War Stories (26 page)

When we arrive back at the highway, one of the RCT-5 medical officers, a Navy doctor assigned to the 5th Marines, examines the child. One of the human exploitation team translators explains to the father that the child needs to have the bone set and a cast applied.

The Navy doctor and a corpsman administer a mild painkiller, set the broken bone, and apply a fiberglass cast. While all this is being done, the father and the human exploitation team translator carry on a lively conversation. After the father and son leave, the doc asks what was said.

“That man was a soldier until last week,” the translator replies. “He deserted from his unit just north of Basra and came back here to his wife and son. His father is the head man in the village. Last night three fedayeen arrived and started pushing people around. This guy
hid out on his roof because the word is out that the foreigners are shooting deserters. One of the ‘big brave fedayeen' pushed the little kid off the roof and that's how he broke his arm. This morning, when the fedayeen guy on the roof took his RPG potshot at the armor moving up the highway, the tank shot back and killed him. The other two panicked and took off across the fields on their motorcycles. End of story—except that this Iraqi father now says they all owe us big-time and if we ever need anything, just ask. I'll pass it on to the S-2 and the guys from the agency the next time they swing by.”

As the translator finishes the story, there is a muffled explosion from the direction of the little village. Instantly, someone yells “Incoming!” but it sounds more like a grenade to me. I stand up and look toward the village, and about 150 meters down the dirt track leading to the cluster of houses there lay what looks like a heap of laundry. Over it hovers a cloud of dust. A couple of Marines start to run toward the scene but are halted by the shouted command, “Stop! Mines!”

It takes more than fifteen minutes for the Marines, the doctor, and his corpsmen, cautiously probing every step of the way, to get to the bodies. I didn't go. I've seen too much fresh death. When they returned the doctor says, with tears in his eyes, “That little boy whose arm I just mended died in his father's arms when the dad stepped on a land mine.”

Both the father and his four-year-old son were killed by an Italian land mine planted by a Saudi terrorist fighting to keep Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in power. It all seems totally irrational, and it reminds me of the expression that my Marines in Vietnam had used for such deaths. They'd have said the Iraqi father and his son had been “wasted.” And they'd have been right.

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #18

      
With HMLA-267

      
Ranging south of Ad Diwaniyah, Hantush, Iraq

      
Thursday, 27 March 2003

      
2350 Hours Local

A half an hour or so after the bodies of the dead father and son were taken away by their family members, Maj. John Ashby, the XO of HMLA-267, asked if I wanted to go with him on an “admin” flight to bring Brig. Gen. John Kelly, the assistant commander of the 1st Marine Division, over to Qal' at Sukkar, about 110 kilometers east on Route 7, where RCT-1 and elements of Task Force Tarawa were located. Thinking this might be a good opportunity to get some footage of other units, I grabbed my pack and camera out of the CH-46 and jumped aboard the armed UH1N “chase bird” that was accompanying the Huey with the general aboard. Two Cobras lifted with us from the landing zone adjacent to the RCT-5 and 1st Marine Division CPs.

The flight east was uneventful, since we stayed well south of the villages along Route 17, the east-west highway connecting the two prongs of the 1st Marine Division attack. Despite the pronouncements of the armchair admirals and barroom brigadiers pontificating from air-conditioned studios in New York, Washington, and Atlanta, the abysmal weather had slowed the attack north but hadn't stopped it. The lead elements of RCT-1 were less than fifty miles from Al Kut and ready to attack north to force a crossing of the Tigris. And 110 kilometers to the west, RCT-5 and RCT-7 were closed up on Route 1, and the Iraqis couldn't tell whether they would veer left up Route 8 past Babylon or hook a right at Route 27 to cross the Tigris at An Numaniyah. To those of us on the ground, it appeared that the slow but steady movement during the sandstorm had confused not only the Iraqis but the “military analysts” back in the States as well.

As we flew south of Route 17 toward Qal' at Sukkar, the Cobras roamed off to our north. On two occasions they attacked Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles in revetments but took no ground fire in return. Even in the several sizable towns along Route 17, there were no signs of any major Iraqi units that could oppose the Marines using the “hardball” highway as a logistics corridor.

When we landed at Qal' at Sukkar, Gen. Kelly went immediately to meet with Col. Joe Dowdy, the RCT-1 commander. I stayed at the LZ, talking with the pilots and aircrews while the Cobras rearmed and refueled and our UH1N took on fuel. One of the officers in this squadron is the son of one of my closest friends. Capt. Allen Grinalds's father, John, a much respected, retired major general, is now the president of the Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina. But Allen is already making a reputation of his own as a Cobra pilot. One of the younger officers in the squadron told me “Captain Grinalds is the best instructor I've ever had.”

Our “bull session” was interrupted by a call for the Cobras to launch in support of a 1st Marines Company engaged with an Iraqi unit east of Route 7. They took off in a cloud of dust.

Gen. Kelly returned for his flight back to the 1st Marine Division CP. This time he had with him two old friends: Maj. Gen. Ray Smith, USMC (Ret.), and Francis “Bing” West, also a former Marine and an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration. We all served as small unit leaders in Vietnam and I have known and admired both these old warriors for years. Ray is one of the most decorated Marines alive and has a well-deserved reputation as a “warrior's warrior.” Bing West was at the Pentagon while I was on the NSC staff at the White House and he is now a bestselling writer.

Kelly, Smith, and West board the lead bird, and we take off to retrace the route west along Route 17, heading back to the 1st Marine Division CP. As we turn into the afternoon sun, I hear in my headset
the pilots in the two helicopters discussing whether they should wait for the Cobra escort. When they get the word that it would take at least another hour to get the Cobras back from their mission, rearmed, and refueled, the decision is made to proceed unescorted.

That's not as dangerous as it might seem. These aren't “slicks”—birds without guns. Both UH1Ns have door-mounted, .50-caliber XM2 machine guns, and the one I'm in also has a pod loaded with 2.75-inch rockets and a GAU-17, 7.62mm mini-gun that looks like a Gatling gun hanging out the right side. When we hear that we were returning unescorted, the crew chief says, “No sweat, Colonel. This isn't your father's Oldsmobile! We can take care of ourselves.”

But this time, instead of staying over the largely unpopulated terrain south of Route 17, we fly almost right down the hardball at fifty to seventy-five feet, clipping along at ninety to one hundred knots. I have my video camera out on my lap as we follow the bird with Gen. Kelly, Gen. Smith, and Bing West aboard. Unlike the mud huts and single-level structures south of here, these houses are nearly all multistory and they all seem to have electricity. Because we're fifty to a hundred meters behind the lead helicopter, we can spot people running out of their homes to see what's making the racket. Kids come out and wave—and from the back of our bird, the gunner and crew chief wave back.

I'm sitting on a troop seat in the center of the bird, following our course along Route 17 and have just marked our location on my map, “Al Budayr,” when I hear through my headphones, “We're taking fire!” I look up from my map to see the lead bird jinking left and right as green tracers just miss the left side of the helicopter. The VIP bird with Kelly, Smith, and West aboard rolls left as its machine gun unleashes a burst almost straight down at the weapon on the ground that had just fired at their helicopter.

By now I've grabbed my camera and am holding it over Maj. Ashby's head, aiming it forward through the windscreen. Through the
viewfinder I can see five or six men wearing what look like black pajamas, running out of a two-story building carrying AK-47s. Across the street from the building there is an unmanned ZSU-23mm dual-mount anti-aircraft gun, but none of them run toward it. Instead, they appear transfixed by the lead helicopter screaming directly over their heads.

As the lead helicopter swoops hard left out of our line of fire, Ashby says over the intercom, “Arming rockets. Stand by.” His voice is cool as ice, flat, unexcited, as if he were ordering lunch over the phone as he flicks a red switch on the console. Through the viewfinder on the little camera, I can see several of the Iraqis kneel down and fire at the lead bird as it passes over them. They still haven't seen us. But then, just as Ashby tilts our UH1N into a shallow dive from 150 feet, one of the black-clad shooters spots us. As he wheels to aim at our helicopter, I hear Ashby say calmly, “Firing rockets.”

On the tape, there is a roar as three of the 2.75-inch rockets ripple out of the pod on the left side of our helicopter. Although I don't recall being startled by the sound, the camera jerks as if I had been and then quickly focuses back on the trajectory of the three deadly missiles. The three rockets Ashby selected are fleschette rounds—each warhead contains thousands of tiny metal darts set to detonate twenty feet from the target. They perform as advertised, and puffs of red smoke from all three erupt over the Iraqis. The videotape shows them being cut down in an instant by the shower of steel. The bird pulls up and hard left, the g-force pushing me back in my seat, the camera pointing off at a crazy angle, and Ashby's voice comes over the intercom: “And they all fall down.” No euphoria, no pleasure, no sadness, simply a statement of fact.

When we landed at the 1st Marine Division CP to drop off Gen. Kelly, I intended to grab Ray Smith and Bing West and get an interview on tape of their reactions to being nearly shot down. But I notice
as we land that the four CH-46s from HMM-268 that had been there when I left on the Huey several hours before are gone. One of the Marines at the fuel point—another one of the unsung heroes of the war for their tireless work at all hours of the day and night—tells me that the CH-46s had displaced forward with Col. Dunford's command group while I was gone.

Since it is nearly dark, I abandon the effort to track down Smith and West and hike up to Route 1 to hitch a ride forward, knowing that my only hope of getting my tape back to the FOX bureau in Kuwait is to link up with the HMM-268 detachment before they rotate helos in the morning. About two hundred meters up the hardball highway I found a 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines artillery convoy of six 155mm howitzers and about twenty ammunition trucks, interspersed with armed Humvees, LAVs, and four tanks formed up and about to head north on Route 1. The convoy commander, a captain, offers me a ride in his Humvee. Not one to lead from the rear, he's positioned right behind the lead tank. As soon as I strap my pack on the back of his vehicle, we're off in a cloud of dust and diesel smoke, accompanied by the sound of tank treads, screeching and grumbling on their road wheels.

We head up the highway, averaging at least twenty-five kilometers per hour. Between taking and making calls on his encrypted PRC-119 FM radio, the captain informs me that they will be setting up their tubes directly behind the RCT-5 CP, so I shouldn't have any trouble finding the CH-46s with Joe Dunford's command group. As we're riding up the road he notices that I'm jotting notes with my left hand and says I ought to give lessons to Capt. Jason Frei, “A” Battery commander, 1st Battalion, 11th Marines. Frei lost his right hand to an RPG that struck his Humvee when his artillery convoy was ambushed in An Nasiriyah. “That isn't going to happen to us tonight,” the captain explains. “We've got you along.”