War Stories (30 page)

With that, I shut off the TV and set my Iridium pager for 0300 so that I can be halfway awake for
Hannity & Colmes
in an hour. As I doze off, I can hear the sound of armor moving down the road a
hundred meters to the west, headed in the direction of the Tigris. Overhead, there is the sound of a predator UAV and, well off in the distance, the rumble of a fixed-wing air strike headed toward Baghdad. My story of how the Marines fooled the Iraqis about the route they had chosen to invade Saddam's capital would have to wait.

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #23

      
With HMM-268

      
North of the Tigris with RCT-5

      
Wednesday, 2 April 2003

      
2330 Hours Local

By the time we finish our “evening” report on
Hannity & Colmes
it is 0430 local and too late to go back to sleep. Dawn is just an hour away, and Col. Dunford's command group is already stirring. Troops of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines (2/5) and 2nd Tank Battalion have been moving for more than two hours, passing through 1st Battalion's lines and headed for the Tigris, just a dozen kilometers north of the Saddam Canal bridgehead that 1/5 seized at last light yesterday. RAP rounds from the artillery are chasing each other across the starlit sky as Griff and I head for a cup of coffee. Gunnery Sgt. Cheramie, Col. Dunford's tough, faithful right arm, almost always has a hot cup available somewhere and I'm in need of one.

As we arrive at the RCT-5 CP—a tent has now been set up to allow the watch officers to plot the course of the attack on their acetate-covered maps—a call comes in for a cas-evac. Two Marines have been wounded by RPG fire. We head back to the birds. A runner from the CP beats us, and by the time we get there, two of the four helos are getting ready to launch. But as we're about to board—me on one helicopter, Griff on the other—one of the crew chiefs informs us that the birds aren't coming back here. “Sir, they're taking the
casualties all the way back to the rear,” he shouts to us above the sound of the helos spooling up. This means they'll be taken to Kuwait.

The thought of missing the Marines' crossing of the Tigris is inconceivable to me, and so we stay behind. This would be the only cas-evac mission of the entire war that we would miss.

A little over an hour later we are back at the CP when the call comes in from the 2nd Tank Battalion that they had battled their way through An Numaniyah—a city of some seventy-five thousand people—and are firing at Iraqi armor across the Tigris. Col. Dunford, who couldn't have had more than an hour's sleep, is sitting on a folding camp stool with a radio handset pressed against his ear.

The Iraqis caught completely by surprise at the Marine advance up Route 27 have failed to destroy the heavy span over the Tigris at An Numaniyah. Though he has to be exhausted, Dunford is patiently talking to his tank battalion commander as if chatting on the phone with an old friend. No bravado. No tough talk. No BS. Just two warriors who respect each other, knowing the lives of their men hung in the balance if they make the wrong decision.

As the sun crests the horizon on his right, Lt. Col. Mike Oehle, the CO of 2nd Tank Battalion, can see the Iraqis on the far side of the Tigris through the thermal sights of his M-1 tank. The enemy has a handful of T-72s, some BMPs, and dug-in infantry with RPGs. Oehle's unit has already taken some RPG hits coming through the city, but his command is intact, and so is the massive concrete-and-steel span across the muddy Tigris. Incredible as it seems, the Iraqis still have not blown the bridge.

Upstream, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, Lt. Col. Pete Donohue—one of Dunford's so-called Irish Mafia—is thrashing around in the mud with his LAVs and AAVs, looking for an undefended ford where a pontoon span can be put down. Dunford wants the option just in case the bridge at An Numaniyah is unusable by the
seventy-two–ton behemoths of Oehle's 2nd Tank Battalion.

Crossing the Tigris on the concrete bridge at An Numaniyah is a terrible risk. The threat of being cut off by a superior force on the other side is very real. So too is the possibility that the Iraqis might have the bridge registered by artillery with high explosives or even chemical weapons. Dunford asks Mike Oehle if he thinks the bridge can be taken. Oehle says, “We can do it.”

An hour later, after a brief but furious fight supported by Cobra gunships, the bridge is in American hands and the lead elements of 2nd Tank Battalion have crossed the Tigris. In the battle through An Numaniyah and across the bridge, Oehle has lost just one of his M-1 tanks, and the crew has survived. Still, nearly all his remaining tanks are scarred by RPG hits—deep gouges dug out of the armor plate, and gear strapped to the turrets blackened by fire—yet otherwise unscathed. But Oehle's tankers have also expended hundreds of rounds of main gun ammunition and nearly all of their .50-caliber and 7.62mm. Before he can press on to consolidate the bridgehead, he has to rearm and refuel.

By mid-afternoon, Donahue's 2/5 has secured the second Tigris crossing point some twenty kilometers north of the An Numaniyah bridge, and the combined Marine/Seabee/Army combat engineers—now calling themselves the “bridgemasters”—finally get a chance to deploy the pontoon span they planned to use at the Saddam Canal. By dark, despite having to perform strenuous labor in full MOPP, minus gas masks (which remained on everyone's hips), the Marines have crushed the Baghdad division of the Republican Guard and put down a second span across the Tigris.

But night doesn't mean sleep. Under cover of darkness, Dunford pushes the rest of RCT-5 across the river, along with his log trains, so that every unit will be ready for the final sprint up Route 6 toward Baghdad in the morning. Before anyone rests, he wants his units
aligned for the attack up the highway. It is a night full of movement: Humvees, tanks, AAVs, LAVs, trucks—even the helicopters.

Fuel and ammo trucks pull alongside the “combat coils” of armor, while the “wrench turners” do their best to maintain and repair what they can before kicking off again in the attack. Not far up the road, an M-88 tank retriever is pulled up behind an M-1 Abrams tank installing a new engine—the “power pack,” they call it—while ammo is being loaded on one side and fuel pumped in from the other.

Fifty kilometers east of RCT-5, along Route 7, RCT-1 has accomplished its mission of making the Iraqis believe that the Marines intend to force a crossing at Al Kut. As night settles in over the Tigris, the regiment is preparing to break contact and race upriver to join RCT-5 and RCT-7 for the final sprint to Saddam's capital. But in none of these units is there a sense of euphoria or elation at what has been accomplished. Everyone is so tired that the historic gravity of the moment simply ebbs away in sweat and fatigue.

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #24

      
With HMM-268 and RCT-5

      
North of the Tigris, Vic Al Aziziyah

      
Thursday, 3 April 2003

      
2200 Hours Local

The word has come down from the division commander, Maj. Gen. Mattis, directly to Joe Dunford, commanding RCT-5: “Go heavy kinetic all the way to Baghdad.” Dunford isn't wasting any time on carrying out the order.

At 0645 hours local, Lt. Col. Jerry Driscoll and two replacement CH-46s arrive at the RCT-5 CP on Route 6. Marine Air Group 39 now has a contingent of four “Phrogs” from HMM-268 and two armed UH1Ns from HMLA-267—along with as many as eight to ten
AH1 Cobras in direct support of the RCT-5 attack. The air controllers have taken to calling this gaggle of helicopters “Dunford's Air Force” and it's getting a workout this morning.

Before dawn, Lt. Col. Sam Mundy's 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5), supported by a company of LAVs and a company of tanks, kicks off up Route 6 beneath a barrage of artillery. Throughout the night and early dawn, RPVs have traversed the highway, looking for enemy armor and emplacements. When found, they were hit first by the F/A-18 or AV-8 fixed-wing strikes, then artillery. Mundy has kept the Cobras for close-in work—they buzz like pairs of angry wasps up and down the highway, looking for things to shoot at. The closer 3/5 gets to Al Aziziyah, the more they find.

The first call for a cas-evac comes in a little after 0700, Driscoll launches his bird and another one piloted by Maj. Mike O'Neil to pick up three of Mundy's Marines, who have been hit by an Iraqi mortar round. As we fly up the highway, “fire trenches” burning bright orange send plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky. The roadside itself is littered with wrecked Iraqi trucks and armor, some of it still burning. The troops, with their penchant for pithy vernacular, have taken to referring to the wrecked enemy equipment as “roadkill.”

Unlike Route 27, which had been all but devoid of defenses, Route 6 has clearly been prepared for a deep defense. On both sides of the hardball highway are interconnected trench lines and numerous fire pits filled with a mixture of kerosene and crude oil. Numerous revetments have been dug with bulldozers, but relatively few contain the tanks or BMP armored personnel carriers for which they have been prepared.

As the CH-46s land on the green smoke that marks the pickup zone, my camera catches a platoon of Marines dismounted from their AAVs, all prone and all pointing outward. Directly on the nose of Driscoll's bird is an M-1, buttoned up, its turret traversing back and
forth as the gunner trolls for targets. I can see no other “friendlies” out in front, but off in the distance, perhaps two kilometers away, is the built-up area of Al Aziziyah. Smoke is rising from several multistory structures. While the litters with the wounded are loaded in the back, an F/A-18 rolls in low and drops an MK-81 one thousand pound bomb. By the time the sound of the concussion reaches us, the jet is already out of sight in the blue sky above.