Both denied knowing anything about an attack. The brigade reported intercepts of increased telephone conversations. But intercepts were unreliable, since the insurgents routinely bragged to each other about battles that had never developed. So Kennedy continued with business as usual on April 6.
It was standard procedure to begin each day’s patrols when the city was stirring. The more people saw the Marines walking around, the better. It was after nine when Second Lieutenant John Hessner led the 3rd Platoon of Golf Company out the sandbagged gate of the Combat Outpost and walked west along Route Michigan. The destination was the Government Center, three kilometers away.
Each of the three squads headed down a separate street, several blocks apart. The technique, called “satellite patrolling,” was employed by British troops in Northern Ireland to quickly surround any sniper who shot at a passing patrol. The Marines stayed in touch by radio. Hessner checked with his first squad, call sign Joker 3-1, which was near a soccer stadium, several blocks south of Route Michigan.
Joker 3-1 reported that the residents were going about their morning chores, scurrying back and forth on the narrow, garbage-strewn side streets.
“We got one asshole tagging behind us,” Staff Sergeant Dameon Rodriguez, the platoon sergeant, reported. “That’s all.”
The morning traffic was light, with most cars heading west, out of town. Just as Hessner noticed that the police and National Guard troops were not at their usual posts, he bumped into a wave of insurgents slipping up on the Government Center. The initial exchanges of fire were intermittent, a burst from an AK followed by answering shots from an M16, a rocket-propelled grenade fired blindly down a street, a pause, then a few more shots. Within half an hour the desultory firing had swelled to a roar, as the two separate squads bumped into gang after gang of fleeing shooters.
The third squad was battling in a large cemetery adjacent to Route Michigan, a kilometer east of the Government Center. Hessner and the second squad ran two blocks and linked up among the gravestones. The insurgents were running among the crypts, firing wildly. The Marines were staying under cover, using the grave markers as resting points for their rifles, trying to hit anyone standing still for more than a few seconds.
Lance Corporal Jeremiah Letterman was struck in the stomach, a serious but not grievous wound. Hessner called his company commander, Captain Chris Bronzi, requesting a medevac.
“I have a solid defense here,” Hessner radioed to Bronzi. “But I’ll need a lot more troops to push through, and Joker three-one’s a click south near the soccer stadium.”
“Hold where you are,” Bronzi said. “I’ll pick up Joker three-one and come to your pos.”
The enemy were out in force that morning. Fearing the Farhan brothers would talk, the imam who served as their second-in-command had ordered the attack to seize the Government Center a day ahead of schedule. Hundreds of insurgents had moved in from the Sofia District to the east, driving in civilian vehicles and slipping on foot down the back alleys. These were gangs rather than regular military units, small and medium-sized clusters of armed, excited youths, each with its own leader. Some were tough former military, trained in tactics and accustomed to being obeyed and feared. Others were unemployed, uneducated young men eager for adventure and comradeship. Some had been recruited weeks earlier by the Farhan brothers, while others at home merely saw the fighters running past, grabbed their rifles, and followed.
The hard-core insurgents wore black shirts and trousers, with knock-off Adidas sneakers. Some wrapped their faces in red-and-white-checked kaffiyehs, while others were bareheaded. Most carried AK-47s, and many hefted RPGs along with a fair sprinkling of RPKs, a machine gun popular throughout Eastern Europe.
While the battalion ops center dispatched a Mobile Assault Platoon to pick up the wounded Marine, Bronzi left the Combat Outpost with three squads and eight Humvees. Kennedy had driven from Hurricane Point to the Government Center, where two Marine squads were spread out on the upper floors and on the roof, looking for targets. Bullets and an occasional RPG round were striking the walls of the center. But the attack lacked heft, and the Marines were pouring out much more fire than they were taking. With Hessner holding his own at the cemetery, Kennedy sensed the main insurgent forces were massing to the east. He hopped in a Humvee equipped with two radios—grandiosely called a Jump CP (Command Post)—and drove toward the soccer stadium to link up with Bronzi.
_____
A kilometer southeast of the cemetery, Joker 3-1 had monitored Hessner’s call for a medevac. The eleven Marines in the squad could hear the shooting, but no one had taken them under fire. With one insurgent still trailing behind them, they crossed a highway west of the soccer stadium, heading to the cemetery. As they trotted across the four-lane road, homeowners shut their courtyard gates and ducked inside without a glance at the passing Americans. When they reached the next cross street, there was not a person to be seen.
“Time to watch our asses,” SSgt Rodriguez said.
Seconds later firing erupted from four sides. To Rodriguez, everything suddenly became so bright that he thought he had stepped onto a Broadway stage. He could see no one, but all around him bullets were zinging off courtyard walls. The noise was deafening. Somehow he was down flat on his chest, his M16 firing up at a rooftop. He knew that’s where they were because he could see empty shells hitting the ground in front of him. Unable to hear above the din, he glanced around and saw that the other Marines were lying prone, too, firing madly. After ripping through a few magazines, the Marines paused, looking for targets.
Sergeant Allen Holt, the squad leader, saw a head duck back on a roof. He straightened the cotter pin on a grenade, gathered himself with one knee on the ground, pulled the pin, yelled “Frag out!” and pitched it onto the roof. The explosion was accompanied by a scream of pain, and the firing momentarily slackened. Before the Marines could collect themselves, the firing resumed from another direction.
Rodriguez called Capt Bronzi. “Joker six, this is three-one. Need some help here,” he said. “Platoon-sized element, all around us.”
“We’re on our way,” the Golf Company commander replied. “We’ll close in fifteen mikes.”
Fifteen minutes seemed reasonable enough. Bronzi thought Joker 3-1 was east of the soccer stadium. Actually, the squad was west of the stadium.
The Marines formed a hasty perimeter, taking potshots at rooftops with their M203 grenade launchers. After they had lobbed a few rounds, Rodriguez watched a man suddenly pop up on a roof, leap down to the top of a courtyard wall, hop down to the street, and sprint around a corner.
“Did you see that dude?” Rodriguez yelled. “He was wearing flip-flops. How’d he do that?”
“Motivated!” Holt yelled back.
Rodriguez wondered if he had overreacted in asking for help. This didn’t seem too bad. Then the incoming fire started to swell again. The insurgents had been finding new positions, not running away. The squad was taking steady fire from behind a parked car down the street to the east. As Lance Corporal James Gentile moved forward, an insurgent ran out, got behind the wheel, and drove in reverse down the street. When Gentile opened up with his SAW, or squad automatic weapon, the driver leaped out and ran away.
Rodriguez saw a man in a white T-shirt step onto the street and then step back out of sight. Rodriguez sighted in on the spot. A minute later the same man, holding an AK, darted back out. Rodriguez shot him in the chest, and he fell into the street. Five minutes later an ambulance drove up; two men got out, placed the body in the back, and drove off.
The eleven Marines had spread out on both sides of the street, protecting both ends, so the insurgents would have to cross an open area to close on them. So far the defense had worked. Time and again the squad leader, Sgt Holt, saw cars—battered four-door Caprices, sedans with no windows, shabby little orange and white taxis—stop for a few seconds in alley entrances. The passengers would fire and the cars would dart back under cover.
They were half an hour into the fight now, and still no Quick Reaction Force. The noise was deafening—the banging sounds of the M16s and SAWs reverberated off the cement—and after a while the ringing in the Marines’ ears wouldn’t stop. Rodriguez, shouting into his radio handset, was hearing no response.
The insurgents were sneaking in closer, and rounds were ricocheting off the cement walls. Gentile was hit in the neck, the bullet passing out the side of his face. He dropped his SAW and staggered to Rodriguez and Holt, who carried him into the shelter of a courtyard. Gentile’s eye socket was fractured, and he was bleeding profusely from the neck wound, breathing hoarsely. As Holt wrapped him in a pressure bandage, Gentile asked him to take his picture. He thought it would look cool.
Corporal Joseph Hayes and four Marines stayed out in the street. Hayes had just fired a 40mm grenade at an Iraqi in a window and thought he had nailed him. But the man popped back up firing just as Private First Class Deryk Hallal, a big man at six foot seven, was running across the street. Hallal was struck in the leg and went down. The sound of the hit, a large
smack!,
caused Holt to spin around.
“Get Hallal!” he yelled.
Lance Corporal Tapia ran out and was bandaging Hallal’s leg when a car spun out of an alley, with men firing out the windows. Hallal was hit in the back of the head as the car disappeared. Hallal kept opening his mouth, trying to breathe, while the Marines gave him a shot of morphine and said a prayer. After a few minutes, Holt called Rodriguez over the radio.
“Hallal’s dead.”
Tapia didn’t want to leave the body of his close friend, but they were under heavy fire. Hayes pulled the three Marines crouched near him behind a courtyard wall. A grenade landed in the courtyard. They ducked. Dud. Another grenade.
Bang!
Two more Marines went down, their hands riddled with shrapnel. Hayes and Tapia crouched by the wall, shooting at the rooftops.
Several houses farther down the block, Rodriguez signaled to the remaining Marines to get inside the house where he had put Gentile. Private First Class Moises Langhorst flopped down just outside the courtyard wall, signaling to the others to duck inside while he covered them. Langhorst tore through a drum of ammunition, the SAW screeching for several seconds before falling silent. Rodriguez crawled out to help Langhorst change barrels and found the SAW gunner dead.
The squad was split into two groups, each at the far end of a separate block, unable to provide supporting fire for the other. Two Marines were dead. Rodriguez had one Marine seriously wounded and four who could shoot. Hayes had two wounded and two who could shoot. With the insurgents putting steady grazing fire down the street, Rodriguez couldn’t carry Gentile to link up with Hayes. Transmissions between the two groups on the handheld radios were spotty.
“I can’t reach Joker six,” Rodriguez radioed. “Can you?”
“Negative,” Hayes replied.
Both groups bunkered in to wait, each rotating a guard on the roof and another near the courtyard gate. Rodriguez propped Gentile up against a wall, and the Iraqi who owned the house wrapped him in blankets. When the blood soaked through, the Iraqi brought fresh blankets. Each group had about three dozen magazines, enough to hold out for about an hour.
It was only a matter of time before the insurgents found a roof high enough for them to fire rocket-propelled grenades down into the courtyards or before they packed explosives into a satchel charge. Explosives were the way to finish defenders lodged behind cement.
_____
Joker 3-1 hadn’t been forgotten, but it had been misplaced. The location plotted in the company ops center showed the squad near the soccer stadium, a kilometer east of its actual location. Bronzi had dismounted at the stadium with fifty Marines. Bronzi couldn’t raise Joker 3-1 on the radio, but he could hear the shooting and knew he was at the wrong spot. He wasn’t sure, though, how long it would take to reach the squad.
The moment his Marines poked their heads around the western end of the stadium, they had been hit by a heavy burst of fire. RPG rockets were whizzing by, bullets cracked overhead, and machine guns were chattering, reminding Bronzi of
Phase Line Green,
a book about a platoon in Hue that had fought for three days to cross one street. With Joker 3-1 ten blocks away, Bronzi called for another platoon from the Combat Outpost.
Having four Humvees with mounted .50 calibers and Mark 19s behind them as fire support, Bronzi’s force headed northwest on foot, moving by bounds. The insurgents were staying under cover, firing from street corners and upper-story windows. The sharp sounds of battle echoed off the buildings, making it difficult to know what fire was coming from what building. The squads advanced in a triangle formation, watching their flanks. Wherever the Marines massed their fire, the insurgents scattered and fell back.
Iraqi men were rushing around, running to their homes to grab their AKs and dashing out into the streets to join up with the neighborhood gang. With a tinge of irony, the Marines called them “Minutemen.” These spontaneous volunteers had swollen the ranks of the insurgents who had set out hours earlier to seize the Government Center, and their presence changed the focus of the battle. Whatever coordinated movement the insurgents had planned, it had collapsed into a swirling melee. Wherever the Marines turned, someone was there to shoot at them.
LtCol Kennedy had left the Government Center with eleven Marines and two Humvees, all afoot as riflemen except for two drivers and two machine-gunners. Listening to the radio, Kennedy thought the fighting resembled a fur ball, a dozen cats kicking and clawing in the dust. His plan was simple. He would join Bronzi, link up with Joker 3-1, and proceed to the cemetery. Along the way a Mobile Assault Platoon would join them. Major Dave Harrill guarded the rear.
It was taking Kennedy longer than he liked to get to Bronzi. The command element would walk safely down one block, then in the next insurgents would pop out on roofs only twenty meters away, blazing away for a few seconds with AKs before ducking back. Others would drive across the intersection in beat-up old cars, firing out the windows. Some got away and some didn’t.