The front door of the house opened to a small living area. Two elegant bookshelves stood in the far left corner. I headed straight back toward the barely visible staircase at the far side of the house. I quickly moved through the kitchen and another living area. The four Marines from the first team stacked at the bottom of the stairs and began to move up. I fell in behind them and helped clear the top two floors. Once they were cleared, the five of us took up positions on the roof, looking down into the intersection we had just moved through.
I sat down behind the roof’s wall and pulled the Vector 21b out of its tan carrying case. I quickly attached the NVG mount and began to scan the windows and the buildings on the opposite side of the intersection.
No movement.
A large house on the opposite corner was perfectly oriented over the worn traffic circle below me. A single streetlight was lit on the northern side where Farm and Annapolis met. The light revealed the far half of the intersection, precisely where Rage 2 was headed. I remembered how 1-37 had taken out all of the lights at the far sides of intersections they had crossed.
I thought about shooting the bulb, but before I did, the first squad from Rage 2 showed up. Firing at the bulb now would have caused massive confusion, so I decided against it. The first fire team began to move out into the intersection. The Marine next to me sighted in on the far house with his SAW, anticipating where the enemy might be. I did a quick scan of the far side with the Vector again: nothing. I then scanned down on Rage 2; the first team was now in the dim light given off by the small bulb.
I recognized Lieutenant Thomas as he walked behind his first team. Next was his radio operator (RO); the small antenna was barely visible outside of his assault pack. The enemy was waiting for this sign of command and control. No sooner had the antenna appeared than we heard a shrieking blast.
I instantly dropped down behind the wall. The blast was right next to the radio operator. I had to force myself to look back up over the wall, fearing the worst. “Shoot the fucking light!” I shouted to the rifleman next to me. He and a Marine down below took the shot before I finished my sentence. One of them hit it.
I started to scan the far houses, looking for any movement. It was pointless; the still dissipating smoke rendered the Vector useless. I couldn’t see through to the other side. Instead, I turned my attention to directly beneath me. The nature of the chaos below made it clear that someone was injured.
Two small successive blasts ripped into the darkness. The sudden light washed out my NVGs. I ducked back down behind the wall. In the moment that I paused, my fear returned. I had just watched my college roommate get blown up. It wasn’t the fear of my own death that brought me out of my confused state; it was the fear of his. In the second that I leaned against that wall, I thought about our uncommon friendship. I remembered that I had convinced him to request this unit. Now I thought he was gone. What would I tell his mom and dad? Sorry I didn’t shoot out that lightbulb? Anger overcame me. I was no longer emotionally withdrawn.
I popped back up over the wall. Smoke still lingered twenty feet away. I could hear Corporal Davila and Lieutenant Trotter shouting orders. Then James Thomas sprinted through the intersection, heading toward the building I was in. I thought I might be seeing things. The sound of his voice shouting into his PRR confirmed that he was real. I headed down into the house, praying that my indecision regarding the lightbulb hadn’t killed his RO.
I stopped on the second floor, where Captain Smith was. Knowing James, I could imagine only one thing going through his mind; update Rage 6 on Rage 2’s status. I was right. He sprinted past every Marine in the house, shouting at each one, “Where’s Rage 6?” He kept asking, unable to hear each Marine’s response. The lieutenant’s ears were still ringing from the blast.
He went up the stairs and spotted Rage 6. He took a knee. “Sir, remote-control IED blast fifteen meters from my RO and me. Only casualty is my RO. He took a small pellet to the foot.” James’s speech was interrupted by three or four quick, shallow breaths, his pale skin whiter than usual. “We got lucky, sir; they put the IED in a storm drain. The blast went straight up into the air.”
The two men started to coordinate the evacuation of the casualty. I headed back to the roof.
One of Rage 2’s squads evacuated Lance Corporal Charles Norris, the wounded RO. Sergeant Ahlquist began his search of the two target houses he was supposed to hit. Eventually, Rage 2 hit their four targets as well. Nothing of note was found. When the squads finished prosecuting their targets, we headed back to the Ice Palace. The next day we conducted a relief in place with Comanche.
Rage Company headed back to COP Firecracker.
Inside the comfort of the COP’s COC, we did a quick debrief of the battle of Christmas with the staff. While we reviewed the last few days’ events, I noticed some army captains hanging out in the Marine base. I hadn’t seen them before and wondered what their purpose was.
Tired after the debrief, I walked upstairs. Mud was caked along each step. The smell of soft, wet dirt emanated from the concrete slabs. When I got to the third floor, I was taken aback. Two dozen soldiers were sprawled out in our common area at the top of the stairs. These guys were obviously the reason that two captains were hanging out in the COC.
I was curious as to who they were. I spotted Albin talking to a few of them in the far right corner. We made eye contact, and I motioned for him to follow me. I went into the staff room and sat down on my cot. Albin came through the doorway seconds later.
“Who are those soldiers out there?” I asked.
He said they were the Brigade Reconnaissance Team and were like snipers or something. Apparently, one of their sergeants first class told Albin they had been sent here because we couldn’t handle it.
I laughed at the foolishness of the soldier’s comment, adding, “I hope they are as good as they claim to be.”
The next day everyone would find out they weren’t.
8
A DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY
December 29, 2006
I sat by myself carefully buttering a slice of white bread. An open, clear plastic bottle of water was on the table in front of me, its blue cap resting on my left thumb. Eating alone was my punishment for sleeping in. The other officers had already eaten breakfast, but I didn’t mind the time to myself. That night the few days of rest we’d had at COP Firecracker was coming to an end. The mission was another relief in place with Comanche, the same purpose as our previous time out. Hopefully, we would come back relatively unscathed, as on our last trip.
I took a bite of the bread and tasted hand sanitizer rather than the small amount of butter. My solitude was interrupted by Lance Corporal Eakin. He sat down across from me. “Sir, did you see the BRT guys leave?” he asked.
I didn’t know what he was talking about. Eakin informed me that all of the counter-sniper soldiers had walked out of the COP with a full combat load about ten minutes ago. I didn’t know what to think. Were they going to occupy a position in broad daylight?
I got up from the table and headed toward the stairwell. Going down, I saw Apache 6 walking in the hallway; he was yelling at his watch officer while heading toward the COC. “Who gave them permission to leave?” he shouted. The lieutenant met his commander within earshot of the stairs. I listened to their conversation.
“Tell them to get the hell back here!” said Apache 6.
“We can’t, sir; we think they forgot to get the new crypto before they left,” replied the lieutenant. Crypto was the material that encoded our radio’s hop set, or the specific set of frequencies that the radios hopped along. It is what prevents the enemy from seeing what frequencies you are using. Standard procedures were to change the crypto weekly and whenever a radio was lost.
A Marine poked his head out of the COC farther down the hall and said, “We got ’ em, sir; the battalion radio still had the old crypto on it.” He headed back into the room when he finished speaking. The lieutenant and Apache 6 hustled into the
COC behind him. I stayed outside the door, keeping out of the annoyed 1/6 Marines’ way.
Listening to their conversations, I heard that the BRT soldiers had taken a KIA. It was a gunshot wound to the head. Only a few minutes after they had set up in an abandoned building, an insurgent sniper inflicted the casualty. It was a poor showing for the soldiers. They didn’t have a single piece of ballistic glass. No sandbags to hide behind. The result wasn’t a surprise. It was the same rookie mistake we had made with the Heidbreder ambush, moving out in the light of day without a specific purpose. This time, though, the result was the death of an American.
I thought about Albin’s previous conversation with one of their senior enlisted soldiers. The BRT considered themselves “counter-snipers,” yet they walked to their position along Racetrack in the middle of the day. They didn’t have a single thing to protect themselves when they got to their positions. There wasn’t even a radio check before they left, let alone permission to move out.
The young soldiers were in over their heads, and it cost an American his life. After sustaining the casualty, they ran back to COP Firecracker, carrying the lifeless body.
I was surprised the insurgents had let them. The enemy I had encountered in Qatana was always ready to hit you when you were most vulnerable. For a moment I wondered whether the insurgents felt pity for the naive soldiers and allowed them to run away. I knew this couldn’t be true, however; al Qaeda was renowned for its brutality, and I was simply accustomed to the insurgents’ ability to exploit every situation. It was the first time I saw the enemy incapable of inflicting maximum damage.
The soldiers returned to the COP. I watched them fall in on their cots. None of them spoke. It was a sobering moment, the same sense of loss I had felt after the Heidbreder ambush. Only this time I wasn’t as attached to the men who had suffered the setback.
Their two captains came up the stairs. The group had a short discussion. At the end, they packed up their gear and left. The brigade was pulling them out. At least, that’s what their captains said. I figured 1/6 had told the brigade they didn’t want them. I assumed that if they had done it to the SEALs, they wouldn’t hesitate to do it to the BRT.
With the soldiers of the BRT leaving the COP, the Marines of Rage Company packed their gear for their next stint in Qatana. Before we left the company staff, Rage 6 in particular became obsessed with the theme song to the movie Team America: World Police. It was a catchy tune, and the chorus of “America, fuck yeah!” took the place of “Good morning” and “Good afternoon” as we passed one another in the dank hallways of COP Firecracker. False motivation was high; morale was low.
The company staged in the stairwell, as it usually did when it got dark. Rage 2 left first for building 17, followed by Rage 1, which headed to their position at the corner of Thornton and Pope. The platoons were occupying the same positions as on Christmas Day. Ten minutes after Rage 1 left, the headquarters element and Rage 3 headed for the Ice Palace.
Progressing north and east down Racetrack, our column formation was properly dispersed on either side of the road. We moved at a slow walk, trying to observe our surroundings. When we began to pass Fire Station Road, a platoon of Comanche Marines turned the corner, heading north. Rage 1 must have finished the turnover with the 1/6 Marines, who were now on their way back to COP Firecracker.
The unusual aspect of the group was their method of movement. The Marines were running in a single column with maybe forty inches between each man. All of their PEQ-2 lasers were shining into the ground at their feet, which was also the general orientation of their heads.
The sight of thirty Marines running back to chest, oblivious to their surroundings, caught me off guard. One IED, RPG, or machine gun burst could have inflicted multiple casualties in a matter of seconds. It was one of the worst tactical methods I had seen. Their platoon commander should have been fired; it looked like he was leading a collection of schoolgirls, rather than the world’s most efficient infantrymen.
Our column moved onward and arrived at the Racetrack-Give Me intersection. A large convoy of engineers and heavy equipment vehicles was parked in the street. Ten- to fifteen-foot-tall concrete barriers surrounded the future COP Qatana. The concrete perimeter was almost complete, and inside the confines of the wall the ground was leveled. A few containers that looked like something off the back of a tractor-trailer were stacked randomly in the muddy dirt. COP Qatana was starting to resemble a defensible position.
The formation moved past the busy engineers and eventually to the intersection with Thornton. We turned onto the side street, splashing through the small remnants of the flood that had engulfed the area around Christmas. After entering the Ice Palace, I headed straight to the third floor and our COC. The room was almost exactly as we had left it: barren. I dropped my assault pack on the hard, cold floor and checked on each fighting position with Lieutenant Jahelka. Comanche 6 left after doing his turnover with Rage 6. We were back in Qatana, and I was not excited.
The next morning, downtown Ramadi awoke to the sounds of a sporadic firefight. Half a mile to our south, the Marines of 1/6 who protected the provincial government center were busy. The standard insurgent sniper fire was harassing their static positions. Although the Marines had not sustained any casualties, we heard over the radio that their request for a GMLR was approved. Less than a week earlier and during the fighting on Christmas Day, our request in a similar situation had been denied; now an organic 1/6 unit was in the same predicament and being approved.
I moved to a south-facing window with Albin and Eakin to observe the impact. The targeted building had five or six floors and was on the intersection of Fire Station and Michigan. We were about 600 meters away. In the moments preceding the explosion, there was no audible gunfire. I wondered how Tarheel had defined “continuous fire” in this specific instance. I was still dwelling on the fact that they had been approved for the use of a GMLR when we had not.
The small group of Marines huddled around the same ballistic glass window that had failed to protect Lance Corporal Aranez when two grenades were thrown at his position. Instead of the frustration of that past moment, we smiled and giggled like kids at a summer movie.
Seconds later the rocket struck. A cloud of dark smoke and debris shot straight up in the air, almost forming a mushroom cloud. The impressive sight was followed by an intense concussion that shook the Ice Palace.
A couple of Marines cheered. Albin turned to me and said, “America, fuck yeah!” I smiled and finished the tune’s chorus with him, but in my mind his words brought about a moment of reservation. It wasn’t until I witnessed this example of American firepower that I began to think about our purpose. Had we brought anything more than destruction and chaos to this city? This was a huge building that we had just obliterated in one moment. I knew the structure was abandoned—elements of Rage Company had cleared it during Hue City II—but hundreds of people called that home a few years ago.
It was my forty-eighth day in Ramadi, and I had never even considered how the locals viewed me, an American. This wasn’t out of ignorance but because I convinced myself that such a thought would force me to second-guess myself in moments when decisiveness was required. Now I was looking out at a city America had destroyed. I realized that when the war was over, no one would remember the lone sniper who was in that building. They would remember that America had destroyed their home. Ramadi was a public relations nightmare.
Watching the debris from the GMLR’s explosion fall back down to earth, I forced those thoughts from my mind. I harshly told myself that the self-preservation of my fellow Americans was worth more than some Iraqis’ home. After all, this was a war.
I’m not sure I bought into my own rationale.
I looked out at the horizon of ruined buildings. The sun was still rising. I tried to find a place in the Ice Palace where I could sit in its warmth. It was a futile effort, so I ended up sharing a blanket with our interpreter, Marlo. Not long after I finally started t
o warm up under the heavy cotton material, insurgents began to fire at Rage 1’s position 200 meters away. It was the same four-story building that Rage 1 had consistently taken fire from during our last stay in Qatana.
After a few exchanges, the firing ceased. A welcome calm overtook our area of Qatana. Albin pulled out his bayonet. The Marine began to inscribe “America” into the white concrete wall of the COC. Captain Smith was listening to the radio and singing the verses he could remember from Team America’s theme song. When Albin finished scratching out “America,” he continued underneath with “fuck yeah!” Once he was finally done, he turned around and started to sing in unison with Captain Smith. I nodded in approval from underneath a red blanket. False motivation was better than no motivation.
Our session of boredom was quickly ended. Three large explosions shook the ground. Rage 2 came over the net and reported that three large-caliber mortar rounds had impacted around their position. I was surprised when the explosions were not followed up with any small-arms rounds. I wondered why the enemy wouldn’t use the potentially devastating indirect-fire asset in conjunction with direct-fire weapons. It seemed like a waste of three good mortar rounds. There were no casualties.
About an hour later, Rage 2 was engaged with a few shots of sniper fire. Instead of the shots coming from the abandoned COP site, they were fired from the south. The building the insurgents were using was located almost directly between the structures that Rage 2 and Rage 1 occupied. The enemy was trying to get us to fire at one another. The shooting ended without consequence.
The day’s fighting was over.
We didn’t plan any large raids that night, but Rage 2 did send out Corporal Davila’s squad on an SKT mission two blocks north of building 17. During the day, we spotted a large number of locals congregating on that street and figured we would have a surprise for them that night if they tried to maneuver on building 17.
Rage Company Page 18
