War Stories

by Oliver North

  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.

  Even before the fight on Route 6 began, a FARP and Army shock-trauma hospital had been established at the captured airfield southwest of An Numaniyah. We deliver the wounded to the Army doctors, hop to a fuel point about seventy-five meters away, and are on our way back to RCT-5 in less than thirty minutes.

  It goes this way for most of the morning: 3rd Battalion pushes up the road a few hundred meters, takes some casualties, we cas-evac them and then return for more. Though it is fraught with some risk (simply flying in a thirty-five-year-old helicopter is risky enough), it is relatively uneventful in comparison with what the troops on the ground are enduring. All that changes with the first mission of the afternoon.

  I have just opened an MRE for lunch and the crew chief, Gunnery Sgt. Pennington, and Lt. Col. Driscoll are ribbing me about my penchant for putting Tabasco on everything, when a runner from the RCT-5 air boss breathlessly informs Driscoll that 3/5 has “taken six priority WIA just outside of Aziziyah.”

  While I gulp down my “Country Captain Chicken” MRE, Driscoll and O’Neil climb into their cockpits, fire up their APUs, and confirm the grid coordinates for the pickup zone. In a matter of minutes both helicopters are airborne, flying up Route 6 at fifty feet and 120 knots, seemingly just clearing the antennas of the vehicles that jam the highway as far as we can see in front of and behind us. To the left and right of the highway, artillery batteries are deployed, the tubes of their 155mm howitzers all pointing northwest—toward the 3/5 fight against the Republican Guard Al Nida division in the outskirts of Al Aziziyah.

  As we approach the pickup zone, Driscoll eases back on the air speed as he tries to make radio contact with the unit on the ground with the casualties. Below us, and about two hundred yards to our right, dismounted Marines are doing a fire-and-maneuver action toward a grove of eucalyptus trees. Gunnery Sgt. Pennington peers over his .50-caliber to guide the bird to a safe landing. A hundred meters to our right front, in a field b
etween the highway and the grove of trees, a smoke grenade pops just as Driscoll lifts the nose of the CH-46 to flare for landing. I’m leaning out the right side door of the helicopter with my video camera. Suddenly I see an RPG whizzing toward us from the grove of trees. I’m not supposed to, but instinct takes over and I yell, “RPG, three o’clock, incoming!” into the intercom mike on my cranial helmet.

  The engines screech and the rotor blades sound as if they might break as Driscoll pulls up on the collective, momentarily arresting the helicopter’s descent. Gunny Pennington, reaching the doorway, shouts, “Where?” over the din, as the RPG passes beneath us and detonates against the berm beside the roadway to our left.

  The Marines below us, having seen where the RPG came from, open fire in a furious fusillade. A machine gunner with a 240-Golf is hammering away at the tree line, and the up-gun on an AAV off to our right starts popping 40mm grenades into the same area. Pennington now decides that there won’t be a lot of opportunities to pick up the wounded below us, just forward of the swirling sandstorm being generated by our rotor wash. Leaning out the door, he calmly says to Col. Driscoll, “Straight down, twenty feet, sir.”

  In the cockpit, Driscoll can’t see anything forward or to his side and is totally dependent on Pennington’s judgment. His eyes scanning the radar altimeter and attitude indicator, he lowers the twelve-ton helicopter straight down and drops the ramp. As soon as he’s on the ground, I can hear him radio his wingman to wave off and slowly head back down the highway. “We’ll take all the wounded aboard our bird and catch up on the way to the Army shock-trauma hospital at An Numaniyah,” he tells him.

  While the AAVs and the dismounted troops on our right keep the enemy in the tree line pinned down, the litter bearers, running hunched over, as Marines do when they are being shot at, bring the three wounded up the ramp and snap the litters into the straps on the left side of the bird. Our two corpsmen, Docs Newsome and Comeaux, are already evaluating them and starting IVs to reduce shock as we lift off. The whole process—from landing to takeoff—has taken less than four minutes.

  By the time we return from the An Numaniyah FARP, the 2nd Tank Battalion has broken through the Iraqi defenses at Al Aziziyah and Mundy’s 3rd Battalion is in the process of aggressively clearing Iraqi defenders from the streets and alleys of the little town alongside the river. Mundy’s last task, accomplished just before nightfall, was to push a rifle company across the small bridge over the Tigris. After a sharp pitched battle at the bridge, RCT-5 captured three crossing points over the waterway.

  After dark, Dunford decides to move his CP forward, beyond the town Mundy had just secured. Having had enough helicopter adventures for one day, I rode up Route 6 in a Humvee with one of the RCT-5 communications detachments. As we roll through the town and up the highway, the “roadkill” is extraordinary. Through my night-vision goggles I can see dozens of ravaged Iraqi T-55s, BMPs, and BTR-60s littering the edges of the highway. It is clear that the Iraqis had meant to hold Al Aziziyah—but have failed. Most notable is the fact that a good number of the Iraqi tanks have been destroyed, not while facing the oncoming Marines but while heading northwest in retreat toward Baghdad.

  Dunford has set up his “jump CP” inside a compound formerly occupied by the local Republican Guard commander. The walls of the buildings are pockmarked by M-1 tank .50-caliber tank fire, and several structures have holes clear through them from main gun rounds. By the time all four of the HMM-268 helicopters land at the new RCT-5 CP, it’s after midnight and everyone is totally exhausted. Driscoll, his pilots, and his crew crawl into litters in the back of the 46s to sleep until summoned for another cas-evac.

  As Griff and I drag our broadcast gear over to a Humvee to plug into some power so that we can report, the M-1s of 2nd Tank Battalion are being refueled and rearmed on the Route 6 hardball highway, about fifty meters to our southwest. These Abrams tanks are magnificent killing machines. But because they consume a gallon of fuel every two and a half miles or so, they are even thirstier than the Marines who fight from them.

  When we come up on the air, Greg Kelly, embedded with 3rd Infantry Division, is reporting on the furious daylong battle to capture Saddam International Airport. The videotape he’s fed over his satellite dish back to FOX News Channel in New York is some of the most dramatic combat footage I’ve ever seen—and I see a lot of it when prepping for each episode of War Stories. When we go live for Hannity & Colmes at 0330, the starlit sky is once again full of RAP rounds as the 11th Marines’ artillery softens up tomorrow’s objective, the Tigris River town of Tuwayhah, less than thirty-five kilometers from Baghdad.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CLOSING IN

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #25

  With RCT-5 and HMM-268

  Route 6, southeast of Baghdad

  Friday, 4 April 2003

  1545 Hours Local

  Gen. Mattis planned to relaunch the attack up Route 6 before dawn this morning but had to delay it until the RCT-5 “log trains,” strung out for miles behind, could catch up to the fast-moving combat elements. I almost bumped into him early this morning as I walked toward the RCT-5 CP, canteen cup in hand, out to beg for a cup of hot coffee. I had been up since doing our 0330 “hit” with Hannity & Colmes, but had not yet shaved—something I try to do every day, but only after that first cup of coffee, since the canteen cup also serves as a washbasin. Shaving in this war isn’t just a matter of hygiene, discipline, or appearance; it could be the difference between life and death, since the military gas mask fits much closer on a clean-shaven face.

  Mattis, already clean-shaven despite the early hour, is on his way to his CP, located just a few yards from that of RCT-5, and he looks agitated. For a moment I think he was upset by my hirsute appearance. But when I say, “How about an interview with FOX News Channel, General?” he stops, looks me over, and smiles.

  “Aren’t you too old for this stuff?” he asks.

  “Never too old if you’re fit. I’m doing okay!” I reply. “How about we take five minutes and get you on tape for FOX?”

  He pauses, then responds, “Not today. I can’t do it now. I’ve got to make some changes. You’re doing fine just talking with the troops. Keep up the good work.” And with that, he heads on to his CP—two back-to-back LVTC-7s with canvas and a camouflage net thrown over them.

  Had I been a little less fatigued, I would have asked the CG (commanding general), “What are you going to change? Will there be a new order of movement? Are we now going straight north, bypassing Baghdad?” (As one rumor has it.) But I wasn’t quick enough.

  An hour later, when Lt. Col. Jerry Driscoll returns from the CP, he takes me aside and says, “General Mattis is replacing Joe Dowdy as CO of RCT-1.”

  “Why?” I ask, suddenly realizing that this must be the “change” Mattis had meant. Though I have spent most of the last fifteen days with RCT-5, it seems to me that all the regimental combat teams have been doing an exceptional job. RCT-1 and Task Force Tarawa have seen some of the heaviest action thus far in the war.

  “Can’t say for sure,” Driscoll replies. “Scuttlebutt is that the CG believes Dowdy is burned out. John Toolan, the G-3 Ops, is taking command of RCT-1. Dowdy is going to become the senior Marine on the EP-3.”

  Serving aboard the EP-3, a flying intelligence-gathering aircraft, as the eyes and ears for the Marines is an extremely important post, but it isn’t the same as commanding 6,500 Marines in combat. Considering Dowdy’s distinguished record, this would not be something he’d have wanted—no matter how exhausted he was. And for Mattis, changing commanders in the midst of a combat operation had to be a very difficult decision.

  This was the kind of event that some could spin into a very negative story, and I decide that both Joe Dowdy and Gen. Mattis deserve better than that. Even though it is after midnight back in the States, I think it was worth trying to get the story up first on FOX, and I head off to locate Griff. I find him asleep on the ramp of a CH-46, his feet hanging o
ver the edge, his head “pillowed” on his backpack, a half-eaten MRE on his chest.

  We set out to find a vehicle that is not about to pull out so that we can set up our satellite transmission equipment using its auxiliary power tap. After pleading our case with five or six Humvees and trucks, we finally find a Radio Battalion Humvee that isn’t getting lined up for the dash up the road, and we plug in our equipment. When the foreign desk answers in New York, I ask if there is space for a story on a change of command in the 1st Marine Division and quickly learn that the only story that matters at the moment was the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division action at the Saddam International Airport. And that FOX News Channel is already right in the middle of it.

  For the next few hours, as RCT-5 rearms, refuels, and replenishes on Route 6, Griff, the CH-46 crews, and a dozen or so Marines sit in front of our little satellite TV, transfixed by some of the best combat footage and reporting we’ve seen. Greg Kelly and his field producer/cameraman, Mal James, have been embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division all the way from Kuwait. They have covered the fight at An Najaf and the breakthrough at the Karbala Gap against the Medina division of the Republican Guard. Now Kelly and James are covering, live, the desperate fight to take and hold Saddam International Airport.

  Late on April 3, a company-sized unit from 3rd Infantry Division, consisting of fewer than twenty Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, had been conducting a “reconnaissance in force” action west of the airport when they seized two intersections on a key approach. Told to hold in place, they had done so against overwhelming odds throughout the night. By dawn on April 4, the small unit had withstood over a dozen assaults by Republican Guard armor and dismounted fedayeen. Kelly’s night lens captured much of the action as more than five hundred foreign fighters—charging on foot, in cars, in pickup trucks, and on motorcycles—died trying to take out the U.S. unit.