Then they headed to the house next door. Instead of going on a rampage, Lieutenant Thomas had a better idea. They offered all of the men at the house chai. In all, there were four adult males. The neighbors were an older gentlemen and his younger son. The owners were another father-son pair, but both were much fatter than the average Iraqi. In line with the lieutenant’s desire, the Iraqis accepted the offer of chai and followed the Marines back to their house.
As soon as everyone was inside the front door, Corporal Clark Davidson slammed it shut. James Thomas was purposely standing next to the owner of the house, the middle-aged fat man. He was also at the head of the group. Everyone watched as James hip-tossed the Iraqi to the floor. Then he flexi-cuffed the fat, stunned man. When he was done, he stood up, pinning the man to the floor with his boot, and looked back at the others. Three scared Iraqis and a cluster of pleased Marines couldn’t believe what they had seen.
“Well? Take those fuckers down!” shouted James.
His Marines did as ordered but not nearly as harshly as their platoon commander had. Each of the Iraqis asked, “Why, mister?” The Marines provided no immediate response, but eventually they brought the Iraqis one at a time to the garage. When the old Iraqi saw the dozens of weapons on display, he spit his dentures at the Marine escorting him, Corporal William Downum. The hatred covered up by offers of tea and goats was now obvious. Both sides knew the other’s true feelings.
After being delivered to the ARDF, the men who lived to the north (the neighbors) quickly blamed the cache of weapons on the two fat men. The response of the two accused men shocked the interrogators and us. They didn’t deny owning the cache but instead said that the neighbors to the north were the ones responsible for planning and coordinating the suicide car bombing of OP Squirrel not even two weeks earlier. In turn, the neighbors responded by saying that the owners of the cache were also the individuals who had planted the IED that killed Sergeant Ahlquist.
Three months later, the owner of the house with the cache, an al Qaeda emir, according to intel, was handed a sentence of death by hanging from the Iraqi government. I do not know if the government went through with the punishment.
Ultimately, Rage 2 didn’t find the missing SMAW rocket. Instead, they captured an al Qaeda emir, the fat man James Thomas had hip-tossed. He wasn’t anywhere near the ranking of Mullah Qahttan, but he was a battalion-level target.
Over the next few days, the sporadic firefights in the Sijariah corridor continued. The insurgent snipers were becoming increasingly effective. Under the pressure of constant and accurate harassing fire, most units would withdraw from the contested territory. To the insurgents, Rage Company was no different from its predecessors. By February 26, all coalition troops would move out of Sijariah.
Yet our withdrawal was for different reasons than most. There was deception associated with the tactic. We wanted the insurgents to fill the void we would create. Two nights after our planned withdrawal, 150 tribal allies from north of the Euphrates would cross the river in Julayba’s northwest corner. Once in Julayba, they would move to a predetermined link-up point with our scouts. Then the militia would break into three groups and hunt down the region’s al Qaeda militants by themselves. It would be our first test of the scouts’ ability to become a real military force.
February 24, 2007
Staff Sergeant Jerry Eagle was upset. As the company’s senior combat engineer, he had the right to advise Captain Smith on all things pertaining to explosives. But the issue that troubled him had nothing to do with engineering. Instead, Eagle was dwelling on the fact that the company had not been conducting presence patrols around COP Melia. In his mind, the Risala Takedown was receiving too much of the company’s focus, at the expense of security in our own backyard.
The native of White Lake, Michigan, wasn’t the only concerned Marine. For the last thirty minutes, on the COC’s dirty-looking couch, he had been discussing this lack of patrols with the leadership of COP Melia’s new security platoon: Lieutenant Shearburn and Staff Sergeant Colwell. The three men were quickly in agreement on the need to execute more localized patrols.
The trio was surprised when Captain Smith initially rebuffed their proposal. After discussing the matter, however, Rage 6 eventually agreed to allow a squad-size patrol. He gave them one condition: do not enter the heart of the Albu Bali tribal area, everything north of Kill Street. With that one restriction they decided to head east along Nova, search the Nasaf Marketplace, and patrol to AO Rage’s easternmost boundary. They would head back following generally the same route.
Lieutenant Shearburn assigned Corporal Anderson’s squad to the patrol, and Staff Sergeant Eagle volunteered to go in support. As Shearburn briefed Anderson, Eagle went to get his gear. With eight 27-round magazines, two fragmentation grenades, a smoke grenade, a .45 pistol, fifteen pounds of C-4 in a demo bag, the always-useful duct tape, an M-4 and an M-14 rifle, and an insane amount of water, the staff sergeant was ready for anything. Add in the body armor, the Kevlar helmet, and the radio, and the weight he carried was in the triple digits. It was a lot of shit for a five-foot-six guy to carry. Then again, Jerry Eagle was deceptively strong.
Once he was ready, he met Anderson’s squad in the foyer. Lance Corporal Jahner, one of Eagle’s subordinate combat engineers, and the company’s senior line corpsman, Doc Del Castillo, would also be attached to Anderson’s squad for the patrol. It was around midday when they finally left.
Staff Sergeant Eagle and Lance Corporal Jahner exited the COP with Corporal Anderson’s first fire team. The squad left via the COP’s main gate onto Nova and headed southeast toward the Nasaf Marketplace, which surrounded the intersection of Nova-Ruby Road. The Marines stayed in the defilade provided by the berm on Nova’s south side. It was the same protection that James Thomas and his men had hidden behind a month earlier. In buddy pairs, the heavily armed men bounded between the houses paralleling Nova. After 1,000 meters of alert patrolling, they came upon the somewhat functional market. It was one of the only places that we knew about where Iraqis could purchase food.
Civilian traffic was minimal. As Staff Sergeant Eagle crossed Ruby Road, however, he noticed multiple Iraqis glaring at him and his men from the north. The combat engineer knew they were up to no good. He wasn’t the only Marine to notice. The patrol’s squad leader, Corporal Anderson, also made a mental note of the group and the small pickup truck they hung around.
The Marines didn’t head after the suspicious men. To do so would have led them farther north and deeper into the Albu Bali tribal enclave. Without visible evidence to arrest the men on, the best course of action was to continue on their original heading—directly east.
After passing the last few houses of the village, the Marines entered rural agricultural terrain. The squad formation was generally exposed. Open fields stretched for about 300 meters to the north, while sporadic clusters of houses dotted the landscape to the south. The blond-haired, blue-eyed Eagle was keenly aware of his surroundings. The dark-brown earth was crisscrossed with dozens of irrigation ditches and plenty of vegetation. The staff sergeant anticipated finding his enemy hidden behind every possible position that offered cover and concealment.
After they had patrolled about 1,000 meters farther down Nova, the squad veered off the road and searched the open ground to the north for tactical caches and IEDs. When they found nothing, they continued heading east. Then, near the turnaround point, they spotted an IRL that wasn’t completely set up. Eagle recognized a lone small building, nothing more than a shack, not far from the IRL. He guessed that it was the hide-spot that would be used to initiate or time the IRL’s launch.
Eagle relayed to Anderson that he wanted to search the shack, and the squad leader agreed. The Marines slowly patrolled to the IRL. On arrival, Eagle successfully dismantled and loaded it into his pack. Then they headed for the shack. Inside, they found an air compressor and random IED-making material.
Anderson requested from the COC that they be allowed t
o detonate the items in place. Shearburn gave him the green light. Minutes later, after Eagle added the IRL to the pile of IED material and set a charge of C4, the small shack ceased to exist. With the items successfully destroyed, the squad began to head back to the COP. They executed the movement in a V-sweep, with Staff Sergeant Eagle at the base of the V, using his metal detector. They didn’t get very far. Minutes in, half a dozen sporadic sniper shots rang out from the north. The rifle fire originated on the opposite side of the field that they had previously searched.
Instantly, the Marines gave up the V-sweep and took cover on Nova’s south side. Just as Nova was bermed around the COP and the Nasaf Marketplace, it was bermed on the southern side as well. The raised road offered the crouching Marines about three feet of defilade.
The squad continued west toward the Nasaf Marketplace and its surrounding village. About midway through the 1,000 meter movement the insurgents opened fire again from the north. The shots missed high. Aware of the sniper threat, the Marines bounded along the base of the road. Eagle could hear Lance Corporal Jeffrey Foy, the squad’s radio operator, trying to explain what was happening to the COC. There seemed to be confusion in Foy’s voice, and Eagle decided to take the handset and do the explaining himself. After he did, Lieutenant Shearburn informed the staff sergeant that the QRF was getting on their vehicles. If things got out of hand they would be readily available.
The shooting ceased. An even mix of fear and excitement seemed to grip each Marine. They all sensed what was coming. The patrol was nearing the Nassaf Marketplace, the same place where the group of young Iraqis had stared them down earlier. It was most likely this group of men that was paralleling the Marines along Kill Street to the north and harassing them with inaccurate rifle fire. Now the Marines knew they were about to be predictable. It was no secret the patrol had to cross Ruby Road to make it back to the COP. If the insurgents wanted a fight, they would be waiting in the village.
Staff Sergeant Eagle was at the front of the formation. When they came to the outskirts of the village, Eagle approached a fence. He cut a hole through it with his wire cutters. Immediately after he ducked under the cut wire, he encountered a large, mud-filled ditch. In a full combat load, he jumped over the crevice and made it to the far side. Slowly, the Marines followed behind. Once the squad was almost entirely across, they heard a fit of expletives from the rear of the formation. Doc Del Castillo had rolled his ankle jumping over the ditch. It was a pretty serious sprain. Lance Corporal Alexander Torres, a big muscular kid who was one of Anderson’s riflemen, had to help the corpsman limp onward.
In two-man teams, the squad entered the village 50 meters south of Nova. It was deserted. The Marines intently navigated between the two rows of houses until they reached the major danger area on their return to COP Melia—the crossing of Ruby Road. Maintaining their two-man buddy pairs, the first team crossed. Staff Sergeant Eagle went with them. They made it to the opposite side unimpeded. From the corner of a house, Eagle sighted through his scope to the north, looking for targets. The first buddy pair of the second fire team crossed. Then it was Torres and Doc’s turn.
They made it a few steps out into the road. All at once, ten different AK variant weapons opened fire from the north. Eagle instinctively looked into the street at his exposed brothers. Dozens of bullets were tearing through the sky between him and the two men. The urgency in their faces said the obvious. They weren’t going to make it.
Torres got hit. The high-velocity round spun his body 180 degrees. His athletic frame crumpled in the road. Unable to stand by himself, Del Castillo also went down.
Panic encompassed the scene. By now, the Marines were matching the intensity of the insurgents’ rifle fire. They also shouted to one another on opposite sides of the street. Eagle executed a magazine change. As he did, he cursed his enemy. They were smart and patient fuckers. Not only did they engage the slow-moving target, but they also waited for the squad’s combat power to be split by the road. Four Marines were still on the far side of Ruby, and at some point they had to cross.
Eagle finished the magazine change and continued firing. In the corner of his eye, he saw Doc Del Castillo help a dazed Torres to his feet. Somehow, the two made it out of the street without further injury. The men went straight into a small house, joining a few members of the first fire team who had already found shelter inside.
The insurgent fire tapered off. The Marines continued to suppress at a sustained rate. Corporal Anderson ordered the rest of the Marines into the small house. He and Staff Sergeant Jerry Eagle took turns firing at the enemy and shouting to Lance Corporal Mitchell Janicki, who had his three men on the roof of a house across Ruby.
Once Janicki was ready to cross, Anderson ordered two Marines with the M249 SAW to come out of the house and provide covering fire. Lance Corporal Jahner and Private First Class Kevin Convery sprinted out the door. They immediately took up positions oriented on the now-quiet insurgents. With their light machine guns, they suppressed the enemy’s previous positions. Two Marines crossed. They were challenged by only a handful of inaccurate insurgent shots.
The process repeated itself. All of the Marines were now on the western side of Ruby Road. Anderson ordered the patrol into the small house. Torres and Del Castillo needed a casevac.
Eagle entered. He expected the worst for Torres. Instead, he found one of the luckiest Marines in the company. Torres had been hit but not cleanly. The bullet had slammed the side of his SAPI plate, punching into the Kevlar along the plate’s width, not on the surface. The width was only half an inch. The bullet had missed the soft tissue on the side of his upper torso by centimeters. But the side of the body armor wasn’t where the bullet’s trajectory stopped. It deflected off the Kevlar and into Torres’s right bicep. Somehow, it didn’t break the skin and only left a massive bruise.
Regardless of his luck, Torres was having a hard time breathing, and Del Castillo could hardly move. The squad still needed the casevac. Del Castillo personally called it in to the COC. He was dumbfounded when Captain Smith denied the request.
When the firefight began, both Lieutenant Shearburn and I were in the COC. Cullen was doing a solid job of tracking what was happening, but Lance Corporal Foy, Anderson’s radio operator, could not give us an accurate location to their position. He thought the patrol was still east of Ruby Road.
At this opportune moment of immense confusion, Captain Smith walked into the COC. He took over the radio from Shearburn and tried to take control. The problem was that we knew the logical next step and he didn’t. We should have pushed the M1 Abrams tank at the intersection of Ruby and Michigan north to Nova-Ruby. It took Captain Smith two to three potentially crucial minutes to come to the same conclusion. During that time, he denied any request, including the one for the casevac. He didn’t know Torres had been shot and thought it was only Del Castillo with a sprained ankle who required medical attention. Cullen Shearburn responded by shouting at Captain Smith to let him speak to his men. It was a frustrating moment.
To save the potentially crucial minutes, Captain Smith should have built his situational awareness before taking the radio. In the grand scheme of things, it is a seemingly inconsequential behavior to dissect, but for the Marines of Rage 1 this event made them lose confidence in Rage 6. Word spread among the lance corporals, inaccurately, that Captain Smith was trying to get them killed. In their minds, he was denying the casevac to protect the lives of the Marines in headquarters platoon (the Marines manning the QRF). In reality, he was trying to gather more information before pushing out the QRF. The result was a significant drop in morale.
After Corporal Anderson’s patrol loaded Torres and Del Castillo into the M113 ambulance, they continued to the COP on foot. Instead of heading directly to the base, they stopped to search the surrounding buildings. On the roof of one, the Marines found four chiseled holes in the retaining wall: standard insurgent spider holes. Each of them was oriented toward COP Melia. We were being watched.
Again, Staff Sergeant Eagle was upset at the lack of presence patrols. They would have prevented the enemy from being comfortable enough to get this close. The insurgent doesn’t know what you’ re doing when you enter a house. Maybe the person is giving you information. Maybe he isn’t. Either way, the insurgent knows he is no longer the only influence on the population. He becomes more subtle, more deceptive. In turn, the people do not see him as much. The insurgent’s threat of terror, which is the basis of his influence, is no longer the only thought in the population’s mind. People become more receptive to your patrols and your requests for information. Truly, just showing up is 80 percent of winning. No one is more aware of this fact than an insurgent.
February 28, 2007
Double-A casually sat on the COC’s couch. He wore the same clothes I always saw him in, a black turtleneck sweater and blue jeans. An olive-drab tactical vest was draped over the sweater. Multiple AK magazines filled its slender green pouches.
“You come out on the mission with us, Daly? I take you to my house and show you my family,” said my Iraqi counterpart.
I continued to stare at the map on the floor between us. I was trying to get an idea of the mission’s target locations. Double-A had circled half of the map, saying that’s where the scouts and their tribal allies would search. There was no rhyme or reason to the circling. I gave up on trying to understand it.
“I’m sorry, Double-A, but this is an Iraqi-only mission. No American interference,” I replied. “The people must see that you are in charge.”
Double-A gave me his usual genuine grin. “But you, Sheikh Smith, Thomas, you are all famous. The people will want to meet you,” he said.
Rage Company Page 35
