Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War (19 page)

From track 201, Castleberry had seen the incoming shells getting closer and closer to Reid’s mortars. He saw a mortar squad frantically trying to target where the shells were coming from. He almost stopped breathing when he saw what looked like an enemy mortar score a direct hit. Pokorney’s body flew toward him. He didn’t immediately react. There was too much going on to take it in.
If we don’t move these tracks, we’re also going
to get hit.
As the tracker, he was responsible for moving the vehicle away from danger. But he couldn’t go anywhere. Robinson, Wenztel, and the rest of the infantry were still out in the fields. It was a rule that you never left without your infantry guys.
I hope we come up with something and get
the hell out of here because those mortars will fuck us up.
Castleberry focused on calling out targets for Schaefer, who was working the .50 cal in the turret of the track. He saw Iraqis running in and out of huts and shacks in the fields around him. They seemed to be collecting RPGs and AK-47s that had been stored there.
Holy shit. The hajjis are getting closer.

Captain Dan Wittnam was still expecting, at any moment, to see the tanks and amtracks of Bravo Company hurtling over the bridge. He scanned the horizon, waiting to hear the throb of a large force on the move.
Where the
hell are they?
His own position was sinking into confusion as fire rained down on them from all sides. They were now taking heavy machine-gun fire from both inside the city and from the north. There was small-arms fire from some huts to the east and from a swampy area to the west. RPGs, heavy rounds from recoilless rifles, mortars, and artillery shells were raining down on them from every direction. His AAVs were fanned out over a quarter-mile area a couple of hundred meters to the north of the Saddam Canal Bridge, mostly sheltered behind large dirt berms. Each time Wittnam and Lieutenant Conor Tracy, the AAV platoon commander, tried to get the tracks to move away from the mortar fire, artillery would bracket in on them. Wittnam realized that they’d fallen into a kill sack. The enemy had expected them to go for the northern bridge and had surrounded them with artillery and mortar positions. Their every move was being watched and targeted. What was worrying was the sheer volume of incoming fire. It was the key to any firefight. If Charlie couldn’t match the volume of incoming, they would be overrun. He now wondered whether it had been a mistake not to prep the battlefield beforehand. Normally, prior to an engagement, the commanders would have sent in aircraft and artillery rounds to bomb the defenders before the ground forces arrived. He knew that they had not done it at Nasiriyah because they wanted to limit collateral damage. In any case, they had not been expecting a big fight. But now he believed that they really did need to get some artillery fire hitting the area of the city to the southwest of the canal bridge. That’s where most of the fire was coming from. He grabbed the radio handset again. It was just a babble of confused radio transmissions. Until he knew where Bravo, Alpha, and the forward CP were, he couldn’t risk calling in artillery strikes.

He rolled back to the company net and heard the news of mounting casualties. He ran over to the destroyed mortar position. A few moments earlier he had had been admiring how fast and furiously they had been going at it with the mortars. He had just complimented Reid on his work.

“We are winning.”

Now he saw the lifeless bodies of four of his marines. He knew that they had been killed instantly. Staff Sergeant Philip Jordan, a decorated veteran from the first Gulf war, lay there in the dirt. He rolled over another body and saw the face of one of the mortar crew, twenty-year-old Corporal Jorge Gonzalez from Los Angeles. A few days earlier, he’d congratulated Gonzalez because he had learned that his wife had just given birth to their first child, Alonso. He saw the battered body of Second Lieutenant Fred Pokorney, who, after thirteen years of service, was going to be promoted later that day. He was going to shake his hand as soon as the bridges were taken. He saw twenty-year-old Lance Corporal Brian Buesing from Cedar Key, Florida, lying in the dirt. Buesing’s grandfather had been a marine mortarman and Silver Star winner in Korea. The scene now facing Wittnam took everything to a whole new level. At that moment, something in him died. They’d been under his command for a year. He’d trained them, he’d urged them on, he’d been responsible for them. He felt proud when they’d done well. Now his young marines were dead. He knew that not a day would pass when he wouldn’t think about them. He knew then that every day he would feel a wrenching regret that he wasn’t able to bring them all home.

Wittnam had to stop the defense from breaking down. He ran along the lines, seeking out his platoon commanders, encouraging them to keep their marines in the fight. Many of them looked scared and confused.

“Keep doing what you are doing. Consolidate your ammo. It’s not going to be too long. Our job is to secure this bridge, and we’re not gonna leave it.”

He knew he had to remain calm and show his face. That was how the Marines had taught him leadership. That’s what kept the marines around him fighting.

At First Sergeant Jose Henao’s medevac track, the number of casualties was mounting. Henao, who had spent twenty-two of his forty-one years in the Marine Corps, was already taking care of the five wounded from track 211. One of the wounded brought to him was the machine gunner, Jose Torres. Torres couldn’t walk. His right leg was hurting so badly that he couldn’t put pressure on it and had to hop on his left leg. His ears were still ringing and his vision was still foggy. He was only half there. He felt that part of him was floating in the air, looking down as if in a dream. Someone lay him down in the track and sat on him to stop the bleeding. He realized now that there were braggarts and bullshitters who claimed to have been in battle but really didn’t understand what war was about. War got into your nose, your eyes, your ears, your stomach. War got into your head. Soldiers who had fought in the American Civil War had a phrase for it. They called it “seeing the elephant.”

Michael “Doc” Robinson, one of the Navy corpsman assigned to the marines, winced as he cut away the chemical suit around Torres’s right leg. There were chunks of flesh missing. He checked his airway, his breathing, his pulse. He pulled out some bandages from his molle bag, the first aid kit that had everything he needed for a combat medical emergency.

“We’re gonna fix you up all right.”

“Don’t worry about me, work on the others.”

Doc Robinson saw that Torres was in a bad way. He was emotional but strong.
That’s the closest thing to a hero I ever saw.
He wanted to reassure him as he worked on him. At the same time, he couldn’t tell him that it was going to be fine because he didn’t know that.

“Corpsman up, corpsman up.”

Robinson was up and running again. He had a marine running alongside him for protection. Robinson only carried a 9 mm sidearm. He could carry more medical equipment if he wasn’t weighed down with heavy weapons. There were several casualties now lining up for treatment. Each time he stabilized one patient, the cry “Corpsman up” would ring out and he’d be up and running again, his molle bag banging into his side. He was grateful that the marines were wearing flak jackets and helmets. Most of the wounds he was treating were the extremities: gunshot and shrapnel wounds to the leg, broken limbs. He could deal with those. Shots to the chest and head he could do very little about. Caked in mud and dust, a marine was down in the dirt, clutching his leg and yelling in agony.

“I’m all messed up, Doc. Help me, Doc, save me. Am I going to die?”

A rush of impatience went through “Doc” Robinson. He knew it must be painful and he wouldn’t like to get shot, but it wasn’t a bad wound. He paused and went through the ABC routine—airway, breathing, circulation. His finger swept the marine’s mouth, checking if the airway was clear and that he was breathing. Then he took his pulse. He tried to calm the marine down.

“It’s going to be all right. You’re safe. We’re going to bandage you up and get you out of here.”

It wasn’t just about doing the physical thing. Ninety percent of what he did was sort out the mental side of his wounded marines. He had to encourage them, persuade them to be strong. In the three months that he’d been deployed with them he’d gotten to know them all so quickly, much more quickly than in Camp Lejeune. It felt as though he’d known them for years. He felt his heart jump into his throat, seeing his marines down and hurting. He had to push the thought aside and get on with his job.
There’s
time to grieve later on. There’s time to feel sorry for them later on. Now it’s
time to act, not time to cry.

First Sergeant Henao made a call to the battalion’s assistant operations officer, Captain Joel Hernley, who was in the C7 vehicle at the battalion main command post south of the Euphrates Bridge.

“We need a medevac. It’s urgent. We need a helo. But we’re in a hot LZ.”

Hernley asked Henao for the grid coordinates.

“I’ll get back to you.”

As Henao got off the track to look at his map, something big hit the medevac track, shaking it mercilessly and smashing a hole in its side. Marines inside screamed and yelled. A marine shouted at Henao.

“We’ve got to get the wounded out of here. We’ve got to take them back down south.”

Henao was momentarily stunned.
Take them back down south? That’s
suicide. It’s too far. We’re not doing that.
No way was he going to go back down Ambush Alley.

He felt panic set in around him. He tried to remain calm.

“We’re not going to go south. We’re going to get the marines out of the track.”

Henao knew the caliber of the shells landing around him. For over twelve years he’d been a marine mortarman. He knew that they were being pounded by 60 mm and 82 mm shells. He watched in awe as an RPG smashed into the rear of his track. It bounced off and landed in the dirt. It was a dud. Marines grabbed the wounded, picking them up any way they could, and carried them to another track. The driver tried to get the track started to get them out of there, but the ignition wouldn’t turn over. They were taken out of the AAV again and laid down in a ditch sheltered by the raised highway. Marines half carried, half dragged Corporal Glass and Sergeant Torres and flopped them down in the dirt. They were yelling and moaning, their faces contorted in pain.

Torres looked around him at the dirt and dust and blood and the debris of marine boots, torn strips of uniform, and shredded MRE packets. For a few brief moments, he didn’t miss anyone. He didn’t miss his wife, his two-year-old son, his friends. He didn’t even feel lonely. That made him sad. He felt light-headed and sick. He closed his eyes.

Nearby, marines made more frantic calls for an air casualty evacuation. Wittnam got the radio operator to call for help. The voice through the field telephone came back.

“When was the last time you took fire and from what direction?”

“We’re taking fire from all directions and we’re taking it now.”

The landing zone was too hot. No helicopter could land there. The number of dead and wounded was mounting. Wittnam knew he’d lost the four marines from his mortar section. A shell had also killed a crewman in 208, Corporal Kemaphoom Chanawongse, a twenty-two-year-old Thai immigrant from Connecticut, as he was doing an ammo run from one of the tracks. But calling in a helicopter might make the situation worse. Even if the helicopter did manage to land, there was little chance that it would get out again unscathed.

There is a golden hour when you can get those guys out of here.
Arms and legs were just dangling by pieces of skin and flesh. They were pumping out blood. Wittnam was aware that if he didn’t get them proper medical attention they were going to lose their limbs completely. Or they might die. Comm was still not working effectively. He tried again to call Timberwolf to find out when help was arriving. He felt frustrated and impotent. The greatest military force in the world could do absolutely nothing to save his marines.

7

At the foot of the Euphrates Bridge, as he looked along the streets that led into the heart of the city, Captain Mike Brooks of Alpha Company saw Iraqi fighters pressing in on them along multiple routes. He had been at the bridge for nearly an hour, and the noise level and the amount of incoming fire was getting steadily more fearsome.

Whoosh.

An RPG streaked over his shoulder. He saw more and more muzzle flashes from the windows of the houses to the west of him and what looked like waves of Iraqi fighters crossing through the alleyways ahead of him. It was as though the whole town had woken up and begun to join the fight. His map was highlighted with the location of no-fire areas, such as schools and mosques, where the marines were not supposed to shoot. But now he looked through his binoculars to see groups of men running into a large mosque ahead of him. When they came out again, they were carrying weapons.
They’ve stockpiled weapons and ammunition in the buildings
surrounding the bridge. They were waiting for us.
All the rules of engagement about not firing on sensitive buildings were now crumbling in the confusion. It was the first time he had been in combat, and he was taken aback by the sensation of hearing and feeling pieces of hot metal flying through the air, just past his face.

He was anxious to get his FiST working. His marines were being targeted by a rain of fire from inside the city, and Brooks knew that it would stay like that until he managed to fight back with some serious weaponry. To his left he saw his 60 mm mortar section taking cover in some sort of trash ditch. They had unloaded their mortar pieces and were now working furiously to attach the barrels to the baseplates. Within minutes, they dropped their first rounds on a blue building to the right where most of the Iraqi fire seemed to be coming from. The mortars were set on delay. They rocketed from the tube, smashed into the building, and erupted inside, shaking the walls and knocking the glass from the windows.

He looked around at his AAVs. They were all in a good position. They’d been able to pull in behind a solid five-foot-high wall that gave them cover. It was almost as though it had been built as a defense. From the AAVs’ turrets, gunners fired their Mark 19 40 mm automatic grenade launchers. As the grenades impacted the ground, they punched holes in houses, destroyed sandbagged Iraqi positions, and tore apart anything within five meters of where they landed.

He had two platoons of infantry dispersed around the foot of the bridge, with one platoon further north tasked with securing the mouth of Ambush Alley. His young marines, lying in fighting holes and taking cover behind walls, were picking off Iraqis whenever they fired from windows or emerged from doorways to launch their RPGs. Brooks was grateful that his marines had such superior marksmanship skills. He also felt proud that they seemed to be working so well as small units, converting what they had learned in training into real combat awareness.

At their position a few hundred meters north of the Euphrates Bridge on the east side of Ambush Alley, Sergeant Frank Walker, Lance Corporal Christopher Rigolato, and Lance Corporal Dante Reece of Alpha’s 2nd Platoon were behind a berm trying to work out what was going on. Rounds were whizzing over their heads from the labyrinthine alleyways ahead and behind them. Hueys and Cobras were firing into a line of houses on the opposite side of the road.
This is chaotic and confusing, but exhilarating.
Rigolato’s training had taken over.
It’s just like a rifle range except they’re
shooting back at us.

Whoosh.

An RPG spiraled toward them and over their heads. Marines were yelling at each other.

“Get over here. No, this way. Watch your southern flank.”

“RPG.”

“Sniper at three o’clock.”

Even though they’d trained for war, none of them was prepared for the reality of it. They were shooting into the city, but the amount of fire coming at them just kept increasing. Rigolato felt the fog of war descend on him and his understanding of what was going on escape from his grasp.
There’s nothing I can do to lay out a plan. I’m just going to have to roll with
the punches.

Through his binoculars, Brooks saw the bizarre sight of a man with a child on his lap and his wife by his side sitting out on the door stoop watching the fight as if they’d come out to see a show.
Is that a commander observing the
battle? Is he a forward observer pointing out our positions to the fighters?
Is he using the child as insurance, believing that we won’t shoot at him?
Brooks didn’t open fire, but in the back of his mind he was wondering whether that was exactly what he should be doing.

He tried again to get comms. Sometimes it was crystal clear. Other times he could not get through, and all he picked up was the dialogue between the battalion’s main command post and the forward CP.

“Timberwolf, this is Main. Sitrep over.”

“Main, this is Timberwolf. Still taking fire from buildings around us. RPGs. Small-arms fire.”

Brooks knew that these were conversations that needed to be held, but he had things that he had to pass over the net. There was so much chatter that he couldn’t break in.
This is like waiting on an elevator that stops at
every floor except mine.
He tried again.

“Timberwolf, this is Tomahawk 6. We are taking heavy fire on the bridge. I say again, heavy fire on the bridge. We need tank support.”

Brooks waited for an acknowledgement. He was sending messages out but nothing was coming back. He had to assume that nobody could hear him. He couldn’t understand why the tanks were taking so long to refuel. He glanced over again at the bridge, expecting to see the M1A1s rumbling toward him at any moment. There was nothing on the bridge.
Where are
those tanks?

For the moment, his weapon systems were keeping the enemy at bay. But he realized that the longer they were there, the more the level of incoming fire was increasing. His position was a good one. It enabled him to see right into the heart of the city. But it also meant that he was dangerously exposed to incoming fire from 360 degrees around them. Mortars, small-arms fire, and RPGs just kept coming. He felt that his young marines were edgy, and he didn’t know for how long they would be able to withstand the onslaught.
It’s only a matter of time before we take serious casualties.

For a moment, he found his mind straying.
It’s strange. After all that has
gone on, I might end up dying in a shithole like this. It’s not supposed to be
playing out like this. The U.S. Marines were supposed to be walking into Nasiriyah virtually unopposed. None of it was making sense. He didn’t stay with the thought long. There were so many other things going on.
What
should I do next? Is everyone doing what they are supposed to be doing?

Once again he got on the radio to harass the battalion commander. This time he got through.

“Timberwolf, this is Tomahawk 6. We need those tanks. I’m not sure how long I can hold on here.”

“Tomahawk 6, this is Timberwolf. We’re working on it.”

Brooks was fuming with frustration.
What I need are those damn tanks.
Where the fuck are they?

The Marine Corps had taught him in its warfighting books that “war is a clash between opposing human wills” and that to win it he had to shock and paralyze the enemy by “presenting him with multiple threats that overload his ability to respond or adapt.” It wasn’t working out like that. His military instinct told him that unless he had more firepower, they would be fighting along too many fronts and would soon be overrun.