Brad Boyd and Mike Evans were observing from their vehicles on the high ground at the Birthday Palace. Parker’s men began to assault the house, and soon a man darted out, attempting to run toward the ubiquitous white Nissan pickup seen everywhere in Iraq. Parker’s troops chased the man with machine gun fire, and Brad Boyd, observing the movement from his own Bradley, ordered his gunner, Private First Class Rodrigo Vargas, to light up the truck. Twenty-five-millimeter shells smacked into the pickup, which rocked from side to side, bumped up and down, and then burst into flames. The man changed direction, whereupon he was shot through the lungs by one of Parker’s infantry soldiers on the ground.
As First Sergeant Evans covered with a Mark-19 grenade launcher, Brad decided to move out toward Parker. Boyd and Evans linked up with Parker’s men near the house. As they approached it, a man came out with raised hands and fell to his knees. He was taken prisoner along with several others, but the fight was not over. The insurgents had managed to squirt out the back from blind spots and were covered by supporting fire from other insurgents positioned in residential balconies to the north of the unfinished house.
Bullets smacked the walls, followed by the swooshing of RPG rockets and ending with metallic bangs as the soldiers took cover. The men opened up on the residences from where the fire came. “Cease fire,” Brad ordered his command, as it was clear that the enemy had withdrawn. He wanted to minimize the damage to people’s houses in the area.
Brad’s troops moved swiftly to close in on the enemy to the north, joined by additional C Company troops closing up from behind to reinforce. Sergeant First Class Stephen Yslas of Brad’s 2nd Platoon provided cover while Brad moved with Parker’s troops toward Highway 1 in an effort to maintain contact with the enemy. Although many of the assailants fled, one had been killed, three were wounded, and seven others were captured, along with a few weapons.
The contest was over. Another insurgent cell was shattered while C Company remained unscathed. I was very pleased with Brad’s handling of his company. He led them. He fought. He inspired his troops and could read a situation as it unfolded. Soon his company would shake off the self-imposed stigma of not pulling its own weight. I now had a company that I could totally trust to hold the center of the city.
The damage to the enemy in the last twenty-four hours had been manifest. Anger and carelessness cost him in deficits he could not readily repay. So continued the last desperate gasps of a dying regime. It would be just a matter of time before we gained complete dominance over Tikrit. The city began to take on an apprehensive calm. Iraqis began to work with us and give us valuable information as we, in turn, helped them rebuild their lives.
Back home, while Iraqis began to gain heart, Americans were seduced into losing it. I wrote home assuring people that things were not nearly as bleak as the press would have them believe. While our wounded and dead were tragic to us all, we had good weapons, good equipment, and stout hearts. Those of us on the front lines understood our purpose. The Iraqi people had been held in the grip of evil for decades with no means of escape. With Saddam’s government fallen, his army destroyed, and Saddam himself on the run, there was little to prevent the accomplishment of our mission—if public support at home remained firm.
Our morale was high, and I felt that success was certain. We were already successfully capturing some of Saddam’s inner circle, fighting insurgents in the street, and interacting with the Iraqi people. We clearly held the initiative. Our actions of the last month had truly impacted the enemy. Even so, I would learn of a new threat to be fought—the threat of inaccurate reporting and the need for telling our story. Rather than shun the press, I opted to engage them as openly and honestly as possible. Stories would be written whether our view was presented or not. Better, then, to provide that view.
As August approached, the press would descend on us as Tikrit had become irrefutably newsworthy. We would meet many reporters, and I grew to respect them, eventually. I continued to base my plan for success in Tikrit on the “Three Tiers” strategy of henchmen, bodyguards, and trigger pullers while we braced ourselves for what would inevitably come as we endured the oppressive heat in the land of the two rivers.
TOUGH GUY
Hot, that’s what it was. The burning, blistering, brutal heat seared our hands as we held weapons, picked up tools and handled parts. We wore gloves to prevent burns. In vehicles, the wind fanned us like a blow-dryer on the maximum heat setting, increasing the effect of the soaring temperature. Even our fingernails got hot.
Yet, somehow, we endured. The Iraqis became suspicious. They could not fathom our ability to operate in battle gear and armored vehicular kilns in the sizzling summer sun. Therefore, another explanation must be given for our endurance, some explanation beyond toughness and tenacity. Since we were Americans, we must surely have some technology allowing this capability. Iraqis inquired about our air-conditioned helmets and their source of power. The talk on the Arab street was about our cooling vests and air-conditioned underwear. Despite our best efforts, we were never able to find these items for issue or purchase.
The markets in Tikrit did offer some merchandise for reprieve from the heat, however. We traded greenbacks for underpowered, Chinese-made air conditioners and fans, with minimal benefit. Like most things in Iraq, they initially presented an impressive façade but worked with only marginal effectiveness and soon expired.
We had been extremely busy since the firefights of late July. Time flew swiftly, but it was all so surreal. Every day was just another day, interrupted by too few hours of sleep. Days of the week blurred without weekends to delineate them. Were it not for our watches and incremental changes in the moon, there would have been virtually no awareness of time at all. We counted the days because they promised relief from the heat. We longed for autumn and the subsequent hope of seeing our families and friends one day in a world much different from this one.
The battalion experienced improvements in family contact during this time. A couple of satellite phones for the companies greatly improved communication. It wasn’t perfect. The AT&T satellite phones did not always track properly, and the heat caused the keypads on the iridium phones to short-circuit. An AT&T phone tent served as another possibility, though the expense was a bit over the top. Phone cards were about five times the normal rate. Nevertheless, the calls we were able to make were wonderful. It was the first time that we had talked to our families since coming to Iraq.
The battle for e-mail was won as well. It took an immense effort but soldiers could now send a note every few days to their families. Three terminals were established in the battalion headquarters, which the companies used on a rotating schedule. Telephones and e-mail, taken for granted at home, were now the lifeline to family and friends. I vowed to keep improving communication to the extent it was feasible. In retrospect, August 2003 was generally remembered as the month soldiers were finally able to write and call home.
Beginning on July 27, Command Sergeant Major Martinez and I made the rounds to our companies to award the Combat Infantry Streamer to each Infantry Company guidon, a small flag representing each company. Its tradition was founded in the Civil War; its present form dates to World War I. The purpose of the guidon is to designate and mark lettered and headquarters companies in a battalion, regiment, or brigade. In World War I, company guidons received silver bands on their staffs for campaigns. In World War II, companies were awarded small streamers for battle honors and combat achievements. The Combat Infantry Streamer meant sixty-five percent of each company’s soldiers had been awarded the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. It is a great honor to the units and one of which they are very proud. It is rare to see company guidons fly these streamers as they usually only appear during or shortly after a war. As peace takes hold, those with combat experience disappear, along with the streamer.
During these visits, Pete and I took the opportunity to ask soldiers about their concerns. Their comments ranged from the need for mission-essential equip
ment to small comfort items for relaxation when not on patrol and better communication with their families. Improvements had already been effected in most of these areas. The acquisition of the newer body-armored vests for all our soldiers was one of them. We were 167 sets short upon arrival in Iraq. The older unarmored fragmentation vests made up the shortfall. Now, all of our soldiers were better protected.
After returning from one such visit on the evening of July 27 from Bayjii (north of Tikrit) where my B Company was located, we had activity that quickly reminded us that there was still much work to be done, even while we felt proud of the accomplishments that we had made thus far. Someone placed a bomb in front of a house in central Tikrit. The blast blew open the gate and damaged the courtyard wall. The victims of the blast, an Iraqi family, asked our soldiers to help them move in with relatives that night as it was after curfew. My operations officer, Major Bryan Luke, obliged. As the family was escorted a few blocks to the east, one of our soldiers noticed a shovel leaning against a wall. Specialist Gersain Garcia looked at the dirt and the shovel. He started digging. Within minutes, he unearthed 44 anti-tank mines, 20 pounds of C-4 explosives and 200 pounds of propellant. More digging produced nine grenades, four mine initiators, an AK-47 and thirty 60-millimeter mortar rounds. This building had been cleared by our troops just days before.
As this situation developed into the early hours of the morning, a burst of gunfire erupted to the south in an arc across the main highway toward the governor’s building. “Gators” from the A Company QRF raced into the night, enveloping an area with two warehouses. The soldiers entered the first warehouse and spotted five men, one armed with an SKS rifle. The Iraqi man immediately dropped the rifle when he saw the Americans. Our men quickly deduced that these men were merely food guards and left them alone.
They continued on to the next warehouse. Staff Sergeant Miguel Delosantos ordered his men to post on two corners of it to flush out the attacker. Specialist David Morgan led his fire team over a wall as they moved toward an even darker back alley to a post on the northeast corner. As he dropped to the other side and took a knee to cover the other men climbing the wall, he spotted a man standing in the shadows. “Come here!” Morgan shouted to the man in both Arabic and English.
As Privates First Class Matthew Rankin, Kenwaski Robinson, and Bryan Patenge scaled to the other side, Morgan fired a warning shot when the man darted inside the building. He reappeared, this time aiming an AK-47 rifle. Specialist Morgan was faster. His shots hit the man in the chest. Body and rifle tumbled to the ground. Morgan closed up on the assailant as he struggled for life. Brushing aside his weapon, he began to render what aid he could to the dying man who had just tried to kill him.
Sergeant Delosantos organized an evacuation for the mortally wounded attacker, who died before reaching the aid station. The Iraqi police at the governor’s building identified him as the man who had just shot up their building. As night turned into morning, we had eliminated another enemy and captured a large quantity of deadly mines and explosives.
As we continued to thin the ranks of our enemy during the last week of July, we received detailed information regarding the location of Saddam Hussein’s number one personal bodyguard who had served him for over 20 years. We had seen this man often in photos with Saddam and his family. He accompanied Saddam everywhere, a constant companion at birthday parties, outings to the beach, and the routine events of his everyday life. He was Saddam’s most trusted personal bodyguard. The locals, however, knew him to be a vicious murderer.
With that information, we planned a lightning raid with my Scout Platoon and elements from A Company to secure three houses in residential Tikrit. Other elements provided a cordon. We were looking for three specific men: two bodyguards and an organizer for the former regime.
The main target was Adnan Abdullah Abid al-Musslit—Saddam’s personal bodyguard. He was part of the “Five Family” network, in this case, the Musslit family. He was also a tough guy who didn’t go down without a fight. When we struck in the dark morning hours of July 29, our scouts found him upstairs, reinforced with liquid courage, attempting to grab a Sterling submachine gun. Butt strokes, epithets and quick action by my scouts prevented it. Unable to grasp his weapon, Musslit swung wildly at our men, to no avail. Soon he was being dragged down a flight of stairs, his head hitting each step.
Subdued and blindfolded in his own courtyard, with slight bleeding to the forehead, Adnan endured camera flashes from the media who were present. The news spread quickly throughout Tikrit, to the elation of all. Within forty-five minutes, all three targets were captured: 1) bodyguard Musslit, part of the “Five Family” network; 2) Rafa Idham Ibrahim al-Hasan, a relative of Saddam’s half brother, also a part of the “Five Family” network and a Fedayeen general; and 3) Daher Ziana, a former Tikriti security chief under Saddam.
Reporters at the scene were curious about the raid, the targets, and the swiftness of action. This was the first time that large numbers of press had covered our raids. We filled in blanks as best we could, endeavoring to convey the profound importance of detaining these three. They began to ask a series of questions.
“How did you find them?” asked one reporter, as if we were going to tell them our strategy.
“Every photo and every document connects the dots,” I told them, telling the truth without too much detail. We had been searching for Musslit since the raid on Barzan’s (Queen of Hearts’) farm. He turned up in scores of captured photos. We asked the people who he was, and Iraqis helped us find him.
“Were you surprised Musslit put up a fight?” asked Ann Scott Tyson, a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor.
“Were we surprised? He’s a bodyguard. That’s why we went in with our steely knives and oily guns,” I asserted. “If everything else had failed and we just got that one guy, we would be happy.” The press loved the comment, and it went around the world.
I learned that night that the key to getting our message heard was honesty and sound bites. I also learned that reporters were not the real target of interviews. The real objective was to reassure the home team that we were winning this fight—from Professor Highbrow at Educate U to Bubba sipping his Budweiser back in Chitlin Switch, Oklahoma. The enemy also needed to know he was losing and that we were hot on his trail. It was an important lesson I would not forget.
The raid made international headlines, and the captured men proved immeasurably useful to future efforts. News of our success spread across the worldwide media as well. Soon, several news services embedded with us and covered our operations with live broadcasts and daily press reports. Most were convinced, and accurately so, that we were on the heels of Saddam Hussein. The presence of news media didn’t sway our focus.
Then something strange happened. It became eerily quiet on July 30 and 31. This was perhaps the first time in weeks that nothing happened. No gunfire. No attacks. Just absolute quiet. We used the respite to catch our collective breath and sift through the mountain of intelligence that we were gathering. Jack, with his SOF team, sorted through it as well to weigh his information with ours. He was impressed with the type of intelligence we were developing and recognized the importance of our strategy and the Musslit bodyguard raid. He also asked us to join him on another raid in Tikrit that was closely connected to that strategy. Unlike our nighttime raids, their surveillance suggested that the targets would be home in the heat of the day and we could literally catch them napping.
The raids continued with success. On August 1, we bagged three more men on Jack’s raid. They all had ties to Saddam. The most significant detainee was Taha Yaseen Omar al-Musslit, part of the “Five Family” network of Musslits we were seeking that we believed would lead us closer to Saddam. Jack also hauled away two others who were drivers for Saddam Hussein. At this stage, each raid seemed to feed upon the previous one with encouraging results. As Colonel Jim Hickey told a reporter at that time, “We’ve unraveled a big ball of yarn in Tikrit, and I think we’r
e at the end of it.”
PAYING US BACK, PAYING OUR RESPECTS
As encouraging as these raids were, discouraging news shortly followed. Sheik Mahmood Neda al-Nasiri called on the civilian telephone line set up at headquarters for locals we trusted to contact us directly. Sheik Mahood was head of the entire Nasiri tribe and was an intriguing and comical character in the cast of the melodrama entitled “Tikrit.” A native of Auja, he balanced the delicate tightrope of being acquainted with Saddam’s closest associates while desiring the evolution of a better Iraq. Mahmood stood six feet four inches tall in all of his sheik finery. His smile was genuine, his manner was appealing, and his appearance was reminiscent of a deep-voiced Groucho Marx in Arab garb.
I spoke to him on the phone through Joe Filmore, my translator. He was frantic.
“They are coming here!” he warned. “They are going to bury Saddam’s sons in the Auja cemetery. You must do something.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“There will be anger and great danger, I am afraid. You must prevent it. They cannot bring Uday and Qusay here. If you cannot stop it, I do not know what will happen.”
“What do you think will happen?” I queried.
“I am afraid. They want me to sanction it. If I do, as their sheik, then maybe both sides now hate me and will not understand the position I am in,” he reasoned. “They could harm the people of our village.” Sheik Mahmood had a valid point and every reason to be concerned.
The information was passed on to Colonel Hickey. Even with all our advanced technology, it seemed that the speed of the sheik’s “grapevine communication” was faster still. His report proved incredibly accurate. Not pleased at the news, as my A Company men under Mark Stouffer were in his village, we worked all evening to validate this turn of events. We were instructed to do nothing. The corpses were to be surrendered to the Red Crescent after being flown from Baghdad to Tikrit. We were to provide no escort or involvement.
We Got Him! Page 13