Authors: Wesley R. Gray
We established initial security of the compound without incident. As the Marines secured the boundary, the
jundi
searched all the residential homes and informed the residents that we would be taking over their lives for the next few days. Amazingly, the residents of the facility were friendly to the
jundi
, inviting them to live in their homes for the course of the operation. I was not sure what to make of this kindness. It might have been old-fashioned Arab hospitality or it might have been the local's fear of telling a group of sixty-two soldiers toting machine guns “No.”
By the time the
jundi
had settled into their basic defensive positions it was nearly 2100. We had one problem. In our efforts to ensure that the patrol base was established and the Iraqis were settled, we had forgotten to settle ourselves. “Jamal,” Major Gaines said, “take Doc and find us a place to set up a COC.”
Doc and I stumbled in the dark and tried to find a building that the Iraqis had not yet occupied. We decided to try the generator building in the center of camp. As we entered the building the drumming noise of generators running at full steam and the rusty taste of oil and gasoline in the air greeted us. Doc and I quickly realized that the fact the
jundi
had avoided the generator building should have been a warning. Nonetheless we wandered through the building in complete darkness. I felt that at any moment an insurgent would jump around the corner and stab me in the neck or blow out my brains. The building was nastyâplain and simpleâbut it was late and we needed to kick a patrol out early the next morning. The generator building was our only option until we could get a better assessment of the compound the next morning.
Combat Raid
We set up shop near the southern entrance of the generator building. We hurried to set up the radios, establish the basic security plan, and figure out the general scheme for the next day. By the time we finished it was 0200 and the first patrol would start at 0600. We decided to go on a staggered two-hour nap schedule split between sleeping, radio watch, and security.
Our nap plan did not last long. As I was half-asleep on the first radio
watch of the night, a couple of semifrantic
jundi
came running up to our position yelling in Arabic, “Jamal, Jamal, as salama aleikum. Shifit erhabeen bil binaye!” (Jamal, Jamal, peace be upon you. I saw insurgents in the building!) I was in a semicomatose state. I answered them in sloppy Arabic, “IHchiet wiya inaqib Mawfood, awwal? Huwwa qaedek, mu anii.” (Did you talk to Captain Mawfood first? He is your leader, not me.) The
jundi
responded, “IHchiet wiya inaqib Mawfood. Huwwa gillitna lazim niHchi wiyak.” (We did talk with Captain Mawfood. He told us we needed to talk with you.) Great, I thought, the people who are supposed to be taking leadership of the Iraqi army are deferring to me for answers.
“Who's on your post right now?” I asked the
jundi
for fear they had abandoned their post. Fulfilling my fears, they responded, “Nobody.” I rushed to wake Martin so he could help me with translation. I could operate without a terp, but when my mind was fried, having a terp made things much smoother and quicker. I told Martin, “Call Mawfood and figure out what the hell is going on. Also, tell these soldiers they need to maintain their post!” Martin reluctantly moved his cream-puff body off his rack, scratched his balls a few times, and fell back on his rack to sleep. I was furious. I shook Martin by the arm. “Get your ass up manâhere is the radioâcall Mawfood and see what is going on!”
Mawfood made his way over to our area. As he approached our position, he greeted everyone with “As salama aleikum.” We all responded with “Wa aleikum salam” (And upon you, peace). Major Gaines, Captain Mawfood, and I walked to the southeast corner of the compound to listen to the Iraqis who had spotted the insurgents.
“You see that half -built house near Route Boardwalk?” Hussein, the
jundi
on post, pointed in the direction of a gloomy looking, half-constructed mud hut home 150 meters from their security post. He continued, “We think we saw seven or eight guys walk in there over the past thirty minutes. It looks as if they had shovels and weapons with them.”
It was time to conduct Operation
Nimer
's first combat raid. I started to think back to Infantry Officers' Course, frantically digging for all the knowledge I had learned on the conduct of raids. It all came back to me as if I had just graduated. I developed a plan to raid the suspected insurgent hideout. I gathered Sergeant Kelley, Corporal Espinosa (“Espi”), and Nuts around the Humvee. With a red penlight in my mouth for lighting, I began to draw a sketch of the building and our plan for the raid. Meanwhile, in the background I heard a faint “As salama aleikum.” I looked up and flipped down my
night vision goggles to see who it was. I hoped my mind was playing tricks. It was Lieutenant Jaffer, the same guy who smashed a civilian the day before.
I had heard through Kelley and Espi that Jaffer was the “worst combat leader of all time and a flaming idiot.” Despite Jaffer's poor track record, however, I stuck to my mission intent as a military adviser and said, “Jaffer, I'd like to hear how you want to go about doing this combat raid. I have a basic plan we can work from, but I'd enjoy hearing your ideas since I am here to advise and not command.”
Jaffer proceeded to give me his basic plan. It sounded more like a poorly thought-out football play than a military operation. Essentially it was “send two guys this way, two guys that way, and then we will go in the front door and search for bad guys.” I was not impressed; neither was I confident this operation would be successful.
I countered Jaffer's incompetence and presented a professional raid plan that involved setting an outside cordon, establishing a raid force, and establishing a support force. It was apparent my ideas were sailing over Jaffer's head. I knew I was not going to get anywhere with Jaffer; we would have to discuss raid planning later. I smiled, told Jaffer his plan sounded great, and told him to be ready by 0300.
Once Jaffer had left I grabbed Nuts, Kelley, Blanchard, and Espi. We went over our own internal plan. The operation had changed from a raid operation to a “protect-our-own-asses” operation. The biggest danger was not the insurgents in the building but the
jundi
under the leadership of Lieutenant Jaffer. The gist of my new plan was simple: let the Iraqis die first, watch out for
jundi
friendly fire, and take the lead in the operation only if it was a matter of our own survival. In my mind Iraqis should die for their country, not Marines.
Jaffer showed up with his
jundi
around 0330, thirty minutes late but respectable by Iraqi standards. The
jundi
who showed up, many of whom were from our battalion, greeted me with much fanfare. “Mulazim Jamal, as salama aleikum. Shlonek? Shlon sawtek? Shlon ahelek? Inta zien?” (Lieutenant Jamal, peace be upon you. How are you? How is your health? How is your family? Are you good?) It felt good to know we would have some familiar faces on this mission.
We pushed outside the compound gate and tactically moved in a squad-column formation to the building suspected to have insurgents. This was exciting. We slowly approached the abandoned building with our night vision goggles and watched as Jaffer put his so-called plan into action. Jaffer
sent a few soldiers ahead to set up a “crap-tacular” cordon around the building. He next ordered two
jundi
with flashlights to search the building. I knew that if the two
jundi
entering the building encountered any resistance, they were toast. To make matters worse, from our position we would be unable to support them. Jaffer's plan was flawed but workable, so as an adviser cadre we were going to allow him to execute it.
I fully expected a gunfight. The abandoned building served as perfect terrain for insurgents who wanted to attack the WTF. But the gunfight never came. The
jundi
sent in to search nonchalantly walked back out of the building with their rifles slung and their flashlights dangling from their waists, swaying back and forth with the rhythm of their steps. They each fired up a cigarette and yelled to Jaffer, “All clear.”
My heart rate dropped a good twenty beats a minute as my fear and excitement faded. So much for being Rambo and getting a chance to find some insurgents. I called back to the WTF, “Shadow One, there ain't shit in this building. What do you want us to do?” After consulting Captain Mawfood, Major Gaines responded, “Roger, Shadow Two, continue on with a normal foot patrol, we were going to push a patrol out in a few hours anyway.” “Rogâ,” I began. But before I could end my radio transmission, Jaffer was already moving the Iraqis across Route Boardwalk to search a large Iraqi home.
We followed the remainder of the patrol across Boardwalk to ensure squad integrity. After examining the house and finding nothing except a family fast asleep, we continued east into the sleepy palm groves to search for stray command wires. The insurgents typically plant the IEDs on Route Boardwalk and string the copper command wires into the palm groves to maximize the concealment of the wires. By moving into the palm groves and walking parallel to Route Boardwalk, we would hopefully run into these command wires before the insurgents were able to use them to blow up a convoy the following day.
We stumbled across barren agricultural fields and moved eastward toward the lush palm groves that nestled against the Euphrates. As we bumbled along, each of us tried to look less idiotic than the other. I have always considered myself a coordinated person, however, throw eighty pounds of combat gear on your back, look through a P.S.-14 monocular night vision goggle, try to walk across mogul-like terrain for a few hundred meters, and see what happens. It's a humbling experience.
We approached the palm groves. Moving into the groves in the thick
of night reminded me of classic war scenes from the jungles of Vietnam. While we did not need a machete to get through the thicket, it was damn close. I called for Jaffer through Martin's UHF radio, “Jaffer, let's talk about how we are going to move through these palm groves.” Jaffer showed up and gave me his plan. His basic idea was for everyone to get in a line and start walking parallel to Route Boardwalk through the dense palm grove forests and the four-foot reed patches up ahead. This plan would cause him to lose control of his squad. We hacked on his plan and came up with something that was not perfect but could work.
The intent of sleuthing through the palm groves in the middle of the night was to run across copper command wires. After five minutes of falling on my face, untangling my gear from reeds, and ensuring I was not in the sights of an Iraqi Army AK-47, I realized that finding these damned command wires was going to have to take a back seat. It was hard enough seeing a foot in front of our faces, let alone being able to see a thin copper fishing wire on the ground. We made a collective decision to return to the WTF.
We returned to the WTF after four hours of trudging in treacherous terrain. Then we gathered everyone around for a quick debrief, which is SOP (standard operating procedure) for the Marines. I began my brief comments, which lasted all of three minutes. Jaffer responded, smiling gleefully, “Jamal, you are my brother, these
jundi
and these Marines are your brothers. Why do you make them suffer through a debrief?” I gazed into the empty faces of the forty-year-old Iraqi army soldiers on the patrol with us, many of whom had lived harder lives than I could even imagine. I replied, “Jaffer you're right. I'm sorry. Everyone get some rest. Great job today.”
Insurgent Snipers Attack
After three hours of dreamless sleep, I awoke to the sound of roaring generator engines and the sight of an Iraqi civilian snooping outside the building. Instinctively I reached for my M-4. I notified Doc, who I found was tracking on the same man. Before we could figure out what to do next, Martin, who was sleeping outside on his cot, addressed the man, “Hey, what are you doing over here?” The man, who was scared out of his mind, timidly responded, “I am sorry, mister. I am in charge of the generators here and need to change the power circuits. Please do not hurt me. Captain Mawfood said it was fine for me come here.” We calmed down the man and had him sit with us for a breakfast of MARES. The last thing we wanted was for the residents of the facility to fear our presence and cease to carry out their jobs at the WTF. I
could only imagine how angry the locals would get if their primary source of clean water were to be halted.
I was to be the lead adviser on the next patrol and my crew was stellar. I would have my trusty comrades Sergeant Kelley, Espi, Private First Class Lynch, and Moody on my team. Kelley was the best of the best. He was an eight-year veteran Marine infantryman, a grizzled combat veteran, and had been on countless patrols in Haditha. If there was anyone I wanted to patrol alongside in Haditha, it would be Kelley. His partner in crime was Espi. Espi and Kelley both reminded me of John Wayne toilet paperârough, tough, and didn't take any shit. It was a great reassurance to have these Marines on patrol with me.
We pushed the patrol in column formation outside the WTF main gate at 1000 hours. We headed across Boardwalk and into the same palm groves we had attacked the night before. As I left the gate Samir, the
jundi
operating the P.C. machine gun on the main entrance, said, “Targa bil salama” (Return in peace). I exited through the gate and replied, “Insha'allah.”
Fortunately we didn't have Jaffer along for the patrol. In my mind this cut the probability of my dying enormously. Instead our patrol leader was Hussein, a forty-five-year-old Iraqi, with twenty-five years in the Iraqi army as an infantryman and special operations soldier. Hussein was as close to being a logical person as Iraqi people can get.