Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War (18 page)

“Go, go. First squad, go.”

Up ahead of him, running along the banks of the canal, he saw black-robed figures getting in positions to fight.

Captain Wittnam was about two hundred meters on the north side of the Saddam Canal Bridge when he turned to see the smoking track 211 grind to a halt in the middle of the road on the bridge’s north side. He saw marines jump out the back. There were flames licking its sides, but it was still mobile and it didn’t look too serious.

He had expected to see Bravo and the forward CP once he crossed the bridge, but there was no sign of them. He now realized his decision to move straight up Ambush Alley was based on the mistaken assumption that it was the route that Bravo had also taken. To the north and east was flat, muddy scrubland. To the west and south, toward and beyond the Saddam Canal Bridge, it was swampy, crisscrossed with smaller irrigation canals. It was reasonably good cover. Parallel to the road heading north there were small berms and ditches on both the east and west sides. He was surprised that the terrain on either side of the road was so uneven. From the maps and satellite photos, it had looked as though they would be able to maneuver their tanks and tracks over it. Now he realized it was impassable to most of his heavy vehicles. His marines had used the ground well and were set up in firing lines behind the berms. He grabbed the radio handset and called back on the main battalion tactical net with his position at the 39 northing.

“Timberwolf 6. This is Palehorse 6. I am on the bridge.”

There was no reply. He looked at the bridge’s plain, concrete span and couldn’t believe that this was what they were fighting for. He repeated the coordinates of his position. It still wasn’t clear if Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski had got the information. There was too much chatter on the radio. Everyone was trying to talk at once. He jumped out of the track and set about trying to organize his marines into a defense. He knew from Intel that there were two Iraqi brigades to the north of his position. They’d been told that one was an Iraqi commando brigade and the other was part of the 23rd Infantry Brigade. And they might have tanks.
They mustn’t be allowed to come back in and reinforce the city.
He would have to fight on two fronts: protecting the bridge from an attack from the north, and making sure that no one could seize it from the south. He was worried about the possibility of taking on Iraqi tanks, but looking around at the barren landscape he felt that for the moment, at least, there was no imminent threat. The level of incoming fire was only a few rounds per minute.
It won’t be
long before Bravo gets up here to reinforce us.

5

Lieutenant Colonel Rick Grabowski and the staff from his forward command post were trying to work out exactly how many vehicles were stuck in the mud in the streets on the east side of the city. The latest toll was three tanks, three Humvees, and three AAVs, including the C7, the battalion’s forward command vehicle, which contained all the radios and electronics for command and control. But it was hard keeping count. Several times a track managed to haul itself free, only to get caught in another mud bog. The AAVs that were on solid ground couldn’t get close enough to tow out the sinking vehicles without themselves sinking into the mud. The towropes were not long enough. The marines had trained for almost every eventuality. But none of them had trained for this. Thirty minutes ago, Grabowski had set off with such optimism across the Euphrates Bridge. Now he found himself under fire and unable to go anywhere.

Fedayeen fighters appeared at the entrances to alleyways, on roofs, and in the windows of houses, trying to get close enough to attack the stricken vehicles. The CAAT Humvees equipped with TOW missiles and heavy machine guns were weaving in and out of the alleyways shooting at any potential threat, trying to keep the encroaching crowds away from their perimeter. The tanks could still traverse their turrets and fire their main guns. As soon as any technical got too close, the tanks’ gunners would fire an MPAT round and obliterate it.

Under fire, Grabowski was still trying to get communications with his subordinate units. The radio operators in the C7 were still having difficulties receiving and sending radio messages. The two-story houses they were bumped up against were masking the VHF signals. Even in his Humvee, he couldn’t get a consistent signal among the labyrinth of houses.

“Can’t we get the goddamn comms up?”

He was desperate to contact Charlie Company. He had been trying to speak to Captain Wittnam ever since they had got stuck some thirty minutes ago. He had no idea where Charlie was. He wanted to make sure that Wittnam didn’t send his company around to the east as in the original plan. Otherwise, they too would get stuck in the same mud bog where his tanks and tracks were now floundering.
I’ve got to get through to him and stop
him, otherwise it is going to get ugly. Then what would we do?
He heard snatches of panicked radio transmissions that seemed to suggest that Charlie Company was engaged in some fight with the enemy, but it was difficult to work out exactly where they were and what was going on. And just when he thought he was getting to grips with what was being said, the signal would cut out.
Where is Charlie Company?

“Palehorse 6, this is Timberwolf 6.”

“Palehorse 6, this is Timberwolf 6.”

All he heard back was an incoherent mess of radio traffic. There were too many people talking at once and no one made any sense. It was like a basketball court where a dozen people were shooting into the same basket and knocking each other out of the way.

He reckoned that some of the younger kids were so nervous that they were “hot miking”—occupying the net and cutting everyone out by keying in the handset even when they weren’t talking.

Then he heard a brief transmission. He could only just make it out.

“Timberwolf 6. This is Palehorse 6. I am on the bridge.”

Grabowski keyed in to talk back to Wittnam.

“Palehorse 6. This is Timberwolf 6. Which bridge are you on? Repeat. Which bridge are you on?”

The signal cut out. Grabowski’s frustration was growing. It was his job to know where all his companies were. He couldn’t direct the fighting unless he knew what was going on.
Which bridge is he on?

He knew that the regimental commander, Colonel Bailey, was waiting for news that they’d taken the northern bridge. He’d already told him that they’d seized the southern bridge over the Euphrates. Bailey was now moving from the regimental CP several kilometers south of the Euphrates Bridge to the foot of the bridge itself. Grabowski hoped that he wouldn’t want to come up any farther.
He has no business going farther.
He wanted to be left to get on with his job.
I don’t want the regimental commander in
the middle of all this shit.

“Hey, sir.”

It was the battalion fire support officer, responsible for fire support coordination. He had been monitoring the radios from the sinking C7.

“Charlie Company is on the second bridge.”

Grabowski hit the hood of his Humvee with delight.

“Great. We have got both bridges.”

He got straight on the radio to report the success to Bailey. He knew that his CO would be getting pressure from Brigadier General Natonski for news on how it was going.

“Viking 6, this is Timberwolf 6. We have now got both bridges.”

Grabowski breathed easier. He was still in the shit, but things were looking up.
I have a marine rifle company on the north bridge and one on
the south bridge, and there is nothing in that city that can push them o f.
All we need now is to get those tanks up there.

Standing a few yards away, Major David Sosa, the battalion’s operations officer, was figuring out what their next move should be. The very heart of the battalion’s decision-making process, the C7 command-and-control vehicle, was stuck in the mud. The forward command staff, including the intelligence officer, the fire support officer, the forward air controller, and the battalion commander, had been forced to dismount to try to get their own comms up outside the C7. He almost didn’t notice the fighting going on around him. It reminded him of being in a pool with his head underwater. When he was talking on the radio, there was only a faint muffled background sound. When he put the radio down, it was like coming up for air. He heard rounds whizzing over his head, smelled the stink of the muddy, stagnant water, saw marines crawling into ditches to reinforce the perimeter.

He watched Grabowski talking on the radio, trying to give out orders. Sosa wished that the battalion commander wouldn’t spend so much time on the radio. He had a habit of talking at length, and just as he was getting to a crucial piece of information someone would key in and he would lose the comms. It was frustrating for everyone.

Charlie Company is on the bridge. How do we reinforce them? How do
we support them?
He couldn’t just move companies around. Each of them had their own mission. He couldn’t get hold of another battalion because that was tied to what the regiment as a whole was doing. And he couldn’t talk to regimental headquarters because they kept losing communications. He was on the point of despair. The one good thing he could take from it was that Bravo’s young infantry marines were keeping the enemy at bay. They were lying in ditches, behind walls, and in water holes, firing at anyone that got too close. Command and control at battalion level was breaking down, but at the small-unit level the marines were doing exactly what they’d learned in training.

It was coming to decision time. Sosa realized that from where they were, the forward command couldn’t coordinate the fight.
If we can’t coordinate the fight, we’re not doing what we need to do. Our whole mission
in life is to coordinate the fight.
He turned to the battalion commander.

“We’ve got to do something. We can’t just sit here.”

Grabowski had already decided he was going to press on with the original mission by going for the northern bridge. They agreed to leave a small force to guard the stricken vehicles. The rest of Bravo’s marines and the remainder of the battalion staff would continue to push their way north.
Hopefully, we can find a pause where we can get better comms.

One of Bravo’s infantrymen, Corporal Neville Welch, was lying in one of the alleyways with his fire team when he got the call to return to the track.

“The helos have found a way out. They’ll lead us out of here. Back to the tracks.”

Marines congregated around their vehicles, some causing confusion by clambering into the wrong tracks. Welch made sure he was up at the hatch scanning the rooftops. There were only two thoughts in his mind.
I’m
going to kill, and I’m going to make sure that I’m going to stay alive.

The convoy set off more tentatively than earlier in the day. Welch was nervous about heading off without the support of the tanks. The column of some ten vehicles snaked its way through the labyrinth of dusty streets and alleyways, trying to avoid the water holes that threatened to suck them back into the mud. Some marines ran alongside the tracks, providing security at road junctions. They ducked and crouched and weaved their way through the streets, staying close to each other, keeping their eyes looking left and right and up and down just as they’d learned during MOUT training. From the hatch, Welch saw that the marines on the ground looked nervous and vulnerable. He had no idea where they were heading, but he was glad they were on the move. The buildings around them provided some cover. At each junction, the column halted while the lead vehicle checked that it was safe to continue forward before punching through. The problem was that the resulting blockage in the column resulted in some vehicles halting in the middle of an intersection, dangerously exposed to fire coming from four directions.

“Keep the column moving, for fuck’s sake.”

Welch watched an officer jump out of his Humvee and sprint forward to the lead track.

“You gotta keep moving.”

He saw white pickups mounted with machine guns and carrying RPG teams maneuvering in and out of the alleyways, charting the convoy’s progress. They stayed hidden. Any time one of the technicals got out into the open, a marine in one of the AAVs would take it out with the .50 cal or the Mark 19 grenade launcher.

From the top of the track, Welch kept his eyes focused on the windows and alleyways in his sector of fire. Sometimes people waved at him. Sometimes they shot at him. It was crazy.
This is not the enemy we’ve been
briefed about. They’re not playing by the rules.
Everything he had learned about identifying hostile intent now seemed to go right out of the window. Welch had always believed that he would be able to get what he wanted through hard work and determination. It’s what had got him out of Guyana and put him through college. But now he was disturbed by the realization that however determined, however well prepared he was, some things were just way out of his control. His convoy was making slow progress through a battlefield and an enemy that he did not understand. Even the maps seemed unable to offer him some measure of clarity. What looked like a straight road north to the bridge turned into a mess of dead ends, narrow alleyways, and dusty streets blocked with water holes, trash dumps, and irrigation canals.

6

Out in the fields to the east of the road by the northern bridge, Robinson tried to maintain his situational awareness. He was in an irrigation ditch, his legs sodden with water, some two hundred meters from the amtracks, within shooting range of the far bank of the canal. Up ahead, he saw fedayeen fighters crawling among the reeds and scrubland. What had started as the odd crack of gunfire had now increased to a hail of machine-gun and AK fire coming at them from around the bridge. Lying prone, he aimed and fired at anything that moved. Around him, he heard the sound of panic as rounds smacked into the ground and marines went down.

“I’m hit. I’m hit.”

“Corpsman up. Corpsman up.”

“He’s been shot in the leg.”

With no warning, the air around him started to explode. RPGs were flying toward them from every direction. Mortars were landing nearby. It mystified him how a mortar would land behind him and yet a person fifty meters in front of him would go down.
What a fucked up thing. How the
fuck does that work?

There was now fire coming at them from under the canal bridge. It seemed like it was raining down from all sides.

“Grenade.”

Robinson watched as a missile slowly looped over his head and landed in a berm to the side. The explosion threw up dirt and stones and made his teeth and guts shudder. Marines were writhing in the fields around him. Some of them were beginning to freeze.

“Corpsman up.”

He saw the Navy medics sprinting from marine to marine as they went down. But there were so many marines dropping that there were not enough corpsmen to go around. Robinson’s heart sank. He had long imagined this moment: in combat, killing people and doing macho stuff in Force Recon. But this was for real, and he wasn’t sure that he liked it.

Corporal Jake Worthington had set up his Javelin gun on the top of track 201. He had helped write the book for the battalion on the antitank weapon. Its unique targeting system meant that once fired at a tank, it would automatically come down on its target from above, where the armor was most vulnerable, rather than impact the thick armor on the side.

It had been a boyish, macho dream of his to be in combat. He had always wanted to know, when it came down to it, whether he was going to have more than the average life.
If it comes to kill or be killed, me against someone else,
who’s favored?
It was like a test. He was adopted as a baby and had never known his real parents. Maybe that had something to do with it. He needed some proof that he was favored, that he was loved. His adoptive parents had been real good to him, but they’d split up when he was young and he stayed with his adoptive mom. She’d bounced around a bit so he never really had a home. She was going on marriage number five. He’d been in Los Angeles, teaching kids with learning disabilities for his adoptive father’s company, when he decided that it was time to test himself in combat.
The marines seem
like hard-asses and they’ve got better uniforms.
That’s why, some two years ago, he’d stepped into the Marine Corps recruiting office in Los Angeles.

“What can the Marines do for me?”

“Get the fuck out my office.”

Worthington was taken aback.

“What?”

“Get the fuck out of my office.”

Worthington went next door to the Army office and asked the same question. The recruiter was sitting there munching on a sandwich from Burger King with a piece of food sticking to his chin. Between mouthfuls of burger, the Army guy began to tell him how they could give him extra money for college and help him out with this and that, but Worthington just sat there wondering why the Marine recruiter had reacted like that.

As he was sitting there listening, the Marine recruiter poked his head around the door.

“Had enough yet?”

Worthington nodded.

“Well, come back around here. Now, then, why don’t you try another question?”

“I suppose you want me to say what can I do for the Marines.”

“Now that’s what we’re trying to get at.”

Worthington signed on then and there for four years. As he signed, he couldn’t help but smile.
Damn, I can’t believe I fell for that trick.

From his position on the top of the track, he scanned the horizon through the Javelin’s CLU, the thermal imaging sighting system that could pick out tanks and other moving vehicles and personnel. He felt vulnerable and wished they had their own tanks with them. He knew that an Iraqi T-72 would be able to hit them from eighteen hundred meters away. None of his marines would be able to see that far. He felt the weight of responsibility.
It’s up to me to take the tank out before it gets us.
At his side he had an M16, ready to fire on any Iraqis that Sergeant Schaefer wasn’t getting.

Worthington had trained in the Weapons Company and was an expert in most weapon systems. He’d enjoyed training with the battalion, but what he couldn’t understand was the battalion commander’s passion for backbreaking humps.
Carrying a heavy machine gun and a TOW and all
that heavy-assed bullshit on long humps is no fun. All you are doing is
hurting marines and lowering morale.
He couldn’t see why they didn’t go on long hikes with just their packs.

Worthington sensed the level of incoming fire being ratcheted up. He heard the whistle of incoming artillery and mortars and watched the ground in front of him explode in splashes of dirt, each hit getting closer.
I’m going to get nailed. It will be steel on steel.
He leaped from the back of the track and lay down in the small depression in the dirt left by the AAV’s treads.
This is ridiculous.
No way would the shallow ground protect him from the incoming rounds. He heard the radio squawking with the sound of marines in a panic. He low crawled, slithering on his belly back toward the road. The truth was that he didn’t have a clue what to do next. His “A” gunner, Lance Corporal Brian Wenberg, the assistant gunner who helped him load the Javelin and identify targets, was at his side.

“Corporal. What are we doing?”

“I don’t really know. Let’s get back in the track.”

The two of them low crawled back to the track to figure out what to do next.

Lance Corporal Thomas Quirk was still taking cover behind a berm in a ditch by the side of the road. None of the marines with him were in his fire team. His squad leader wasn’t there. There was no one telling them what to do. All command structure had collapsed. They just did whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. There were rounds cracking and whizzing all around them.

“Where are those fucking rounds coming from?”

“They’re coming from our own track.”

Track 211 was no longer just in flames. The ammo inside was starting to cook off. Quirk was only fifty meters away when rounds inside the track punched through the skin of the AAV and whistled through the air in all directions. High-explosive rounds, demolitions, and rockets punched through the track and exploded in the air, scattering sharp, hot shrapnel all around.
Our own shit is firing at us.
Quirk looked on with disbelief. He had no idea what to do.
I can shoot hajjis, but what do I do with a smoking
track? You can’t kill a track.
As he’d done so often before, he began to pray to calm himself down.
Give me a calm head and a strong heart . . .

Reid had led one of his three mortar squads toward the canal bridge, about sixty meters south of the other two mortars that were still firing toward the military compound to the north and enemy positions to the west. The volume of fire coming at them from the city was increasing, and Reid knew that he needed to get Corporal Garibay’s squad firing to the south to shut it down. Reid asked Garibay for his wiz wheel. He had left his own with Corporal Espinoza. But Garibay didn’t have one, either.
Fuck. We’ve left
the wiz wheel behind.
He sent Private Jonathan Gifford back to get it. At the sight of Gifford scooting back to the original position to the north, bent double and zigzagging to avoid the rounds, he and Jordan burst out laughing. It was partly nerves. But it just looked so funny.

Reid used the road as defilade. Because it was raised, he and the mortar squad could tuck themselves up against it as cover.
They can’t hit us
here.
All the same, he watched as several RPG rounds, coming from the southwest, flew over his head, slow as day, and smacked into the dirt a hundred meters away. The world around him had shrunk to what was going on in the few meters around him. He wasn’t sure where any of the other platoons were, or what Captain Wittnam was doing. He was focused on the marines on either side of him and getting those mortars up and firing.

Fred Pokorney, the artillery FO, came over and lay down next to Reid.

“I got some fire missions out.”

“Roger that, Fred.”

“You might want to get your head down.”

Reid was confused.
Keep my head down? What the fuck is he talking
about?
For a moment he thought that Pokorney meant that he had altered the targets and they were going to be closer than those he had marked earlier.

“Were those missions where I told to shoot?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s okay. We’re good to go.”

Reid was pleased that somehow Pokorney had got those missions out. He must have finally got through on one of the nets. Any moment now the 1/10 artillery batteries, set up some ten kilometers away south of the Euphrates, would start shelling the targets he’d pinpointed. He wished the cannon cockers would hurry up. The terrifying thuds of incoming RPGs and mortars were increasing. And they were landing closer. He turned to look downrange. Out of nowhere there was an ear-piercing explosion behind him. It was as though an iron beam had been dropped from a forty-story building, slamming into concrete right next to him. A searing pain shot through his arm and the blast twisted him back toward the road. He looked down and saw nothing but dust. His first thought was of the Vietnam movie
Hamburger Hill,
when the platoon commander is talking on the radio and gets his arm blown off and doesn’t even know it. He just keeps talking.
My arm has been blown o f.
As the dust cleared, he saw his arm dangling uselessly next to him.

“My arm’s fucking broken.”

“That’s too bad, sir.”

It was the voice of Corporal Jorge Gonzalez who was sitting right behind him. There was something about his tone that made Reid think that things were badly wrong. Then it was Garibay, off to the right, who spoke.

“Sir, Buesing is dead.”

Reid looked up and saw a big hole in Lance Corporal Brian Buesing’s face. He was sitting Indian style, slumped forward but still upright. He was having body spasms and was gurgling as though trying to breathe. Reid didn’t know what to do.
Do I take my pistol out and shoot him? What the
fuck do I do?
He turned away. He couldn’t deal with it. He glanced to his right at the six-foot-seven-inch gangly frame of Fred Pokorney stretched out on the road. Pokorney was thirty-one and the father of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, Taylor. Next to him lay his weapons platoon sergeant, Philip Jordan, the marine who everyone looked up to and who, just a few moments ago, had seemed to be actually reveling in the sound, taste, and smell of combat. Reid ran over to him and rolled him over. The bone structure on his face was shattered. His body was crumpled. He looked like something out of a movie set. He let go and stared at the body. He looked again at Buesing and then went completely numb. He turned to Garibay, who was right there just staring up at him with the biggest eyes he’d ever seen. He was alive but he too had been hit.

“You keep everyone here. I’m going to get help.”

Reid was up and running. He made it about twenty meters and then all of a sudden found himself lying on his face in the dirt. He didn’t feel anything, but he knew he’d been hit. He saw a bunch of blood forming in a pool on the ground in front of him. His eye wouldn’t open. It was all screwed up.
I’ve lost my eyeball.
He felt himself zoning out.
Man, I’m
done. This is it. Do I just lay here? How does this work? How did this happen?
In the few seconds that he lay there so much went through his mind. He wondered what his wife, Susan, would do with the insurance money from his death. They’d only been married eight months when he left for Iraq. He had a rush of anxiety over what she would do with the $250,000 insurance money.
I hope she doesn’t blow it.
He wondered whether he should get up or just die right there in the dirt.

For some reason, he struggled to his feet and went from tunnel vision with two eyes to tunnel vision with one eye. The only thing he saw was a track. He slumped toward it and crawled in the rear. Inside he saw Corporal Elliot and Lance Corporal Trevino. He thought they were breaking out ammo. Reid half screamed, half moaned at them.

“We got casualties. We need to get them evacuated. You get up on that fucking gun and I don’t care what you shoot but if they are hajjis you fucking kill them.”

Elliot had to look twice to take in the apparition. Reid’s face was all torn up. There was just a bleeding mess where his eyes should be. There was blood coming out of every orifice. He almost laughed at the horror of it.
Oh my god.
It was the first time he had seen anyone like that.

Reid yelled again.

“We’ve got to get those guys out of here.”

He stumbled back out of the track and looked to his left to find his other two mortars. He couldn’t see anybody around. No one.
Where the fuck is
everybody?
He felt more alone than he had ever felt before. Like a man lost in space. A man living alone on a distant planet. He guessed he’d been fighting for nearly an hour, but his understanding of the battle was minimal. He had little idea what was going on or who was shooting at them or from where they were shooting. He was a first lieutenant, but, in the heat of battle, his understanding was no more than that of a private or lance corporal.
I haven’t been able to control anything greater than the handful of
guys around me.