War Stories (20 page)

      
Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait

      
Friday, 21 March 2003

      
2300 Hours Local

Griff and I are preparing for a live feed for the 5 p.m. (EST) FOX News Channel broadcast and have our satellite transceiver set up outside the squadron ready room tent. And finally, as the first full day of war comes to an end, we have a chance to get a clear picture of what's been happening.

CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar reports that the Iraqi 51st Mechanized Division has collapsed, yielding more than eight thousand enemy prisoners of war, and for the first time an Iraqi division commander and his deputy have personally surrendered. On the far right, the British 7th Armoured Division is on the outskirts of Basra. The U.S. Marines' RCT-7 has captured all of the crucial oil infrastructure targets in the vicinity of Az Zubayr, and 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines along with a company from 1st Tank Battalion have
subdued Safwan. Farther west, RCT-5 has seized all of their objectives intact, including the six major GOSPs and the Ar Rumaylah oil fields. And on the far-left flank of the I-MEF advance, RCT-1 has raced more than fifty kilometers across the desert and is already just south of Jalibah.

As before, dozens of Marines of all ranks are gathered around us to watch huge explosions rock the enemy capital on our TV. When FOX newsman David Asman, whose son is serving with Task Force (TF) Tarawa, informs us that the Army's 3rd Infantry Division has advanced sixty miles into Iraq, there are cheers. The only bad news: Two more U.S. Marines—a second lieutenant with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines and a corporal from 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines—have been killed in action. And there is one other unpleasant item: The missiles missed. Saddam is still alive.

CHAPTER FIVE

RUNNING THE GAUNTLET ON BLOODY SUNDAY

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #12

      
RCT-5 Command Post

      
10 km north of Ur, Iraq, south of the Euphrates River

      
Saturday, 22 March 2003

      
2300 Hours Local

I
t's been a very long day for the pilots, aircrews, and medical corpsmen of HMM-268. Our two birds have now been “on station” for more than twenty-four hours, and these guys have been flying for most of it. The pilots have taken to napping in the cockpits while the rest of us—crew chiefs, gunners, corpsmen, and the two-man FOX News Channel team—doze on the troop seats and litters in the back of the helicopters, catching sleep in brief snatches.

Our two haze-gray CH-46 helicopters are parked directly behind the 5th Marines Regimental Command Post, a hastily erected tent and camouflage net thrown up over two back-to-back LVTC-7s (Landing Vehicle, Tracked, Command). This is Col. Joe Dunford's “Alpha” Command Group. A mirror-image “Bravo” Command Group is leapfrogging ahead of us with the lead battalions of RCT-5. Once
“Bravo” finds a good site, Col. Dunford will displace forward. He has moved his CP five times in the last twenty-four hours as the 5th Marines roared up Route 8 and then up Route 1, past the recently discovered ancient ruins of Ur—the birthplace of Abraham. But we didn't take the time to visit.

Throughout the last twenty-four hours, contact with the enemy has been remarkably light, as have the friendly casualties. It's pretty clear that the speed at which the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is moving has taken the Iraqis very much by surprise. Though we've had a lot of cas-evac missions, they have all been routine, many for wounded Iraqi EPWs (enemy prisoners of war). Best of all, none of the zones have been “hot.”

Alongside the highway, there are scores of oil-filled ditches, called “flame trenches.” Apparently the Iraqis abandoned their positions before these could be set afire, since only a few have been blazing, spewing black smoke into the sky as we fly over or drive by in the Marine convoys. There are also hundreds of revetments for armored vehicles that the Iraqis had dug with bulldozers—nearly all of which are empty. In places where they did succeed in placing a tank or armored vehicle in a revetment, the enemy equipment is now a smoldering wreck, hit by F-18s, AV-8s, Cobra Gunships, or in some cases by fire from Marine M-1 Abrams tanks or the 25mm Bushmasters on their LAVs.

It's now becoming a ritual: Every time we land, even if for a few minutes, day or night, Griff and I rush out the back of our respective helicopters to find a Humvee, truck, tank, or armored vehicle to set up and plug in our equipment. With the help of a crusty Marine master sergeant, “Comms Chief,” we have jury-rigged a power inverter—that converts 24 volt DC to 110 volt, 60 cycle, AC—through a “pigtail” plug so that we can connect to almost any Marine vehicle and power our broadcast equipment.

While one of us sets up the satellite antenna and hooks up the power, the other positions the camera and connects it to the audio-video link on the satellite transceiver. And instantly we're surrounded by Marines of every rank who are hungry for news of what's happening elsewhere in the war—waiting to catch a glimpse of our FOX News Channel satellite feed on the small monitor.

They aren't alone. A correspondent embedded with a combat unit has anything but the “big picture” of what's going on in the war. That perspective may be possible for reporters at a major headquarters facility like CENTCOM, I-MEF, or the U.S. Army's V Corps, but in a ground combat unit or a front-line helicopter squadron, one sees only a very narrow slice of the war. What's happening just a few miles away might as well be in another solar system. Other than occasional opportunities to stick my head inside the CP tent and look at the operations map or sit in on a commander's briefing, my best sources of information on how the war is going elsewhere are the live reports from other embedded correspondents. While we wait to go on the air, Griff and I watch, just like the Marines, as FOX News Channel correspondents Greg Kelly, with the 3rd Infantry Division, and Rick Leventhal, embedded with the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, describe what's happening with their units.

That's how we learn that the 3rd Infantry Division has been racing through the desert—well off to our west—spearheading the main attack for the U.S. Army's V Corps. Supported from the air by USAF B-2s, B-52s, F-117s, A-10s, F-15s, F-16s, and their own Apache attack helicopters, the 3rd Infantry Division is aiming straight for the southern approaches to Baghdad and pressing hard against Saddam's Republican Guard Medina division.

But earlier this evening, a raid by thirty-two Apaches of the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment went seriously awry. Dispatched after dark to attack elements of the Medina division, the Apaches ran into
a terrible barrage of anti-aircraft and small-arms fire that damaged nearly every aircraft participating in the attack. Worst of all, the Iraqis managed to capture one of the downed aircrews.

While Greg Kelly's reports give us an idea of how things are going with the U.S. Army drive off to the west, Rick Leventhal, our FOX News Channel correspondent with the Marines' 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, has been filling in the gaps on what we know about the rest of I-MEF Supporting Attack. Once Iraq's southern oil fields, GOSPs, and distribution facilities were secured, the primary mission for 1st, 5th, and 7th Regimental Combat Teams and Task Force Tarawa was to threaten Baghdad from the southeast. Thus far there has been far less opposition than expected.

Before dawn, the sixty-thousand-strong Marine Air-Ground Task Force completes its first task of the war—securing Iraq's crucial oil infrastructure in the south. The British 3rd Commando Brigade is now in control of the waterborne approaches to Basra, and the British 7th Armored Division and 16th Air Assault Brigade have successfully isolated Basra from the north.

By first light this morning, all three of the 1st Marine Division's Regimental Combat Teams—the 1st, 5th, and 7th—have reoriented themselves and are on the move to accomplish their second objective: closing as fast as possible on Baghdad's eastern approaches. Moving with them is Task Force Tarawa, a Marine Expeditionary Brigade built around the 2nd Marine Regiment from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. As soon as the Iraqi oil infrastructure is secured, TF Tarawa charges across the desert to seize the Iraqi air force base at Jalibah.

By the time darkness obscures the dust raised by thousands of constantly moving Marine vehicles, TF Tarawa is just outside the Shi'ite holy city of An Nasiriyah—a critical road junction and crossing point on the Euphrates. Further to the west, RCT-1 had driven hard across the desert and closed up on RCT-5 and RCT-7, which are spread out along Route 1 and farther south on Route 8.

As soon as the air base at Jalibah is in U.S. hands, the 3rd Marine Air Wing establishes a Forward Arming and Refueling Point (FARP) on the roadside, turning highways into runways, and begins cycling in C-130s loaded with fuel, ordnance, and equipment. Nearby, an Army shock-trauma hospital has been erected in a matter of hours to provide immediate lifesaving surgery for the severely wounded. FARPs are being built all along the route to Baghdad, and the Marines are naming them after America's Major League Baseball parks.

Just before nightfall this evening I fly on an “armed recon” back down Route 1 aboard a UH1N from HMLA-267. The pilots have been told to reconnoiter out along the flanks of the two I-MEF columns and look for signs of enemy activity. As my camera rolls on the Cobra gunships escorting our flight back to the RCT-5 CP, I can see below us an awesome sight: tens of thousands of I-MEF troops, weapons, and vehicles poised for a two-pronged attack to the northwest.

Columns of RCT-1 and TF Tarawa armor stretch north from the intersection of Routes 1, 7, and 8 to nearly the outskirts of An Nasiriyah. Farther east, RCT-5 and RCT-7 are lined up prepared for their push up Route 1.

As far as we can see, the desert floor is covered with U.S. and British troops and military equipment. The breathtaking array of tanks, light armored vehicles, trucks, amphibious assault vehicles, Humvees, artillery pieces, rocket launchers, portable bridging, and engineer equipment goes on as far as the eye can see. But other than a handful of wrecked Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles and a few flaming oil trenches with plumes of black smoke belching into the sky, there is no sign of the enemy—as we will duly report on our return.

Shortly after dark we get the word that the general commanding the Iraqi 51st Mechanized Division and his deputy walked up to some Marines in an AAV (Amphibious Assault Vehicle) and surrendered. Their division of Iraqi Shi'ite and Kurdish conscripts had vanished and the division simply ceased to exist—thus explaining the
absence of enemy activity in the immediate area.

Hopeful that we won't have to move again before dawn, Griff and I wolf down an MRE and set up our equipment in the dark, preparing for our nightly “hit” on
Hannity & Colmes
. As usual, once the tiny video transceiver locks into New York's signal, those who want to catch up on the war news surround us.

For those of us watching from Iraq, there is a telling difference between the reports coming from embedded journalists over here and the armchair admirals, barroom brigadiers, and sound-bite “special forces” pontificating about the war from New York, Atlanta, Washington, and London. The journalists traveling with the coalition forces seem to be presenting a straightforward account of what's been happening—though many seem honestly amazed at how good the American soldiers, sailors, and Marines are at the work of war.

Thus far, the embedded reporters I've seen have been emphasizing the military prowess of the coalition forces, the pinpoint accuracy of the precision-guided bombs and missiles, and the minimal casualties and collateral damage inflicted upon Iraqi civilians. Several of the embedded journalists seem genuinely surprised at the humanity and compassion of coalition troops who go out of their way—often at great personal risk—to care for Iraqi civilians, enemy prisoners, and wounded combatants.