toward our insertion point.
Insurgent spies hid near the bridges and in various spots in the city. Had we been on land, they would have tracked our progress. But on the water, we weren’t an immediate threat, and they didn’t pay much attention.
We were traveling heavy. Our next stop was near the center of the city, deep in enemy territory.
Our boats eased into shore, running right up onto the bank of the canal. I rose and walked across the little bow doors, nearly losing my balance as I stepped off onto land. I trotted up the dry land, then stopped and waited for the rest of the platoon to rally around me. We’d taken eight Iraqis with us in the boats; counting our terps, we were just over two dozen strong.
The Marines slid back into the water and were gone.
Taking point, I started moving up the street toward our target. Small houses loomed ahead; there were alleys and wider roads, a maze of buildings, and the shadows of larger structures.
I hadn’t gotten very far when the laser on my rifle crapped out. The battery had died. I halted our advance.
“What the hell’s going on?” asked my lieutenant, coming up quickly.
“I need to change out my battery real quick,” I explained. Without the laser, I would be aiming blind—little better than not aiming at all.
“No, get us out of here.”
“All right.”
So I started walking again, taking us up to a nearby intersection. A figure appeared in the darkness ahead, along the edge of a shallow drainage canal. I caught the shadow of his weapon, stared for a moment as I made out the details—AK-47, extra mag taped to one in the rifle.
Muj.
The enemy. His back was turned and he was watching the street rather than the water, but he was well- armed and ready for a fight.
Without the laser, I would have been shooting blind. I motioned to my lieutenant. He came up quick, right behind me, and—
He took down the insurgent. He also damn near put a hole in my eardrum, blasting a few inches from my head.
There was no time to bitch. I ran forward as the Iraqi fell, unsure whether he was dead or if there were others nearby. The entire platoon followed, spreading out and “busting” the corners.
The guy was dead. I grabbed his AK. We ran up the street to the house we were going to take, passing some smaller houses on the way. We were a few hundred yards from the river, just off two main roads that would control that corner of the city.
Like many Iraqi houses, our target had a wall around it approximately six feet tall. The gate was locked, so I slung my M-4 on my shoulder, took out my pistol, and hauled up onto the wall, climbing up with one hand free.
When I got to the top, I saw there were people sleeping in the courtyard. I dropped down inside their compound, holding my gun on them, expecting one of my platoon mates to come over after me to open the gate.
I waited.
And waited. And waited.
“Come on,” I hissed. “Get over here.”
Nothing.
Some of the Iraqis started to stir.
I eased toward the gate, knowing I was all alone. Here I was, holding a pistol on a dozen insurgents for all I knew, and separated from the rest of my boys by a thick wall and locked gate.
I found the gate and managed to jimmy it open. The platoon and our Iraqi
The people sleeping in the courtyard turned out to be just a regular extended family. Some of my guys got them situated without firing any shots, rounding them up and moving them to a safe area. Meanwhile, the rest of us ran in to the buildings, clearing each room as quickly as we could. There was a main building, and then a smaller cottage nearby. While my boys checked for weapons and bombs, anything suspicious, I raced to the rooftop.
One of the reasons we’d selected the building was its height—the main structure was three stories tall, and so I had a decent view of the surrounding area.
Nothing stirred. So far, so good.
“Building secure,” the com guy radioed to the Army. “Come on in.”
We had just taken the house that would become COP Falcon, and, once more, done so without a fight.
Petty Officer/Planner
Our head shed had helped plan the COP Falcon operation, working directly with the Army commanders. Once they were done, they came to the platoon leadership and asked for our input. I got involved in the tactical planning process more deeply than I ever had before.
I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I had experience and knowledge to add something useful. On the other hand, it got me doing the kind of work I don’t like to do. It seemed a little “admin” or bureaucratic—coat-and- tie stuff, to use a civilian workplace metaphor.
As an E6, I was one of the more senior guys in the platoon. Usually you have a chief petty officer (E7), who’s the senior enlisted guy, and an LPO, the lead petty officer. Generally the LPO is an E6, and the only one in the platoon. In our platoon, we had two. I was the junior E6, which was great—Jay, the other E6, was LPO, and so I missed a lot of the admin duties that go with that post. On the other hand, I had the benefits of the rank. For me, it was kind of like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears—I was too senior to do the bullshit jobs and too junior to do the political jobs. I was just right.
I hated sitting down at a computer and mapping everything out, let alone making a slideshow presentation out of it. I would have much rather just said, “Hey, follow me; I’ll show what we’re going to do on the fly.” But writing it all down was important: if I went down, someone else would have to be able to step in and know what was going on.
I did get stuck with one admin job that had nothing to do with mission planning: evaluating the E5s. I truly hated it. (Jay arranged some sort of trip and left me with that—I’m sure because he didn’t want to do it, either.) The bright side was that I realized how good our people were. There were absolutely no turds in that platoon—it was a real outstanding group.
Aside from my rank and experience, the head shed wanted me involved in planning, because snipers were taking a more aggressive role in battle. We had become, in military terms, a force multiplier, able to do a lot more than you might think based on our sheer numbers alone.
Most planning decisions involved details like the best houses to take for overwatch, the route to take in, how we’d be dropped off, what we would do after the initial houses were taken, etc. Some of the decisions could be very subtle. How you get to a sniper hide, for example. The preference would be to get there as stealthily as possible. That might suggest walking in, as we had in some of the villages. But you don’t want to walk through narrow alleys where there’s a lot of trash—too much noise, too many chances for an IED or an ambush.
There’s a misperception among the general public that SpecOp troops always parachute or fast-rope into a trouble zone. While we certainly do both where appropriate, we didn’t fly into any of the areas in Ramadi. Helicopters do have certain advantages, speed and the ability to travel relatively long distances being one of them. But they’re also loud and attract attention in an urban environment. And they’re relatively easy targets to shoot down.
In this case, coming in by water made a great deal of sense, because of the way Ramadi is laid out and
