Echo in Ramadi

by Scott A. Huesing

  The only intact structures were the mosques. I counted at least a dozen. Their minarets accented the cityscape which towered between thirty to fifty feet high—blue domes stood in stark contrast to a sea of gray and tan wreckage that was the capital city of Al Anbar Province.

  The infrastructure was flattened. Telephone and electric wires dangled from bent poles that jutted from the ground at strange angles. Nothing was green. Even the few surviving palm trees were covered with a film of gray dust kicked up by explosions and dust storms.

  Peterson pointed out the Army checkpoints as we drove past. They were nothing more than dilapidated buildings reinforced with sandbags, concrete dividers, and HESCO barriers—square, collapsible, metal cages lined with cloth and filled to the top with sand that when interlinked, made an impenetrable wall. I could see the barrels of rifles and machine guns poking out of sandbagged windows.

  As we pressed close to Camp Corregidor, our vehicles zigzagged through a maze of four-feet-high concrete barriers that were arrayed to slow down traffic as it approached checkpoints.

  Our driver slammed on the brakes.

  I said, “What’s up? IED?” I thought the worst.

  Peterson quickly looked over his shoulder at us. “No, sorry, just a dog.”

  I watched as a small brown dog padded past the truck and zipped into a house on the other side of the road, immune to the surrounding madness.

  “Random,” I thought.

  We flew out of Ramadi the next day to Camp Al Asad. The Regimental Combat Team commander, Colonel W. Blake Crowe, welcomed me with a big handshake and bear hug. He had commanded my battalion when I was a first lieutenant stationed in Twentynine Palms in 2002. He then took me back to his office to examine a wall-sized map of the entire area of operations for which he was responsible.

  After an hour with Colonel Crowe, he sent me to his intelligence section for more imagery (maps and satellite photos). Afterward, Smith and I went on our way to Al Taqqadum (Tah Kay Dum or TQ), where most of our unit already had been marshaled.

  Smith and I boarded an Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter out of TQ and were joined by our battalion sergeant major, Joe Ellis.

  Sergeant Major Ellis was the senior enlisted leader of 2d Battalion, 4th Marines. A consummate professional, he had dedicated twenty-three years of his life to one thing—the best interests of the Marines.

  Ellis was a strack, clean-cut, model picture of a Marine. Lean and fit, he could outrun, out-hike, and out-smart most half his age, without question. He offered his opinions to commanders in a manner that was so goddamned honest and utterly unvarnished but never made you feel that he was talking down his nose to you.

  I landed late that afternoon at TQ and linked up with my company staff who had set up a makeshift headquarters in one of the temporary staging tents. It was a large domed space. Cheap bunk beds lined the walls with no bedding. The thin mattresses still covered in plastic looked as though they’d never been slept on. We taped maps of Ramadi onto dry erase boards so that we could study them together.

  Meanwhile, a good share of Echo Company had begun cleaning weapons and prepping their gear.

  Others made their way to the Post Exchange to buy additional gear. There always is a small segment of Marines in any unit who can never have enough “Gucci Gear” that seemed to have a mental effect on their performance in the field. They love it—some are willing to spend almost half a paycheck on the stuff they think makes them more productive and comfortable than the Marines who stick with basic issue field gear from the battalion supply section. They bought extra kit to make their lives a little better for the upcoming months—small, fingersized flashlights, custom Wiley-X eye protection, Storm Safe waterproof notebooks, beef jerky, Wet Ones baby wipes, permanent marker map pens, and whatever else caught their eye.

  I wanted to speak to my Marines. On my orders, First Sergeant Foster, Echo Company’s most senior NCO, gathered the entire company in formation on the sandy face of an old Iraqi Army ammunition bunker that stood forty feet high, arched with large steel doors for re-supply trucks to drive through to deliver ordnance. Most likely it had been filled for decades at some point with Soviet and Iraqi arsenals—small arms, artillery munitions, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades.

  Unsurprisingly, I overheard a high degree of bitching and moaning about the photo-op from the Marines. “What the fuck are we doing this for?” started it off, and the usual “You’ve got to be kidding me” rounded it out.

  Despite the soliloquies of gripes and groans, every Marine wanted a copy of that photo the minute the camera clicked. They swarmed the photographer and handed their email addresses to him to get a copy.

  It would be the last photo we all took together.

  After the picture, they were restless but quieted down as I walked in front of them. Some took a seat and placed their rifles between their legs. I looked out into the sea of sturdy faces fixed on me. The majority of the Marines had shaved their hair down to the scalp—some ritualistic way of preparing for battle.

  As my Marines fought in Al Anbar Province, I wanted the physical movement associated with killing to be instinctual. I never wanted them to hesitate when it mattered most or have them feel remorse for doing their duty. To do so, they needed to know that, in the end, I would bear the burden, the inescapable burden of command. I spoke in a forceful, confident tone and encompassed much of the advice I had accumulated over the years from my mentors.

  “This is the first time in combat for most of you. You will have to fire your weapon at the enemy. You will have to kill. I don’t expect that this will be easy for anyone. It shouldn’t be. But know this. I am ordering you to kill. You will kill, and when this is all over it will be my responsibility. It will be my burden to carry because I am ordering you to do it. We are Marines, and we follow orders. You’ll kill the enemy but you will leave this place without regret, and we will win. Is that understood?”

  The senior NCOs nodded their heads in approval during my address. They knew everything I said to be true—having walked the same streets of Ramadi only twenty-four months ago.

  22 November 2006

  It was late in the evening when Echo Company, laden with gear, lined up and readied to fly into Camp Corregidor on a flight of the Army’s big, twin-rotor Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

  As we staged in our sticks and serials, neat rows of twelve and twenty-four Marines all lined up, First Sergeant Foster took special care to ensure complete accountability before embarkation on the impressive flight of Chinooks that landed in front of us.

  Most Marines decide to enlist when they are in their late teens or early twenties. Foster was twenty-seven. He went to college and then bounced around from job to job. He worked construction, did a little pest extermination, and even managed a ski lodge in western Colorado. He never found his niche. He wanted something bigger. He wanted a purpose.

  Foster’s younger brother, Steve, was a U.S. Marine on recruiting duty in their hometown of Grand Junction, Colorado. Foster called and told him he was interested in joining.

  His brother hung up on him.

  Foster persisted. Eventually, like any good recruiter, Sergeant Steve Foster signed him up to enlist.

  Foster spent his twenty-eighth birthday at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, as a recruit with the aspirations of becoming a heavy equipment operator. Right before his graduation in July 1990, his drill instructor went down the roll call of their platoon and rattled off the Military Occupational Specialties (MOSs) to the new Marines.

  When he came to Foster’s name, he barked out, “Foster, 4421, legal specialist.”

  Since Foster shipped out for boot camp early, his brother had to fill a quota and re-assigned him while he was in training. Like many Marines, Foster now had a “How-My-Recruiter-Fucked-Me-Over” story. Unlike most of them, however, his recruiter was his brother—a tough story to beat.

  Foster spent the next fifteen years as a legal clerk and legal chief before he was promo
ted to the rank of first sergeant. When promoted to first sergeant, a Marine is given a new MOS—8999—that makes him or her assignable to any unit, regardless of previous experience. This policy is designed to provide diversity based on seniority.

  Foster was assigned to the infantry community. Aside from serving on a mobile training team in Iraq training soldiers for the Iraqi Army, Foster had no real experience with Marine Corps infantry.

  He was given orders to 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, in 2006 and became my senior enlisted advisor. I had no bias to the fact he was new to the infantry—on the contrary, I loved it, because everything was new to him. He hadn’t been burnt out after years in the infantry.

  I instantly liked him because I could tell he’d found a place where he wanted to be. He was fascinated and excited by the new challenge and the fact that he was on the ‘cutting edge’ at last—finally getting the opportunity to live out the excitement he’d only seen in the movies and glamorized on recruiting posters. He was totally dedicated to his duties. An added benefit for me was that, since Foster joined the Marines at twenty-seven, he had a few years on me in age. I was no longer “the old man.” He was. Most constantly reminded him of this fact—not me, of course.

  I was grateful to have him next to me throughout everything Echo endured. I couldn’t have done it without him.

  After checking in, Sergeant Major Ellis briefed Foster on how Echo Company was the rowdiest company in the battalion, with a mixture of a few dozen combat-hardened Marines that had all been through hell in 2004, and a bunch of young kids with personality and attitude. Every squad and platoon was filled with Marines with character larger than life.

  Foster found this to be true. He knew that Echo Company was inescapably not an elite unit, but undeniably an extraordinary team of Marines with remarkable chemistry.

  We moved inside the Chinook helicopters. I was impressed by the sheer size of the aircraft when we boarded. The interior blushed with a fluorescent, greenish-blue glow of the lighting in the fuselage. The hydraulic fluid that dripped from the pressure lines smelled sweet as it speckled our packs and uniforms as we readied for take-off.

  The flight crew took special care in handling our gear and baggage. There was no random tossing of our kit inside the plane. All packs were stacked and strapped down to ensure safe transport. Echo had done this type of thing before in training. We were meant to be inserted into combat by helicopter. While it was familiar, it also was different. This was the real thing.

  We landed at Camp Corregidor around 0100 hours and began to disembark the flight of Chinooks. We trotted along in column, through mucky dirt—it was winter in Iraq, and it had been raining. At a slow pace, we moved toward the reception area. It was only a couple hundred meters of walking from the HLZ to the camp, but, as soon as I started, I already knew I had over-packed.

  The pack on my back drove down hard into my shoulders despite the thick body armor I wore. The two additional over-stuffed kit bags I carried cut deep into my fingers as I strained to hold onto the handles. All the while the muzzle of my M4 carbine jabbed me in my right thigh with every step.

  “Yep, definitely over-packed,” I kept thinking to myself, as my shoulders ached and my swollen fingers burned, turning shades of bright pink and white. I laughed at myself as I thought about the clumsiness of it all—making me regret bringing so much unwanted gear.

  The day after we arrived was Thanksgiving. The staff and officers served a turkey dinner in what had once been a building that many of those who had fought in Ramadi in 2004 remembered. We wore white paper side caps as we slung chow on their trays, like those worn by countermen in 1950-style diners, with our cammies. That gave the boys a good laugh.

  As we settled into our living spaces, I wasted no time getting together with my Army counterparts to familiarize myself with the battlespace firsthand.

  Captain John Tate, TF 1-9 IN’s Able Company commander, was eager to show me around. Tate was five-nine and lean. He wore yellow-lensed ballistic glasses that made him stand out from the other soldiers. His company occupied the Sina’a (Sihn Eye)—or Industrial District as it was commonly called, an area of demolished factories and warehouses that was part of the area we were going to take over.

  Tate walked me around Camp Corregidor and the headquarters compound. Camp Corregidor had been part of the College of Agriculture in Al Anbar Province. It took up one square kilometer of what had been a large campus, and the TF 1-9 Infantry headquarters was the largest building on it.

  Palm trees had been hacked down all around the camp—soldiers and Marines sat on the odd-looking two-foot stumps as makeshift stools as they prepped their gear. There was an improvised hundred-meter target range carved out in the dirt at the back of the camp where we zeroed our rifles. The firing line was nothing more than a big sheet of six-by-six-foot aluminum siding. It served its purpose.

  We walked north across Main Supply Route (MSR) Michigan to the Combat Outpost (COP) to the Battalion Aid Station (BAS) and then to Able Company headquarters. The COP also served as the maintenance shop for all of the mechanics who repaired the vehicles damaged by IEDs or those shot up in firefights.

  All of the camps were dusty scrapyards of military refuge. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to how the camps were set up. They were cluttered with blown-up Humvees, wooden pallets of gear, concrete barriers, sandbags, and fighting positions. Shot-up buildings served as both homes and offices and were draped in desert camouflage netting more to provide shade than concealment from enemy observation—since there was no aerial threat whatsoever from the insurgency. The only evidence of military-style order were the columns of General Dynamics M1-A1 tanks—and rows of three to four blue port-a-john shitters perfectly aligned.

  Tate had his convoy staged out front of the HQ. A couple of my lieutenants and NCOs and I hopped on board.

  We drove slowly, which was still new to me. During my previous combat tours, the usual tactic had been to drive as fast as possible past any suspected roadside bombs or IEDs since most were command-detonated, meaning there was a “trigger man” at the other end of the wire or cell phone who detonated them. Now, the insurgents were using pressure-plate devices. When a vehicle rolled them, its weight would press two metal plates together, completing the circuit and detonating the device. That was bad enough. Making things even more dangerous was the fact that the explosives they used were often 155mm artillery rounds buried underground.

  The damage they could cause was catastrophic.

  The new tactic was to drive slowly and look for signs of anything out of place. If we found an IED buried in the road before we popped it, we’d mark it with a flag, go around it, and then call for the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams to reduce it.

  The first post we stopped at was “7 West,” located at the “Y” intersection of Sufia Road and MSR Michigan. It was nothing more than one single armored Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun tucked behind several four-foot high concrete barriers. Hanging out there alone, it received fire frequently and was arguably one of the most dangerous positions to be at. But it was in a key spot to provide almost 360-degree observation and covered two of the main avenues that led to Camp Corregidor.

  The next stop, Observation Post (OP) Hotel, was a thousand meters west.

  Tate turned to me and said, “OK. So, when we get out of the truck, don’t fuck around, run fast, and get inside. We’ve had a lot of sniper fire in the area. Cool?”

  “Cool.”

  It was good advice too. No sooner had we gotten into the building when we heard small arms fire and the snap of rounds hitting the building and random gunfire in the distance.

  Living conditions at OP Hotel were abysmal. At four stories, OP Hotel was one of the taller structures in Ramadi. It was solid concrete, but it was in extremely rough shape. Almost every support column had been eaten down to the steel rebar from small arms fire as if some giant dog had chewed on them. It had large, open windows draped with chain link fencing to d
etonate RPGs before they sailed through. The walls and corridors inside were pockmarked by incoming rounds. These marks served as a helpful visual reminder to minimize your exposure even inside the building.

  There was no functioning plumbing at OP Hotel (or at any of the posts). To relieve themselves, the men who manned the observation post pissed in plastic water bottles and then tossed them outside—a mountain of urine-filled piss bottles amassed in front of the post. The bottles often broke, and the urine saturated the ground outside. It was nauseating, but there was no real way to rectify the situation. It might sound crude pissing in a Gatorade bottle, but it was a necessity and not worth going outside to take a leak and getting shot by a sniper.

  OP Hotel had eight fighting positions: one at the entrance, one on the stairwell entering the third floor where the Marines slept, and six more on the fourth floor and roof. From the top, we could see for miles. It gave perfect observation of the surrounding rooftops, MSR Michigan, and the streets below, and we had a front-row view of the red and green tracers that would light up the night sky.

  There was a .50 caliber machine gun position on the southwest corner of the fourth floor. It was set back in the room to hide its muzzle flash and to give the Marines the ability to fire in multiple directions. The surrounding concrete walls echoed the blasts when the Marines opened fire with the heavy machine gun that was deafening. The sound it made was impressive, its effects deadly: it unequivocally contributed to the hearing loss of its operators.

  After the tour of OP Hotel, we pushed back down MSR Michigan and hung a left northwest on Sufia Road to OP South House. The OP resembled a dungeon right out of medieval times. The shoddy brick and mortar that once constituted the walls of someone’s house were barely intact. The floors were made entirely of fine dirt, or what we called “moon-dust,” which refused to let go of anything it touched.

  The first floor had a few rooms for storage of engineer gear, ammunition, and an assortment of medical supplies. The common area was where the Marines staged for missions and slept in between manning their posts and patrolling. It defied any western standard of living, but as always, the Marines made it work.