by Bing West
“We need to suppress! Somebody get outside!” Wagner yelled. “Don’t sit on your asses!”
Lance Corporal Thomas Adametz rushed out with his SAW, momentarily grasping the barrel in his left hand and burning it badly. “Fuuuck!” he screamed, standing erect, wildly spraying bullets down the street, screaming at the top of his lungs, his welder-type shooter goggles completing the image of a man completely berserk. The Marines inside the house cheered and hollered. Flores said he looked like the wild machine-gunner in the movie Full Metal Jacket. When his drum was empty, Adametz ran inside, and Lance Corporal Craig Bell took his turn in the tag game, shambling out with an I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude, popping off a half-dozen 40mm rounds from his 203, then ambling back inside with a strut.
The small-arms fire was not abating. From the center of the Jolan District to the east, taxis were dropping off gunmen as though they were commuting to work. Zembiec received a radio report that a UAV was tracking two buses headed his way. The Jolan was the heart of the Fallujah defenses and the lair of the arch-terrorist Zarqawi. The “cease-fire” had provided the insurgents with weeks to organize their interior lines, and they were responding with reinforcements. From their perspective, this could be the beginning of the final attack that LtGen Conway had promised a few days earlier.
Lance Corporal Joshua Hill, lying behind his SAW across the street from Flores, watched as a truck with wooden slats slowed down as it crossed an intersection three hundred meters to the east. Hill saw at least twenty men standing up in the truck bed, hanging on to the slats. He sighted in and held down the trigger, sending dozens of rounds smashing into the wood and flesh, firing until the truck crawled out of view. Hill knew he should fire two hundred rounds, then change out a barrel and let it cool for fifteen minutes. He had burned through twelve hundred rounds, and still the insurgents were returning more fire than the Marines were putting out. Hill laid the red-hot barrel on his bipod and attached his third and last barrel. Smelling acrid smoke, he saw that the sizzling barrel had welded to the plastic on the bipod. He searched around for a substitute brace.
The insurgents in the adjoining house, no longer under fire from the roof, pressed forward. A small silver-colored grenade bounced off the outdoor steps to the roof and dribbled into the kitchen.
“Grenade!”
Eight Marines went flat, and the exploding shrapnel missed all except Lance Corporal Rafael Valencia, who felt his right leg go numb.
“I’m hit,” he said as he collapsed in slow motion to the floor.
Liotta rolled him onto his stomach, slit open his trouser leg, and saw an ugly gash in the calf, with what could have been a chunk of metal. It was hard to tell with the blood gushing out, and Liotta didn’t want to poke around with a forceps and pull out a tendon instead.
“Valencia, stop acting,” Liotta said in his best bedside manner.
“At least stop the bleeding,” Valencia said. “Then I’m out of here.” Valencia thought, Time to go back outside.
Liotta wrapped a pressure bandage around the wound, and before Wagner could say a word, Valencia limped down the stairs and back into the fight.
The insurgents next door were peppering the north side of the house with rounds. LCpl Sleight was ducking instinctively and watched in amazement as Sgt Neary poked his rifle out the window at an angle and shot a man in the neck. Sleight saw another man with an AK leap up and run away. As the pressure against the north side of the house eased, Liotta radioed to the south house for help. He had eight wounded, two in tight tourniquets and three with metal sticking out of them. He needed an experienced medic to guide him.
Across the street in the south house, Zembiec was on the roof with a team of snipers, including Larry, from special Task Force 6-26. Delta Force soldiers like Larry were spread out in all the rifle companies, lending an unofficial hand. Larry had taken some shrapnel in the face and, like the five other Marines and Delta soldiers on the roof, had laid aside his sniper rifle to pitch grenades. Zembiec thought their position was secure. It was the casualties, not the fighting, that concerned him. No helicopter could evacuate the wounded from this beehive, and he didn’t have an armored ambulance to call forward.
The forward air controller, Capt Michael Martino—call sign Oprah—was waiting for two Cobras to arrive. Battalion had refused the request for mortar support, lacking precise targets in a district teeming with civilians. Zembiec had yelled and yelled over the company radio net to bring forward the two tanks. In the din of the battle, he couldn’t hear the response and kept shouting his coordinates.
“Red Three and Four, this is War Hammer. I am at eight four nine nine two six. When at my pos? Over.”
The battalion and company frequencies on the PRC-148 had been cluttered with too many people asking him too many dumb questions, so he had put it aside and talked with Wagner over their handheld radio. When he picked up the 148 to again call the tanks, the company first sergeant came on the net.
“War Hammer six,” 1/Sgt Skiles said, “I’m Oscar Mike in a Hummer. ETA three mikes. Out.” Skiles would arrive in three minutes—in an unarmored Humvee.
Through a mouse hole in the terrace wall, Zembiec studied the street. A well-known wrestler at the Naval Academy, Zembiec was accustomed to concentrating on an opponent. He had never felt this alive and focused. His brain was whirling, anticipating the next move. The machine gun to the east and the AKs were still firing. Zembiec had counted more than sixty RPG rockets in the initial attack and another fifty since then. Now there was a lull in the rocket fire. They’re out of rockets, he thought. Poor fire discipline. He beckoned to Dan, the Delta medic.
“Ready to run for it?”
Dan nodded. At twenty-eight, Dan was the youngest of the Delta soldiers with Echo Company. He was also calm, steady, and superbly trained in shock trauma medicine, treated as the leader by the younger navy corpsmen. The two men sprinted across the fire-swept street and up the stairs to Wagner’s redoubt in the kitchen.
“Let’s get the most seriously wounded downstairs,” Zembiec said.
As the wounded were carried down, a Humvee skidded to a stop outside the house, rounds hitting the wall behind them. To Skiles, it sounded like a hundred angry bees were buzzing around him, and he wondered how they were going to make it back out. An empty AK magazine struck Skiles on his shoulder, and he pointed his 9mm pistol at the nearest roof but saw no one.
The Cobra helicopters had just arrived and were skimming back and forth, trying to frighten the shooters off the rooftops while aiming their guns farther to the east, the empty brass tinkling on the street. The SAW gunners were ripping both sides of the street, screaming at them to get the wounded the fuck out of there before they all were killed. As the corpsmen rushed the wounded out, a grenade bounced off the hood of the Humvee and sputtered out harmlessly.
Valencia helped to carry out four wounded, anxious for the Humvee to escape before an RPG rocket found it. He then lay down and fired up the street, yelling for 1/Sgt Skiles to get the hell out of there. When a Marine who had driven in with Skiles handed Valencia a fresh M16 magazine, Valencia thought, What’s he doing? Why’s he not shooting? Valencia grabbed the magazine, slapped it home, and resumed firing.
Wagner was crouched next to the Humvee when he heard through his handheld radio that he had another serious casualty on the roof. As Doc Liotta and Dan ran back up the stairs, Wagner shook his head.
“Too much fire, First Sergeant!” he yelled. “This Hummer is going to be chewed to pieces. Take off now.”
With four wounded, the makeshift ambulance turned around and drove out of the maelstrom.
Wagner went back into the house just as Doc Liotta and Dan carried another Marine down from the roof. Behind them on the outside steps, Gomez was tearing through M16 magazines to suppress the enemy fire.
“Roof’s clear,” Gomez told Wagner. “No one can survive up there.”
Gomez slumped in a corner while Liotta and Dan went to work on Lance Corporal Aaron
Cole Austin, who had been shot in the shoulder, the bullet exiting his chest above his heart, a grievous wound.
“Tell my fiancée I love her,” Austin mumbled.
“Tell her yourself, man,” Lance Corporal Jose Cruz said. “You’re getting out of here.”
Gomez had a cut on his face and sat on the cement stairs leading to the roof, dripping blood and muttering that he should have done more. Walking past him, Liotta slipped in a puddle of blood. He looked more closely at Gomez and saw that the top of his right shoulder had been ripped away, leaving a hole the size of a Pepsi can. A round from a heavy machine gun had gouged out enough muscle to rip the arm off a normal-size man. Wagner looked at him in alarm.
“Sorry, sir,” Gomez said, embarrassed to be out of the fight.
“You’re a beast, Gomez,” Wagner said.
Liotta bandaged the wound and turned to Austin, who had struggled to his feet and fumbled for his rifle.
“Gotta get back,” Austin mumbled.
Wagner helped Liotta restrain the severely injured Marine. In shock and a morphine haze, Austin weakly hit Wagner in the face.
“It’s okay, Austin,” Wagner said, laying him back down. “It’s okay. You’ve done your job.”
_____
In the house across the street Zembiec was crouched on the roof, trying to figure out how to get out the other wounded. He glanced down at some movement in the side alley and saw a man pointing an AK right at him. He leaped back as bullets chipped the cement between his legs. He felt like he had been kicked in the balls and stumbled back, looking down at the tear where a spent bullet had ricocheted off the ceramic groin protector attached to his armored vest. It looked like a drooping diaper—Zembiec had felt a bit foolish wearing it that morning. His future progeny safe for the moment, he flipped a grenade down into the alley and turned his attention back to directing in the overdue tanks. Zembiec had more wounded to get out.
Downstairs Sergeant Joshua Magana had been outside guarding the rear courtyard when he was shot, then was dragged inside by Sergeant Nunez and Staff Sergeant Willie Gresham. Corpsman Everett Watt pulled down Magana’s pants and saw that the bullet had hit him in the buttock and exited through his pelvis.
“It hurts, man,” Magana said as Watt rolled him on his side. “I can’t feel my arm.”
“That’s ’cause you’re lying on it,” Watt said.
Watt didn’t like the situation one bit, though. A yellowish tube protruded from the stomach wound, and Watt gently packed the entrails in battle dressings and applied an Ace bandage while Magana clutched a crucifix and a picture of his wife and daughter. After a while, he stopped staring at the picture and lay still, a blank expression on his face. In the south house, Gresham saw the unexpected Humvee and grasped Magana under the armpits, dragging him toward the back door just as mortar shells exploded in the courtyard.
“Where are we going, Staff Sergeant?” Magana said. “I want to go home.”
“Not this way, we’re not,” Gresham said. “We’re staying inside. You’ll catch the next ride.”
He lowered Magana to the floor in the kitchen.
“Take this letter.” Magana held out a letter from his wife.
“Bring it home yourself.”
Up on the roof Zembiec heard the sharp bang of a tank main gun, sounding like a giant sledgehammer hitting a manhole cover, and looked up to see the minaret at the mosque buckle and pitch forward. It’s about time, he thought. The tankers assured him they were two minutes out, approaching from the schoolhouse to the west. They had been driven back once by a torrent of RPG fire, concerned about being struck in the rear. Now they were advancing with a platoon of riflemen covering them from the school.
Zembiec contacted Wagner over the handhelds. “We’re getting the wounded back, Ben,” he said. “When the tanks get here, we’re hoofing it. I’m coming across.”
Again Zembiec darted across the fire-swept street and into the north house. In the main room on the second floor, Sanchez was applying CPR to Austin; Dan and Liotta had performed a tracheotomy to ease his breathing.
Zembiec ripped down a door. “Carry him on that,” he said.
The walking wounded went out first, followed by Wagner and three others carrying Austin on the door, his shirt off, breathing hoarsely. Going downstairs, they slipped in the blood and Liotta caught Austin, hugging him to his chest and stumbling backward across the street. Liotta’s foot tripped a wire, and he fell. There was a brilliant flash of light, and he rolled on top of Austin to absorb the blast. Nothing happened.
Thank God, he thought, it’s only a trip flare.
Then hands were pulling them both up and propelling them into the south house. Lance Corporal Chris Hankins crossed last as the rear guard. He had gone out that morning with twenty-three magazines; he was down to two. They could hear the tank treads around the corner, and Zembiec ran back to the roof and grabbed his PRC-148.
“Red Four, pull into the street in front of us and fire to the east. We’re getting the wounded back to the schoolhouse.”
On the roof next to Zembiec, Lance Corporal Lucas Seielstad felt a hammer hit him in the right arm. Dazed, he stumbled down the stairs and into the main room, where PFC Boykin was firing out a window.
“Oh shit,” Seielstad said.
“Oh shit what?” Boykin said.
Seielstad gestured with his jaw at a bullet sticking out of his right bicep. “Looks cool,” he said.
In shock and with a fractured right leg, he sat down and tugged off his glove, blood and chunks of flesh dropping onto the floor.
“What’s that?” Seielstad said.
“Man, you’re all messed up,” Boykin said.
Zembiec looked around. Staff Sergeant Gresham was organizing the thirty-five Marines for the three-hundred-meter dash west to the schoolhouse, where 3rd Platoon was providing covering fire. Zembiec hesitated, then sprinted back to the north house, running alone up the stairs to the empty kitchen.
“Is anyone here? Marines? Any Marines here?”
He knew his questions sounded ridiculous, but he had to make sure. It was spooky, standing in a puddle of blood, yelling in an empty house, the sounds of the AKs, M16s, and .50 calibers on the tanks hammering away outside.
Careful not to slip in the blood, he scampered back down the stairs and ran across the street to the south house. Gresham was shepherding everyone out the back door and forming them up into teams in the walled courtyard. Zembiec went up to the roof for a final look around. Two Delta operators, Don and Larry, were glassing the rooftops, looking for targets. Below them a tank main gun fired, followed a few seconds later by the other.
“Fire’s died down,” Don said. “We can stay.”
Don, Zembiec knew, was a master sergeant. His flat statement was almost a challenge. Larry, who was bleeding at the neck, nodded in agreement. They wanted to continue the battle.
“I have two urgent wounded,” Zembiec said. “We’ve been killing these fuckers for a month. They’ll be here tomorrow. Come on, let’s go.”
“Let me shoot my thermo,” Don said.
To the envy of the Marines, Delta had brought some neat grenades and disposable one-shot rockets called thermobarics—new explosives that drove up the overpressure in confined spaces, creating tremendous destruction.
“All right, then we’re out of here.”
With Zembiec and Larry providing suppressive fire, Don knelt, aimed at the window on a troublesome house a block away, and fired the rocket. There was a muffled whump! as a corner of the building crumbled. Satisfied, the three ran downstairs. In the courtyard, Gresham lined everyone up two by two. No one was to make the run alone; every Marine had a battle buddy. Those with severe wounds were carried out first, followed by the walking wounded. Magana lay on a metal door, a Marine carrying each corner.
“Hey, you need to cover that approach,” he said in a morphine-induced slur, gesturing vaguely around.
“Got you covered, bro.”
The
3rd Platoon wanted to move forward to help. Zembiec told them to hold their position, fearing a loss of control and friendly fire if some Marines rushed forward while others pushed back. It was only three hundred meters, and they could see the schoolhouse. No way they could get lost or separated.
While the two tanks sat in the intersection and pounded both sides of the street, the wounded were carried out the back of the courtyard. The insurgents on the roofs saw what was happening and began yelling. Out of sight of the tanks, some ran down back alleys, firing from the hip whenever they glimpsed the withdrawing Marines. Behind the wounded, the rear guard of able-bodied Marines departed the courtyard in pairs. When it was LCpl Sleight’s turn to go, he took off at full speed, head down, trying to make himself a small target. After running half a block, he glanced around for his battle buddy. No one was there. He looked back—and stared into the gun barrel of an Abrams tank. The tank commander was standing upright in the turret, waving both arms frantically, gesturing to Sleight to come back. He had been running full tilt the wrong way, heading for the center of the city. Sleight quickly scurried back.
For the first two hundred meters, Wagner carried Austin. Once he had to cross a ditch by embracing Austin in his arms. Both were covered with blood and sweat, and Austin kept slipping and fighting against Wagner’s embrace. Wagner took that as a good sign that Austin would make it. When Wagner ran out of steam, Sergeant Jason Rettenberger carried the wounded Marine. But LCpl Austin eventually succumbed to his wounds.
Corporal Joshua Carpenter had taken shrapnel wounds to his eyes fighting next to Zembiec on the roof. Corpsman Watt had placed a bandage over his eyes, shouldered both their packs, and was running with Carpenter by the hand, the rounds cracking around them and brass from the hovering gunship hitting them on the helmets. It was noon, and they had been fighting for their lives for three hours. Watt couldn’t believe how exhausted he was. Getting to the schoolhouse with the two packs seemed like the longest run of his life. Toward the end he was wheezing and his stride faltered. He slowed to a walk.
