Carnivore

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

My loving wife, Amy, for the support, understanding, and sacrifices she has made.

My children, Daniel, Janise, Jaycob, and Max, for understanding when I was gone and for the sacrifices they had to make because I wasn't home.

The Big Three group, David Fortier, and James Tarr for pushing me to write this book.

The best Commanders anyone could ask for, Captains McCoy, Bair, and Burgoyne.

First Sergeant Roy Grigges, SFC Jason Christner, and Lieutenant Garrett McAdams for their leadership and support.

CSM Tony Broadhead for his never-ending support, and for always saving my ass when I bit off more than I could chew. Without Tony Broadhead there would be no Crazy J or Carnivore—Bradley
or
book.

The crew of the Carnivore: Soprano, Sperry, Sully, and Patten, for putting up with all my crap and being the finest fighting crew in history.

My wingmen: Geary, Carter, Wallace, Williams, Miller, Sowby, and Kennedy, and to the Crazy Horse troopers of 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, past and present, the finest fighting force ever trained.

And finally, the lost warriors of 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry: SFC Parson, SSG Mitchell, and SPC Williams.

Dillard (CJ) Johnson

February 2013

Dedication

Map of Iraq

Prelude

  
1. Bosnian D-Day

  
2. Junior Jackassery

  
3. No Such Thing as Friendly Fire

  
4. Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

  
5. Love and Marriage, Army Style

  
6. Eight Ball and the Lipstick Lizards

  
7. Deathtrap

  
8. First Contact

  
9. Carnivore, Camel Toe, and Circus Freaks

10. Steel Beast

11. Ambush Alley

12. Junkyard Dogs

13. Line in the Sand

14. Every Truck in the Country

15. Repo Men

16. The Great Baghdad Tank Battle . . . Sort Of

17. Iraqi Bullfighting

18. The Mafia Hit

19. Stage 3

20. Exchanging RPGs for IEDs

21. Sniping Is as Sniping Does

22. The Lion's Mouth

23. Syria vs. Kentucky

24. Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Photos Section

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Publisher's Note

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

E
merging from the Commander's hatch of my Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Carnivore, I stared out through my goggles and saw hell. A monstrous sandstorm swirled around us, and in the haze the flames from the dozens of destroyed vehicles that had charged our position cast a devilish glow on the terrain. Their steel carcasses stretched over a mile across the plain before us, but right then I could only view the few that had made it to within shouting distance of our little canal bridge: tanks, cars, trucks, a bomb-laden bus that had tried to ram us, and the tanker truck that had been burning for two days.

The sandstorm seemed as if it had been going on forever, like we'd been inside a vortex of dust the entire war, and it was only getting worse. Visibility was down to ten feet. The thick sand made the dancing flames even more orange, and the whole area was bathed in eerie light. The glow from the flames was enough to screw up our thermal and night sights, but not sufficiently bright for us to actually see what we needed to, namely the Iraqis we knew were out there. Luckily, that meant they couldn't find us, either; so in between troop trucks charging our position on the canal bridge we only had to contend with random, inaccurate AK fire.

Crazy Horse Troop, 3/7 Cav, had seen so much action in the first two days of the war that the Commander had decided to give us a break. He'd put us in the rear of the column on the march north, guarding the 100 or so thin-skinned vehicles that made up our headquarters and medical and support elements. Those 100 vehicles were stretched out three-quarters of a mile behind me all the way to the bridge we'd crossed over the Euphrates River and made one hell of a tempting target. Especially since we were no longer advancing and had been told to hold both bridges. I was at one end of the convoy in the Carnivore and Sergeant John Williams was at the other, guarding the bridge over the Euphrates in his Bradley, the Casanova.

“Stay alert,” I told Sperry, my driver, but I was talking as much to myself as I was to him.
How long had we all been awake?
Four days of near-constant combat, most of two days crossing the desert before that, and three days in Kuwait to start it off, when they'd been afraid of the troop getting hit by rockets, so we'd been on the move almost nonstop. How many days was that in a row? With only snatches of sleep here and there. I couldn't count the days. I could barely think. The concussion didn't help. The pain from all the mortar shrapnel in my arms and shoulders and the bullet in my leg wasn't keeping me alert anymore. Everything was just a dull ache.

Lieutenant McAdams was behind us on the road in his Bradley. Sergeant Wallace was to our right in his Bradley, off the side of the road by the canal where he could get a different angle on any oncoming vehicles. The sandstorm roared and hissed, and the engines of the Bradleys were loud anyway, so we couldn't hear any vehicles approaching. I watched and waited.

A truckload of Iraqis rolled up right on us—to the far side of the canal bridge, 40 damn feet away—before we even spotted them. And they had their fucking headlights on! Wallace got on his gun quicker than we did and killed everybody in the truck with a short burst from his machine gun.

“I'm getting down!” I called to my crew.

Visibility was bad enough without headlights shining in our faces, so I jumped down to turn off the lights of the truck. My knees were so stiff from standing in the hatch, I could barely walk. When I reached the ground and started limping toward the truck, I looked over and saw an Iraqi soldier on foot just 10 feet away from me with an RPG launcher on his shoulder. Before I could react, he fired at the Carnivore. The rocket hit the driver's hatch, flipped up in the air, and exploded over the bridge.

I drew and fired my Beretta, hitting him in the arm and chest, then the pistol jammed. AGAIN. That pistol was trying to kill me. There was an AK-47 on the seat of the truck, and I dove for it. As I went down, I was spattered with gore as the man's head exploded all over me.

Over my shoulder I saw Soprano, my gunner, less than two feet away, holding an AK of his own. He grinned, held it out, and said, “Here you go. It shoots a little high.” Smartass.

Soprano had gotten off the Bradley to back me up and had moved to my right to avoid the lights of the truck. He had one of the more than 100 AK-47s we'd picked up the day before that we hadn't gotten around to dumping in the canal. We'd been too busy keeping one another alive, which meant we'd done an extraordinary amount of killing.

Soprano headed back toward the Carnivore. As I turned off the lights of the truck, two more dark shapes appeared on the road about 200 meters out. McAdams and his gunner, Sergeant Mulholland, had picked up the movement and were watching to see if the trucks that were rolling closer were troop transporters or some clueless farmers. When they stopped, the swirling sand was thin enough for us to see they were troop trucks, and the enemy soldiers started jumping out. I ducked down behind the Iraqi truck. I knew what was coming.

Mulholland opened up with 25 mm HE (high-explosive) rounds on full auto, shooting right past me, and the Iraqis scattered like cockroaches when the light hits them. Most of the dismounts ran toward us, firing their AKs, but a few smart ones ran for cover.

Thirty soldiers charged our position, and I had AK bullets whipping past me in one direction while Mulholland fired the Bradley's main gun in the other. Looking up at the winking muzzle of that gun as Mulholland worked it back and forth was an unsettling experience—now I knew how the enemy felt. Mulholland was able to kill two-thirds of the soldiers before they'd gotten within 100 meters of the bridge. The rest of them were determined and kept working their way toward us. AKs are a poor match for 25 mm HE, however, and Mulholland was able to pick them all off in a few minutes.

I got up from behind the truck where I'd been crouching and headed back to the Bradley, which I never should have left. Remember the line from
Apocalypse Now
, “Never get off the boat”? Note to self—
Never get off the Bradley, dumbass
.

As I climbed back up on top of my Bradley, I checked the driver's hatch for damage from the RPG round that had slammed it. Sperry opened the hatch and looked at me with his baby face.

“What the hell hit my hatch?” he asked me.

Oh, nothing, just a rocket that should have killed you
. Hell, Sperry, Soprano, my loader Sully—we all should have died a dozen times over the past few days, and yet somehow we kept battling. They were still just kids, and there they were, fighting a war. Not just fighting, but kicking ass and taking a whole bunch of names.

I was old and angry and liked to fight, but this
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
last-stand bullshit wasn't exactly what they signed up for. As much as we were killing dismounts and destroying vehicles, we just couldn't seem to stop them.

Captain Jeff McCoy, the Troop Commander, had already given us the bad news—in between rare breaks in the sandstorm, JSTARS, our eye in the sky, had spotted 44 tanks heading toward the rear of our column, right at Sergeant Williams sitting on the Euphrates bridge. If that wasn't bad enough, they'd then radioed there were 1,000 troop trucks—not troops, mind you, but troop trucks, each one of which could hold at least 20 soldiers—bearing down on our position. Potentially 20,000 troops. The sporadic trucks we'd seen so far were just the disorganized advance troops, random drops ahead of the oncoming tidal wave. We didn't have enough ammunition, enough time, enough visibility, and they just kept coming.

What we didn't know then was that Saddam Hussein himself was personally moving these pieces around the board. He knew he had a U.S. cavalry squadron surrounded and was going to destroy it to get his victory over the Americans. Whatever it took, he was going to wipe us out, and he sent all the assets he had at that early stage in the war, which was most of the Medina Division. We had an entire enemy tank battalion coming at our rear and a whole infantry brigade advancing toward us from the front. Coming straight at our little canal bridge. Destroying Crazy Horse and all the assets we were protecting could alter the course of the war, and Saddam Hussein knew it.