War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom

by Oliver North

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #21

  HMM-268 Detachment with RCT-5

  Hantush, Iraq

  Tuesday, 1 April 2003

  2045 Hours Local

  The “operational pause” is over with a vengeance. Before midnight, the three reinforced battalions of “Fighting Joe” Dunford’s RCT-5 were on the move, back up Route 1, to the “right turn” on Route 27, following the hardball highway to Hantush. It’s the same path they had taken on March 27—before they’d been turned around and sent back. This attack north has been preceded by a dramatic display of artillery fire from the 11th Marines. Throughout the night, RAP rounds, their orange trajectories arching over our heads like a fireworks display, pounded enemy positions that had been reoccupied when the Marines were told to reverse course for the “pause.”

  In the race north, I-MEF has left the remnants of at least four Iraqi divisions in its wake, some of them with enough residual strength to make mischief by setting ambushes for Marine resupply convoys—but none of them sufficiently intact to threaten the drive to the Tigris River. Now the Iraqi forces arrayed in front of the Marines are about to feel the full wrath of those who believed they had been wronged by the media and slighted by the decision to make the Army’s V Corps the “Main Attack” force on Baghdad.

  Though I’ve not heard a single Marine commander utter a word that could be construed as “interservice rivalry”—most have even praised the cooperation among the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines—many of the troops still feel that the USMC just isn’t getting enough credit where credit is due. The Marines were the first to deploy, and most have been “in-theater” since December or January. And even the most junior Marines are aware that the Corps has a far higher proportion of its combat power committed in Iraq than any other U.S. service.

  With the exception of contingents in Afghanistan and small detachments deployed with Marine Expeditionary Units elsewhere around the world, the Marine Corps has committed all of its tank and light armored vehicle battalions, over half its infantry and artillery, two-thirds of its engineers, all of its bridging equipment, over half of its helicopter assets, and nearly the same proportion of its AV-8 and F/A-18 fixed-wing aircraft to Operation Iraqi Freedom. In all, nearly 66,000 Marines, more than one-third of the entire Marine Corps, are in this fight. And so, when I-MEF was given the order to “get up and go” after the “tactical pause,” the Marines were more than ready to do just that.

  By dawn this morning, Dunford’s RCT-5 CP had moved forward yet again and the helicopters displaced with them. Before noon we were back at the Iraqi “highway” airstrip at Hantush—right where we were when we were told to turn around for the pause.

  Beside us on the highway there is a steady rumble as Dunford’s one thousand tracked and wheeled vehicles move north up Route 27 headed for the Tigris. Behind us at Ad Diwaniyah, RCT-7 is in a series of running gunfights with fedayeen and Iraqi irregulars. Over the last twenty-four hours, the Iraqis have been lobbing 122mm rockets at the Marines from within the city. Several of these Soviet-era BM-21 rockets have hit in the general vicinity of the RCT-5 CP, causing us to scramble for cover. On two occasions we were ordered to “mask up” for fear that they might be firing chemical warheads. Though these rockets are wildly inaccurate, each one is packed with 140 pounds of high explosives—and no one wants an Iraqi rocketeer to get lucky. The 11th Marines counter-battery fire has been great, but if the RCT-7 infantry can eliminate the shooters inside Ad Diwaniyah, everyone will be safer while traversing Routes 1 and 27.

  Enemy resistance as we move up the highway this morning has been sporadic rather than sustained, nothing like the Task Force Tarawa battle for An Nasiriyah. There, dismounted infantry had to battle from block to block and house to house against fedayeen, who had the advantage of sheltering themselves among the civilian population. Here the terrain is open, and aside from small farming villages along the way, RCT-5 is prepping every kilometer, first with fixed-wing air—F/A-18s and AV-8s—then with artillery and mortars, and finally with waves of Cobras under the direction of forward air controllers, the Marine pilots assigned to every battalion.

  The battalion commanders are using their own Dragon Eye RPVs—as small as a radio-controlled model airplane, launched from a giant slingshot. The Dragon Eyes are equipped with sensors to pick out targets well before the armored columns approach what could be an ambush. But even with all this high-tech gear, it’s still bone-wearying work for the grunts.

  RCT-7 dispatched 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, reinforced by a company of tanks, to enter Ad Diwaniyah and they have been going at it since dawn. Tasked with clearing out the fedayeen and Baathists loyal to Saddam, the dismounted infantry had to resort to exhausting fire team and squad rushes to root out Iraqi militia, snipers, and irregulars. Fighting from trench lines that seemed to have been hastily dug during the “pause,” the disconcerted Iraqi defenders fought bravely enough. But they were no match for disciplined, well-trained Marine infantry backed up by armor. The smart ones surrendered; those who didn’t died. By early afternoon, enemy resistance inside Ad Diwaniyah had ceased. So had the rocket fire.

  Farther up Route 27, Dunford’s RCT-5 was driving hard to the north in an effort to capture a bridge over the Tigris. To save fuel, the helicopters were holding at the roadside airstrip, waiting for the C-130s to start cycling in with bladders, pumps, and equipment for a new FARP. Maj. Mike O’Neill, the HMM-268 flight leader, also wanted to rearm his depleted flare and chaff pods because everyone is expecting heavy Iraqi anti-aircraft fire once we reach the Tigris.

  I was talking to the commander of a cobbled-together Marine/Seabee/Army Engineer bridge unit when he got a radio call to come up immediately to the RCT-5 Forward CP. He agreed to take me along, jammed into the back of his Humvee along with a Navy senior chief petty officer and an Army first sergeant. We raced up the highway, weaving between tank retrievers, AAVs, and trucks carrying bridge sections, bulldozers, girders, pontoons, boats, and fuel.

  From the look of things going up Route 27, the Iraqis clearly did not expect the Marines to be taking this approach to the Tigris. Unlike Route 1, with enemy bunkers at every intersection, flaming fire trenches, bulldozed tank revetments, and sandbagged fighting positions, this two-lane hardball highway was wide open. As we passed by farms and roadside buildings, mothers held their little children and watched. The older youngsters waved. The message was clear: “No Fedayeen Here” might as well have been posted on the walls of their houses. Even with the “pause,” and despite the RCT-5 “pullback” of the 27th, the 1st Marine Division deception plan had still worked.

  We arrived at Dunford’s three-Humvee mobile command post, just as 1st Battalion, 5th Marines (1/5) succeeded in smashing through a dug-in Iraqi infantry company that had been defending the bridge over the twenty-meter-wide Saddam Canal, the last obstacle before reaching the Tigris at An Numaniyah. Despite his fatigue, the normally taciturn Joe Dunford was ecstatic. His approach march had been so swift that the Iraqis hadn’t had time to blow the bridge.

  The CO of the bridging unit wasn’t quite so happy. The entire way up the highway he and his two senior enlisted NCOs—all reservists—had been planning how they were going to “show their stuff” by bridging the canal. But even now, in their disappointment, they began to plan how they would employ their skills the following day when RCT-5 reached the Tigris.

  As 1/5 was consolidating its bridgehead on the north side of the Saddam Canal, the four HMM-268 helicopters arrived, their flare and chaff pods were reloaded, and the birds were fully fueled, courtesy of the C-130s that were landing on the roadside airstrip behind us. Griff and I immediately set up the satellite with New York before it became totally dark. The regimental chaplain, Cdr. Frank Holley, let us place our satellite antenna on top of his Humvee and plug into his 24-volt slave, as he had done so many other times to save our skins in time for a report back to the States. But just as we were about to tell the foreign desk at FOX News Channel in New York ab
out the day’s success, the Regimental S-3 took me aside and asked that we not announce to the world our location, saying, “It would be best for all of us if the Iraqis didn’t know exactly how far we’ve gotten. We’re inside his chemical weapons fan and we don’t want him to reinforce the bridge over the Tigris.”

  It made sense to me, so in the report I prepared for the 3 p.m. (EST) news, I talked only about the success in establishing the FARP some forty kilometers behind us and the RCT-7 success in Ad Diwaniyah earlier in the day. As it turned out, nobody in New York was much interested in the Marine move toward the Tigris. Unbeknownst to us, there was a much bigger story making news in America.

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #22

  HMM-268 Detachment with RCT-5

  Three Rivers FARP, Vic An Numaniyah, Iraq

  Wednesday, 2 April 2003

  0200 Hours Local

  When we dialed into the satellite “catcher” in New York at about 2100 hours local on April 1, I was surprised that the lead story wasn’t coming from Rick Leventhal, embedded with 3rd LAR, or Greg Kelly, with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division as they battled their way toward the Karbala Gap southwest of Baghdad. It was coming from CENTCOM, in Qatar. Early in the day, a terse news release had been handed out to journalists at the CENTCOM media center. It left more questions unanswered than it explained:

  April 1, 2003

  Release Number: 03-04-12

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  U.S. ARMY POW RESCUED—OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM: Coalition forces have conducted a successful rescue mission of a U.S. Army prisoner of war held captive in Iraq. The soldier has been returned to a Coalition-controlled area. More details will be released as soon as possible.

  -30-

  That’s all anyone wanted to talk about—not Army or Marine forces closing in on Baghdad. Reporters at CENTCOM and Brett Baier, our FOX News Channel national security correspondent at the Pentagon, reported that the rescued POW was a female American soldier who had been captured by the Iraqis nine days earlier, when the 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed at An Nasiriyah, and that further details would be offered after her family was notified of her safe return. Few of us watching the little satellite television receiver even knew her name: PFC Jessica Lynch.

  As Marines gathered around in the darkness to look at our little TV, the report reviewed what had happened that Sunday, the fourth day of the war. Most of us, Marines and embedded media alike, had put the 507th ambush and its tragic consequences behind us in the days since the sandstorm, the “pause,” and the renewed offensive. But it hadn’t been forgotten back home. Newspaper and newsmagazine writers, as well as some broadcast journalists, had pieced together quite a tale.

  While we were preoccupied with the realities around us, all kinds of speculation had floated around about the engagement in which eighteen vehicles of the 507th Maintenance Company, from Fort Bliss, Texas, had become separated from the rest of their convoy. They had taken a wrong turn and fallen prey to fedayeen dressed in civilian clothes, who had unleashed AK-47s, mortars, machine guns, RPGs, and hand grenades at the soft-sided convoy.

  Detailed accounts, which we had never seen, described absolute terror and chaos as the Americans tried to escape. The Iraqis had built a barricade in the road using cars and an Iraqi tank to prevent the Americans from getting past them.

  Several stories described M/Sgt. Bob Dowdy, the senior NCO among the ambushed Americans, taking charge and jumping from his Humvee and dodging Iraqi bullets to help PFC Lynch and two other soldiers into his vehicle, driven by PFC Lynch’s close friend, PFC Lori Piestewa.

  According to some narratives, PFC Piestewa had made a valiant effort to drive through the ambush until a rocket-propelled grenade hit the front of her vehicle and it veered into a wrecked truck, killing her, M/Sgt. Dowdy, riding shotgun in the front, and two soldiers in the back of the Humvee.

  Some accounts told of PFC Lynch heroically fending off enemy soldiers with an M-16 rifle, expending all of the two hundred rounds issued to her. Yet other stories said her weapon jammed and was useless. Still others said she was seriously injured and unconscious. And as if to prove that no one really knew what had happened, other narratives described both PFCs Piestewa and Lynch fighting valiantly like warriors but then captured and beaten with rifle butts, kicked, and stomped on. Differing versions depicted how PFC Lynch was shot. Others said she was stabbed.

  Realizing that my story about FARPs was unlikely to get air time, I left the small crowd of weary Marines huddled around our TV and went to find my old pals from OGA—the “Other Government Agency.”

  The team chief, “Don,” and a dozen of his operators were holed up inside a walled house about fifty meters from Dunford’s mobile CP. I was allowed in the gate after convincing the new guy standing guard that, “yes, I really am Ollie North.” With the exception of the twelve-inch hole in the wall made by a 25mm bushmaster, and now covered with a piece of cardboard, the place looked nice enough to have belonged to someone important.

  Now, after some good-natured ribbing about me always scrounging coffee from them, they tell me what they know about the rescue. According to these guys, the operation was put together very hurriedly on March 31, when an Iraqi in An Nasiriyah told a Marine sergeant from RCT-1 that an American female soldier was being treated for severe injuries in the city’s Saddam Hussein General Military Hospital. The information was passed up the line, and CENTCOM had tossed the ball to Task Force 20 (TF-20)—a unit comprising CIA paramilitary personnel, Delta Force operators, and Navy SEALs.

  The very secretive TF-20 has been primarily engaged in searching for WMD, seeking out and either “taking out” or bringing in Baath Party leaders, while at the same time looking for scientists working on unconventional weapons for Saddam. Fearing that the wounded POW information might be a ruse to lure U.S. troops into a trap (because so many schools and hospitals have been converted into arsenals by the fedayeen), Special Ops Command put together a “raid plan” by the end of daylight on March 31.

  The raid required that the Marines create a diversion several blocks from the hospital while an Army Ranger security cordon was surreptitiously established around the medical facility. Then TF-20 operators would swoop in by helicopter and “take down” the hospital, rescue the American POW or POWs, and extract them before the Iraqis could react.

  According to the guys from OGA, at precisely 0100 hours local on April 1, the Marines kicked off “one hell of a firepower demonstration” with troops, tanks, and artillery as the TF-20 operators flew in aboard TF-160 “Nightstalker” Black Hawks at rooftop level to seize the hospital, with AC-130 gunships providing cover. The whole thing apparently “went down” flawlessly.

  The lights went out in the hospital as planned, and the Iraqis—disoriented by the Marine fire on the other side of town, the noise of the helicopters, and stun grenades—offered little or no resistance. The rescue team, using NVGs, was able to search the buildings and grounds for other living and deceased Americans. They apparently found PFC Lynch exactly where the source said she was, an unarmed male nurse standing beside her bed.

  As it turned out, several Iraqi doctors had wanted to try to turn her over to the Americans, because they were afraid she might die, but were afraid to do so because of the fedayeen. One of the staff led the commandos to the morgue where the bodies of two deceased Americans were located and pointed out where nine more bodies were buried outside. After evacuating Lynch by helicopter, they retrieved the bodies of the other American dead. It was, according to my storyteller, a “perfect op. No American casualties. No Iraqi casualties. Mission accomplished.”

  “But here’s the best part, Colonel,” adds one of the agency wise guys. “You got scooped! The Army sent along a combat camera crew and they videotaped the whole thing with a night lens.”

  I joke that he can shove his scoop where the sun doesn’t shine and ask, “Seriously, guys, how much of what you’ve just told me can I use on the air?”

  “Do
n,” my old comrade from years gone by, says, “None of it, till CENTCOM gives the green light. Otherwise, no more coffee.”

  I bid the OGA boys a good night’s sleep and go back to the chaplain’s Humvee. The small crowd of Marines watching the poncho-hooded TV has thinned. Fatigue is taking its toll on even the most ardent TV fan. The chaplain is sleeping on top of his vehicle, and Griff is dozing on the hood—my favorite places to bunk down at night because you can’t get run over up there. While everyone sleeps, FOX News Channel is playing a tape of Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks from earlier in the day. “At this point she is safe. She’s been retrieved. And some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen, loyal to a creed that they know, that they’ll never leave a fallen comrade and embarrass their country.”

  With that, I shut off the TV and set my Iridium pager for 0300 so that I can be halfway awake for Hannity & Colmes in an hour. As I doze off, I can hear the sound of armor moving down the road a hundred meters to the west, headed in the direction of the Tigris. Overhead, there is the sound of a predator UAV and, well off in the distance, the rumble of a fixed-wing air strike headed toward Baghdad. My story of how the Marines fooled the Iraqis about the route they had chosen to invade Saddam’s capital would have to wait.

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #23

  With HMM-268

  North of the Tigris with RCT-5

  Wednesday, 2 April 2003

  2330 Hours Local

  By the time we finish our “evening” report on Hannity & Colmes it is 0430 local and too late to go back to sleep. Dawn is just an hour away, and Col. Dunford’s command group is already stirring. Troops of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines (2/5) and 2nd Tank Battalion have been moving for more than two hours, passing through 1st Battalion’s lines and headed for the Tigris, just a dozen kilometers north of the Saddam Canal bridgehead that 1/5 seized at last light yesterday. RAP rounds from the artillery are chasing each other across the starlit sky as Griff and I head for a cup of coffee. Gunnery Sgt. Cheramie, Col. Dunford’s tough, faithful right arm, almost always has a hot cup available somewhere and I’m in need of one.