War Stories (43 page)

The young officer simply shakes his head, knowing that such a journey, even without battle damage, is terribly hard on the equipment. And he's right.

But then I realize that the trip we're about to start isn't going to be a picnic either. Sitting on the hood of Maj. Cox's Humvee, I program my GPS for the route we're going to follow: across the border at Safwan, a left turn up Route 8 to Route 1, around Ad Diwaniyah to pick up Route 8 again, and through Baghdad to a TAA that V Corps has established for the 4th ID at a Republican Guard installation just north of the capital. There, the armor will be off-loaded from the HETs and 4th ID will move tactically to their assigned area of operations north of Samarra.

We'll be rolling right through the battlefields that the 1st Marine Division and the 3rd ID fought over for nearly a month on their way north to Tikrit. On my map it looks to be about five hundred miles. That's a full day's driving on interstate highways in the States. But back home there's a gas station at practically every interchange and we don't have sandstorms, ambushes by roving bands of fedayeen, or 299 other vehicles traveling with us when we pile the family into our
SUV and head to the beach. I tell Major Cox that I don't envy his task. He shrugs and says with a smile, “They're good soldiers and they've been waiting a long time for this.”

That's certainly true—on both counts. These are among the best troops in the U.S. Army. Nearly every vehicle in the 4th ID is equipped with a “Blue Force Tracker”—an encrypted, GPS-based, satellite-linked computer system that displays the location of friendly and enemy units on a plasma screen.

This capability alone offers an extraordinary advantage to 4th ID field commanders in responding to calls for reinforcements, resupply, cas-evacs, and fire support in the midst of a gunfight. Every trooper in the division has been trained to use and maintain this gear. And because they are so good, the original war plan for Iraq called for the 4th ID to accomplish one of the most difficult missions in the campaign: offload in Turkey, race east across the country to the Iraqi border, and charge south to Baghdad through some of the toughest terrain in all southwest Asia. At least that was the initial plan for these good soldiers—as Cox accurately described them.

There's also great validity to the major's comment that the men have been waiting a long time for this. The 4th ID, based at Fort Hood, Texas, was one of the first units alerted for Operation Iraqi Freedom. As early as November 2002, the division's operations and logistics officers had completed their war plans and started moving equipment to Galveston and other ports for shipment to the theater of operations. More than twenty commercial oceangoing vessels were contracted to move the 4th ID's combat gear from Texas to the NATO port facility at Iskendurun, Turkey. According to the plan, as soon as the ships arrived the division's troops, carrying only their personal weapons and gear, would be flown to the big NATO air base at Incirlik, Turkey. Then they'd bus to the port, offload the ships, and be on their way to the Iraqi border.

By working around the clock, seven days a week (even through the Christmas holidays), everything the 4th ID would need was mounted out and on its way to Turkey by the second week of January. But then the unthinkable happened: Ankara said no to U.S. plans for moving forces through Turkey. And so, with their gear still at sea and no equipment left on which to train, the soldiers of the 4th ID were told to wait.

At CENTCOM, Turkey's denial of access sent the war planners scrambling for alternatives on how to pressure Baghdad from the north. Without some kind of credible threat from that direction, Saddam would be free to move nearly all his forces south to confront coalition units invading from Kuwait.

Gen. Franks intended all along to use Special Forces teams as Scud hunters in the western desert and to rally the Kurdish enclaves in Iraq's northwestern mountains. But those lightly armed units wouldn't be enough of a threat to Baghdad to make Saddam leave six of his best combat divisions north of Tikrit.

Although the international press had reported widely on Turkey's refusal to allow transit rights to U.S. forces, Gen. Franks decided to use the 4th ID in much the same way as Eisenhower had used Patton to deceive Hitler as to where the allies intended to land on the coast of France during World War II.

In May and June of 1944, while the rest of the allies prepared to land at Normandy, George Patton was ordered to set up bogus headquarters units along the English coast between Margate and Brighton, convincing the German general staff that the allies would take the shortest route across the English Channel and land at Calais. The ruse worked and the Germans held dozens of armored divisions near Calais that could have devastated the allied landings had they been closer to Normandy on June 6, 1944.

In the days before launching Operation Iraqi Freedom, Gen. Franks used the 4th ID the same way. Instead of immediately ordering the
ships from Texas through the Suez Canal when the Turks rejected the U.S. request for transit, Gen. Franks kept the vessels at anchor off Iskendurun and insisted that the Pentagon continue the pretense of trying to change Ankara's decision. It worked. Saddam held his northern divisions in place until it was too late for them to counter the 3rd ID and the 1st Marine Division attacks from the south. Only then did Gen. Franks order the 4th ID ships to proceed through the Suez Canal, around the Arabian Peninsula, and into the Persian Gulf.

By the time the 4th ID troops finally loaded up on planes en route to Kuwait, Saddam's regime was finished. And though the patience of the soldiers from Ft. Hood was worn thin by constant alerts, canceled leaves, and interminable waiting, their delay in getting into the fight had been an important factor in abbreviating the war's duration.

Now these very frustrated soldiers are finally heading north—just as the Marines we rode with for a month get ready to head south. Though some of these soldiers talk about being “too late for the action,” the older officers and NCOs know better. At a brief stop for refueling—a sergeant first class who fought in the first Gulf War admonished one of his young troopers, “Don't think that all the shooting is over. The toughest part of this war is still ahead.”

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #39

      
With 3rd Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment

      
4th Infantry Division, U.S. Army

      
10 km north of Tikrit, Iraq

      
Easter Sunday, 20 April 2003

      
2300 Hours Local

At dawn on Easter Sunday we arrive at the 4th ID TAA, just north of Baghdad. Six days ago, riding with Sam Mundy and the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, we breezed right by this Republican Guard training
center en route to Samarra. Just north of here we passed through the lines of the 3rd ID, which had captured this facility on April 11, the day after Baghdad fell.

Now, after two and a half days of mind-deadening, butt-numbing, day-and-night movement, Griff and I are back to exactly where we were almost a week ago. The enormous convoy pulls into the facility behind Major Cox's Humvee and stops on a five-acre paved parade field. Every building around the periphery is shattered, having been hit by bombs, artillery fire, or both. We have stopped only to refuel at points along the route guarded by dust-covered paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division. Now the HETs are finally unloading their armored vehicles and preparing to highball it all the way back to Kuwait to pick up another load of equipment and bring it forward.

Every soldier and vehicle is covered with dirt, as we were during the MOASS dust storm back in March. Those passengers, like me and Griff, who have had to ride in the backseats of Humvees—a space designed by some sadist without knees or feet—are practically anesthetized.

At times during this interminable “road march,” I jump out of Maj. Cox's Humvee and jog alongside for a few minutes to prevent a potentially lethal blood clot. The first time I do it, about eight hours into the trip, our driver, SPC Rios, asks me if all Marines do this. “No,” I reply, “only the old men over fifty. And if they can't keep up we leave 'em behind.”

Rios, a communicator by training, has a keen sense of humor. After having to stop several times so that various vehicles could fix flats caused by all the shrapnel on the highway, he begins referring to the journey as an “Ordeal by Tire.”

Now that we're finally inside a friendly perimeter, Maj. Cox stretches to get out the kinks from sitting so long and goes off to find the unit that will take us north. Griff and I wander through row after
row of M-1 tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, trucks, artillery pieces, and Humvees looking for an Easter service. We find one, but not until the chaplain for one of the battalions of the 66th Armored Regiment is already wrapping up a sunrise Resurrection celebration.

By noon we have linked up with Lt. Col. Larry Jackson, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment. The famed 66th won acclaim during World War II when it landed in North Africa in 1942, and fought across Utah Beach at Normandy two and a half years later. Col. Jackson, a tough no-nonsense professional Army warrior, is adamant that the 66th will live up to its legacy.

Before we head out of the TAA, Lt. Col. Jackson briefs us on his battalion's mission: move as fast as possible to occupy and secure a wide swath of terrain northeast of Saddam's hometown of Tikrit; search for weapons of mass destruction; detain or kill any “Iraqi leadership targets”; protect the oil pipeline and refinery at Bayji; restore essential services and law and order for the civilian population, and protect U.S. forces. And, he tells me, “The area around Tikrit, Saddam's ancestral home, is the most likely place in all of Iraq where Hussein and those loyal to him will hold out. If he's there, we aim to get him.”

I say, “I hope he does—and that it'll happen soon.” Just before our briefing with Lt. Col. Jackson, the FOX News Channel foreign desk paged me and asked why we hadn't been on the air for more than forty-eight hours. As gently as I could, I informed them that the satellite equipment Griff and I carry has to be stationary to use, that we had been moving nonstop for more than forty-eight hours, and that we had still another full day's movement before we'd be able to set up. The desk officer replied, “Well, get up on the air as soon as you can. You're our last ‘embed team' in Iraq.”

Lt. Col. Larry Jackson's column of tanks, Bradleys, Humvees, trucks, and artillery forms up inside the perimeter of the Republican Guard cantonment and when he gives the signal, it moves. Griff and I are riding in a Bradley about a dozen vehicles back from the front of the column. As we exit the gate, the column has to slow down and wheel right to get on the hardball highway headed north to Tikrit. When we do so, there is a burst of AK-47 fire from a crowd milling about in front of a shabby
souk
across the highway, less than a hundred meters from our vehicle. As the call goes out over the tactical net, “Taking fire, nine o'clock!,” the gunner for our Bradley's 25mm chain gun wheels the turret around hard to the left and depresses the muzzle, looking for targets through his thermal sights. I grab my camera as several hundred civilians scatter in panic. In the midst of the crowd I can see two AK-47 barrels pointed skyward, moving with the horde. But before anyone can flip an arming switch or squeeze a trigger, another call comes over the radio, “Hold your fire! Keep moving. Close up your vehicles!”