professionalism as General Davidson’s aide;

General Charles Sandy Davidson for his leadership and personal example;

Herbert Hale for his courage and for his expertise as General Davidson’s driver;

Matt Pedersen and the men of his Civil Affairs team for showing us how such teams could make a difference in the lives of the Iraqi people;

Christopher Cummings and Steve Lindsley for their skills and for their individual sacrifices on behalf of Iraqi amputees;

The men and women of the 350th Civil Affairs Command and its subordinate units (the 478th CA Battalion, the 425th CA Battalion, the 415th CA Battalion, and the 416th CA Battalion), for their courage and sacrifice during OIF Two;

Lieutenant Colonel Rob Doc Parrish for all the lives he has saved with his medical skills;

Arthur Gordon, Logan Barbee, and the other officers who displayed the warrior spirit and for whom we had so much respect;

The thousands of Coalition warriors from Great Britain, Australia, Iraq, and other nations, for their courage, their sacrifice, and their friendship;

The warriors of the Kurdish Peshmerga;

The citizens of Kurdistan for their courtesy and generosity to the American soldiers who lived and worked with them;

Colonel Martin Stanton, for his story about Chad Higginbotham in Somalia;

Staff Sergeant Salvadore Cerniglia, Sergeant Major Jose Berrios, Sergeant First Class Michael Harrington, and the other members of CMATT Team Eleven for their courage and for their detailed account of the siege of the DAC;

The soldiers of the First Cavalry Division; the ones who served and sacrificed with me in Vietnam and the ones who carried on the First Team tradition in Iraq;

The Iraqi Ministry of Culture, Dr. Donny George of the Iraqi National Museum, and the Iraqi and American archaeologists who care so much about protecting the history of Mesopotamia;

Our Iraqi friend, Khalil, wherever he may be;

Doug Besherse, war correspondent;

Michael Murphy, formerly of the Orlando Sentinel, for publishing the op-ed pieces I sent him from Iraq;

The men and women of the Altamonte Springs Police Department and the City of Altamonte Springs, Florida, who have given such great support to their fellow employees who served in the global war on terror;

My children John, Rebecca, Charlie, and Jennifer (and her husband Ken) for their support at home during my tour in Iraq;

My granddaughters Kaitlyn, Jessica, and Ashley, along with my new grandson, Aiden;

And, of course, my beloved wife, Debbie, whose love and support have made my life complete.

Prologue

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A blood red Asian sun rose ominously from the South China Sea as a commercial airliner filled with American soldiers crossed the dark coast of Vietnam. The soon-to-be jungle warriors, most of them young and inexperienced, looked down through wispy clouds and pondered their future in a dangerous no-man’s-land infested with a skilled and cunning enemy.

It was September 1970, and one of those anxious young soldiers was me, a twenty-one-year-old Army second lieutenant who was about to lose his innocence to the siren of war. As the gung ho son of a World War II infantryman, I found myself swept up with other members of my Baby Boomer generation, some voluntarily and some not so voluntarily, by the battle to save the world from international communism.

With my jump wings and Ranger tab securely attached to my uniform, I volunteered for combat duty, an act many of my civilian friends would refer to as a death wish. I didn’t believe I wanted to die, but I was an adventurous, seemingly immortal young man who was easily seduced by excitement and danger.

I was only twenty years old when I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1969, and there were those who said I was too young to be an officer because I was a novice at life in general. That was probably true for the most part, but I was highly motivated, I never seemed to lack self-confidence, and I was determined to make my own way in an exciting world full of endless mystery and limitless possibilities.

Landing in Vietnam was the beginning of my first great adventure as a man. I was filled with a positive attitude fueled by lifelong patriotism and a traditional love of all things American, like Mom and apple pie. After all, I was one of the good guys, and I knew the Lone Ranger always won.

It didn’t take long for me to learn that war was not a glamorous way of life. The blood was real, our friends were frequently and violently stolen from us, and the Lone Ranger was only a television hero. Patriotism and apple pie were pushed aside as survival of the fittest became the ultimate reality.

Our youthful innocence was finally crushed by the terrible world of war, forcing us to become like jungle cats. Our very existence became a desperate struggle to kill the enemy before he killed us. We were still young men when our tours ended, but we had aged before our time. Few of our fellow citizens tried to understand us, but we understood each other. With wounded bodies and cracked souls, we became the phantom soldiers of our time as we faded into history.

Almost thirty-four years after I arrived in Vietnam, an older and presumably wiser man sat in a C130 military aircraft as it twisted and turned in its efforts to avoid ground fire while landing at Baghdad International Airport. No longer a wide-eyed, shiny-new Airborne Ranger lieutenant, I was a grizzled, fifty-four-year-old Army Reserve sergeant and an experienced police officer.

Deep within my heart and soul, I believed I had long since come to terms with any leftover ghosts from Vietnam. My youthful illusion of immortality vanished during my jungle war, and the subsequent decades offered increasingly larger doses of reality that sometimes punched me squarely in the gut. I was fortunate in many ways, but I saw the world through experienced eyes, and I looked at life from the perspective of a man whose older spirit bore a few scars and just a tinge of rust.

Before I left for Iraq, many of my friends, relatives, and acquaintances suggested I was too old to serve in a war zone. I was polite to some of these people, but in the manner of an old soldier and an old cop, I told a few of them what part of my anatomy they could kiss. I made the decision to go to war again simply because I believed it was the right thing to do.

When the new war on terror began, my age and experience gave me a different vantage point in life. As a young soldier stepping off the plane in Saigon, I walked into the quicksand of war for the first time. When I landed in Baghdad, I was more aware of the historical significance of what our nation was doing, where I was going, and what challenges would lay ahead.

I tried to write a journal in Vietnam, but the rapidly changing events of life in combat absorbed my days as an infantry platoon leader, and that journal was quickly forgotten. My most accurate recollections from the jungle were the letters and photographs I mailed to my parents. These memories were meticulously saved and catalogued by my mother, who proudly presented me with several scrapbooks when I came home.

In Iraq, I made a commitment to myself to keep a detailed journal. This computer record became a chronicle of my physical and emotional journey through a new and different war. I had an unusual, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compare my experiences in Iraq with some of the lessons I learned a generation ago in Vietnam. I was also able to reflect on how all of this made an indelible mark on my life as a man, a husband, a father, and a grandfather.

After all, when a man’s soul is immersed in war, he never knows how much time is left on the clock of life. What better time could there be to contemplate the previous chapters of his life as the tide of war carries him to an uncertain future? My daily war journal became the primary reference for this book.

It would be my honor to serve with a new generation of young patriots in Iraq. These men and women witnessed the savage attacks of September 11, 2001, on their fellow citizens and volunteered to be part of the military force seeking justice for our murdered countrymen. With courage and resolve, these extraordinary Americans set out to confront the new purveyors of international evil on multiple battlefields throughout the world.

The similarity of this new group of warriors to the young soldiers I served with in Vietnam was amazing. It was further proof that the uniforms, the enemies, and the music may change, but America’s twenty-first century sons and daughters share the same spirit of patriotism that sent their ancestors to confront the British at Lexington and Concord, the Nazi menace at Normandy, the North Korean and Chinese hordes in South Korea, the North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerrillas in Vietnam, and the Iraqi invaders in Kuwait.

It was also a privilege to serve in Iraq with some of my fellow Vietnam veterans. We obviously had much in common, including our participation in a new war where the public recognition of our service was so unlike the negative treatment we endured in the sixties and seventies.

I will never forget my soldiers in Vietnam, but serving with this new group of warriors was the high point of my life. The men of the C.O.B.R.A. Team became more than just my brothers in arms. Since I was old enough to be their father, they became like sons to me. With a common law enforcement background, all of us already had a cop state of mind. We also had many years of military experience between us, and we were ready to confront the deadly threats posed by a dangerous and brutal insurgent enemy.

Even though I knew we were the good guys, I remembered my lessons from Vietnam. I had no illusions about our mortality. I knew the simplest quirk of fate, one single mistake, or one bad decision, and all of us would go home in body bags.

From my standpoint as a leader, I only had two missions in Iraq. If I were able to accomplish them both, my own tour would be a success. The primary mission of our Protective Service Detail (PSD) was to ensure the survival of Brigadier General Charles (Sandy) Davidson. My own secondary mission was to make sure that all the members of my team made it home as well.

The war against Islamic extremists continues throughout the world. The final chapter in this epic struggle may not be written in our lifetimes. Every veteran of this war will perform an important mission as a vital part of a team, and each warrior will have a unique story to tell.

I wrote this book to share the experiences of the C.O.B.R.A. Team and to tell the stories of some of the dedicated Army Reserve and National Guard warrior-citizens we served with in 2004. Although real names are used for most of the individuals in this book, some names have been changed.

When we began our tour in Iraq, I didn’t know what the future held for me or for the men of the C.O.B.R.A. Team, but one thing was crystal clear.

This was my last war.

Charles M. Grist

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

—President John F. Kennedy

Chapter 1

Of Patriot Blood

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The soldier adjusted the helmet liner on his son’s head and gave him a wink. The parade was about to start, and the six-year-old boy was going to ride in a real Army jeep with his father, Major John M. Grist. The major’s son looked up at his dad, and all the boy could see was the tall, heroic figure in uniform that towered over him.

That little boy was me, and I remember how proud I was to be a passenger in that jeep during a Christmas parade in the 1950s. The helmet liner was too big, but so was the Army uniform shirt that hung from my shoulders. When we rode past my mother, Claire, and my little sister, Jeannie, I waved proudly. Spectators applauded the marching soldiers, and I felt as if I were also in the Army. It was a defining moment for me.

In grass-stained blue jeans and dusty sneakers, the small soldiers of my generation waged pretend wars in backyards, on school playgrounds, and in open fields. We dug through our fathers’ footlockers, marveled at their medals, tried to wear their helmets, drank from their old metal canteens, and buttoned up their Eisenhower jackets. Our dads were our heroes, and we wanted to be just like them.

My parents’ generation was filled with heroic men and women who possessed a deep inner strength molded by the difficult years of the Great Depression. After he was drafted, Dad graduated from the Army’s Infantry Officer Candidate School (OCS) and served during World War II. Like his comrades, he brought home the kind of patriotism that was more intense than the flag-waving kind.

My parents taught me that America was a shining beacon of liberty to the rest of the world. They told me stories about my ancestors who fought in the American Revolution, and I discovered military service had always been a tradition for the men in my family. I was raised to understand that the blood of patriots flowed through my body, and the task of preserving our liberty was a duty inherited by the sons and daughters of America.

The lessons I learned from my parents were profound and lasting. I discovered what it meant to be one of the good guys and how important it was to recognize the bad guys. Even as a child, I found myself tested on more than one occasion.

I was only eleven years old when I watched a bully and his sidekick tease the prettiest girl in the fifth grade. When the bully called her sewer girl for the umpteenth time, I knew I had to do something. After all, my heroes of the fifties, other than my father, were the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, and Superman. Good and evil were clearly defined in my world, and I knew exactly where I stood.

I told the bully to call her that name to my face. He and his friend laughed, and he immediately walked up to me. He was taller, bigger, and he wasn’t afraid. He stared me in the eye, said sewer girl once more, and laughed again.

With my anger boiling over, I put my right fist along the lower edge of his jaw with everything I had. I could almost see the stars in his eyes as he staggered backward. We circled and sparred, and we both made good hits, but mine were better. The battered bully finally ran away with his sidekick. My little girlfriend was entranced, I was her hero, and all was good with the universe.

I would eventually learn the hard and painful lesson that even good guys can get their asses kicked. I faced another large bully a few years later and promptly broke a bone in my hand with my first punch. After this bad guy finished using me for a punching bag, I limped home with torn clothes, a lot of bruises, and a swollen hand.

When I became a teenager, I couldn’t wait for the next episode of the television series Combat, which chronicled the World War II adventures of a fictional infantry sergeant. In high school, I eagerly read The Green Berets by Robin Moore and managed to get him to autograph a copy of his book. His inscription was Keep writing. As a young journalist, I was grateful for the inspiration.

One of my neighbors highly recommended that I attend the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, so I applied for admission and began my cadet life in the summer of 1967. A year later, I was a sophomore cadet corporal who decided to drop out of college, much to the distress of his parents. I made a few civilian parachute jumps with my fellow cadets, and I didn’t want to wait for graduation to serve my country as a paratrooper. I enlisted in the Army in December 1968.

I qualified for Infantry Officer Candidate School during basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. I then completed advanced infantry training at Fort McClellan, Alabama. Finally, I reported back to Fort Benning in April 1969, and began the transformation from private first class to infantry lieutenant.

My company commander in OCS was Captain Jack Jacobs, a young, high-energy officer who earned our respect and who demanded excellence. A couple of weeks before we graduated, Jacobs was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions while serving as an advisor to the South Vietnamese army. Already an example of what an officer should be as far as the officer candidates were concerned, Jacobs became a warrior god to all of us when he received America’s highest honor for valor in combat. Retired Colonel Jack Jacobs became a military analyst for one of the cable news networks.

Another benefit of OCS was the opportunity to learn from more experienced officer candidates. Many of these soldiers had already distinguished themselves as non-commissioned officers in combat. Their awards ranged from the Silver Star, the nation’s third highest medal for valor, to the Purple Heart, the badge of honor worn by those wounded in combat by enemies of the United States.

Toward the end of my OCS training, the time came for the new lieutenants to receive their orders. I requested assignment to the Ranger Department at Fort Benning because I’d have the opportunity to attend the Army’s Airborne and Ranger schools. This department, now known as the Ranger Training Brigade, was the cadre of Ranger instructors who taught at Fort Benning, at the mountain Ranger camp in Dahlonega, Georgia, and at the jungle training camp at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. My orders to report to the Benning Ranger Committee arrived just before our OCS graduation ceremony.

On October 16, 1969, retired Major Grist gave the oath of commission to his twenty-year-old son who was graduating as a second lieutenant. My father’s eyes got misty as he finished administering the oath to me, my mother pinned on my gold bars, and the family tradition continued. I was old enough to lead men in combat, but not old enough to buy a beer.

On a memorable day, along with another new second lieutenant, I walked into the orderly room at the Ranger headquarters to sign in. As I did so, I noticed the imposing form of the first sergeant in the back of the room. I can’t recall his name, but he was a tall, muscular black man with a lot of sergeant’s stripes on his uniform.

When I turned to walk out of the building, the first sergeant said, Lieutenant, do you mind if I ask you a question? Sounding real officer-like, I replied, Sure, First Sergeant. He then asked, Sir, are you sure you’re old enough to be a lieutenant? For the first time as a new, freshly starched officer, I felt like I wanted to melt into my boots. All I could think of to say was, Yes, First Sergeant, I am.

During almost a year with the Rangers at Fort Benning, I served as a physical training instructor and graduated from the Airborne and Ranger courses. It was also my honor to meet a few old Rangers who fought in three wars: World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. These men were living legends to me, and they each wore combat infantryman badges with two stars, signifying three separate awards for combat service.

The day I left for Vietnam in 1970 was one of the hardest of my life. I went to the Orlando airport with my parents, my sister, and my grandmother. When a loudspeaker announced the last call for boarding, all the women burst into tears. I said my good-byes to my sister and my grandmother before I held my mother close to me. I could feel her shaking as her tears dampened the shoulder of my uniform. She and my grandmother survived World War II on the home front, and they lived through the loss of friends and relatives to enemy action in far-off lands. I sensed their well-founded fears for my safety.

I shook hands with my father and hugged him—I could tell he was holding back tears himself. The previous night he broke down in my arms, crying about the son who was headed to war and telling me he wanted to make sure he didn’t cry at the airport. Dad also lost friends and relatives in World War II, and I was sure those memories helped fill his heart with an agonizing fear for the life of his son.

With all the farewells complete, the young second lieutenant walked to the plane with a lump in his throat, not looking back at his loved ones and not knowing if he would ever see any of them again.

When I returned from Vietnam in August of 1971, I was proud of my service to my country. As I walked through the airport in San Francisco in my uniform, a group of hippies spat on the ground at my feet. In the Atlanta airport, I heard someone in the crowd behind me mutter the word murderer. When I reached home, I took off my uniform and didn’t wear it again for many years.

I enrolled at Valencia Community College in Orlando and signed up for several intense academic classes. It’s difficult to explain how hard it was to be a soldier in the jungle one week and a college student in a classroom a couple of weeks later. I dropped out after only two weeks, unable to concentrate and yearning for some time to unwind.

The most memorable part of campus life during that two-week period was watching Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern speak to a television camera and a dozen or so students. All I can remember him talking about was his recent meeting with the communist Viet Cong, the same people who had been trying to kill me only a couple of weeks earlier. He didn’t talk about meeting with soldiers, only about a chummy visit with my enemy. It felt like another slap in the face to me as a Vietnam veteran.

The next couple of years were my irresponsible years. I took my Vietnam savings account and moved into an apartment I couldn’t afford. I drank and partied too much, so I was ultimately forced to move out in the dead of night. Fortunately, I met an eighteen-year-old beauty in early 1973, and she put me on the path to responsibility. I married Debbie a year later, and the best part of my life began.

The road to my second war in Iraq was filled with over thirty years of the joys and the challenges of raising a family, finishing my education, and finding my niche as a law enforcement officer. Along the way, I also became a grandfather.

By the time September 11, 2001, approached, I was settled into my full-time career as a cop and my part-time job in the Army Reserve. I had a family that meant everything to me and a future with unlimited possibilities.

I was a very lucky guy.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

—George Orwell

Chapter 2

Forging the Sword

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After I returned from Vietnam as a first lieutenant, a local Army Reserve officer told me I needed to enroll in the Officer Advanced Course. He said I should do so before my name came up for promotion, or I couldn’t make the rank of captain. If I were passed over for promotion twice, I would be honorably discharged, but Army regulations prevented me from being commissioned again.

I didn’t enroll in the course because I wasn’t interested in military service any longer. I was a war veteran who was working or going to college, and I enjoyed being a healthy, single young male. By the time I had second thoughts about serving as an officer in the Army, it was too late. My officer career came to an end.

My wartime experiences as a platoon leader in Vietnam were difficult, but as a man they were rewarding. I learned a lot about leading other men into harm’s way, but it was the return to the world, as we said back then, that soured me on military service. I didn’t like hearing veterans referred to as murderers or being accused of committing war crimes when I knew the vast majority of us served honorably. It took a long time for me to realize that I missed all the good things about wearing the uniform of the United States Army.

About nine years after I returned from Vietnam, some guy pulled up next to me at a traffic light. He saw the Ranger and Airborne decals in the window of my 1969 Mustang, and he asked me if I wanted to jump, as in parachute, on the weekends. I only paused for a minute before answering in the affirmative, and my new career in the Army began. I enlisted for the second time, received a grade determination as an E5 sergeant, and joined an Army Reserve Special Forces unit.

Many of the soldiers in that unit were also former officers. Unlike my situation, most of them were RIFd out of the Army. The term Reduction In Force meant the Army didn’t need them any more because the Vietnam War was over. Some of these experienced troops were senior sergeants (E7s or E8s), but they served on active duty as captains, majors, or lieutenant colonels. They were trying to finish their twenty years for retirement.

I continued to return to the Army Reserve or the National Guard when a particular military job seemed right for me. When the position was no longer rewarding, I left. I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of the Army, but I’m not very fond of politics, either in the military or at the police department. It’s rewarding just to be a soldier and a cop—I’ve never been willing to shine someone else’s boots, polish their sword, or kiss their ass.

At the beginning of the war on terror, I was an Army Reserve sergeant first class (E7), and I had held that rank since 1990. That’s a little too long to be considered a mover and shaker in the Army. I probably should have tried harder to become a master sergeant, but I never really worried too much about getting promoted after my post-Vietnam enlistment. There were a multitude of hands-on sergeant jobs available, and I enjoyed giving young soldiers the skills to survive in combat.

As I’ve said before, with