The Bremer Detail by John M. Del Vecchio Frank Gallagher Page B

And it certainly didn’t hurt that the majority of the guys were built like professional athletes. The testosterone and strength oozed from their pores and they knew how to play the game. We were the superheroes keeping all the women safe. Or, at least, that’s what we told anybody who would listen. The other guys rarely had a chance when it came to getting and keeping a female’s notice. It was truly comical. Women got all the attention they could have imagined; they met guys who they would never have met back in the States; they had their choice of studs. What could be better? It was a good deal for all involved. The guys kept their stress levels reduced, and the women lived their fantasies. Everybody was happy.
    These women were, by and large, extremely bright, professional career women—and aggressive. Most were college graduates with postgraduate degrees. Some were in politics, some were military, some were nurses and doctors, and some were career diplomats. They were smart as hell and knew what they wanted. I had great admiration for all of them. They were in the sandbox because they had volunteered to be there. They were driven to succeed to a degree rarely seen by most of us. And they endured the same discomfort and risks we did—the heat, the water outages, the power outages, the rocket and mortar attacks—and yet they showed up for work every day and they supported the mission to the best of their abilities. There was no crying in Baghdad. Some of them were tougher than some of my guys. They were truly a breath of fresh air. And they smiled and smelled a lot better than did my guys.
    The new guys were quickly brought onto the teams in positions that I thought best met their backgrounds and skill set. It was a trying process. Without any résumés to review, placing guys was difficult. Ken had to get a quick feel for them, and then we hoped the new guys had not misled us about their past. Some did. The reaction to the new members of the team by the experienced members was always difficult to manage. The margin for error was nonexistent by this point. We were running 100 mph each and every day. The new guys were expected to pull their weight immediately, and the guys who had been here for a while were very quick to point out any and all mistakes. Several times each day, someone would come to me and tell me how this guy or that guy was not going to make it. The experienced guys knew what the risks were, the new guys did not. I urged each complainer to work with the new man, and told him to try to remember that only a few short weeks ago he himself did not know his ass from a hole in the ground. Tempers were short.
    More than once guys had to be separated after exchanging words. New guys did not know what they did not yet know. Guys who had been there knew what the risks were and knew why we did things certain ways. The good-idea fairy is a dangerous thing in a war zone. I begged the new guys to learn our way for at least thirty days before they came up with suggestions we had already tried and likely eliminated weeks or months earlier. We did what worked, not what we thought might work. We were writing the book, not reading it.
    The story that the new guys were being told back in Moyock and the promises they were being given by Blackwater HQ during the train-up created frustration and disenchantment when these guys realized immediately they were not being issued the gear and not being assigned to the team leader slot that someone back home had promised. OOOPs! Not my problem. My only promise was that once they got to the sandbox we would work them to death. Maybe not in the spot they wanted, but the spot we thought they could best fill.
    Another intel report came in stating that a raid had uncovered videotape and photos of the detail at various locations we had been to with the ambassador. We always assumed the bad guys had been doing surveillance on us, but it had never been confirmed until this point.