Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War (31 page)

23

Major Peeples and Captain Dyer, in their tanks
Desert Knight
and
Dark
Side,
accelerated to forty-five miles per hour as they screamed up Ambush Alley toward the Saddam Canal Bridge. Small-arms fire pinged off the side of the tanks, but they were going so fast that Peeples hardly noticed it. Halfway along, he saw what looked like a marine step out into the road and try and flag him down. It was Major Sosa, with pistol drawn. Peeples drew up beside him.
What the hell is he doing?

Sosa yelled up at him.

“Charlie Company needs you up north.”

“I know that. That’s where I’m going.”

“Well, get going then.”

Peeples jumped up again on his tank. It was a strange conversation. But at least he now knew the location of the battalion forward command post. He sped north toward the canal bridge, hardly noticing the amount of fire raining down on him. Just before reaching it something caught his eye. He saw a burning AAV, and in the dirt around it, the torso of a marine. He’d never seen a dead marine before. It was a sight that burned into his memory. He faced forward again and continued toward the bridge.

Just behind him in
Dark Side,
Dyer’s driver, Lance Corporal Shirley, was swerving the tank in and out of the telephone poles to avoid the RPG rounds that were coming at them from both sides of the road. In the turret, Dyer was targeting a retreating RPG gunner with his coax. As he swung the turret back to a forward position, he caught a glimpse of a red cloth and the distinctive shape of some marine helmets on the roof of a house on the east side of Ambush Alley. It was not much more than a flash, but he guessed that they were marines. He wondered what they were doing there. He logged the house’s position in his mind. There was no way he was going to stop. He was going at forty-five miles per hour and was under fire.

Following Peeples’s tank, he rolled up to and across the flat span of the canal bridge and got his first view of the battlefield on the north side.
Holy
shit.
Dyer again thought of a movie. The air was thick with dirt, smoke, and flying metal. Mud was being thrown up in the air as mortars and artillery shells impacted on the ground. He saw there was hardly any space between the impact holes. Small-arms fire whizzed around him.
This is like
the opening scene of
Saving Private Ryan.

Lying in a swamp near the span of the canal bridge, marines from Charlie Company’s 2nd Platoon were trying to identify targets. They had been receiving fire from under the bridge all day. They could see figures running about in the reeds trying to take potshots at them. Lance Corporal Eric Killeen was worried. If there were a concerted push from the north, they would be sandwiched.

Tracy was trying to organize his two remaining fully functioning vehicles into a defensive perimeter. He hadn’t fired the gun on his track for some time. He’d assumed that the Iraqis thought they’d all quit when the AAVs went south. He didn’t want to let them know that those two tracks were still functioning.
I’ve just got to sit here quietly and not attract any attention.

Captain Dan Wittnam was by the bridge, taking cover under the raised road that headed north. For several hours he’d been expecting tank support to arrive. It was about 1600, and soon it would get dark.
Where are
those fucking tanks?

From across the bridge, the marines of Charlie Company heard a rumble and felt the ground shake. Killeen thought Iraqi tanks were on their way. He thought the company was almost certainly lost.

Wittnam and Tracy also heard the roar. They raised their heads above the road and saw two M1A1 Abrams rumbling over the bridge. Tracy’s stomach leaped.
This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.

From the turret of his M1A1 tank, Peeples saw that Charlie Company was getting hit hard. Mortar shells were coming in from the southern bank of the canal; rounds were coming in from the west and east. He headed for the AAV with the diamond symbol denoting the commander’s track. As soon as he stopped, Dan Wittnam jumped onto the tank. He looked beat up and anxious.

“What do you need?”

Wittnam pointed to some buildings back toward the city from where they were taking most of the artillery fire. Peeples ordered his loader to load a high-explosive round.
Any second, the Iraqis are going to bracket
fire on me. I’ve got to find them before they get me.
His gunner sent out a laser shot to get a range on a building and then fired the main gun. There was a deafening boom. The building crumbled. Wittnam stayed on the tank, pointing out targets.

“We’re taking fire from that building there. The one with the machine gun on the roof.”

“Roger that. I see it. Hey, gunner, I want you to put two rounds right on that building with the red door.”

“Roger that.”

The gunner looked through the crosshairs on his sight and fired a couple of times. The tank rocked back.
Boom. Boom.
The building exploded.

Wittnam was relieved.
We’re gonna have the north side of this bridge
for the rest of the war.

“Panzer 5, this is Palehorse 3. We are separated from the rest of the company and we are getting heavy fire from the north.”

It was Lieutenant Seely, the same marine on the radio who had alerted Captain Dyer to Charlie’s plight. Peeples directed Dyer and his tank to head north and find them. From the turret, Dyer looked for Lieutenant Seely and the platoon of marines who had become separated from the rest of Charlie. About five hundred meters away, he discovered them, a ragged platoon of marines, dug in like ticks, targeting a large building complex to the north with nothing but machine guns and M16 rifles. They had no mortars with them, and their FiST members had been cut up in the fight. Artillery and mortar shells were landing all around them. Dyer remembered from briefings that the large white building was an Iraqi army complex. He got onto his gunner, Corporal Bell.

“Put some rounds into those buildings. Fire into the high points. And hose the whole complex down with the coax.”

The turret traversed until the barrel of the gun pointed at the complex. He fired the main gun, and the marines around him cheered as a fountain of dust exploded from behind the building’s white walls.

Tracy, hunkered down by the canal, now remembered the radio message he had received from Castleberry. He knew that at least one marine was somewhere in the city.
And what about the figures I saw running along the
bank of the canal when one of the convoy tracks was hit crossing back into
the city? They could be marines, too.
He couldn’t look for them with his two remaining tracks. They were too vulnerable. The only vehicle that had the armor and firepower to venture back down Ambush Alley was a tank. He got hold of Major Peeples.

“We have marines in the city.”

Peeples recalled the conversation he’d had with Sergeant Schaefer of Charlie Company. He, too, had told him that there were marines in the city. There were no comms with the battalion commander. He decided that he was the only one who was in a position to provide any help. He spoke to Captain Wittnam.

“I’m going to leave my XO here, but I’m going back into the city to find those missing marines.”

Once more,
Desert Knight
took off into Ambush Alley.

24

The marines in the two houses along Ambush Alley had been holed up for two hours. They were hot, thirsty, and exhausted. The initial euphoria that had kept them alive during those early frantic moments was ebbing away. They had still not managed to get any meaningful radio message out to the forward command. There was the distinct possibility that no one knew they were there. Lance Corporal Jared Martin, sweat, dirt, and dried blood staining his face, looked up at the sky from his position on the roof.
We have about two hours before the sun goes down. Then we’re gonna be real
screwed.

A few minutes earlier, they had heard the rumble of tanks coming from the south toward them. They had all scrambled to wave the tanks down. Someone had grabbed the orange air panel. Worthington, Doran, and Martin had waved their rifles and Kevlar helmets. But the tanks had thundered by without stopping. Soon there was nothing but a cloud of dust and a distant rumble. The atmosphere on the roof had descended into despair. They all had the same thought.
We are going to die here.

Jared Martin forced himself to stay in the game. Within his sector of fire there was a small alleyway on the other side of the street. Several times an Iraqi had emerged from behind the wall and raised an RPG to his shoulder. Each time he came out, Martin got off a round to send him diving back behind the wall before he could fire. Martin waited for him. This time he was too late. He saw the Iraqi dive into the street and fire off the RPG before he could get his M16 round off. Martin watched as the RPG arced toward him, trailing its thick white smoke.
It’s going to hit
us.
Just before it made contact, it veered off into a power line above his head, exploding in a shower of sparks.
Next time that hajji comes out, I’m
going to drop him.
A minute later, the Iraqi appeared behind the same corner. Martin was ready. He let off a burst from the M16 and the man crumpled.

Castleberry and Robinson were realizing that they were not going to get out of there. Robinson had already started to plan the defense of the houses in case they had to spend the night there. During training, they had always been encouraged to think
What If?
It was something that came naturally to Robinson. He had spent his whole life working out how to get out of difficult situations, from having an escape route if the police caught him fighting on the Santa Cruz beaches, to a story he could tell if he was accused of using steroids. Now his mind was buzzing with tasks they needed to do if they were going to make the houses secure before nightfall. Then the marines on the roof heard another distant rumble of an armored vehicle from the southern end of Ambush Alley.

“Hey, get up here, everyone. We’ve got vehicles.”

From the sound, Castleberry recognized that this time it wasn’t a tank. It was an AAV. All of them grabbed something to wave. Castleberry saw that someone was waving some pink ladies underwear.

As a tracker, Castleberry recognized every track in his platoon. He was amazed therefore to see that the lone vehicle coming up the road was Brown’s track. He didn’t know that Schaefer was inside, on his way back to Charlie’s position at the northern bridge. He watched the vehicle come toward them at speed. At the same moment, an Iraqi came out of an alley and took a knee, ready to fire an RPG at the track.

“Stop. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Stop.”

Castleberry yelled at the Iraqi uselessly. He was a long way away, but Castleberry, in a fury, unloaded a full magazine of thirty rounds at him.
That’s our ticket out of here. I’m not going to let him screw us. I’m going to
shoot this guy.

The AAV accelerated and disappeared back into the dust toward the northern bridge. It didn’t even appear to have seen them. Castleberry could see that the sight of it broke the spirit of some of the marines.

“It’s okay, guys. He’ll be back. We’ll be out of here.”

Castleberry tried to encourage them. He said that the trackers had seen them. In fact, he was just as dismayed.
We’re fucked. We’re screwed.
But he kept his thoughts to himself.
If I were them, I wouldn’t want to hear
that.

He thought about the time he’d spent with his wife, just before he’d left for Kuwait. It now upset him that they hadn’t spent more time together. They’d been high school sweethearts, and they married a year ago. She was visiting her parents when he got the news that he was going to Iraq. It was just after New Year’s, and by the time she was back they had only five days together. And most of the time he was working his butt off getting ready to depart. That sucked. When they got the order to go, they drove the amtracks to Camp Lejeune’s Onslow Beach and swam the tracks out to the ships. The lines on the ship to call home for a few minutes were so long that he had decided against calling her. He wondered now whether that was a mistake.

On the roof, Private First Class Robinson’s black thoughts were returning.
What the fuck am I doing here?
He thought of all his buddies that he’d grown up with in Santa Cruz and wondered what they would be doing now. Some would be surfing, others would be earning good money in the construction business. He thought of them partying on the beach.
None of
them are holed up in a shitty house in a far-off country being shot at by
hajjis.

It was unbelievable. They were part of the most formidable military force in the world, yet none of its might, expertise, or technology had been able to get them out. They were surviving on their own guts and wits. Robinson wasn’t looking to blame anyone, but it was hard not to feel that those higher up had let them down badly.

The clatter of a Huey woke him up. He was horrified to see it bearing down on them, guns aimed directly at their positions. Everyone on the roof put their fists on their head to signal they were friendlies and started yelling.

“Friendly. Friendly.”

The helicopter came in for a closer look and gave them the thumbs-up sign. He flew over them, went across the street, and launched some missiles at buildings across the way.

Castleberry, Robinson, and Worthington talked to each other. They talked about a lot of things. Castleberry smoked a cigarette, even though he hated the things. They talked about their girls and wives, about getting them all together once they got out of this mess. It seemed like hours since the tanks had thundered past without seeing them; in fact, it was only about thirty minutes. And then they heard the roar of a tank again.

Peeples had crossed the northern bridge and was scanning the buildings along Ambush Alley, looking for signs of marines in the city. He guessed they must be near where he had seen the torso of the dead marine on his way northward earlier. He spotted movement on the east side of the street and saw the disabled AAV. He ordered his driver to pull up alongside a building. He jumped off, ducking to avoid the fire, and ran to a house. He’d got the wrong one. He needed to be next door. He crawled through a fence to get there. Waiting for him on the other side was a group of marines. They were ecstatic and hyped up. He was the first officer they had seen since they’d been holed up in the house. Now people knew where they were.

“What the hell is going on? How can I help?”

“There are guys who’ve been bleeding for two hours. If we don’t get them out of here right away, they’re gonna die.”

There was no room in the tank and not much room on top. But Peeples saw a way that he could get some of them out of there. By turning the turret sideways, he could put the injured marines on the flat, exposed part of the tank and drive them back to the northern bridge.

Castleberry was pleased.
What an awesome idea.
If they could get the wounded to safety, the marines left in the house would feel much happier about staying there longer. Smith, Wentzel, and Olivas helped him load up the injured men onto the tank while the marines on the roof covered them with fast and furious fire. Some of the wounded could be helped along; others had to be carried because their legs were shot out. Castleberry held Elliot’s hand as he loaded him onto the tank.

“It’s going to be okay, Elli. We’re going to get you out of here. You’re going to be okay.”

“Thank God. Thank you. Thank you.”

Castleberry gave Elliot’s hand a squeeze.

“When you get back, you can have a shave and a rest. Save your energy. You’ll be fine.”

Peeples then came up with a plan to get everyone back.

“Right, fellas. This is what we are going to do. I’m going to drive my tank slowly back to the north bridge and you can walk by the side of the tank so you are protected on one flank. You’ll just have to deal with the other flank yourselves.”

Castleberry and Robinson looked at each other. They had never heard such an absurd idea in their lives.
Walk back up Ambush Alley with people
coming out from the side of the road shooting at us!

Worthington was horrified.
I’ve been across the bridge twice already,
and I’m not going back across with anything less than a battalion.

“That’s not going to work, sir. We have too many people. If we start getting hit, we’re going to be fucked.”

He was also worried about leaving behind the CLU, the sighting system for his Javelin.

“Sir, I cannot leave without my sight. It costs two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Peeples couldn’t believe it. They were in the middle of a war zone, and he was worrying about a piece of equipment.

“We can forget about the damn sight.”

Peeples thought they had the place pretty secure. Maybe they could hold out a little longer. He climbed back onto his tank and gunned up the tank, ready to take off with the wounded.

“We’ll get the rest of you out of there soon enough.”

For Castleberry, Worthington, and Robinson, it was a huge relief to have got the wounded away. The worst part was sitting there watching their fellow marines slowly bleeding to death while there was nothing any of them could do for them. As the tank left, Castleberry looked at his hands. There was blood up to his elbows. It wasn’t enemy blood. It was blood from his own marines. It was a sight that he knew would live with him forever.

Marines on the roof were ready to fight again. They were reinvigorated. They had enough ammo and no wounded to slow them down. Once again, Ortiz felt the adrenaline coursing through his veins.
We gotta do what we
gotta do to survive.