The Rushdi Mullah missions had become so frequent that First Strike decided in mid-April to seize a house permanently and make it a patrol base. Instead of having different units running through there at irregular intervals, they now had a fixed location that Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie would occupy on an alternating basis. The battalion never really had enough men to hold on to that patrol base and control of the town completely, but almost everybody viewed the initiative favorably because the battalion’s activities were obviously disruptive to a very large insurgent population. Soldiers even liked the Rushdi Mullah missions. They were dangerous and scary, but they were more like the kind of war they had trained for. It was real enemy territory where soldiers could maneuver and fight against enemies who were recognizable yet defeatable. Give me a gun battle over an IED any day, was every soldier’s preference.
First Platoon became a regular and reliable part of those rotations. For Goodwin, April seemed to be a crucial turning point. He felt that 1st Platoon was, after much pain and resistance, adapting to Fenlason’s way of doing business and coming back on line as a well-performing unit. “We had three platoons at that point,” he said. “It felt good. We were not just sitting there getting punched in the face. We’re actually going out, looking for him, punching him back.”
Around the same time, Task Force 77 was making more dramatic strikes into the area looking for Zarqawi. In February, they had identified certain houses in the Yusufiyah area that insurgent leaders were using. At 2:15 a.m. on April 16, TF-77 operators raided one such safe house. They got into a firefight, during which several suspected insurgents were killed and several more were taken into custody, though Zarqawi was not among them. He was, the Americans later learned, less than half a mile away at the time. Nine days after that, TF-77 mounted another raid on a house several miles from where the Apache had crashed on April 1. They were fired upon as they arrived and killed five men outside the house. With persistent fire coming from within the house, they called in an air strike, which reduced the house to rubble and killed seven more men and one woman. A press release issued by the military said every male found in the rubble was carrying an AK-47 and wearing a weapons vest.
With uncanny timing, a video starring Zarqawi appeared on Islamist Web sites the same day. It was his most public communiqué ever and the first to show his uncovered face. During the thirty-four-minute video, Zarqawi speaks directly into the camera for long stretches, meets with some masked lieutenants, pores over maps, and squeezes off machine gun bursts in the empty desert. He has a mustache and a beard and wears black fatigues, an ammunition harness, and a black skullcap. He is serious but robust looking. Healthy, even plump. The message is a condemnation of the United States and George W. Bush and an exhortation to the Iraqi insurgency. There are elements of bitterness—he is very harsh with Sunnis who have begun participating in the political process. They have, he says, “put a rope around the necks of the Sunnis,” and he vows to target anyone who cooperates with the Shi’ite-dominated, U.S.-backed government. A debate raged within military and intelligence circles about whether Zarqawi’s dramatic step into the spotlight connoted desperation or bravado.
In mid-April, some Charlie Company soldiers were busted for possession of Valium. The AR 15-6 investigation revealed that they had gotten it when they spent a short time at the TCPs filling in for Bravo. According to the soldiers’ statements, the IAs offered them drugs within their first few hours of arrival. HHC commander Shawn Umbrell, who conducted the investigation, said he mentioned to Goodwin that if it happened to Charlie Company so quickly out there, then it was likely that Bravo’s guys were being exposed to that temptation on a regular basis. Many IAs were known users and abusers of both drugs and alcohol. Fenlason, for his part, said he never entertained the notion that 1st Platoon might be abusing substances at the TCPs. “Do I know I have an alcohol problem or a drug problem?” he asked. “No, I don’t. Did I conceive of it? No, I didn’t. Did the IA have drugs? Yeah. They had all kinds of stupid shit down there. But, no, it never occurred to me.”
That changed in mid-May when a 1st Platoon Bravo soldier, high on Valium, left his guard station at TCP3 in the middle of the night without his weapon and wandered two hundred yards down the road until he got caught in a strand of concertina wire. Sergeant Carrick found him snared out in the street, babbling gibberish, thinking he was still on a patrol that had happened days ago. Carrick sent him up to the medic at TCP1 because he thought he had had a mental breakdown. Doc Sharpness checked him out and concluded, no, he was not having a breakdown. He was high. Fenlason and Goodwin ordered urinalysis tests for the whole platoon and three soldiers failed.
In mid-May, Task Force 77 initiated another round of offensives against Al Qaeda throughout First Strike’s AO. Beginning on the evening of the 13th, the United States claimed it killed a high-value target known as Abu Mustafa (who it believed was involved in the April Apache crash) and fifteen other insurgents in four coordinated raids in Lutufiyah. In keeping with TF-77’s “unblinking eye” approach, the operators used information gleaned in those raids to immediately mount another raid beginning the afternoon of the 14th, this time on a safe house not far from the power plant.
As coalition forces approached, they started taking fire. Al Qaeda’s Aeisha Brigade had commandeered several rooftops and from there shot at the helicopters with missiles and machine guns. At 5:30 p.m., they hit one of TF-77’s Little Bird helicopters just east of the power plant. That copter was able to self-recover and take off again. At 5:40 p.m., however, the insurgents hit another Little Bird. This one crashed badly only a few hundred yards northwest of Rushdi Mullah. TF-77 called in a fighter-bomber air strike, which included at least one 500-pound bomb that ripped apart several homes and resulted in dozens of dead and wounded. An MNF-I (Multi-National Force–Iraq) press release said that “approximately 20 terrorists” were killed, but locals insisted that the dead were mostly noncombatants.
Several units from throughout the division were dispatched to assist in the recovery of the Little Bird and its two dead pilots, including, once again, Bravo’s 2nd Platoon. In a repeat of the recovery mission in April, the salvage crews took far longer to get to the site than expected due to the dozens of IEDs and numerous firefights they met along the way. At about 3:00 p.m. on the second day, 2nd Platoon got word that the trucks were only an hour or two away. But by 7:00 p.m., after hitting two more IEDs, they still had not arrived and were not likely to make it there until morning. At that point, 2nd Platoon told the convoy to stay there, they would bring the helicopter to them. They found the house of a farmer with whom they had developed a good relationship. “We told him we’d pay him if he would let us borrow his tractor and trailer,” said 2nd Platoon’s Sergeant Jeremy Gebhardt. “And he said, ‘No, no, I’ll drive. Let’s go.’ So he drove out there and we loaded up his tractor with helicopter parts.” They finished the job of getting the debris to the wrecker just before 11:00 p.m.
A military spokesperson reiterated to the Washington Post what MNF-I’s press release had said, that there were no civilian casualties related to this battle. This is not true according to 3rd Platoon soldiers who were down at the JS Bridge during this time. Platoon Sergeant Phil Blaisdell recalled, “The fucking bomb hit this one family’s house, killed like five kids. The wife survived, but her arm was broken. They brought all those kids down to the JSB in the back of a Bongo truck, just all fucked up. How do you face a guy that just lost his entire family except one son and his wife?” The man asked Blaisdell if they could cross the bridge, which was ordinarily closed, to bury their children in a cemetery that was on the other side. Blaisdell let them pass.
Fenlason and Norton were happy that 1st Platoon was participating more fully in the company’s battle rhythms, including the multiday rotations out to Rushdi Mullah. To them, it was a sign that they were rehabilitating the platoon. They had a couple of very successful runs up there, doing patrols, gathering intelligence, rolling up bad guys. “It was
important, proving that we’re not a jacked-up unit,” said Norton, “proving we could accomplish multiple-day operations miles away from any sort of higher leadership.”
Virtually every aspect of the platoon was on the upswing. Two months after he kicked Yribe out, Fenlason felt like the men were finally getting on board. Soldiers were shaving, wearing their uniforms correctly, cutting their hair. Their attitude was improving, they were letting go of some of their anger and bitterness. “We still couldn’t take much of a setback, but we had turned a corner,” he said. “We were well on the road to recovery.” Others noticed it too. Sergeant Major Edwards told Fenlason several times that he was now running one of the top five platoons in the whole battalion. Even some of the men say that May did seem like the beginning of a new chapter. They had been in country seven months, they were on the back end now, and things were looking up.
In mid-May, 1st Platoon returned to Rushdi Mullah. During what would turn out to be their last trip up there, several elements of 1st Platoon got into a serious firefight. On May 22, most of the platoon was back at the patrol base after a round of morning patrolling. They were relaxing, trying to cool off. They had been taking some sporadic fire coming from behind the house for some time, but it was steadily getting more persistent, moving from harassment probes to more directed fire.
After checking with Norton and Fenlason, Lauzier grabbed Specialist Barker, Sergeant Diaz, and another soldier and they headed out to maneuver on the gunmen. Norton began prepping another fire team to flank from the other direction. Barker was in the lead, with Lauzier behind and Diaz and the other soldier making up a machine gun team in the back. They flanked out right from the house and into a farm field. To their surprise, this field was much lower than the surrounding ones, and their sight was further impaired by stands of elephant grass. But they spotted six or seven insurgents on a berm about 130 yards to the northeast. Diaz and the other soldier had started firing the machine gun and lobbing rifle-fired grenades when another group of insurgents began firing from a field only 50 yards to the west. They were caught in a brutal crossfire. They hit the ground. Pinned down, they were trying to return fire but their weapons started to jam. Both Lauzier’s and Barker’s M4s locked up. Diaz, meanwhile, realized that they hadn’t brought a full load of machine gun ammo. At the same time, the insurgents were refining their fire, walking it closer to them. “The rounds were just cracking all over us,” Lauzier said.
“Hey, I need fucking mortars now!” Lauzier yelled into the radio. The platoon’s radioman requested mortars up to battalion headquarters.
“Denied. We have fast movers in the air,” meaning there were jets in the vicinity, which is a collision risk with large caliber, high-flying mortars. But the mortars that travel with each company are small enough that they fly below jets’ minimum altitude. Norton’s fire team had the mortar team, led by Staff Sergeant Matthew Walter, with them.
Mortarmen are frequently maligned for being lazy. They have heavy equipment, and it is standard practice to spread the mortar-round loads out to all the men of the platoon, which they complain about. But Walters humped all, or almost all, of his own gear. He would frequently carry the mortar tube and a dozen rounds at a time, which is about 100 pounds. So the guys esteemed him greatly. As Norton was talking to Fenlason about what sort of help they could get Lauzier, Walter asked Norton if he could borrow three men. Walter grabbed the men and ran across the road. Since he could see the enemy’s tracer rounds, and generally the source of fire, he set up his 60mm mortar tube. Norton followed about two minutes later.
“How far do you think that is? Four hundred meters?” Walter asked.
“Six hundred?” Norton said. They decided to average it. The big problem, however, was figuring out where Lauzier’s team was. Since their weapons were jamming, and they were conserving the machine gun ammo, Norton and Walter couldn’t tell, exactly, where their friend-lies were. They tried to determine their location over the radio, but descriptions like “in a canal” or “to the right of the enemy fire” were not hugely helpful. At Norton’s command, Lauzier ordered Diaz to fire one rifle-launched grenade at the insurgents, and Norton eyeballed their probable location back from that explosion. With all of those variables, Norton and Walter were fairly confident, but still, this was some risky business and Norton was uneasy. Lauzier, however, was insistent.
“We are getting cut up,” he yelled into the radio. “Our weapons are jammed. We need support now. Repeat, now.”
“All right, we are working on it,” Norton responded. “I want you to lay everything you have on the exact spot where the insurgents are. And then we’re going to drop mortars off of that. As soon as the mortars drop, I want you to break contact and clear the area, because we’re going to sweep left to right toward the direction we think you are. Got me?”
“Roger,” Lauzier responded. A few seconds later, Diaz’s machine gun ripped toward the berm, and Norton and Walter finalized their adjustments. Walter dropped his first round. Away it flew and detonated on impact.
“Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrhhhhh!” Lauzier screamed through the mic. It was a loud and ear-splitting wail. Through the crackle of the radio, it sounded like the scream of a man badly injured. Walter and Norton looked at each other. “Oh my God,” Norton thought. He felt like he was going to puke. “We hit them. I just killed my own men.”
“Lauzier! Lauzier! Are you there? Are you there?” Norton yelled into the mic.
“Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrhhhhh, yyyeeeaaahhh! Fucking bull’s-eye, dude!” Lauzier yelled. “You hit him dead on! Fucking bull’s-eye! Fire for effect!” Norton had never been more relieved in his life. Walter lobbed about four or five shells on and around the spot. Lauzier wanted to follow and make sure the insurgents were dead, but he didn’t have any more working weapons. He told his men to break contact, and they headed back to the house. It is something he regretted years later, that he was not able to personally finish the insurgents off.
After three years of hunting, the U.S. military finally found and killed Zarqawi on June 7, in a farmhouse in a village thirty-five miles north of Baghdad. U.S. and Jordanian intelligence had gotten a number of key breaks in the weeks before. One source helped focus the Zarqawi-hunters on Sheikh Abdul-Rahman, often described as Zarqawi’s spiritual adviser. A small Task Force 77 team had followed Abdul-Rahman to a farmhouse where they were certain he was meeting with Zarqawi. Worried that their prey might get away if they waited to muster enough troops to attempt an assault, they requested air support. Two Air Force F-16s were diverted from another mission, and at 6:21 p.m., one dropped first one, then another 500-pound bomb on the house. Amazingly, Zarqawi survived the initial blasts as Iraqi police and U.S. soldiers swarmed the scene, but he died from injuries within the hour. Everyone else in the house, including Abdul-Rahman and a small but never conclusively specified number of women, children, and other men, died in the blast as well.
Hopes that this alone would deal a decisive blow to the insurgency, or even AQI’s activities, were fleeting. On June 12, the Mujahideen Shura Council released a statement on behalf of Al Qaeda in Iraq saying that a new emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq had been appointed. Attacks resumed unabated, and a month later U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad would tell the BBC that Zarqawi’s death, “in terms of the level of violence …has not had any impact.”
By June, First Strike had decided to shut down the Rushdi Mullah patrol base. It simply did not have enough men to hold the position and turn it into a fully functioning outpost. Constant operations here were sapping combat strength for missions elsewhere, so on June 11, Bravo Company’s 2nd Platoon was in the process of tearing it down. They were breaking down some of the defensive positions, dismantling the concertina wire serpentines in the front, and preparing for a night mission later on. They would depart the next day.
At 3:00 p.m. on what had been an unusually quiet day until then, the house started taking fire from both the front and the rear. As the IAs on guard started returning fire, the only Amer
ican on guard, Private First Class Tim Hanley, who was manning a bunker on the front gate, saw an orange thirty-ton dump truck approach from the northeast. When it got to the front drive, it turned right and began barreling toward the gate, plowing through what few strands of concertina wire were left. Hanley started banging away at the truck with his M240B machine gun. He damaged it and may have thrown it off course, but he could not stop it from slamming into the courtyard wall and exploding into a massive fireball. Platoon Sergeant Jeremy Gebhardt, who had walked to the front door to investigate the gunfire, was thrown across the room. Several other soldiers were picked up off of their feet, hurled against walls, and showered with debris, shrapnel, and glass. The blast shook the FOB at Yusufiyah five miles away. Amazingly, although fifteen U.S. soldiers, eight Iraqi soldiers, and one interpreter were injured, no coalition forces were critically hurt. The driver’s body was ripped to pieces.
A medic ran to the front of the building, where Hanley had crawled out of the rubble of his bunker, with a ruptured eardrum and shrapnel in his neck. The truck’s front axle and engine had landed directly on top of his post, which was fortified only with sandbags and plywood overhead covering. Looking at the crushed bunker, it was impossible to figure out how Hanley had survived. Hanley lost most of his hearing, however, and could have returned home, but he elected to stay with the men and finish the deployment.*
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was inaugurated on May 28, 2006, and the Shi’ite militias’ carte blanche increased substantially. Sectarian killings continued to escalate throughout the country, with more than a hundred civilians dying every day in June. By early August, the U.S. military would acknowledge that more people in Baghdad were being killed by Shi’ite death squads than by Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents. Yet throughout the summer, the Iraqi government and top U.S. commanders thwarted attempts by lower-level units attempting to rein in the Shi’ite paramilitaries: American forces were not allowed to target the Mahdi Army without direct approval from either Maliki or General George Casey.
Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death Page 32
