None Left Behind: The 10th Mountain Division and the Triangle of Death

by Charles W. Sasser

  There was little GIs could do to protect themselves against IEDs. Iron Claw and Husky couldn’t be everywhere for every patrol. Second Platoon alone was blown up 47 times during the weeks after Delta Company occupied the patrol bases on Route Malibu. Fortunately, most of the explosives weren’t powerful enough to do much more than rattle the GIs around like pebbles in a tin can and bust tires, windows, and axles. What the Joes feared was hitting a really huge bunker buster like the one that caught Colonel Infanti and killed Scarface. Or like the one that finally took out Iron Claw.

  Fourth Platoon was on a route mission with Husky and Iron Claw in the lead when Sergeant Joshua Parrish overheard EOD on the radio suddenly shouting for everyone to get down and take cover. You knew something was coming when EOD panicked. Boom! The explosion blew the indestructible Iron Claw in half. Part of it flew over Parrish’s hummer and landed on the other side of the road.

  Delta trucks ran constantly, day and night. Soldiers on that single stretch of Malibu through the S-curves were being attacked more than any others in Iraq. It turned into a fishing game, but it was hard to determine who the anglers were and who the fish. Platoons always traveled in squadrons of at least four trucks, moving at about 25mph and spaced no closer than fifty meters apart, all heavily armed with mounted .50-caliber machine guns, two-forties, and M19 automatic grenade launchers. Steering vehicles through the perilous landscape was nerve-wracking and monopolized every last bit of a driver’s attention. Like rats or cockroaches, insurgents kept sneaking up to the road after nightfall to plant more IEDs, which often resulted in wild Fourth of July displays of orange flame and dirty gray billows of smoke the next time a convoy drove by.

  Getting blown up became almost a spectator sport. Every Iraqi in the vicinity disappeared just before something was about to happen. The kids were always the most obvious as they scurried for cover. As soon as the IED went off, however, jetting a spray of earth and smoke several stories into the sky, every hajji around crowded up with children in arms to see what the commotion was all about. Naturally, nobody ever saw anything. Deaf and dumb as a bunch of sand crabs.

  After each attack, Americans and IAs pushed through the nearest villages and settlements rounding up every male of military age for interrogation. They ransacked houses for weapons and used metal detectors to probe yards for buried stashes. They questioned suspects in hopes of catching them in lies that could be leveraged into workable information on anti-Coalition terrorists in the area. It was sheer craziness. Pathetic-looking figures sitting cross-legged on the ground with burlap bags pulled over their heads and their wrists flex-cuffed behind their backs. They were either ballsy little bastards or else they were scared shitless at the prospect of being turned over to the IA, where the Queensberry Rules did not apply. Big NCOs manhandled them and conducted strip searches, voices barking orders.

  “Stand up. Take off your pants.”

  Delta Company tried everything to stem the assaults—mounted and dismounted patrols, static watches, cordon-and-search raids, rewards, bribes, intelligence gathering . . . Nothing seemed to work. Week after week, it was more of the same: IED and mortar explosions, the chirping, whistling sounds of shrapnel shards spinning through the air; the screaming of rocket grenades launched from concealment; the sudden ring of a sniper’s shot . . . And always the men felt they were being watched by dark plotting eyes. Someone proposed more than once that they assassinate Crazy Legs. At least get rid of that pair of hostile eyes. No way in hell could it go on like this indefinitely without the Joes losing their minds.

  After a while, Sergeant John Herne was the only man in Second Platoon whose truck hadn’t been blown up by an IED. The other Joes competed to see who would ride with him. Men wanted to rub his head for good luck. It got so bad that it sometimes took the army’s Rapid Repair Road crew days to get around to filling up the numerous IED holes up and down Malibu Road. In the meantime, insurgents crept up and planted more IEDs in the bottoms of the craters in order to blow up the road crews when they finally came around.

  That led to the establishment of 24-hour-a-day “crater watches” to guard the holes. Sergeant Chris Messer of Second Platoon protested.

  “It’s crazy to put a static watch out there,” he scolded Lieutenant Dudish, his platoon leader. “We’re asking for them to be ambushed and our guys wiped out.”

  “I agree with you, Sergeant,” Burke said. “But we still got to do it.”

  Neither would know for several months yet just how precognitive Messer really was.

  In spite of all the activity, Delta Company was fortunate. Although a number of soldiers had been shot or suffered concussions and various other IED injuries, no American had been killed so far. The Joes kept getting up, dusting themselves off, repairing their trucks, and returning to the fray.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The reason the 10th Mountain Division was deployed so much and to so many different places—and then to the angriest parts of those places—was because its soldiers were some of the best in the military. Even so, good soldiers could break under the strain of uncertainty, privation, fear, separation from home, and combat that was both nerve-wracking and strange in that the enemy was nowhere and at the same time everywhere. There were only so many times they could turn themselves on and off. It was like repeatedly heating and cooling a length of metal. The process eventually weakened the material over time until it ruptured from the strain.

  Shaking hands, chatting up merchants, flirting with shy girls, and handing out candy and little presents to kids had been easy until about the eighth or ninth IED. After that, the soldiers began to have second thoughts. They still wanted to make friends, be good neighbors, but they lost the illusion that they could build a relationship one-sided. They became more curt with Iraqis, wary, suspicious, unable to let down their guard for even a moment lest the manticore that stalked Malibu Road get them.

  At the same time, the longer American troops remained in the AO, the less cordial everyday citizens became. A lot of it had to do with resentment at the inconvenience of the occupation. Closing off roads to through traffic meant farmers had difficulty transporting their produce to market. Stopping people to check their ID cards and raiding in search of terrorism suspects further annoyed the population. Soldiers on Malibu could almost feel the hate in Iraqi hearts as they passed by in their armed and armored convoys. It seemed the people were merely waiting for the Americans to get fed up with the shit and go home. They didn’t believe the Americans were here to stay until it was over and that they would have to cooperate with the Americans in order to bring about better days.

  Colonel Infanti constantly reminded his troops that things were going to change. There would be a turning point. Persevere and stay strong, he encouraged. We’re a team. Every soldier is important to the chain of command. We’re suffering right along with you. Change is coming.

  Yeah? When?

  Mosques were behind much of the trouble, especially those controlled by Sunnis. Imams bitterly harangued their congregations about the invaders and prodded them to resist, creating even more insurgents.

  “These sons of monkeys and pigs come to Iraq in the name of freedom, but they are poison that will change our lives. They will shave our beards; take the dresses and veils off our wives, sisters and daughters; seduce them and turn them into whores. We must ask Allah to rain darkness upon the American and Jewish pigs. Please, God, kill the Americans and Jews, destroy them and eject them from our country. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

  Insurgents used the mosques as safe houses and there was little GIs could do about it except shoot the finger at the 109 Mosque every time they passed it. Raiding a mosque to disinfect it was out of the question; it would be like poking a stick into a hornets’ nest at the response it would generate throughout the AO.

  The trick to pacification lay in ridding the land of insurgents while weaning the people away from them. As far as American soldiers were concerned, the only way to get rid of fanatics was to
kill them, wipe them off the face of the earth. They were little better than predatory animals. After all, what kind of men wired themselves with suicide belts and blew themselves up on Israeli school buses full of very young children? Who launched rockets indiscriminately into Tel Aviv churches, schools, and houses? Who hid out in caves to manufacture anthrax or the Bubonic Plague in order to wipe out the cities of those they considered infidels? Who would hijack airplanes full of innocent women, children, and babies and fly them into skyscrapers . . . ?

  You had to know your enemy.

  “We’re here to help, don’t you understand?” Army Civil Affairs officers pleaded with local sheikhs and community leaders. “If you don’t stop bombing trucks and start fighting insurgents, things are going to get much worse.”

  No constructive aid or rebuilding projects could be launched until residents put a stop to the murderous assaults and the AO became less dangerous. PsyOps (psychological operations) soldiers went through villages and towns handing out leaflets or shoving them underneath gates and doors. Some of the handbills cautioned locals that attacks on Americans would be dealt with harshly. Others offered rewards for information on terrorists or weapons caches.

  Trucks with loudspeakers drove through, blasting caveats against insurgent activity.

  “Attention, men of Kharghouli. Three days ago, there was an attack on an American patrol near here. Attacks like that hurt innocent Iraqis, slow progress, and prolong the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq. You are responsible for security in your town. Provide us with information on those who commit such futile acts and help bring peace to your community. Do not confuse our restraint with weakness. Today we come as concerned friends. Do not make us come back as enemies.”

  A bang outside the town signaled another American hummer striking an IED.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  As the modern U.S. Army fought with computers and high-tech communications as much as it did bullets, Battalion maintained a section of ten trained specialists to keep all the digital electronics going and everybody talking to everybody else. Companies in the field called it the “geek squad,” no disrespect intended. Computers and Internet or satellite phones were also the Joes’ link with home and the outside world, which made the geek squad in high demand when something broke down. The most popular communications specialist in the section, at least in Delta Company, was a nineteen-year-old Speedy Four (Specialist Fourth Class) named Jenson Mariur.

  Originally from Palau in the South Seas, the brown-skinned young soldier was forever optimistic, polite, soft-spoken, and eager to help. He could light up an FOB with a single grin. What made him even more popular with Delta was the fact that the soldiers could always persuade him to repair their PCs, video games and assorted other personal entertainment gear.

  Mariur’s popularity had its downside. The Delta platoon with a problem would jump on the radio and ask for him personally. “Hey, hey, dude. We’re having a little trouble. When are you coming out? Just say the word and we’ll send a convoy to Yusufiyah to get you.”

  The result of which meant another nervous trip running the gauntlet known as Malibu Road.

  One afternoon, Delta Company’s First Sergeant Aldo Galliano hightailed it in to Battalion with a convoy from Third Platoon to pick up tech support to install some new computer equipment for the Company TOC at Inchon. That naturally meant Mariur, who felt more than a little apprehensive about riding with the Top Sergeant’s convoy.

  Top Galliano was jinxed, an IED magnet. It seemed his caravan got hit almost every time he went out. Not just his convoy, his truck within the convoy. He had been blown up twenty times, so often he began to take it personally. It got where, as soon as he was clear of the explosion, he jumped out of his hummer with his ears still ringing, dust up his nose, and went into a contrived rage, kicking tires, ranting and raving like a bull charging a red flag.

  “Them dirty, no-good, ragheaded, shit-eating, Baghdad sons-of-bitches . . . !”

  “Tell us how you really feel, Top.”

  “I get it every damned time. What’s with Herne? They never hit him. What’s he doing, bribing ’em?”

  Anyone in Delta who failed to experience one of the Top Sergeant’s productions was missing an Oscar-winning performance, tales of which circulated among the troops with a great deal of laughter and joking. Men would be passing the stories down to their grandchildren, they were that entertaining.

  Galliano was one hard-charging Latino, rather small and short with a broad face, thick shoulders, and a practical-joke sort of humor that made him as well-liked as he was respected. He could chew a hole in a soldier’s boxers and make him like it. When he noticed how shaky Mariur seemed about taking the trip down Malibu with him, he really laid it on.

  “Mariur, you can ride in the truck with me. I got some technical stuff I want to talk to you about.”

  “That’s okay, Top. We’ll have a lot of time to talk when we get to Inchon. Why don’t I ride back here?”

  “What’s the matter, Specialist? You don’t believe all them stories about me, do you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “What are you so pale about, soldier? When I get hit—”

  “When?”

  “Well, yeah. Have you ever been blown up before?”

  Mariur had a feeling he was about to. He sucked it in and managed, “Top, I sure wouldn’t want to miss seeing you kick the tires out from underneath this old crate.”

  Galliano laughed. The convoy headed back for Malibu Road with Mariur seated next to the Top Sergeant behind the driver, the third vehicle back in a procession of four. The crazy road with all its potholes and patched-up IED craters reminded Mariur how vulnerable they were.

  It was a lovely autumn day, not so hot as sometimes, with the sun shining brightly, kids in the fields herding shaggy goats, and muezzins revving up their calls for afternoon prayers.

  “Any damage you do to government property comes out of your pay,” Galliano noted slyly.

  “Pardon?”

  “Your ass is chewing a hole in the seat.”

  True to form, Top’s vehicle detonated an IED just before the trucks reached Inchon. Mariur wasn’t even surprised; he expected it. There was a loud bang, a puff of dirt, and pieces of shrapnel chipping at the vehicle’s undercarriage. Although the scumbag who put it there buried it too deep to cause any real damage, the concussion was enough to knock the breath from Mariur’s lungs. He had never felt more profound relief than when the convoy pulled through the gate at 153.

  Aldo Galliano jumped out to go through his usual rant. As he was stomping around kicking tires, he glanced up to see Mariur standing with his hands in his pockets looking solemn and appreciative at simply having survived the trip. His eyes were open wide, the whites in sharp contrast to a patina of “black face” sweat, dust, and smoke. He looked totally out of place in a war zone. All he needed to complete the picture of geek was a bow tie and a pocket protector.

  As for Mariur, he chuckled to himself from then on whenever someone described Galliano’s hitting another IED. He couldn’t help himself—picturing the little Top Sergeant out there somewhere on Malibu Road kicking hell out of his hummer and blackguarding loud enough so every “Baghdad motherfucker” in The Triangle of Death could hear him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Triangle of Death was like a house infested with rats and mice. Kill one or two or three, and a half dozen more popped up somewhere else. The Joes of Delta Company sometimes thought they must have tumbled down the rabbit hole into a world of lunacy. It might be better to have had a battle fully joined, such as the Marines fought at Fallujah, than to suffer constant attrition from deadly rodents sneaking and gnawing around.

  ROEs dictated that you couldn’t shoot an insurgent unless you actually caught him in the act of being a rat. That meant he was shooting at you or engaged in other obvious insurgent-like behavior. Delta’s platoons were taking it in the shorts until they learned to use the rules of engagement to their own
benefit.

  “We have to be smarter than they are,” Sergeant Montgomery said. Being smarter than the bad guys was how Second used Crazy Legs to significantly reduce the number of mortar and rocket attacks from across the river. Two or three times observing Crazy Legs and then ambushing the ambushers had almost put a stop to it. Maybe Second Platoon could do the same thing to those planting IEDs.

  Some guy out in the middle of the night with a shovel and pick digging a hole in the road wasn’t repairing the road. He was a legal target the moment he started digging, whether armed or not. Heretofore, soldiers had tried to capture them or run them off if they weren’t packing heat. Lieutenant Dudish and Sergeant Montgomery, having received permission from Captain Jamoles to shoot to kill, launched a campaign to eliminate as many of these pests as they could. It didn’t take long for the tactic to pay off.

  Each patrol base posted a night security watch on the road on either side of the outpost. While pulling one of these static watches, Sergeant Victor Chavez and Specialist Robert Pool were parked north of 152 facing toward Inchon observing through NVs when they spotted two figures slinking from the shadows. Apparently thinking themselves concealed by darkness, the mad bombers scurried onto the road and began digging. Sergeant Chavez radioed Delta for permission to engage.

  Pool sat behind the two-forty in the turret. The M240B 7.62mm machine gun came equipped with laser target acquisition, which made for extremely accurate night firing. The range was about four hundred meters, visibility unobstructed through his NVs. Pool beaded in on the two men and felt a sudden attack of conscience at the prospect of drilling a couple of guys unarmed except for pick axes. Of actually killing another human being.