less than a shooting battle to be a bullshit mission.
By splitting us up, Officer Bob had checkmated the development of my sniper team. We had already proven to other combat leaders how effective we were working together, but it had made no difference to Bob. He wanted both of us left behind but settled for Casey. When I broke the news that he was being quarantined, Casey just shook his head and said nothing at all, but it was easy enough to read the anger and disappointment in his thoughts. I left with the main body for the attack a few minutes later while Casey told his boys to stand down and pulled his truck out of the assault position.
That same day, with the Main and Tac HQs established and guiding the battle that was developing up the road, a couple of large Iraqi BM-21 rockets came howling into the area and exploded nearby. As usual, Officer Bob went bananas, got on his radio, and started yelling gibberish at the senior officers in the Tac, who were only a few yards away and knew as well as he what had just happened. Bob said that everybody had to pack up and move, although no one had been hurt and our counterbattery radar had already pinpointed the launch site and was guiding planes to attack and shut it down. Bob was ignored, but the incident spurred Casey to get out of the man’s presence and find something useful to do.
One of the Secret Squirrels, an intelligence officer, told him that an abandoned antiaircraft missile launch site had been found nearby, and he wanted to check it out. Instead of assigning a grunt to provide an armed escort, Casey grabbed his rifle and went along to do the job himself. They came upon a carefully built position containing another of those huge French-built Roland antiair missile launchers, a state-of-the-art piece of defensive equipment, but useless because its operators had abandoned it. While the Squirrel rummaged through the trashed position, Casey found a discarded Iraqi flag: three broad stripes-red, white, and black-with three big green stars in the middle of the white one. It was not a new flag, and the colors had been dulled by time and exposure to the hot sun.
To most Americans, the Iraqi flag was just a flag, but this one was a relic from another era. Its design had been the banner of Iraq since 1963, but just before the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein added the
The morning’s mission began with the Bravo tanks and Kilo infantry heading for a suspected chemical factory while the India grunts set up in a blocking position and cleared neighborhoods to the east. The military side of the operation was relatively routine, because our coordination was flawless and we all knew our jobs.
The problem was that we were no longer out in the desert or going through smaller towns. We were entering the congested suburbs of Baghdad itself, and Iraqis streamed out of the buildings and into the streets to watch us pass, most of them waving and smiling. Some even danced with joy. This was the kind of welcome that we had been told to expect, but after our previous experiences, it was unnerving. Our armored vehicles ground toward our objective without incident, and we kept studying the cheering crowd for signs of trouble. We wanted to join the celebration of freedom, but we didn’t want to be ambushed or sniped at, or to kill any more civilians.
There was some talk later that the mission had been assigned mainly to give McCoy’s battalion something to do, and there was no doubt that the Boss was impatient. He was drawn to danger spots as if by magnetism, and when he popped out of his Humvee to enter a large building that was taller than most of those surrounding it, Sergeant Major Dave Howell put his big arm around my shoulders and told me quietly, “If he keeps this up, he is going to get himself killed. Go watch out for him.”
We followed McCoy inside what had obviously once been some sort of government building and found that looters had beaten us to the place and had stripped it bare, from the high ceilings to the floor, leaving behind only piles of junk and a musty emptiness. We ran up to the roof, and Baghdad spread out before us like a dusty checkerboard. Buildings lay out from our position at every angle, like spokes in a wheel, and parks and open spaces broke up the grids of streets. Automobiles were driving about, and people were outdoors in vast numbers. Were we going to have to fight through this?
I found a good vantage point in a rooftop corner, behind the ever-present tiara wall that every building in Iraq seemed to wear, and settled in. Other Marines spread out as I glassed the area and watched waves of civilians but saw no discernible soldier types. Maybe, I thought, we had broken their will to fight after all. I told the boys to stay sharp despite the whooping and hollering out there in the streets. As if to emphasize the danger, only a few minutes passed before we got into one of the strangest firefights of the war.
The colonel had gone back down into the building and called up to tell me it was time to drive over and check India Company, two miles away. I hurried down and linked up with him at the Humvees parked just outside the compound, and as we were saddling up, the sharp sounds of a short, vicious battle erupted inside the courtyard through which we had just passed. I had my rifle ready, but the high wall prevented me from supporting the Marines doing the firing, and by the time I popped around the corner, three Iraqi fighters lay sprawled dead about fifty meters away. Two had loaded rocket-propelled grenade launchers on their shoulders, and the third man carried a short AKM automatic rifle, the preferred weapon of Saddam’s Special Forces.
Where the hell had they come from? This area was supposed to be secure.
An Amtrac sergeant needing to answer a call of nature had gone to the corner of the compound, which was covered by a layer of smelly garbage and sludge that indicated the Iraqis had also used it as a latrine. Luckily, with the combat rule of never letting anyone go anywhere unprotected, his gunner on the Amtrac was keeping an eye on him. When the Marine had his pants down, these three jokers crawled out of the slime and mire only four feet away, apparently thinking everyone had left the compound. Surprise was total, and the Marine took off, yelling for his Amtrac mate to open fire, which he did with a 7.62 mm machine gun, and other Marine grunts quickly came up and joined the shooting. The Iraqis were killed before they could get off a shot. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good, because those fedayeen nuts could definitely have done some damage.
McCoy came into the courtyard in a fury. To Darkside Six, the otherwise laughable incident meant that his battalion was getting sloppy, and he ordered Kilo to search the entire compound thoroughly again; then he dispatched the Bravo tankers to scour the surrounding area. The laughing, waving civilians parted quickly at the sound of gunfire and the sight of suddenly grim Marines who once again were wearing their war faces.
Sure enough, only ten minutes later, the tanks kicked over a hornets’ nest, and the blasts of their big guns shook the streets as a duel opened with Iraqi troops protected in a strong bunker complex. An ambush point had been built right in the middle of an urban area. They obviously were not as concerned as we were about civilian casualties.
With Panda driving like mad, we were rushing toward the battle area in our Humvee until I once again realized the lack of wisdom in getting caught between Abrams tanks and whatever it was they were trying to kill. Instead, I spotted some Marines on a highway overpass and yelled for the Bear to get us the hell over there. He bounced the curb, churned into lower gear, regained speed, and power-slid the truck right up against the walkway to the overpass, as if he didn’t want me to have to walk far. We ran to the crest of the bridge.
A Marine was shooting at distant targets in the same bunker complex the Bravo tanks were attacking. “Staff Sergeant,” he said, “boy, am I glad you’re here. I’ve killed three of them already, but they’re too far out for me to hit with this piece of shit.”
“How far?” I put my rifle against the metal railing and braced hard into it.
“About eight hundred yards.” He was almost at the maximum range of his M16A4 rifle, a newer version of the standard infantry weapon. It had a low-power scope that increases accuracy but not distance.
“I’d say that piece of shit is doing you pretty good.” The kid had done well. “Walk me onto where they are.”
He pointed, then fired some rounds to kick up dirt in the target area. Through my scope, that was as good as a flashing neon sign. I glassed onto the bunkers made of concrete, logs, and sandbags and through a shifting haze of dust and debris saw a lot of enemy soldiers bobbing up and down, firing and dodging around. The Bravo tanks and the grunts were already putting the fear of Allah into them, and the poor souls had no idea that a sniper was joining the hunt. With no time to use the laser, I estimated the range, dialed in the dope, seven plus four and three minutes right, and settled down to work.
