A Soldier's Perspective

On this Day Four Years Ago

Those that have followed my blog for the past two and a half years have no doubt read about what happened on March 31, 2003. There I was, in the middle….just kidding. I won't rehash it since you can read it yourself. What you haven't really read about was how I got there and what was going on around me.

As you know, Jules Crittendon, a reporter with the Boston Herald, was embedded with us that day. He wrote a story about the incident that Emily read when a the mother of one of her friends in Illinois read it and sent it to her. That's how she found out about the incident. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have mentioned it. I spent the whole war with whichever unit was on the front line (or "tip of the spear" as they call it). THIS is the story that was picked up in papers across the US. We've kept in touch for the past four years. He's one of the few journalists I trust and actually like.

So, you've read my account and you've read Jules' account (if you clicked the link). What I'd like to share now are parts from his journal where he writes about the things going on around me at the time that I wasn't aware of. In combat engagements, Soldiers tend to get tunnel visioned towards their encounter at the time. Jules has given me permission to share this.

As we neared al-Hindiyah, Wolford radioed the order to pour on speed for the assault. Our vehicle lunged forward, the vibration and already deafening track and engine noise intensifying as Baxter accelerated. It was the 21st century equivalent of a cavalry charge. It felt like surfing toward rocks, on a massive heavy metal wave. The anticipation of fire brought all our senses alive and we were all wired, beneath the mutual small-talk and joking pretense that this was all somehow normal, a Monday morning carpool to work. I suppressed the thought of fire coming through the steel walls of the Bradley and being dead in a few minutes, and it was not so hard, as we became engaged. Our Bradley was in line behind the Red Platoon tanks, where the Bradley’s fire-support team could call in artillery as needed, with White and Blue Platoons following. The Red tankers just ahead of us reported Iraqi RPG teams scrambling into roadside ditches as we approached.

“We’ve got contact," Lustig said over the radio, matter-of-fact and cool about it.

The tankers opened up with their .50 caliber and 7.62 mm machine guns. For the first time, I heard a 120 mm main gun fire. It was a horrific, merciless noise. It cut right through the track noise, right through my CVC helmet’s headphones where I sat in my regular perch in the back of the Bradley, taking notes. Then the shock wave rocked our 27-ton armored vehicle.

LT: “He blew the f*** out of that thing. It was awesome. That’s s*** you see in the movies."

Sgt. Will, also up in the turret: “I see somebody. A lot of people down the road, running."

LT: “I’d be running too."

Baxter, up front driving: “Y’all see that dog? The main gun round go off, that b***h just froze!"

LT: “Oh s***! RPG!"

Baxter: “Where, where?"

LT: “Left, left!"

Sgt. Will: “Fire?"

LT: “Yeah… Fire!"

The Bradley rocked with the recoil of its 25 mm cannon, and acrid bluish smoke wafted into the rear cabin.

LT: “I don’t see anyone moving around anymore."

RPGs were now rocketing through and over the column. One skidded skyward off an Abrams turret’s angled armor. Another barely cleared the medic track. Small arms and mortar fire was kicking up dust around the vehicles.

Wolford to White One: “There are dismounts behind that wall. Take down the wall."

Wolford a few seconds later: “I don’t hear you firing, White One."

Several thunderous main gun discharges shook our vehicle.

Wolford: “We just killed seven dismounts. They’re lying on top of that bunker complex. There’s still another bunker. Take it out, White One."

There was another boom of main gun fire.

White One: “One bunker destroyed, sir."

I asked the LT for permission to get out of the Bradley.

LT: “What the heck. If the CO doesn’t want you out there, he can tell you to get back in."

The woman was one of a family of terrified farmers coming out from a farmhouse 100 feet in front and to the right of us. Wolford directed them to cover behind the Bradley. Two women in abayas and two little girls in dirty pink and red smocks huddled there and wept. Wolford asked who had candy for the kids. I took some MRE candy from my pocket and offered it, but the kids refused to look at me and the women angrily waved it away. Wolford, trying to reassure them, showed pictures of his own wife and kids. Heavy machine-gun fire resumed from the vicinity of the berm, answered by the .50 cals on the tanks. Red tracer streaks darted through the palms. The Iraqi women pushed the little girls down and covered them with their bodies. One woman, crouched over, began breastfeeding an infant I hadn’t noticed before.

An incendiary grenade was fired into the farmhouse to dislodge a suspected sniper, and a teenaged youth huddling with the women began speaking and gesturing frantically. It took a few minutes, but when C.J. Grisham, one of the Arabic-speaking counterintelligence specialists, understood his request, the Iraqi youth was allowed to go in. He re-emerged a few minutes later with a hobbling old man. Then Wolford told the family they needed to leave. They didn’t want to go but, Grisham translated for Wolford, if they didn’t get moving down the road, they’d be zipstripped. They argued a little more, but finally moved out.

The surrendering Iraqi soldiers sat zip-tied on the pavement in front of us. They stared at us, a couple with dark, menacing looks, most just frightened. One of them was trembling uncontrollably. One had what looked like a smirk. He was the one who could barely keep his genitals inside his baggy bikini briefs. Baxter was out of the vehicle now and covering the prisoners with his rifle.

Around mid-morning, an M577 command track and an Abrams tank pulled up. Col. Perkins, the brigade commander, and 4-64’s CO, LTC deCamp, jumped out and went to talk with Wolford. Atlantic Monthly writer Michael Kelly, my acquaintance from the embed bus, climbed out of the 577 behind Perkins. Kelly’s round face was swimming in his oversized chemical warfare suit and helmet. He beamed. As others who knew him have noted, Kelly had the ability to make you immediately feel like an old friend. I was surprised and pleased to see him.

“How are you doing?" he said.

“Fine. Busy morning," I said. I told him what had been happening here, and he gave me a little about the fight through town to the bridge, where the mechanized infantry had encountered moderately heavy resistance.

“You watch these guys and look at their body language. Some are genuinely concerned. Others are leaning in doorways, their arms crossed. Those are the ones you watch," Lustig said.

As we talked, an RPG streaked out of the trees a couple hundred feet or so down the road, a white-hot flash trailing white smoke. It flew high and wide. The tankers in that part of the column opened up.

Wolford took a party of tankers and combat engineers in among the date palms to gather up the Iraqi weapons and ammo. I moved in with them, examining the places where the Iraqis had slept around their weapons in shallow depressions. There were cheap multi-colored civilian blankets lying in depressions around the mortars, forming dusty little nests. In one place, there were some tin mess kits and a pot of half-cooked lentils. We had surprised them at breakfast.

The dogs who had been barking all morning were quiet and a pair of donkeys were chewing their fodder in a farmyard nearby. As some soldiers hefted the Iraqi ammo to the collection point where they would be destroyed, a couple of artillery rounds whistled overhead and exploded in the palm groves across the highway.

“That stuff’s going the wrong way. Let’s get this stuff and get out of here," said Wolford. The destruction of Iraqi defenses around the bridge at Hindiyah and the theoretical confusion of Iraqi military command had been accomplished. Unclear whether we had succeeded in luring anyone out of Karbala or Hillah to get killed by the Air Force. No one told us.

As the soldiers hefted the Iraqi weapons, I walked over to what appeared to be an irrigation or drainage ditch and walked along it, looking down at the weapons and crates full of RPG and mortar rounds where the Iraqis had set up fighting positions in it. Then I looked up and saw Wolford and Grisham checking some Iraqi bodies for documents out in the field and walked over to join them.

I had just reached them when several bursts of AK and M4 rifle fire sounded behind me.

“We just killed two of them!" a GI shouted. But the heavy thunking noise of AK 47 fire resumed and the GIs, half a dozen of them, flattened themselves behind palm trunks. Wolford, Grisham and I began moving toward the fight, going from one palm to another. Recognizing that both parties of riflemen were intently focused on each other about 50 feet ahead of us, my initial feeling of vulnerability to fire in the open field subsided. I leaned against one of the date palms, looking around and taking notes. I could see five or six GIs kneeling behind piles of earth and palm stumps, exchanging fire with some unseen Iraqis in a ditch, under a large clump of brush. The leaves were fluttering and puffs of dusts were kicking up on both sides of the exchange. Looking back, I saw Grisham’s head poking out one side of the next tree back, and Wolford looking around the other side.

Grisham ran forward to the next tree ahead of me, yelling “Esteslem, esteslem!" He explained later that meant “Surrender!" The Iraqis answered with AK fire, and the GIs returned a heavy volley of M4 fire and the plunk of an M203 grenade launcher.

“I think I got him!" yelled the GI with the grenade launcher, one of the combat engineers. But the AK fire resumed. Wolford, exasperated, ran ahead emptying his 9 mil at the ditch. Taking cover, he yelled at the GIs, “Anyone got a grenade? When you throw it, bound up on him while he’s still stunned!"

The GIs followed Wolford’s advice, and finally the firing stopped. A wild animal-like moaning noise came out of the ditch. The Iraqi who was making that noise crawled out from under the brush.

“I got him! I got him!" the M203 gunner yelled, running up and pointing his rifle down at the blood-smeared Iraqi. The Iraqi was writhing on the ground, wailing and moaning in pain and anger. One of his buttocks was ripped open.

“Stay down, mother****er!" the GI shouted. The Iraqi kept moaning loudly. A couple more GIs came up and pointed their rifles down at him.

“Shut the f*** up!"

“How’s that 203 round taste, motherf***er! That was me!"

“I told him ‘esteslem,’ " Grisham said. The Iraqi, lying on his face, heard that and waved his hand dismissively. He interrupted his moaning to spit out the words, “esteslem, esteslem" in an “all right already" tone.

There was a dead kid lying in the ditch, shot in the head. Two more Iraqi holdouts lay 15 feet farther down on their backs against the rear of the ditch, one dead and the other in shock, ashen-faced, with a gaping hole in his thigh, ragged bloody meat and white sinew showing where a grenade had torn a chunk out. We thought it was over, but as the GIs began carrying that one out, AK fire erupted from a position 100 feet farther along.

The exchange of M4 and AK fire continued as we talked. Then the engineer with the M203 got back into it and fired a grenade. It exploded with a whump, kicking up some dust. There was more AK fire. We could see some rustling in the brush. The engineer checked his aim and fired another grenade, dead on this time. The AK fire stopped.

The GIs were moving back up to the road, carrying the two wounded Iraqis out of the ditch. I stopped for a minute by one of the dead ones. He was a clean-cut, nice-looking teenager in a forest-green Republican Guard uniform, lying on his side against the back of his ditch, still holding his AK in his hands. His eyes were wide open, staring at the branches a few inches in front of his face. He had a neat hole in the side of his face where a bullet had drilled straight back into his brain. He barely looked dead. I remember thinking what a waste it was, and that his parents were going to be upset about this. I remember thinking: “You stupid mother****er. Your buddies zip-tied up on the road over there will be eating MREs tonight. And look at you. All done."

I joined Grisham for the walk up to the road.

“First time I’ve ever been shot at. Pretty exhilarating," he said.

“Yeah. You know what Winston Churchill said about that? ‘There is nothing so exhilarating in life as to be shot at without effect.’ It feels great when they miss."

Read the entire, unedited, story at Jules' website.