Echo in Ramadi

by Scott A. Huesing

  7 December 2006

  I exited the BAS feeling empty after leaving Libby behind—the image of his face was still fresh in my mind, but I pushed back the thought. I had to get back out into the fight and position myself where I thought the most friction was.

  It was past midnight when the Quick Reaction Force headed back to ECP 8.

  While 4th platoon was fighting hard at ECP 8, two of my other platoons also were battling hard against the enemy. First Platoon was slugging it out at OP South House, a couple of hundred meters south of ECP 8. Second Platoon was equally engaged north of MSR Michigan at the four-story complex of OP Hotel.

  OP Hotel came by that name naturally. It actually had been a hotel, The Ramadi Inn. I was quite certain it lost its five-star rating after a suicide bomber detonated a dump truck filled with explosives directly in front of it in 2004. Since then, it had been peppered with so many bullets and RPGs that it looked like a massive chunk of Swiss cheese. Frankly, I was astonished that the building was still standing.

  Once inside ECP 8, I saw the radio operator, Lance Corporal Christopher Muscle, monitoring the tactical radio nets. He told me that OP South House and OP Hotel were getting into it hard and the Marines would need an ammunition resupply soon.

  Also in the COC was Staff Sergeant Miller who sat on top of a green, folding military cot with one boot off. He told me that he thought he had busted his ankle coming down from the roof with Libby on the makeshift ladder made of two-by-four lumber.

  I asked him where Second Lieutenant Nicholson was.

  “He’s up on top. He’s on the roof, sir.”

  I scaled the busted wooden ladder. I was instantly exposed to fire as I crossed an open gap between the two buildings that joined ECP 8 to the house next door.

  It was pitch black, but I could tell that ECP 8 was standing engaged from every side by small arms and medium machine-gun fire from enemy fighters who were trying to get close enough to our position to throw grenades into the compound. Green, blue, and red tracers streaked into the air, bright against the blackness of the sky. Everywhere was the rattle of small arms fire, the deeper thud of machine guns, and the sound of loud explosions from every direction.

  I started yelling, “Where’s Lieutenant Nicholson?”

  He called out to me, “I’m over here, sir! I’m right over here!”

  I crouched low to the ground and duck-walked toward his location only a few meters away. Spent brass ammunition casings rolled under my boots as I shuffled closer.

  The air was thick with smoke that had the distinctive spicy chemical smell of rifle fire which always reminded me of lighting off a brick of firecrackers.

  “Nicholson, what’s going on, man?”

  “They’re all over, sir! They’re all around us—you’d better stay low!”

  I’d been in situations like this more times than I cared to remember, and I heeded Nicholson’s advice.

  Nicholson told me that there were at least five teams of enemy close by who had maneuvered into a series of buildings to our west. I looked across the street and watched an enemy squad trying to engage us with machine guns.

  He pointed out that the enemy was also engaging the Iraqi Army (IA) position across the cul-de-sac, and one of his squads was trying to support it with fire from their M249 squad automatic weapons (SAWs) and rifles. The enemy was trying to advance south on Route Apple toward the IA compound.

  I thought to myself, “The IA better hold their fucking ground tonight and fight back.”

  I asked Nicholson what he thought was the biggest threat. He said the building east of ECP 8. There, the enemy was getting ready to engage us with hand grenades and RPG fire.

  I told him, “I’m on it.”

  The rooftops of the complex at ECP 8, like most Ramadi homes, were built with traditional, flat, concrete roofs, similar to sundecks on certain American-style homes. I made my way across the roof and down the rickety, makeshift ladder into the COC to get in contact with the task force headquarters back at Camp Corregidor.

  Less than halfway down, I was knocked off the ladder by the jolting blast of an RPG that smacked into one of the walls. Flailing and skipping several rungs, I fell hard on top of all my gear.

  My helmet crashed into the side of the wall. I felt a sharp “snap” in my neck and pain in my back. I shook it off. Gathering up all my gear from the ‘yard sale’ the blast had just made of my stuff, I made my way back inside the COC.

  One of the Marines looked at me and could see I was a bit disheveled as I shook myself off, trying to sort out my gear. Like a turtle snapping back into its shell, he reared his head and neck back with a concerned look on his face. “What was that, sir? You alright?”

  “Yeah, I’m good, brother.” I tried to compose myself after having the shit knocked out of me seconds earlier.

  I picked up the handset of the radio and called the task force’s operations officer, Major Jared Norrell. I requested that he send the tank QRF to my position.

  Norrell responded, “They’re on their way.”

  The tank crews kept their hatches buttoned up in their Abrams as they drove. Rounds bounced off like gnats. Echo Company Marines tried to talk them onto the targets over the radio. The tank crews had limited situational awareness and observation from inside the vehicles. They relied on our radio communications to paint them a picture.

  When the tank QRF, consisting of two M1-A1 Abrams, rolled up, they checked onto Echo’s tactical radio channel (TAC): “Longhorn Six, this is Blue One and Blue Two. Over.” (“Longhorn” was Echo Company’s call sign, and, as Echo’s commander, my call sign was “Longhorn Six.” The commander of every unit is called the “Six”).

  “We’re outside on Sufia Road. Ready for tasking. Over.”

  The two Abrams, armed with their 120mm main gun and 7.62 caliber coaxial machine gun, were ready to get in the fight.

  Coordinating their support was complicated. The radio I needed to talk to the tankers and the map I referenced—an alphanumeric map that is a gridded reference graphic that had every single building plotted out—was in the Command Operations Center.

  But, with us being in a close-quarters battle in a built-up area, I needed to confirm the targets with my own eyes. I had no choice then but to shuttle back and forth—using the goddamned ladder—forced into a dance between the COC and the rooftop each time we wanted to clear the fires of the tanks. I ran up and down the ladder until I sorted them out.

  To help the tankers see where they needed to shoot, I told the boys to mark the buildings where the enemy was holed up and to go heavy on the orange-tipped tracer rounds. To the tankers looking through the thermal-imaging equipment in the M1’s, the tracers would look like streams of light heading into the target. As they did, some of the Marines poured machine gun fire onto enemy positions to suppress them from shooting back.

  I yelled up to Nicholson, “Once you mark those buildings, get everyone down flat on that roof when the tanks blast those buildings.”

  The blast of the tanks’ 120mm gun was loud, huge, and powerful in any case. In a built-up area with narrow streets and high walls, the force would not dissipate, but be channeled upwards, and off the walls acting like an invisible bulldozer.

  The Marines laid down more tracer fire, and the tanks confirmed they had the target.

  I yelled back up to Nicholson, “Get the boys down! I’m about to clear the tanks to engage with main tank rounds! Tell me when you’re all down!”

  Nicholson responded, “We’re down, sir! We’re all down.”

  I called the tanks. “Blue Two. This is Longhorn Six. Cleared to engage.”

  No more than thirty seconds later, Blue Two fired one 120mm tank round into its target. The effects were devastating—shattering the walls of the insurgent stronghold and killing those foolish enough to think they were safe inside. The Marines on the roof popped back up and immediately re-engaged the enemy with a heavy volume of fire.

  The tank’s crew apparently were unaw
are the Marines on the roof were back up and firing, manning the walls.

  The barrel of the tank sat wedged in between two of the buildings, tucked in between the large pockets of concrete formed by the adjacent structures. The soldiers inside the tank assumed that each section was cleared to engage two rounds each.

  Blue Two pumped a second main gun round into the same building it had just hit next door to ECP 8. The overpressure from the muzzle break of the barrel had nowhere to go but up.

  Lance Corporals Jonathan Yenglin and Ryan Downing stood back up, continuing to mark targets. As the second round blasted from the tank, the resulting overpressure knocked both Marines flat on their backs.

  Yenglin was a twenty-one-year-old from Las Vegas, Nevada. He stood five-eleven at 195 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes that his amber-tinted safety glasses made barely visible. He’d been swayed at an early age by all of the Marines’ fantastic recruiting commercials when he was fourteen. He wanted to slay dragons.

  The Marines dragged Yenglin to the safety of one of the rooftop bunkers. Doc Dicks came to his aid. Knowing that he’d need to get Yenglin down the ladder somehow, he tried to duct tape him to a stretcher.

  Yenglin, still dazed, looked back at Doc Dicks with all of the contempt he could muster. “Doc, there is no fucking way I’m going down that ladder duct taped to this stretcher! I’ll walk.” And, with another Marine helping him, he did just that.

  Yenglin writhed in pain from the jarring blast as his brothers moved him to the COC. His insides burned, and his ears rang. His head throbbed and stung more than any hangover he’d ever felt. Worse, his vision was dark and blurry. He could barely see.

  Lying on a cot, Downing looked like a rag doll. His arms and legs dangled over the edges. His face was pale and bore a blank expression. Downing was short and weighed about a buck-forty with bricks in his pockets. This was not his first Purple Heart—he’d been wounded in combat already. He was a 2004 Ramadi veteran with 2d Battalion, 4th Marines.

  When the litter teams brought Yenglin and Downing into the platoon COC and laid them out on the cots, I immediately called on Company TAC to Blue Two and ordered them to cease fire. I radioed the TOC back at Camp Corregidor to advise them that we had two more priority casualties who needed to get to the aid station.

  Somerville’s QRF had managed to get his convoy back to the position accompanied by an M113 armored personnel carrier (APC) which would act as an ambulance.

  Yenglin vomited as they hefted him into the vehicle. Both Marines were concussed badly.

  As soon as they left, I ordered the tanks to continue to fire on Sufia Road and south on Route Apple. Using the muzzle flashes of the enemy weapons and the Marines’ tracers to direct their fire, they drilled maingun rounds into target after target with amazing precision.

  Nicholson stayed on the rooftop the entire time and did an astounding job leading his Marines in a hellish combat environment. He had been in the operating forces for only five months, but he performed as if he’d been doing it for twenty years. For his actions that night, he was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal with Valor Device (known as the “Combat V”).

  In the midst of fighting, Neris asked Nicholson how Libby was. Nicholson walked away.

  He asked again.

  Nicholson replied, “He’s stable.”

  Corporal Tom Welsh overheard the exchange. He was the 3rd Squad Leader in 4th Platoon.

  Welsh never drank soda. The Marines nicknamed him “Juice Box” because of it. He was a twenty-year-old fitness junkie from Decatur, Illinois. He had black hair and brown eyes and, at five-ten and lean—almost skinny at 140 pounds—he looked even younger. His looks belied his manner. Welsh was as dependable and as trustworthy as they came.

  As enemy rounds still thrashed the walls of ECP 8, Welsh walked up to Neris and told him in a sullen tone, “Man, I can’t lie to you. He didn’t make it.”

  For the second time that night, Neris took a knee in the middle of the roof. Tears again streamed down his face, and his chest heaved as short gasps escaped his lungs. He tried to stifle any audible crying because, again, he didn’t want the other Marines to see him cry.

  Welsh reached down and grabbed Neris by the six-inch, nylon strap on the back of his body armor, shook him from side to side and said, “Come on, man. We can’t do this now.”

  The attack continued relentlessly.

  Nicholson called down to me that he was taking a high volume of fire from the west side of the building. I was talking to Norrell at the time, and I told him I needed more fire support.

  “Manchu Three,” I said. “Manchu” was the task force’s call sign. “Three” was the designation for the operations officer. “What type of aviation do we have on station now?”

  Norrell replied that we could have a section of fixed-wing aircraft—two Marine fast-movers, McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier attack jets—to be precise. I immediately generated a close air support (CAS) request and passed the information to the TOC. It was going to be a Type III control, meaning that I could provide only observation and information on the targets to the TOC—they would have to approve the mission and then relay it to the pilots.

  The Harriers would be checking in armed with 500-pound MK-82 bombs—ordnance normally used against medium to large structures and minimize collateral damage.

  I told Norrell that it was going to be “danger-close” for what the Harriers were packing since our position was only one hundred meters from the target. Although the effects of the bombs would be safely mitigated by intervening concrete structures, the bombs’ devastating effects would still put us within the danger radius.

  There was a mad scramble to get everyone off the rooftop—we had only minutes to get the bombs dropped on the target.

  Nicholson confirmed that everyone was down. I called back to Manchu Three and told him that we were safe, and he could approve the mission.

  “Two minutes until impact,” Norrell said.

  I heard the roar of the jets and braced for the shockwave of the bombs, hunkering underneath the plywood table. I tucked the radio handset between my helmet and ear, freeing my hands and allowing me to jam a big dip of Copenhagen in my bottom lip.

  Lance Corporal Brian Dickinson leaned near me. “That’s not a bad idea, sir. If that bomb misses the mark, I want to go out with a fat one in [referring to the dip of Cope]. This shit is getting pretty hairy.”

  The flight passed overhead.

  Norrell got back on the radio. “Longhorn Six, this is Manchu Three. No drop. No drop. Over.” The bomb had failed to release from the wing, what aviators call “hung ordnance.”

  The flight was advised to conduct a re-attack since the jets had enough gas.

  Nicholson called down. He wasn’t able to positively identify the mark made by the forward air controller-airborne on the target. He couldn’t see it, even with night vision goggles.

  The mark wasn’t easy to see in the first place as it looked like an infrared flashing strobe light—only visible through NVGs. It wasn’t like a huge floodlight shining at a used car extravaganza sale, beaming down from the sky.

  I did a quick stubby-pencil drill on my map—re-checking the geometry. Suddenly, I had visions of the bomb missing the target—and hitting us. The hairs on my neck stood up—it was going to be too close. Without hesitating, I called the TOC. “Abort, abort, abort!” There went our air strike.

  Norrell called back, “The only thing I have left for you is GMLRS.” We pronounced the acronym as a word in slang: “Gimlars.” The Army’s Guided Multiple Launcher Rocket System (GMLRS) fires a rocket that resembles a twenty-foot telephone pole, carries a 200-pound warhead, and is guided by GPS. Even at its maximum range of more than twenty miles, it can hit its targets with surgical precision. In fact, the Army GMLRS Battery that was firing in support of us was located outside of Fallujah.

  I looked on the wall in the COC and saw an MRE carton taped to the wall on which was written the GMLRS call-for-fire instructions
. I quickly called back to the TOC with the following transmission:

  “Manchu Three, this is Longhorn Six. Request GMLRS, one rocket each. Sector two-six-five, buildings six-six and six-seven. Immediate Suppression, Over.”

  The voice from the TOC read back, “Distance 165 meters from friendlies to target.”

  My company executive officer, First Lieutenant Bobby Lee, was inside the TOC when I called in the GMLRS mission, watching the video feeds from the drones buzzing over our zone. He heard my call for fire support come across the radio, as did the Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company (ANGLICO) representative, and the Army “battle captain” who stood watch over the TOC staff.

  Lieutenant Colonel Ferry was standing beside Lee when the battle captain turned to Ferry and said, “Sir. You do know that each one of those rockets cost like $100,000?”

  Ferry’s response affirmed the unwavering loyalty he had for the Marines he commanded in his task force.

  “I don’t give a fuck if they cost one-hundred million dollars!” Ferry replied with certainty. “They killed a U.S. Marine tonight. Approve the mission.”

  The Marines cleared the roof only minutes before the rockets struck their targets.

  We called in more rockets. Having seen what happened to Downing and Yenglin, the Marines on the roof were anxious to be under shelter when the rockets arrived.

  There was a small room on the roof of ECP 8, no more than four by four feet in size. As the rockets launched, Muscle called to the Marines on the roof, “Get the fuck in here.” As clowns seem to do in a circus car, ten Marines, laden with gear and weapons, piled into the room for protection. After a few minutes passed, the absurdity of the situation spurred their laughter. Pressed tightly against one another, one by one they started laughing.

  From the middle of the dog pile, squished by the other Marines piled on top of him, Muscle chuckled. He asked the group, “Does the CO know what “danger close” is?”

  Another Marine from the pile chimed in jokingly, “I want to say, I love you guys. Just in case we’re about to get fucked up.”