Thunder Run (28 page)

Wright was in the commanders' hatch of his Bradley, parked atop the overpass, with the enemy on all four sides. From the north, gunmen were firing from a mosque, supplied with weapons and ammunition from outbuildings inside the mosque compound. From the south, RPG teams were unleashing grenades from three-story buildings. From the east, soldiers were shooting from a forest of palm trees. And from the southwest, a mob of fighters backed by a heavy machine gun mounted on a pickup was advancing on the interchange. Suicide vehicles were speeding down the access roads, trying to penetrate the perimeter.

Two of Wright's three platoon sergeants had been wounded, and two engineers had gone down with shrapnel wounds. A gunner was hit with a ricochet. An infantryman dragging a wounded enemy soldier to safety was hit in the wrist and stomach. Every tank and Bradley was tattooed with small arms and shrapnel. The TOW missile launcher on one Bradley was destroyed by an RPG. Two more Bradleys had their coax guns go down, ruptured by shrapnel. One of the tanks lost the use of its main gun.

With the help of mortars fired by the crews at Curly, Wright was holding his own. But Wright's tank and Bradley crews were beginning to run low on rounds. They had already “cross-leveled” ammunition—trading coax, tank rounds, and .50-caliber ammunition back and forth. From the perimeter, the track commanders radioed Wright to tell him they were now going amber on both ammunition and fuel.

Then the mortars stopped. Wright got an urgent call from Lieutenant Josh Woodruff, the mortar platoon commander at Curly. Woodruff sounded apologetic. He felt terrible, he said, but he could no longer provide mortar support. He hand-fired every last round—his entire allotment of 240 mortar shells. He was black—completely dry.

Wright radioed Twitty. He tried to give a precise and nuanced report, neither overstating nor understating his predicament. Wright and Twitty were comfortable working together, and Twitty felt he knew how to read the captain. When Wright mentioned that he was considering collapsing his perimeter as a way to help the tanks conserve fuel, Twitty knew the situation was serious. He asked Wright how long he could continue to fight without fresh supplies of fuel and ammunition. Wright answered quickly: a few more hours.

Twitty realized that the time had come for him to make a decision on fuel and ammunition. It would take a while to get the supplies all the way up to Captain Wright at Moe. Twitty had expected his combat teams to fight to keep Highway 8 open for the resupply convoy. He had not expected that they would also be fighting just to survive. The brigade could not afford to lose any of the three interchanges, but Moe was particularly crucial. If Captain Wright were overrun, the enemy would pour through the spaghetti interchange and hammer Rogue and Tusker from the rear—and the two tank battalions would be cut off from the fuel and ammunition supply.

Twitty called Captain Ronny Johnson at Curly. Johnson had just fought his way up the highway to Curly from the brigade operations center. He was now in charge of the entire combined combat team. Twitty wanted to get his sense of the threat level along that stretch of Highway 8. Johnson gave him an honest answer. It was hot, he told him—extremely hot.

Twitty also requested a fresh update on the fighting at Curly.

“Sir,” Johnson said, “what I can tell you is, it's not as intense a fight as it was an hour ago but we're still in a pretty good fight here.”

Twitty asked to hear from Command Sergeant Major Gallagher. He asked Gallagher whether he thought the fuel and ammunition trucks could survive the gauntlet of RPG and recoilless rifle fire on the highway.

“Boss,” Gallagher said, “we can get 'em through. I'm not going to tell you we can get 'em through without risk, but we can get 'em through.”

Twitty signed off and put the radio down. He lowered his head. He had to make a decision. And whatever he decided, American soldiers were going to die. He knew it. They would die at one of the interchanges, where they would be overrun if they weren't resupplied. Or they would die on the resupply convoy trying to fight its way up Highway 8.

Twitty picked up the radio and called his executive officer. “All right,” he said. “We're going to execute.”

Just before the missile exploded inside the TOC compound, Captain Aaron Polsgrove had been sitting on top of his Humvee with his helmet off. He was relaxing, enjoying the warm weather after a long cold night, and marveling at the fact that American soldiers were bearing down on Baghdad just two weeks after leaving Kuwait. His Humvee was parked on the dusty shoulder of Highway 8, a few hundred meters west of the TOC compound, a complex of dull beige buildings set against a swaying backdrop of tall green date palms.

Polsgrove was twenty-six, a native of Louisville, a cheerful and engaging young officer, and a devout Christian. He had joined a Christian officers' group at West Point, and he served along with Lieutenant Colonel Wesley in the Officers' Christian Fellowship. He carried a Bible with him at all times. Every day, he tried to find a few minutes of privacy in his Humvee to read the “Daily Bread” devotionals his chaplain had given him.

Polsgrove was the support platoon leader, in charge of keeping the fuel and ammunition trucks intact and moving as a unit. They were lined up behind him now on the highway shoulder, engines idling. The convoy was awaiting the order to move up and resupply the China battalion combat teams at the three interchanges.

Polsgrove had not seen a lot of action on the march up from Kuwait. (His wife was videotaping hours of TV news coverage for him.) The supply convoys tended to stay to the rear, behind the combat teams. In fact, Polsgrove's support platoon had not yet conducted a resupply under fire in Iraq. But now battles were raging up Highway 8, and he wasn't sure what to expect. He had only two radios, and neither could pick up transmissions from the men in the firefights at Moe, Larry, and Curly. The radio reception was so bad, in fact, that Polsgrove's boss, Captain J. O. Bailey, had taken three vehicles from the supply convoy and moved a few kilometers north so that he could talk to the commanders at Curly and get a feel for the situation there.

Polsgrove heard what he thought was a low-flying aircraft. The sound puzzled him. He thought the plane either was on an extremely low bombing
run or was about to crash, and neither possibility made sense. Then the TOC exploded. Polsgrove saw a fireball erupt from inside the TOC compound, just over his right shoulder. He felt a blast of heat. Shards of flaming metal were raining down on the convoy. He thought they were under an artillery attack. He dove into his Humvee, put on his helmet, and reached for the radio. He had to move the convoy out of harm's way. The twenty-five-hundred-gallon fuel tankers were mobile bombs. The ammunition trucks were portable fireworks factories. A single shard of hot shrapnel could trigger a conflagration.

There were twenty-one vehicles in Polsgrove's convoy. With only two radios on hand, communicating with the driver of each vehicle was a maddening endeavor. Polsgrove had devised a series of hand signals to alert the drivers behind him to his orders. The only other radio was in his platoon sergeant's vehicle, the last one in the convoy. Polsgrove called him.

“Support Seven, this is Support Six, we're rolling,” he said. He gave a circular wave of his arm to signal the drivers behind him.

The convoy sped north on Highway 8, past the flaming TOC and its funnels of black smoke. Polsgrove radioed Captain Bailey up ahead. Bailey was unaware of the missile strike. “The brigade TOC just got hit!” Polsgrove told Bailey. “I'm moving out. It's too dangerous here.” Bailey told him to get up to his position as quickly as possible.

Bailey had managed to make radio contact with some of the officers and NCOs at the three interchanges, but he had not been able to get a clear picture of their fuel and ammunition needs. Most people were telling him they were amber. Others were red, and a couple said they were close to going black—not enough to sustain the fight. And now his support platoon was fleeing a missile hit.

Just as Polsgrove and the main body of the convoy pulled up, several mortar rounds whistled down and exploded in the barren fields at the edge of the highway. It was a nuisance, mostly, but it reinforced the sense of vulnerability that both Bailey and Polsgrove had felt all morning. They were hauling 110 tons of tank, Bradley, mortar, and small-arms ammunition and twenty thousand gallons of highly combustible JP8 fuel. One of their trailers was loaded with the engineers' mine-breaching device, a twisted sausagelike link of powerful C-4 explosive charges. And they had no armor to protect them—no tanks, no Bradleys.

The Humvee with Bailey's little group was mounted with a .50-caliber machine gun and the armored personnel carrier with him had another .50-caliber in the turret. But Bailey's own armored track had no crew-served weapon; he had only his M-16 automatic rifle. Polsgrove's twenty-one vehicles had just six crew-served guns—three .50-caliber machine guns and one MK-19 grenade launcher on four ammunition trucks, an M-240 medium machine gun on the platoon sergeant's Humvee, and a grenade launcher mounted on Polsgrove's Humvee.

Polsgrove was firing his M-16 from his Humvee, trying to hit a couple of men who appeared to be enemy mortar spotters, when three armored Humvees pulled up. They were scouts assigned to bolster security for the convoy; two of the Humvees were armed with .50-caliber machine guns and the other had a grenade launcher mounted in the turret ring on top. Polsgrove was relieved to see them. It wasn't as good as getting tanks or Bradleys, but the scouts afforded the convoy a reassuring extra dose of combat power.

Polsgrove knew one of the scouts, Sergeant First Class John Marshall. Marshall was fifty, ancient by combat standards, where many infantrymen were teenagers and most of the company commanders were still in their late twenties. Polsgrove figured Marshall was probably the oldest guy in the whole battalion. Hell, he was eleven years older than the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Twitty. Marshall had volunteered for combat duty after the September 11 terrorist attacks, even though he had a wife and children. He told people that he felt a responsibility to get involved, though seemingly he had done enough already—he had fought in the first Gulf War.

Polsgrove welcomed Marshall's combat expertise; he was a good man to have around. Marshall took enormous pride in being a scout. He was unflappable, with an even disposition. He was always smiling and pleasant, and he rarely cursed or even raised his voice. Polsgrove knew Marshall would keep his cool under fire.

Marshall joined Polsgrove in firing on the mortar spotters, squeezing off bursts from his M-16. Then Marshall called his two scout Humvees over and had the gunners open up with their .50-caliber machine guns. Polsgrove couldn't tell if they hit anything, but the mortars soon stopped. Things had calmed down considerably by the time Captain Bailey got the radio call ordering him to launch the convoy north up Highway 8.

Bailey had serious misgivings about taking a convoy of soft-skin vehicles on an exposed highway in the middle of a firefight. He knew from the radio traffic that the combat team at Curly was being pounded with RPGs and small-arms fire. He had no idea where he was going to park nearly two dozen vulnerable tankers, ammo trucks, and other vehicles at a highway interchange with ordnance flying all around. He had gotten on the radio and asked the battalion executive officer, Major Denton Knapp, to send down Bradleys to escort him. Not possible, Knapp told him. Knapp was in the middle of a ferocious firefight. The combat teams couldn't afford to give up their Bradleys at this crucial interlude, he told Bailey. Holding Curly was paramount. The resupply convoy would have to fight its way up with the help of the scout vehicles and the crew-served weapons.

Bailey didn't think he had enough firepower. His soft-skinned vehicles were easy targets. He needed Bradleys to suppress enemy fire. Bailey repeated his request, this time with a sharp edge in his voice. The answer came back from Knapp: no Bradleys. They couldn't be spared from the fight.

Frustrated and angry, and fearing the worst, Bailey reluctantly gave the order to move out.

Sergeant Marshall assigned one of his Humvees to the rear of Captain Polsgrove's column and another to the middle. He yelled at Polsgrove, asking him where the captain wanted Marhall's own Humvee. Polsgrove was an officer, but he didn't have Marshall's combat experience. He felt awkward telling a guy like Marshall how to situate himself.

“Hell, Sergeant Marshall,” he said, “you know what you're doing. You tell me where you think you need to be.”

Marshall thought for a moment and said, “Sir, scouts lead the way.

I'll take the front.”

It was the first time since Polsgrove's unit crossed into Iraq more than two weeks earlier that the captain was not in the lead vehicle. But he deferred to Marshall. The sergeant knew what he was doing. Polsgrove pulled his Humvee behind Marshall's.

There was a brief moment of confusion just before they pulled out, right as Marshall was telling his scouts to mount up. There was nobody in the gunner's mount of Marshall's vehicle.

Earlier that morning, Marshall had pulled the regular gunner, Specialist Kenneth Krofta, because Krofta was worn out. He had been up all night escorting medical vehicles that were transporting the three soldiers
wounded during the mortar attack on China battalion near the TOC. Marshall had said to Krofta, “Hey, Big Time”—he called everybody Big Time—“get in the back and get some rest.” Krofta had protested. His birthday was on the sixth, and he told Marshall he wanted to celebrate by firing the grenade launcher as they rode into Baghdad on the seventh.

“That's right, Big Time, hog all the glory,” Marshall had said, and he insisted that Krofta stay off the weapon and rest. Krofta and Marshall had a special kinship because both men loved the grenade launcher, and both were quite accomplished on the weapon. Krofta was just twenty-two, a short, thin scout with a wispy blond mustache. He thought of Marshall as a grandfather figure, though he didn't dare tell him that.