Authors: Charles W. Sasser
While all this was going on, Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery's Second Platoon drew the grim task of cleaning up the ambush site. By now, the two trucks were incinerated, leaving nothing except blackened cabs dropped down onto wheel rims with the rubber burned off. The Joes wore gloves to rummage through the ruins to pick up body partsâshards of bone, charred fleshâand place them reverently into body bags. Grave Registrations people would have to sort through it all later to identify which belonged to which slain GI.
They worked mostly in sickened silence, the nauseating smell of burnt flesh and bones bringing tears to their eyes.
Hulls of 7.62 AK-47 cartridges strewn on the road attested to the swiftness and ferocity of the attack. Insurgents must have outnumbered the crater watch by at least three to one. No American bullet hulls lay about. The spate of rifle fire heard by soldiers at Inchon and at 152 was all from enemy weapons. Apparently, Sergeant Connell and his men had not gotten off a single shot in the surprise raid.
Evidence left at the scene and witness statements from those Iraqis who lived in the vicinity, and who could still be located, painted a dark portrait of stark terror compressed into a few short minutes. Wind and the darkness of the night would have contributed to it.
Murphy appeared to have been the only man with a chance at escapeâand that a slim one before the insurgents picked him off with automatic rifle fire. Claw marks showed where he continued to pull himself through the weeds until he became entangled in concertina and his executioners caught up to him.
Blood trails, drag and scuffle marks, plus the smear of blood inside the farmhouse, indicated that the three Americans apparently taken captive were wounded. An Iraqi witness who fled his house out of fear of involvement was hiding in shrubbery, watching. One of the Americans, he said, a big man, was beating up on two of the insurgents and was getting the better of them when a third ran up and belted him from behind. He and the other two prisoners were thrown up onto the bed of a bongo truck and hauled away.
Unlike World War II or Vietnam, where mutilated corpses had to be identified using dental records, fingerprints, and dog tags, modern DNA technology made identification faster and more certain. There was no problem with Chris Murphy since his body remained relatively intact. Hard as it was for them, platoon members confirmed his identity.
The other victims took longer. Still, Delta Company knew within a relatively short period of time the names of those slain in the action and those whose status became known as DUSTWUN (Duty Status and Whereabouts Unknown). In addition to Christopher E. Murphy, 21, the
others found slaughtered were SFC James D. Connell, 40; PFC Daniel W. Courneya, 19; Sergeant Anthony J. Schober, 23; and IA interpreter Sabah Barak, about 30.
Missing in action were Specialist Alexander R. Jimenez, 25; PFC Byron W. Fouty, 19; and Joseph Anzak Jr., 20.
Probably no non-urban terrain in Iraq posed more challenge in conducting a search than that in The Triangle. Criss-crossed by irrigation ditches and canals flowing from the Euphrates River, dotted with family farms growing barley and wheat and goats, studded with villages and towns, it afforded enough hiding places and safe houses into which a thousand insurgents might vanish. Even if they were cornered, it was unlikely they would surrender peacefully after what they had done. Previous patterns revealed how, turning suicidal and even more homicidal, they would first execute their captives, then take as many other Americans with them as they could before they committed suicide by blowing themselves up.
Soldiers in Iraq knew only too well what awaited GIs if they were taken alive by radical Islamic extremists, to whom life was cheap and who thought nothing of torturing and executing their victims. The worst nightmare an American commander could have was of his soldiers being kidnapped and beheaded live on television for the world and their families to see. Colonel Infanti added five more casualty cards to his collection. Three of his soldiers remained missing, unknown whether they were dead or whether they were alive and being held in some moldy basement while savage Islamics sharpened their big knives and prepared to present their next macabre feature to Al Jazeera TV.
The massacre occurred before dawn on Sunday. Information about it remained sketchy most of the day throughout The Triangle of Death, except for those soldiers and outfits chopped down to Malibu Road who were actually involved in the search. Future history professor Big Willy Hendrickson had been temporarily assigned to Brigade at Mahmudiyah to pull tower guard for a battery of field artillery. Another soldier relieved him before sunrise. He was standing outside on the sprawling compound, smoking a cigarette before he hit the rack for some sleep, when another Bravo Company Joe rushed up with news he picked up at the chow hall.
“They've killed a bunch of our guys!” he blurted out.
Hendrickson dropped his cigarette, freaking out because he thought it might be some of his buddies in Bravo.
“Who?” he demanded, unable to get out more past the stricture in his throat.
“I don't know. They say the ragheads kidnapped some of them.”
Hendrickson forgot all about sleep. The two GIs broke for Brigade TOC, the nerve center for 2
nd
BCT in Iraq. The whole place seemed to be going ape shit. Off-duty soldiers not tapped for immediate duties hung around outside the TOC trying to pick up what information they could. The air was full of aircraft coming and going.
Piecemeal, Hendrickson learned that the victims were with Delta Company down on Malibu Road, not from his Bravo. He felt relieved that the dead weren't some of his own friends. Better they be from some other outfit than from one's own.
Guilt followed relief. How could he feel better about the deaths of some Joes over others? History in the making could be so fucked up.
Chaplain Jeff Bryan was on his way to Delta Company to be with Captain Gilbreath's grieving soldiers when Hendrickson got a chance to speak with him. The chaplain knew only that five had been killed and three were missing. The only name Hendrickson knew was Specialist Alex Jimenez', that because of its connection with the battalion CSM.
“This is a chaplain's nightmare,” Chaplain Bryan said. “I have to ask them to trust in God and His wisdom after a disaster like this.”
“Chaplain, do you believe there really is a Big Plan for the universe?”
“Don't you, my son?”
Sometimes Hendrickson didn't know what he believed. History was full of mankind's follies; foolishness and cruelty repeated endlessly.
An hour after the chaplain departed, a headquarters sergeant burst into the tent where Hendrickson and the other Joes on tower detail were bivouacked.
“Gather up all your shit and get on the flight line,” he said. “You got one hour. You guys are flying out.”
A Black Hawk dropped them off in Yusufiyah at 4
th
Battalion's compound. By noon, Hendrickson found himself reassigned as a replacement for one of Delta's dead and missing. It gave him a funny feeling, taking a KIA's place. He also felt like an intruder when he linked up with First Platoon's surviving members at Inchon. They were supposed to be getting some rest following the chaplain's visit. None of them could sleep. The hate fest among them was something palpable and contagious. Some were crying from anger, loss, and frustration; others were cursing. Even Cookie Urbina's Brown Dog went around alternately whimpering and growling with his tail tucked between his legs, as though he sensed First Platoon's loss. Some of the guys were talking up some pretty wild stuff.
“Them motherfuckers living in their little shacks . . . They know who did it. We ought to burn every damn house and village along the river until somebody starts talking. I wouldn't trade all them cocksuckers' lives for one of our guys.”
Most of the Iraqi captives rounded up were simple farmers trying to stay out of the way of both sides. Hear no evil, see no evil . . . Either that,
or they
pretended
to be farmers. It was sometimes hard to ferret out the truth.
“I was in my cucumber field when I heard a big explosion and shooting. I ran to my house because I was afraid I would be arrested if someone spotted me in the field. I've been arrested four times. The real attackers run off and innocent people like me get arrested.”
“You were in your cucumber field at four in the morning?”
SpecOps brought in a wounded man they caught hiding in a house. Hands cuffed behind his back, he was a scruffy-looking character in his early twenties with an even scruffier beard and a dished turban. Interrogators took him off into a room and spent hours with him. Word soon circulated that he may have participated in the attack.
“Stand him up against a wall and shoot out his eyes,” Specialist Brandon Gray proposed.
“That's too easy,” Sammy Rhodes counter-suggested. “Basically, stake him out in the sun, pour gas on him, and light a match. Burn him the way he did our guys. Doesn't the Koran and the Bible say an eye for an eye?”
Civilians tended to think American soldiers had a switch that could turn their emotions on and off at will. It wasn't that simple. It sometimes went beyond their ability to immediately back off and exercise restraint and maturity after some of their fellow soldiers had been killed or maimed. Specialist Shaun Gopaul, Jimenez' best friend, was so angry and devastated that the chaplain and mental health counselors pulled him off the combat line before he did something he and everyone else would regret. Psychiatrists prescribed antidepressants and sleeping pills and sent him to a desk job at Battalion HQ.
Hendrickson found himself working with a “search and clear” team, experiencing the gut-churning fear that comes with kicking in doors to confront whatever might be inside. Never knowing if the welcome would come from an armed fedayeen or a child huddling in fear with his mother. On the way out from Inchon, his caravan stopped to look over the wreckage at the ambush site.
He sat in his humvee with some of the other Joes of First Platoon and
looked silently out at the shadows of rapidly approaching nightfall and the burnt-out hulls where his fellow soldiers had died. During daylight, the land could be attractive, even idyllic. It must have been a little ghostly last night with the wind blowing.
Another line of military vehicles with their lights blacked out whisked past without warning. A breeze blew the sounds of their engines the other way.
War mostly claimed the lives of young men and kids, who went out every day as they did on Malibu Road with the singular purpose of keeping faith with their buddies, of not letting them down in the face of danger or death. Of every war in which America has become embroiled, it can truthfully be said that soldiers rarely fight for God, country, and Mom's apple pie. Rather, they fight for each other, for their buddies.
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Infanti considered the toughest part of his job to be notifying a family that it had lost a son, husband, father, or brother in combat. A personal phone call was the least he could do, during which he strove to be reassuring, comforting, and complimentary in conveying his and, by extension, the army's sincerest condolences and appreciation for the job the soldier performed. Each time he finished such a call, the lump in his throat was so big he could hardly talk. He limped outside his TOC at Yusufiyah with his bad back and, standing alone, lifted his head to the stars until he recovered.
After the memorials, after the placement of boots and helmets and more photographs of the dead or missing on the walls, after Chaplain Jeff Bryan did what he could to ease the suffering, some of the “old hands” of First Platoon packed the gear of the dead and missing in boxes for shipment Stateside. The ritual was a somber one, with long-faced soldiers almost reverently handling shaving kits, wallets, photos, papers, books, letters, and other belongings before carefully placing them in boxes. New guys were not invited to participate. PFC Big Willy Hendrickson stood back and watched respectfully, feeling temporarily outcast. It was tough for a replacement to come into an outfit where bonds had already been formed. Many combat soldiers would not make new friends for fear of losing them as they had the old ones.
It seemed to medic Specialist Michael Morse that, in the sudden deaths of so many, First Platoon was losing its spiritual cohesion, its soul. Practical jokesters and teasers like Alex Jimenez and Joe Anzak had kept morale high and the men laughing. Someone in the platoon deflated Brenda the Bitch and took her off and either buried her or, if rumors were correct, stuffed her in a wag bag and burned her. She was never seen again lounging around half-dressed on the old sofa at Inchon. The Joes simply weren't in the mood for Saturday night dances or impromptu strip teases anymore after DUSTWUN.
“If we could just move time back to last week,” Morse lamented.
Everyone blamed the crater watches; sooner or later T-Rex was bound to have come for the tethered goat.
During World War II, what family members waiting at home feared most was receiving the dreaded telegram, sometimes delivered by a local taxi company, followed by the Ladies Auxiliary. Before the war ended, the army adopted the practice of dispatching officers and NCOs to the home of the deceased to break the sad news. Which was most distressing, the taxi or grim soldiers arriving in a staff car, was difficult to measure.
With Iraq, as with Vietnam and Korea, an officer attended the funeral of every soldier killed in action. His job was to oversee all the military aspects of the funeral serviceâpall bearers, military escort, Honor Guard, taps, firing of the 21-gun salute, folding and presentation of the flag to the next of kin . . . He comforted where he could and read tributes from the soldier's buddies and commanders, those who knew him, who lived with him, loved him, and fought beside him. Voices from war-deployed units transcended distance and spoke with an eloquence no civil service could ever hope to match.