Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War (12 page)

“Tanks are stuck, tanks are stuck. We can’t move.”

“We’re sinking. We’re fucking sinking.”

As Welch’s track turned a corner into a large open area, he saw a pathetic sight. Three tanks and one AAV were half-submerged and floundering helplessly in pools of mud. The tank commanders were yelling their heads off, urging the drivers, with a stream of obscenities, to hit the gas. The treads just whirled uselessly through the soft, wet ground, unable to get a grip and digging even bigger holes. Welch shuddered with disbelief. Tanks were such a major part of the battalion’s strength and security. They provided massive firepower, offered security and protection. To see them go down like that was bewildering. Welch felt a shock wave of panic pass through the whole company.

Following behind the tanks, the CAAT vehicles, and Bravo Company, the two tracks and Humvees of the forward command post containing Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski, Major David Sosa, and part of the battalion command staff, crossed the long span of the Euphrates Bridge.

There is no turning back now. We are committed.
In planning meetings, Grabowski had talked about “going into the bowels of hell.” It didn’t feel so different.
God knows what’s waiting for us on the other side of the
bridge.
An RPG skipped across the road, narrowly missing the vehicle in front. Rounds whizzed overhead, but Grabowski was so busy coordinating the movement on the radio that he hardly noticed. His vehicle crested the span and headed toward the entrance to the city. Now he could see that the lead tanker, a kilometer or so in front of him, had missed the first turn toward the east and was heading up Ambush Alley. He was just about to call Captain Newland to find out what was going on when he saw the tanker take the next road to the east.
At least he’s heading east. That’s not
so bad.
He saw the convoy turn into a narrow labyrinth of small alleys and roads with power lines overhead.

Grabowski had tried for days to get aerial overflights of the eastern half of the city to find out what the terrain was like. He and his staff had never managed to build up a convincing picture. From the maps, it looked as though they would be able to find a way through the eastern part of the city to an open area from where they could head north to the canal bridge.

But as he came down the span of the bridge into Ambush Alley it looked very different, more open than how he’d imagined it from the maps. There was a flow of information coming to him across the net from Bravo Company and the C7 command track. Some commanders traveled in the C7 command track, but Grabowski preferred the freedom of a Humvee. He found it easier to see what was going on from the front seat of a light mobile Humvee rather than from the back of a windowless track. Besides, they always seemed to have problems with comms in the C7. He knew, though, that at some stage he would have to stop and set up a proper forward CP. It was difficult to communicate when constantly on the move. He was just turning to the east when the radio call came through.

“The tanks are stuck. We’ve got tanks down.”

Tanks stuck. What does that mean?
He recognized that something had gone wrong, but at that moment it didn’t really make much sense. He followed the convoy through the streets and alleys of a poor, ragged neighborhood where the buildings were tumbling down and roads petered out into little more than bumpy dirt tracks. As he came around a corner, next to two houses in front of an open area, he saw his command-and-control vehicle, the C7, which contained the battalion’s staff and communications equipment, sink up to its axles in deep mud. It happened so quickly that he saw it almost drop down to its belly until mud covered the treads.

The battalion net was just going crazy.

“We’ve lost another tank.”

“Now another one has gone down.”

“We’re losing our Humvee.”

Grabowski’s movement forward had been completely halted. He jumped out of the Humvee and ran over to the C7. The driver was working the treads trying to get the C7 out, but it was just sinking further into the bog. He could now see that what looked like hard mud was in fact a thin crust of dirt covering pools of slimy mud.
This is not a good situation.

“Timberwolf, this is Mustang 6. We are now receiving small-arms fire. Several vehicles are stuck.”

It was the Bravo Company commander, Captain Tim Newland. He was only a few hundred yards away on a parallel street.
What sort of mess are
we in?

Two Iraqis in uniform were lying dead in the dirt. At first Grabowski thought his marines had shot some cops, but Chief Warrant Officer David Dunfee, the gunner, looked at the uniforms and confirmed that they were military. He was already looking through their pockets for maps and documents that might be useful later.

The level of incoming fire was increasing. Grabowski was nearly deaf in one ear and couldn’t hear the rounds whizzing past his head. He was too focused on how they were going to get out of there. Dunfee yelled at him.

“Hey, sir, you need to get the fuck down.”

Grabowski looked around at his young marines.
There are a lot of scared
marines out there, and I’m one of them.
They were running around disoriented and confused.
Jesus Christ. If we have guys starting to panic we’re
going to have a real problem on our hands.

Corporal Welch was torn away from the terrible sight of seeing the tanks slowly sinking further into the bog by the yell of the marines around him.

“Get out. Everybody get out. Everybody OUT.”

It was SOP to get out as quickly as possible when a track went down. The ramp on his track lowered and dazed marines scrambled out, their M16s swiveling. They were running in all directions, some of them bumping into each other. Their confused sergeants and lieutenants were trying to organize them into some sort of defensive perimeter to keep the tanks and Humvees from being overwhelmed by the enemy. Welch had done plenty of training in Military Operations on Urban Terrain, but now, out in this alien environment, he was lost. MOUT had taught him about fighting in cities, about street plans—radial, ray, rectangular, and combined street patterns—about how to stay alive in urban terrain and keep situational awareness. But the area in front of him seemed to have no pattern. Paved streets turned into dirt tracks and rectangular blocks of buildings gave way to wide-open spaces dotted with green, slimy water holes. He was third man from the front and tried to exert some sort of control over his fire team.

“Jones, you got the front. Manah, you got the rear. Nguyen, keep your eyes open.”

He wanted to put Jones with his M16 in front as point man. His weapon was light, and he could react quickly. It sounded cruel, but they were taught to put the inexperienced and youngest at the front. If he was shot, those with more experience and bigger weapons would still have a chance. But a good point man could save lives.

“Jones, keep eyeballing what’s ahead of you.

“Watch your weapon. Keep your rifle pointed away from marines.”

Welch wanted each member of his team to have a clear field of fire. He’d been taught how easy it was to shoot each other accidentally in combat. He wanted to keep them all together and alert.

“Watch out for incoming.”

They skirted a wall and went to the right. To his horror, he realized he’d led them straight into a dead end. Figures in black scurried on the roofs overhead. Muzzle flashes exploded from windows. Fire rained down on them from all sides. Welch’s team pressed themselves into doorways and gaps in the walls and returned fire. It was like the training they did in the specially constructed town at Camp Lejeune.

“Hajjis on the roof to your right.”

He saw marines fall to the ground around him as they tried to protect the tanks.
Shit’s not going right. This is chaos.
He watched in disbelief as a tanker, the man who had all of the M1A1’s enormous combat power under his control, climbed on the turret of his tank and uselessly fired a 9 mm pistol at Iraqis on the rooftops. He had imagined losing a track or a tank to enemy fire, an RPG or something,
but not to the earth.
Some of the dismounted marines were wading through the mud, trying vainly to stop the tracks, tanks, and Humvees from sinking further. One marine was up to his waist attaching a towrope to the track’s underbelly. When he started sinking, other marines had to run over and pull him out. An amtrack pulled up alongside and took up the slack of the towrope. As it took the strain, that one, too, churned uselessly in the mud and began to sink.

Am I going to get home and see my wife or am I going to become a statistic?
There was not enough time to ponder or contemplate. He had a quiet word with God and began again his mantra.
I am not going to get
killed. I am going to get home and chill out.

He went into action, firing down alleyways, onto rooftops, through windows. He went back to his training.
You gotta keep firing, keep taking
cover, keep seeking concealment, you gotta keep putting rounds downrange. Maintain your situational awareness. No time to think of anything
else.
They were in a bad position, exposed and in the open. They were inviting a firefight. He saw rounds go off all around him. A shot rang out, another from his rear, more from the rooftops. He went back to the basics of his infantry training and the mission of a marine rifle platoon—“
to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver.
” In his mind, he laid down a challenge to those who were trying to kill him.
If you got it,
bring it on, or we’ll take it to you.

Lance Corporal Leslie Walden was providing security down an alleyway across the street. With him in the narrow alley were about ten other marines, trying to find a way to push forward through the mazelike streets. On the roof opposite he saw a couple of Iraqi soldiers moving around as though they were trying to get in position.

“We got hajjis on the roof over here.”

Walden let out a burst of suppressive fire, and the whole squad tried to find their way out of the alley. As he rounded a corner, he glanced back over his shoulder to see the outline of a man with an RPG on his shoulder aiming straight toward him.
Holy shit. He’s gonna shoot.
Walden remained frozen to the spot as the ominous dark shape of the missile came hurtling toward him trailing a plume of white smoke.

“Oh shit.”

The RPG passed by him and exploded on the ground ten feet away, picking him off the ground and hurling him into a wall. For several seconds he remained slumped on the ground. A group of marines ran over to him and hauled him away.

“Walden. Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Groggily, Walden opened his eyes. He patted himself down, checked for broken bones and blood, tried to shrug off the ringing in his ears, and continued the fight.

Corporal Welch saw his buddy Walden fly through the air and sink to the ground. He thought at first that he was dead. The heaviness of despair momentarily came over him. As soon as he’d realized that the battalion was going into the city without a full complement of tanks, he’d had a bad feeling. He crouched behind a wall, trying to catch his breath and keep at bay the sense of panic that was beginning to surge up inside him.
This is a suicide mission.

Major David Sosa, traveling alongside Grabowski, tried to get a handle on the mess they were in. He could hardly take in the sight of three of his tanks mired in thick mud. They represented a huge loss of firepower and protection. Just in front of them two Humvees were almost upended in the bog. His driver slowed down and steered away to avoid getting caught himself. He turned back to see the C7 and P7 command tracks rapidly sinking up to their axles. Sosa looked at the C7 and was horrified. The track contained all their comms equipment.
My God. We’ve lost command and
control of this fight.

His radio was squawking with the sound of panicked marines, all trying to talk on the net at once. He felt a shudder of panic, as if everything was collapsing around them.
If we are in this sort of mess, what on earth is
going on with the other companies?

2

A couple of kilometers south of the Euphrates River, Alpha Company’s commander, Captain Mike Brooks, waited for the tail end of Bravo Company to pass through his position. As the last of Bravo’s AAVs and Humvees roared past him and over the bridge, he reached for the radio.

“Let’s move on out.”

Alpha Company’s three lead tracks, filled with marines from 1st Platoon under Second Lieutenant Matt Carr, bounced onto the road followed by Brooks, fourth in line in the command track A304. Eight other tracks filled with marines from 2nd and 3rd Platoons and two Humvees brought up the rear. Brooks felt a rush of adrenaline revive his tired and aching body. He looked around the track. With him in the command track was the FiST team—artillery and mortar forward observers to provide fire support, the FAC or forward air controller to call in air strikes, a couple of radio operators, and a young AAV crew. His company packed a formidable punch. Sitting across from him was a journalist from the London
Sunday Times.
He didn’t really mind having him there. It was a good thing that the public could get to read about how the marines served their country. He was more worried about letting rip with a string of swear words. What was peculiar was that the embedded journalists seemed to have had more combat experience than the marines. The British journalist with him had even been asked to hold classes for the marines about life in a combat zone.

Brooks had spent weeks on ship rehearsing this maneuver, but although they had changed the order in which the companies would attack the bridge, it didn’t seem to matter. Things were going to plan, just like a well-executed football play. He felt comfortable and in control. From his position at the heart of the column, he could see what 1st Platoon was doing and was ready to help them out if they got into trouble. He could also issue orders to the marines behind. As his convoy approached the bridge, Brooks heard the
tink, tink
of small-arms fire hitting the track’s aluminum frame. And then, out of nowhere, there was a
whoosh
as an RPG, fired from the far bank, shot across the road in front of them.

In the tracks behind, marines from 2nd Platoon were crouched in the darkness, swaying with fatigue in the belly of the track as they rumbled toward the bridge. There was the
ping
of metal hitting metal. To those inside it sounded like the popping of popcorn. Most of them had never heard the sound of rounds hitting the outside of their track.

“What’s that?”

Lance Corporal Christopher Rigolato was on air security, standing on one of the benches with his torso out of the roof hatch, when the bullets started hitting the track. At first he couldn’t hear anything above the noise of the track’s diesel engine, but then he caught the unmistakable crack of a bullet as it whizzed past his head. He heard explosions, maybe mortars, off to the side.

“What’s going on up there? What can you see? We can’t see. Tell us what’s going on.”

From inside the track, marines demanded to know what was happening. Rigolato could tell their questions were tinged with panic. But Rigolato couldn’t see what was going on, either. The thick black smoke from one of the tanks that the CAAT platoon had killed earlier was blowing right across the road and into his face, and he could hardly see where they were going, let alone who was shooting at them. Every time a cloud of dust blew past, he had to duck to avoid it and immediately lost situational awareness. He tried to tell them about the smoke, the noise, the explosions, the RPG that just flew down the road in front of them, leaving a plume of white smoke, but it was all happening so fast that he couldn’t get the words out. The black smoke parted and Rigolato found they were on the bridge, crossing the wide expanse of the Euphrates. The flowing river and palm tree–lined banks were a shock to his eyes after days of nothing but desert and scrub. Another RPG whooshed past and he was tossed from side to side as his AAV swerved to avoid the rocket. Up ahead, it looked as though the road was on fire. Flaming vehicles pouring out thick smoke littered the entrance to the city.
It looks like all the war movies I’ve ever watched, but
now I’m in the middle of one.

Two tracks ahead of Rigolato, Captain Brooks was trying to get his bearings. He was coming off the bridge into the city, but somehow none of it looked as he imagined it from the maps. He looked for the wide expanse of road running northwest through the city that he’d expected to find as soon as he crossed the bridge, but he couldn’t see it. He saw muzzle flashes from the buildings ahead of him.
This isn’t the welcome we were expecting.
He pressed forward, deeper into the city, and found what he was looking for—an open area of road to his left that gave him a clear view into the heart of the city. The wide-open space reminded him of the Mall in Washington, D.C. There were two-story cinder-block houses on either side with a mosque and a large mural of Saddam on the left-hand side. He was in a good strategic position at the junction of the road heading northwest and at the entrance to what some marines had named Ambush Alley, the main road heading north to the canal bridge. He looked back toward the Euphrates Bridge and was startled at how far he was from it.
We must have
come five hundred meters into the city.
It was much farther than he’d planned.
I hope we don’t get isolated here.

In the tracks behind, marines from 2nd Platoon were getting nervous. Beads of sweat trickled down their faces. They nervously fingered their rifles and let out a string of expletives as each new explosion rocked their vehicles. Lance Corporal Jacob Anderson felt a gnawing anxiety eating away inside him. For hours they’d been sitting in the darkness, in the same position, next to the same guys, wondering what was going to happen next. He really had no idea what he was getting himself into. Now he just wanted to get out into the open, even if it meant running into a firefight.
Nothing in training has prepared me for this.

“Get ready to dismount—ramp opening.”

The tracks wheeled around and came to a halt, back-to-back in a defensive position. The hydraulic rear ramps slowly dropped, letting light flood across the marines inside. Anderson fought with the others to scramble out. As the marines came tumbling out, it was chaos. Blinking in the sunlight, Anderson ran in all directions, disorientated, looking for cover as he’d been trained. Gunfire echoed all around.

“Dismount.”

“Get over here.”

“Get the fuck down.”

Sergeants and lieutenants were shouting out orders. Cobras and Hueys were clattering overhead. Mortar crashed into the dust around him. There was fear, excitement, and the rush of adrenaline all mixed up together. He tried to work out where he was. He saw the river behind him, the wide road running into the city. He looked for his fellow squad members, but all he could see was a blur of running bodies.
This is like a video game. But I’m in it.

As soon as the ramp on his track dropped, Lance Corporal Christopher Rigolato headed for the cover of a wall. An RPG smashed into the telephone pole above his head. Rigolato felt overwhelmed with confusion.

“Move over here.”

“Move, move. Let’s go.”

“We’re moving to the other side of the road.”

It was his platoon commander yelling at them. Rigolato and most of 2nd Platoon were just north of the bridge on the west side of the four-lane highway he knew as Ambush Alley. It looked a long way to the other side, maybe fifty meters. There was no cover. It was just a wide-open expanse of road. When the order came, he gripped his M16, jumped over a metal barrier, put his head down, and ran as bursts of machine-gun and small-arms fire erupted all around him.

Lance Corporal Dante Reece, with the rest of 3rd Squad alongside him, tried to cross the road after him. Reece was struggling to get his heavy squad automatic weapon across the metal barrier. They had just gotten halfway across the road when an RPG came flying out of a building from the north, whizzed toward them, and passed right through the middle of the squad. It had missed him by inches. Reece looked at the others in surprise. Sweat and dirt stained their faces. Reece couldn’t take it in. He felt he was in denial. He tried to pull himself together.
This is for real. This is
for real.
But he still wasn’t sure if this really was happening.

Anderson followed them across the road at a sprint.

“Anderson, over here.”

Gratefully, he dived behind a mound of earth, pleased to be back with his squad again. With Lance Corporal Van Gipson he formed a line along a berm, covering the southern flank toward the river. Incoming rounds started hitting the ground around them, sending up dirt as they cracked by. Anderson turned to Gipson with wide eyes and they both rolled down into the ditch, laughing. Some reacted to fear by sweating and trembling. Anderson and Gipson laughed uncontrollably.

“They’re actually shooting at us.”

The two of them lay in the ditch panting with elation. Then seconds later, reality set in.

What happens if I get shot?
For the first time, Anderson was scared. He didn’t have time to linger on his fear.
If it’s my time, it’s my time.

From the TC’s hatch Brooks watched his marines dismount and scatter into a 180-degree perimeter. He was heartened at the way they reacted. He’d seen many of them in action at the combined arms exercise over the summer when they’d practiced as a helo-borne company. Several had struggled through training, getting things badly wrong because they were either out of shape, lazy, or just slow. He knew some of them had checkered backgrounds, were troublemakers, and carried a whole lot of baggage with them. Now, amid the flying metal, the explosions, and the swirling dust, he saw all that stuff go away. Individually, they were nothing special, but when they came together they were amazing. They were moving together, reacting to what was going on around them, taking the initiative. There was a coherence, which gave him an enormous sense of pride. He was surprised that the marines who had struggled with training were now the ones who seemed to be taking control.

With all the noise and chaos, Brooks couldn’t actually see who was firing at them. He had a good view up the road into the city, but there was no sign of tanks, artillery, or mortars. He didn’t see anyone in uniform.
But
something was going on.
He pulled out his binoculars. Figures appeared in the alleyways ahead of him, on roofs, in windows, and then melted into the background. The situation felt sinister. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it reminded him of the opening scenes of the movie
Black Hawk Down.
The figures didn’t appear to be armed, but there was something about them that put him on edge. In the distance, he saw white pickup trucks and orange-and-white taxis congregating in the middle of the highway and then careering off down side streets. One taxi filled with young men and flying a white flag came hurtling toward them before screaming into a side alleyway.
Something is about to happen.
He wondered whether the white pickups were
technicals,
improvised fighting vehicles that had been used with success against U.S. forces by irregular fighters in Afghanistan and Somalia.

He looked back to check that the rest of Alpha Company had made it across the bridge and that they had it secured. Then he called the battalion commander.

“Timberwolf, this is Tomahawk 6. We’ve seized the Euphrates Bridge.”

He wanted to be more exact.

“Timberwolf, this is Tomahawk 6. We have secured the bridge, but we are coming under increasingly heavy fire.”

He got on the radio to his platoon commanders, who had now taken up position on either side of the road, just north of the bridge.

“Keep your eyes on those people.”

His marines had spent months training for legitimate target identification. They didn’t want to fire on unarmed civilians, so they had been taught to zero in on hands to look for signs of weapons. He got back on the radio.

“Hey, if you see an Iraqi with a weapon, then we need to take care of it and we need to kill that Iraqi.”

The rate of fire was increasing, but it was still something they could easily cope with. There was a brief lull, and then he sensed that it was about to happen.
It’s going to boil over.

When it came, it reminded him of one of those light dimmer switches that is suddenly turned up. All at once RPGs and small-arms fire rained down on them from all sides. Small 60 mm commando mortars were coming in on them from the gaps between houses. To the north, east, and west he saw Iraqis dressed in black running out of alleys, dropping to one knee, and firing off round after round of grenades. Muzzle flashes lit up windows, mortars threw up splashes of rocks and dirt around him, and the sound of rounds cracked just yards from his head.
Oh Lord. What have we
got ourselves into?