We Got Him!

by Steve Russell

  Not so the enemy. Our combined return fire had indeed eliminated one, probably more. Chris’ scouts searched the area of the two buildings where we returned fire. Enemy shell casings littered the rooftops. A trail of blood led down from the roof where we fired the Mark-19. The blood trails tapered off until our men could no longer track them. They had no doubt been given sanctuary within any number of possible residences in the neighborhood.

  We confirmed later the name of the insurgent we killed when a martyr banner appeared the next day. These were black muslin banners with hand-painted calls for a wake bearing a slogan about martyrdom. They looked very similar to regular Iraqi funeral announcements, but the lettering was different. Joe Filmore always alerted our men to them. We cut this one down, as we did all martyr banners. On it was the name of Arkan Najan Abdullah Hamza al-Duri. He was a relative of Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the King of Clubs on the deck of cards. Izzat was the former Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and one of the original members of the coup that brought Saddam to power.

  As we assessed the situation, the outcome was satisfactory. We had been ambushed and fought our way through it with one man slightly wounded. It was not pretty, but combat never is. We could withstand whatever they threw at us in RPG Alley. I told my men that we would never be unwilling to go into this neighborhood.

  “Sir, are you okay? Did you get hit?” asked Mike Rauhut.

  “No, I’m fine, Mike.” I said, relieved.

  “I don’t see how,” he replied. “I saw fire hitting all around you.”

  “God is good!” I offered with a smile.

  As things settled, I noticed a reporter from what I believe was the European Stern magazine standing nearby. In the pandemonium, I had forgotten that he was on board with us that night. He had been a quite pleasant man when we visited earlier. Seeing a camera around his neck, I asked, “Hey, did you get any pictures?”

  “Of the pavement!” he replied with the wide eyes and excited smile of a survivor. We all had a good laugh.

  Scroll forward a few hours. Mark Stouffer’s A Company had been patrolling the streets of a dusty farm village south of Tikrit, checking for anything abnormal. Rocket-propelled grenades flying toward you certainly qualified. The men brought their Bradley section into action but the assailants fled into a house. The “Gators” of A Company quickly recovered from the near misses of the RPGs and brought their force to bear on the house. Mark’s infantry spilled out the back of the vehicles, joining others brought in by truck. The house was empty of attackers but not weapons. The enemy fled, leaving an RPG launcher and three rockets. Patrols arrested the attackers the following day when they tried to return.

  Go forward another hour to northern Tikrit and the “Cobras” of C Company. A skinny man on a motorcycle cruised down the four-lane road with an even skinnier weapon. The silhouette revealed it to be an RPG launcher strapped to his back. He was still a good distance from the Birthday Palace but close enough to be deemed hostile. Fusillades of fire greeted the man, causing him to turn wildly and escape down a side alley. He was quickly absorbed into the city under the cover of night. His attack and, no doubt, his pride were thwarted. Unfortunately, we did not capture him. These were the events of July 17, the day of the “returning” enemy. While certainly active, it was a pathetic effort to usher in Saddam’s return to power.

  While the enemy’s boastful claims of Saddam’s return on July 17 never materialized, something else was born on that date. On the morning of July 18, the people had a different view. Rather than Saddam and his henchmen, the Iraqis saw their own police, government officials, and American forces providing for their security. They seemed to accept it. They seemed, also, to acknowledge that Saddam would not return. Even his image on the Farouk Palace Gate was blown from its mount on that morning, providing a powerful visual to those who observed it.

  The Farouk Palace was the massive complex of buildings adjoining the west bank of the Tigris and the wedge between river and city. The huge bronze statue sitting atop a 50-foot-high arched gate was soon laced with explosives. A fireball of flame erupted, followed by billows of brown smoke. The metallic body of Saddam holding a banner and sitting astride a charging horse flanked by rockets soon fell down the parapet, stumbled, and crashed with finality, symbolic of Saddam’s former regime. As the dust settled, the people seemed to settle with it. The Tikritis became almost tranquil when they realized that the talk of Saddam’s return was just talk. The evening of July 18, 2003, was calm but for a volley of mortar rounds fired into an insignificant patch of sand near our tank company, C Company, 3-66 Armor—the “Cougars.”

  4. TACTICS

  THE HUNTERS

  While the people seemed to cooperate more, we also saw a more developed enemy. I was working feverishly with my commanders, urging them to train OPs and combat outposts to secure points in the city and eventually to set our own ambushes. It was risky work, but if it was properly done, our men would gain the element of surprise and could cause some serious damage. Nothing stops enemy ambushes more effectively than being ambushed himself.

  Captain Boyd was quickly getting his troops on a war footing, but I still required the outposts. I had asked Brad and all my commanders how quickly they could be ready. “We are an infantry battalion,” I reminded them. “We ought to be able to do these things. We may have Bradleys to ride, but we must still fight like infantry. I want to know how soon we can be ready.”

  “Sir, it will take at least three weeks,” Brad asserted. The other commanders agreed. “I have to take these guys through baby steps,” he continued. “It’s not that they can’t shoot or fight; it’s the patience and concealment part that needs work. I plan to give them outposts near the Birthday Palace for a few hours at a time until they improve.”

  The evening of July 19 was a good example of improvement. Brad ordered Sergeant Andrew McKnight, Sergeant Jarvis Gibson, and Sergeant Joseph Sheldrick to establish an OP ambush providing security and warning to C Company opposite the main entrance of the Birthday Palace. At 11:10 p.m., the men sighted a two-man Fedayeen team in long-sleeved black clothing with shemaghs drawn down to cover their faces. They had stealthily scaled a wall and were now in direct view of the soldiers across the street. They did not see the soldiers and began to work a corner near the Birthday Palace entrance, each with a loaded RPG launcher.

  Sergeant McKnight whispered to the others and upon seeing the RPG launchers, he opened up on the insurgents. The first bullet struck two inches from an insurgent’s head, perforating the rear flange of the RPG, and causing him to lose control of it. Startled by the shot, the enemy prematurely squeezed the trigger, wildly firing his RPG grenade into the street. The second insurgent also pulled the trigger of his weapon, sending a deadly blast into the compound wall 15 meters short of his intended mark. Metallic, echoed booms, followed by a patter of gypsum-starved concrete from the wall and pavement from the street, blended with the sharp pops of American rifle fire from Sergeants McKnight, Gibson, and Sheldrick. The soldiers at the gate hunkered behind sandbags and were not harmed.

  The badly shattered enemy fled over a breach in the residential wall he was pinned against and into even darker shadows. Brad gathered a knot of men who had hastily assembled inside his compound. A Bradley Fighting Vehicle crashed through the gate and flattened it to the ground. Brad led his forces in the direction of the last known location of the attackers.

  Chris Morris, hearing the sound of the guns, brought his forces on patrol, and I joined in with my command group and interpreter on patrol in the city. All of our forces began to cordon approximately four blocks of the city along a two-street axis. The enemy fled on foot, ditching weapons, grenades, and other items that would mark them as hostile. The soldiers weaved through city blocks, unable to find those whose attack had been thwarted.

  That night, Brad Boyd, First Sergeant Mike Evans, and Sergeant Andrew McKnight presented a shot-up RPG launcher to me with the boyish and deserved pride of hunters sh
owing off their game. In their hands was proof that this elusive, insurgent enemy was not 20 feet tall. He could be found, and he could be defeated.

  The men were making progress. They were becoming alert and on the hunt. The enemy, on the other hand, found himself looking over his shoulder, worried about our ambushes rather than planning ambushes of his own. The tale of my taunting the enemy at the open intersection circulated widely through the battalion. The morale of the men shot up after these three days of combat as we began to hit the enemy hard and seized the initiative. Not only were we seizing it in raids against Saddam’s inner circle, but in street fights as well. Patrols and OPs throughout our sector gained confidence. I told the men that we would be the hunters, not the hunted.

  SALT LICK, CATFISH TRAPS, AND SPAWNS

  On the morning of July 20, a command-detonated explosive, hidden in a pothole, erupted. A Humvee from a passing Military Police element was the target. The attack happened on Highway 1, the main highway that vertically bisected Tikrit and connected it with Bayjii in the north and Samarra in the south.

  Three soldiers were wounded, but fortunately, they were very near one of our surgical hospitals. Jon Cecalupo’s “Cougars” quickly loaded the wounded into their tanks and provided medical assistance. Thankfully, the men were not seriously injured. Sifting through the debris, our men noticed parts of a cell phone used to detonate the device. Also visible were parts of a mortar tube, apparently packed with C-4 and used to make a “super pipe bomb” in a very unconventional manner.

  We used our own mortars in the conventional manner on the following day. Finally given permission for counter battery fire, the “Thunder” soldiers of our mortar platoon registered 120mm rounds, sending earth and stubble skyward from abandoned fields. For weeks now, the division compound had been harassed with enemy mortar fire. We begged to shoot back with our own counterfire but had been denied. Then we asked to fire Harassment and Interdiction fire (H&I) on the locations that we were able to trace back with radar. Those were mostly rural areas. The enemy could shoot from the eastern side of the Tigris River and lob shells into the huge palace compound where the 4th Infantry Division headquarters resided. Our logic was, if observed, the H&I fire would keep the insurgents out of the field altogether. General Odierno agreed and gave us the permission we needed.

  We fired numerous rounds over several days to counter the enemy’s indirect fire attacks. Once our fires began, enemy mortar activity declined sharply. This was the first firing of “Regular” mortars from the 22nd Infantry since Vietnam, and the men were proud to carry on the tradition of veterans before us while keeping the indiscriminately lobbed mortar rounds of the insurgents at bay.

  Over the next few days, I sat down with Mike Rauhut and Bryan Luke to assess the situation. Still desperately short of needed infantry, both of my infantry commanders in Tikrit were doing what they could to help. Colonel Hickey relieved the Bradley section guarding his headquarters and replaced it with his own headquarters troops. This freed an additional patrol for us. He also relieved us from guarding the massive ammunition dump southwest of Tikrit, giving us an additional force. Colonel Hickey replaced our troops at the ammo dump with Lieutenant Colonel Mark Huron’s 299th Engineers, who were blowing up hundreds of thousands of enemy munitions there.

  With my rifle companies regaining their guard forces and with the relief from having to guard key infrastructure in the city, the liberated force allowed me to make my units more mobile and agile. Still, I needed OPs, combat outposts, and snipers. My scouts had the OP capability well in hand, and my infantry were learning the trade of combat outposts, as Sergeant McKnight’s group had proven, but we still needed a tight net to track and kill the enemy lurking in alleys and city streets. We had snipers, but they were scattered throughout the battalion when I took command. I brought them back together but I needed a strong leader who could act independently and allow teams of two men to conduct operations over a three- to four-day period, if necessary, to get the kills. This would take the right kind of leader and Command Sergeant Major Pete Martinez and I worked diligently to find him.

  To reform the snipers, we needed the absolute best and most resourceful staff sergeant in the battalion. I told my company commanders to submit their best because we would find them anyway. We interviewed some of the finest squad leaders in the battalion. While each was excellent in his own right, the man qualified to lead the snipers needed to possess resourcefulness, bravery, patience, assertiveness, and innovation . . . and perhaps a bit of insanity.

  We found him in Staff Sergeant Brad Owens, one of Mark Stouffer’s “Gators” from A Company. Brad had the mind-set needed for this mission and I knew Chris Morris could work with him in the Scout Platoon. While the snipers would work directly for me, they would also work hand-in-hand with my Scout Platoon. Chris’ scouts would primarily seek, while Brad Owen’s snipers would kill. The tasks and tactics were very much different.

  Of the nine soldiers in the sniper section, four of them were graduates of the U.S. Army Sniper School at Ft. Benning. I instructed Brad Owens to build a fourth team with his headquarters element, even though we only had three sniper rifles. We were able to build another team by using the Russian-made SVD sniper rifle captured at the Hadooshi farm.

  The soldiers needed to realize what I hoped to accomplish in Tikrit. In each district of the city, scout eyes, reinforced by sniper teams in augmenting locations, were needed to track enemy movement. The scouts would then pass off the enemy to roving combat patrols that would bird-dog him until he could be positioned for the kill. I estimated the need for about four scout OPs, three to four sniper teams, several combat outposts from the companies, and roving combat patrols. We would use these components like “bumpers” on a pinball machine, giving the enemy no place to hide. Once identified, he would be killed or ambushed.

  I used two illustrations to convey the plan to my men. The first was called the “Salt Lick.” In any typical infantry battalion, there are hundreds of soldiers with hunting experience. A common tactic in deer hunting is to place a salt block, during the off-season, in an area where deer are likely to travel. The hunter determines where the deer might move by observing lines of drift, water sources, wind direction, etc. He then places a block of salt called a “salt lick” in that area. The deer licks it until the hunter removes it during deer season. With a deer stand in place, the hunter is ready when the deer comes looking for the salt, and bang, he gets the buck.

  I told my commanders we would use “salt lick” tactics to strike the enemy. We knew the areas in which he moved, his “lines of drift.” He wanted to ambush us on known routes and choke points that we had to travel, but also in areas where he could readily escape into dense parts of the city. Knowing this, we would establish our own ambushes; when the enemy went in search of us—bang, we would get the buck. My commanders got it. So did our men.

  The second analogy I used was the “catfish trap.” Each trap is a box made of long slats, somewhat like a picket fence on each side, so the water can pass through the trap but not the fish. Ideally, it is laid lengthwise in the direction of the flow of water. There is a divider in the center of the box, with a funnel made of more slats that are sharp at one end. It funnels the incoming fish, like a street cone, but wide enough to let the fish pass through. The opening is not too wide so that, as the fish turns around and tries to enter through the nose of the cone, his whiskers touch the sharp ends of the slats and he refuses to swim back through. The second compartment is soon full of catfish waiting to be rolled in cornmeal and fried for dinner.

  I told my commanders that the “slats” of our catfish trap would be our scouts, combat outposts, and OPs in the city. As the enemy advanced, he would be passed off from place to place until he was “boxed” in. We would then strike with combat patrols and snipers and soon have the insurgents rolled in cornmeal, frying for dinner. Combining this with the “salt lick” ambushes, our men could ambush or be focal points for obliterating the ene
my.

  It would take a few days to redirect our forces, but the men now perceived the basics well enough to employ the new tactics. On the evening of July 22, as we began to apply some of these sniper teams, scout OPs, and combat patrol tactics, we noticed that a strange mood had descended over the city. Every eye was glued to the television set as the breaking news of Uday and Qusay Hussein’s deaths jolted the population like an electric shock.

  Tikrit was eerily quiet, but not without danger. At approximately 10:50 p.m., we heard another familiar “dumpster crash,” signaling an RPG attack, as we headed south in our command group convoy. We pressed northward along the main highway bisecting the town and saw a pall of bluish smoke. Local men gestured from balconies, giving us the general direction of the activity. A quick patrol from our men looped around the block, but we found nothing. The target was a photo shop wedged into a corner. It was all very strange. Perhaps the assailant didn’t get his film on time.

  BROTHERS, BROTHER-IN-LAW

  As I rolled to my feet from a short, deep sleep in the early hours of July 23, I had no idea how long and violent the day would be. By dusk, it was clear that the enemy had become very active, given the scattered reports of gunfire and mortars throughout the day from all the subordinate commands. Even with such obvious activity, the enemy remained elusive, though his damage was negligible. Perhaps the news of brothers Uday and Qusay Hussein’s deaths had ignited even more hatred and anger. Regardless of what may have sparked the evening’s events, it was a day I would never forget.