Echo in Ramadi

by Scott A. Huesing

  When the plane landed in Kuwait, the process repeated itself albeit in reverse.

  The airport terminal ramp closed. The plane’s engines shut down. The ramp lowered.

  A detail of Marines came up the ramp to retrieve their fellow warrior. First, they slowly turned the casket so that the Marine would come headfirst off the plane. Then, slowly, reverently, they moved the fallen hero from the plane. They turned their fallen comrade over to the crew of a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster, which then flew him to Dover, Delaware. From Dover, the CACO personnel escorted the fallen Marine on the last part of his journey: to his home, to be laid to rest.

  Marines love each other deeply—even if they don’t know each other. Almost certainly, the Marine in the back of the plane was unknown to the crew. But they are fellow Marines. Brothers. Sisters. Deserving all the respect and honor that they can give them.

  While serving as a young captain with 2nd Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team (FAST) Company in Virginia, I was talking to some good friends of mine who were Navy SEALs on a close-quarters battle range. One of them told me with complete, unsolicited sincerity why he thought the Marines were the best. “They’re disciplined to a fault. They’re great shooters. They’re physically fit, and they’re aggressive like no one’s business.”

  He added, “I think the reason we (SEALs) enjoy our level of success is that we are a smaller unit. We’ve got a shitload of money, and we get a lot more specialized training—but I would never have a second thought about fighting alongside the Marines.”

  He was right, but he had left something out—what truly underlies the greatness of the Marine Corps. I have to admit that, early on in my career, I didn’t have the wisdom or experience to understand it. Later on, I did.

  What makes us good, what makes us great, is the brotherhood.

  It’s not that the individual Marines are the most lethal weapons on the battlefield, nor how straight they shoot, nor how they attack and kill the enemy with an unbridled ferocity that makes them so great. They’re not just warriors—they’re artisans, musicians, poets, comedians, and yes, sometimes writers.

  When we lose one of our own, we understand that the entire Marine Corps has lost someone special. Being part of that brotherhood, that tradition, is nothing short of amazing, and seeing it in action, we understand that the world has lost one of its best.

  CHAPTER 9

  Livestock

  It was bitterly cold in Ramadi during December 2006. I grew up in the Chicago area, enduring many winters of bone-chilling lake-effect winds. I had spent plenty of time in the mountains at high altitude in training as well. I had known my share of cold. Without question, I had never felt or endured the cold as I did in Ramadi that year.

  I’m quite sure the sleep deprivation, the regular malnourishment of my diet, dehydration, and persistent fatigue played a large part in it. The human body doesn’t want to function the way you want it to under those conditions—it has to be forced through individual will.

  We constantly sweated through our body armor that weighed over fifty pounds with all of the ammunition, water, and gear strapped to it. After hours of patrolling at night, our uniforms would be soaked with sweat. When we came to a stop and went firm at the day’s target house, the moisture would interact with the cold air and set us all to shivering.

  We’d beg the sun to shine hard and warm us as fast as it could.

  One night, Echo Company prepared to root out what we called high-value individuals (HVIs) who were known to be in the Sufia District during a clearance operation, an area of the city that had largely gone untouched by the U.S. Army for some time. An HVI is a person who is essential to the enemy’s operations, someone who is critical to their success. The primary goal is to capture them and turn them over to an intelligence unit for interrogation and exploitation—resisting capture usually turned out badly for those who chose that option.

  The area was south of the Euphrates River and scattered with date palm trees, random cinder-block sheds, agricultural fields, garbage, and demolished vehicles.

  Iraqi Army soldiers were mixed in with the patrol’s lead elements. We also had military working dog (MWD) teams which were an essential part of any clearance operation to sniff out weapons caches. Most Iraqis hated dogs. They viewed them as foul creatures and wanted no part of them. It was extremely rare to find one kept as a pet. Most of the ones we encountered were strays, mangy and diseased. We had to put down more than a few that became aggressive toward our patrols.

  The MWDs were different. They were Belgian Malinois, a ferocious, compact breed of shepherds—not cuddly, malleable little pets. They were a bold combination of attack and bomb-sniffing K-9s. The dog handlers were the only ones allowed to touch the dogs, but just having them around boosted our morale. Man’s best friend and all that.

  We staged our forces ready to execute Operation Kasserine located at a firm base called OP Crater. It was an Iraqi Army compound a few hundred meters northeast of ECP 8. OP Crater was worn down, lacking electricity, and it was gutted out—the house had no real function.

  The platoon staged inside before we stepped off. We had a few hours to wait; the boys huddled together and tried to stay warm. Still wearing all of their battle gear, some of the boys were snuggled under a thick, red, satiny blanket with white trim around the border, trying to catch some sleep. The tan Malinois lay at the Marines’ feet, curled up in a ball with his handler next to him. I smiled as I watched them.

  My battle-hardened Marines looked somewhat innocent—resembling toy soldiers stuffed gently into a Christmas stocking—the soft, white, satin border of the red blanket tucked snugly underneath their arms.

  When we stepped out on a six-hour operation, we did so under a starry sky through which moved a bright half-moon. In the greenish glow of our NVGs, this light highlighted the shapes around us.

  As we moved forward, my nose began to pick up what smelled like a well-used horse paddock. Through the narrow, 20mm monocular optic, I scanned the area to try to make out the source of the smell. As I panned my gaze to the front I was dumbfounded to see a huge spotted cow. It was the first cow I had ever seen in Iraq.

  The cow softly mooed as it grazed—or tried to. After staring at it for a few seconds, I looked behind me, where I knew my Forward Air Controller (FAC), Captain Richard “Bam-Bam” Rasmussen, was located whenever we patrolled. My gaze hit Bam-Bam directly, and I could make out his face clearly and the optic mounted on his helmet.

  I said in a quiet whisper, “Bam-Bam, it’s a cow.”

  Bam-Bam, a Wisconsin native, turned his view toward the direction of the beast and then slowly turned his gaze back to me. I saw his optic bobbing up and down in the affirmative, acknowledging that he saw it too.

  Bam-Bam said in a low, calm tone, “Yeaaahhhh.”

  I guess that he seemed so unfazed by the sighting of what I thought to be—and what indeed might have been—the only cow in all of Iraq because so much of what we’d already seen in Iraq bordered on, and often crossed into, the surreal.

  We always had so much kit strapped to our bodies, like the NVGs on our helmets. Optics and scopes and flashlights. Everything mounted to aluminum rails on our weapons and wherever else we could secure a high-tech gadget to gain the upper hand on our enemy. Only the Marine Corps could find a way to make the latest hi-tech, lightweight gear cumbersome. We must have looked like spacemen to the locals, with all of our high-speed gear strapped and fastened to our bodies.

  Bam-Bam joined 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, as our FAC in February 2006. After three consecutive deployments to Iraq, flying CH-53E Super Stallions, huge single-rotor Sikorsky helicopters capable of hauling 24 loaded Marines or more than 30,000 pounds of cargo, he was ready for a change of pace and volunteered for a tour as an FAC. He insisted on being assigned to an infantry unit because he wanted to contribute to, support, and experience the Marine Corps at its most elemental. His job was to direct jets and attack helicopters as they delivered fire support for us.


  The words “highly fortunate” don’t begin to describe how I felt having Bam-Bam with me. He was the epitome of what an FAC should be. He worked fast, knew his stuff, and never faltered, even in the fiercest fighting. He also served as a sounding board for my ideas and provided a much-needed sanity check on most days.

  Despite dragging him around the battlefield tethered to my hip by a radio cord, he was always there for me. I’ll always be grateful for how he fought as a Marine—moreover to have him as my friend.

  The way my patrols worked was that the company would go out as a whole. When the lead element, typically a platoon, came close to hitting the limits of its endurance or daylight drew close, whichever came first, I would choose a building on the map in which we would “go firm” and would make my decision on which building we would occupy based off of what is called a “map recon,” which is a detailed study of the map of a certain area with special attention to its infrastructure and terrain.

  Using preexisting buildings as firm bases made sense for many reasons. First, there were no pre-built fighting positions that we could use in the city. Second, we never stayed in one place long enough to justify digging in fighting positions as we would on a more open, traditional battlefield. Third, the buildings were made of solid concrete blocks, reinforced with stucco and mortar. The metal-framed windows had relatively small openings that limited observation from outside threats.

  I always remember thinking that if I had to fight a war like this, Iraq was as good a place as you could get since the buildings were all made so damn well. The durability of the construction was far superior to what one would find in the United States. Insurgent 7.62mm bullets would cut through vinyl siding, standard two-by-four lumber, and drywall like a hot knife through butter if we were fighting in downtown San Diego.

  The Marines would cordon off the building and set up perimeter security. They would post themselves on rooftops to allow for better observation and set up machine guns to cover avenues of approach, usually roads, that the enemy might use to advance against our position or drive a VBIED into our base. During the night, we would send out security patrols covered by marksmen posted on the top of the house. These patrols would ensure that no insurgent activity was brewing around us and no attack would occur without advanced warning. Those Marines not patrolling or manning positions would sleep or maintain their gear.

  Procedurally, we’d knock on the door to determine if the house was occupied, not out of common decency alone, but also because we didn’t want any surprises from the occupants. I had a Terp do the talking for us. The Terp would explain to the family that we’d be using their house as a position to hole up for the day, and if they had family living close by they should visit. We didn’t want them to be in our way.

  It was a necessity in this environment to use the local infrastructure to our advantage; living in the streets was not an option.

  On this patrol, Jake was our Terp. He was one of our better ones, with remarkably good English. Like Big Sam and Ford, he was a young kid, certainly no more than twenty years old. He was five-ten, and as a soccer player growing up, he was athletic and physically fit. He was a good-looking kid with deep smile lines that cut from his nose to the corners of his mouth and into his neatly trimmed mustache and beard. Consistently cheerful, the only evidence of the toll that his job had taken on him were dark circles around his eyes.

  His English was remarkable, and he loved to be in the middle of the action and out on patrols with the Marines.

  Always “kitted-out” with the same gear the Marines wore, Jake loved to look the part, but he wasn’t a poseur. He wore desert-striped cammies and a black balaclava ski mask to cover his face. On his right arm, Jake wore a Velcro patch of the American flag with great pride. Across his body armor, he sported a traditional Iraqi chest magazine pouch and carried an AK-47 with a metal, collapsible stock with the magazine inserted. He never had any ammunition.

  In this case, the family of five who lived in the house we chose insisted that there was nowhere else they could go on such short notice. Still being relatively new to the game of how to be most effective while working in this part of Ramadi, I let the family stay. We isolated them in one of the house’s larger rooms. We allowed them to use the bathroom, gave them food, and posted a guard to keep watch on them. We had searched the house for weapons and contraband upon our arrival.

  We’d captured a few weapons during our movement that first night but never received any contact from the enemy.

  Before I settled in for some rest, a Marine told me that Jake was not doing so well. I went to the living room where he was lying on the floor—sprawled out amongst a squad of exhausted Marines. I knelt down and asked him what was wrong. He told me he didn’t know if he’d have enough energy to keep going the next day.

  Jake’s condition concerned me greatly because our Terps were one of our most valuable assets during any operation. I motioned to the squad leader to bring Jake’s rucksack to me. I lifted its flap and started rummaging around inside to survey the contents. I rooted down to the bottom of the pack, I felt an odd shape—and then another, and another.

  I turned on my helmet light to see if what I had in my hand was for real. To my shock and disbelief, it was Borden’s eggnog. Not one, not two or three, but six, one-quart metal cans of eggnog. The standard conversion of one quart weighs a little more than two pounds. So, in addition to his normal combat load, Jake was carrying an extra fifteen pounds or more of thick, creamy eggnog, which he’d apparently snuck out of the dining facility.

  “Jake!” I asked. “Son, why the fuck would you pack-out six cans of eggnog?”

  In an exhausted voice and with a half-cocked and somewhat guilty grin on his face, he replied, “Sir, I love this Egg-Nuug.” He placed a heavy emphasis on the hyphen and “Nuug” when endorsing his beverage of choice.

  I ordered his squad leader, “Get rid of that shit. Only water for Jake from now on.”

  We had little activity that night—relatively uneventful. The Marines ate chow, slept, and cleaned their weapons. Small unit leaders inspected the boys’ gear. Platoon sergeants made a note of any supply shortages, and we passed the information back to the operation center at Camp Corregidor. They’d coordinate a link-up position to get a re-supply to us before we’d kick off the next night’s patrols and clearance operations.

  As the morning unfolded, we heard a massive explosion nearby. Before we could contact the task force’s TOC, we monitored a request for entry into friendly lines from Task Force 1-9 Infantry’s command element. I agreed immediately, and soon we spotted a dust trail on a road to the south. Not long after that, a four-vehicle convoy rolled up to our position and posted in a herringbone-shaped formation in front of the house with their machine guns pointed outboard.

  The Marines greeted the soldiers at the Humvees and began to brief them on where all of our positions were, and let them know the location of the friendly patrols we had out in the area.

  The door on the lead Humvee opened up and the task force’s command sergeant major, Dennis “Birdog” Bergmann, emerged. He looked like a human sugar cookie—covered from head to toe in fine, white, chalky dust. Evidently, the convoy had been blasted by a roadside bomb as Birdog and the other soldiers came out to visit us—just to check in and see if we needed anything.

  Birdog was a professional soldier—a U.S. Army Ranger who had endured five combat tours already.

  He had a clean-shaven head and was built well for a soldier in his early forties—five eleven and 195 pounds. He’d acquired his nickname in childhood because he had the knack for finding other people’s misplaced stuff, a human Labrador of sorts.

  At the pinnacle of his career as a command sergeant major, he had a cocky smile, and his bulgy eyes had a wild excitement in them as if he was eagerly anticipating the next fight. When he wasn’t chewing soldiers’ asses, he had a laid-back, familiar manner with everyone. Officers were no exception. He called most of those with whom he
interacted, “Bubba,” with an occasional, “Sir,” thrown in. I loved it.

  Birdog erupted. “Shit, that sucked! What a fucking way to start the day, brother.”

  He came over to me and began to give me the details of their short but harrowing drive from Camp Corregidor through the Sufia District. Luckily, the roadside bomb had caused only superficial damage to the convoy, and none of the soldiers were seriously injured—most just reeled from the blast with a definitive ringing in their ears.

  I replied to Birdog, “You’re right, my friend. One hell of a way to start the day.”

  We began to collect up all of our gear after Birdog’s convoy departed. We let the family come out of the house. The kids were especially curious about what we were doing, and their fingers loved to explore all our gear.

  The children also enjoyed getting candy from the Marines, and these were no exception. Several Marines emptied their pockets of candy into their tiny, wanting hands. Some were schmoozing and put their sunglasses on the younger children. “A risky gesture,” I thought, because typically once kids get a liking for something, they want to keep it.

  Jake translated my thanks to the family for the use of their home, and we gave them pamphlets with the phone numbers to the Civil-Military Operations Center (CMOC), a unit designated to deal specifically with the concerns of the local civilians—and take any reports of insurgent activity.

  They rarely gave us any useful information unless it was to squeeze some cash out of the CMOC soldiers for “damages” that were supposedly caused to their homes while we stayed there.

  We doled out the last of the candy to the kids at the house. Then, squad by squad, we moved out, continuing to clear the Sufia District as we struggled to stay warm and hunt down HVIs.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sacrifice

  Kimberly Downing, a nurse in Norwalk, Iowa, never served a day in the military, but she made many sacrifices for her country. Over ten years, the three men in her life—her husband, Jeff, and her two sons, Ryan and Justen—served in Iraq. All of them were Marines. All of them served in the infantry. Ryan Downing was one of my Marines in Ramadi.