War Stories (40 page)

      
With HMLA-267

      
Eastern Iraq

      
Saturday, 12 April 2003

      
2345 Hours Local

By the time Griff and I bed down on the night of April 11, the immediate area around the RCT-5 HQ at the sports complex is secure. Earlier in the day, while I was out poking around the warehouse/home, S/Sgt. Riayan Tejeda, of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines—with whom I had gone on patrol a few nights earlier—was killed by an Iraqi or fedayeen sniper. But by dark last night, things in Baghdad are remarkably quiet. Wrapped in my poncho liner on the concrete steps of the stadium, I can see stars overhead—and the Marine sniper team on the roof of the school next door. And though there are occasional bursts of AK-47 fire off in the distance, for the first time since March 20, we don't hear the sound of U.S. or British jets or UAVs overhead.

In the morning, Capt. Allen Grinalds, a Cobra pilot with HMLA-267, offers to have me ride along on a “hunter-killer” mission. Grinalds was flight leader for two AH1J Cobras and two UH1N Hueys. They are heading north toward Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, looking for a fight. It sounds like a way to get some good footage for one of my FOX News Channel feeds and see some of the country I haven't yet been over, so I go along. As is so often the case in war, things don't go as intended.

The original flight plan called for us to fly the route that would be taken by Task Force Tripoli. This hastily organized unit, comprising 1st, 2nd, and 3rd LAR Battalions, an artillery battalion, an infantry company, a Marine engineer detachment, and a Navy SEAL team—all commanded by Brig. Gen. John Kelly, the 1st Marine Division assistant commander—was to take Tikrit as fast as possible. Task
Force Tripoli had two missions: kill or capture any leaders of the regime who might have taken refuge in the city, and make sure that the Kurds didn't get there first. The CENTCOM staff was justifiably concerned that if Kurdish pesh merga troops got to Tikrit before U.S. forces arrived, there would be a slaughter of biblical proportions. There isn't a Kurdish fighter in Iraq who hasn't lost at least one family member to Saddam's goons. And in this part of the world, retribution is a way of life.

The mission to be “the
firstest
with the
mostest
” in Tikrit fell to I-MEF, even though the Marines had already come farther, faster than anyone else in the war, and farther from water than any Marine force had ever gone before.

Grinalds and his four-bird flight take off and head north for about ten minutes. But shortly after we leave the Baghdad skyline behind, an urgent call comes over the radio diverting the mission to a “high-priority target”—an enemy armor concentration to our east—in the Task Force Tarawa zone of action. As the four helicopters wheel right and head off in the new direction, I fumble with my laminated map to plot the grid. I am astounded—we are being sent more than 150 miles east, to the vicinity of Al Amarah, within sight of the Iranian border.

The Marines of Task Force Tarawa, having fought the bloody battle of An Nasiriyah and then all the way north to An Numiniyah, have spent the last two weeks holding more than 150 kilometers of MSR (main supply route) on Routes 1, 7, and 27, keeping them open for Marine and Army convoys rolling up from Kuwait. Despite being spread thin—and even though some units have suffered combat losses of more than 20 percent—not one convoy has been ambushed by roving bands of fedayeen. Now the exhausted and depleted TF Tarawa is tasked with the “urgent mission” of racing east to Al Amarah because someone at “higher headquarters” perceives a threat from an Iraqi border outpost.

We refuel twice on the way, and just as we finally arrive at the outskirts of the city, Grinalds receives a radio call canceling the mission. The target has been hit by a fixed-wing air strike.

As it turns out, the whole venture is for naught. When Task Force Tarawa swarms into Al Amarah, they confirm what was apparent to all but those who sent us there: the Iraqis have already fled, leaving mountains of unattended weapons, equipment, ordnance, and armor behind.

As the discouraged pilots fly back to the west, one of the Cobra pilots sees a large enclosure surrounded by guard towers, and a berm topped with barbed wire. On closer inspection it turns out to be a tank park. There are dozens of Iraqi T-72s, T-55s, BMPs, BTRs, and anti-aircraft weapons scattered about the site—far too much to be destroyed by four helicopters carrying 2.75-inch and five-inch rockets, Hellfire and TOW missiles, 20mm cannons, and machine guns. But after marking the GPS position of the site, the pilots take out their frustration by destroying the anti-aircraft weapons protecting the facility so that they can't threaten any other aircraft. Then, for good measure, they unleash their TOWs and Hellfires on the armor. As the birds wheel away into the setting sun more than thirty of the Iraqi armored vehicles, AA guns, SAMs, and trucks are blazing.

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #34

      
With 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines

      
Baghdad, Iraq

      
Palm Sunday, 13 April 2003

      
2345 Hours Local

We spent last night on the captured runway at An Numaniyah. This is now a full-fledged Marine airbase—MAG-39 and MAG-13 both have operations and logistics centers here. I had just unrolled my
poncho liner beside the skid of the Huey when Lt. Gen. Conway, the I-MEF commander, drove up in a Humvee and invited me to join him for a late-night snack. Since he didn't have room in his vehicle for all twelve of the Huey and Cobra pilots and aircrews, I respectfully declined his hospitality and got my first full night's sleep in weeks.

Shortly after dawn, as I am wolfing down a jambalaya MRE for breakfast, my satellite phone rings and the duty officer at the FOX News Channel foreign desk in New York politely inquires if I could link up with Task Force Tripoli, now on its way to Tikrit. I explain, without going into the details, that I was about seventy-five miles southeast of Baghdad and looking for a ride to link up with RCT-5 and HMM-268.

“Why do you want me to cover Task Force Tripoli?” I ask. “We already have Rick Leventhal and Christian Galdabini with 3rd LAR and they're part of TF Tripoli. They're as good or better than anybody out here. Why can't they cover the attack on Tikrit?”

“Their Humvee broke down,” he replies.

“I'll do my best,” I say, and sign off. Then I make a frantic dash for the MAG-39 Forward Operations tent. Inside I find Gunnery Sgt. Robert Pequeno, the MAG-39 Ops Chief—who also happens to be the best barber in all of I-MEF—and he snags me a ride in a CH-46 up to RCT-5.

But by the time I arrive back at the Baghdad sports complex, find Griff, pack up our satellite gear, and go into the RCT-5 CP to scrounge another hop north to link up with TF Tripoli, it is too late. All the HMM-268 “frogs” and HMLA-267 Hueys are committed to other missions. Breaking one loose to fly two guys from FOX News Channel up the Tigris to Tikrit just isn't in the cards.

Seeing my disappointment, Joe Dunford suggests that we join up with Sam Mundy's 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines again, because they are headed up that way. We promptly load our gear into two Humvees
and head across town, where Mundy's Marines are preparing to roll out of Baghdad and head north. We arrive just in time for a Palm Sunday service being offered by the battalion chaplain.

I've been to hundreds of these church services over the years. “Church” has been the hangar deck of an assault landing ship, a bomb crater at Khe Sanh, an artillery revetment at Con Thien, a jungle-covered hillside in Central America, a bunker in Beirut, a sweltering tent in Kuwait, and countless other venues. None of those are more memorable than this gathering of 250 or more bone-weary, grimy young men, clad in their battle gear, standing, sitting, and kneeling in the dusty courtyard of a former Republican Guard barracks.

The sergeant major has organized a choir, which sings as well as any in a cathedral. The chaplain's words are inspiring and almost prophetic. He uses the Gospel text about Christ entering Jerusalem a week before his terrible death as a lesson for the young Marines gathered for worship. “The crowd's cheers turned to jeers. Jesus didn't live up to their expectations,” he said. “Most of the people didn't understand his purpose in being there and turned on him.”

It somehow seems as though that is already happening to these Marines. Most of the people here in Iraq welcomed them, showering them with flowers, handing them little handmade American flags, and loving them for having ended Saddam's reign of terror. But back home, as evidenced by the criticism in the media, it seems as though their victorious entry into Baghdad, like Christ's into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, is widely misunderstood. Complaints in the U.S. press and in Paris about their “failures to prevent Iraqi looting,” the destruction of “cultural sites,” the “inability to get water and electricity flowing” seem grievously unfair to these boys-turned-men who have fought so hard and sacrificed so much to get this far.

Following the service, Griff and I videotape Mundy's Op Order to his company commanders for the attack north. We'll drive through
northern Baghdad, pass through the 3rd Infantry Division's lines, and pick up the route north taken by Task Force Tripoli. The battalion's mission is to drive north through hostile territory for sixty kilometers and search for “high-value leadership targets,” look for American POWs, check out a major pharmaceutical plant in Samarra for weapons of mass destruction, secure the nearby airfield, and be ready to reinforce TF Tripoli in Tikrit if needed. Just an average day for a Marine infantry battalion.

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #35