There was another burst of tracer fire over the rooftops, and it quickly turned into a sustained firefight. I was now about 150 meters outside COP Falcon, and I was coming up on the first major intersection. Trash lay everywhere, all along the sidewalks. I swore that the electrical lines in Iraq ran external to the buildings. After years of neglect, they hung down over the fronts of the shops and homes. The wires always appeared to run randomly. To make matters worse, the most prevalent local method of initiating IEDs was with command wire.
Insurgents would run a wire from the IED to their hiding spot, detonate the IED as you walked or drove by, and take off. A few Marines carried wire cutters and cut every wire they came across.
I oriented down the intersection, walking sideways past a tire lying in the middle of the street. On the far side was a partially destroyed white sedan. The street was lined with concertina wire to prevent anyone from walking out onto the dusty asphalt and planting IEDs. I scanned the windows of a five-story building on the opposite side of the intersection. Without a PEQ-2, an infrared laser only visible with NVGs, I couldn’t see inside the windows, but every few seconds another Marine would shine his in my direction. I nervously crept toward the structure. Captain James had given me a video of a substantial firefight that took place inside the building I was now looking at, no more than 25 meters away. We walked by without incident.
The platoon suddenly began to move onto a side road. For whatever reason, the point element recommended that we get off Baseline; there was probably a potential IED (PIED) in the street. After a 30-meter walk south, we turned east onto a much smaller one-lane road that ran parallel to Baseline. I was walking up on a four-way intersection when there was another blast of AK fire, followed by my first personal experience with an RPG. As it streaked across the sky directly above us, I took note of my surroundings. Between me and Baseline was one row of buildings. The fire and the RPG we had just received came from north of Baseline, and I could hear the loud rumbling of a huge engine. I peeked around the corner and saw an Abrams tank situated in the middle of Baseline just to my north. The tank was most likely the RPG’s target. Corporal Holloway had already acted on the situation, and the squad was moving into the building on the far right side of the intersection. The first team moved in and began clearing.
Albin, Eakin, and I ran into the building behind the second team. The structure was surrounded by the usual exterior wall. Inside the wall was more of the same—a small courtyard, an outhouse, and a driveway. The home was situated about 5 meters back from the wall. It was the typical small fortress that formed the insurgents’ urban jungle.
We made entry into the home, going first into the kitchen and then into the main living area. I was sweating profusely. “Sir, I am dropping my long johns,” said Albin.
“Me, too,” I said. “Make it quick, though; we will be moving here in a second.” More Marines were coming into the house, and it soon became jam-packed with infantry grunts, an Iraqi family, and lots of rifles. Sporadic gunfire came from the east and the north.
“Nothing coming over the net about that fire, sir,” Eakin said, knowing exactly what I was thinking.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Switch over to Battalion every now and then when we go firm and see what’s getting passed.”
My thoughts came back to the immediate scenario, and after the previous experience with the shotgun at COP Falcon, my mind was screaming that the room was way too crowded. “Albin, Eakin, go outside to the courtyard,” I ordered. “There are way too many people in here.” I was still putting on my gear as they went out.
Corporal Holloway came up to me. “Sir, did you and my lieutenant smoke before this mission?” he asked.
For some reason I took a second to soak in the moment. Corporal Holloway was your usual all-American kid. He was athletic, not tall, not short, and had a genuine smile and confidence. I emphasized my response more than usual.
“I don’t smoke,” I replied.
“Sir, it’s not too late,” he said.
I walked away, shaking my head.
I headed outside and came across Eakin sitting in the kitchen. As a question went through my mind, Albin came through the door. Why was Eakin inside? I just told him and Albin to go out into the courtyard.
“Eakin, what the hell are you doing?!” screamed a visibly angry Albin.
“What?” replied Eakin.
“You left me out there by myself! Luckily, Cleveland was out there, or I would have been all alone in the street! You stupid, lazy . . . ,” Albin continued on with the names.
“Albin, shut the hell up, and Eakin, we will talk later,” I said, trying to quiet the two men. The last thing I wanted to do was deal with squabbling at that moment.
“We’re moving!” bellowed Holloway.
“Holloway, I am putting my team behind your first fire team. Any objections?” I shouted back.
“None.”
We headed out down the side street back to the intersection we had just crossed. The first team moved up just short of the tank. I was posted at the northeast corner, with Holloway crouched in between two crates and a break in the wall. Rage 4 walked by on Baseline, passing the tank. I knew from the operations order that this would mess up the order of movement into the objective area. Apparently, Rage 4 did not see any reason to move to the side road and had stayed on Baseline the whole time. We let the platoon pass and waited for a few minutes to get adequate separation.
A loud crackle of AK fire ripped through the air. It was close—deafeningly close. For the first time, I pulled my fragmentation grenade out of its pouch. I moved up to the corner and scanned for a target. I moved back to my previous position, and there was another two- to three-round burst. I could have sworn it came from the roof adjacent to us.
“Are you going to throw that?” asked one of the Marines on the corner of the four-way intersection.
“If I can figure out where the hell he is, yes,” I said.
The question forced me to think about the risks involved in throwing the grenade. Since the source of fire was in an elevated position, I would be throwing from low to high, and gravity would send a poor throw right back at me. I was reminded by my conscience again that I had played soccer in high school, not football or baseball. Plus, maybe elements from another platoon were already clearing one of these homes. Although it was certainly AK fire—you can tell by the sound—I did not see any muzzle flashes, which meant that all I could observe was movement. The last thing I wanted to do was frag a group of friendlies or a family of Iraqis hiding out. As someone removed from the combat environment would put it, I did not have positive identification of a target or indication of hostile intent. I came to the realization that I was reacting to a confusing situation with poor judgment. I put the grenade back in its pouch. We waited a few minutes and continued to move.
Somehow, Holloway’s squad was now in the lead of the platoon, and my team of “observers” was directly behind his point element. It took ten minutes for us to reach the intersection of Baseline and Graves. It was only a couple hundred meters south that Lance Corporal Heidbreder had been shot days earlier. After we turned, Graves Street would take us north toward another small army COP named Sword. It was one of the most isolated in all of Ramadi. As we neared Graves Street, a burst of tracers flew over the Bradley on the intersection. The sound of a distant raging firefight engulfed the city. As I watched the point team turn north on Graves, one thought went through my mind: fuck. I realized that for the first time I was thinking of saying a four-letter word for an actual reason and not just as a figure of speech.
Albin and Eakin were both on the left side of the road. I crossed directly in front of the Bradley, with the roar of its engine and my knowledge of its optics providing some comfort. Again the road was littered with debris, chopped-up portions of concrete, and wires running into every structure. The buildings were a mix of homes with courtyard walls and garage-style storefronts. The platoon came to a halt.<
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“Corpsman up!” shouted the team leader from the point element. It was repeated down the line.
“Eakin, what the hell is going on?” I yelled across the street.
“I’m not hearing anything, sir.”
Holloway was moving up behind me. “The corpsman isn’t for us, sir. He’s for the soldiers at Sword,” he said. The next day I was told that an insurgent had shined a high-powered flashlight at a soldier’s position on Sword’s roof, temporarily blinding him. This drew the soldier out from behind his ballistic glass to engage the enemy with his automatic weapon. The moment he did a sniper took his life. This trick was a standard insurgent tactic in Ramadi.
Our conversation was interrupted by a close firefight that replaced the distant echoes. “Sir, Fourth is in contact!” shouted Eakin. I signaled acknowledgment with my hand.
The platoon continued to go north on Graves. We were moving to another street, Vic Mackey, where we would proceed directly east. Then we would assume a position in our lane for the clearing portion of the mission. Rage 4 was already on Vic Mackey and heading east. I skipped over a pothole filled with water and moved through a T-intersection that opened up on my right. I looked up at the overhang and saw countless wires dangling. I ducked underneath and noticed a group of stacked crates on my right, and it happened. The deafening sound of medium machine gun fire ripped through the night. I saw the first tracer through my NVGs. I watched it land five feet in front of me to my left. As I instinctively spun, I watched another land even with me just on the edge of the sidewalk. It smacked the dusty pavement and screamed at roughly a forty-five-degree angle into the sky. I felt the thud of my body impacting the concrete wall behind those stacked crates, squarely on my right shoulder. I turned with my back to the wall and sent my M4 from safe to semi. There were now hundreds of rounds flying through the street, as every rifle behind me and ahead opened up. Since the streets were literally empty, there was nowhere for the Marines to get down; their best cover was their trigger finger and they all knew it. For about ten seconds I was in hell. I raised my M4 to cover the roofs on the far side of the street. I went to lift my rifle combat optic to my eye and was forced to push up my NVGs, taking away my night vision. A PEQ-2 laser pointer really would have been nice, and I cursed the Marine Corps’ pride at doing so much with such a small budget.
“Cease fire!” Holloway shouted to his squad.
He peeked around the crates, as I scanned the far rooftops. “Sir, I thought—it looked like you were hit. Are you sure you’re okay?” he said.
“Do you have a cigarette?” I asked.
Holloway laughed, and I felt like shit for being the only guy who actually had somewhere to take cover during the brief exchange of rifle fire. After a minute we were up and moving again. I walked about 5 meters to another T-intersection with almost the exact same setup as the last one. I was a few steps from kneeling down on the corner when I heard what sounded like the angriest group of bees I’d ever heard coming down the alley in front of me.
Thump, thump, thump.
I looked to the left and saw Albin head out into the intersection, seemingly oblivious to the rounds blasting all around him. “Get down!” I shouted, as I moved to the corner and posted down the alley. Whoever had just fired was gone.
“Albin! Get out of the fucking intersection!” I shouted like an upset parent. There was no response, only compliance. I turned around to check Eakin and make sure he hadn’t been hit by a ricochet. “Eakin, pass up that we took contact to the east, one street over!” I went to pull out my map to read the street name, and more 7.62mm rounds pierced the air in the alley behind me. The Marines got down but could not identify where the shooter was. One rifleman stated the obvious: “We’re taking fire!”
We stayed in the road for what seemed like an eternity. I was getting anxious. There were plenty of homes in the near vicinity where we could go firm and regroup. Instead we were sitting out in the open, waiting for something to happen. I needed a radio in my hands. I got Holloway’s attention. “Holloway, how about we get in a house?” I said reluctantly. I was not in Rage 2’s chain of command so I tried not to interfere with their tactics, but Lieutenant Thomas was somewhere behind me. As Captain James had said, I was the man on the ground, closest to the point of friction.
“Yes, sir!” Holloway directed his last team to move up and breach into a home on the western side of the street. We cleared the structure and moved onto the roof. Once we got our bearings and Rage 4’s situation improved, we got ready to move.
Darting in and out of the streets was stressful after being stationary for fifteen minutes. The enemy was adept at placing surface-laid IEDs not only in the vicinity of dismounted patrols but literally on the doors or the gates to the compound they were clearing. It was an unwelcome surprise when the unit moved to the next building. Numerous 1-37 Armor units had come across this tactic, and, to be honest, I couldn’t understand how it was possible until I actually cleared a building in southern Ramadi. Standing inside an Iraqi house with its courtyard walls is like being stuck in an armored vehicle. Who knows what is happening out in the street. We reached Vic Mackey, where Rage 4 had previously been engaged.
We turned east. Roughly 200 meters in front of us was a red chem-light in a small crater in the road. A red chem-light signaled a possible IED that should be avoided. The street was lined with homes on the south (my right), and to the north was some sort of school complex. A six-foot wall ran along the road on the north side. The wall was broken up in many places and was not continuous. Beyond the wall was an open field with larger one- and two-story structures. Although we had only 300 meters to move on the road, there was no easy way around the PIED.
We continued toward the chem-light. I constantly checked the north, ignoring the clutter of the residential area closer to me. I felt that if I was the enemy, I would set up in the larger buildings beyond the wall. They are most likely abandoned and filled with all kinds of potential firing positions. After we moved about 50 meters, I saw a spot where the wall cut north and formed a rectangular-shaped area where we could maintain cover and head into one of the school complexes, thus avoiding the red chem-light and the PIED. The first team saw the same thing and moved up to the wall. My team followed behind them.
“Bahhhhhh . . . bahhhhhhh!” There were goddamn sheep in a pen right next to me! I almost kicked one, thinking it was going to bite me. Sheep in a city; it was another culture gap. I checked out the immediate area and decided that nothing looked threatening. The squad moved up to the break in the wall, and we began to climb over. It was only about four or five feet high in the spot we went over.
“What a mission, sir.” Eakin needed someone to talk to.
“How’s that radio doing?” I asked.
“Wonderful; things seem to have quieted down for us on the net, but whoever that is still in contact out there, it sucks to be them.” Eakin was referring to the distant firefight that continued to rage sporadically. The first team was over the wall.
I kneeled on the ground so that Eakin could step up on my other bent leg. He had a heavier load than I did. “Get over that wall, Eakin,” I said.
We moved in complete silence over the wall into the school compound. The school was only one story high and had been built with four exterior structures centered on a courtyard. Dozens of dark windows stared at us as we followed the wall around the northern side. The area where we walked was covered in trash, and there was no avoiding it. I inadvertently crushed numerous cups and various plastic items. We came upon the school’s eastern side, where the main gate was located. It was directly opposite the intersection where we wanted to be. We halted to allow the entire platoon to get in position to cross.
We were now looking at the Lima 2 patrol sector. Our lane was another 250 meters down the road. All three of the other platoons were already in the clear portion of the mission, but there was no sign of them. Only the infrared chem-lights that marked certain buildings as cleared had been le
ft behind. The first team moved across the intersection. Albin and I were on the northern side of the street, with Eakin on the south. We had no sooner crossed when the point element halted us. There was another red chem-light. Kneeling on the sidewalk, I looked back at Holloway and saw Albin on the corner. I thought I heard the sound of a classical ring tone.
“Shit! What the—it’s a cell phone or something!” A screaming Albin broke noise discipline as he shouted, stood up, and stared into a market stall.
“We need to get out of here!” said Holloway.
I looked at the jamming device on his back. “Holloway, is your Warlock Blue on?” I asked. I got up and ran as fast as I could down the block. I was running straight toward the red chem-light. It was no longer the primary threat.
“Yes, sir!” he answered, then shouted to the point element to move faster.
The area we were operating in had an active remote-control IED element. There was an insurgent team capable of employing IEDs that were detonated from a distance with garage door openers, cell phones, and Seneao base-station phones, to name a few devices. The Warlock Blue was designed to jam the receivers in the immediate area we were in. Although it didn’t project a lot of power and only covered certain frequencies, the fact that a cell phone had been set off within a few meters of it disturbed me; I wondered how much the damn thing had cost. We pushed a few teams into a couple of the buildings to try to flush out the possible triggerman as the rest of the platoon moved up. No one suspicious was found.
We finally arrived at our lane.
The first house was occupied by a large family. They were petrified of us. The scene of us bursting into the home was being repeated by eleven other squads executing the same mission. The sounds of that night’s previous firefights had changed to the clamoring of Marines ripping down doors. We were no longer concerned with noise discipline; everyone knew where we were. I went straight to the room containing the family. My goal was to question every MAM I came across during the clear phase.
Rage Company Page 9
