Echo in Ramadi

by Scott A. Huesing

  The mosque’s imam was trying to comfort the two women.

  With the mosque now flooded with Marines from the other squads, Grillo came in to assess the damage and Doc began to provide first aid to the injured woman, bandaging the elbow with a compression dressing to stop the bleeding.

  All of the lights were on inside the mosque. The Marines began to clear all the rooms for weapons and IED-making materials. Grillo started directing the other Marines to continue the search. Minutes later, he came over to check on Raney who had been rooted in place, still shocked by what he had done. His lieutenant’s face bore a look of disappointment. Raney knew he had screwed the pooch on this one—badly.

  Raney watched two Marines from another squad digging the bullet he’d shot out of the wall. The round had gone clear through the soft tissue of the woman’s arm and lodged itself into the concrete.

  When Raney returned to The Bank, he sat alone, wracked with guilt for shooting an unarmed woman.

  From his time growing up in Tacoma, Washington, Joseph Raney had been brought up in the parochial school way of thinking that men take care of women, treat them with respect, and keep them safe. He had clung to that code—and now he’d live with the fact that he’d violated it and had harmed an innocent woman who was in what probably was to her the safest place in the world.

  Raney replayed the scene over and over in his head that night and wondered why he had been so jumpy and had shot his weapon. Was it the unknown? The fact the whole situation unleashed so quickly? Was it that he felt nervous without his SAW gunner next to him for backup that night? He didn’t find the answers, at least not that night.

  As Marines will, his squad mates compounded his anxiety and guilt about the incident by giving Raney a new call sign—“PID.” It stood for Positive Identification. It wasn’t an affectionate handle. It was a reminder to him not to shoot anyone unless he could see his target clearly.

  When I arrived, I found Foster and a security team on site. The Marines who had raided the mosque already had headed back to their firm bases. The injured woman had been moved outside the mosque and was standing amongst a group of other Iraqis, still holding her bandaged arm. I tried to communicate with her brother, but we didn’t have an interpreter on site yet, so we put her inside Somerville’s Humvee.

  She sat there for two hours until we sorted out the situation.

  Friction.

  I went across the street to an apartment building occupied by the MSPF unit who had a Human Exploitation Team (HET) embedded with it. I asked if First Lieutenant Stephen Peacock was around.

  Peacock was a former enlisted Marine from Anchorage, Alaska. At thirty-four, he came with a lot of experience and common sense. I was counting on him to help us deal with the situation as time ticked by and daylight crept closer. I didn’t like hanging out in the middle of Rutbah during daylight under normal circumstances, let alone after my boys had raided three of the city’s mosques—we had to clear the scene as soon as humanly-fucking-possible to eliminate what could have potentially boiled over into a worsening situation of local hostility.

  Peacock knew a local doctor nearby who he’d run into occasionally while patrolling in zone. My Terp, Ford, explained to the brother and injured woman we were going to the local clinic to find her a doctor.

  A small team of security accompanied Peacock, Ford, the wounded woman, her brother, and me on the trip to the clinic. It was almost 0400. We banged on the door to rouse the doctor. After several minutes, he cracked the door and peered through a slit with a wary look. Ford told him what had happened to the girl.

  The doctor and Ford started going back and forth in what appeared to be a heated conversation. Most Iraqis spoke in a very sharp, loud manner punctuated by overt hand gestures. Despite our offer of money for his services, the doctor told Ford there was nothing he could do to help her. He said our best option would be to have her brother drive her to Ramadi General Hospital and get her to the emergency room for a proper exam. Ramadi was more than four hours away by car.

  We were bewildered that the doctor refused to treat the woman—he was completely worthless to us.

  “I guess there’s no such thing as a Hippocratic-fucking-oath in Iraq,” I thought, as I slammed the screen door in his face and pulled my team out.

  On the spot, Peacock and I formulated a plan to tell the brother to get her to Ramadi General Hospital and gave him $1,500 to cover any potential fees needed to get her to Ramadi right away. The brother assured us that he had a car and was going to drive her there immediately once they got their things together.

  With the situation controlled—to a degree—we all returned to our firm bases and tried to make sense of the night. Despite the unfortunate gravity of the situation and shooting the woman at the mosque, our raids yielded fantastic results. I saw the evidence of that when I walked into the main room of Building 500. Dozens of AK-47s were laid out neatly on the huge Persian rug that covered the floor, along with RPGs and other contraband all captured from the mosques by the Marines of Echo Company.

  The sweat from my soaking-wet camouflage blouse had just begun to air out, and I unlaced my boots. I was planning on getting a couple of hours of sleep. My plans for rest, however, were derailed when one of the radio operators came into my room and told me we had gotten a call from the 15th MEU’s operations center: I was to report to CKV to see Colonel Beaudreault.

  I put my gear back on and told Somerville to get a convoy for a run to CKV.

  I also told him that I wanted to do a quick patrol over to The Bank to check on the Marines before we pushed to CKV.

  As our four-vehicle convoy approached The Bank, small arms fire began to crack around us, and the Marines on the roof scanned the area to see where the shots originated. At the same time, a squad across the street returned fire. Then, all of the Marines converged their fire on the buildings from where the muzzle flashes emanated.

  We pushed to the west side of the street next to The Bank and took cover. We were in a bad position and had no direct observation of the enemy from our vehicles. The firefight lasted only a few minutes, and we quickly exited the Humvees and made our way inside.

  I briefed Lee on the events and my planned trip to CKV, and told him he was in charge—he had no idea why I was going, but I’m sure his imagination had already been running overboard. Somerville had pulled the convoy to the front side of The Bank to mount up. As we did, rounds started biting the ground around us.

  I scrambled toward my Humvee, the back door of which had already been opened up for me.

  A couple of shots cracked around me, and the Marines in the gun truck and on the rooftop of The Bank returned fire. I dove for the cover of the heavily armored Humvee. With little grace under fire, I smacked my head on the edge of the door as I made my way into the back seat, jamming my Kevlar helmet down onto my brow.

  The convoy sped out of the kill zone, and we drove west on MSR Michigan toward CKV. The driver kept looking over his shoulder at me. He finally piped up, “Hey sir. You know you’re bleeding?”

  I said, “What the hell are you talking about?

  He said with certainty, “Yes, sir. You’ve got blood all over your face and nose.”

  The A-Driver, who occupied the right front seat, also turned around and chimed in, “He’s right, sir. You’re fucking bleeding.”

  I didn’t feel anything, but I took off my helmet to assess the reported damage.

  It turned out that my helmet had pressed my protective eyewear down so hard, that it cut deeply into the bridge of my nose. It looked worse than it was. The Marine sitting next to me took some paper towels and wiped the blood off of my face for me, like a mother licking a napkin to wipe smeared chocolate ice cream off of her kid’s face.

  Marines take care of their own.

  During the forty-five-minute drive to CKV, my imaginary “career reduction light” continually flashed as I thought about facing the 15th MEU CO. I had raided all three mosques when he had granted permission to
raid just one. Plus, one of my Marines had shot a civilian woman. I had no plan of diluting the truth to the MEU CO.

  When we arrived, I told Somerville to get the boys some chow and hit the store while I handled things with the colonel.

  As I walked into the COC, I sensed the eyes of officers and men staring at me, sitting behind their computer workstations in nice, clean uniforms with cans of cold soda on their desks. I knew I looked like hell. I was completely filthy, physically and emotionally drained, not to mention severely sleep deprived, after weeks of continuous patrolling.

  It bothered me a little, I suppose. They looked at me like I was some mangy animal defacing their territory. But they all knew who I was—I was the CO of Echo Company, and we’d been out in the city for weeks cleaning house. Tough shit.

  A Marine I knew grabbed me and said, “Hey, Scott, man. Come here. You’re bleeding, brother!” The gash on my nose had come open again without my knowledge, and blood was trickling down my face. Hindsight being what it is, I guess maybe that’s why all of the Marines gawked at me.

  After I got patched up, I went to see the 15th MEU operations officer, Paul Nugent. He was one of the coolest and collected guys I’d ever met, and I was glad he was willing to listen to the events before I met with the boss. I knocked on his thin door, made out of a piece of plywood, that was already half-opened. He told me to come in. His first concern was if I was OK. I told him I was fine, just tired.

  He asked me about the previous night, and I explained in detail all of the decisions. Major Nugent said, “Sounds good, Scotty. I think the Colonel just wants to talk to you.”

  He escorted me into the CO’s office. The colonel was calm. He was tall and physically fit with salt-and-pepper hair, cropped short. He spoke in a low, relaxed voice for such a large man. Everyone called him a “soft talker.” I never knew if that was really his nature or just the way he made sure that everyone was actually listening to him.

  I went through the events in detail with the CO. I admitted that I decided on my own to hit all three mosques based on the reliable information, and the fact I had Marines positioned ready to strike.

  There was a short silence. I was certain the CO was about to drop the hammer on me for deviating from his orders.

  Instead, he said, “Scott, don’t worry. You did the right thing. I made the call, not you. You got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I was relieved. I felt fortunate to have such loyal leaders taking care of me. I still felt like the whole night was replaying like a movie, fast-forwarding to certain parts in my head in no specific order as a result of the sleep deprivation I was fighting off.

  Colonel Beaudreault asked if there was anything I needed out in zone and told me to keep up the good work. Despite the shit-storm that I had created for my boss to deal with, his leadership that day made a distinct and lasting impression on me.

  I was grateful for his understanding and support and left feeling relieved about the decision I made. My gut had been right that night, but I never liked making decisions based on that alone.

  CHAPTER 24

  Crush

  I didn’t have to be a tactical genius to figure out that if I took the weapons and ammunition out of the hands of the enemy, my Marines would get shot at less. There were still some soldiers and Marines, however, who thought that local Iraqis were entitled to keep at least one AK-47 in each home—as if keeping a fully automatic assault weapon under a bed was a birthright of all Iraqis.

  Bullshit.

  If any of my units raided any home or building and found weapons, the weapons came out with us. Whether or not the Iraqi National Ministry of Defense wanted to enforce the policies was a moot point to me as an operator on the ground.

  Once during routine clearance operations, we found an AK-47 in the home of a frail, seventy-year-old woman with a full magazine right next to it.

  I asked her, “Is this yours? Do you own this?”

  She said sheepishly, “Yes.”

  I politely asked her to pick it up and show me how it worked and to insert the magazine.

  She had no idea how to do it.

  It was a known tactic from city to city in Iraq for insurgents to stash guns in as many houses as they could to use at their discretion. Therefore, an insurgent scumbag could walk around town and blend in with the locals by not toting a rifle around. If he ran into a Marine unit patrolling along he would simply duck inside a nearby house, intimidate the shit out of the residents, grab a weapon he’d hidden inside, take a few crack shots at a patrol, and ditch the rifle back in the house. He then fled out the back door and blended back in with the crowd.

  We developed a tactic to deal with this.

  First, we’d set up a cordon at the edges of the city or zone we operated in and establish entry control points. We’d search all vehicles and persons coming in and out, choking off their supply lines.

  Second, we’d bring in the dogs. They’d sniff out any weapons caches that were buried or hidden underground, in fields, walls, cars, dumpsters, or dead animal carcasses that scattered the landscape. Trust me, if there was a place to stash weapons and ammo, the insurgents used it. They were very creative. The military working dog teams, however, were better at finding them than the insurgents were at hiding them. Advantage, us.

  Third, I ordered every Marine who went out on patrol to seize every single weapon, no matter where they found it.

  One day, I overheard one of the Marines humorously refer to my tactic as, “Captain Huesing’s Going Out of Business Sale.” He wasn’t far off. Just like a used car salesman, my theory was, “Everything must go!”

  If it sounds easy, it wasn’t. Implementing it was even harder. My men were already carrying more than fifty pounds of gear on patrol—body armor, ammo, helmets, weapons, batteries, radios, food, and water.

  We had a saying, “Ounces equal pounds and pounds equal pain.”

  A fully loaded AK-47 weighs more than eight pounds. Pain.

  If they got into a firefight, they still had to fight their way out, and could then be carrying up to three rifles that added up to almost twenty-five extra pounds. More pain.

  Nonetheless, the Marines in Echo Company embraced it. There were days when they’d bring home dozens and dozens of rifles and RPGs along with boxes of ammunition even from zones deemed “clear” by intelligence reports. The weapons continued to pile up to our collective astonishment.

  By the time Echo Company slid into a routine in Rutbah, we had figured out where the hot spots of enemy activity were. I decided to take action and drafted a concept of operations and pushed it up to Major Nugent for review. Two days later, the 15th MEU approved the plan.

  My concept was simple, but it required a lot of manpower and support from adjacent units. I envisioned the area to the west of Building 500 to be a “crime scene” so to speak, since that was where we’d been receiving the most frequent small arms fire over the past few weeks.

  Like any good police force, we had to seal off the crime scene. We did just that.

  The area we would be clearing was roughly two square kilometers, or one hundred forty football fields put together, jammed with more than two hundred houses. Streets lined with dilapidated, abandoned vehicles that were so narrow you could barely drive a compact car down them—let alone Humvees. Most of the area’s residents were families with small children.

  Echo Company could not stop manning our existing observation posts; therefore, we had to rely on support from other units. It was my intention to go in at dawn and cordon off the entire area. I intended to go in heavy—supported by six General Dynamics LAV-25s and twelve Humvees, mounted with heavy weapons and machine guns. We were joined by two teams of military working dogs, Human Exploitation Teams, four Terps, and medical support vehicles.

  Helicopters, including Bell AH-1W Cobra attack gunships, would fly overhead and provide aerial reconnaissance and close air support. In addition to this ensemble of firepower, a platoon of over sixty dismounted
Marines from Echo Company would go house-to-house and clear thoroughly.

  The reinforced platoon staged for the operation at Building 500 right across the street from the zone we were about to enter. The Marines checked their gear and readied their teams. Small unit leaders reviewed the pocket-sized strip maps that detailed the zone they’d be operating in.

  They were set.

  Once we had communications with the Light Armored Reconnaissance crews with Chippewa, the helicopters, and the mounted patrols, we were ready. I gave the command to execute just before first light.

  The massive, eight-wheeled, LAV-25s rushed into zone and assumed the high ground and major avenues of advance. Simultaneously with the mounted Humvee patrols, the LAR infantry scouts hopped out of the back of the vehicles with rolls of two-inch, white, cloth engineer tape and began to rope off the entire perimeter from vehicle to vehicle. Under cover of darkness, they stretched the cloth tape four feet off of the ground and tied it from bumper to bumper. Additional Marines from the mounted patrols covered all of the access points along the streets.

  We had sealed off the crime scene, and no one would be allowed in or out.

  We estimated that it would take around six hours to clear the zone once we had it sealed.

  The infantry Marines reached their release points at the south end of the zone. They moved north, conducting a systematic search of every single house.

  It was a laborious process. Each house took a great deal of time to clear. It took even longer if the home was occupied since we needed the Terps on site to explain what was happening and enable us to conduct tactical questioning.

  If there were women alone in the house, this posed another issue. It was improper for a female to have strange men in the home without the husband or a male family member present. Some of the women had no issues with it, and they would gather up their children and sit in the kitchen while we conducted business. Some even offered us tea and bread.