Washington – There’s a lot of weirdness every day in the capital city, but this one pushed the envelope: Thirteen veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts in full desert camo going on “patrol” from Union Station to Arlington National Cemetery. They carried imaginary assault rifles, barked commands, roughly detained suspected hostiles with flex cuffs and hoods – and generally shocked, frightened and delighted tourists and office workers.
“How does occupation feel, D.C.?” shouted Geoff Millard, head of the local chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who previously served on a brigadier general’s staff in Tikrit.
Young, disillusioned
They cut a swath across downtown, taking imaginary sniper fire and casualties on the grounds of the Capitol and the Washington Monument, scouting the White House, and performing mock arrests at the foot of the Capitol steps and a vehicle search on the Mall. At the Capitol, the veterans almost got detained themselves by civilian peace officers with real guns. The vets brought their act to a military recruiting station and concluded with a memorial ceremony in the cemetery.
The 12 men and one woman included one veteran of Afghanistan, and they represented the Army, Marines and Navy. They were young, intense, disillusioned. Home from the war, on Monday’s fourth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, they wanted to bring the war home to Washington.
They called it Operation First Casualty – citing the adage that truth is the first casualty of war. The premise of their guerrilla-theater incursion was that, for all the yellow ribbons and “support the troops” sloganeering, life goes on at home pretty much oblivious to what it’s like for soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
“When I got home, the hardest thing for me was realizing the war does not exist here,” said Aaron Hughes of Chicago, who was a sergeant in a transportation unit that convoyed troops and supplies in and out of Iraq from Kuwait.
The group stayed in character for much of the day, which meant creeping down the arcade outside Union Station in formation at about 8:15 a.m. “Danger area ahead,” warned patrol leader Garett Reppenhagen, a former Army sniper with the 1st Infantry Division.
They held their left arms out straight, like gun barrels, and gripped imaginary triggers with their right hands. He signaled for his men to sprint two by two through the arcade to the subway entrance.
Outside the subway station were about eight civilians with white T-shirts over their winter clothes. In real life, they are anti-war activists. On this day, they played suspects and bystanders in a war zone patrolled by an edgy occupying army.
The way it is on patrol
Shouts and curses, shoving and arm-twisting, from Reppenhagen and his men: “Don’t move!” “Get down on the ground!” “Do I have to shoot you, or are you going to stay still?” The soldiers twisted on the cuffs and adjusted the hoods, then ordered, “Get ’em out of here!” In two frantic minutes, the scene was over; the soldiers continued their patrol.
This is the way it is on patrol, the vets said. You can’t take chances, which means you can’t treat people like human beings.
Motorists halted for the strangely alert, cautious, crouching column. Men and women in the workaday uniforms of trench coats and business suits got tangled in the advance. While explanatory fliers were handed out, not everybody got the message.
“I don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re in everybody’s way,” said Janet Ruck, a career counselor in Washington. Upon hearing an explanation, she said, “So they were intentionally getting in people’s way. I don’t think that people have lost touch or forgotten (about the war). I don’t think this is the way to get people to connect.”
“We weren’t sure what they were doing, but it’s kind of cool,” said Glenn Gebhart, an information-technology consultant from Rochester, N.Y.
“We’re all in favor of the message,” said his friend Chris Santillo, of Alexandria, Va.
All day, an alien context was being imposed on familiar streets and tourist zones. The new frames of reference made for little epiphanies.
For example, through the eyes of a soldier, potentially hostile cities all look alike. The soldier reduces every feature to threats or places of shelter.
They are all members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a group that claims about 400 members nationwide and calls for immediate U.S. withdrawal.
“We are the troops,” said Kelly Dougherty, co-founder of the group. “Supporting the troops means not sending us into a war based on lies.”
