The line first sergeants were fighters, suppliers, ambulance drivers, administrators, and right-hand men to their commanders. Their task was enormous. Mike Evans carried a huge load when C Company lost its commander. Jaime Garza kept the A Company “Gators” fighting fit through their recent change in company commanders. My B Company in Bayjii had recently been sent a new first sergeant to replace the tough and able Louis Holzworth, who was due to take my headquarters company from First Sergeant Meadows.
Newly assigned First Sergeant Robert Summerfield was a unique fit for the “Bears” of B Company because he was an engineer rather than an infantryman. When Pete put the notion to me that he and brigade Command Sergeant Major Larry Wilson were looking to put him in a rifle company, it just made good sense to give him the “Bears.” He was a first sergeant of high caliber, and we were glad to get him.
First Sergeant Summerfield wasted little time getting the feel of his men and the environment around Bayjii. Not only did he keep the men supplied, but he also fought on patrols with them like all of our top sergeants.
On the 24th of January, Summerfield was leading a Bradley section on combat patrol with vehicle B23 and his own B65. While Sergeant Braden Sickles took the lead in B23, Summerfield covered the trail. The initial mission was to gain some information from an informant and follow it with a raid. On this night, there was no new information, so Summerfield gathered Sergeant Sickles and the rifle squad led by Staff Sergeant Dale Howell and Sergeant Jose Montenegro to establish some outposts in the city. Disgorging troops to their designated point short of the hot spots of Bayjii, the patrol cruised a loop north along Highway 1 and then swung south to support them. Another patrol was not far away, if needed.
Staff Sergeant Montenegro and Sergeant Howell set their elements on opposite sides of the highway and prepared for action. They received a tip from a local about a gray Opel with four men planning to attack Americans, using RPGs and small arms. Unfortunately, no time or date was specified. Still, the soldiers remained alert.
Sergeant Chad Stursma, at the gun of B65, did this kind of patrol often. He and driver Private First Class Ervin Dervishi had been on many a patrol. It was typically a top-notch crew to be selected to gun and drive for the first sergeant. They knew it, and they knew their jobs. They had been in tough scraps before and would take care of their new first sergeant. As they made their way south along Highway 1 into the heart of Bayjii, Stursma scanned the turret like a pendulum, covering the rear of the patrol from 4 to 8 o’clock if it were viewed on the face of a clock.
For Ervin Dervishi, it was a long journey that brought him to Bayjii and the Regulars of 1-22 Infantry. Dervishi loved American soldiers and never dreamed, when he was an Albanian boy in Kosovo, that he would emigrate to the United States with his family and become an American citizen. Now he was living his dream. It pained him that jihadists had taken Islam and twisted it to suit their lawless attacks. He was Muslim himself, but he could clearly see the evil that existed over the many months he had been in Iraq. Now he was making a difference, not only for himself and his family, but also for his nation and his faith.
As Dervishi guided the Bradley in a stagger behind the lead vehicle, Sickles’ Bradley scanned from the 10 to 2 o’clock position. Stursma saw normal activity through the thermal gun sight. Pedestrians walked along sidewalks and men hung out sipping coffee in the cafes. First Sergeant Summerfield scanned about as well. They were approaching the Bayjii CMIC. While the city seemed fairly normal, Bayjii always had a tense feel.
A violent explosion crashed the calm and threw Summerfield into the brow pad of the commander’s hatch in the Bradley.
“IED!” shouted Summerfield, not realizing that it was a ground attack with RPG-7 rockets and small arms from a blind spot to his left rear flank.
Sergeant Stursma had also been lurched forward, becoming completely dazed. Sergeant Sickles craned behind him at the noise and saw a fireball on the first sergeant’s Bradley. It was still moving. A second explosion a couple of seconds later shattered any pretense of a good situation.
“IED!” shouted Summerfield again. “Are you OK?”
“Roger, First Sergeant,” replied Stursma. His head now cleared a bit, he picked up his scan for the enemy through the gun sight.
“Lancer Mike, Bear 7, contact with IED vicinity the CMIC on Highway 1, over,” called Summerfield as he overrode the turret controls from Sergeant Stursma to point him and the gun at the suspected enemy location.
Hearing the explosions and the radio transmission, Staff Sergeant Howell ordered his squad to make their way along both sides of the highway toward the Bradleys in an attempt to cut off the attackers.
“Dervishi, are you OK?” asked Sergeant Stursma as the Bradley continued to roll.
“Dervishi, are you all right?” asked First Sergeant Summerfield, noting that the Bradley seemed to be coasting and drifting across the highway median.
“First Sergeant, I think Dervishi’s hurt,” informed Sergeant Stursma.
“Dervishi. Dervishi!” called Summerfield. He then radioed that his driver was hurt. Suddenly the power went dead on the Bradley. Summerfield watched as the lights went out on all the controls in the commander’s station and the tracking LED screen in front of him faded to a residual glow. Not knowing if the radio call transmitted, he hopped out of the turret and scrambled to the driver’s hatch. Stursma was already there and had cut off the badly damaged engine. “Let’s try to lift him out.”
“Roger, First Sergeant,” replied Sergeant Stursma.
It was no use. Dervishi was not responding, and the weight of his body, combined with the tight fit of the driver’s compartment, prevented them from pulling him out.
“Go down the Hell Hole, and see if you can get to him,” ordered Summerfield.
“Roger, First Sergeant,” responded Stursma. Making his way into the small space on the left side of the turret inside the Bradley, affectionately known as “the Hell Hole,” Stursma came up behind Dervishi.
“I see blood,” discovered First Sergeant Summerfield as he shined his flashlight down from above while Stursma came in from behind.
Stursma saw it, too. He looked Dervishi over to see its source and saw it dripping from his left side, pooling onto the floorboard. Raising Dervishi’s uniform, he saw a nasty hole. Clutching a combat lifesaver bag inside the Bradley, Stursma ripped open a bandage and slapped it up against the wound. The bandage sucked into the hole as an unconscious Dervishi struggled for life. Stursma tried to hold it there and attempted to wrap it around his body in the tight confines of the driver’s compartment.
Staff Sergeant Howell’s squad began to arrive and helped Summerfield pull Dervishi out the hatch while Stursma pushed him from behind. Dervishi’s legs were caught in the seat, so Stursma unhooked them as they carefully pulled him out of the stricken Bradley.
First Sergeant Summerfield’s call had been heard, and by the time Dervishi had been pulled from the Bradley, a mortar track and a scout Hummer from 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor arrived. They loaded Ervin onto it and rushed him to a helipad for air medevac to the 28th Combat Surgical Hospital.
First Sergeant Summerfield and the “Bears” immediately cleared the area surrounding the attack. It appeared that a small cell had attacked them with a volley of rocket-propelled grenades, one hitting and one missing, followed by small arms fire. The rocket that connected hit from an angle on the port side of the Bradley, causing a slag of molten metal to penetrate the skirt, hull, Private First Class Dervishi, the engine access compartment, and the engine.
The soldiers regained contact temporarily with the assailants, or perhaps their accomplices, and poured fire on a rooftop spotted by Sergeant Sickles’ Bradley and Staff Sergeant Howell. Several Iraqis were detained, along with some small arms and propellant.
At 3:04 a.m. on January 24, 2004, Ervin Dervishi slipped away on the operating table at the 28th CASH. He fought and died for a nation that had freed his family.
A CHANC
E TO SAY “GOODBYE”
Dervishi’s death pained me as we drew closer to our redeployment. How many more would we lose? Questions such as “Why couldn’t he have died early on rather than fight a year and fall at the end?” were foremost in my mind. Such questions were not mine to ask. I was not bitter. I blamed no one but the enemy for his death. Still, the pain of losing such fine young soldiers cut through me like a knife.
When a unit takes casualties, the natural reaction is to recoil. We could not, and I would not, allow it. The worst strategy would be to adopt a defensive mind-set in the final weeks of our mission. Such a course would only make things worse. I had to keep the men focused on the enemy rather than ourselves. We would continue to raid his leadership and ambush him in his cities and villages until we were formally relieved of duty or ordered home.
The insurgents were fully aware of the troop rotation due to our free and open press reporting. They knew the designations of the units coming to Iraq and could even deduce specific battalion locations and unit commanders. It was a simple matter of reading news clippings from the towns from which they deployed.
Colonel Hickey and Major General Odierno were naturally concerned for the safety of arriving troops. The new troops would not see the environment through the same eyes we did or with the same alertness born from the experience of a year’s worth of combat. Jim Hickey was adamant that we step up the pace to clear the highways and streets of roadside bombs. The area for which our brigade was responsible along Highway 1 from Samarra through Tikrit to Bayjii was cleared to such an extent that no newly arriving unit traveling through or taking up station in our area suffered a single casualty from either a roadside bomb or direct attack until the day of our departure.
For the next eight weeks we gave it everything we had, though we had close calls of our own, such as when we nearly lost an A Company vehicle to a bomb on the 26th of January between Tikrit and Auja. Thousands of newly arrived troops passed through unmolested. This was a remarkable achievement, born from incessant patrolling and fighting on the part of Colonel Hickey’s Raider Brigade soldiers.
Confident that we could control our area, I still felt the threat of the open space beyond it. To our west, there were literally hundreds of miles where no soldiers patrolled. What lurked there was a great mystery. To the east of us, along the Tuz-Tikrit Highway, a stretch of some 50 unsecured miles greeted our soldiers who would sometimes have to travel the route to make spare parts runs for our large number of vehicles. Such supply runs were not without risk.
Our Army was forced to create islands of security concentrated mostly on populated areas along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It was the best of the worst arrangements, as securing people and infrastructure in a new Iraq was more important than securing expansive terrain. While about 40,000 more troops would arrive later in the war and would combine with hundreds of thousands of new Iraqi security forces to connect these islands, such reinforcement was completely foreign to us. We accepted the situation as we found it.
So it was when our mechanics found some critical parts we needed to keep the fleet rolling; they did not hesitate to go into the less patrolled territory between Tikrit and the Jabal Hamrin Ridge on their way to Kirkuk to get them. Well aware of the noman’s-land between our area and the ridge, Captain David Muller, leading a 4th Forward Support Battalion convoy, put together a sizeable force of five vehicles to beef up his security that included a medical vehicle.
When my support company soldiers working on vehicles in the brigade’s support area were asked if they could support the convoy, Sergeant Eliu Mier and Corporal Juan Cabral volunteered to add their Hummer as trail security. Their cargo Hummer, A-17, was a welcome addition, boasting a Mark 19 40mm grenade launcher in a makeshift mount in the back. Volunteering to man that grenade launcher, Private First Class Holly McGeogh again jumped at the chance to go out on patrol.
To crew A-17 and take up rear security, a more veteran roster of fighting mechanics could not be found. Sergeant Mier was levelheaded and perhaps the ablest wheeled mechanic in our entire task force. Corporal Cabral had already received a Purple Heart for actions in June when he had gone forward to work on C Company vehicles, being wounded by an RPG rocket. As for Holly McGeogh, I had to mildly reprimand her for sneaking onto my command convoy during combat patrolling more times than I could count, although this did allow her to introduce “Duck, Duck, Goose” to throngs of Iraqi children on one of our more civil liaisons.
With only a handful of wheeled mechanics in the task force, I could not risk their skills on routine combat patrols. Now three of them, jumping at the chance to cover their fellow support soldiers and needing to acquire parts for our own vehicles, departed on a fairly routine mission. They could not have imagined the results of their decision. Tough soldiers all, they would need everything they could muster as they prepared for it.
On the last day of January, this convoy wove the streets of Tikrit a short time after 8:00 in the morning. Crossing the Tigris, they clipped along at a vigorous pace on the Tuz-Tikrit Highway with about 50 meters’ distance between vehicles. For Captain Muller, it was another chance to obtain parts needed for the mission. He had traveled the road before, always a little concerned about the territory and that naked feeling of venturing beyond the security provided by the Regulars.
Corporal Cabral drove the road with alertness, mindful of the potential ambushes on the flanks of the road that could be launched from the farmland. Sergeant Mier kept a strained eye on the surrounding territory, maintaining a respectable distance from the rest of the convoy vehicles. Private First Class McGeogh panned the big 40mm grenade launcher from side to side at suspected threats.
The area was sparsely populated between Tikrit and the eastern mountain ridge. Captain Muller was pleased with the time they were making after they passed through the last checkpoint on the outskirts of Tikrit. With any luck, they would be in Kirkuk in no time.
After traveling little more than an hour, they spotted a small, white pickup coming up a side road from an insignificant cluster of dwellings to the south. As the pickup pulled into the intersection, it seemed to go around something. Entering the road, it crossed into the opposite lane and then diverted back, traveling in the same direction, just ahead of the convoy. This temporarily slowed the convoy. As the pickup did not appear to gain any speed, Second Lieutenant John Lopez, driving Captain Muller’s vehicle, passed it.
Corporal Cabral spotted the convoy diverting around both a spot on the road and the pickup. As Sergeant Mier looked to the south, he scanned ahead and north for any trouble. Private First Class McGeogh continued to cover the rear with the grenade laun . . . Blackout.
Checking his six in the rearview mirror, Lieutenant Lopez saw the tall medium truck called an LMTV successfully pass the white pickup. Initially, he was unable to see behind it due to its size, but he soon saw a mushrooming cloud of smoke fill the rearview mirror.
“Sir, I think somebody got hit,” he warned.
Captain Muller looked behind him and saw the same cloud in the short distance. He began to count vehicles. One . . . two . . . three . . . Where’s the fourth? he thought.
Private First Class Agundhi Copeland, in the vehicle just ahead of A-17, heard a massive explosion. Instantly glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw flame mixed with a dirty brown cloud. To his horror, he could see the vehicle gunner being propelled north through the air a great distance from the Hummer, still sitting in the makeshift seat used to mount the gun. He immediately pulled the vehicle off the road and ran to offer assistance, along with Sergeant First Class Gary Kent.
The scene was horrific. The Hummer was not recognizable as a type. The blast was so powerful that it had launched the Humvee skyward 25 yards and flipped its remains on its back, sending them skidding another 25 yards. Only a single spar connected what remained of the Hummer’s frame. The tires were ablaze, dripping pools of rubber. The engine was missing entirely. So were all of the occupants.
Sergeant First Class Stephen Arnold raced the considerable distance to what was left of the burning vehicle. As a combat medic, he began to look for the soldiers, as did the others now collecting there. Corporal Cabral was discovered a short distance from the Hummer, limbs contorted in impossible positions. There was not much hope, but Arnold took his pulse. Nothing. It seemed certain he died instantly.
McGeogh was spotted after a quick search about 75 yards northeast of the blast crater. There was little doubt looking at her horrible injuries that she was dead. As Arnold checked her pulse, he noticed her staring up at the sky through lifeless eyes.
Sergeant Mier could not immediately be found. The soldiers made concentric circles from the blast crater, and he was eventually located with his shattered and mangled weapon still in hand about 100 yards to the east, across a berm. Mercifully, there was little doubt that he, too, had been killed instantly.
Trying to manage the situation, Captain Muller made repeated attempts to raise his unit. The distances were too great for transmission. Concerned for the soldiers’ safety, out of contact and quite exposed, the sergeants tightened security, but the entire convoy had been deeply affected by the scene and by the loss of friends. The white pickup was caught and searched, but little could be deduced from it. It was possible that it was a point vehicle to pace the convoy and expose it to ambush, but little evidence could be mounted for such speculation.
The soldiers did find a long wire leading back toward the little village. From studying the large crater, it appeared that a heavy caliber artillery shell, or perhaps a sizeable sack of explosives, had been burrowed under the asphalt, concealing it and enhancing the force of its blast. The wire connecting the fuse had been hidden with dirt. This appeared to be what the pickup was skirting as it entered the roadway.
We Got Him! Page 39