Hunting Down Saddam (23 page)

We have become accustomed to it now but we are comforted by the hope that we are now past the summer solstice and daily lose seven minutes of daylight, which will gradually result in cooler temperatures. When we shed our equipment, we attempt to dry out, and this being accomplished, our uniforms take on the appearance of stiff and badly starched fatigues, with a map of salt stains lining the shores of where the sweat had advanced in our clothing.

The sun also bores into the metal of our weapons and sometimes our rifles are so hot to the touch that we must wear gloves to remain comfortable. But the sun does not penetrate or lessen our morale or our ability. We are able to fight under these conditions as our enemy has learned to his own detriment.

The day after my last update—July 3rd—soldiers from our B Company were greeted with a fireworks display of a different kind. A Bradley Fighting Vehicle was on patrol with a tank section on a dusty street. The platoon sergeant in the vehicle noticed that a tire was in the road and, this being unusual, told the driver not to drive over it. The driver—who had placed his armor plated vest on the floor below him that morning on a gut feel and wore a vehicle vest in addition to it—veered to the right. When he did, a violent explosion erupted through the vehicle.

The engine in the front of the vehicle lurched cock-eyed as the hull-access cover on top sailed through the air, followed closely by the entire transmission of the vehicle. As the transmission completed its trajectory, road wheels, sprockets, and associated smaller hatches, accompanied it. The platoon sergeant's helmet was blown from his head and immediately consumed in flames, although his head was miraculously untouched.

Inside, the driver felt a searing heat, smelled the Halon fire extinguishers blow, which consumed the flames, had his feet and legs bounced upward by his armored vest, and felt a sharp pain to the back of his neck and left-hand fingers.

The soldiers in the back were consumed in a concussive shock wave of blast and heat that was extinguished as quickly as it had lashed at them. One soldier's glasses were blown from his face, while another was nearly knocked out but he somehow maintained consciousness. The platoon sergeant felt sharp nerve endings and blood on one of his legs.

After the one second of time that encompassed this, the men immediately reacted. The driver, despite his wounds, was able to pull himself free, exit his station, and help the others get out. All exited the vehicle, covered by the tanks in trail. The men could not imagine having been inside the vehicle that they were now viewing. For two of the men, this was the second time they had suffered a mine explosion while in a Bradley.

Now full of adrenaline, they accounted for themselves and equipment and realized that God had spared them from what should have been certain maiming or death. They were able to secure themselves, evacuate the wounded, and recover the destroyed vehicle. Of the eight men aboard, all have since returned to duty but one. He is expected to fully recover. We remain “Regulars, by God.”

“Pepsi” War

In the next couple of days that followed, our positions were probed with a series of “pinprick” attacks, producing little but damage to the enemy. In an act of desperation, assailants made improvised bombs from Pepsi cans filled with gunpowder from artillery shells and packed with improvised fragmentation such as glass or gravel. The top was then sealed with tar and an improvised fuse added. The attackers would sneak up at night on our positions behind walls and then attempt to fling the bombs at our troops. The flying, sizzling cans hit the pavement, giving the appearance of a cigarette flicked by a smoker into the street that then rolled a small distance. The ensuing flash and bang caused little damage and our soldiers in most cases captured the stupid manufacturers of these beverage bombs.

After a couple of days of “Pepsi” war, a more serious attempt at injury to our soldiers in C Company was thwarted by their alertness and swift action on July 7. Two men on a motorcycle followed the first sergeant's convoy that was rotating troops from a position. The assailants intended to ride up to the trail vehicle and shoot a soldier point-blank with a pistol, as had been done earlier in Baghdad. The men, having had scraps with punks on motorcycles before, carefully watched the riders.

As they approached their turnoff, the first sergeant decided to make the turn but to use the vehicles as an instant barricade on the road. The tactic caught the punks completely by surprise. The cyclists braked sharply and tried to jump their bikes across the median to escape the soldier blockade. The soldiers fired warning shots. The passenger attempted a feeble aim with a 9mm Beretta pistol. The soldiers' next shots showed no mercy. The men volleyed rounds in the distance, hitting the armed man in the leg. The driver gave up but his passenger still attempted resistance, only to be shot in the jaw by SPC (Specialist) Uribe's M-16A2 assault rifle. That ended the engagement. Both men were captured and the wounded man struggles to this day with tubes stuck in every opening of his body.

The following day, our entire battalion ventured out on a fifty-kilometer raid of a house belonging to Saddam Hussein's first cousin. Our Recon Platoon, along with the attached Brigade Reconnaissance Troop, scouted the initial objective area and provided an inner cordon. A Company with attached engineers provided the assault forces while C Company provided an outer cordon, reinforced by some tanks from C Company, 3-66 AR attached to our task force. C Company also moved along the Tigris River in RB-15 Zodiac rubber boats to affect a cordon of the riverbank at the target house.

The cousin—much to our disappointment—did not occupy the house, but he had been there recently. We discovered this only after a grand entrance provided by the “Gators” of A Company. Unable to gain access to the single entryway in the back of the plush house, the men—armed with a ten-pound sledgehammer—wailed on a system of sturdy antitheft bars that covered the door to the kitchen and all of the windows.

After four minutes of sweaty work, the soldiers compensated their futility with a door charge of C-4 explosives, using the “P-for-Plenty” method of measurement. The resulting blast effectively remodeled the kitchen with a nice open-air view to the bluffs on the Tigris. It also rearranged the dishes in the cabinets—as well as the cabinets—and provided for permanent open windows in all of the rooms on the ground floor.

A continued search of the house revealed important documents and photographs and small amounts of explosives. Hidden in the yard was a cache of RPG launchers, ammunition, a machine gun, and several Kalashnikov rifles. Our mission complete in a couple of hours, we picked up our “Regular” navy from the Tigris and then moved with the entire task force back to Tikrit.

“Graffiti” War

Back in Tikrit, we began the “Graffiti” war with the enemy. We wanted to counter an array of absurd and poorly written slogans that prophesied the return of Saddam and death to Americans or those who work with Americans. A silhouette of Saddam's head often accompanied these slogans. Our initial actions were simply to paint bayonets stuck in the Saddam heads, some even adorned with blood spurts or an eyeball popping out. We also added the financial news that a $25 million reward awaited those who brought him in dead or alive.

Seeing that we began to stir a hornet's nest of sorts, we upgraded our information campaign—thanks to SPC Haggerty—with neat stencils and Arabic writing attesting to the same theme as before. We will not allow the enemy to win even the slightest advantage—not even graffiti.

To keep the enemy from returning to his venomous themes on the wall, we target them, sending sniper bullets nearby as a warning. We also have wrapped concertina wire around one major sign along the main street and placed magnesium trip flares within the wire—so if they pull the wire away to alter our handiwork, they get the scare of their lives. Since our graffiti campaign started, we are beginning to see more and more people just cleaning all of it off their walls or replacing it with paintings or professional signs.

Curiosity Killed the Cat

By the 12th of July we saw a couple of Iraqis who work with us being targeted by hostile forces. The attacks came more as threat vs. action but some improvised explosives were thrown at people's farms. In one case, a Pepsi bomb sizzled on a sparkly arc into a man's courtyard and rolled to a stop. His curious cat spotted it and immediately pounced after it, paw raised for action, just as it detonated. I guess the old saying is true after all.

Constant movement and action from our task force characterized the days that followed. We planned, assembled, raided, exploited, reassembled, and set up again for the next operation. An area to the east of the Tigris, known for its love of mortars and a willingness to use them, was the initial focus of our operations.

As our soldiers moved through the farms and fields on a wide area, we noticed the little things that cause us to look closely at an area. Before too long, the farms and fields yielded a bounty of a different kind. Soldiers with minesweepers and shovels soon harvested rifles, weapons, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers with their evil projectiles. Farmers claiming their innocence could not explain the weapons or their lack of leathery hands and feet that betrayed their true profession. Now they are unemployed.

Our operations continued with our mechanized Infantry delivered to their objectives in Bradleys, trucks, V-hulled boats, and helicopters. We remain versatile and the impact on the morale of the soldiers is manifestly positive—many of them having never used these methods before at Ft. Hood or in their careers. But I see them as Infantry and will employ them by the best means to get the mission accomplished. And accomplish it they do.

The impact on the enemy has been measurable and we continue to hurt him. He must learn that he cannot sustain his operations, be as flexible, match his will against ours, or defeat our forces. Further, he clearly lacks the popular support of his own population. What a reminder of how we must maintain the support of our citizens at home and, with God's help, nothing will alter the certain outcome.

But the enemy did attempt to strike back, and characteristically, in a most cowardly way. Not only does he hide behind his women and children, engaging us from multifamily dwellings, he also attempts to kill those who cooperate with us—including those who are older and indefensible.

One such target was a man who worked with our forces since our arrival. He was the one who owned the curious cat. On the 14th, he was visiting his son's auto-parts shop in Tikrit. A group of four men came into the shop and began to threaten and argue with the fifty-five-year-old man. Weapons were soon exposed. The man pulled a pistol and fired at the attackers to ward them off.

He quickly emptied his pistol, and being out of ammo, was surrounded and shot once point-blank in the head and twice in the chest. His two sons came running to his aid, one with an AK-47, which he promptly emptied into the man that had just killed his father. He then used the rifle to club another man senseless. His older brother—armed with a hammer—nailed away at the head of another man. The engagement effectively was over and some of them got away. Nothing could bring back the father.

Two days before he died, this man gave us information about a village to the north of Tikrit. We used it to target a series of selected farms and maneuvered our forces by tank, Bradley, truck, scout humvee, and even boats in the Tigris River, as the village abutted its banks. Within four hours, our men had unearthed over 250 AK-47 rifles, 56 crates of Composition 4 (C-4 plastic explosives) each weighing fifty pounds, 8 crates of blasting caps for the explosive (25,000 in all), surveillance equipment, and a variety of military goods and wares. The men felt proud to at least discover something to honor his death, although we were all very saddened by the loss of this poor, older, honest, and decent man. Their numbers are too few in this godforsaken place to lose even one.

But one more we did lose—a local national translator. He was a simpleminded and humble man in his forties who had a knack for the bottle and one night drifted away from his dwelling. When his body was discovered floating in the Tigris River, having lodged in our military float bridge, we noticed signs of struggle and a severe beating. No doubt he was rolled into the river to finish the attack on his life.

Saddam's Anniversary

The enemy did attempt attacks on us as well in his grandiose return on the much-vaunted 17th of July—the day Saddam came to power and a former holiday in the old regime. Every Iraqi believed that Saddam's loyalists might return and defeat the Americans on this anniversary.

We first learned of the enemy's activity in Tikrit when he spread rumors that the U.S. forces had imposed a curfew banning all movement on the day of the 17th. We noticed on the evening of the 16th that many of the shops were closing early. We asked the locals why and soon learned of the rumor.

We immediately countered with bullhorns and translators telling the people that the 17th was a normal day and they could move freely as they were now a free people. The cheers and applause that greeted these messages could be readily heard above the bullhorns. That the message got out was obvious when the city was teeming with normal activity on the 17th.

That evening, however, the enemy attempted to be teeming himself. At 2350 hours on the 17th, I moved about the city in my humvee convoy with a five-ton truck to collect curfew violators for a ready labor force to clean off graffiti. As we cruised around southern Tikrit near the Women's College, also known as “RPG Alley,” we once again confirmed why we gave it this label. Making a right turn, we heard the
whoosh
and
bang
of RPGs, fired by attackers who did not anticipate our change of direction. The sound an RPG makes upon contact is best described as sounding like a Dumpster dropped from a fifty-story building. The volley struck in a prong with the left fork heading near an observation post atop the Women's College and the right fork just barely missing our vehicles because we turned right instead of heading straight.