When a humvee in the convoy struck a massive IED, the turret gunner was thrown more than 100 meters from the vehicle. In the ensuing chaos, a group of three Iraqi men, said to be brothers, dragged the body onto this no-name street. They hid the fallen Marine under some trash in the empty lot next to the VBIED factory. According to the source, the three brothers lived in this house. The report was already partially confirmed because the massive search launched by 1/6 to find the body discovered it on this street immediately after the attack.
Marines began to tear the house apart, looking for any sort of contraband. I headed to the roof with Captain Smith, Lieutenant Jahelka, and Sergeant Ahlquist to observe the VBIED factory and come up with a plan on how to prosecute it. We were extremely wary of defensive IEDs or any sort of booby traps. Our plan to counter the threat was simple. First, we would fire shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapon (SMAW) antitank rockets into the buildings, in order to set off or disrupt any larger explosives awaiting our arrival. Then we would fire into the open courtyard 40mm grenades from the M32 street-sweeper, an automatic grenade launcher carried by Rage 3’s platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Michael Crippen.
I headed back downstairs. Marines were sifting through everything. Furniture was being moved and rugs were pulled up off the floor. Boots stomped on the tiles, as the Marines tried to find hollow spots where an underground compartment might be. I moved through the home’s central hallway, past the busy Marines, in search of the headquarters element. I found them sitting on a couple of couches in the living room and quickly joined the group.
Ahlquist positioned a small security detail on the roof. He carefully placed the team of Marines outside the back-blast area of the SMAW’s firing positions. In a booming voice, he shouted down the stairwell for SMAW team one to get on the roof. I noticed Bustamante sitting on the couch with Eakin and immediately sent him up to take video of the fireworks.
The sounds of 9mm tracer rounds served as advance warning for the incoming rockets. The tracers are fired by the Marine holding the rocket and are used to verify that he is aiming at the target the spotter wants destroyed.
The thundering blast of the rocket being fired shook the house. SMAW team one was aiming at the correct building.
After SMAW team two traded places with SMAW team one, the same process repeated itself. Following the second rocket shot, we could hear the building it hit collapse. At least we didn’t have to search it.
Next, the wily Staff Sergeant Crippen, who insisted on carrying the street-sweeper, headed up to the roof. He fired off four of the 40mm grenades into the compound. There wasn’t a single secondary explosion from any of the blasts. As Ahlquist moved his Marines down off the roof, I began to doubt whether the compound was in fact a VBIED factory.
Captain Smith directed me to keep the headquarters element inside the house. A team from Ahlquist’s squad remained with us to help provide security. Ahlquist led the rest of his squad to a predesignated breach site along the northern side of the VBIED factory’s wall. Instead of walking through the compound’s main gate, we would use our team of combat engineers to blow a hole in the exterior wall. It was less likely to be booby-trapped.
I took Bustamante back up to the roof to keep videotaping. The engineers blew down the wall and immediately found unexploded ordnance. Mortar and artillery rounds were inside tires and buried under standard household trash: garbage bags, plastic and Styrofoam cups and plates, and discarded debris. A small ditch contained an assortment of automatic rifles. After a few minutes of listening to the radio, I headed over to see for myself. Staff Sergeant Jerry Eagle, our senior combat engineer, was walking about carrying artillery rounds half his size. A large pile of explosives quickly formed. More stuff for EOD to blow up.
I headed back to the headquarters element. Eakin was monitoring the radio. He informed me that while I was gone, another squad from Rage 3 had discovered a room full of fire extinguishers. When I didn’t seem all that impressed or concerned, Eakin qualified his initial statement with, “Sir, each one of the extinguishers is hooked up to det cord or something.”
He suddenly had my attention. I remembered that one of the platoons had found a pile of empty fire extinguishers during the Papa 10. It seemed that making bombs out of the benign red cylinders was suddenly an insurgent trend. We sent a team of Marines with Staff Sergeant Eagle to the intersection of Starr and Farm Road to assess the homemade bombs.
It took about an hour for EOD to show up. The group of technicians was petrified that we had moved the large amount of ordnance. As they had during the destruction of our previous cache, they accused us of violating the rules of engagement and endangering our Marines by letting them touch the explosives. The EOD technicians truly believed that only they were allowed to touch something that was potentially dangerous. Our combat engineers soon grew annoyed with the criticisms of EOD.
With the night dragging on and EOD trying to decide where and how to detonate the pile of explosives, 1/6 canceled the leveling of the new COP site by a combined-arms attack. Again, our own success at finding the enemy’s tools had prevented us from achieving the primary mission. There simply was not enough darkness left to evacuate the surrounding homes and then destroy the structures along Racetrack. So the entire company exited the area along the same route it had come. I walked past all of the same structures and debris back to COP Firecracker. With a squad from Rage Company for security, EOD stayed behind to detonate the stockpile from the VBIED factory where it was. The explosion was smaller than our previous experience but impressive nonetheless. Loud noises were always good for morale, so long as you were responsible for them.
When we arrived back at the COP, most of the Marines went straight to sleep. Before the officers hit the rack, Captain Smith informed us that 1/6 was sending us out on the same mission the next night. We would use the same route to get there. The platoons would have the same lanes. Everything was literally the same as we had just done.
I felt sick to my stomach. After my first day in downtown Ramadi, I had become deathly afraid of being predictable. Now I was ordered to be predictable. Not a single Marine was happy about the mission, but we all knew that COP Qatana had to be built. The mission came first, and the next night was going to be déjà vu.
The following day began with the usual harassing fire from the insurgents. As soon as a light drizzle developed around midday, the fighting stopped. For the Ramadi insurgent, fifty degrees and wet was too cold. I was surprised that our elusive opponent was willing to relinquish the initiative while he was dictating the terms of the fight. Rage Company enjoyed a dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches without a shot fired in anger.
As we had done the night before, we stepped off when darkness set in. The insertion to the objective area went by smoothly. We passed the same debris, the same flashing infrared strobes. The platoons filed into their assigned lanes. The three brothers’ home was still empty. The same food littered the kitchen and the floor. Nothing had changed.
The neighboring house had an entire extended family living in it. After we spent about five minutes of searching this second house, the déjà vu quickly ended. It came over the net that a Marine from Rage 3 was wounded. I snatched the handset from Eakin and listened to the conversation between Captain Smith and Lieutenant Jahelka.
The injury was a shotgun blast to the foot. It had happened when one of the squads was gaining entry to a home. A breach team had used a shotgun to open a locked door. As the entry team went by, the lance corporal with the shotgun tried to force his weapon into a makeshift sling on his back. The safety for the shotgun got caught on his gear and became disengaged. The trigger was stuck on this same gear, and the weapon went off as the entry team passed by. The pellets blasted into another lance corporal’s foot. A dangerous trend with shotguns was forming.
Captain Smith coordinated a vehicle from COP Firecracker to come pick up the wounded Marine.
After handling the incident, the platoons continued
to evict the local population. Rage 1 was searching for a suitable site to move the locals to that was east of Farm Street. While on this part of the mission, a squad from Rage 1 discovered a house they described as a torture chamber. The only furniture in the building consisted of two iron bed frames. Hooks hung from the ceiling, and electrical wiring was strewn about the floor. Countless bloodstains marked the walls. Captain Smith sent the interpreter to the squad, ordering him to question the local populace about the residence. One family told him that it was where the ISI carried out the judgments of its legal court.
Back on no-name road, we continued clearing east. We entered the third house, which turned out to be a multi-building compound. The squad had the extended family from the previous home in tow. When I went through the third house’s gate, I was immediately greeted by three small residences. Each one faced inward to the common courtyard that I stood in.
The Marines simultaneously cleared each of the small homes, two of which were empty. I directed the headquarters element to put the neighboring extended family in the empty house on the left to keep the families separated. If the neighbors were going to give up dirt on one another, they certainly wouldn’t do it knowing that the others could hear them.
I headed into the central home, which contained the owners of the compound. Again, it was an extended family. The man of the house pleaded with us in English to go away. We all stood around kind of staring at one another until the interpreter made it back from Rage 1’s position. Marlo, the interpreter, immediately went to work on the group. He asked questions to multiple people at once. Then he started to focus on one of the teenage boys. I couldn’t understand anything they were saying, but I still tried to listen closely. Curious, I tapped Marlo on the shoulder. “What are you talking about?” I asked him. The Shia Iraqi said he was simply asking the same questions I had given him for the last mission.
The interpreter spit out another question at the boy, then nonchalantly turned back to me. “The building back at the intersection is a bomb,” he said. Even though I figured as much, I asked him to be more specific about the building’s location. The boy responded to Marlo by saying that it was the big apartment building on the corner of this no-name road and Racetrack. The teenager had watched insurgents place explosives in it only a few days earlier.
I looked at my map. The structure that the kid was referring to was not one of the originally rigged buildings. I left the room to update Captain Smith, who was with Rage 1, on the new information. Marlo continued to question the family. About ten minutes later, with the Marines still searching the compound, we were told over the radio to halt the clear. There was no explanation besides “Hold your current position.” So we sat there. In a matter of minutes, our sweat became colder than ice. Bones and teeth chattered in the cold, and the stationary Marines began to wonder what was going on. An hour passed by, then another. The lull in the mission became an opportunity for the Iraqi family to share their kerosene heater with us. A couple of Marines and Iraqis even shared a blanket. I got the feeling we were falling into a false sense of security.
Finally, we got word over the radio. The mission was being aborted. All units were to return to base. Captain Smith directed Rage 2 to leave first, followed by Rage 1. I walked out to the front gate and watched the squads from Rage 1 move past us. Captain Smith used it as an opportunity to link back up with Rage 3, meeting me at the gate. After a few minutes we began to move, but when the point element reached the intersection with Racetrack, we stopped. Somebody said that we were waiting for adequate dispersion, but whatever the reason, we were halted directly beneath the apartment complex that we had just been told was recently mined. I tried to conceal my frustration at the carelessness of the situation.
The battalion had canceled the mission because they felt that the area was too dangerous. Too many buildings were booby-trapped. Now we, the units in this dangerous area, were kneeling underneath the overhang of the rigged structure. Staring into the darkness of an empty window, I was very aware of the twisted irony in the event. To have us kneeling under the building that was rigged to explode was not the battalion commander’s intent.
It was another example of the psychological effect of being stationary while exposed. There was too much time to think. You became aware of the urban environment’s countless concealed positions. Knowing that you couldn’t cover them all at once led to irrational thoughts. I looked around and wondered whether the relaxed Marines, some of them leaning against the rigged building, knew where they were.
A couple of agonizing minutes went by, and we stepped off. It was the usual route back: following Racetrack. We approached the intersection with Give Me. A tank was stationed there, its barrel oriented north down the side street. I turned back to maintain a visual reference on Captain Smith and noticed that he had halted and was shining his PEQ-2 laser into the mined structure on the northeast side of the intersection. It was the same building that the RPG had been fired from the day before. I got Albin’s attention and halted the headquarters element.
I jogged back to Captain Smith. “Sir, what are you looking at?” I asked. The rest of the column was stopped behind us.
“There is something in there, Lieutenant Daly. I can’t tell what it is,” he said.
I was really not in the mood for standing around. Giving in to my anxiety, I tried to coax Rage 6 into leaving, saying, “Sir, the building is mined. Let’s just head back to the COP.” It was an attempt at coercion that I soon regretted.
The captain’s response was adamant. “Daly, a fucking Marine died from an RPG that was shot from this building. If that’s an RPG in there, we are going to get it!” he shouted.
A couple of Marines from the squad behind us came up to see what was going on. I took a few steps back, grabbed Eakin by the collar, and told him to get the rest of the headquarters element over to the far side of the intersection, where Albin was standing. I wanted to keep the formation moving and reduce the number of bodies standing around the building. I headed back to Captain Smith, who was trying to pry open the sheet-metal door to the former market stall he was staring into. The tallest Marine in Rage Company, Lance Corporal Adam Duvall, was helping him. Duvall was one of the most capable junior Marines in the company, full of initiative and a desire to do something. He was best known for declaring everything hajji “un-American.” At the moment, he was asking Rage 6 whether he wanted him to rip off the door. In his ridiculous Southern twang, Duvall kept saying, “Just tell me, sir, an’ I’ll rip ’ er off.”
Duvall suddenly identified what Captain Smith was looking at. He said it was a discarded engine block that was in rough condition—probably the aftermath of an IED blast. Captain Smith kept trying to get a better look at the shadowy hulk of debris, but the sheet-metal door was in his way. He eventually gave up and walked down off the curb, toward me in the street. I knew by his demeanor that Rage 6 was frustrated. We all were. No matter what we did, in a couple of hours the sun would come up and insurgents would own this part of Qatana. To an extent, I had come to accept this fact. It was the reason my sole desire was to head back to COP Firecracker as quickly as possible.
Captain Smith took my former position at the front of the headquarters element, and I ended up being third to last. Only Eakin and Bustamante were behind me.
We continued our movement, and I noticed that the squad from Rage 3 behind us had halted. They were increasing the dispersion between our two groups. It was the same walk back, scanning the same windows and rooftops, only in opposite order. The column moved at a snail’s pace.
We made it to the five-way intersection, best characterized as a traffic circle, just outside the COP. Moments later, I walked into the serpentine. I was two steps beyond the first waist-level concrete barrier, and a machine gun exploded behind me. Instead of running into the protection of the COP, only twenty feet away, I turned around to face the threat. Dozens of red tracers flew through the sky. Eakin stood motionless ten feet away, staring into the da
rkness. Through my NVGs, I could make out Duvall and the other members of his squad sprinting toward the COP. Some of them were firing their weapons; one of the Marines went down.
I shouted at Eakin to hand me the radio’s handset. There was no response; he was frozen. Sergeant Bustamante ran past us and into the COP. I screamed Eakin’s name, trying to shout over the machine gun still spitting out dozens of rounds. No response. I began to add four-letter words to my shouts while I ran toward him. He turned around as I reached for him with my right arm. “Get the fuck in the COP!” I shouted directly into his face. The young man’s eyes were wide with fear, but his mind was back in reality. He sprinted into the COP.
The Marines from the squad behind us made it to the serpentine, and the shooting ceased. Duvall went by first, shouting to me as he passed. “It was that damn tank there, on the corner, sir! He’s doing all the shootin’,” he said.
I waited for the last guy, which was, of course, Staff Sergeant Crippen. I told him I’d seen one of his Marines go down inside the traffic circle. He laughed when we got behind the ten-foot concrete wall that was the COP’s perimeter. “I know you did, sir, because it was me. I stepped in a sewer hole, and my legs are soaked with shit.” We walked through the maze of concrete barriers and concertina wire, entering the four-story building that was our home.
I thought about going straight to bed, but I was too curious about the new plan. I was also interested to hear what the tank had been shooting at. I went directly to the COC to find out. Captain Smith was already there. I could hear the tanks, call sign Warlord, giving the battle-damage assessment over the radio. Two-man RPG team killed in action, right on. I thought about my previous idea of using hummers to man the positions at night. There was no way a Marine with NVGs would have spotted the RPG team. Using the tanks for their optics had just prevented our first serious casualty. It was a reminder to me that military tactics is an art, not a science. There is no set answer for battlefield problems, only principles to help you make up your mind.
Rage Company Page 14
