Authors: Oliver North
We literally roar up the road and arrive without incident at the 5th Marines CP shortly after 2130âperhaps the fastest overland trip I've ever made in a Marine vehicle. I immediately go to find Griff and our helicopters and learn that during the few hours I have been gone, four new CH-46s have arrivedâand that Jerry Driscoll, the squadron commander, has returned with them. When I find them they are clustered around our little satellite transceiver watching FOX News Channelâand they are very angry at what they are seeing.
Throughout the Task Force Tarawa firefight in An Nasiriyah, Iraqi state television and Al Jazeera have been broadcasting gory videotape and pictures of dead American soldiers killed in the 507th Maintenance Company ambush. Even worse than the gruesome sight of American dead are shots of five American soldiers from the 507thânow prisonersâwhom the Iraqis captured last night.
At a news conference Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed claimed, “Baghdad will respect the Geneva Convention and will not harm captured American soldiers.” Yet, the very Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners that the Iraqis are citing forbids photographing or parading captives before TV cameras. Those watching on our little TV monitor are outraged.
In the dark, one of the Marines says, “This reminds me of Somalia.” He was no doubt thinking of the notorious 1993 incident in Mogadishu when an Army Delta Force and Ranger unit suffered
eighteen killed and more than seventy wounded in an event made famous in the book and movie
Black Hawk Down
.
But from what little I have been able to see of the gunfight in An Nasiriyah, it was nothing like what had happened in “Mog.” Back in 1993, the Rangers and Delta Force operators had no armor, artillery, or fixed-wing air support. A Pakistani general under UN control commanded the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) that came to their rescue more than twelve hours later. Last night's ambush of the thin-skinned army vehicles of disoriented logistics and support troopsâincluding female soldiersâof the 507th has been a disaster, no doubt. But TF Tarawa is anything but a UN QRF. The Marines in TF Tarawa are a well-trained, heavily armed, air-ground combat team that had already seen action by the night of March 23. And though the Marines had already begun referring to the highway through An Nasiriyah as “the gauntlet” or “Ambush Alley,” they responded in less than three hours, in darkness, when the 507th needed help. Unlike the situation in Somalia, TF Tarawa was able to bring to bear enormous coordinated, disciplined firepower against the regular Iraqi army and irregular forces arrayed against them inside the city. And while the aging LVT7s proved vulnerable to RPGs, French-made anti-armor rockets, and 25mm armor-piercing projectiles fired from an errant A-10 Warthog, TF Tarawa's M-1 Abrams, with their thermal sights made short work of enemy troops holed up in buildings.
Shortly after the horrific images of dead and captured Americans appeared on American television, President Bush came on TV to say, “Saddam Hussein is losing control of his country.” He also points out that the U.S.-led coalition forces are achieving their objectives, and he warns the Iraqis, “The people who mistreat U.S. prisoners of war will be treated as war criminals.”
A short while later, in Great Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair expresses his anger and displeasure at the Iraqis for televising the
American prisoners of war. He calls it a “flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention.”
Then, from CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar, Lt. Gen. John Abazid, Gen. Franks's deputy, offers a more comprehensive explanation of the engagement at a press briefing. He says that a U.S. Army supply convoy has been ambushed by Iraqi troops near An Nasiriyah, that in the encounter, several American soldiers have been hurt, and that a dozen more are missing. The CENTCOM update also notes that “Marines of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force are heavily engaged in An Nasiriyah” and that “there have been casualties.” While no numbers of killed and wounded are provided, the Marines now know that the toll to take the bridges and secure the route through An Nasiriyah has been high. And though Lt. Gen. Abazid hasn't said so, the Marines also know that one of the missing from the deadly Army convoy is a young female soldier. What we don't know until later is her name: PFC Jessica Lynch, a twenty-year-old supply clerk from the 507th Maintenance Company.
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OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #14
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With HMM-268
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Camden Yards FARP, Vic RCT-5 Command Post
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On Route 1, 40 km north of the Euphrates River
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Monday, 24 March 2003
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1800 Hours Local
We've been on the move again since dawn, leaving the cleanup of An Nasiriyah to Task Force Tarawa and RCT-1. Despite continued resistance from bands of Baathists and fedayeen inside the city, Gen. James Mattis, the 1st Marine Division commander, has decided to proceed with his original plan for a two-pronged attack north toward Baghdad. RCT-5, with RCT-7, will continue the attack up Route 1 to Ad
Diwaniyah. To our east, TF Tarawa has been given the mission of securing An Nasiriyah and its bridges so that RCT-1 can pass through and attack two hundred kilometers north, up Route 7, to seize the city of Al Kut and its airfield on the north bank of the Tigrisâscene of the great British defeat at the hands of the Turks in 1916.
By dawn this morning, Marine engineers and Seabees, working through the night without lights, put down a pontoon span over the Euphrates next to the Route 1 highway bridge in an effort to ease the congestion for units crossing the river and heading north toward Ad Diwaniyah. Even though the 5th Marines seized the concrete-and-steel highway bridge intact before the Iraqis could destroy it, only one M-1 tank at a time is being allowed to cross over the Euphrates.
The “backup” engineer span works as intended to ease the bottleneck at the Euphrates and by 1000 hours, RCT-5 is driving northâfollowed by RCT-7âup an unfinished four-lane highway designated as Route l. Cobra gunships scouting ahead of the lead tanks in our column report only sporadic contact with Iraqi units deployed in our path as the long column of tanks and armored vehicles races north past desolate marshlands on both sides of the highway.
As Col. Joe Dunford's RCT-5 Command Group leapfrogs forward, Lt. Col. Jerry Driscoll's four HMM-268 CH-46s do so as wellâeven though it means moving the birds every few hours. Each time we land, Griff and I race out of our respective helicopters to set up our broadcast equipment. By noon we've done this three times since dawn. It would seem futile since we have little to report, except that the satellite connection with FOX News Channel in New York is now our best source of information on what's happening to Brig. Gen. Rick Natonski's Task Force Tarawa in An Nasiriyah and the latest on the American MIAs and POWs from the 507th Maintenance Company.
It's midday in Iraq and we're parked at the “Pac Bell” FARP on Route 1 when we tune in for the early Monday morning news in the United States. The news is not good.
Marine casualties in An Nasiriyah have continued to mount, and the RCT-1/TF Tarawa advance toward Al Kut is stalled. And now embedded correspondents are reporting that fedayeen irregulars wearing civilian clothes are approaching coalition forces waving white flags as if to surrender, but just as they are about to be taken into custody, they pull out weapons and begin shooting. There are other reports of foreign fighters using human shields and ambulances full of explosives driven by suicidal terrorists.
In Baghdad, Saddam is apparently unfazed by continuous precision air strikesânow more than one thousand per dayâagainst his command-and-control nodes, government buildings in Baghdad, and military headquarters facilities throughout the country. Al Jazeera broadcasts continue to parrot Iraqi regime claims of massive civilian casualties inflicted by coalition forcesâand the Arabic-language satellite network persists in repeatedly airing images of the Americans captured in the 507th Maintenance Company ambush, along with new shots of two U.S. Army Apache pilots being paraded before the cameras after they were captured when their helicopter was shot down.
All this is apparently enough to drive most of the chattering class of retired generals and admirals who appear regularly on U.S. television into deep depression. Retired generals Wesley Clark, Barry McCafferey, and others are prognosticating that the war will go on for months and that horrendous U.S. casualties should be expected, because Gen. Franks had made the monumental military blunder of attacking Saddam with too small a force and inadequate “softening up” by air power before the ground offensive began. With the notable exceptions of retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom MacInerney of FOX News Channel, nearly all of the other TV networks' “senior military analysts” are predicting a long and very bloody campaign.
Perhaps encouraged by the blathering from Washington and New York, or by Saddam's financial enticements for “fellow Arabs” to join
the fight against the American and British “invaders,” or simply motivated by the desire to become martyrs in the “Islamic jihad,” a number of Arab foreigners are responding. In any event, the gory gunfight at An Nasiriyah has precipitated a wave of new volunteers for the fedayeen. They are coming by the hundreds in buses, cars, pickup trucks, and even motorcycles from Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. And because U.S. casualties from the engagement are so highâtwenty killed in action and more than ninety wounded in actionâmany of the troops who fought to open the route through “the gauntlet” at An Nasiriyah are now referring to March 23 as “Bloody Sunday.”
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OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #15