Combat and Other Shenanigans Page 11

  The weapons package is rounded out with a TOW missile launcher mounted on the left side of the turret, which is raised into position before firing. The TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided) missile can destroy armored targets more than two miles away, and because of its wire guidance system, the gunner can track moving targets, adjusting the course of the missile while it’s in flight.

  Most of this I knew already, so Wasser walked me through some of the finer details of operating on the vehicle – tips and tricks, safety measures, evacuation procedures, a quick-and-dirty run through the turret controls and gunnery techniques. I filed away as much as I could remember, and took the chance to position some of my equipment in the turret – maps and pens, laminated reports, the UAV and satellite photos of the area where the night’s raid was taking place, and my GPS unit.

  As dusk fell the following night, we loaded into the Bradleys outside Squadron headquarters, my NCOs talking to their crews, checking weapons and equipment, quizzing them on their roles in the night’s mission. On cue from Anvil 6 (Captain Black, the Anvil Troop commander), we lined up and rolled out, our long line of vehicles rumbling through the gathering dark. It was a twenty minute ride to the target area, and as we approached we received updated intelligence from Squadron HQ, who was watching a live video feed from a drone flying above the river.

  “Anvil, this is Saber X-Ray: we’re observing a large group of civilian vehicles at the target site, clustered around what appears to be a tent.”

  Our intelligence team had estimated an enemy force of up to 150 guards to protect the high level leadership that was supposedly at the meeting, and this big group of cars seemed to confirm that assessment. We made the final turn onto the peninsula where the house was located, picking up speed and switching to black-out drive, headlights off for maximum “surprise” (never mind the ungodly racket 30 tracked vehicles were making). Barnes, in the lead of our platoon, found the side road we had picked to deploy along, and we split off from the main column as Anvil Red drove into the heart of the complex. Our job was to be the outer cordon, while Anvil’s scouts cleared the buildings. As we set in place and I began marking down the locations of my different vehicles to report to Anvil X-Ray, I kept my ears open for the sound of a firefight. It was eerily quiet.

  During the first five to ten minutes of a raid, the clearing teams are generally too busy to report frequently. I learned over time to be patient and let my men work, but oftentimes headquarters would get impatient and demand an update, curious to know if the raid was successful or not. In this case, since Major Randall (the Squadron Operations Officer) was on the ground, they were more patient knowing he would be monitoring the situation closely himself. For those of us on the perimeter, though, we spent a solid 20 minutes wondering what was happening in amongst the buildings. Had we caught the insurgent leader?

  Finally, Major Randall came on the net and told me to move to his location – the main house at the center of the property. Once there, I hopped down and jogged into the house, which was being casually guarded by several Anvil Troopers. Major Randall and Captain Black were being harangued by an older man who was not at all pleased about his house being tossed by surly cavalrymen late at night. The “insurgent conference” from our intelligence report was in reality the final night of prayers following a funeral for his mother. No insurgents, no 150 guards. Major Randall saw me, politely excused himself from the old man’s diatribe, and motioned me to the side.

  “Darkhorse is reporting there’s some guy hiding in the weeds along the river just north of here. Go check it out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Outside, I hopped back onto my track, keying the net to relay the news of the raid to my platoon.

  “Green, this is … correction! Red, this is Red 1, situation report follows, over.” I was going to catch hell for that from my new platoon – after six months of calling myself “Green 1,” it had become totally reflexive. After a few sarcastic transmissions about color-blindness from several of my Bradley commanders, I gave them the update and then asked Staff Sergeant Neathery, my new wingman – Red 5, to guide his track to my location. As we moved north of the house, peering down the steep slope to the river, I switched to the Squadron frequency.

  “Any Darkhorse element, this is Bulldawg Red 1 on the Squadron net.”

  “This is Darkhorse 22, go ahead Bulldawg.” As always, the helicopter pilot’s voice sounded oddly muffled, as his microphone struggled to dampen the background noise of the rotors.

  “Roger, my 5 element and I are moving north of the objective to investigate possible insurgent hiding along the riverbank, over.”

  “This is Darkhorse 22, roger! I’ve been trying to get Anvil Troop to find this guy, but they couldn’t see him and bailed on me. I’ve got eyes on his location now, I’ll talk you in. Be advised: Darkhorse is ten minutes to ‘bingo’ on fuel, and we do not have another Air Weapons Team on standby, over.”

  In aviator terminology, “bingo” meant that their remaining fuel was only enough to return to base – it was the literal point-of-no-return for helicopters. If we didn’t find this guy in the next ten minutes, we would lose him. We stopped on the road when we reached the area Darkhorse was orbiting. With all six vehicles in the fight tonight, we had only one dismount between our two tracks, however – Sergeant Shore, one of our two platoon marksmen – so Staff Sergeant Neathery dismounted along with him, taking a dismount radio. The two of them side-stepped down the steep bank, disappearing into the thick reeds at the edge.

  “Red 1, Red 5.”

  “This is Red 1.”

  “Yeah, roger – can you have Darkhorse spotlight the guy, over?”

  I relayed his request to the pilots, who dutifully flipped on their powerful, nose-mounted spotlight, training it on the man in the water.

  “Okay, this is 5 – we’ve got eyes on him, but he’s like halfway out into the river – I don’t think we’re going to be able to get him without going swimming, over.”

  Shit. A few weeks prior, a soldier elsewhere in Iraq had drowned swimming in the Tigris, which is both deep and swift-moving. The result was that a high-level directive had just been published reminding soldiers they were not to swim for any reason, recreational or operational, while in Iraq.

  “Yeah, no swimming, 5.” I thought hard, checking my watch – seven minutes to “bingo,” and there was an excellent chance we would lose this guy for good the minute the pilots took the spotlight off him to return to base.

  My earpiece crackled to life. “Red 1, Darkhorse 22.”

  “This is Red 1.”

  “Roger, we monitor that he’s too far out of reach – we think we’ve spotted a boat about 100 meters south of your dismounts’ location.”

  Well, I thought, that safety directive hadn’t said anything about boats. It would be a clear violation of the intent of the rule, but it wasn’t technically prohibited, as far as I knew. I called Neathery.

  “Red 5, you monitor?”

  “Roger, we’re moving.”

  They found the boat, but it lacked a motor, oars, or paddles of any kind. Neathery and Shore were determined not to let Darkhorse down, however. They got the boat in the water, towed it up the bank to the area nearest the swimmer, and got in. Using the reeds, they pulled themselves close to him, but as they got farther out into the river, the current began to catch them, propelling them away from the man. They began to paddle with their hands, but could not move the boat upstream against the swift current. With their arms tiring fast, they realized they were not going to reach him, so Neathery and Shore started to point the boat back towards the bank, abandoning the man in an attempt to avoid getting swept further out into the river.

  What Darkhorse did next became something of a legend in the air troops, and cemented a close working relationship between Bulldawg and Darkhorse, which continued throughout our tour. Seeing the two scouts try so hard and come so close to success, the Darkhorse pilot decided he wasn’t going to let
them fail. With his aircraft at “bingo,” he stopped flying in a circle around the area and came in for a close hover over the water, just downstream of Neathery and Shore in the boat. Angling his blades just right, he used the powerful downdraft of the rotors to physically push the boat back upstream toward the swimmer. Neathery and Shore, at first totally confused at what the hell was going on, later couldn’t stop laughing about how amazing a maneuver it had been. They were at the swimmer in moments, and hauled him in, waving to Darkhorse as they did so.

  “Red 1, Darkhorse 22 – your dismounts have the swimmer, Darkhorse is returning to base for refuel at this time, over.”

  “Roger, Darkhorse – good news, thanks for the assist.”

  “Thank you guys for coming over to help.”

  I honestly don’t remember what happened to the man we captured – I think he was probably detained for a while and then released, since we had no evidence on him other than the fact that he was actively trying to escape the target location. We saved his life, however – he had been out in the water so long that he was approaching hypothermia when they hauled him out, and Sergeant Shore saw him go under several times as they approached him.

  My new platoon ended up with the only success stories of the mission, though little of it was due to my efforts. While Red 5 and I were off playing Coast Guard, Staff Sergeant Barnes acted on an earlier Darkhorse report of suspicious activity from a small house near his location on the outer cordon. Searching the house – whose occupants had left while he was parked on cordon duty – they found an AK-47 with a bandolier of ammunition, and an RPG launcher with several rounds. It would have been an auspicious start to my career as a scout platoon leader, except for the fact that my Bradley broke down messily a mile or so short of FOB Mackenzie’s main gate on our return march. It wasn’t my fault, of course, but I never quite lived that one down.

  I went to see Major Randall the following day, seeking his advice on putting Neathery and Shore in for an award, along with the resourceful Darkhorse crew.

  “I believe if you check the after action report, you’ll see that the man was simply pulled out of the water by soldiers on the riverbank, Lieutenant. Do you know why it says that?”

  I frowned. “No, sir …?”

  “Because U.S. forces in Iraq are prohibited from using watercraft without training or proper safety equipment,” he told me sternly.

  “Oh,” I said, disheartened. “Roger, sir.”

  “Nice work, though,” he said, winking.

  * * *

  I had thought it would be a long time before I saw Samarra again, but I was wrong. Soon after the raid with Anvil Troop, Squadron sent us back to Bulldawg Troop with orders to secure three new traffic control points scheduled for construction on the main roads to the south, northeast, and northwest of Samarra. The plan called for a massive amount of construction, which would be accomplished by Army Engineers: each checkpoint would be several hundred meters long, a cement fortress of ten-foot-tall jersey barriers with machine gun towers and designated search areas off the main road. They were well-designed, but they were also a stone’s throw from the city itself, easily within small arms fire range, and anyone manning them would make juicy targets for snipers and mortar fire. Samarra was still a “no-go” zone for U.S. forces, so parking a couple Engineer platoons on its outskirts to build these fortifications was likely to draw all kinds of unpleasant attention.

  And it certainly did. White Platoon drew the first security watch on the checkpoints, overwatching the Engineers as they arrived and began clearing the area around the first site, dropping cement blocks into place, and generally making a big racket and an even bigger target. Out at FOB Rex, we used to see about ten rounds of mortar fire a week being shot at us. In 30 straight hours of construction operations, White Platoon reported no less than 30 incoming rounds, which landed with increasing accuracy but miraculously failed to cause any casualties.

  They sent the Engineers out the following day as planned, and also sent two Apache attack helicopters to orbit the area as additional security. The insurgents knew their business, however, and merely set up their mortar tubes several blocks in, behind buildings or inside buildings without roofs, and continued to shoot undisturbed. Finally, on the third day, some senior officers showed up to tour the construction sites, and while we were showing them around, they took both sniper fire and several mortar rounds. This was enough to convince them that the plan needed a bit of revision: the Engineers began packing it in and we moved back to FOB Mackenzie.

  They didn’t concede the point fully, however, and requested that while the plan was revised, the sites be guarded – from a safe distance – so that the locals didn’t make off with all the expensive construction materials left behind. Two of my Bradley commanders, Staff Sergeants Neathery and Romano, drew this task. On the morning of the fourth day, they set their two Bradleys in position several hundred meters north of the checkpoint. The firing started soon.

  In an uncharacteristic display of courage, perhaps emboldened by their success at driving off the bulk of our forces, the insurgents decided to take on the two Bradleys in a stand-up fight. They opened up with rifles and machine guns from long distance, taking up positions in the buildings on the northern edge of the city. Even from several hundred meters away, they were able to score some hits on the vehicles, the bullets ricocheting off the armor and sending an adrenaline jolt through the crews of Red 5 and 6. The two men started their vehicles and closed their hatches, scanning the buildings to begin to identify targets as bullets continued to harass them. Red 5 reported the contact, and within several minutes a flight of two Apaches was lifting off the tarmac at FOB Speicher to the north, inbound for Samarra at high speed. Back at FOB Mackenzie, word reached me that my soldiers were in a fight, and since I couldn’t join them, I jogged over to the troop command post to listen in on the radio.

  Neathery and Romano could not identify targets from their location, and they weren’t going to just sit there without striking back, so they pushed forward and approached the highway between them and the city. The firing from the buildings intensified, bullets clattering off the armor at a steady rate. At the same time, Red 5 and 6 saw men moving from the buildings under cover of the machine gun fire, heading to the flanks of the Bradleys in what was clearly a planned, coordinated maneuver. The men were dressed in black, carrying Soviet rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, and they moved in pairs – a gunner and a loader carrying spare ammunition.

  Red 5 and 6 knew at once that they were fighting a more experienced enemy. Intelligence analysis following the fight identified them as foreign jihadists, likely veterans of fighting in Afghanistan or Palestine, approximately 50 in number. Though the small-arms fire was heavy, the RPG teams posed the most significant threat to Neathery and Romano, whose gunners immediately opened fire on the insurgents as they moved out of the cover of the buildings.

  Within seconds, two of the RPG teams had been destroyed with accurate 25mm cannon fires, the explosive shells tearing through the exposed fighters. The gunners then turned their attention to the buildings and began engaging targets as they appeared in windows, doors, and on rooftops. Neathery’s crew killed a particularly well-concealed machine gunner with a TOW missile round, firing the missile through the building’s window; his gunner saw their target get ripped in half by the force of the blast. At about this time, the Apaches arrived on station, hovering over the Bradleys in support and checking in with Red 5 on the radio.

  The focus in combat is always the fight on the ground – though air assets can significantly affect the outcome of a battle, the main effort is on the ground. For this reason, aviation units fall under the tactical command of ground forces when the two coordinate, and it is up to the senior man on the ground (in this case, Staff Sergeant Neathery) to figure out how to employ those air assets. There is no real playbook for this scenario, however – almost all of the Army’s Field Manuals detail how units at larger levels should fight a simila
rly-equipped enemy army. Neathery decided to maximize cooperation between the two units, attaching one Apache to Red 6 to work with, and keeping the other for himself. With each man talking directly to the pilot hovering near him, they were thus able to coordinate their fires with devastating effect.

  The Apaches opened up with 30mm chain gun fire and Hellfire missiles, gutting several buildings and wreaking havoc on the enemy’s front line positions. The fight continued to intensify, however, as insurgents began firing RPGs at long range, arcing the rounds over the rooftops toward the Bradleys like indirect mortar rounds. The insurgents also set up a 120mm mortar and began lobbing rounds at the Bradleys with distressing accuracy, at one point placing a round just 50 meters short of Red 5’s position. A direct hit would have destroyed either vehicle, killing all inside.

  Apaches are fearsomely armed, but not well-equipped for a sustained gunfight. Within a short period of time, each gunship expended its full ammo load. The Apache lead pilot came on the radio.

  “Red 5, Gunfighter 5: we need to return to base to rearm.”

  “This is Red 5, roger.”

  “This is Gunfighter 5 – we’ll be back in 10 minutes, I guarantee it! Just hold them off, we’ll be right back!”

  They were as good as their word, and the support crews at FOB Speicher had the two birds rearmed and refueled in record time, juggling rockets and links of chain gun ammo like a pit crew at full tilt. Red 5 and 6 continued to hold their ground under fire, and in the meantime, the Air Force liaison team at Squadron headquarters had an F-18 fighter jet rerouted from Fallujah, which took up position several thousand feet over the city, waiting for a target from the ground. Red 5 was happy to oblige, and as the Apaches moved well back, he picked a building on the edge of the city from which the small arms fire was heaviest.