Combat and Other Shenanigans Read online

  Over the course of two months that summer, Dude managed to leave his rifle under the gun tube twice, so that when his gunner elevated the gun, Dude’s rifle was crushed, twice. Once is an embarrassing oversight, twice in as many months is inexcusable. Whenever we were out on missions, if I gave Dude a grid (the series of numbers we used to indicate a position on a map), I invariably needed to repeat it two or three times. He became annoyed with me for making him repeat back to me every grid I sent him, but it was the only way I could ensure he got it right. One time he even got lost on the way to our observation posts north of Samarra – an area where we had been conducting missions for months, static positions where we parked our tanks and sat for days on end, which hadn’t changed once in those long months. Somehow, Dude couldn’t find them.

  He was terrible at radio reporting, one of his primary duties – the man seemed incapable of talking on the radio and doing anything else at the same time. Often, one of his crew members, impatient that he was ignoring the radio, would respond for him while he was trying to guide his driver, but usually, I would cut them off and demand to speak with Dude himself. I wasn’t going to allow him to continue his bad habits, as much as I could help it.

  As Dude’s wingman, Staff Sergeant Kean should have been given an extra medal for having to deal with Dude on the most frequent basis. To his immense credit, he managed to largely conceal his lack of respect for Dude from the soldiers, dutifully maintaining the chain of command as much as possible. Sometimes, however, Dude sorely tried Kean’s professionalism in this regard. As much as we could, while in Iraq we avoided driving through fields that were clearly being farmed, in order to maintain good relations with the local farmers. It was an unwritten, standing rule – if you could avoid damaging anything valuable to an Iraqi, you did. Dude missed this memo, apparently, because one day he blithely parked his tank in the middle of a freshly-plowed field, destroying the neat rows the farmer had so recently labored to complete.

  Kean later told me that he completely lost it, had Dude meet him behind the tanks, where the soldiers couldn’t hear them, and then laid into Gilman like he was the lowliest Private in the Army. Any other platoon sergeant would never have tolerated this treatment from a subordinate, but Dude just stood there, nodding sheepishly. This lack of backbone disgusted Kean even more, but all he could do was walk away, find the farmer, and give him a case of MREs and some water bottles to try to make it up to him.

  One night, Dude and Kean were pulling observation post duties north of Samarra. It was a particularly clear night, and Kean and crew were admiring the night sky when a large, bright shooting star raced across the sky, from one edge of the horizon to the other. The radio crackled to life.

  “Bulldawg X-Ray, Green 4!”

  Staff Sergeant Kean groaned – Dude sounded excited on the radio, which was never a good sign. X-Ray responded.

  “Green 4, this is X-Ray.”

  “Roger, enemy contact! One rocket, grid MC 192 754, unable to determine the point-of-origin, over!”

  “Roger Green 4, we acknowledge you are taking incoming rocket fire at your location, can you estimate size of round and general direction it came from, over?”

  “Uh, it didn’t impact at my location, it passed overhead … stand by for direction, over.”

  Staff Sergeant Kean decided it was time to put an end to things before they got any more ridiculous, so he picked up his own hand-mike, trying to conceal his disgust.

  “X-Ray, Green 3.”

  “Green 3, X-Ray – did you get a good look at that rocket Green 4 saw? You guys are in visual range of each other, right?”

  “Yeah, X-Ray, I saw it – that wasn’t a rocket, it was a shooting star, over.”

  Dude, indignant, was sure he had seen a rocket, and despite his own crew trying to explain it to him, and then Kean trying to explain it to him over the radio, he could not be convinced otherwise.

  “No, man – it had a white trail after it. Stars don’t do that!”

  To this day, Dude believes it was a rocket. He was already the butt of many jokes among the troop’s officers and senior NCOs by that point, but the “rocket” episode made him infamous throughout the entire troop.

  * * *

  1-4 CAV needed our help back at FOB Mackenzie because our logistics convoys were getting hammered by IEDs and complex ambushes as they passed north of Samarra. As at our previous locations, our mission was to secure that route, but because FOB Mackenzie was a solid 45 minutes from Samarra, we based operations out of a tiny outpost close to Samarra that housed a communications link between Squadron’s two bases, known as the retrans site (for “retransmission”).

  The retrans site was a real dump. We’d been in some crappy locations before, but this one immediately set a new low. It was on the edge of a road within sight of Samarra, and featured a short, dusty mound which supported the radio antennas. The mound had a small area of flat sand about the size of a basketball court at its base, which was surrounded by a low earthen wall, reinforced haphazardly with some razor wire. It was poorly fortified and horribly exposed – the only shelter was a tarp awkwardly covering a hole scraped out of the mound, where the lone commo soldier sat and monitored the radios all day and night. There was no generator for electricity, no place to sit in the shade (save for the dark green tarp, which heated up like a sauna during the day), a single plywood outhouse, and a mangy dog who begged for MRE scraps and who we imaginatively named Rex. Save for short trips back to FOB Mackenzie to shower and eat some hot chow, this would be our home for the foreseeable future.

  Along with our sister tank platoon, we worked out a rotation system that would barely cover manning the Samarra observation posts and guarding the retrans site. Two tanks would occupy the observation posts along the road outside Samarra for eight hours, then go back to the retrans site for eight hours (switching out with another pair of tanks), and continue switching for 48 hours straight. The crews would then spend 48 hours manning the guard positions at the retrans site, swapping out on 8 hour shifts. Our time off consisted of a 48-hour recovery period, which included travel time to and from the retrans site, and by necessity it was mainly spent doing maintenance on the tanks, and possibly, showering and sleeping for a few hours. Soon enough, however, with vehicles breaking and soldiers going on R&R, it became impossible to rotate anyone back, and we had crews staying at the site for a week or more, spending 12 hours on their tank, then 12 hours off at the retrans site, repeating several times, then working eight-hour guard shifts at the site for a day or so before maybe sneaking back to Mackenzie for a brief 24 hours. It wore us all down fast, and the excruciating August heat didn’t help.

  Rex the dog became such a ubiquitous part of the life at the retrans site that the outpost was soon renamed FOB Rex. Rex was a mangy mutt you could smell from a mile away, but we loved him and welcomed any distraction from the day-to-day drudgery of life out there. About a month in, we discovered that Rex was, in fact, female – and she was very much in heat, which caused her to spend most of her time with her head buried in her crotch, licking industriously. I got back from 12-hour observation mission one day and set up my cot in the shade of my tank, hoping to get a little sleep before the sun moved too far and I sweated myself awake again. Exhausted, I passed out, but soon awoke to an odd sensation – Rex, lovingly licking my face. I’ve never missed the ability to shower so acutely.

  * * *

  1-26 Infantry was technically responsible for securing Samarra, but back in the spring, insurgents had attacked their outpost with a massive car bomb, killing a number of the infantrymen. Without a way to secure that base from further attacks, 1-26 withdrew from the city, only patrolling sporadically. Predictably, insurgents flocked to Samarra in droves, claiming the city for themselves. But one unit remained: a Special Forces “A” Team, a handful of Green Berets in the middle of an insurgent-held city.

  Manning our observation posts outside Samarra, we regularly listened in on the 1-26 Infantry net: since the
y were our neighboring unit, it was good to keep tabs on what they were up to, especially when there was enemy contact in the city. Generally the contact was brief: a few mortar rounds were fired across the river at their FOB, or someone emptied an AK-47 magazine at a Humvee patrol, using the ever-popular insurgent “spray and pray” technique: (1) hold the weapon out at arms’ length around the corner of a building, (2) pull the trigger, (3) run. On one night, however, we heard several loud explosions, and then heavy small arms fire. The Green Berets’ safe house was under attack.

  The fight was going strong after 30 minutes, tracers still ricocheting up into the night sky, punctuated by the occasional muffled thump of a grenade detonating. We heard the radio crackle to life; the Special Forces team was calling 1-26 Infantry, and given the prolonged fight, my guess was that they were going to ask for some reinforcements.

  “Spader X-Ray, this is ODA 621, over.” I could hear heavy gunfire in the background, but somehow, the special operator managed to sound bored.

  “Go ahead, 621.”

  “Roger, we’ve been in contact for a while here, any chance you guys could put together an ammo resupply for us? We’re getting a little low.”

  I had to laugh: I’m sure the infantrymen were chomping at the bit to join the fight, but the Special Forces guys had it well under control.

  “This is Spader X-Ray, roger – what do you need?”

  “Appreciate it. We need … uhh, where’s that list? 10,000 rounds of 5.56mm, another 10,000 linked 7.62mm … hold on.”

  We heard a machine gun firing a sustained burst, then the Green Beret picked up his radio microphone again.

  “… sorry about that. A case of fragmentation grenades, and any M240 rounds you can scrounge up would be great.”

  * * *

  By late summer, 1st Infantry Division had decided to begin operations to retake Samarra, but intelligence estimates varied wildly on the number of insurgents that had taken up residence there. The analysts were sure that at least 300 hardcore Saddam loyalists controlled the city, with up to a thousand foreign fighters augmenting them, all spoiling for a fight. To gain a better understanding of what clearing the city would be like, 2nd Brigade and 1-4 CAV launched a series of night-time raids on the perimeter of the city, called Operation Cajun Mousetrap (the Army picks operation names at random to avoid hinting at the intent of the mission). We continued to maintain our observation posts during these missions, and though I was back at FOB Mackenzie when the first raid was launched, I had front row seats to Cajun Mousetrap 2 several days later. Though Bulldawg Troop would not be participating in the raid, our Troop Commander (Captain Hoffman) and Executive Officer (First Lieutenant O’Brien) brought their vehicles out from Mackenzie to set up a troop command post overwatching the city. They had nothing to command from their command post, they just wanted to watch the action, too.

  And it was quite a show. The operation started on the far side of the city, with 1-26 Infantry moving onto a bridge across the Tigris to clear it of road blocks and enemy positions. They encountered resistance immediately, and after destroying barricades and machine gun nests with Bradley and tank fire, they called in Apache support, who lit up the area with 30mm chain gun and rocket fire. The Apaches soon became locked in a bitter firefight with a large group of insurgents occupying an abandoned Iraqi Police station, and once they had received clearance to do so, the Air Force dropped a 500-pound bomb on the building.

  As soon as we heard the report over the net that an airstrike was inbound, we had the cameras out and ready. It was spectacular, exactly like the “shock and awe” explosions we had seen in Baghdad on TV, except that we felt the shockwave even from two miles away. A massive fireball lit up the night sky, and flaming debris and shrapnel arced out of the blast site and over the rooftops. There was a certain amount of not-so-professional cheering and whooping over the net, and then we settled back down to watch some more. I felt like making some popcorn.

  Next up, 1-77 Armor and 1-18 Infantry approached the city from the north along Route Grape, driving past our positions as they looked for the road they would use to enter the city. Their mission was a simple “movement to contact,” which is Army-speak for “keep driving until you find someone to shoot at.” They were to enter Samarra, drive in a big loop through several blocks, destroy any insurgents encountered, and then leave. Except that they missed their turn in the dark, and we watched as their long column of armored vehicles drove past the entrance road and continued away from the city. They stopped soon after, idling in a disorganized jumble on the road in obvious confusion.

  Grinning, I flipped my radio switch to talk to Peiper: “Hey, Green 2: you seeing this?”

  “Yeah, roger. How are they fucking lost?”

  I laughed. “Think I should go down there and help out a little? ‘Hey, see the lights and buildings, that way? That’s Samarra. You want to go that way.’”

  “Those guys could fuck up a wet dream.”

  They soon figured it out, and after a laborious U-turn process, entered the city as planned. They were doing fine, trading machine gun fire sporadically with insurgents, until a tank “threw track” in the city, the road wheels coming out of the massive loop of treads on one side of the tank, disabling it immediately. It’s about the worst thing that can happen to a tank in combat – there’s no quick and easy fix. Either you spend an hour or so opening the loop of track, dragging it back into place, carefully walking the tank wheels back onto the treads, and then closing the loop again, or you leave the track and tow the tank as is, destroying the exposed road wheels in the process. As they were actively battling insurgents, they wisely chose to just tow the tank out of there. Though they were several blocks in, we were able to track their progress by the running firefight, tracers ricocheting over the rooftops and explosions backlighting the buildings. It turned ugly when the insurgents began firing rocket-propelled grenades, the white flashes of exploding warheads lighting the city blocks like flashbulbs. 2nd Brigade responded with two 500-pound bombs this time, which immediately knocked out all power to the city, shrouding it in darkness.

  Meanwhile, Anvil Troop had begun its raid on the southeastern quadrant of the city. Unlike the 2nd Brigade elements, Anvil Troop had actionable intelligence in their sector, and planned to conduct a snatch-and-grab raid on a building thought to contain high value targets. As they entered the city, however, they encountered several groups of insurgents busily digging up weapons caches, hurriedly pulling rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers out of holes in the ground. Anvil engaged them immediately, with help from Darkhorse Troop in their Kiowa helicopters. Under the sustained fire, the enemy quickly retreated to a large building, which jumped to the top of the airstrike priority list.

  Along the eastern edge of the city, our Red Platoon Bradleys had established a series of positions to prevent any enemy forces from escaping during the raids. Red 2’s gunner, Sergeant Newsome, was monitoring the Anvil Troop net and relaying the highlights to us on the Bulldawg Troop net.

  “The insurgents have all holed up in one building,” he reported.

  “Fuck yeah!” My gunner, Sergeant Cleary, grinned at me.

  Newsome came back over the net. “They’re going to drop a 2,000 pound bomb. Stand by …”

  “… impact in 20 seconds.”

  Across the battlefield, crewmembers were hastily awakened for the show.

  “… ten seconds.”

  Cameras up, breath held.

  “… impact.”

  Nothing. We waited until Newsome came back on the net.

  “Yeah, they’re saying that it was a dud.”

  There were sustained boos and catcalls across the net, followed by colorful descriptions of the depth of incompetence found only among fighter pilots.

  “Hold on … okay, they’re going to drop another right on top of it.”

  According to the Anvil Troopers close to the scene, the combined 4,000 pounds of high explosive utterly demolished the building. A
massive column of cement-grey dust rose from the area, and the noise of the blast echoed over the city. As Anvil continued into the city, they encountered more resistance, but this time, the insurgents were clustered in a large crowd in the street, firing at the troopers from behind a low wall. 2nd Brigade detached another fighter from the stack overhead, which swooped into position with a 500-pound bomb, ready to rock. Newsome continued the play-by-play for our benefit.

  “Nope, they’re canceling that 500-pounder mission. A drone orbiting the area just identified women and children in the street nearby.”

  Sergeant First Class Nicholls, disappointed, chimed in with his two cents: “Fuck ‘em! Wrong place, wrong time. Besides, women and children are just insurgent-factories and insurgents-in-training.”

  Faced with inflicting civilian casualties, Anvil withdrew without raiding their target. Across the city, 1-26 Infantry, 1-77 Armor, and 1-18 Infantry also pulled out of the city, their objectives accomplished, with no casualties among U.S. forces but a heavy toll – as usual, precise counts were impossible – exacted on the insurgents in the city. As dawn broke, we watched 1-77 Armor leave Samarra, hauling their broken tank with them. The tank’s exposed road wheels were completely aflame, rings of fire spinning in the half-light, leaving a 50-yard trail of burning rubber in their wake just like the Delorean in Back to the Future. It may have been a less-than-dignified exit for U.S. forces, but the scorecard was clearly in our favor.

  As the large-scale mission wound down, the Bulldawg elements that had come out from FOB Mackenzie to watch the battle began to regroup and prepare to return to base. I yawned – it had been a long night. First Lieutenant O’Brien, in his Bradley, called Captain Hoffman on his tank to see if he was ready to lead the convoy back in.

  “Bulldawg 6, Bulldawg 5, over.” He waited several seconds. “Bulldawg 6, this is Bulldawg 5.” Another wait. “Bulldawg 6, Bulldawg 5.”