launched aircraft about the size of an RC aircraft kids of all ages play with in the States.
They fit in a backpack. I never got to operate one, but they did seem kind of cool. The trickiest part—at least from what I could see—was the launch. You had to throw it pretty hard to get it airborne. The operator would rev the engine, then fling it into the air; it took a certain amount of skill.
Because they flew low and had relatively loud little engines, the backpack UAVs could be heard on the ground. They had a distinctive whine, and the Iraqis soon learned that the noise meant we were watching. They became cautious as soon as they heard it—which defeated the purpose.
Things got so heavy at some points that we had to take up two different radio bands, one to communicate with our TOC and one to use among the platoon. There was so much radio traffic back and forth that comms from the TOC would overrun us during contact.
When we first started going out, our CO told our top watch to wake him every time we got into a TIC—a military acronym that stands for “troops in contact,” or combat. Then we were getting in so much combat that he revised the order—we were only to notify him if we’d been in a TIC for an hour.
Then it was, only notify me if someone gets injured.
Shark Base was a haven during this time, a little oasis of rest and recreation. Not that it was very fancy. It had a stone floor, and the windows were blocked by sandbags. At first, our cots were practically touching, and the only homey touch was the banged-up footlockers. But we didn’t need much. We’d go out for three days, come back for a day. I’d sleep, then maybe play video games for the rest of the day, talk on the phone to back home, use the computer. Then it was time to gear up and go back out.
You had to be careful when you were talking on the phone. Operational security—OpSec, to use yet another military term—was critical. You couldn’t say anything to anyone that might give away what we were doing, or what we planned to do, or even specifically what we had done.
All of our conversations from the base were recorded. There was software that listened for key words; if enough came up, they’d pull the conversation, and you could very well get in trouble. At one point, somebody ran their mouth about an operation, and we all got cut off for a week. He was pretty humiliated, and of course we reamed him out. He felt appropriately remorseful.
Sometimes, the bad guys made it easy for us.
One day we went out and set up in a village near the main road. It was a good spot; we were able to get a few insurgents as they tried passing through the area on their way to attack the hospital.
All of a sudden, a bongo truck—a small work vehicle with a cab and a bed in the back where a business might carry equipment—careened from the road toward our house. Rather than equipment, the truck was carrying four gunmen in the back, who started shooting at us as the truck drove across the fortunately wide yard.
I shot the driver. The vehicle drifted to a halt. The passenger in the front hopped out and ran to the driver’s side. One of my buddies shot him before they could get going. We lit up the rest of the insurgents, killing them all.
A short while later, I spotted a dump truck heading down the main road. I didn’t think all that much about it, until it turned into the driveway of the house and started coming straight at us.
We’d already interviewed the owners of the house, and knew no one there drove a dump truck. And it was pretty obvious from his speed that he wasn’t there to pick up some dirt.
Tony shot the driver in the head. The vehicle veered off and crashed into another building nearby. A helo came in a short while later and blew up the truck. A Hellfire missile whooshed in, and the dump truck erupted: it had been filled with explosives.
Finally, a Plan
By early June, the Army had come up with a plan to take Ramadi back from the insurgents. In Fallujah, the Marines had worked systematically through the city, chasing and then pushing the insurgents out. Here, the insurgents were going to come to us.
The city itself was wedged between waterways and swampland. There was limited access by road. The Euphrates and the Habbaniyah canal bounded the city on the north and west; there was one bridge on either side near the northwestern tip. To the south and east, a lake, swamps, and a seasonal drainage canal helped form a natural barrier to the countryside.
The U.S. forces would come in from the perimeters of the city, the Marines from up north, and the Army on the other three sides. We would establish strongholds in various parts of the city, demonstrating that we were in control—and essentially daring the enemy to attack. When they did attack, we would fight back with everything we had. We’d set up more and more footholds, gradually extending control over the entire city.
The place was a mess. There was no functioning government, and it was beyond lawless. Foreigners entering the city were instant targets for killing or kidnapping, even if they were in armored convoys. But the place was a worse hell for ordinary Iraqis. Reports have estimated that there were more than twenty insurgent attacks against Iraqis every day. The easiest way to be killed in the city was to join the police force. Meanwhile, corruption was rife.
The Army analyzed the terrorist groups in the city and decided there were three different categories: hard- core Islamist fanatics, associated with al-Qaeda and similar groups; locals who were a little less fanatic though they still wanted to kill Americans; and opportunistic criminal gangs who were basically trying to make a living off the chaos.
The first group had to be eliminated because they would never give up; they would be our main focus in the coming campaign. The other two groups, though, might be persuaded to either leave, quit killing people, or work with the local tribal leadership. So, part of the Army plan would be to work with the tribal leadership to bring peace to the area. By all accounts, they had grown tired of the insurgents and the chaos they had brought, and wanted them gone.
The situation and plan were a lot more complicated than I can sum up. But to us on the ground, all of this was irrelevant. We didn’t give a damn about the nuances. What we saw, what we knew, was that many people wanted to kill us. And we fought back.
The
There was one way the overall plan did affect us, and not for the better.
The Ramadi offensive wasn’t supposed to be just about American troops. On the contrary, the new Iraqi army was supposed to be front and center in the effort to retake the city and make it safe.
The Iraqis were there. Front, no. Center—as a matter of fact, yes. But not quite in the way you’re thinking.
Before the assault began, we were ordered to help put an “Iraqi face on the war”—the term command and the media used for pretending that the Iraqis were actually taking the lead in making their country safe. We trained Iraqi units, and when feasible (though not necessarily desirable) took them with us on operations. We worked with three different groups; we called them all
We had used a small group of scouts during our operations east of the city. When we went into Ramadi, we used SMPs—they were a type of special police. And then we had a third group of Iraqi soldiers that we used in villages outside of the city. During most operations, we would put them in the middle of our columns—Americans at the front, the Iraqis in the center, Americans at the rear. If we were inside a house, they would sit on the first floor, doing security and talking with the family, if there was one there.
