War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom

by Oliver North

  As Conlin is charging onto the university campus with his column of tanks and AAVs, Lt. Col. Brian McCoy’s 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines are pushing deeper into the heart of east Baghdad. The reinforced battalion proceeds on this foray as dismounted infantry. Followed by tanks, AAVs, and dozens of armed Humvees, the infantry platoons move slowly, building to building, from the rougher streets of southeast Baghdad into increasingly affluent neighborhoods. As the day wears on, more and more Iraqis come out to greet the Marines with smiles, waves, and other friendly gestures.

  By the time they reach Firdus Square, not far from the Palestine Hotel, a large crowd has gathered. Though wary, McCoy’s Marines quickly grasp that this is not a hostile mob. In fact, the Iraqis are jubilant. As the Marines approach, the Iraqis shout joyfully and cheer the Americans and their president. “Bush is good,” several of them call out. Others cheer, “We love George Bush.”

  Children soon join the adults, and dozens of them are captured on videotape and film, laughing and shouting happily while running beside the battle-scarred infantrymen. A few youngsters have flowers and hand them to the grinning Marines. Some of the troops take the flowers and place them in the webbing of their battle gear. Others stick them into the camouflage covers of their Kevlar helmets. It confirms the message on leaflets dropped all over the country, what Conway and Mattis have been saying all along: “We’ve come as liberators, not invaders.”

  Some individuals are less impressed than the Iraqis. Among those awaiting the Marines at the Palestine Hotel are a handful of sullen antiwar activists from the United States and the United Kingdom. They have come to Baghdad to volunteer as “human shields” for Saddam. One of the protesters, apparently British from the sound of her accent, cries out to the lead tank in the square, “Yankee bastard! Go home!” The Marine doesn’t reply, but an Iraqi man tells the woman, “You can go home now. You are not needed here.”

  Meanwhile, the crowd has decided that Baghdad really is under new management and turns its pent-up fury not on the Americans but on a forty-foot black metal statue of Saddam. After pelting the statue with stones and garbage for a few minutes, several Iraqis enlist the support of the Marines in removing this eyesore from their midst.

  With the cameras of the international press recording it all, and some news services broadcasting the event live to the world, Marine Cpl. Edward Chin climbs up the King Kong–sized representation of Saddam and drapes an American flag over its head. The Stars and Stripes cover Saddam’s head for a brief moment. Then, after replacing Old Glory with an Iraqi flag, Cpl. Chin helps secure a chain around Saddam’s neck and then hooks the end of the chain to the heavy-duty winch cable of an M-88 Tank Retriever.

  As the statue pitches forward on its pedestal, the crowd roars its approval and begins clamoring over the fallen idol, attacking it with hammers, stones, and—in an Arab insult—with their shoes. When Saddam’s head is detached, the cameras catch children jubilantly beating on it. The symbolism is inescapable: Saddam Hussein has been toppled. The brutal reign of the despot and his Baath Party is finally over.

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #31

  With RCT-5 and HMM-268

  Baghdad

  Thursday, 10 April 2003

  2330 Hours Local

  Saddam’s regime might be finished, but the fighting isn’t. While RCT-7 was capturing Baghdad University and ripping down statues, RCT-1 was mopping up resistance in Baghdad’s eastern suburbs at the Al Rasheed Air Base. Meanwhile, Joe Dunford’s RCT-5 closed in on the presidential palaces along the banks of the Tigris. What had started out this morning as a series of raids into the heart of the city—similar to the Army’s “thunder runs” of the last few days—suddenly became a full-scale occupation of the enemy capital.

  Having swept around to the northeast side of the city, all of RCT-5 has been busy conducting patrols, both mounted and dismounted, throughout its assigned area of operations. And though extensive stores of munitions are being found, enemy contact has been unusually light for RCT-5 throughout April 9. Early in the afternoon, I go with a squad-sized patrol that encounters several young Iraqis carrying AK-47s. They are relieved of their weapons and briefly detained. Not a shot is fired.

  Late that day, Griff and I join up with Lt. Col. Duffy White’s 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. We’ve been told that as soon as it turns dark, the LAVs would be going out looking for trouble. We wanted to be there with our cameras if they found it.

  Just before sunset we videotape the platoon patrol order, then sit down and eat while we wait for darkness. Sitting on a five-gallon water can, sharing my MRE with Iraqi flies, I can see the large plume of smoke from the oil refinery south of the city. A UAV buzzes over and begins circling the area to our southwest. We hear the sound of American or British jets, well above us. Griff, always looking for the perfect shot, catches the contrails of a B-52 loitering in the upper atmosphere just as the sun dropped below the horizon.

  The night patrol by eight LAVs departs RCT-5 lines at about 2100 hours. I hold my camera with its night lens right next to the 25mm Bushmaster turret, hoping that if the gun fires it won’t wipe out the camera. But as it turns out, the night lens is useless. The video image on my camera constantly “flares” from green to bright yellow as the patrol encounters an extraordinary number of civilian vehicles moving about with their lights on. Most are Japanese sedans or pickups—many carrying entire families—all apparently attempting to flee the heart of the mostly darkened city.

  A little after midnight on April 10, we are poking through a Chaldean Christian neighborhood, complete with churches and cemeteries, when the patrol is ordered to return immediately to the Marine perimeter. When we arrive, we are told that RCT-5 is preparing a raid on the presidential palace complex on the west side of the Tigris and that the operation is to take place as soon as possible. Communications intercepts and an OGA source indicate that a Special Republican Guard unit and numerous fedayeen are inside the palace grounds. Some speculate that the hum of radio traffic coming from the site might mean that Saddam and/or his two evil sons have taken refuge there. If that is the case, “Fighting Joe” Dunford isn’t going to miss the chance to capture or kill them.

  Dunford chooses Lt. Col. Fred Padilla’s 1st Battalion, 5th Marines—reinforced by tanks, AAVs, LAVs, CIA specialists, and a contingent of Delta operators—for the mission. The objective—a series of large palaces and government buildings on the banks of the Tigris, surrounded by a high wall—appears formidable. If well defended, it could require much of Dunford’s RCT to search and clear the area. He alerts 2/5 and 3/5 just in case they are needed and asks for immediate UAV overflights of the routes to and over the objective so that his commanders can see what they are up against.

  Bounded to the north by the Jamhuriyah bridge and to the south by the 14th of July bridge, the five-kilometer-long presidential complex contains four large residences, including one of the dictator’s personal homes, the National Assembly building, apartments for Baath Party and government officials, and a large barracks area for a detachment of the Special Republican Guard. Three of the palaces were extensively damaged by JDAMs and cruise missiles earlier in the war. To prevent collateral damage to a nearby residential area, the southernmost luxurious domicile has been hit with three or four GPS-guided two-thousand pound-concrete inert “bombs” that plunged through the roof and collapsed the interior floors of the palace without the need for high explosives. Somewhere in this maze of buildings, gardens, fig trees, and eucalyptus groves, several hundred Iraqi soldiers and foreign fedayeen are believed to be hiding.

  By 0300 hours on April 10, Lt. Col. Padilla’s column of tanks, AAVs, LAVs, and Humvees are rumbling, screeching, and grinding south through eleven kilometers of Baghdad’s darkened streets, trying to reach the Tigris River bridges and the palace complex before dawn. Padilla rides in an LVTC-7 behind four M-1 tanks; his Company “A” troops jammed into sixteen AAVs, are closely followed by the OGA and Delta Force operators in Humve
es and SUVs. The rest of his battalion, a column of more than seventy tanks, AAVs, and Humvees, trails behind for more than two kilometers. The infantry, who will have to seize the objective, are wedged into the AAVs—hatches open, weapons at the ready—peering up at the buildings and at every intersection through their NVGs. Gunners in the tanks use their thermal sights to search for signs of an ambush.

  Despite sandbagged emplacements at every overpass, the Route 2 expressway through the city is ominously quiet as the lead tanks of Padilla’s task force turn off on the exit for Port Said Street, the best approach to the Jamhuriyah Bridge. Cobras sweeping overhead, scanning the rooftops and palm groves bordering the highway with their infrared scopes, see nothing. Then, just as the lead tanks are crossing the undamaged span over the Tigris, the rear of the 1/5 column comes under heavy RPG and AK-47 fire from the vicinity of the Al Khulafa Mosque as they exit the expressway at Al Thawra Street.

  With the rear of his column under attack, and not knowing for sure when the rest of his battalion will be able to close up on him, Padilla makes a bold decision and orders Alpha Company, supported by the four lead tanks, to keep moving and charge the palace complex. After firing two 120mm HEAT rounds into the northwestern gate, the lead tank rotates its turret to the rear and slams through the portal into a hail of RPG and AK-47 fire. Though each Abrams is hit several times by the anti-armor weapons, the four tanks blast their way into the palace grounds and quickly silence all close-in enemy fire with rounds from their main guns and coaxial mounted machine guns. The thermal sights on the tanks give the Marines a tremendous advantage over the Iraqis and fedayeen—a fact that the enemy never seems to grasp. An enemy gunner getting up to his feet to fire an RPG at a tank from three hundred to four hundred meters away stands almost no chance of hitting his target. For the tankers, who can accurately hit well beyond a kilometer, the palace grounds are a “target-rich environment.”

  Within minutes Padilla has all of Alpha Company’s AAVs and the special operators inside the complex. Though he has already taken several wounded, his little force is intact and fighting back. Behind him, Col. Dunford has decided to bring up 2/5 to deal with the problem at the mosque and free up the rest of 1/5 for an assault through the palace complex. Two Marine Cobras from HMLA-267 head off to support the action at the mosque, while two others, growling low over the city, slip down the Tigris to provide overhead fire for the Marines at the palace. Within minutes all four “snakes” are hit by ground fire, though not seriously enough to bring any of them down.

  Fifteen kilometers to the north, Griff and I wait with 3/5 and the remaining LAVs for the word to reinforce. We can hear the dull concussions of the furious melee taking place south of us and occasionally see the streak of a Cobra unleashing its rockets. The Marines we are with doze in or on their vehicles, while others on watch stare into the night with NVGs, anticipating an order to join their mates in the battle. But the word to advance never comes. I am sure we are missing the last big gunfight of the war.

  I am wrong.

  Just about dawn, the sound of a CH-46 APU winding up rouses me as I doze against a Bushmaster turret atop an LAV. I awaken Griff and we jump down and jog over to the nearest bird and ask the crew chief, Cpl. Moreno, where they are going.

  “Emergency cas-evac at the palace, sir,” he shouts in my ear over the din as the helicopter’s main engines light off. I run up to the lead CH-46, jump aboard, and ask the flight leader, Maj. Don Presto, if Griff and I can ride along. He gives us a thumbs-up, so we hustle back to the LAVs, grab our gear, run back, and pile into the birds.

  The two aging helos speed along at one hundred knots just over the rooftops of the city, and our cameras capture the panorama below as Maj. Presto follows Route 2 south toward the palace. As we pass the Al Khulafa Mosque on our right, burning tires in the intersections bordering Al Thawra and Ar Rashid Streets mark the scene where 2/5 was engaged. Both our cameras capture dismounted Marines maneuvering forward of their armored vehicles, firing at dark-clothed figures at close range.

  When Maj. Presto reaches Yafa Street, he banks right and brings the two birds over the Tigris just south of the Jamhuriyah bridge and slows to fifty knots. The palace complex is now on our right. Both helicopters drop down until their landing gear is just above the water. Here the river is three to four hundred meters wide and there is a fifteen-foot-high levee, so I’m looking up at the palace complex on our right as we search for the landing zone.

  It’s now light enough that the NVGs are unnecessary. Off to our right, we can see a skirmish line of Marines, fighting with the water to their backs. The leathernecks are engaging fedayeen inside the structures to their west. Using his call sign, “Spaz,” Sean Basco, the Marine F-18 pilot assigned as the air officer with 1/5, tells the helicopters over the secure radio that the only safe landing zone is a small garden surrounded by a low hedge on the east side of the southernmost palace.

  The two CH-46s are practically hovering over the river, with the 14th of July bridge five hundred meters in front of us, when Basco pops a smoke grenade. The landing zone is very tight, barely big enough for one helicopter. Presto tells Captains Espinoza and Graham, piloting Dash Two, to land first, and he rotates our bird ninety degrees to the left, placing our rear wheels on the levee while the front landing gear hangs out over the Tigris.

  The sight of two haze-gray helicopters in such a confined space must be too much of a temptation for the fedayeen hiding in the buildings west of the landing zone. Dash Two is no sooner on the ground than there is a horrific burst of fire from the closest building to our south. The Marines on the ground respond with a fusillade that raises the decibel level but does little to stop the enemy fire.

  At this point several people inside the bird—myself among them—are yelling into the intercom, “We’re taking fire—three o’clock!” Cpl. Kendall, manning the .50-caliber machine gun on the right side of the aircraft, has been searching for the source of the fire. He spots a dozen black figures on the roof of a building about three hundred meters to the west and says, “Right side fifty firing.” It’s not a request or even an exclamation, it’s just a simple declarative statement spoken so calmly I hardly pay any attention, fully engrossed in videotaping the action going on around us.

  Suddenly, the muzzle of the big .50-caliber, about eighteen inches in front of my lens, erupts with a blast that almost blows out my eardrums. The videotape shows my reaction. The camera jerks back and up. There is a spastic pan across the ceiling of the helicopter. Finally, the lens points back out the hatch and at the roofline, where Kendall’s rounds are impacting our antagonists. Pieces of brick and mortar fly off the building with puffs of dust as the big armor-piercing bullets hit home. And through all this, the audio track records the loud, steady, metallic hammering of a very long string of fire from the .50-caliber; then another, shorter; and finally a third burst, just a few rounds.

  The barrel of Kendall’s .50-caliber is red hot and smoking. Spent brass shell casings are all over the floor of the helicopter, but the Iraqis or fedayeen or whoever they were aren’t shooting at us any more. The bird is still half-hovering over the Tigris, and Maj. Don Presto, who hasn’t budged an inch through all this, comes up on the intercom and says, “So, Corporal Kendall, did you get some?”

  “Yes, sir!” Kendall replies. “I got some.”

  Dash Two has finished loading eight wounded Marines aboard. Now it’s our turn. Presto hovers up a few feet and sideslips into the landing zone as Dash Two lifts off. My camera records our rotor wash flattening the shrubbery, blowing the trees and dust about as we touch down. Once again, litter bearers race for the tail ramp, crouching low, hurrying. Nobody wants this big noisy thing on the ground any longer than necessary. We take eight wounded aboard, and as we lift, there is another furious burst of fire—the unmistakable crack, crack, crack of AK-47s.

  By the time we have dropped the wounded at the nearest Army shock-trauma hospital, 1/5 has more casualties. We quickly refuel, pick up more a
mmunition, and head back. The second trip is much like the first—except this time it’s full daylight and the birds are clearly visible to anyone who wants to look up and take a pot shot at them.

  We go in first this time, and my camera catches a terrible moment. The wounded are loaded very quickly and we take no fire while we’re on the ground, but as we start to lift off, an RPG whizzes across in front of the bird, hits in the dirt just behind us, and explodes right in front of two Marines. It looks to me like one of those blown straight up in the air by the blast is Spaz, the air officer. As Don Presto pulls up hard to clear the buildings to our south, somebody says sadly over the intercom, “They’ll be on our next lift.”

  The trip out of the city to the field hospital is another adventure in low-altitude express delivery. We’re flying so low and so fast that it seems impossible not to hit something. When we arrive at the Army field hospital, we have to orbit around for a few minutes because the other two HMM-268 helicopters are in the dusty hospital LZ unloading casualties from the battle at the mosque.

  By the time we head back for our third lift of the day, the back of our CH-46 looks like a charnel house. Blood-soaked battle dressings, IV bags, latex gloves, pieces of Marine battle gear, and puddles of blood are all over the deck. Each troop seat along the right side of the bird has a pool of blood in it and I suddenly wonder, after all these years, if this is why the nylon webbing is dyed red.

  On the way to the palace for our third casualty pickup, two U.S. Air Force A-10s fly the route in front of us, not going much faster than we are. As we’re coming down the river I can hear Spaz on the radio talking to the Warthogs, telling them to strafe the 14th of July bridge. A group of fedayeen have run onto the span and are delivering enfilade fire on the Marines surrounding the landing zone. It’s probable that the RPG round that just missed our helicopter on the last run has been fired from the bridge. The A-10s do as asked, and this time we take no fire from the bridge as we slide into the zone.