Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War (7 page)

With his head out of the TC’s hatch, Reid saw helos and F-18s flying over the city. As the helos passed by, they were carrying rockets and missiles. They flew back carrying nothing.
Well, they’re shooting at something.
He heard the boom of the artillery shooting some counterbattery. There was more talking on the net. The radio communications were starting to build and becoming more intense. From the messages, he could tell that Alpha Company was now dismounted and the marines were clearing some buildings on the eastern side of the MSR.

Ben Reid had never wanted to be anything other than a marine infantry officer. His father had been one, and as a family they’d moved around every few years, on new Marine Corps assignments, between Virginia, Hawaii, Kansas, North Carolina, and Texas. All his friends had fathers who were marines, and he’d grown up admiring everything about the Marine Corps.

Reid was conscious that he’d come out of school just over two years ago and yet was in charge of marines who’d been in the Corps for many years. He was grateful that on the ship to Kuwait he’d shared quarters with Second Lieutenant Michael Seely. Seely was one of the few guys who had been in Desert Storm, so they talked about what to expect. He let the older and more experienced Seely do the talking because he didn’t want to look like a jackass and ask stupid questions. He’d learned from him and from books passed out on ship that the Iraqis used British military doctrine but had failed to adapt it adequately to work with Soviet equipment. He didn’t know whether the information would be useful, but it gave him something to look out for. He worked hard to develop teamwork with Second Lieutenant Fred Pokorney, his artillery forward observer. Fred was a big, lanky guy whose uniform never seemed to fit properly. He’d had several years in the Marine Corps and was due for promotion to first lieutenant. They would talk late into the night about FiST tactics, as well as tell each other personal stuff about wives and family.

Once, on ship, he’d sat down to eat at the same table as Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski, the battalion commander. Even though his nametag was clearly showing, Grabowski still got his name wrong.

“How’s it going, Martin?”

“I’m Lieutenant Reid, sir.”

That’s how the conversation began and that’s how it ended. Reid understood that Grabowski was probably not very good with names and had other things to worry about, but it did concern him.
The Marine Corps is a
people business. If you know the names of your marines, their girlfriends’
names, the brand of beer they like to drink, the chances are that you will
also know about fire support, about weapons systems, about tactics.
Maybe he was being unfair, but he just feared that Grabowski sometimes gave the impression that he cared about other things more than his marines. That’s when there is a danger that you will lose credibility. He had no doubt that Grabowski really did care, but somehow he didn’t say the right things. It was the same when he gave the sending-off speech the morning before leaving Camp Shoup for the attack into Iraq. They were expecting a rousing speech about a “Band of Brothers” and “Fighting together for Victory.” Instead, he’d said something in his husky voice about getting to Baghdad as soon as possible so they could enjoy the luxuries of the PX, the military stores where marines could buy their Cokes and favorite candy bars. It was awkward. No one laughed.

The battalion commander’s apparent obsession with gear uniformity also concerned him. He wanted all the machine-gun ammo men to look the same, all the grenadiers to look the same even down to the exact location of a magazine pouch. Reid understood the point he was making. He guessed it was a good thing to know where to find ammo on a marine if necessary. But he did think it was over the top.
It’s a lot of bullshit so that
the battalion commander can feel important.
He didn’t see how that would help him fight his battle. In Reid’s view there were other concerns that deserved more time and energy. He did accept, though, that maybe Grabowski was right. Maps, compasses, and first-aid kits needed to be carried in a standard location.
I guess that’s why I am a lieutenant and not a lieutenant
colonel.

Reid stuck his head out of his TC’s hatch. They were moving up on the left of Bravo Company. Up ahead he could see the first sign of activity. A few cars were driving back and forth real slow and the occupants stopping to talk to people.
This looks suspicious. They look as though they are getting ready to do something.
An old man leading a mule was carrying a bundle of what looked like white sheets. As they moved up, marines in Reid’s track pointed their M16s at him and shouted at him.

“Drop what you are carrying.”

“Fucking drop it.”

“Drop your fucking laundry.”

They weren’t really nervous. They were just doing what they thought they should be doing. Anyway, the harmless old man didn’t understand and just walked on.

Farther to the rear of the column of Charlie vehicles, in the back of track 211, Lance Corporal Thomas Quirk of 3rd Platoon was having a hard time of it. The exhaust was coming back into the track, and the dust and dirt and smell of diesel were getting to him. He was hacking up wads of yellow pus caused from the dust infecting the lung’s membranes. His vocal cords felt stretched and raw from the coughing. He no longer knew how long they’d been moving, but for hours now he’d been cramped up in his track, dozing off in the most uncomfortable of positions: a head in someone’s lap, a foot on someone’s stomach, a hand in someone’s ear. It occurred to him that if someone had opened up the track, it would have looked like something from a nature documentary on the Discovery Channel. They were like little animals all curled up together in a dark hole.

The radio squawked into action and the marines dozing in the rear forced themselves awake. In the distance was the sound of gunfire. Quirk’s squad leader, Corporal Randy Glass, who had been monitoring the radio, spoke up.

“Hey, listen up. What we heard is that the Army is pinned down in the city to the north of us and we’re going to reinforce them. And we gotta watch out because the hajjis were making out like they were giving up and then pulling out AK-47s on them. They killed a couple of Army guys.”

In his head, Quirk slagged off the Army.
These fucking idiots got themselves in trouble. These pussies are in the wrong fucking spot. They need to
be building churches and handing out food, not fucking getting in firefights.

Then another message came through the radio. No, the Iraqis had not pretended to surrender.
The briefs are changing all the time. What is
going on?

Quirk was glad for the minor excitement. It was something else to talk about. During the two months since leaving Camp Lejeune, they had exhausted most subjects. They talked about the stupid stuff they’d done in high school, the things they wished they could do, the things they might do in the next few days, and the things they were going to do when they got home. For the last few hours they’d laughed about the time when Quirk’s buddy, Lance Corporal John Mathews, had made fun of their staff sergeant. They were digging a “SCUD pit” and Staff Sergeant Anthony Pompos had told Mathews to dig deeper.

“Hey, Staff Sergeant, do you like duck meat?”

“Yeah, I love hunting ducks and I love duck meat.”

The lance corporal nodded and pointed to his dick.

“Well, why don’t you duck down here and get some of this meat.”

It was the funniest thing they’d heard in a long time. It was made even funnier when Staff Sergeant Pompos yelled back at him.

“Well, Mathews, you duck down in the hole and keep digging until I tell you to stop.”

Quirk had grown up in Ossining, New York, a nice, suburban neighborhood of small but smart houses with three-foot-square front lawns, about an hour’s journey from Grand Central Station in Manhattan. His parents were TV parents—caring, middle class, and so sweet. They were the best. His mother was a teacher and his father worked in computers. He respected his dad. He’d been in the Marine Corps and served in Vietnam. But Quirk could never bring himself to tell him just how much he admired him. Quirk, too, had wanted to join the Marines straight after high school, but he and his girlfriend had got into trouble for vandalizing a police car. They only meant to throw eggs at it but ended up jumping on it and breaking some windows. He was put on probation for three years. Then September 11 happened. He went home and saw the second tower falling on TV. His dad looked at him.

“Well, what are you going to do now?”

“I am going to join the Marine Corps.”

“Hats off to you son.”

He went to the Marine recruiting station in Middletown, New York, and told the recruiter about his neighbor and the local firemen who had died on September 11. Quirk laid it straight down the line to the recruiter because he knew they were conniving bastards. They tried to suck you in with stories of combat, of cheap blow jobs in Guam and Manila, of the thrill of killing and how every chick wants to hook up with a marine.

“Don’t pump my ass. Don’t try and trick me with your bullshit. I want to be a rifleman. I want to be a grunt. Just tell me what I have to do to make this happen.”

The recruiter said he could work with his criminal record. It took him several months but finally he managed to get the waivers, and on January 21, 2002, he went to Boot Camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. A year later he was on his way to Iraq. Not that he cared about Iraq or Afghanistan. He didn’t give a shit about those places, about liberating this guy or that guy. It was pure and simple.
If Americans are going to get killed, I
want to be right next to them because for whatever fucking naïve, childish
fucking reason, I fucking goddamn love my country.

Quirk still showed traces of how young he was. He was short in stature, but his shoulders were broadening. He still had a baby face, but his jawline was getting stronger. Before joining the Marine Corps his biggest fear was taking a shit in front of other guys. He really didn’t want to wipe his ass in front of anyone else. But now he was getting used to life in the field and for the past few days, whenever he needed a shit, he’d take a buddy and the two of them would go over a hill and chat away as they were taking a dump.

Quirk stood up and poked his head out of the AAV’s hatch. He offered to swap places with Lance Corporal David Fribley. Fribley, a twenty-six-year-old marine from Lee, Florida, had been posting air security all day and he was tired. Quirk was glad to do the guy a favor. He was about the nicest guy you could ever meet, but he was an odd one. If you ever needed any money he would give you his last five dollars. He was a different kind of marine. He didn’t have the let’s-kill-everybody mentality that the rest of them had. In fact, he was so nice, so self-sacrificing that he got on Quirk’s nerves. But it was useful when he wanted a pack of Combos—the pretzels with cheese filling that were Quirk’s favorite snack out of all the shit in the MREs. Fribley would never refuse a swap. Fribley walked into the wrong
office. He should have gone to the Air Force instead.

It reminded him of a joke he liked. He told it to the rest of the guys in the track.

“Three high school friends meet up for a camping holiday a few months after they have joined up. The one who was in the Air Force says:

“Boot Camp was horrible. They ran out of Diet Coke in the soda fountain.

“The one from the Army says:

“That’s nothing. They made me sleep outside and it rained on me.

“The one who joined the Marine Corps says nothing. He carries on lighting the fire with nothing but his dick.”

With his head out of the hatch he saw, for the first time, Cobra attack helicopters flying overhead toward the city. They were shooting stuff up, firing off missile after missile and exploding targets ahead in fountains of flames, smoke, and billowing dust. Quirk was in a state of euphoria. This was the first time he’d seen American marines shooting at real things. He was through the roof with excitement. He turned to his buddy, posting air security next to him.

“They are shooting the fuck out of things. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Hey, this is the best day of my life.”

The clattering of the helos, the booms of their missiles, the smoke rising on the horizon sent Quirk into overdrive. He didn’t think the Iraqis would fight back. He didn’t even think he would have to fire his weapon. He certainly didn’t think that within the next hour he would be shooting at and killing human beings or that they would be shooting back and killing his buddies.
This is cool. They’re blowing all this shit up and I’m so glad I’m
seeing it.

That’s what he liked about the Marines. All his life, growing up in a safe suburb of New York, he’d dreamed of another, more vigorous, more exciting life. And now he was in the thick of it. He was at war. The thrill was intoxicating. He had to pray to stop himself from feeling crazy. He did it a lot when he was a kid to stop himself from getting agitated. It was not an organized prayer, just something to calm him down when things got overwhelming.

“Dear God, give me a clear mind and a calm heart. Give me strength to get through this day.”

He looked up again to enjoy the sight, sound, and smell of the American military machine at war.

5

Looking down from his Huey, Brigadier General Rich Natonski saw the efforts of his planning. A long column of hundreds of AAVs, tanks, and supporting vehicles of Task Force Tarawa were strung out along Highway 8, ready for the move into Nasiriyah. Natonski had wanted to be a marine ever since he was a little kid growing up in a small house in Connecticut, but he had no idea that he would come this far. Very few marines actually got to war and yet here he was, in the thick of one, with some six thousand men and hundreds of tanks, AAVs, helicopters, and jet fighters under his command.

At over six-foot-three, he was a large and, at first glance, an intimidating bear of a man. He’d had a long and distinguished military career, and to the younger men he exuded the romance of the Marine Corps life: of jungle patrolling the Ho Chi Minh Trail, of assaults into Hue, of nights out in Saigon. In 1975, he’d commanded a platoon that evacuated American and foreign nationals from Phnom Penh just as the Khmer Rouge were moving into the city. Weeks later he was flown into Saigon in a CH-53 helicopter, where he evacuated civilians from the U.S. Military Assistance Command compound hours before the North Vietnamese Army overran it.

He’d stayed in the Marine Corps during the traumatic years of the 1970s and 1980s when General Louis H. Wilson Jr. cleaned house, tackling the drug abuse and racial problems that had plagued the Marine Corps by kicking out the bums and the slackers. He’d gotten married and had three children. Now, at fifty-one, he had risen to brigadier general and had commanded marines in Somalia, Bosnia, and the Middle East as part of the modern, professional, all-volunteer Marine Corps. The Marines chose Natonski. The other branches of the military just weren’t the same: the dull professionalism of the Army doggies, the showy but boring technology of the Air Force flyboys, the impenetrable, elitist culture of the Navy. To be a marine you had to be physically and mentally tough. You had to excel at the raw and dirty art of combat. It wasn’t a job; it was a calling.

He had nearly missed the latest adventure. When CENTCOM, the ground forces command base in Florida, was first planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom, it seemed as though there might not be a place for Natonski or his marines from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, based out of Camp Lejeune.

The Allied commander, Tommy Franks, wanted to take Baghdad as rapidly as possible. Unlike the first gulf war, where General Norman Schwarzkopf had called for a forty-day air war before sending in ground troops, Franks wanted to use the Army, led by the thirty thousand soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division, to make a lightning strike on Baghdad from the southwest across the desert. He wanted the Marines to take the roads and attack Baghdad from the southeast as the supporting effort. He gave the mission to the 1st Marine Division, out of Camp Pendleton.

That hurt. The East Coast marines thought the Hollywood marines were too soft and pampered. Those on the West Coast thought of the East Coast marines as a poorer cousin. It was friendly rivalry. But it was a real rivalry.

Then, nearly a year ago, the 1st Marine Division’s commander, General Mattis, had asked Natonski to form a self-sufficient MAGTF, a Marine air-ground task force, from East Coast marines to support the 1st Marine Division. They were originally called Task Force South, and their mission was to follow the 1st Marine Division into Iraq and then block toward Basra. But two days after leaving for Kuwait, the British offered up their 1st Armored Division to the Coalition. The Brits got the Basra mission instead. On ship, they had to plan for a sudden change in task: to open up and secure an eastern route through the city of Nasiriyah so that the 1st Marine Division could pass along two routes to Baghdad. The plan had always been for the 1st Marine Division to bypass Nasiriyah to the west and then take Route 1 to Baghdad. Opening up a second, eastern route through Nasiriyah would allow Marine convoys to transport equipment north on Route 7, a less crowded and less targetable route. It would also confuse Saddam’s forces if the Army and the Marines attacked Baghdad along several axes. The Medina Division of Saddam’s Republican Guard up in Al Kut would have to make a decision whether they were going to block Route 1, or whether they would block Route 7. It would split their forces.

The new road they were to open up was christened Route Moe, and once Task Force Tarawa had secured it, they were tasked with guarding the 1st Marine Division’s thrust toward the Iraqi capital. It would allow the 1st Marine Division to conserve its ammo for the attack on Baghdad. Natonski was disappointed. It meant that his marines wouldn’t get the glory of marching into Baghdad. That would go to the West Coast marines. He tried not to let it bother him, but each time Natonski traveled from Camp Lejeune to Camp Pendleton in California for planning operations he felt as though he was treated like an outsider. Natonski consoled himself with another thought.
We’re going to kick down the door to Baghdad.

He’d formed his Task Force around Camp Lejeune’s 2nd Marine Regiment. It was the 2nd Marines who had lost over two hundred men in a suicide bomb attack on their compound while on a mission in Beirut in 1983. Now they were back in the Middle East, and he was determined that this time they would come out on top. He’d brought with him the helicopters and fixed-wing planes of Marine Aircraft Group 29 from the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing and logistics and support vehicles from Combat Service Support Battalion 22. It’s what made the Marines different from the Army. He could pick and choose units to create a self-sufficient and flexible force that had everything it needed to fight in the air and on the ground. It was fortunate that many of his units had recently trained together during combined arms exercise, known as CAX, at the Marines desert base at Twentynine Palms in California.

It was Natonski who had come up with the name of Task Force Tarawa. He’d asked the historical branch to come up with some names. They’d suggested Plughole. During World War II, it was the U.S. Navy’s code name for Iraq. But Natonski thought Task Force Plughole didn’t have the right ring. Walking back into his HQ one day he’d seen a portrait of Lieutenant General Julian Smith leading the 2nd Marine Regiment in its attack on the Japanese-occupied island of Tarawa. He knew there and then what his task force’s name should be. They became Task Force Tarawa to reflect that they were an East Coast unit fighting in a West Coast force.

His Huey began its descent toward his frontline troops on the outskirts of Nasiriyah. He saw the approach to the city, dominated by the three huge circular oil tanks, which he’d so often imagined from his maps. It had only taken him a few minutes to fly in from his combat operations base at the Jalibah air base. Now, as he approached the regimental command post, he was working out his next move.

He’d been watching the progress of his lead element, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, on his Blue Force Tracker. Through onboard GPS, each command vehicle relayed its changing location to a satellite transmission system that transferred the information to digital maps dotted with blue icons to show where his forces were positioned. First Battalion, 2nd Marines was making slower progress than he had expected, and he had come forward to see what was holding them up.
I’ve got to get them moving.
The regimental commander, Colonel Ronald Bailey, had reported to him that 1/2 Marines was receiving sniper fire. Natonski didn’t want that to stop them.
We’re a mechanized force. We can’t have snipers holding us back.
He knew that the 1st Marine Division was already refueled and waiting to move through Nasiriyah on its way to Baghdad. His strategy had been built around the military concept of tempo. If he could get his units operating faster and more aggressively than the enemy, his forces would always retain the initiative and knock the enemy off balance. They would not be able to react in time. It had worked well during Desert Storm when the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions had attacked violently and unexpectedly through Iraqi defenses to seize the outskirts of Kuwait City. He had to get that route through Nasiriyah open, and fast.

Natonski ducked as he jumped out of the Huey and hurried, bent over double, through the heat and dust whipped up by the helo’s rotors. The first thing he saw were four U.S. servicemen lying on litters with bloody bandages around their arms and legs. From their equipment and the patterns on their desert cammies he realized they were U.S. Army soldiers. Alarm bells started ringing.
What’s going on? What are soldiers doing
here?

He ran over to them, beads of sweat already forming on the back of his neck.

“Who the heck are you?”

The soldiers were wide-eyed and pale. They were in a state of shock. One of them tried to explain how they were part of the Army’s 507th Maintenance Company. They were supposed to be following an Army convoy but somehow they had taken a wrong turn in the dark. Instead of bypassing Nasiriyah according to plan, they had mistakenly gone right into the heart of the city and been ambushed by Iraqi forces.

Natonski tried to look as calm as possible, but inside he was raging. What the hell is going on? This shouldn’t be happening. U.S. Army units shouldn’t have been there in the first place. And what Iraqi forces had they come up against? The intel he had received was that the entire Iraqi 11th Infantry Division inside Nasiriyah would capitulate rather than fight.

“Well, I’m glad you are okay. We’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.”

Natonski found Colonel Bailey, the regimental commander, and went forward to look for the battalion commander, Rick Grabowski. On the flanks, young marines were busy clearing buildings. Some of them were knee-deep in mud, their spongy, charcoal-lined MOPP suits dripping with water soaked up from the small irrigation ditches lining the highway. They looked so miserable as they waded through the muddy ground that Natonski felt a pang of pity for them. Many years ago he’d been in their position. When he reached Grabowski’s Humvee, he was stunned to find six more U.S. soldiers gathered around an Army vehicle. This is getting con
fusing. What the hell is going on?
They were soldiers from the same 507th Maintenance Company. Natonski pieced the story together. They had just made the most unbelievable wrong turn. At the junction of Routes 7 and 8, south of Nasiriyah, instead of turning sharp left to head around Nasiriyah to the west, the convoy had gone straight into the heart of the city. Iraqi soldiers waved them through several checkpoints until they emerged on the other side of the city. It was then that they realized they had made a mistake. The sun was rising, and they had just turned around to retrace their steps when they were attacked. Under fire from Iraqi fighters, the convoy’s eighteen vehicles had sped back through the city, trying to avoid debris and blockades erected in their path. A few vehicles had gotten through. Most had been hit and were disabled somewhere in the city.

Natonski’s eyes grew wider as he heard the full absurdity of the story.

“Is that all of you?”

“No, there are some still missing.”

An Army captain, almost sobbing, explained that some twenty soldiers and thirteen vehicles were still unaccounted for. Among the missing were Private First Class Howard Johnson, Specialist Shoshana Johnson, Sergeant George Buggs, Specialist Edgar Hernandez, Private First Class Jessica Lynch . . .

As Brigadier General Natonski talked to the soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski and Major Sosa tried to figure out how the army convoy had got in front of them. When the tanks had called back with news of U.S. soldiers, Sosa’s first thought was that it might be an Army scout unit that had originally planned to link up with them. That plan had been scrapped some days ago, but maybe the message hadn’t got through to them. The news that it was an Army maintenance convoy came out of the blue.

They cast their minds back. Grabowski remembered that in the very early hours of the morning, as they had been trying to cross a cloverleaf junction some sixty kilometers south of Nasiriyah, he had been aware of an Army convoy passing them along the highway. He didn’t think anything of it. He assumed they were just heading toward the western side of Nasiriyah and wouldn’t interfere with his mission on the eastern side of the city. The only thing Grabowski was concerned about then was not getting his vehicles mixed in with the Army convoy.

Now he realized that the Army convoy had jeopardized his mission.
How am I going to respond?

When he’d first heard the reports of wounded U.S. soldiers up ahead and that Major Peeples from the tank company had gone off to locate them, his main concern was that Peeples didn’t get stuck up there without support. They were the only tanks he had in the task force.

He had been frustrated when he had difficulty reaching Major Peeples on the radio. He knew Peeples was probably switching to his company net to talk to his marines, but he wanted a clear picture of what was going on.

“Bill, I need you to stay in your tank. You need to stay on the radio.”

He was even more frustrated when he heard the tank company XO, Captain Dyer, get on the radio with another request.

“Timberwolf, this is Panzer 5. My tanks are less than half full. We need to refuel before the decision is made on whether we are going to do a blocking position.”

The tanks had gone through gallons of fuel in their rush to locate the U.S. soldiers.

“Roger that. We are setting up an RP for you now.”

The Abrams was fast and quiet. Its advanced suspension made it a comfortable ride. Tankers said it was like riding in a Cadillac. But its fifteenhundred-horsepower gas turbine engine drank up fuel, and it could only go three hundred miles on a full tank. At full speed it went through fiftysix gallons an hour. Even when it was idling, it drank ten gallons of fuel an hour. It couldn’t stray too far from an RP, or refueling point.

Major Sosa also had a bad feeling about sending the tanks back to refuel. It wasn’t just a few tanks that would be out of action.
They all have to
go back.
It had to be done, though. They didn’t want the tanks stuck without fuel on the northern side of the city after the mission was completed. They would be a long way from any of the fuel trucks. Nevertheless, a wave of anger came over him.
That’s what the fuel bladders were for.
He was silently fuming that Major Peeples had cut them loose.
They carried fifty-five gallons. That was an extra quarter of a tank for each M1A1.
He and Peeples had already got into a fight over the issue back in Kuwait. Peeples had said it was SOP, standard operating procedure, to drop the bladders once they got engaged. Sosa hadn’t thought it was a good idea. Rather tetchily he had suggested that they review their SOP. He was also unhappy with the way Peeples passed his information. In Sosa’s view, he was out of his tank too much or talking to his marines on the company net rather than keeping battalion informed. The summer before at the CAX in Twentynine Palms, they had trained with another tank company commander. Sosa remembered being very impressed by how effectively that tank commander had passed information across the net.