War Stories

by Oliver North

  As we gently load him on the stretcher, I ask him, “Why didn’t you say something?”

  He says, “The other guys were hurt worse than I am.”

  This is some of the stiffest fighting thus far in the campaign, but no one here has any doubt about the outcome. It’s also clear that increasing numbers of foreign fedayeen are joining the fight. They’ve cut fire trenches at nearly every intersection, filled them with oil, lit them, and made movement very difficult and dangerous through streets now nearly obscured by thick, black clouds of acrid, choking smoke.

  As 2nd Tank Battalion and 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines chew their way through Tuwayhah, increasing numbers of “civilians” straggle out of the town. Many of them are young men with short haircuts wearing clean white thobes and sandals. Everyone knows that they are deserters, but they simply walk on by, having hidden their weapons and shed their uniforms. No one wants to take the time, troops, or trucks necessary to detain them and transport them two hundred miles to the rear.

  When we get our satellite equipment up, we learn that, miles behind us, Task Force Tarawa and RCT-1 have accepted the surrender of an estimated 2,500 troops from the Baghdad division of the Republican Guard. The news from New York also informs us that Iraqis are deserting in northern Iraq, and that to discourage others from doing the same, Iraqi commanders and the fedayeen are conducting public executions of any of their troops caught deserting.

  By nightfall, RCT-5 has moved through Salman Pak and Tuwayhah, and Sam Mundy’s 3/5 has cleared the highway on both sides of Route 6. For Mundy’s Marines the afternoon and early evening were a repeat of the action the day before at Al Aziziyah. Dismounted infantry rushed through the built-up area and then beyond that into the farmlands north of the city. It was exhausting for his already tired troops.

  Though the Republican Guard regulars cut and ran after 2nd Tanks broke through Tuwayhah, the foreign fedayeen stayed to fight there and in Salman Pak. For more than five hours and as many kilometers, the 3/5 rifle companies slogged up the rough ground parallel to the highway, supported by fire from the AAV up-guns on the road. Together they rooted out Syrian, Jordanian, Saudi, Egyptian, and Yemeni fighters who weren’t just willing to die on their jihad—they wanted to die. Mundy’s Marines obliged them. There may be prisoners taken elsewhere, but along this stretch of Route 6, I saw only two of the fedayeen taken alive—both were badly wounded.

  Not all the Iraqis got away. Late in the afternoon, as we landed next to where the RCT-5 CP would be established for the night, an Iraqi major general, the chief of staff of the Special Republican Guard, tried to run a roadblock in his nice white luxury sedan. It was his last mistake. Griff’s camera captured the image—the dead general and his driver, splayed out on the shoulder of the road beside the car. Inside the bloody vehicle was the dead general’s pet dog, also killed in the hail of gunfire.

  Late that night, a messenger from Mundy’s CP brings a sandbag containing captured documents to the RCT-2 command post. It is full of foreign passports taken from those who died trying to kill Mundy’s Marines just eighteen kilometers from the outskirts of Baghdad.

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #27

  With RCT-5 and HMM-268

  Southeast suburbs of Baghdad

  Saturday, 5 April 2003

  2300 Hours Local

  The night does not begin well. At about 2200 hours, I am asleep on the hood of Chaplain Frank Holley’s Humvee when I am awakened by the sound of incoming Katusha rockets—the big 122mm I remember so well from Con Thein and Khe Sanh, even after so many years. In an instant, Marines are yelling, “Incoming!” I’m already facedown in a little ditch, trying to wriggle into my flak jacket. As the rockets begin to land nearby, I’m instantly sorry that I left my borrowed helmet on the helicopter.

  Then, moments after the rockets impact, the 11th Marines’ 155mm batteries across the road behind us are pounding the coordinates where the counter-battery radars and computers tell them the rockets have come from. In less than ten minutes, the exchange is over, and I crawl back up on top of the Humvee, so tired that the flashes on the horizon, the booming concussions, and the ground trembling with hundreds of coalition air strikes on Baghdad do nothing to disturb four full hours of slumber.

  During our 0400 broadcast on Hannity & Colmes, the sound of aircraft flying overhead and the noise of anti-aircraft missiles streaking futilely into the air cause a producer to ask during a commercial break if we are under attack. I reply with one of the lines the Marines were using: “That’s just some noise from the Baghdad Urban Renewal Project.”

  Later, FOX News Channel coverage from the Palestine Hotel shows a virtual fireworks display, as a strike against one of Saddam’s palaces rocks the central part of the city. Wire service reports claim CENTCOM suspected that Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s sons, were inside the complex and consequently hammered the site with all kinds of munitions. It is also reported that satellite-guided weapons have been used to destroy the Iraqi air force headquarters in central Baghdad.

  Yet for all of the targets that have been hit, the troops on the ground know that one target has not been taken out. I hear griping whenever Griff and I set up our FOX News Channel gear for a feed to and from the States. The Marines grouse about the fact that Iraqi TV is still up and running, still blaring out propaganda that encourages more foreigners to join the fight. When they ask me why the state-run TV and radio haven’t been taken off the air, I simply shrug. I don’t know either.

  While we were flying the cas-evac missions, the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, appeared on Iraqi and Arab TV to announce that Americans were nowhere near Baghdad and certainly none had entered the city. He added that the U.S. forces had been expelled from the former Saddam International Airport, and told the press corps that he would prove it by taking them on a tour of the place. Baghdad Bob then read what he claims is a message from Saddam Hussein, and urged Iraqis and friendly Arabs to step up resistance to the Americans.

  Ironically, just as FOX News Channel is showing him telling the Iraqis that the Americans were nowhere near Baghdad, they also put up a split screen showing U.S. Army tanks parked on the lawn of one of Saddam’s palaces. And while the Iraqi information minister was busy misinforming his people, Greg Kelly with the 3rd Infantry Division put on a battalion commander from the airport who points out that more than three hundred Iraqi troops were killed defending the place.

  With the dawn of a new day, we learn that RCT-5, having led the attack all the way to the outskirts of Baghdad, won’t be the first group into the city after all. Gen. Mattis has decided he wants a multi-pronged attack here, just as he did for the crossing of the Tigris back at An Numaniyah. RCT-7 will continue to drive north, directly toward the southern suburbs of Baghdad and to the bridges back across the Tigris. RCT-1 will come up on the right of RCT-7 and attack from the east, and RCT-5 will swing all the way around the city to attack across the Diyala River from the northeast. All this means that RCT-5 will have to attack in a new direction.

  If Joe Dunford is disappointed, he doesn’t show it. He immediately summons his battalion commanders and reorients his forces to attack northward, parallel to the muddy ditch shown on the map as the Diyala River. He orders maximum coverage by RPVs and dispatches 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion’s LAVs to find suitable crossing points where the engineers can throw down bridges for his one thousand vehicles.

  For the rest of the RCT, it’s a matter of sitting and waiting, but not resting. The momentary halt in movement means that much-needed maintenance will be performed while the infantry patrols out far enough to keep any lingering fedayeen from dropping mortar rounds on our heads. Aside from the unremitting air strikes on Baghdad, and the constant sound of RPVs flying over our heads, it’s the quietest night since the sandstorm.

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #28

  With RCT-5 and the Stingers of HMLA-267

  Southeast suburbs of Baghdad

  Sunday, 6 April 2
003

  2300 Hours Local

  The day begins with a beautiful chapel service. Sam Mundy’s sergeant major has put together a little choir of Marines. They sing with more fervor and sincerity than most church choirs back in the States. Griff’s camera records a great rendition of “Amazing Grace,” sung to the accompaniment of several artillery barrages in support of the LAVs as they search for a suitable crossing.

  A few minutes after the chaplain finishes, Capt. Shawn Hughes, one of the pilots from HMLA-267, comes out of the RCT-5 CP and we walk together to where his armed UH1N is parked next to the HMM-268 CH-46s. On the way, he tells me that he’s heading out to do a recon of the Diyala River to see if he and his wingman might have better luck finding a crossing point for the increasingly frustrated Col. Joe Dunford. I ask if I can go along and he agrees.

  I grab my camera and a single battery out of my kit on the back of the CH-46 and yell to Griff, “I’ll be back in an hour or so.” The two UH1Ns take off and we head west for the river.

  The first thirty minutes or so of the flight are recorded intermittently on the videotape. When we reach the muddy Diyala River, we fly from south to north, noting possible crossing points on the GPS and on a map. There are not many. I notice that there are also relatively few other aircraft in the area—no fixed-wing, no Cobras. Aside from the LAVs, which we left well to our south, there are no friendlies on the ground. But that doesn’t strike me as being so bad, since there doesn’t seem to be any bad guys down there either.

  About a half an hour into the mission, Capt. Hughes receives a call over the radio to check out an Iraqi air base that has supposedly been hit by a coalition air strike just west of the river.

  On the map it shows as Khan Bani Saad Air Base. Below the name is the notation abandoned. But as we approach the airfield at about seventy-five feet and one hundred knots, the place is anything but abandoned. And if it was targeted by an air strike, they missed.

  The runways have several MI-8 aircraft on them—and though not all of them appear flyable, none of the hangars seems to be even scratched by a bomb or a bullet. Through the open doors of one hangar, we see what looks like a fully assembled MI-24 gunship. Yet as we fly straight down the runway, there is no sign of anyone except a few civilian Toyota pickup trucks scurrying down a paved road encircling the perimeter of the field.

  But then, as our two Hueys wheel around the far end of the field, all hell breaks loose. Below and to the front of us, men in green uniforms are running from a building and uncovering anti-aircraft machine guns. Others are already taking a bead on us with AK-47s. The flight leader calls out over the radio, “We’re taking fire.” And indeed we are.

  That ball-peen hammer sound is now all around us, hardly affected by the return fire from our GAU-17 mini-gun. S/Sgt. Compton tries to hold his bursts on target, while Hughes is jinking to make our bird harder to hit.

  As we whip over a truck loaded with troops, they all open fire, and we realize our lead bird seems to have run into the hail of bullets. The helo begins to spew fuel vapor. On my camera, it looks like something out of one of those old World War II movies, with planes falling out of the sky, trailing streams of smoke as they crash.

  Someone says in my headphones, “I’m losing fuel pressure and power. I’m going to try to make it across the Diyala.”

  Hughes responds with a terse “Roger.” And the two birds streak east for the river.

  The camera suspended over Captain Hughes’s head captures fuel pouring out of the belly of his wingman’s helo—instantly vaporizing as it hits the air rushing by. If one of the Huey’s anti-aircraft flares goes off right now, or if the bird is hit with a tracer round, it will disappear in a fireball.

  When we cross the river, there is no time to find the perfect landing zone. As the two damaged helicopters settle in on a farmer’s field next to an irrigation ditch, Hughes is calling out a distress signal.

  The TRAP call is heard by an AV-8 flying several miles south. He immediately responds, appearing above us just moments after the two shot up helicopters are on the ground. Hughes tells him that both aircraft have sustained battle damage, but that we have no casualties, yet. He passes on the grid coordinates of the truck that was loading up with Iraqi troops as we flew over the airfield. The AV-8 heads off to hunt after passing our coordinates to Highlander—the LAVs of 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. They are several miles south and headed our way fast.

  I fervently hope that they’ll hurry. The irrigation ditch reminds me of the final scene in the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri. In that movie, based on James Michener’s novel, William Holden and Mickey Rooney, playing Marine pilots, are shot down by Chinese communist troops and killed in an irrigation ditch.

  While the crew chief and gunners from both birds struggle, in a shower of jet fuel, to repair the leaks, S/Sgt. Compton does a quick inventory of what we have for defensive weapons—eight Beretta 9mm pistols, three M-16s, a 240-Golf machine gun, and one working .50-caliber. While we’re waiting for either the enemy or friendlies to arrive, I volunteer to fix the jammed .50-caliber, telling the Marines, “I’ve seen the end of this movie and it’s not pretty.” No one knows what movie I’m talking about.

  But it turns out we don’t need any of the hardware. The AV-8, acting as a forward air controller, has already engaged the Iraqis who they thought might get to us. After his laser-guided bombs were expended, he stayed around to “illuminate” targets for two Marine F-18s. By the time they all were finished and Highlander’s LAVs have rolled up, there are no Iraqis left to come after us.

  In the second demonstration of Marine ingenuity in as many days, the gunner mechanics have managed to pull the shot-up fuel pump and remove an armor-piercing 7.62mm slug from it in the process. They then jury-rig the fuel system. After examining the holes in our aircraft, the mechanics determine that no vital parts have been damaged and the bird can limp back to the safety of friendly lines.

  As we lift out, Maj. Tim Kolb, flying another HMLA-267 Huey, comes alongside to escort us back to safety. After we land, I learn that he was the HMLA-267 pilot who evacuated the wounded corporal from Capt. Aaron Eckerberg’s broken CH-46 after the dust storm from hell. It really is a very small Marine Corps.

  By the time I get back to RCT-5, everybody aboard the CH-46 is asleep except Col. Driscoll. As I climb onto one of the litters, he whispers, “You okay?”

  “Yes,” I reply.

  “Good. You’re grounded.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  FALLEN IDOLS

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #29

  With RCT-5

  Saddam City, east Baghdad

  Tuesday, 8 April 2003

  2300 Hours Local

  Getting shot up in the UH1N on April 6 didn’t really get me “grounded,” but I did get a more sympathetic than usual hearing when I asked to go with one of the ground combat units as they entered Baghdad. With the acquiescence of MAG-39 and RCT-5, Griff and I put on our packs, shouldered our cameras and satellite broadcast gear, and joined Sam Mundy’s 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines for the move across the Diyala and into the Iraqi capital.

  Now that we’ve finally crossed the river, we’re in the midst of the filthiest slum I’ve ever seen. This is Saddam City. The Iraqi dictator mandated that the Shi’ites who fled to the capital of Iraq had to live in the “planned community” he named after himself. It is a rabbit warren of crumbling, multistory, Soviet-style apartment buildings without running water or functioning sewage systems. It’s worse than anything I’ve ever seen in Calcutta, Haiti, or Bangladesh. The whole place is home to more than a million “internal refugees,” teeming with naked children, their stomachs distended from malnutrition. There is raw sewage running in the streets, and piles of trash—some of it smoldering with a stench that is enough to make even Marines who haven’t bathed in weeks smell good.

  And how we smell is something that’s suddenly much more obvious. For the past nineteen days—since D-day—we’ve all been wearing che
mical protective suits: baggy bib overalls and a hooded jacket. The tough, tightly woven, Teflon-treated nylon outer shell is hot, but the activated charcoal lining that protects the skin from chemical or biological agents also absorbs odors. Now that we’ve entered Baghdad, CENTCOM has advised everyone that Saddam is unlikely to use such weapons in his capital city, so we have shed the suits for the first time in nearly three weeks. We’re all much more comfortable wearing field uniforms, but the inevitable consequence of not bathing is now greatly evident.

  We’re told to keep our gas masks on our hips and keep the chemical suits in our packs just in case this psychotic regime decides to do the unthinkable. Throughout the campaign, chemical weapons have been a threat, and every Marine unit has been on the lookout for any signs of WMD. In every Iraqi military installation we have overrun, the Marines have found large quantities of chemical protective suits, atropine antidote syringes, and Russian, Chinese, Yugoslav, Czech, French, and Jordanian gas masks—even some empty chemical artillery rounds and aircraft dispersal canisters—but they haven’t found any of the chemical agents they’re designed to hold. Given all the defensive preparations both sides have made in providing chemical protective equipment for their military forces, there’s no doubt that both the Iraqis and the coalition forces expected Saddam to use them. What’s unclear is where the weapons are now.

  What is obvious to all, however, is that if Saddam uses such weapons against the American or British troops, he won’t kill many of us—thanks to our protective NBC suits and masks—but he will succeed in killing thousands of Iraqi civilians. Up until now, we’ve all played it very safe. In addition to the protective gear, every unit has sophisticated, state-of-the-art chemical detection equipment—in some cases even a specialized vehicle for this purpose. And though this apparatus has given us several “false alarms” over the course of the past three weeks, causing us to quickly “mask up,” no one suggests that such alerts be ignored. We’ve all worn our NBC suits, put on our “rubber duckies”—rubber overshoes—when necessary, and kept our rubber gloves handy. But Marines being Marines, they have also taken additional steps, just in case the expensive high-tech equipment doesn’t work as advertised. Before leaving Kuwait, almost every unit’s NBC NCO bought some chickens and pigeons. The birds, kept in cages on the back of a Humvee, serve as the caged canary in a coal mine—they will succumb to smaller amounts of a chemical agent than humans. Griff, fascinated by what the Marines called their FEWGAD—“fowl early warning gas alarm device”—spent almost an hour “interviewing” Geraldine, one of the RCT-5 chickens. He decided not to videotape the other chicken, nicknamed Kung Pao; he thought the name was too descriptive of the bird’s ultimate fate.