Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War

by Tim Pritchard

  Marines around him were now yelling at each other.

  “See that green mosque thing with the onion-shaped dome? There are troops inside with small arms.”

  “Port side, port side. No, to the right. They’re dressed as civilians. They’ve got a white flag but they’ve got AKs and they’re not surrendering.”

  Welch saw the mosque a hundred meters from the road. To the side of the mosque was a small dirt berm. He saw an Iraqi stand up, put an RPG to his shoulder. Welch fired two rounds. The man didn’t go down. The RPG shot out of its launcher. Several other marines from another track let out a burst of gunfire. The figure collapsed in the dirt. The RPG and its trail of white smoke spun wildly off into the distance. To the right of the mosque, a crowd of women and children seemed to be waving at them. Welch wasn’t quite sure whether to wave back. And then the crowd parted and some men, dressed in black robes, stepped out between the women and let out a burst of AK fire. Welch and the other marines on his track shot back. He wasn’t shocked. He was in an Arab country and knew that women and children were prepared to commit acts of suicide. This isn’t an environment of love. I’m not going to assume that people here love me. Am I going to get back home or am I going to let them send me back home? He didn’t have time to contemplate whether they had good intentions. The rules of engagement were clear and had been drummed into Welch during training. They shouldn’t fire indiscriminately. That would exact a heavy toll on the civilian population. But for Welch, the reality was more complicated. If they are out in the street, they mean to do me harm. If they mean to do me harm, they are a target. All his focus went on protecting himself, his marines, and their vehicles. He let out another burst of gunfire.

  It was how he’d been trained at Boot Camp. For twelve weeks at Parris Island, South Carolina, he’d been shouted at, manipulated, indoctrinated. He didn’t mind. He understood that the Marine Corps was preparing him to react to fire, to carry out a mission without question, to develop teamwork, to confront imminent death, to sacrifice himself for fellow marines. You don’t escape Parris Island without experiencing sacrifice. Some recruits found it difficult to cope. Welch didn’t. If you have the eyes to see why you are doing these things, you understand. He welcomed the uniformity, the incessant drills, the movement as one mass. He’d seen the smoke pit, a twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot sandbox, where those marines who couldn’t conform were made to exercise at a rate that made their hearts want to drop out. Push-ups, jumps, squats—sometimes all day and all night. He understood that the drill instructors had to transform belligerent young men who had grown up answering back to figures of authority into marines who would accept orders without question. Welch understood, and he complied.

  A couple of kilometers behind Corporal Welch, Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski received a call on the radio from Captain Tim Newland, the Bravo Company Commander.

  “This is Mustang 6. Sir, we are on the Euphrates Bridge.”

  Grabowski knew he couldn’t be there yet. He could see from the icon on his Blue Force Tracker that Bravo Company had only just arrived at the railway bridge. They were still a couple of kilometers south of the Euphrates.

  “Mustang 6, this is Timberwolf. Check your map again.”

  Newland’s Blue Force Tracker had broken down. The Blue Force Tracker worked perfectly in the Humvees, but for some reason it didn’t work very effectively with the power output in the tracks. Newland was relying on DCT, a satellite tracking system that related position directly to a map grid. And the maps he had didn’t show up very clearly that there was a railroad bridge south of the Euphrates Bridge.

  “Timberwolf, this is Mustang 6. Sir, you’re right, we’re continuing to push.”

  Captain Newland, in the track just behind Corporal Welch, ordered Bravo across the railway bridge. Suddenly a cry went up.

  “We’ve got tanks. We’ve got tanks.”

  The CAAT vehicles that had been flanking Bravo Company on its approach to the bridge pushed forward. As they reached the highest point of the span, the CAAT marines saw two enemy T-55 tanks dug in on either side. The air erupted in a hail of machine-gun fire. Working their .50-caliber machine guns from their Humvees, the marines sent rounds tearing into the dug-in positions, scattering Iraqi fighters in all directions. Some collapsed in the dirt, others took cover behind trenches. Sergeant Edward Palaciaes spotted more dug-in tanks on both sides of the bridge. Their turrets weren’t moving and they were probably so antiquated that they were unmanned, nothing more than machine-gun bunkers. But in Palaciaes’s eyes they were Iraqi tanks, and he wanted to kill them. As the machine gunners showered the area with suppressing fire, Sergeant Palaciaes and Corporal Josh McCall fired off TOW missile after TOW missile, keeping the crosshairs on the tanks and watching them explode into huge fireballs. Palaciaes was in heaven. The Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire command-link guided antitank missile was an expensive piece of equipment. Palaciaes didn’t get to fire too many of them in training. This is one helluva exciting thing.

  Iraqi fighters were running around in the fields by the bridge, firing at them from both the east and west sides. A fog of thick acrid smoke from the U.S. Army vehicles, which were still in flames, swept across the area, obscuring the marines’ vision.

  Palaciaes scanned the horizon for more tanks. The turret of a dug-in T-55, hidden by mounds of earth, turned toward him. The small two-lane bridge was too crowded with CAAT vehicles. His driver maneuvered his vehicle away from the three other Humvees on the bridge. The backblast on a TOW can stretch up to a hundred meters and could easily kill a man. Looking behind him to make sure he was clear, he took a shot. It hit the turret of the T-55, sending a ball of dirt and twisted metal into the air.

  The sound of loud cheering and laughing came over the radio.

  “Five T-55s engaged and killed.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski, a couple of hundred meters south of the railway bridge, could see the CAAT teams on the span of the bridge ahead of him firing their TOW missiles. He was shocked that they had come into contact with tanks so early on. They’ve got tanks. There’s more to this mission than we’ve been aware of. This is supposed to be a walk in the park. This is not how it is supposed to be. His own tanks were still back being refueled. He knew that he was now on a timeline and he had to get the battalion moving. But he didn’t want to go any farther into the city without the M1A1 Abrams. He got hold of Major Sosa.

  “Hey, if we don’t get tanks up here we are not going any farther.”

  Once again Grabowski got on the radio to his XO, Major Jeff Tuggle. This time he showed his frustration.

  “I need those tanks up here as soon as possible. Tell them to get their asses up here.”

  “Roger, boss, I’m working on it.”

  All of a sudden there was a huge boom. A hot storm of dirt and rocks blew toward them. They’ve hit one of our amtracks. Grabowski feared the worst.

  “What the heck was that?”

  The battalion gunner replied.

  “That’s a Javelin.”

  It was the first time his battalion had fired a Javelin in combat, and although they were a couple hundred meters away, he was surprised at the strength of the backblast that sent hot air, dirt, and packaging from the missile hurtling toward them. He looked up to see the gunner and his loader hollering and high-fiving with excitement.

  “I guess they hit what they were aiming for.”

  He was proud of them. They were doing what they had trained to do. Locate, close with, and destroy the bad guys.

  For the fourth time, Grabowski got back on the net and asked Major Tuggle where those tanks were. All of a sudden, he heard a rumble and felt the ground shake. Through the thick black smoke still pouring from the burning U.S. Army vehicles appeared the outline of four M1A1 tanks. They roared through his position toward the bridge. He called Captain Newland of Bravo Company. He wanted to get them “Oscar Mike,” or “on the move.”

  “Mustang 6, you’ve got your tanks. We need to
get you moving.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  “Let me know when you are Oscar Mike.”

  Grabowski knew that to meet Natonski’s deadline he had to go for those bridges.

  9

  Major Peeples and his tanks had driven about ten kilometers south to get to the refueling point at the rear of the battalion’s column. He was pleased with the way the movement had gone so far. His team had performed well, and they were jubilant and high on the adrenaline of battle. He wanted to get the tanks refueled quickly, but there was no great hurry. He knew that the battalion was planning to establish a defense south of the city. He then presumed there would be a huddle before a decision was made on whether to go for the bridges. It was a principle that even the most junior marines were taught. The attacker controls the clock. The only thing he regretted was that he hadn’t had time to conduct a proper handover with the commander of Bravo Company, Captain Tim Newland, now that Bravo had taken over as the lead element.

  He saw a flurry of activity around the fuel truck. That’s when he had a bad feeling. He had eleven tanks, each requiring five hundred gallons of fuel. One of the support staff came up to him.

  “We’ve only got fourteen hundred gallons of fuel left to give out.”

  Peeples quickly did the calculation. It meant that each of the tanks was not going to get much more than a hundred gallons. That would only get them an extra 120 or so kilometers. There was worse to come. They’d been having problems with spare parts for the pumps and some of the pumps weren’t working. Now Peeples discovered that none of the pumps worked. The tanks would have to be gravity fed, and there was only one hose.

  Nearby, Captain Scott Dyer had answered the question that had been bugging him for years. How will I fare in combat? He was pleased with the answer. They had rescued American soldiers and none of his crew were injured. Now he wanted a much-needed leak. It came out like a torrent, forming a huge puddle. I’m pissing like a racehorse. He was so exhausted from the fight that he inadvertently trod in it and was irritated to find that the mixture clumped to his boots.

  Milling around the hospital tracks at the rear of the column near the refueling point were some of the rescued soldiers from the 507th. Dyer ran over to one of them, a staff sergeant, to find out more about what the Army convoy had been through. The picture the soldier painted of the city was not at all what he had been led to believe. Dyer realized that the intelligence they had been fed for the past few months was all wrong. Waiting for them in the city were not crowds of cheering Iraqis, ready to shower them with flowers for taking on Saddam. The soldier talked of fortified positions, of machine-gun bunkers lining the streets, of thousands of armed Iraqis swamping the streets, ready to attack the invaders. He painted the area to the north, around the Saddam Canal Bridge as swampy, treacherous, and not trafficable by tank. This is brilliant battlefield intelligence. It dawned on Dyer that their whole strategy was built on wrong assumptions. I’ve got to get this information to the lead units.

  Dyer ran over to the main battalion command post where the XO, Major Tuggle, was coordinating logistics for the battalion from his C7 command track. Major Tuggle was the backstop for Grabowski at the forward command post. That was the quickest, most reliable way of feeding the battalion commander information. Dyer tried to explain what the soldier had told him, but Tuggle didn’t seem to take much notice of what he was saying. He was preoccupied with something else.

  “Bravo is in contact and needs the tanks.”

  Dyer looked at him. He saw from his face that he was desperately trying to conceal worry and stress. Tuggle knows that everybody’s ass is in a crack.

  “We’ve just got a call from Bravo. They are in contact and need the tanks back up there as soon as possible.”

  Captain Dyer was confused. Why the hell are they in contact? Then it struck him that the battalion must have started the attack without them.

  “What the hell is going on? Why didn’t you tell us that they were going to attack?”

  Dyer thought that Tuggle gave him a strange, almost apologetic look.

  “It’s too late. It’s done. You need to get up there and help those boys.”

  Dyer could not believe it. They had planned the maneuver for months on ship and in Kuwait. They had gone through it over and over again. Tanks were central to the success of the mission. Team Tank was going to take a position on the south side of the Euphrates Bridge and provide a base of fire to support Alpha Company’s seizure of it. Then Bravo, reinforced with the other four tanks, would go around to the east of the city to take the northern bridge with Charlie Company. Team Tank would then make their way up to the northern bridge to support its seizure. It had been endlessly talked about and rehearsed, and he felt confident that they all knew what they were doing. But that mission had been downgraded to a “be prepared to” mission. And now it seemed that Bravo Company had begun the attack without them.

  Major Peeples was monitoring the refueling process when Major Tuggle ran up to him.

  “Bill, we need those tanks up there as soon as possible.”

  Like Dyer, Peeples didn’t understand the urgency. Why the hurry? Peeples knew they had been told that they were going to get into a blocking position south of the city along the interchange between Route 7 and Route 8. Then a decision would be made as to who, if anyone, would actually seize the bridges. Clearly, something had changed.

  With only one hose, it was taking fifteen minutes to give each tank a hundred gallons. Peeples cut short the refueling for the four tanks from 2nd Platoon that were supposed to be with Bravo Company. He’d given them the four tanks that were in the best condition because they would be the farthest away from the rest of the tank company and would find it harder to get backup support. He yelled to Gunnery Sergeant Randy Howard, his 2nd Platoon commander.

  “You need to get the hell up there.”

  The four tanks from 2nd Platoon had roared off up the road. To make sure he wasn’t missing something, Peeples checked again where his reserve position was to be after the rest of his tanks finished refueling. He was right. They were supposed to be in a location just south of the Euphrates Bridge. What the heck then did they need those tanks for so quickly?

  With the loss of the tanks from 2nd Platoon, his Team Tank was now down to seven tanks. Captain Thompson’s 1st Platoon had three tanks, Captain Cubas’s 3rd Platoon had two tanks, and he and Captain Dyer, the HQ element, had two tanks.

  10

  Captain Dan Wittnam was in the TC’s hatch of his Charlie Company command track, fourth from the front of his column of vehicles. Just in front of him was Alpha Company. He knew that the change in the order of the column meant that the CAAT vehicles and Bravo Company were out in front by the railroad bridge. From the radio reports, he could tell that they were in contact with tanks and machine-gun fire. He pictured again the map of the city and the satellite images that he had pored over for months. It was how the modern Marine Corps taught the art of combat. Visualize the battlefield, visualize potential problems, and visualize how to solve them. They were taught to run a mental video of the battlefield through their heads so when it came to the real thing they could predict how the battle would unfold, how to react, and where and when was the best place to make a move. And the more you mentally downloaded those maps and images, the more efficiently you could control your battle. Make the enemy fight your fight. Don’t get suckered into reacting and fighting his fight. General Mattis had sent a prebattle message to his marines before they crossed the line of departure: “ Be the hunter, not the hunted.”

  Wittnam was feeling confident in his abilities. He was well versed in the military principle of Commander’s Intent. It was drummed into him when he was a young marine, and from the first day of training he had drummed it into the marines under his command. Know what the commander wants to achieve at the end of the day and put all your efforts into achieving that aim. It appeared in all the Marine Corps warfighting documents. “Commander’s Intent
is the commander’s vision of what he intends to have happen to the enemy.” It was a doctrine that gave everyone, from company commanders down to the grunt on the ground, a role in decision making, enabling them to act in a changing environment in the absence of additional orders.

  “Palehorse 6, this is Palehorse 1. We are receiving sporadic gunfire from buildings to the left of our position. Nothing we can’t handle, over.”

  It was Lieutenant Scott Swantner, leader of 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, letting him know what was going on. Wittnam was pleased that his platoon leaders were giving him information about enemy activity. His marines were trained to be as clear as possible about where it was coming from and its strength. What you didn’t want to do, though, is clog the airways or give too much information that wouldn’t be of any use to anyone.

  “Roger that. Keep your eye on it.”

  Behind Wittnam’s track in the hatch of Charlie 208 was Lieutenant Ben Reid, Charlie’s FiST leader. He was monitoring the radio when he heard that the CAAT team had encountered tanks at the railway bridge. He heard the battalion staff coordinating the fight up ahead and the cheers as the CAAT team launched some TOWs at enemy tanks.

  He got hold of his artillery forward observer, Fred Pokorney.

  “This is pretty impressive. Battalion is doing pretty good at controlling the engagements.”

  The amount of communications on the net was increasing with every minute that went by. Reid now realized that there was a real fight up ahead by the railway bridge. F/A-18 Hornets streaked by, shooting up stuff in the tree line. Over the battalion net there was a confused chat about the red smoke in the air.

  “What is that red smoke and where is it coming from?”

  Reid knew that it was the trail of the Zuni rockets fired by the Cobras at the tree line. He tried to get comms with battalion to find out what the helos were engaging and what their frequencies were. He felt frustrated that he wasn’t able to let his company commander, Dan Wittnam, know what the fire support situation was. He wasn’t at the front line, but nevertheless he felt control of the fight slipping away from him.