Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War (35 page)

Just as he did, a mortar round landed so close that he was clobbered in the face with mud. Shirley quickly ducked back down and closed the hatch.

With the lull in the incoming fire and the extra security Alpha’s presence had brought them, Lieutenant Conor Tracy, commander of Charlie’s AAV platoon, could begin to account for his trackers and his vehicles. He’d started the day with forty-eight men and twelve working vehicles. Now he counted no more than ten men and only two working tracks. He’d been with most of his platoon for a year and a half. He knew almost everything about them. Now he was facing up to the prospect that his platoon was decimated.

He was on the eastern side of the road, working out what he was going to do next, when the first of his missing trackers pulled back into his area in a working AAV. It was Corporal Brown and Sergeant Schaefer, who had followed Major Peeples’s tank back up Ambush Alley. Tracy was delighted to see them.

Schaefer, too, was overjoyed to see Tracy. At one stage during the battle, he was convinced that Tracy, his platoon commander, was dead. He’d had to take over the responsibility of leadership, and he didn’t like it. He was feeling confused and guilty. A few hours earlier, he had led a convoy of five vehicles south and had now come back with only one functioning track.

“I’m so fucking sorry.”

Schaefer and Tracy sat down in the dirt and shared a cigarette, taking cover under an overhang where part of the eastern side of the road had been blown away. Tracy didn’t smoke, but someone had given him the cigarette early that morning. He’d kept it in his pocket, and it was so bent out of shape that it looked like the McDonald’s logo. Someone had to light it for him. His hands were shaking from shock.

“I’m so fucking sorry that I lost those vehicles.”

Schaefer was on the point of breaking down. He analyzed everything he’d done, picked apart every decision he made. He could feel the tears welling up. Guilt started to overwhelm him. He felt bad about taking so many vehicles south, and he felt bad about leaving Castleberry and the others in Ambush Alley. Schaefer, at twenty-five, was one of the senior guys. He’d been with the Camp Lejeune AAVs for four years. He remembered the day Castleberry and the others had arrived at the 2nd AAV Battalion headquarters at Courthouse Bay. He’d enjoyed training them and teaching them everything he knew. Castleberry was highly strung and overexcitable, but Schaefer always felt real proud when he gave him something hard to do and he pulled it off. It was the same with Elliot. He was a good Christian pretty boy who never did anything wrong. But he felt protective toward him and the others. Now he felt as though he’d let them down. He’d abandoned them in Ambush Alley. He was glad Lieutenant Tracy was sitting next to him, because otherwise he would have lost it.

“You did what you thought was right. At least you were able to let them know of the situation at the northern bridge.”

Tracy tried to reassure him. He wouldn’t have ordered the medevac convoy to go back, but it did mean that someone managed to reach Alpha and warn them of the fight that Charlie was in.

“Don’t dwell on it. There’s work to be done.”

That helped change Schaefer’s mind-set. He got up to scour the creeks and irrigation ditches for the bodies of the missing marines. Then he would have to start work on the tracks. For every hour that the track is running, it needs eight hours maintenance.
The idle mind is a dangerous
thing. We’ve got to get back to work.

One by one, Tracy’s trackers started turning up. Everyone that showed up was a gift. Soon he didn’t even think of it as losing people. The numbers of those confirmed alive mounted. But it was troubling him that Castleberry hadn’t appeared. He recalled the message that Castleberry had clicked through to him on the radio that he was somewhere in the city.
Where is he
now?

As Castleberry arrived back at the northern bridge with the rest of the marines from the Alamo, the first thing he saw was Staff Sergeant John Lefebvre in one of the tracks, with Lance Corporal Jerome Washburn driving. Castleberry was confused.
It should be Chanawongse driving.
It gave him a bad feeling. He didn’t yet know that two of his fellow trackers, Corporal Kemaphoom Chanawongse and Sergeant Michael Bitz, had been killed. He reached the rest of the trackers. He was so glad to see them. He burst into tears. It was like returning to his family.

“Hey, we’re so glad to see you. We thought you were dead.”

Sergeant Matthew Beaver gave him a big, big hug.

“Hey man, it’s real good to see you.”

“Doc” Fonseca, one of the corpsmen, grabbed him.

“Where are you hurt? What do you need?”

Castleberry’s knees and elbows were bloody and raw, but otherwise he was fine. He drank some water and tried to smoke a cigarette, but he was shaking so much that he had to put it down.

“Chanawongse is dead. Bitz is missing.”

He went numb. He felt like a zombie. He couldn’t think too much. He now understood the term
war torn. They’re all fucked-up looking.
He tried to piece it all together. He found Schaefer assessing the damage to one of the tracks. Castleberry listened wide-eyed as Schaefer told him how he had jumped into Brown’s track to head back to the Euphrates Bridge and how, when he had asked for help to get them out of Ambush Alley, a battalion captain at the command post had told him there was nothing he could do.

“I told them, but those motherfuckers wouldn’t send anyone to help you.”

Castleberry stewed.
How is that possible? How did they not know
where we were? And when they knew, why didn’t they help us?
He looked up at Schaefer.

“I need to be alone for a while.”

For the next hour, Castleberry sat there, his head in his arms looking at the ground.

Lieutenant Reid, in the back of the casualty track, was getting nervous. He couldn’t see what was going on, and even though there was not much noise outside, he was fearful that the track was going to get hit.
I’m not going to
stay here.
He jumped out of the track to find a bunch of people from Alpha Company standing around. He couldn’t understand why they looked so nonchalant.
Don’t you understand there is a battle going on?
Then it dawned on him that most of the fighting had stopped. He asked around for his buddy from Alpha, Lieutenant Steve Cook. A corpsman came over and had him sit down at the casualty collection point. Then Cook came over.

“I’m glad to see that you are okay.”

Their wives were good friends, and just by seeing him, Reid felt closer to home. Another close friend, Lieutenant James Lane, an Alpha platoon commander, came over. Reid’s eye was still bloody and swollen, and he was still losing blood from somewhere.

“Where are you hit?”

“I am good to go. Another doc bandaged me up.”

“Well, we are going to take your SAPI plate out to make you more comfortable.”

They opened up Reid’s flak jacket and took out his Small Protective Insert, a bulletproof ceramic plate.

“Holy shit.”

“What is it, Doc?”

“There is a hole in your shoulder. I do not see an exit wound. But it doesn’t look too bad. You’ll be fine.”

“Sure thing, Doc.”

The medic patched him up and marines came by to see him. He watched their body language closely to see how they reacted to him.
Am I going to
have an eye by the end of this?
His head seethed with guilt. He knew several of his men had been killed, including the artillery FO and platoon sergeant. Lieutenant Seely came by and just laughed at him and gave him a friendly tap on the leg. That made him feel better. He remembered with black humor that he and Cook had bet on which bridge would be the toughest to take. Cook had thought the northern bridge would be hardest. Reid had thought it would be the southern bridge. When they were on ship, Charlie had originally been tasked with taking the southern bridge and Alpha the northern bridge. Both of them had been pissed when their missions were switched because they both wanted to be where the action was.
I guess Cook was right.

Jose Torres was still lying by the casualty collection point. He had no idea what was going on. To him, it was just a bunch of marines coming and going. He felt as though he had been on a roller coaster for several hours, just spinning around as he was driven from track to track. Now he was lying in the dirt waiting for the helos to come in. Every so often, a marine would come past and comfort him, or a corpsman would check up on him. He had a tag attached, which read, “
Urgent—surgery—buttock.
”

Nearby, another marine had the job of keeping the flies, birds, and dogs away from the body parts laid out on ponchos in the mud and the hood of a Humvee.

Overhead, there was the throb of an incoming helicopter.

4

Captain Eric Garcia, piloting his CH-46 helo, had dropped off the two casualties from the first casevac at the “Big Buddy” CSSB or Combat Service Support Battalion, 22 level-one care facility and then flown on to the Jalibah airstrip to refuel. It was there that he had got a call to go back into Nasiriyah. This time they were very clear about the status.

“Parole 25, there is a Mass Cas situation. Mass Cas.”

Mass Casualties.
Reports were coming in that there might be as many as fifty. He focused on flying the helo back toward Nasiriyah. It wasn’t his job to think about the patients or wonder what sort of state they were in. His job was to get his CH-46 back to the battlefield as quickly and safely as possible.

In the rear of the CH-46, Moses Gloria went through his equipment again. But he was distracted. He couldn’t help looking through the windows, searching for incoming RPGs. He’d done his job with the two patients on his first casevac mission. But this time he knew it would be different.

Mass Cas.
Even the sound made him fearful. He was scared that his brain might freeze when he started to work on someone. He was terrified that the number of casualties would overwhelm him.

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . . please help me make it through the day.”

He prayed that nothing would hit the aircraft. He prayed that he would be able to do his job. He prayed that he would remain calm. He prayed that he would not get in such a state that he would start pretending to do stuff that in reality was not going to help. His worst moment had been during refueling, when he knew that he had to get back there and save some lives. But the refueling took time. There was nothing he could do except sit and wait.

Garcia looked down at the outskirts of Nasiriyah. Puffs of black smoke erupted around him. It reminded him of watching an old World War II movie.
There must be an Iraqi antiaircraft artillery battery aiming at me,
trying to bring down the helo.
They started taking fire from a palm grove by the river. Now below him he could see the street where they had carried out the first casevac mission a couple of hours earlier. This time the air controller gave him another grid a couple of miles farther north. He flew over the north-south MSR. He was flying over Ambush Alley. Now he could see the blackened hulk of a burned-out AAV just by a bridge over a narrow stretch of waterway. It was still smoking. He couldn’t believe that’s what could happen to an AAV. He’d never seen anything like that before. He hovered overhead, found a wide road to land on, and brought the helo down.

Gloria looked out of the window and saw that they were hovering above the landing zone. He looked over a wide, desolate area of mud fields covered in debris and smashed vehicles. The site was a reality check. During the previous weeks, he had been lolling around in Kuwait, trying to make use of the facilities. He knew that once they got to Iraq it would be rough, so he spent much of his time on the Air Force side—the Rock, he called it—enjoying the hot chow and showers, the air-conditioned chow halls, the stores selling reading material, the cabins for making calls home. He’d seen the full might of the coalition getting ready for war. There was the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the Brits, the West Coast and East Coast Marines. He’d thought then that it was going to be a walk in the park, that with such power and organization they would stroll into Baghdad. He’d daydreamed about how he was going to spend the extra money he earned after the war was over.

Now all those thoughts were gone. Moses Gloria could see the full terror of what was waiting for him. There were smoking vehicles; bodies, some covered in camouflage ponchos, some draped in the Stars and Stripes; groups of wounded marines, dazed and confused, held together by bloody bandages and strips of T-shirts. Some were in the arms of their buddies who were trying to comfort them.
This is hell on earth.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

The helo landed with a bump. He ran down the ramp and began triaging, assessing his patients for severity of injury. There were marines holding bloody limbs that were no longer attached to their bodies. There were gaping lumps of gore where a leg used to be, bones protruding through skin, necks and faces covered with shrapnel wounds oozing thick red blood.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Flashes of people that had ever meant anything to him came into his head.

“Where were you hit?”

He took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together.

“Can you hear what I am saying?”

Something had clicked—muscle memory, training—something that just made him get to work on his patients in spite of all the chaos and terror around him, in spite of all the weird things that were going through his head.

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

He made sure that he went from marine to marine, checking all of them. He felt that a guardian angel was looking over him, helping him do what he had to do to get these guys out of there. There was one marine with a severe chest wound that he wanted to spend time over. But he forced himself to help everybody, to not waste all his supplies on one patient. He started babbling to himself. He was losing it again. He stopped and took a deep breath. One marine’s stomach was blowing up. He was bleeding internally. There was nothing he could do for him. He needed major surgery and fast. He tried to make him comfortable.

“Hang on there, buddy, we’re going to get you home.”

Gloria chose his patients. He took the critical ones with internal injuries, severed limbs, head injuries. He started to send the less critical injuries to a second helo that had just landed. He was horrified to see that a master sergeant was already loading the dead into that helo. Nobody had the heart to tell him to take out the bodies. One of the marines loaded up was covered in the Stars and Stripes. None of the corpsmen or crew chiefs that day would forget the name of that marine. The marine who carried him to the helo had scrawled it on a piece of cardboard
—Fribley.

“We loved that guy. Get him home.”

Gloria looked for seven patients to make up a full load. There was one who was in a bad way—it was some sort of cervical injury, but he was stable. He had a laceration to the head and a couple of superficial wounds to the stomach and his leg, but they weren’t bleeders. He had a collar around his neck. But the worse thing was that he couldn’t or wouldn’t open his eyes. They were squinted down really hard. It reminded Gloria of the MVA victims who’d suffered head trauma or cervical spinal injury from a vehicle accident.

“Can you squeeze my hand?”

The marine, his eyes shut tight, gave Gloria’s hand a slight squeeze. He tried getting him to move his leg. There was no movement. He rubbed his sternum to see if he could get some reaction. Nothing. He realized that there was nothing he could do for the marine. It was either shell shock, in which case he’d recover with time, or he was really messed up and had some sort of brain injury. There were limits to what he could do. He moved onto the next one.

He began to package them, putting tags on them with information on their injuries and what medication they’d had. He had to guesstimate what treatment they’d received on the battlefield.

Some of the corpsmen on the ground had done excellent first-aid work with what little they had. Some of them had molle bags with IV fluid and bandages, but much of the equipment had already run out. Marines had used T-shirts to stem the bleeding, belts and shoelaces as tourniquets, duct tape and rifles as splints. They’d done what they had to. Get air into the airways; if he bleeds, plug the hole.

He moved onto his next patient, Sergeant Torres. On his tag, a corpsman had written, “
Urgent—surgery—buttock.
” He pulled back the bloody dressing and found that half the marine’s buttock had been blown off.
We’re taking a beating down here. This is something we can’t handle. This
isn’t Kansas anymore.
He suddenly had a premonition that this is what it was going to be like every day for the next six months.
We’re going to be flying 24/7, balls to the wall, picking up guys in body bags and piecing them
together.

“Okay, get him on the helo.”

Mass cas.
It was so utterly confusing no matter how hard you planned for it.
This is what is going to happen all over Iraq.
He wondered how he got here. Why wasn’t he in some nice white naval hospital somewhere?
I’m
not a warrior. I’m trained to heal, not to fight. I’m on the chubby side; I’m
not made to run around on a battlefield like this.
All the same, he did what he was trained to do, scared, fearful, doubting his own abilities. He patched up some marines and sent them back to their units to fight again. Others he sent to the helo.

He had his full load of seven patients. If he took more, he would be maxed out and unable to cope. He let Captain Garcia know the casualty status.

“Okay, sir, we have five litter patients and two walking. We have three surgicals and two immediates. Let me know when we have an ETA.”

He could usually tell within minutes whether he was going to lose a patient. This time, though, he didn’t think he had any “expectants.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

Marines were still ferrying the dead and injured to another helo that had landed next to them. The rotors whirred, the ramp went up, and the helo lifted. Some marines were in too much pain to say anything. Others were joking.

“At least this shrapnel wound will make it easier for me to pick up a girl.”

One marine was missing part of an arm, but he was still more worried about the marine next to him.

“I’m all right, Doc. Look after my buddy.”

One of those loaded on the helo was Lieutenant Reid. He was worried that the helo was going to get hit.
What a way to go after making it through
such a horrible day.
With relief, he felt the helo lift. But he couldn’t get the morbid thoughts out of his head.
What if we get a mechanical failure and
end up going down?

While the corpsman made sure that the IV fluid was properly attached, Reid thought back to the number of wounded in his platoon. He looked over and saw Torres and Espinoza on the other side of the helo. He had seen at least three dead. If that’s what happened to his platoon, then there might be fifty dead from Charlie Company as a whole. The germ of guilt continued to take root.
I ordered Garibay to get those guys on the track
and ordered it to go back. I killed them.
It was too much to think about. But in the weeks to come, alone in the hospital, he would continuously analyze the battle from every angle, and he would become bitter. He felt that they had been micromanaged in training, that the decision making was too centralized. It would take several months before he realized the only thing that still mattered: that nobody—neither the general, the colonel, nor any of the battalion staff—had set out to get anybody hurt. They had all, including him, made decisions based on the information they had at the time. There were some things that no one could control: how hard the wind blew, whether the Iraqi jerked the trigger, whether the enemy mortar was bubbled up or not. Everyone had done their best, but some things were just not known.
Would I like to have more information next time?
You’re damn right I would.
His one hope was that one day, the truth about that day would come out, regardless of egos, so that everyone could learn from what went wrong.
If the Marine Corps learns and becomes stronger,
then my men did not die in vain.

Alongside Reid, Torres was feverish and cold. As the helo banked, he saw the devastation below, a swirling mass of vehicles, men, smoke, and mud. Breaking through the sound of the rotors, he heard a
tink, tink, tink
of small-arms rounds hitting the helo’s hull.
What is going to happen to me?

Gloria went from patient to patient, checking up on them all, keeping them talking, taking their blood pressures and heart rates. A couple of marines had cut femoral arteries that had been controlled on the ground. He left those wounds alone. He wanted to make sure that the wounds didn’t uncauterize. He didn’t want to lose any of them now that they were so close to getting help. He looked at the horror around him and decided that when it was over, he would make every day count.
If you’re moving,
you’re breathing. If you’re breathing, you’re alive. If you’re alive, it’s a
good day. It’s a good day.

“Airburst at two o’clock.”

Garcia, in the lead aircraft, pushed his helo through the airbursts and flew back over the city toward Jalibah.