“No better friend was certainly our first and foremost objective, but we also knew that we could be their worst enemy if they decided to make life difficult,” Colonel Toolan says. “In Bing West’s book [No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah, Bantam, 2005] he brings out the combative nature of Marines. Let’s face it—that is what we are all about. But we spent an amazing amount of time and energy getting the Marines mentally ready to be their friends. Maybe friends is a bit of an exaggeration, but at least be present and earn their trust and confidence that we would be there. Instead of an insurgent, a Marine would be there and their family wouldn’t be abused in the night or threatened or whatever. That was our going-in objective.
“The problem is,” he adds, “the attacks just increased. It would have been a sign of weakness to them if we hadn’t responded. We didn’t have to respond with violations of land warfare, but we had to respond in kind.”
By November infrequent incidents had melded into constant agitation. Weapons Co. Marines riding in Humvees with TOWs and other heavy weapons were constantly in contact. Kasal’s Marines were spread thin, running around the entire AO while setting up road checkpoints and providing security, and they were being faced with more and more difficult circumstances.
“Our CAAT [combined anti-armor team] platoon would get some Arabs who would cross trigger lines—lines that if they crossed they would be shot,” Grapes remembers. “There would be signs warning them, and they would ignore them, and they would get shot. It was still justified. The first time one goes to war there is a bit of hesitation. Later on there is no hesitation. Even those aggressive Marines with a rifle had a sense of compassion, but over time as you see more and more of your friends getting hurt, the hesitation diminishes. There is a distinction between losing hesitance and taking it too far and doing the wrong thing. Prior to going to Fallujah we didn’t have an enemy.”
Trying to be everywhere to ensure that his Marines complied with the ROE was a major part of Kasal’s job. While constantly in the field and performing his regular duties as a first sergeant, he would go on missions with Marines. He was on the run 24 hours a day, living on 20-minute catnaps. He consistently went without rest so he could be with his Marines.
“Sometimes it was okay,” says Kasal. “Sometimes we would get four or five hours of sleep. I learned to adapt. Marines learn to adapt to anything.”
There was no time for too much else. His Marines were spread across an area roughly half the size of Rhode Island. Keeping them together was an important part of the job.
“A first sergeant should be there to lead and inspire,” he says. “Before pinning on first sergeant stripes you have to be a leader. Just being with your Marines and letting them see that you are enduring the same hardships and dangers as them will lift their spirits in even the hardest of times.
“When I would go out with a platoon or a squad I would always have a pocketful of candy. I used to tell my Marines that I believed in General Mattis’ statement about no better friend, no worse enemy than a U.S. Marine. I kept telling them that when you go out there, you be warriors and you be ready. If the enemy even thinks about blinking, you be the most ferocious thing he’s ever seen and you kill the little bastard.
“At the same time I’d tell them to try to make a new friend every day,” he adds. “If you just go out there every day and piss people off, you are going to have a long, hard war ahead of you. The only way you are going to win this war is by winning the populace, and that means when you go out on patrol, don’t be abusing people and kicking things in and trashing places.”
In October Weapons Co.’s 81mm mortar platoon suffered a killed in action (KIA) and multiple wounded in actions (WIAs) from an enemy mortar round inside their compound. While out on patrol with one of his sections, Kasal learned that the Marines from the 81s stopped combat operations to mourn their fellow Marines. Kasal came off the mission he was on and headed to the 81 ‘s compound. He pulled the NCOs together and gave them a brief lecture on combat leadership. Never let your Marines mourn immediately after a loss, he told them. Keep them focused on the task at hand. There would be time for mourning after the fight.
LOOKING AHEAD
Kasal realized the growing combat they lived every day was tough, scary, and lonely, but he also knew that it was nothing compared to the hell that was about to arrive. To make sure his own Marines kept their heads in the war, he turned to his gunnery sergeants and other staff NCOs to help him.
In al-Anbar province in October 2004 Chief Warrant Officer 2d Class Christian Wade was a gunnery sergeant, or “gunny,” in Weapons Co. It was his fourth time in combat. Wade, originally from Bozeman, Montana, had sweated out Somalia and fought in Task Force Ripper during Desert Storm and during 3/1’s first deployment in 2002. After getting wounded in al-Anbar province by an IED and staying on to get in on the fight in Fallujah, the former sniper was nominated to be a Marine Corps gunner, a rank of rare and exalted status. Wade went to Quantico, Virginia, to train for his new role.
“By the time it came around we were praying to go to Fallujah,” Wade says. “I wanted my Marines to be aggressive. The Rules of Engagement were still pretty liberal. I encouraged my Marines to shoot and kill and destroy as much as possible.
“With First Sergeant Kasal leading the way, I didn’t have a choice. He established a from-the-front style of leadership. I would hear things like ‘What the hell is First Sergeant Kasal doing out there getting shot to hell? That isn’t a first sergeant’s job.’ Kasal thought his job was being out with the men.”
By the end of October Kasal and Wade already knew through the NCOs’ grapevine that they were going to take out Fallujah.
Wade was more than ready, tired of daily firefights with no clear victory. The Marines in his platoon felt the same way. He rode them hard—he says sometimes too hard—making sure they stayed focused on the mission. The constant combat was grinding everybody down.
“I was going out with my CAAT teams to make sure that they had everything they needed and to show them we were all in it together,” he says. “Even when the sections were running on their own they felt better because the gunny was out there.
“I had done some checking and found out that in the unit we replaced, the gunny I was replacing didn’t leave Camp Abu Ghraib. I wasn’t going to do that. I went out to keep an eye on my men, making sure the Marines were cleaning their weapons, doing their maintenance. I kept dialed in on four sections. Three had staff sergeants and one had a sergeant running them.”
Wade confesses: “I had the habit of interfering when they weren’t doing right, when I thought I saw something interfering with the integrity of the section or platoon. Kasal talked to me about it. When Kasal told me something I listened because he was right. I had to let my sections run themselves.”
Kasal remained everywhere all the time. He went from platoon to platoon and section to section making sure Weapons Co. Marines stayed in the loop. He never tried to diminish his young Marines’ fears about the upcoming fight with bullshit. He told them that good Marines are prepared Marines. Their training was the best weapon they had. He made sure they understood it.
Despite the Marines’ combat anxiety they weren’t running scared. Every insurgent assault was met with force and 3/1 stung the insurgents plenty of times. The snipers of H&S Company (Headquarters and Services) were especially effective taking out pesky insurgents keeping an eye on the Marines. Even so, before the battle for Fallujah broke, no one in 3/1 knew that one day the name would become immortalized in the annals of the United States Marine Corps. All they knew was that other Marines had been there before and were ordered to give up ground they had taken with their blood. That was enough to pray for payback.
The men in the Thundering Third were also too busy surviving to suspect that the Old Breed’s battle for the ancient Islamic city would in the future simply be known as “Fallujah” and uttered with the same reverence as Veracruz, Chateau Thierry, Iwo, or T
he Canal. And it was still much too early to know that the Marines who died there would be enshrined in its lore and that Fallujah would claim its place in the proud litany of battles already admitted to the pantheon of the Corps’ cherished fights. They would have laughed in the face of anybody who even suggested it.
CHAPTER 8
MOVING UP
On October 24, 2004, Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl and Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Malay, the CO of 3/5, accompanied Colonel Mike Shupp, the new commander of RCT1, on a mission designated Operation Team Comanche to reconnoiter a huge train station slightly north of Fallujah. Colonel Toolan had unexpectedly turned over command of 1 st Marines in September to Colonel Larry Nicholson. Shupp replaced Nicholson, who was severely wounded on his first day of command.
At Shupp’s direction Buhl and Malay joined C Company, 2d Tank BN, RCT1 while it executed a carefully orchestrated feint at the train station to determine if it could be used as a jump-off point to attack Fallujah. Team Comanche had been rehearsing the ruse for several days with the fast, wheeled light armored vehicles (LAVs) from 3d Recon. BN and was ready to move out. In the April battle the Marines had attacked Fallujah from the northwest with 2/1, from the south with 1/5, and later the east with 3/4. The insurgents seemed to expect any second attack from the same general directions. To repel attack they had massed their forces in the southwestern part of the city and along the Euphrates River on its western edge. They had even prepared positions to repel AAVs swimming across. Shupp wanted to surprise them.
Officially Captain Robert Bodisch, the C Co. tank commander, was leading the combined arms team of tanks, LAVs, and a tactical Psychological Operations (Psyops) team. The mission’s primary purpose was to identify key objectives in north Fallujah and locations to establish breach lanes for follow-on operations. Breach lanes are paths cleared through obstacles to allow tracked and wheeled vehicles to attack a specific point.
Commanders and staff officers had varied views on the mission. Some believed it would telegraph the Marines’ moves without any tangible gain. Others thought it was showboating to send an armored column unnecessarily into harm’s way. They felt the intelligence information was available through other means.
TAKING FIRE
Buhl found himself the designated loader in an Abrams commanded by an experienced gunnery sergeant named Juhl. Juhl had just finished a tour as a tank instructor at the Army’s Armor School at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. For the rest of the day Buhl was under Juhl’s command. His job was to look out the gunner’s hatch in the turret to make his reconnaissance and to load the main gun if called on to do so.
“We went up there with tanks and LAVs,” Buhl recalls. “The insurgents were building up in the southern part of the city and along the river. The area where they were concentrated had been the scene of heavy fighting with 2/1 in April.
“It took us some time to maneuver toward the train station. The insurgents had some people where 3/5 later penetrated. They were shooting at us. Eventually the fire built up as more and more insurgents arrived. They were coming in from all over the city. It was sort of like, ‘Hey, come over and take some shots at the tanks sitting by the train station.’”
The tanks stopped just east of the train station. While they waited, drawing small-arms fire, their Forward Air Controller (FAC) and artillery Forward Observer (FO) worked up an air strike and artillery attacks instead of just using the main guns on the tanks.
According to the official After Action Report Team, Comanche immediately came under “accurate and continuous mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire coupled with sniper and small-arms fire.” Buhl’s perspective was that of the lance corporal who normally manned his position in the tank. His only view of the action was through the tank’s optics.
“We sat there for 10 minutes taking fire from these bastards,” Buhl says. “RPGs were hitting our tank; they make a peculiar sound when they strike the armor. The RPGs were coming from the northeast and northwest. The LAVs backed off out of range until just the tanks remained. By then the insurgents were bringing in adjusted 82mm mortars. At that point I thought that the insurgents could be bringing up something bigger. There were Milans [Italian-made guided antitank missiles] in Theater.
“I was concerned about a mobility kill. I thought we would have a tank struck with an RPG and have a track drop. Then we would have to get out and secure the tank, and it could be a big fight. We also considered they might try and swarm us if that happened.”
Buhl knew as well as anyone that nothing was more deadly to a tanker than being immobilized with a broken track. The insurgents had been known to swarm over disabled tanks with the hopes of killing the crews working to recover them. So far that had not happened here and Buhl hoped it remained that way.
“In a previous operation we had already had a tank damaged and immobilized when it hit a mine while under heavy small arms and RPG fire,” he says. “The gunnery sergeant in my vehicle had been involved in that previous operation and he was very concerned. There were some tense moments.”
Buhl’s telescopic view from inside the tank brought the entire city into precise focus. What he could see was eerily medieval—a ponderous, lurking fortress of thick-walled buildings and tall, menacing minarets surrounded by ancient walls. From the minarets at the corners of the fortress city, its defenders could see the attackers long before they arrived at the gates.
“Someone could easily signal across the city via the mosque minarets just as they had done since medieval times,” Buhl says. “In effect, with observers in these mosque minarets, there was no way to approach Fallujah without somebody seeing us, particularly enemy FOs.”
As Buhl was peering through his scope Captain Bodisch directed his Fire Support Team (FiST) to suppress and, he hoped, destroy the insurgent positions while pulling back from the main line of resistance. Bodisch ordered his tanks to open up with their turret-mounted coaxial machine guns and suppress or kill as many of the insurgents attacking them as they could.
After the RCT1 engineer officer determined which enemy obstacles needed to be destroyed by his engineers, and Buhl and Malay had adequately studied their lines of approach, Bodisch ordered Team Comanche to beat feet.
Getting the order to leave didn’t break Buhl’s heart. As an infantryman he wasn’t comfortable being inside a tank taking fire. Buhl later remarked, however, that a redeeming part of the experience was getting to load a round into the main gun and let it rip. He even saved the ejected cartridge for a souvenir.
It wasn’t as if Buhl and his infantrymen didn’t appreciate the Abrams’ 120mm main gun, its magnificent array of optical wizardry, or its deadly coaxial machine guns. But infantrymen have understandably mixed feelings about tanks because tanks often draw fire. Marines call them “mortar magnets” for good reason. Every time tanks came in their area they received incoming mortar and rocket fire. It didn’t bother the tanks too much, but it could be really tough on the mud Marines.
The insurgents hated tanks and they expended huge amounts of ammunition at great risk trying to wound or destroy one. Mortar magnets or not, tanks in Fallujah were worth their weight in gold to the Marines, and the men in Bodisch’s C Co. earned the respect and admiration of every member of the Thundering Third.
Shupp later deemed the mission a success for identifying the key objectives and breach lanes that were ultimately used. Additionally the tankers killed seven insurgents and destroyed four fortified positions without getting bogged down in a slugging match. Shupp credited the mission with setting the conditions for penetration of Fallujah from the north two weeks later.
“The best thing about the mission was that we got a good look at the train station and the approaches to it,” Buhl agrees.
KASAL TAKES CHARGE
By late October the battle plan was complete. The Third was given the all-important task of taking the Fallujah train station the night before the battle began in earnest. Success would depend on two untested Iraqi National Guard (ING) compan
ies performing as advertised. Both were being trained by Marines from the Weapons Co., 3/1, former mortar platoon members out of work in al-Anbar province because of the ROE. India was the ING company led by Lieutenant Zachary Iscol and his ad hoc advisory team.
If the Iraqis were successful the Thundering Third would plunge headlong into the killing ground where unprepared insurgents would die. If they weren’t successful things would get a lot messier. Weapons Co.’s newly minted advisors had a month to get ready.
Part of Kasal’s job as first sergeant of Weapons Co. before the big fight for Fallujah was to keep it all communicating so that each element of the company meshed with the next. He had sections of TOWs and Mark-19 automatic grenade launchers perched on turrets in Humvees, and man-portable Javelins, and good ol’ Ma Deuce, that big hunk of copper-spitting, twin-handled precision steel that had been sending the enemy to death for almost a century In addition he had three platoons of 81mm mortars, a poor man’s artillery that can be devastating. All of it was tied together with computers, radios, and satellite pictures. Above them were fixed-wing attack jets dubbed “fast movers” and attack helicopters on call. To make sure Weapons Co. was in the right place at the right time the chain of command went like this: The company commander issued the orders he received from the battalion commander. Kasal’s NCOs led the squads, sections, and platoons to make sure the men were ready. Finally Kasal made sure they were all where they were supposed to be.
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