House to House: A Tale of Modern War (24 page)

One gutsy insurgent with a bandolier of linked machine-gun rounds slung across his chest becomes separated from the rest of his cell. He takes refuge in a house about four hundred meters north of his buddies. Iwan calls in the battalion scout platoon to dig him out of the house. Three scouts go in through the front door.

As they open the door they are met by a torrent of bullets meted out by a crew-served machine gun. Staff Sergeant Jason Laser goes down, hit in the chest. A second one, Sergeant Andy Karnes, tries to help his wounded comrade, but he gets shot in the side. The machine gunner is unrelenting. A third scout suffers a grazing wound to the stomach.

Sergeant J. C. Matteson spots another insurgent who is about to enter the back door to the house. From the turret of a Humvee, Matteson blows the enemy to bits with a Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher.

Captain Sims reaches the scene just as the insurgent machine gunner starts shouting out the window, “Fuck America!” He moves from room to room in the house to avoid all the fire Sims directs on him.

When bullets don’t work, Sims calls up a bulldozer. As it rumbles toward the house, the insurgent peppers it with bullets. Though surrounded by the better part of a mech infantry company, this man will not give up.

While Sims handles the lone gunman, Iwan and Lieutenant Meno huddle up outside a house our platoon has just cleared half a kilometer away. Iwan tells Meno that tracking down the rest of the cell will be our job. If the other guys are half as committed as the one Sims faces, it’ll be one hell of a fight.

Meno outlines a plan. He wants the platoon’s Bradleys to cordon off the neighborhood. With a track on every corner, and a tank in support, we will search each house one by one.

Iwan approves the plan, climbs into his Bradley, and moves south to help set up the cordon.

House by house, we start to clear the block. We kick in doors, sweep through rooms, and try to maintain our situational awareness. Despite the threat, it is hard not to get a little complacent from the repetition. We’ve cleared too many buildings since starting out this morning.

In one house, we find rockets and ammunition. In another, we stumble across a cache of American helmets and old Kevlar flak jackets.

The big Abrams tanks clank forward and roar and rumble, leaving buildings in flaming ruins. We follow in their paths, peering into the hollowed, burning shells. Smoke coils out over the rooftops. We’re destroying the best neighborhood in town.

I watch a Bradley and an Abrams open up on a house. A 120mm round explodes inside while the Bradley’s cannon shells streak through the wreckage, eventually falling hundreds of meters away.

The area around us suddenly erupts with grenades and machine-gun fire. Those shells landed near some Marines, who have finally reached our area. It is about time they get online with us.

Then again, it is a mixed blessing to have them around. They don’t take kindly to the 25mm incoming. Their response sends us diving for cover behind our tracks as .50-caliber machine-gun fire stitches across our street. Rodriguez gets on the radio. The Marines are not apologetic. We are told that they will return any and all incoming fire, friendly or otherwise.

Not long after, the Marines send a barrage of parachute flares and star clusters over our heads. They are supposed to be moving south parallel to us, on a line some three hundred meters to the west. The coordination needs work. They send up flares at the slightest hint of contact and bathe our neighborhood in brilliant white light. This is the last thing we want. We’re fine operating in the dark; we all have night-vision goggles. But the Marines issue them only to their leadership. We own the night; the Marines rent it.

We move to another house and prepare to clear it. A star shell bursts overhead, leaving us perfectly backlit for the enemy. The sudden bloom of light washes out our night vision. For a critical moment, we’re exposed and blind. And then they send us scrambling as they commence shooting at our movement underneath their flares. Fucking Marines.

As much as I love to point out their Semper Fi-diocy, I am awed by their cohesive fire. When one Marine fires, so does his entire platoon. Their fire superiority is humbling, as I grab earth to avoid its death. Roll-playing for even two minutes as an insurgent is too long against a platoon or company of Marines. No matter what, you gotta respect that.

We continue on to the next house as the friendly star-shell barrage continues. When we get inside, my squad finds piles of IVs, gauze, and fluid bags. We press on to the next house. This one holds two sets of desert GI boots tucked away in one room. Some of the men find eight complete Iraqi National Guard uniforms.

Four hours later, we are beyond exhausted. I look over at Fitts. His limp is more pronounced.

Knapp spots something ahead in the street. Through the darkness, we see a man lying in the road, a Russian machine gun next to him. Knapp and I open fire. I hit him twice in the back and hear his lungs expel a sudden rush of air. Was it a death rattle? I’m not sure. Knapp puts a round right through his head, and that finishes the job.

We approach the insurgent. He lies on his stomach in a thick pool of his own blood. He must have been hit by a cannon shell from a passing Bradley as he hid inside one of the nearby houses. In his dying moments, he crawled into the street, still dragging his weapon and ammunition. Belts of 7.62mm rounds lie accordioned around him.

It is our job to make sure each insurgent is really dead and not just playing possum. We’re supposed to kick apart their legs, then give them a hard boot in the crotch. If they don’t flinch, they’re dead, and we can search them for booby traps and intel.

I try to kick this insurgent’s legs apart, but one is almost entirely gone and the other one is little more than tattered pink flesh and gore. When I try to kick his balls, my boot sinks into his leg cavity. It dawns on me that the guy has no nut sack left.

“Dude,” I wonder aloud, “What do you do when the guy has no legs? That wasn’t covered in training.”

I draw my knife and poke tentatively at his back. I probably should have just buried the blade in him, but I’ve never used a knife in combat before, and I’m not sure how to do it. I poke at him a couple more times, embarrassed by my lack of skill.

Lawson pulls out a larger knife and slams it home into the guy’s back. He looks over at me shaking his head.

“What a day, huh?”

It is obvious that this insurgent is dead. I lift his head up, and Knapp sweeps underneath him. “Clear,” he says, and I let the dead man sag back to the pavement. We spike his weapon and leave him for the dogs.

What a day? No shit. Happy birthday.

We continue down the street. Rubble clogs the way, and we struggle through blocks of masonry, bricks, and chunks of concrete that the tracks have left in their wake. I hear a curse. Ruiz has fallen and turned his ankle. It starts to swell inside his boot.

We move inside a nearby house so our medic can treat Ruiz. Meanwhile, the men break out their MREs and wolf down a few bites. It is the first meal we’ve eaten all day. Some of the men grab quick catnaps. Fitts and I catch hell from Cantrell, who is in a track on the left side of the cordon. He badgers us over the radio for situation reports. It is deeply irritating. We lie and tell him we’re still clearing houses.

A half hour shy of midnight, we move out again. We’re weary and our pace lags. The break has flushed the adrenaline out of our systems. The rebound from a combat-induced adrenaline rush is almost as bad as a hangover.

We cross the street and reach a nine-foot wall untouched by bullets or Bradleys. Behind it is a house also left unscathed. The gate, which is just wide enough for a car, stands partly open. The platoon files through it and enters an open courtyard. Four decorative brick columns, each about a man and a half in width, dot the courtyard. They are the only cover between the front door and the nine-foot wall.

I enter behind Fitts and his squad. Some rich Ba’athist must have owned this house. It is square-shaped, with a pillboxlike second story that opens onto a balcony overlooking the garden. The front door is to our left. Two windows into a living room take up the center, flanked by a barred window into a kitchen at the far right.

To the right is a beautifully landscaped garden with palm and date trees. A series of hedges winds around their trunks. It’s a pretty nice pad, ripe for
Better Homes and Gardens: Fallujah Edition.
The front door is ornate. We’ve been kicking in doors all over Iraq since February; I’ve long since become a door connoisseur. I can tell which ones are flimsy, which ones are thick, and which ones are so secure they will require our man-beast, Sergeant Hall, to demolish.

This door is a composite of sheet metal and steel with a beautiful glass partition inlaid in the middle. I am surprised that a thing of such beauty could survive the carnage we’ve delivered to the neighborhood.

In a neighborhood that values siege-warfare architecture, whoever built this place knew what he was doing. It’s a micro-fortress, a perfect summer getaway for a drug cartel. It’s going to be a bitch to clear.

We secure the courtyard. Fitts moves to the front door. I follow and take up a position next to a window. I look inside and see nothing unusual. My instincts aren’t tingling, which leads me to believe this place is empty like all the other ones on the block. The men aren’t overly concerned either. They spread out in the courtyard and wait for orders.

Fitts stands by the door and waits for his squad to join him. When nobody follows, he gets riled. He waits by the door, and I know he’s starting to boil. His mouth bulges with a huge wad of Copenhagen that he cadged off somebody earlier in the evening.

He spits a wad of chaw, then bellows in a tired and horse rasp, “I don’t care what squad you’re in, get in the motherfucking stack ASAP.”

Behind us, the men stir. Misa reaches the door first. The tracer fragment in his cheek has festered overnight and now looks like a giant, burned and bloody boil. It’s still oozing black liquid.

Ohle follows Misa and lines up behind him, single file. The Fallujah grime has not been kind to his face either. Beyond the cuts we all have, Ohle’s got whiteheads poking through the dirt encrusted on his face. Metcalf gets behind Ohle. Ruiz limps up to the door with Maxfield. Fitts now has his stack. He moves to the rear of it so he can watch the men as they go inside. Misa will lead the way.

Hall prepares to kick in the door, but finds it unlocked. Disappointed, he opens it the old-fashioned way, and Misa charges inside, with the rest of the men still in single file, close behind. Seconds later, most of the platoon, minus Lawson’s weapons squad and Lieutenant Meno, follows in the entry team’s wake.

I stay outside and keep my eyes on the adjoining living room through a window. This way, I can get eyes on the rooms the rest of the platoon is about to clear. If an enemy is lurking inside, I can put rounds into the bad guys before the men are exposed.

Through the window, I can see the platoon’s SureFire lights bouncing off the walls and ceilings as the men start clearing the room. They don’t need me covering now, so I move toward the front door to join up with them.

Inside the house, Misa and Ohle lead the entry team through a foyer and into the living room. There’s a closed door on the far wall. Ohle brazenly throws it open.

An instant later, red tracers stripe the darkness around Ohle. He doesn’t flinch at the surprise gunfire. Instead, he swings his SAW to his shoulder, flips the safety off, and unloads a burst. It’s no use. Unable to see the enemy, Ohle is going to die if he stays in that doorway. Misa grabs him from behind and pulls him out of the line of fire. Ohle’s finger remains tight on the trigger, and his SAW unleashes a rainbow of tracers into the next room and up into the ceiling of the living room as he spins out of balance in Misa’s grasp.

Jumping back to the window I can see Ohle’s bullets arcing into the ceiling of the living room. They ricochet crazily in all directions. More tracers bounce around, fired by the insurgents in the next room. Unsure of what’s going on, I run through the front door. Just as I get inside, a rash of gunfire tears into the foyer. Overhead, a chandelier explodes in a shower of glass and metal. I throw myself against the wall between the foyer and the living room.

I’m totally confused. I assume Fitts and his men are reconning by fire, but it’s gotten a little out of control. Our own tracers are boomeranging around our heads, sending chips of plaster, brick, and concrete spinning through the room.

“Cease fucking fire! What are you doing?” I yell. My voice is rough and sandpapery. After all the excitement of the mosque fight the day before, my vocal chords are shot. My words come rasping out. I sound like Demi Moore.

“CEASE FUCKING FIRE,” Sergeant Hall echoes my command.

A hoarse voice rises from the living room, “NO! Don’t cease fire! Continue to fucking fire!”

“They’re shooting at us,” Ohle yells back. He is unable to move.

The shooting continues. Tracers tic-tac-toe through the foyer and living room, zipping off the walls, ceiling, and cement floor. We’re in a beehive.

I need to get a handle on the situation. I shout again, “Cease fucking fire! What are we shooting at?”

I look through the door leading into the living room and see the platoon pinned against one wall. Ohle, Misa, Fitts, and the rest of the men are bleeding from dozens of wounds caused by the flying chunks of concrete and masonry. What is going on?

Fitts sees me. “Hey, Bell,” he says, “Why don’t you tell the fuckers on the other side of this wall to cease fire?”

Oh my God. We’re in contact.
It dawns on me just how precarious our position is now. Fitts watches the light go on in my head and nods at me. “Yeah, bro.”

The bulk of our two squads are trapped inside the living room. The insurgents are dug into positions in a central stairwell, just inside one door off the foyer and with a clear shot through another door to the living room, the door that Ohle opened. They can shoot through that doorway and kill anyone making a run for the foyer, since our guys are behind the far wall of the living room. They have a bowling-alley-wide field of fire into the living room, and a pie-shaped one into the foyer. They have plenty of ammunition and are not afraid to use it.