Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War

by Tim Pritchard

  He went south to where he had seen a handful of marines lying prone in the dirt. There were mortars and RPGs flying through the air and thudding and exploding in the dirt around him, but he hardly noticed it anymore. We’re all fucking screwed up. We’re screwed up. He found some marines lying behind a berm and stumbled toward them. He fell, got up out of the dirt, and fell down again. He staggered to his feet, unaware of the rounds flying over his head. Finally, he reached some marines tucked up in a ditch against the east side of the road. It was Gunnery Sergeant Jerry Blackwell, Corporal Charles Wykstra, and a few others.

  All Blackwell and Wykstra could see was a marine with a bleeding mess of a head stumbling toward them out of a thick cloud of black smoke.

  “Who the fuck is that?”

  “Gunny, it’s Lieutenant Reid.”

  Wykstra and Blackwell pulled him to the ground and grabbed some bandages from their first-aid kit.

  “Hey, Gunny, is my eyeball still in my head?”

  Blackwell looked him over.

  “I think it’s still there. You look good.”

  “What the fuck is going on? We need to get out of this shit.”

  Reid did a quick sanity check on his own situation and realized that he’d been stumbling around without a Kevlar helmet or a gas mask. He’d lost his binos and his map. He didn’t hear the plane overhead, but Blackwell did.

  “There’s an A-10 here now.”

  “That’s good, Gunny. We need the help.”

  “No it’s not. The A-10 is fucking coming at us.”

  Mouth, from his position on the eastern side of the city, south of the canal bridge, was now waiting for the A-10s to engage their targets. He knew that he couldn’t control the close air support through Type 1 CAS. He could not see the enemy forces and was unable to satisfy the criteria for positively identifying targets. He did believe, though, that he had satisfied the requirements to safeguard incidents of friendly fire. The plan was that Bravo was always going to be the lead unit. He had checked with the company commander that they were still the lead unit. No one had overtaken them. Type 3 CAS would allow him to give the pilots a geographical area to target. The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski, had stated that Type 3 CAS had to be cleared through him. Mouth was stressed. Comms with the battalion commander was virtually nonexistent. He didn’t want to hold up the attack. There is no time to find a clear channel to the battalion commander to explain the situation and then ask for approval for the fires. He was worried that there were enemy forces congregating north of the canal about to head into the city to attack the marines there. CAS is use it or lose it. It is flexible and lethal, but fleeting. If I don’t act now, marines are going to die. He decided that it was within his responsibility, through Commander’s Intent, to authorize Type 3 CAS allowing the pilots to prosecute their own targets north of the canal.

  Overhead, the A-10 pilots assumed that they were under the FAC’s control and that Mouth had eyes on the target. They thought they were operating under Type 1 or 2 control. They got on the radio and asked Mouth for clearance to attack the targets.

  Mouth, still operating from his track in the east of the city, was bemused. Why are they asking for clearance? Under Type 3 CAS, they were allowed to engage the targets as they thought fit. I don’t want to get involved in a discussion about close air support doctrine. He decided to clear them hot so they would get on with the business of dropping their bombs and firing their rounds.

  Gyrate 73 and 74 heard their clearance to engage. They wheeled around on a final east-west approach for a gun run on the vehicles below. It was a classic A-10 deployment. The pilots had their eyes on the target vehicles, and they knew their guns were extremely accurate and wouldn’t cause collateral damage. They rolled the A-10s toward the road and lined up on their targets. Gyrate 73, followed by 74, swooped toward the target vehicles. The pilots flicked the triggers of their Gatling guns, unleashing whirling barrels that spewed out thousands of rounds. Both pilots felt a strong surge of energy as they let loose with the weapons. The power was so great that their jets shook as the guns went off, leaving a trail of gun gas blowing over their canopies. They watched as the rounds impacted the ground, tearing up everything in their path.

  From his position in a ditch on the east side of the road, Reid looked up with his one good eye to see an A-10 roll in toward them. He watched as rounds from the 30 mm gun began to hit the ground about eighty-five meters to the northeast of where they were. Green sparks bounced off the ground, kicking up the dirt in a direct line toward their own tracks. Reid remembered that each track had been equipped with an orange panel to make friendly forces easier to identify from the air. The night before they left Camp Shoup, the company commanders had come by with orders from higher headquarters to take them off. They didn’t want the tracks to have any panels on them unless they were green or tan.

  Reid now watched with bewilderment as the rounds started to tear into their own tracks. It’s every man for himself. Reid took off running to the east and didn’t look back.

  At track 201, Private First Class Casey Robinson, Corporal Jake Worthington, Sergeant William Schaefer, and Lance Corporal Edward Castleberry were all trying to take cover when the A-10s came in for their strafing run. Worthington first heard the rumble of something in the sky. Seconds later, he saw red sparks leap out of the top of one of the tracks herringboned nearby and more explosions coming in a line right toward them. As he rose to climb up through the hatch, he looked up and saw the underbelly of a plane with engines near the tail. He looked over at Lance Corporal Brian Wenberg.

  “What the fuck was that? I thought we had air superiority. What’s going on here?”

  Seconds later, Worthington heard an ear-piercing explosion, like metal smashing on concrete, and leaped for cover. Robinson, still standing on the roof of the track, was thrown sideways. Schaefer felt a rush of air from below and was lifted out of his turret. Castleberry saw sparks bounce off the top of the track and something tear through the roof, cutting through the metal as if it were paper. The rounds tore up the ground around them.

  Out in the fields, a group of marines were running toward track 201 trying to escape the mortar fire when one of them, the commander of 3rd Platoon, Second Lieutenant Mike Seely, heard a groaning noise overhead that he recognized. He had been strafed by an A-10 during Desert Storm. It was a low, loud growl he would never forget. With him was twenty-six-year-old Lance Corporal David Fribley, from the Florida town of Lee. It was the same Fribley that Lance Corporal Thomas Quirk thought was too nice to be a marine. Running alongside them was Lance Corporal Jared Martin, a twenty-nine-year-old former high school wrestler from Phoenix, Arizona. Martin saw a plane flying low toward them, moaning like some wounded beast out for revenge. He saw the ground up ahead being whipped up in dense clouds of sand. The rounds were heading straight for them. They willed themselves to get to the track. Heat and dirt kicked up all around. Seely felt something hit his side. Martin felt heat in his back. A piece of metal smacked Martin below the eye and blood streamed from his forehead. He looked down and saw his fingers hanging off.

  “I’ve been hit.”

  “Man down.”

  Seely looked up to see Fribley lying in the dirt, almost broken in half, his flak jacket ripped from his body.

  As one of the A-10s peeled off, Lieutenant Swantner, from the hatch of 201, saw a marine with blood pouring from his lower back and legs crawling toward him, trying to mouth the words “I can’t walk.” There was so much blood that he didn’t recognize the marine. Swantner had only joined the company five months earlier. He had done pretty well to learn everyone’s names on the ship over and in Camp Shoup, but he didn’t know this guy. He threw off his helmet and jumped to the ground to try and pick the marine up.

  Martin and Seely dragged Fribley’s lifeless body to the rear of track 201. His helmet and the remains of his flak vest fell off. His clothes were shredded. As Martin tried to put him in the track, Castleberry felt
another explosion. He looked back to see Fribley’s back just blow out, pieces of flesh and guts fall off his body, onto Martin’s face and Kevlar jacket.

  On the other side of the road from track 201, Jose Torres was lying behind a mound, his leg still in agony from the RPG that had hit 211 as it was racing through Ambush Alley toward the northern bridge. With him was Captain Wittnam. They both heard the sound of a plane overhead. Wittnam had worked with A-10s during training. He recognized the sound. His first thought was Thank God. He was ecstatic that air support had come to help them out. Nearby, Lieutenant Tracy saw sparks fly up in the air. He, too, thought the A-10 was there to help them. Man, that’s kind of cool. It looks like a bunch of little sparklers on the Fourth of July. Neither Wittnam nor Tracy looked up. But Torres did. He saw the A-10 bearing down toward him. Someone yelled out.

  “Watch out.”

  It was all in slow motion. The rounds were kicking up dust and heading right for him.

  “Oh my God.”

  At the last moment, he turned to avoid a direct hit. Torres felt a searing pain as burning metal tore through his left side.

  Next to him, Wittnam was engulfed in a fountain of dirt and stones that erupted into his face. It was as if the entire world had turned black.

  First Sergeant Jose Henao was on the west side of the road near the second mortar position, where they were still trying to pump out rounds to suppress the overwhelming amount of incoming fire. A marine yelled at him.

  “First Sergeant. First Sergeant. We are in a shit sandwich.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  Everyone was yelling at him with news of someone who had been shot.

  “I don’t think the sergeant is going to make it.”

  Henao realized that he might not get out of this. Man, I might get shot, too. He thought of his wife and eight-month-old daughter. I just want my little girl to see her dad again, that’s all.

  As Henao got up and ran toward the bridge, he heard the sound of a plane. He looked up and saw it flying low toward him. He heard the groan of its gun and recognized it as the buzz of an A-10 on a gun run. As it kicked up rounds in front of him, he launched himself to the ground and covered his face. He looked up again and saw another A-10 firing terrifying bursts from its Gatling gun as it came in on its strafing run. As it passed, he looked up to see three marines lying next to him.

  Corporal Matthew Juska, from Roxboro, North Carolina, was just reaching track 203, parked south of track 201, about three hundred meters to the north of the canal bridge when one of the A-10s made another gun run. There was so much noise around him that Juska didn’t know what it was. He jumped into the track and pulled the hatch shut behind him. Corporal Randal Rosacker, a twenty-one-year-old machine gunner from San Diego, California, whose father was a Navy submariner, was already inside setting up his weapon to provide cover for marines darting across the road. Out of nowhere, Juska saw white sparks hit the top of the track. A blast of hot air swept through the track and blew the sides out. It was filled with 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm ammo on the left side and 40 mm grenades to the rear. He watched Rosacker’s feet get swept out from under him as the blast lifted him up and dropped him back onto the deck of the track. Lance Corporal Bradley Seegert, posting air security in the hatch, felt his own arm burning. It was a hot, sticky mess. Hot metal fragments had shredded his triceps. The air swirled with dust, paper, and pieces of metal. There was debris everywhere. Juska didn’t know about the A-10 overhead. He assumed they were being attacked by rockets. They’re targeting RPGs at us.

  Juska grabbed the marines with him and they poured out of the track and ran to a dirt mound. There was too much going on to think about what had happened to Rosacker. He didn’t know that the blast had killed him instantly. Now more rounds rained down on the ditch where he’d taken cover.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  All around the northern bridge, it was chaos. Some marines popped off every bit of signaling pyrotechnics they could lay their hands on, sending green-and-red smoke into the air in an effort to get the A-10s off them. Tracks all around the northern bridge were being targeted. There were so many shells landing on and around the tracks that the marines couldn’t tell whether they were being hit by the A-10, enemy artillery, or mortars. Wounded marines clambered into the back of any track they could find.

  Lieutenant Mike Seely grabbed the radio handset and tried to call up battalion on the net. He screamed into his radio.

  “Timberwolf, cease that damn A-10 fire. Cease fire. It’s hitting friendlies. Cease fire. Cease fire. You’ve got to turn off that air.”

  11

  For nearly an hour, at the southern Euphrates Bridge, Alpha Company’s commander, Captain Mike Brooks, had been nervously looking over his shoulder toward the river for signs of the tanks he’d been promised. The streets ahead were in turmoil. Iraqi gunmen were bounding from house to house, drawing closer to his battle positions. The enemy is becoming more determined and better coordinated. He almost felt the physical pressure of the encroaching enemy fire pushing in on the perimeter his marines had set up. Where the hell are those tanks? As he reached for the handset to get an update, he heard a deep rumble across the river and four tanks crested the bridge’s span. The earth shook violently as they crushed the barrier separating the highway and moved up toward Brooks’s frontline position. His heart leaped.

  From the turret of Desert Knight, as he came down the span of the bridge into Nasiriyah, Major Peeples saw marines spread out around the foot of the bridge and into the city. Many were lying prone on the west side of the road, taking cover behind a long mud wall. Ahead, the mouth of Ambush Alley was teeming with military vehicles, taxis, trucks, and figures running from house to house. How am I going to find the company commander? He still couldn’t quite believe that the battalion had just gone into the attack without them. He couldn’t get anyone up on the battalion net. Why is everyone still yammering away incoherently? He looked out for an AAV with a diamond on it. It signified the company commander’s vehicle. Just to the northwest of the bridge, he spotted it. As he jumped out of his tank, he saw Captain Brooks running toward him.

  “What the hell is going on? What do you need?”

  Brooks was so grateful to see him. In the middle of the road, with shots ringing around them, he pulled out a map and the two of them pored over it.

  “I’ve got a platoon up to the north here and we’re taking fire from buildings on the east of the road at about here. I want two tanks orientated that way to the north and another tank to the east.”

  “Roger that.”

  Peeples ran back to his tank and sent two of 1st Platoon’s tanks a couple of hundred meters to the north. He told his XO, Captain Dyer, to take his tank, Dark Side, and face to the east. He rolled his tank forward and started shooting at some of the buildings on the west side. This is not the way I thought we’d be fighting. It was nondoctrinal warfare. Peeples’s training had been about identifying and shooting targets a kilometer or so away. Now they were shooting at targets only a hundred meters away. He quickly switched his mind-set. This was close-quarter urban fighting. He saw muzzle flashes from windows and from bunkers.

  Brooks’s voice came over the radio.

  “I want you to shoot the building with the blue door.”

  Peeples popped his head out of the turret. There are three buildings with friggin’ blue doors.

  “Gunner. MPAT.” There was a frustrating pause while he tried to describe the target to his gunner.

  “Shoot at all the fucking buildings with blue doors.”

  There was a huge boom, a massive fireball, and the first building just disintegrated. Methodically, the gunner traversed the turret, loaded another round, and fired the main gun.

  In Dark Side, positioned just to the east of Peeples’s tank, Dyer and his FAC, Major Hawkins, had managed to make radio contact with the tanks from 2nd Platoon. They had gone to help the 3rd Platoon tanks and the Bravo amtracks that were stuck on the east
side of the city. Via messages relayed through Captain Thompson of 1st Platoon, Dyer now realized the full horror of their situation. At least three tanks were mired in mud and sewage in an area they were now referring to as the shitbog. Hawkins was on the radio and was speaking directly to the pilot of one of the helos flying overhead. The pilot painted a grim picture of waves of Iraqis trying to get at the mired vehicles. It was only the firepower of the Cobra gunships that was keeping them at bay. But now the pilots themselves were coming under attack from antiaircraft artillery fire.

  “How does it look?”

  “It looks okay, but we have to get them out of there.”

  Dyer had already called back to his tank leader, Gunnery Sergeant Greg Wright, to see if he could get the M88 tank retrievers moving north to help recover the tanks. There was little else he could do for the moment. I’ve got to concentrate on the task in hand. He needed to help Alpha’s marines in securing the Euphrates Bridge. He yelled at his driver to maneuver his tank into position to give supporting fire. His tank was like a bullet magnet. As soon as it appeared on the scene, the Iraqis went for it, taking the gunfire away from the marines. All he could hear was a relentless ping, ping, ping as bullets bounced ineffectually off the thick armor of the Abrams.

  “Driver. Hard left.”

  His driver, Lance Corporal Shirley, located in the driver’s seat in the belly of the tank underneath the main gun, wasn’t responding. He had been driving for thirteen hours and had only three hours of sleep the night before. Each time they stopped, he fell asleep in his seat. Dyer yelled at him again to wake him up.

  “Driver. Hard left. Steady.”

  There were mud pools all around. He didn’t want to get stuck like the others to the east.