Hunting Down Saddam (11 page)

Over the course of the same day, there were four more Iraqi missile attacks. In one hour, three sirens.

I quickly decided that I would try to stay out of the bunker and report live, which I did, for NBC. It was a personal choice, my reasoning being that if the missile hit our bunker, which had no doors and was open to the outside, we wouldn't survive anyway. My producer hid in the bunker, and only with a bit of coaxing did I manage to get cameraman Bill Angelucci to come out.

Over the next few days, the rush of adrenaline was followed by fatigue and frustration when the “all clear” signal came. It wore on everyone.

I went from fear to anger; from not wanting to mask-up at all to reminding myself there could be chemical weapons in one of those warheads, which, while falling harmlessly in the desert, could be blown into our camp with lethal consequences.

My producer, who had decided to stay in the bunker, told me she saw one young soldier, tears visible through the gas mask eye pieces. The 3rd Mechanized had passed into Iraq. We were sitting ducks until the word would come for us to move out and into Iraq.

Camp Pennsylvania

Getting psyched up to go into combat is a lifelong pursuit for commanders training young soldiers: how to turn fear into something that motivates. The attack on Camp Pennsylvania, just down the road from our base, bruised the morale of many in the 101st. It was an attack from one of their own, and one of the most confusing sequences of events I had witnessed in the Kuwaiti desert.

An American soldier was alleged to have thrown grenades into three of his commander's tents. He also opened fire as a soldier tried to come out and investigate the source of the blasts. One soldier lay dead, while nineteen were injured, including the commander.

At Camp New York, there was pandemonium as first word spread of the attack and then another explosion erupted into the night sky. I looked up and saw a huge orange fireball slowly falling to earth not far from our camp. Then the alarm sounded for us to put on gas masks. Soldiers, believing there was a coordinated terror attack on the Camps, took up defensive positions, crawling on the ground around our tent and aiming their weapons at the perimeter fences.

As the hunt was underway for the wanted American soldier at Camp Pennsylvania, in an unrelated incident, one of the camp's Patriot missile batteries mistakenly identified a British fighter jet as an incoming missile, and launched. We heard the launch, and the fireball I saw turned out not to be a downed missile as we first reported, but the aftermath of two British pilots being blown out of the sky.

Unrelated events, but in the end connected. As soldiers rushed into bunkers, the wanted American soldier who had carried out the attack was seen in a bunker with blood on his clothes, tackled, and arrested.

Despite the obvious news value of the attack, some questioned our reporting, because it actually delayed the departure of the 3rd Brigade. COL Joe Anderson, who attended the memorial ceremony the next day at Camp Pennsylvania, left us behind at Camp New York. His view was, “The story is a day old; we have a war to fight. I can't imagine why you're still reporting that.”

The colonel never tried to stop us from reporting, but the incident demonstrated one way of controlling reports coming from embeds. The Army won't censor your material, but they can control what you have access to. We relied on their transportation, their good will to take us where we wanted to go, and sometimes they weren't interested in allowing us to see what we thought was news.

Mission Planning

It deserves to be written now that overall, during the war, I was provided remarkable access by the 101st. Not all commanders were as open as COL Anderson. He trusted me as a professional, enough so that I was privy to witnessing the actual mission planning as it happened. I was allowed to walk in and out of what is known as the TOC, or Tactical Operations Center. Inside there were computer screens with real-time information on troop movements. In battle planning, we heard when troops would move before they did. I also saw American intelligence estimates showing the estimated strength and locations of Iraqi forces. All of this helped me cover the war for the American public in a most efficient manner as an embedded reporter.

Because of his confidence in me not to report mission plans, which would surely cost American lives, I can say that the embed process allowed me a deep understanding of the war from beginning to end. I did not consider it a compromise to not report something the moment I knew it. And it was because of COL Anderson's trust that I came to know that complicated mission plans were often turned upside down.

Almost daily, the 101st received changes in battle plans, and planners became deeply frustrated. 101st MAJ Mike Hamlet, who led mission planning, told me, “I have never seen anything like
this
in war planning.”

As an example, one day, the 2nd Brigade was tasked to take Saddam International Airport. Another day it was a target code-named BEARS—the road leading out of Baghdad to Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. In the end, the Strike Brigade was never tasked to take those targets. The 3rd Infantry Division moved faster than anyone imagined and mission plans went up in smoke.

Final Dinner

“Easy Company,” the famous company of soldiers from World War II profiled in movies and TV programs like
Band of Brothers,
was part of the 101st.

Soldiers from Easy Company told me that when waiting for paratrooper missions in England, they never knew when they would be sent to fight—except for one signal: the night before combat, they were given a special meal. That meant they would go to war the very next day. There were so many canceled missions after these meals that they seemed a mixed blessing.

In a dining tent set up for hundreds, at Camp New York, we lined up for our special meal. Steak and lobster were served to soldiers who now knew they were being deployed to Iraq.

Soldiers from other bases got wind of the menu, and decided they deserved a good dinner, too, so as a result, the lines were so long I never actually tasted the steak. But the lobster tail was the last good meal I would eat for weeks. In the dining hall, soldiers were wearing their chemical (MOPP) suits; the call to move out early the next day had come. There are many stories of the tricky intricate planning in wartime; now I know it goes right down to the last lobster tail served up with melted butter in a tent in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert!

Road to Iraq

The 101st has a saying about how quickly it can deploy: faster, deeper, further. Light infantry, rapid-deployment airborne units can move much faster than heavy, mechanized divisions that need monstrous amounts of supplies to keep them going. We didn't cross the border first, but when the Strike Brigade moved, it was fast. Traveling only in humvees, we crossed the border into Iraq. Being in the back of a cramped humvee with a cameraman was about as comfortable as being squeezed into a tin can.

Excluding a few fuel stops and eating Army food on the hoods of our vehicles, we drove north toward Baghdad for a straight thirty hours. It was exhausting and nerve wracking. The danger and fear were that Iraqi forces would launch a preemptive assault on our convoy of several hundred vehicles. Humvees are not bulletproof. They are “soft” vehicles and offer little protection, so much of the time we drove at night. No lights. All the while, the drivers were wearing night vision goggles and trying not to fall asleep or run into the vehicle in front.

It is difficult to describe the massive amount of U.S. military supplies moving north. For example, we were told the 3rd ID was literally running out of gas. Huge tankers, convoys of thirty and more, raced up the highway to refuel tanks waiting to assault Baghdad.

One tanker overturned in front of us, when a convoy was told there was intelligence that an Iraqi attack might occur on their roadside base, and they moved out too quickly.

On the road, we saw dizzying amounts of burned-out Iraqi vehicles. And, while it received little media attention at the time, we also saw burned-out U.S. M1A1 Abrams tanks. Soldiers were shocked because no U.S. tanks had been destroyed by Iraqi forces in the last Gulf War, yet outside Baghdad alone we saw three of them damaged beyond use.

The First Mission

The Strike Brigade's first mission involved relieving mechanized units from the Iraqi town of Kifil, a little town with a very large battle.

Kifil, south of Baghdad and near An-Najaf, is a gateway across the Euphrates River, and where the Iraqis put up a major fight. As we entered the town, the first bridge had been half exploded. We drove across what was left only to find out a few days later there were explosives under the bridge that luckily didn't detonate as we crossed.

When the 3rd ID quickly pressed forward to Baghdad before us, they often skirted towns and cities, leaving them still occupied by Iraqi Army units and paramilitaries.

Our first meeting with the mechanized units took place on the north side of town, and it ended in mayhem. Iraqi forces, knowing our location, fired mortars on our position.

My cameraman, Bill Angelucci, jumped into a crater left over by the Coalition air campaign, and took cover. I was stuck outside. I first ran for cover beside a building, but then thought the wall might come down on top of me. I ran out into the open, praying the shells now landing 150 feet away wouldn't kill us.

Within seconds, the Army wisely signaled that we were moving out.

But it wasn't over. As we drove down the road, enemy sniper fire was directed at soldiers guarding the road. This time I took cover next to a ditch while the soldiers frantically searched for the source of the sniper fire.

All the fears of urban warfare were suddenly realized: The sound of fire echoes off buildings and there's no way to tell where it's coming from. You take cover and scan the buildings but often the gunman fires and moves before troops can return fire.

Members of the 101st shook their heads at the damage done by tank fire to the town of Kifil. There was barely a storefront or home along the main street that wasn't bullet ridden. The bodies of Iraqi paramilitaries shot to death in their vehicles remained. It was a gruesome scene, as starving dogs fed on the bodies.

I will never love dogs quite the way I used to.

Kifil Soda

Kifil, a town most Americans have never heard of, soon became famous among the Coalition troops. The 101st Airborne (AASLT) took over a soda factory as its temporary base. Huge stockpiles of apple-flavored soda, orange soda, and cola soon started appearing on military units moving toward Baghdad. Some soldiers would probably drink that soda before long, in Baghdad!

The Army told us they planned to write a check to the owner of the factory—if he ever turned up.

The Kifil soda factory also bottled water. After days of 100-degree heat, wearing chemical gear that felt like a sauna, we had our first showers. One of the soldiers used a plastic laundry tub and placed it on a second-floor platform inside the soda factory. With a hose as a shower head, and gravity working to draw the water down to the first floor, I was able to get sixty seconds of water.

Ten seconds to get wet and soap up.

Fifty seconds to wash off.

The water was freezing cold.

Still, that soda factory proved to be one of the most comfortable nights we had in Iraq.

Sleeping

When we slept, most of our time was spent on the ground, under the stars, in humvees, or on portable cots—if we could get them.

There were times that we left our gear behind, believing we'd be back to a temporary base—only to be stuck in an area of conflict with nothing. I will never forget the searing daytime heat of Iraq followed by the freezing nighttime temperatures.

In the city of An-Najaf, I slept for two nights on the ground behind a school. With only my clothes and a bulletproof vest to keep me warm, I spent the night miserable and shivering, dreaming the “heater,” or Iraqi sunrise, would come soon. My bulletproof vest often doubled as my pillow. Not very soft, but enough to keep my head off the ground, where I worried about scorpions.

In the end, I only saw one scorpion next to my bedroll, which didn't bother me. It was a spider that decided I was good enough to eat. For two weeks after the war, I suffered stomach swelling and eventually underwent surgery for the poisonous bite.

An-Najaf—Mines!

An-Najaf is a holy city to the Iraqi Shi'ia, housing the Tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, who the Shi'ia believe was the Prophet's true successor. An-Najaf was one of the places the Shi'ia rose up against Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War, only to be slaughtered by Iraqi forces. Soldiers from the Strike Brigade took the city from the north while other members of the 101st fought their way into the southern half.

I stood and watched LTC Bill Bennett from the 101st call in his artillery strikes. The first artillery shells were smoke, to shelter the hundreds of U.S. soldiers moving into residential areas, then came the actual artillery fire directed at the rooftops that were used by the pro-Saddam loyalists to resist the Coalition attack.

Suddenly, out of the smoke we saw a Shi'ia man emerge and approach commanders. He was speaking Arabic while signaling that there was something on the ground we were walking on: land mines!

We had walked onto a minefield, and now we had to get back out. Mines are buried and designed to hide just below the topsoil, until someone steps on them with devastating results. Two of our tanks had already crossed the field safely, so we quickly moved onto those tracks, cautiously walking our way through the danger.

When we got to the other side, our cocky COL Anderson remarked: “Ha! I think that there were no mines—that guy just told us that so we wouldn't spoil his field.”

Not ten minutes later, there was an explosion as a humvee crossed the field and ran over a mine. Luckily, the passenger seat was empty. The vehicle was destroyed by the blast, but the two soldiers inside the vehicle were unharmed.