Joker One

by Donovan Campbell

  “Sir, I can't lead us out. I have no idea where third is right now. I can't take us where we need to go because I don't know where we're going.”

  The CO stared at me for a second, then said, a bit sharply, “Fine then. I'll take us there. Just get in the second vehicle. We're getting out of here to go get third.”

  Five minutes later, the convoy roared out of the gates en route to the southern part of the Farouq district. The CO, Teague, Doc Camacho, and Mahardy, who was carrying the only long-range radio in the platoon, were in the first vehicle, and everyone else followed behind them. As fast as we could, we drove straight toward the sound of the guns.

  NINETEEN

  Iwish that I could tell the story of the battle as it happened—give some sort of traditional, blow-by-blow account of the different troop movements within the city, where the various units were engaged, how the enemy forces arrayed themselves—but I can't. In fact, I can't even give a reasonable account of my own platoon's fighting, because most of the time my squads were separated from one another, without communication, in the middle of an urban jungle that had suddenly sprouted fire from all directions. I can't begin to describe the chaos, let alone try to make sense of it. My Marines and I fought house by house and block by block in a series of small, intense, mostly separate battles, and we experienced that day not as a linear, understandable progression of events but as a jumbled array of brief, intense snapshots. All that I can do is share some of these snapshots and hope that they at least convey faithfully our experience of the all-out fighting of April 6.

  We piled out of the vehicles at the very bottom of the Farouq area, along Baseline Road just north of where the train tracks ran along the very bottom of the city. Baseline was entirely deserted, and where its northern sidewalk ended, the dense housing compounds sprang up, forbidding and seemingly impenetrable. The fight had gotten more intense, judging by the brief pauses between bursts of gunfire. Based on how distant that firing sounded, I guessed that the fighting was still several hundred meters away, to our north. As I was about to hop out of the Humvee, it suddenly struck me that we couldn't take the seven-tons off the wide Baseline Road and into the narrow streets of Farouq. They'd assuredly get stuck somewhere, and then we'd be tied down defending hunks of metal instead of rescuing our trapped comrades.

  Still, I couldn't just leave the vehicles and their four drivers all alone in the most hostile part of town. I used the PRR to radio Bowen, who was standing one hundred meters behind me on Baseline. If anyone could handle being isolated in this dangerous area, protecting a stationary target without any communication with other friendly units, it was he.

  “One-Three, this is One-Actual. I need you to provide vehicle security here. One-One and One-Two will move with me farther north.”

  “Roger, sir. You need me to stay with the vehicles. Uh, sir, do you have a 119 [long range radio] I could have?”

  “No. Mahardy's got the only one for the entire platoon, and the CO needs it. There's no fighting here, so you might be safe. And if you take any casualties, at least you can perform your own medevac with the vehicles. That's the best I can do, One-Three. We don't have any time to wait. I've gotta leave you—somewhere in this city Joker Three's got a couple of Marines bleeding out, and we've got to get ‘em. If anyone can handle this shitty mission, it's you.”

  “Roger that, sir. I'll make it happen. Don't worry about us. Get Joker Three. I'll see you in the fight.”

  During our conversation, the rest of the platoon had finished dismounting. I jumped out of the Humvee and looked up ahead. The CO was sprinting west down the road with Mahardy in tow, so I took off after them. Once again I heard someone screaming for Marines to get in front of the lieutenant, and suddenly Teague passed me and positioned himself directly in front of me.

  The CO called me over the PRR: “Hey, One. Third platoon isn't where we thought they were, and we don't know exactly where they are now. I bet we're too far south. We've gotta move north, and quickly.”

  “Roger that, sir. Moving.”

  Neither of us had any idea where, exactly, to go, so first squad, second squad, the CO, and I did the only thing we could. We ran straight toward the sound of the guns as rapidly as our feet would carry us.

  Ten minutes later, we had made our way into Farouq, and we found ourselves running toward a major north-south road called Easy Street. The sounds of fighting were much closer now. I was functioning mainly on autopilot and adrenaline—there were no decisions to be made until we either found third platoon or got attacked. The CO was leading the way, and he and Mahardy suddenly popped around the corner of a house, jumping out onto the sidewalk lining Easy Street. I was about thirty feet behind, and the two disappeared from my view. Suddenly firing erupted, very close now, and Mahardy and the CO immediately reappeared, backpedaling as fast as possible. Teague ran up to join them; arriving there, he, too, dived for cover.

  My PRR erupted with the CO's voice: “One … they've got us pinned down with some heavy fire … Probably at least one machine gun position … Get off this street … Move south, try and flank.”

  The last bit was redundant—I had already backtracked to the closest north-south street, and now I was running south as fast as I could with the back half of first squad following. The front half was still pinned down, and second squad had somehow gotten separated from the rest of us. We moved down one block, then I stuck my head around the corner of a compound wall to get a visual on the houses across Easy.

  Less than a foot to my left, the wall suddenly exploded in a solid line tracing up from the sidewalk to well above my head. The left side of my face was peppered with shards of concrete that pinged off my sunglasses and scraped the skin where they hit. Reflexively, I jumped backward around the corner so quickly that I almost fell over. There was at least one machine gun position directly across the road—I had seen the flashes out of the corner of my eye—and we needed to somehow get rid of it. I glanced back and spotted Corporal Walter, one of Noriel's team leaders.

  “Walter,” I yelled. He couldn't hear me above the din, so I caught his eye and motioned frantically for him to come alongside me. “We've got a machine gun right across the street; first house you see, second story. We need to get some fire on it so we can cross the street and hit it hard. Grab one of your Marines and get him ready to go. You and I are gonna suppress and cover him.”

  “Roger, sir,” Walter screamed back, then turned around and grabbed Lance Corporal Boelhower, a Marine who had joined us only one month before deploying, from where he was kneeling behind a parked car. Ten seconds later, Boelhower and Walter were both standing behind me.

  I put my mouth right next to Walter's left ear and yelled, “Okay, on the count of three, we're going to pop out and fire. Watch my tracers—they'll tell you where that gun is … Got it?”

  “Got it, sir,” he screamed back.

  “Okay, one, two, three.”

  We lunged around the corner, out into the open again, and I started pouring fire at the window where I had seen the enemy. Corporal Walter followed suit. Immediately the gunner opened up again, then went silent; our combined fire had eliminated him. I felt nothing at the possibility of having shot my first human, just the need to continue pouring fire on the other houses across the street and a distant irritation that I could no longer hear anything out of my right ear since Walter had placed his muzzle right next to it before opening up with his weapon.

  I kept pulling the trigger as fast as good shooting allowed, and Walter turned around and waved Boelhower forward, screaming, “Go, go, go.” Without any hesitation, the Marine set off across the street at a dead run, and Walter and I started opening up again on more enemies who had suddenly appeared on a nearby rooftop and begun shooting at our runner. Tracers were streaming back and forth across the road, but somehow Boelhower made it safely across. More of the squad moved up alongside me and added their fire to Walter's and mine. I briefly stopped shooting and looked to my south, trying to figure out w
here on earth my second squad had gone. I spotted them about fifty meters away, crouched down behind a gigantic mound of dirt right in front of the southern soccer stadium. Tracers from more enemies across the street were pouring into the mound, and it looked strangely as if a laser light show had suddenly started, with all lasers converging to a single point two-thirds of the way up the large mound. Carson later told me that while he was crouching behind that mound, he suddenly became certain that he wouldn't live through the next five minutes.

  I tried calling Leza and Staff Sergeant over the PRR, but got nothing in response. I wondered if they had been killed, then I started shooting again.

  Somehow, I had made it across Easy with the back half of first squad, and

  I paused to shift the receiver of the PRR to my left ear after realizing that the hearing in my right one still hadn't returned. The radio squawked to life with Noriel's voice, and it distantly occurred to me that it could very well have been squawking at me this entire time without my knowing. He and the front half of first were still pinned down on the opposite side of Easy Street. I could hear his shouted instructions.

  “Tig, above you, Tig, above you!”

  Corporal Teague's voice came back. “Ser'ent, I can't see him. I can't see him!”

  “He's on the balcony, Tig, one house down, on the balcony! Throw the damn grenade there. Throw him!”

  I looked back across Easy Street, one block north of the way I had just come, and I spotted Sergeant Noriel standing on the roof of a house, completely exposed and totally heedless of the bullets that were clearly zipping all around him. One hand was on his weapon, and the other was on his PRR. I glanced farther up Easy on my side of the street just in time to see Teague heave a grenade up in the air. A balcony above him exploded, and I saw a flash, smoke, and dark redness suddenly splashed all over the balcony's railing.

  Boelhower was trying to get into a house, the one from which most of the enemy's fire had come, but first he had to kick in the metal gate that opened up into the house's courtyard, and several kicks failed to produce the desired effect. The rest of the Marines were stacked up behind him, along the compound wall, waiting for the gate to break so that they could pour into the breach. I was still on the sidewalk, trying to raise Leza on the PRR but having no success. I had no idea whether any of his second-squad Marines had made it across the street, or whether any of them had been killed or wounded in the fighting. After ten or so attempts failed, I gave up, and I ran down the street to rejoin the fragment of my first squad as it finally entered the house.

  No sooner had we gotten inside the wall than the CO called me. “One, this is Six. I'm across Easy with part of your first squad. Where are you?”

  “Six, I'm also across Easy. I'm about to go into a little housing compound that we're breaching.”

  “Negative, One. We need to keep moving. Third platoon isn't at the south water tower like we thought. It's at the north one [a distance differential of roughly half the city]. We've got at least ten more blocks to go. I'm moving north on the sidewalk now.”

  “Roger, Six, I'll pick up the rest of the squad and move to you.”

  I could see Walter, so I yelled at him to get his guys out of the house—whose door Boelhower had finally bashed in—and to follow me back to Easy Street. He gave me a thumbs-up, and I did an about-face and started running back the way I had come. A stream of tracers passed smoothly through the spot where I had just been standing. Corporal Brown stared at me wide-eyed as I ran past him.

  When I got to Easy, a beautiful sight greeted my eyes. Weapons Company, the battalion's QRF—and its big guns—which lived at Hurricane Point, had arrived on the scene with Humvees equipped with heavy .50-caliber machine guns and Mark-19s, our automatic grenade launchers. The Marks were dusting off the rooftops of the buildings lining Easy while the .50-cals slammed through their walls in their wonderful, slowly rhythmic thumping. One block north of me, I could see the CO, Noriel, Teague, and Mahardy. Weapons Company Marines were streaming out of the Humvee to join them, and the sidewalk in front of me suddenly filled up with at least five of them. I glanced back—the rest of first squad was behind me on the street—and started moving north to rejoin the CO.

  With Weapons's arrival, the fire had slackened, but it was still snapping around us from all directions, and I had taken maybe five steps along the sidewalk when the Weapons Company Marine directly in front of me suddenly doubled over, crouched down, and then fell on his side in the fetal position. He had just been shot through the stomach. Time stopped, and all sound seemed to fade away again. I looked across the street just in time to see another Weapons Marine spin around and sit down heavily. I could see tracers zigzagging crazily in front of me, creating almost a lacework pattern of light across the street directly in front of me. At that exact moment, all I remember thinking was Wow. This is just like in the movies.

  Then time kicked in again, the gunfire and the cracking resumed, and I ran like hell to the wounded. A corpsman got there first and started work. As I passed him, I realized that my current magazine was running low on ammo, and I should probably change it. I did, and kept on moving.

  We were nearing the end of Easy, about four blocks south of where it ended at Michigan. Teague's team was walking point, and I was right behind them. Two grenades came tumbling over the wall of the nearest house, neatly splitting the team in half. Without thinking, I turned around and sprinted for the nearest corner, even though it was probably futile; the grenades had landed only about ten feet away. One of Teague's team members, I don't know who, tossed his own grenade back over the wall. I heard one explosion, then nothing, so I turned back around. There, lying nicely in the middle of the sidewalk, were the two enemy grenades. For some reason, they hadn't exploded.

  Everyone stopped moving. With half of Teague's team in front of the grenades and the rest of first squad behind them, I was briefly at a loss for what to do—should I risk moving past the unexploded little bombs, or try to get everyone into cover and then shoot the grenades, or wait in place for something else to happen? I stood motionless, just staring at the sidewalk for about five seconds, then Noriel solved my problem. Appearing out of nowhere, he streaked past me, spewing a mixed stream of English and Tagalog curses as he went. With no hesitation whatsoever, he ran up to the grenades, bent over, grabbed one, heaved it as far as he could into the houses to our west, then grabbed the other and did the same. Finished, he turned around and shouted at the rest of us.

  “Well, what the hell are you alls waiting for! Move, move, move!”

  We did, continuing north for another block until the CO reached me via PRR.

  “One, we need to move west. I don't know exactly where third is, but they're somewhere in the next couple of blocks. Move west, off of Easy, and do it quick. Third's got one dead and some badly wounded. We've gotta get to them soon.”

  “Roger, Six.”

  The PRR sprang to life again, this time with a broken transmission from Staff Sergeant. “One-Actual … moving where you are … moving …”

  “Say again, Staff Sergeant. Say again.” I was desperate for news. I still had no idea where my second squad had gone or whether they had any killed or wounded.

  “Moving to you. We're moving to you …”

  “Do you have any wounded, do you have any wounded, Staff Sergeant?”

  “Negative … Okay … no … hurt … see Weapons. We're coming.”

  “Okay, come find us. We've gotta keep moving to third. Marines are dying.”

  I listened, but didn't hear anything else. Teague was looking back at me, so I motioned him to head west down the nearest street. He nodded, then moved off at quick patrol pace. The rest of us followed, and when I turned around to make certain that the squad was still together—that no one had been wounded without us knowing—I saw something amazing. Citizens were standing at the entrances to their houses, watching us pass them by. The gunfire down the street had slackened, but it hadn't died away altogether, and just a f
ew blocks away we could hear fierce, unremitting fire from wherever third platoon was pinned. None of that seemed to matter to the locals. Now that the worst of the fight had passed their street by, they wanted to see what was going on outside their front doors. Some of them even darted across Easy to get a better look, and, amid all the running, I noticed a few people calmly carrying sacks of goods across the main street.

  I shook myself loose from the surprise of this outbreak of everyday life in the midst of our war. Teague and first squad were still moving, and the insurgents were still ferociously attacking third platoon somewhere nearby. I turned around and trotted off, again moving straight toward the noise of heavy firing.

  The sounds of continuous fighting were very close now, perhaps only a few blocks away. As I pressed myself up against a compound wall located somewhere in the middle of the city, about four blocks due south of the Saddam mosque, I again heard the cracks of passing bullets. The fire seemed to be coming from behind us, from our east, not from our west, where third platoon was still fighting desperately. Noriel swung around and spotted a window with some flashes, and he pointed it out to Feldmeir, who aimed his grenade launcher in its general vicinity and somehow managed to put a grenade right through that window. The opening filled up with smoke and the firing ceased for a moment. Then it picked back up again. First squad stopped advancing and took cover as best it could.

  I ducked around the nearest corner, intending to head toward this most recent fire to get a better picture of our attackers’ positions. Suddenly, I saw two men dressed head to toe in black, from the ski masks on their heads to the black tennis shoes on their feet, standing twenty feet away and staring at me. The all-black getup was the standard battle dress of the hard-core insurgents, the uniform they favored for the all-out, stand-and-fight battles. The men and I made eye contact, and in that quick instant both they and I knew exactly what I was going to do next. Before I could lift my muzzle high enough, though, both men ducked through the open steel gates in front of which they had been standing; then they clanged the doors shut. I loosed off about fifteen shots, hoping to hit the men through the thin sheet steel, and I called for a grenade. Walter ran up and slapped one into my outstretched hand. I carefully popped the thumb clip off the spoon, pulled the pin, and then lobbed the little round, smooth object over the compound gates. We ducked up against the wall and waited for the explosion; when it went off, I screamed at Walter for another.