by Oliver North
This was the kind of event that some could spin into a very negative story, and I decide that both Joe Dowdy and Gen. Mattis deserve better than that. Even though it is after midnight back in the States, I think it was worth trying to get the story up first on FOX, and I head off to locate Griff. I find him asleep on the ramp of a CH-46, his feet hanging over the edge, his head “pillowed” on his backpack, a half-eaten MRE on his chest.
We set out to find a vehicle that is not about to pull out so that we can set up our satellite transmission equipment using its auxiliary power tap. After pleading our case with five or six Humvees and trucks, we finally find a Radio Battalion Humvee that isn’t getting lined up for the dash up the road, and we plug in our equipment. When the foreign desk answers in New York, I ask if there is space for a story on a change of command in the 1st Marine Division and quickly learn that the only story that matters at the moment was the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division action at the Saddam International Airport. And that FOX News Channel is already right in the middle of it.
For the next few hours, as RCT-5 rearms, refuels, and replenishes on Route 6, Griff, the CH-46 crews, and a dozen or so Marines sit in front of our little satellite TV, transfixed by some of the best combat footage and reporting we’ve seen. Greg Kelly and his field producer/cameraman, Mal James, have been embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division all the way from Kuwait. They have covered the fight at An Najaf and the breakthrough at the Karbala Gap against the Medina division of the Republican Guard. Now Kelly and James are covering, live, the desperate fight to take and hold Saddam International Airport.
Late on April 3, a company-sized unit from 3rd Infantry Division, consisting of fewer than twenty Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, had been conducting a “reconnaissance in force” action west of the airport when they seized two intersections on a key approach. Told to hold in place, they had done so against overwhelming odds throughout the night. By dawn on April 4, the small unit had withstood over a dozen assaults by Republican Guard armor and dismounted fedayeen. Kelly’s night lens captured much of the action as more than five hundred foreign fighters—charging on foot, in cars, in pickup trucks, and on motorcycles—died trying to take out the U.S. unit.
About the time I call in to New York, Kelly is reporting on an attack by more than twenty Republican Guard T-72 tanks against a small detachment of 3rd Infantry Division Abrams and Bradleys. In minutes, the 25mm chain guns on the Bradleys and the 120mm main guns on the Abrams destroy more than a dozen of the T-72s and so clutter the approach to their position with burning Iraqi armor that the surviving enemy tanks beat a hasty retreat.
Just before noon—0445 back in New York—we have to break down our satellite link because the vehicle we have been using for power has to get in line to move up the highway. As we do so, I tell Griff that we need to have our gear ready to set up again as soon as we are stationary. The footage Kelly and James were feeding from 3rd Infantry Division was too good to miss.
By noon, trucks with food, fuel, ammo, and water have replenished the troops and vehicles of RCT-5 and we are ready to resume the move toward Baghdad on Route 6. With 2nd Tank Battalion leading the attack up the four-lane highway, artillery firing in the distance, Cobra gunships snarling just overhead, and the LAVs heading off to scout the flanks, all one thousand vehicles of RCT-5 begin to move.
From the ramp of Driscoll’s CH-46, staged just thirty meters off the hardball highway, I can see Col. Joe Dunford leaning against the hood of his vehicle in the little, three-Humvee command group as the lead element of 2nd Tank Battalion rumbles past. The tank commanders, standing in their turrets, and the gunners in the CAAT Humvees must be able to see him as well—a tall, thin, solitary figure, just a few feet off the road. He’s wearing a chemical suit, flak jacket, and helmet just like everyone else, no sign of his rank or position. As I walk toward him, the ground shaking from the weight of the passing vehicles, the air full of dust and diesel smoke, the roar of the engines too loud for speaking, I wonder if any of those passing by him know that this is the man who has just set an astounding arsenal in motion.
When I reach Dunford, I notice that he is simply watching, not gesturing or waving. Ten meters away, Gunnery Sgt. Cheramie is checking his Benelli shotgun to make sure that it’s loaded and ready. On the mounts atop the Humvees, the gunners are locking and loading. As I walk up beside the vehicles, Cpl. Moorehead, one of Dunford’s command group drivers, sees me and then, gesturing toward the highway, yells, “Awesome.”
Not wanting to intrude on Dunford’s thoughts, I hang back for a few moments. When he finally turns away from the road and moves toward his vehicle, he notices me standing with Gunny Cheramie and comes over.
“Very impressive, Colonel” was all I could manage.
“Yes,” he responds, “It makes you think.”
I nod in agreement. “Watching all this go by makes me think of Robert E. Lee’s remark to Longstreet at Fredricksburg in 1862: ‘It is well that war is so terrible; we would grow too fond of it!’”
Dunford looks at me almost quizzically, and says, “Indeed.” Then, taking his seat in the right front of his Humvee, he turns to me and says, “Be careful today.” With that, the three vehicles charge up the incline at the edge of the highway and join the column rolling toward Baghdad.
Lt. Col. Driscoll and I go up to the RCT-5 Bravo Command Group CP to listen on the radios for progress reports as the column makes its way up the road. The question on everyone’s mind is whether the remnants of the Al Nida division of the Republican Guard, badly mauled already, will put up a fight. Our answer comes in less than a half hour.
At about 1245 hours, the first call for a cas-evac comes in from the lead elements of 2nd Tank Battalion, who have been trying to push into the small industrial city of Tuwayhah. Driscoll plots the grid coordinates for the pickup zone as I look over his shoulder. On his 1:25,000 map, it looks to me as though the pickup zone is right in the middle of an intersection near the outskirts of Tuwayhah. He checks again to confirm the location, verifies the site on the aerial photo taped to a board above the radios, shrugs, and says, “Okay, I’ll fly this one.”
We walked back to the four CH-46s and he briefs the other flight crews saying that the zone was big enough for only one bird and that he would fly in, and pick up the four casualties and his wingman would loiter behind us while we are on the deck to make sure we get out with the casualties. The DASC promises to send a pair of Cobras for escort if any could be spared.
As soon as we lift off, Gunny Pennington orders the machine guns locked and loaded. As we fly at fifty feet and 110 knots up the highway, my camera records the two corpsmen in the back preparing their gear for the casualties. Cpl. Kendall, the left-side gunner, is crouched and scanning the terrain below. Pennington confirms over the intercom that “Dash Two is seven rotors at five o’clock, level,” meaning that Driscoll’s wingman was about 140 feet behind, on our right rear at the same altitude.
Holding my camera to shoot through the front canopy, I can see the bright orange of flame trenches on both sides of the road as we fly through billowing black smoke. Wrecked and burning Iraqi T-55s, T-62s, trucks, BMPs, and occasional fuelers are all over the four-lane highway. Some are smoking in the revetments that were so carefully dug in the six months the Iraqis had to prepare their defenses.
Up ahead, columns of smoke are rising above the city. We’re now flying over increasing numbers of multistory buildings in what appears to be an industrial area. My camera catches four Cobras, wheeling, diving, and firing—the bright flash and the contrails of Hellfire missiles and five-inch rockets clearly visible. At the rate they are firing, they’ll be out of ammunition by the time we arrive at the pickup landing zone. This means we’ll have no overhead protection while we’re on the ground.
I have jammed the camera’s microphone up inside my helmet so that the tape will pick up Driscoll’s radio calls to the unit on the ground with the casualties. He’s been transmitting, “Iron Horse
Alpha, this is Grizzly Two Zero”—the call signs for A Company, 2nd Tank Battalion and for his CH-46 helicopter—but he gets no response. All that can be heard on this frequency is the sound of heavy gunfire, both incoming and outgoing, and a lot of yelling as someone on the ground with a headset mike keyed open shouts orders. It’s the sound of a furious firefight, and it seems to be taking place right in front of us.
Driscoll changes frequencies and comes up on a Regimental Tac Net, and now I can hear the unbelievably calm voice of “Fighting Joe” Dunford talking to Lt. Col. Mike Oehle, the 2nd Tank Battalion commander. Neither man seems unduly excited, though the sound of gunfire can be heard in both their transmissions. Oehle reports that he has lost an M-1 to an ATGM—an anti-tank guided missile—either a Russian-supplied Sagger or one provided by our NATO allies, the French.
Driscoll slows his approach—I can see the airspeed indicator drop to forty knots—and he finally makes radio contact with a Humvee at the landing zone. The Marine on the ground advises that they have “popped a smoke” and that the zone is “tight” and “hot.” Driscoll’s response is a laconic, “Roger, one frog inbound.”
We’re now flying literally at rooftop level straight down a city street, just clearing the utility poles on both sides. Fixed-wing air strikes, artillery, the Cobras, and fire from the Abrams guns have blasted the buildings on each side of the street. Yet, as we slow to a hover, a black-clad figure leans out a second-story window and points an AK-47 at us. Pennington sees him as I do and says without preamble, “Firing the right side fifty.”
The noise of the gun opening up just two feet in front of my camera is deafening as the shooter disappears amid chunks of flying brick and mortar. Somehow Driscoll manages to put the CH-46 down dead-on in the middle of an intersection. As the ramp at the rear drops down, I can see power lines to our front, our rear, and both sides. All around us are Marines, dismounted from their vehicles, firing into the buildings just twenty to thirty meters on every side. To our right, down the street, an M-1 is slamming .50-caliber rounds into a low-slung building. Directly in front of the CH-46 is another American tank. This one is using its main gun to engage something farther down the street that we can’t see. As the dust from our landing clears, Marines carrying litters start running in a low crouch for the back of the helicopter from the alleyways and several nearby doorways.
As they make their way toward us, an ambulance comes racing up from our left and skids to a halt in the intersection. We already have four wounded aboard, and it looks as if at least six or seven more are on the ambulance. There’s space for only six litters rigged on the bird, because of concern of overloading these old helicopters. Driscoll says, “Let’s get everyone possible aboard, so that we don’t have to bring in Dash Two if we don’t have to.”
The corpsmen, ducking rounds that are clearly aimed at them, start to unload the wounded and bring them aboard. Suddenly, an RPG passes in front of the helicopter, exploding in the dirt about fifteen meters beyond us. The crack of AK-47 rounds is audible over the sound of our engines and the outgoing fire. All this prompts Driscoll to ask over the radio, “How much longer, folks? This is a pretty sporty zone.”
Sporty? It strikes me as an interesting way to describe the hottest LZ I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been in a bunch. We’re downtown, surrounded by multistory buildings and power lines. A whole lot of bad guys have decided to shoot at the biggest target around: a CH-46 parked in their backyard. And Jerry Driscoll calls this “sporty.”
Now the unit on the ground calls for help. They don’t want their cas-evac helicopter burning in the intersection any more than we do. As Pennington and Kendall work over the second story of the buildings on both sides of the bird, three Humvees race up from the left, machine guns blazing from their roofs. One stays on our left, another takes up a position to our rear, and the third parks in the intersection to our right. As they continue to blast away at our tormentors, a Marine disembarks from the Humvee to our right and crouches down behind the door, prepared to engage any Iraqi or fedayeen crazy enough to show himself. Looking up from the camera viewfinder, I realize that the sentry is Gunnery Sgt. Cheramie. In the front seat of the Humvee is “Grizzly Six,” the CO of RCT-5, Col. Joe Dunford.
Dunford had helped load the dead and wounded aboard the ambulance—after fighting off a fedayeen attack—and was escorting the ambulance to our helicopter when he heard over his radio that we were being fired upon in the zone. Knowing that there were far too many casualties for one helicopter, he directed his little command group to surround us. He also ordered Sam Mundy’s 3rd Battalion to close up and clear the street behind us so that the second CH-46 could land. Logic would seem to indicate that one helo landing into that “sporty” landing zone was crazy enough—but two of them?
Finally, with eleven casualties aboard our helicopter and ten on the bird behind us, Driscoll gives the word to lift off. The two heavily loaded helicopters lift a few feet off the ground. With power poles and lines just inches away from the blade tips, the helos rotate 180 degrees so that if we managed to clear the lines and poles, we’ll at least be taking off over “friendlies.”
With engines and rotors screaming, the ancient helicopter shudders as Driscoll lifts her straight up between the obstacles, tilts the nose down, and gathers airspeed. Somehow, he clears the power poles, wires, and structures around the zone and delivers the casualties to the hospital. It is, at that point in my life, the hottest helicopter LZ I’ve ever been in—and over the years I’ve been in a fair number of “hot” LZs. But as it turned out, the day was just getting started.
By mid-afternoon all four HMM-268 helicopters are shuttling casualties from the engagement in Tuwayhah and another gunfight at Salman Pak—long suspected to be the location of a terrorist training center for the Saddam fedayeen and radicals from other Middle Eastern countries. Like the earlier casualty pickup zones, the Salman Pak LZs are all “urban,” meaning that they are mostly intersections of city streets, surrounded by multistory buildings, power lines, and enemy soldiers firing at the birds when they are most vulnerable—while they’re getting on the ground and taking off.
In order to get some footage of different runs into the city, I arrange to ride with Maj. Mike O’Neil on a cas-evac run into Salman Pak. But Gunny Pennington pulls rank and comes along as crew chief, saying that he wants to make sure that everything checks out on some fix that’s been performed on O’Neil’s helicopter.
The flight into the zone is another hair-raising adventure in rooftop terrain avoidance, and Maj. O’Neil drops the bird into a tight little intersection. My camera lens catches the litter-bearers, bending low, racing for the ramp of the bird—and Pennington’s .50-caliber hammering at the second story of the building on the right side of the helicopter.
To our left front, the up gun on an AAV pumps a stream of high-explosive rounds into a building as O’Neil lifts off, carefully threading both rotors between the wires that seem only inches from our blade tips.
Then, just as it seemed we were clear, the crack of AK-47 fire comes from a rooftop sniper. Invisible to the troops and armor on the street, the sniper empties his magazine as we fly by.
Bullets hitting the skin of a helicopter sound a lot like someone striking sheet metal with a ball-peen hammer. As we fly through the hail of fire, fuel spurts from the engine area and drains down over the tail ramp. Pennington’s response, as he unleashes a burst of .50-caliber fire at the offending Iraqi or fedayeen, is, “Man, they shot my helicopter. Now I’m really pissed.”
From the cockpit, Maj. O’Neil, still unflappable, asks, “Everything okay back there?”
Pennington quickly checks with the two corpsmen who have continued attending the wounded as if nothing has happened. He reports, “No other casualties, but it looks like we’ve got a ruptured fuel line up top.”
O’Neil, apparently ignoring the fact that several people have just spent the last ten minutes trying to kill him, replies, “Okay, let’s see if we can g
et some help for these wounded grunts before this thing quits on us.”
Most Marine grunts will tell you that the guys who fly helicopters are all a little crazy. First, according to the guys on the ground, the thing they drive around in the sky is sort of like a bumblebee, with a body that seems way too heavy for the little “wings.” Second, helicopters have far too many moving parts. Logic dictates that anything with that many pieces is likely to end up in pieces, along with the people it carries. Pilots and air crewmen like the Red Dragons of HMM-268 apparently don’t think much of such criticism, since they jump at the chance to fly these ancient contraptions into harm’s way, even though tooling around Camp Pendleton in them is dangerous enough.
When we land at the shock-trauma hospital back down Route 6, we’re still well within range of Iraqi artillery and rocket fire, but O’Neil says, “Let’s shut her down and see how bad the damage is.”
Pennington is immediately on the ramp, bathed in jet fuel, looking for the rupture. When he finds where the bullet nicked the fuel line, he takes out his Leatherman tool, pinches the aluminum tube on either side of the rupture, and snips out the damaged length of metal pipe—about the diameter of a soda straw. He looks at it for a few seconds, climbs atop the helicopter, opens the forward rotor nacelle over the cockpit, and snips a length of tubing from the unused heater hidden inside. Climbing back down, he takes the piece of “pipe” he just extracted from the heater and a pair of clamps and repairs the damaged fuel line, all in less than ten minutes. After making sure that the clamps are as tight as he can get them, he puts on his helmet and says over the intercom, “Okay, Major, let’s see if we’ve got this thing fixed. Would you start her up, sir?”
