My Men are My Heroes

by Nathaniel R. Helms

  In spite of the concussion that initially left him loopy Wade remembers the incident vividly “We were going on a standard night patrol that ended at about 5:30 a.m.,” he says. “We were all wearing night vision. We were on the road we called Mobile, a main highway that ran from Baghdad to Syria. We stopped in Abu Ghraib Prison to pick up some ice before going to our firm base—it was very hot. While we were there I talked to the section leader I was attached to. He said he knew a new shortcut so we headed back down the Mobile and tried his new shortcut.

  “On the way we had to go through a fjord at a creek. It had high walls and you had to go through it. We got hit by double-stacked 5-inch-diameter PVC pipes about a foot long that were buried right where the vehicles had to cross over. They were filled with SEMTEC [an Eastern-Bloc plastique explosive] or something like it, all water-proofed with plastic bags. It was wired together with red British-style detonator cord.

  “I think it counted our vehicles. It was a pressure fuse we had to drive over and it waited for the second or third vehicle before it exploded. I know what it was made from because only one deck detonated and I saw the other one.”

  Wade is, among other things, a weapons expert. This particular IED told him there were some very sophisticated terrorists in the neighborhood. “These were an experienced group,” he says. “They knew our tactics—knew that the old guys usually rode in the second or third vehicle and knew where to place the device to do maximum damage. They had this one set to wait for the following vehicles.”

  ROADBLOCK ATTACKS

  The attack on Wade’s vehicle forever changed the trust he was trying to develop with al-Anbar’s defiant citizens. It hardened the rest of the men in Weapons Co. too, Kasal says. The Marines were now more likely to shoot instead of watch a few seconds longer when something bad started happening.

  “When we were doing road security we had weapons pointing down every road. If a car would all of a sudden turn right and head toward us, it would have got lit up before it made 10 feet,” Kasal says.

  Such quick-responding trigger fingers averted disaster for the Marines when an Iraqi died in a hail of gunfire for trying to ram a Weapons Co. Humvee. Pictures of the incident show a small car burned black with an equally destroyed human body next to it. Whatever possessed the man to try to ram an armed vehicle full of Marines disappeared in the fireball that engulfed him.

  “They opened up on it with M16s, 9 mils, and ultimately a .50 cal,” Kasal says. “It not only stopped the car and shot the guy, but it lit the car on fire. They were using incendiary bullets.”

  Buhl remembers many of the roadblock shootings with a touch of sadness. He thinks that some of them could have been prevented through better communication with the Iraqis because simple misunderstanding was often the culprit.

  “Here in America we simply assume most people can see, hear, read, and comprehend while driving cars that have most of their normal safety functions intact,” Buhl says. “We assume our brakes work and someone driving a car knows how to do it. It wasn’t important to the Iraqis. They were trying to survive. The Iraqis don’t always see too well, they have no glasses, and many are illiterate, and they are dazed and confused and bad things happened, They didn’t always understand the signs because they couldn’t read.”

  Presumed threats were fair targets out of necessity. Marines had to assume drivers failing to heed their warnings at roadblocks were acting intentionally and maliciously. To see it any other way was to invite American casualties, Kasal says. His Marines didn’t want it that way, and he figures more than one Marine went home with some serious emotional baggage because of the violent nature of the encounters, but there wasn’t too much time to make a decision.

  “If it was a threat, for whatever reason, we had to stop the threat,” Kasal says.

  Stopping suspicious action was especially necessary because all too often the threats could be determined attempts on Marine lives. In September two insurgents blew themselves up in a twin suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (SVBIED) attack during an incident at the 3/1 compound in Al Kharma. The vehicles were purchased there a few days before the attack. Post-attack investigation determined the two drivers were Syrian nationals on a mission to meet their maker.

  Protecting the Marines was a HESCO barrier, named after the company that first manufactured them. A HESCO is a multicellular defense system, made of galvanized-steel mesh and lined with nonwoven polypropylene bags filled with sand. It’s a sort of fortress-in-a-box. Behind the HESCO and sandbagged guard stations were Marines with automatic weapons.

  The suicide bombers approached in two directions. Whether their intentions were to breach the entrances was a moot point because the Marines lit them up and they died long before they got that close. But the explosions were powerful enough to blow car parts, engine blocks, and parts of the Syrians all over the intended targets.

  Other attacks were more successful. One SVBIED parked off the road detonated on the second-to-last vehicle in a convoy near Fallujah. There was a large amount of fuel in the vehicle, “which caused the Humvee to catch fire along with the Marines,” the intelligence summary says. A picture accompanying the report shows the hulk of the insurgent vehicle 25 yards east of the road surrounded by puddles of unburned fuel.

  All these incidents were undeniable proof that al-Anbar province was getting very dangerous. The Marines thought it was about time to do something about it.

  BRING THE VIOLENCE!

  Before the second battle of Fallujah broke, Buhl wanted his men to have a day to loosen up. Five months of intermittent combat had made the Marines edgy. Marines are like thoroughbred horses that can be trained too hard. Buhl was looking for a diversion. They needed to blow off some steam before they got in the big fight.

  “These men were about to face the greatest professional tests of their lifetimes,” Buhl says. “I needed some way to calm things down, to get the men thinking about something besides Fallujah. The younger Marines were especially aggressive. It could lead to some real problems.”

  It didn’t help that the press was reporting 10,000 U.S. troops had encircled Fallujah to attack the insurgents. The media said it was all predicated on whether Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, gave the word. The tentative news reports weren’t fooling the Marines. They had already packed their rucks and peeled down to their combat loads for the attack. Buhl didn’t want them stewing over what might happen: He wanted their heads in the game when the attack lit off.

  So Buhl decided that taking a page from the Hollywood epic Ben-Hur was just the ticket. He called for the “First Annual ‘Ben-Hur’ Memorial Chariot Race.” More important, he had the horsepower to do it.

  Over the preceding five months, the battalion had seized a number of horses from the Iraqis. Apparently even horses weren’t immune from being suspects in the growing insurgency. The horses had been impounded temporarily when suspected infiltrators brought them around the FOB under the guise of collecting scrap. They were spavined creatures for the most part, more skin and bone than meat, but they had fattened up on Marine Corps chow. Marines with horse-handling experience cared for them in the weeks preceding the chariot race. They even had their own little stable inside the camp at Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile other Marines built chariots out of wagons.

  Buhl thought the event would be as therapeutic for the men as it was for the indentured horses. The Marines had been in contact almost daily for five months and they were in a foul mood.

  “Friends, Romans, Marines: Lend me your ears for the rules!” roared ringmaster Captain Jonathan Vaughn. “If all horses die before the finish line, whichever makes it the farthest wins!”

  Then it was Alex Nicoll’s turn. He stomped into view wearing a blue toga and a silver helmet, brandishing a broadsword and a great spike-studded club—the quintessential 10th-century wild-eyed Irishman. Nicoll got the Marines shouting with his lewd rendition of the famous victory speech by Scottish warrior William Wallace in Braveheart. />
  When Nicoll roared his defiance to the jihadists he raised his arms until his tattoos appeared: “Bring the,” his right arm declared; “violence,” his left arm replied. It was a magnificent performance that lifted the spirits of the Thundering Third.

  Too bad Charlton Heston didn’t show up. The insurgent Iraqi horses used the opportunity to try once again to defy the Thundering Third. One steed turned on its driver in the first race and tried to bite the Marine who forced him back with a wooden trident, drawing loud applause from the crowd. Another horse simply refused to participate. A third seemed confused about which way to run. When the contest was over a team from Weapons Co.’s 81mm mortar section, led by Staff Sergeant Sam Mortimer, had gained the victory and earned a rousing volley of cheers. It would be the last time they had anything to cheer about for a long time.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE OPENING

  GAMBIT

  The eager Marines’ opening gambit was played at 7 a.m. on November 7, 2004,—“D-day”—when maneuver elements began their work, rumbling across the desert to recapture the city. The sun was already setting when the Third Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) Wolfpack seized the peninsula west of Fallujah with its eight-wheeled LAVs to block the insurgents’ potential escape route through that region. The idea was to initiate the battle incrementally to maneuver forces into final attack positions without overtly alarming the insurgents. Maybe they telegraphed the coming punch, maybe they didn’t—that’s a debate that is still argued among Marines. Regardless, Marines were uncoiling everywhere and the LAVs were fast and lethal.

  All around Fallujah more Marine and Army units were closing up, tying into units on their left and right. The circle wasn’t perfect but it was good enough to keep most of the insurgents from escaping. By the time the sun set the ring was constructed and the contenders were locked in their corners. Six months of bickering, backbiting, pointless negotiations, and on-again-off-again threats had produced a standoff. Now it was time to end it. Al-Fajr—The New Dawn—would rise tomorrow. Kasal, Weapons Co., the Thundering Third, and the entire 1st Marine Division were as ready as they could be. Now they awaited the opening bell.

  During preparations Kasal was busy keeping track of where everyone was. “The company was spread out all over the place,” he says. “I had 81s in firing position, then I had 81s with Lieutenant [Zachary] Iscol’s group taking the train station and working with the ING, and then I had the FiST team with my CO and other personnel with the Alpha Command Group, and then I had four CAAT [Combined Anti-Armor Team sections] all split up. Three of them were attached one to each rifle company and the fourth one was in general support. I had units in eight or nine different locations.”

  Not only did he have to keep track of everyone’s location, he says: “I had contingency plans for everything. If certain people got injured, who would replace them? If equipment failed or needed to be replaced, everything was laid out. That was all done in the days beforehand, using standard operating procedures [SOPs] that were already established. That is why I always tried to stay in control of where everybody was at and to keep track of everybody for accountability of casualties, medevacs, and everything else.”

  The bell finally rang at 3 a.m. on November 8—referred to as D+1—when two of Kasal’s CAAT sections, dubbed “Carnivore,” slipped out the gate at Abu Ghraib. The two pairs of armored Humvees were ordered to confirm whether it was clear to go across the desert shortcut shown in the plan to reach their attack positions.

  Carnivore also needed to take the enemy’s pulse. If it jumped, deadly projectiles would start whanging off Carnivore’s Humvees, a pretty good sign the insurgents were waiting for them. They were to scout out the site that had been preselected for the 81mm mortars to set up.

  Kasal went along to make sure his sections were on location when it was time to move. “I was initially traveling out with our first CAAT section, which was commanded by Sergeant Christopher Lopez. I was in a vehicle commanded by Sergeant Die,” Kasal recalls. “I needed to be close to a radio to have good comms.”

  An hour after the first CAAT section departed the FOB another CAAT team mated up with the first serial headed for the jump-off point. (A serial is a group of vehicles that move together on a specific schedule to minimize traffic congestion and facilitate command and control.) Buhl, Major Chris Griffin, the Operations Officer (S-3), and Captain McCormack, the S-2, were in the first serial along with the rest of the Forward Operations Center (FOC). If they were taken out the battalion would be leaderless.

  The serial was a stellar group. Griffin, the 2004 winner of the Marine Corps’ prestigious Leftwich Award for excellence in leadership and the former CO of A Co., 1st BN, 4th Marines in OIF 1, was the battalion’s planner. He was the officer who pulled all the parts together into a cohesive operation. Under his command the FOC kept in touch with the other commands in 1st Marine Division through a sophisticated computer uplink system that passed its communications traffic back and forth between the satellites in geosynchronous orbit thousands of miles in space. Along with the FOC were the Dragon Eye section, a fire support coordinator’s vehicle, and a communication truck with all the battalion’s high-level radios. Bringing up the rear was Weapons Co.’s Cannonball section and 81mm mortars for close indirect support.

  The insurgents could not match the Marines in mobility, but they enjoyed other significant advantages. The jihadists had interior lines of supply that couldn’t be easily interdicted. They knew the city. And they had had months of uninterrupted time to turn it into a fortress. They thought that once the Marines entered the city their vaunted mobility would not mean a thing. The Marines would be forced to dismount and walk, covering their vehicles so they would not be destroyed by stay-behind suicide squads trying to take out the heavy weapons.

  Marine intelligence had uncovered some alarming truths about the insurgents’ defensive plans for Fallujah. The insurgency had placed explosives on bridges and key points of entry and positioned discarded tires and barrels full of fuel around the city—possibly to set on fire to create smoke screens. They also had developed plans to defend Fallujah with coordinated ambushes involving IEDs and small insurgent teams of five to seven men staged in homes at the city’s edge. The Marines suspected more than a thousand houses had staged weapons including AK-47s, 7.62mm Russian-designed light machine guns (PKCs), mortars, RPGs, and bombs.

  Buhl expected the insurgents “to be highly mobile and prepared to use our ROE against us. Part of their plan was to move unarmed between caches so we wouldn’t shoot them.”

  Also factored into the equation was intelligence that was both unbelievable and dangerously disturbing at the same time. Intelligence had discovered that the insurgents had no intention of fighting the Cav’s Abrams and Bradleys for reasons beyond the obvious fact they couldn’t compete. The jihadists convinced themselves it was both unmanly and beneath a holy warrior’s dignity to engage mechanical devices in mortal combat. To fulfill their spiritual requirements, the insurgents felt honor bound to wait until they could confront the infidel Marines in close quarters shoot-outs.

  Buhl found that diabolical. “The insurgents thought it wasn’t a fair fight unless we went into a house and went toe-to-toe,” he says.

  Perhaps the jihadists had searched history for their tactics. Defending the city without the means to escape left them with few options. They could surrender, die, or try to sneak away. Their own intransigence had trapped them in a classic fight that pits a mobile offense against a fixed defense. The last time jihadists had relied on fixed defenses of such a grand scale was during the Crusades. Maybe they were holding out for better luck this time.

  Despite the terrible ferocity of the ensuing fight it was a lopsided contest from the start, one the insurgents should never have fought. Genuine soldiers would have pulled out to fight another day, something amateur fanatics armed with medieval logic refused to do. The jihadists were depending on an irrational formula that combined faith and suicidal de
termination with bad tactics. They started the fight with inferior numbers, inferior weapons, primitive communications, and almost no logistics.

  The Marines showed up with enough firepower to turn Fallujah into a rubble pile populated with dead insurgents, but that was not their official intent. To do so would have defeated the Marines’ mission to win the hearts and minds of the Sunni population. Division and Regiment didn’t want to destroy the city; neither did its commanders or the provisional government. To do so would be political suicide. Unless the Sunni majority in the alAnbar province was pacified, there would be no lasting peace. The young Marines, on the other hand, just wanted payback. If that meant killing every jihadist in Fallujah, that would have been okay with them.

  As incongruent as the multiple points of view seemed, everyone agreed it was time to assert the Coalition’s influence. If the Coalition didn’t prevail, there would never be a stable government of any kind in Iraq.

  Stable governments were far from Kasal’s mind as 3/1 rumbled into the northern edge of Fallujah in the false light of dawn on D+3. He was busy monitoring the radios and keeping track of his widely dispersed sections. At the same time he kept an ear tuned to the Weapons Co. frequency to follow what was going on in his company, and he kept an eye on what was happening around Fallujah.

  The Coalition had promised free passage to anyone wishing to leave and thousands of people took them up on it. The Iraqi government told the mulish Sunni leadership anyone still in Fallujah after the battle started would be detained or killed. Kasal thought the announcement would make the battle easier for his Marines. On the other hand his CAAT teams had to make sure nobody slipped away from the refugees and attacked 3/1’s lines of communication.