I removed my camera from a drop pouch and waved at the group, telling them to “say cheese.” The girls waved back in glee. The teenage boys waved at me to go away. I took the picture and moved out of the doorway. I was quickly replaced by a few Marines, who offered candy to the children in the crowded room.
As I moved from room to room, my mind was full of thoughts. I also took note of everything we had disrupted. Furniture was randomly rearranged. Mud seemed to find its way onto everything. The observations led to a broader perspective. Young, aggressive Marines had come into this house, shouting, with weapons at the ready. They had systematically cleared each room and secured all of the entrances and the exits. In the darkness of the night and blinded by the high-powered Surefire incandescent lamps of the Marines, the Iraqis had been forced into a single room, barely lit by a kerosene space heater. Laden with body armor, NVGs, shoulder-fired rockets, and a litany of miscellaneous gear, the Marines resembled something from outer space more than human beings. The family had good reason to be frightened.
I took a seat on a plush green couch and looked at the floor. We, the alien invaders, were going to provide this family with nothing more than the dirt caked on their carpets. Not security or hope; just fear and mud.
I found the headquarters element in a living room off the foyer. Some of the guys were asleep on a couch, huddled together for warmth. I took a seat next to Eakin, who was acting as the battalion radio operator for the mission, instead of fulfilling his usual position as my personal radioman. Even my purpose had changed. Instead of focusing solely on detainees, I was also the nominal leader of the headquarters element. The concept was intended to allow Captain Smith to focus on directing the company, rather than on the ten Marines who accompanied him on every mission. Looking at the group, I understood why he had asked me to perform the task. Half of the Marines were asleep.
Their slumber was interrupted by a shouting Eakin. He had just received a transmission from Tarheel that cleared us to resume our advance, and he was now notifying Rage 6. I staged the headquarters element and followed a squad from Rage 3 out into the street. The formation carried onward into the Qatana darkness, heading toward Fire Station Road. Rage 1 and Rage 2 would be waiting for us there. Once we established an over-watch position of the sniper alley and the marketplace, the two platoons would begin a detailed search.
To avoid a prominent intersection, the formation turned into the backyard of what had once been a large family compound. The expanse stretched for about six city lots. I climbed over knee-high rubble that had once been the exterior wall and stared into the back of a large home. Initially, I was impressed with its grandeur. Then I scanned its many windows, anticipating a hidden enemy. The Marines ahead of me snaked in a single file line through the yard. Trash was everywhere. I assumed that the family had fled during the war, and their former neighbors now used the empty space as a garbage dump. We maneuvered through the debris and came out on the far side.
Standing in the dark street, Eakin received new orders from Tarheel on the battalion net. We were being directed to halt. Pathfinder had found a larger IED and was attempting to disarm it. The battalion had decided to exercise caution and was telling us to get inside a structure.
The two lead platoons took up positions on Fire Station Road. They were now waiting for us to establish the over-watch in order to continue the advance. It became a small point of friction. With the order to halt, even though there were a hundred buildings between the IED and us, Rage 3 and the headquarters element were falling behind in the mission. Once we were given the green light to continue movement, Rage 1 and Rage 2 would be stuck waiting for our arrival. In the first three hours of the mission, our lead units had moved less than 500 meters. There was no way we would have enough darkness to clear the full 1.5 kilometers.
Relaxing in another Iraqi’s living room with a dozen Marines, I interrupted the usual jokes and banter of bored men. “Eakin, relay to battalion: Rage 1 and Rage 2 have reached Fire Station Road,” I said.
He looked at me quizzically. “I already told them that, sir,” replied the sleepy lance corporal.
“Just do it,” I said. I hoped that by our reminding battalion of our forward units, they would realize that we should be allowed to move.
Eakin keyed the handset and slaughtered what I had told him to say. “Tarheel COC, this is Rage, Rage lead trace Seventeen Old Railroad Station Road, over,” he said.
The young Marine was clearly bored and tired. The other Marines in the room laughed hysterically. One inadvertently burned himself with his cigarette. I snatched the handset and sent the transmission myself. The entire room was now chiding Eakin, so I brought him outside, where it was cold. “Wake up and get focused,” I told him.
I turned around and walked back into the house. I bumped into Captain Smith on the way in. As we came face-to-face, an F/A-18 screeched low across the Qatana skyline. His radio operator dove to the ground next to us, expecting some sort of incoming mortar fire.
“I think the communications guys are scared tonight,” I said to Captain Smith.
An hour later, Pathfinder had disarmed the IED and was ready to continue moving. It was more than enough time for insurgents to hastily emplace surface-laid IEDs. Instead of continuing through the urban terrain, Captain Smith directed the platoon to move north to Racetrack. Pathfinder was now clearing the Give Me-Racetrack intersection and was a few hundred meters ahead of us. To make up lost ground, the formation got on the now cleared portion of Racetrack and headed to the intersection with Fire Station Road.
I was walking down the same road that hundreds of insurgents had held a parade on two months earlier. I recognized each of the buildings from the video that 1-37 had given me of the event. They had pulled it off a jihadist Web site.
After turning onto Fire Station, we went firm in the large school complex. The massive two-story structure was empty. The walls of every cinder-block room were barren. Two basketball courts were in the central courtyard. A squad from Rage 3 cleared the second floor and positioned itself on the roof. Rage 1 and Rage 2 both began the clear of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) compound opposite Fire Station Road. Rage 1 was prosecuting the old marketplace, while Rage 2 hit the insurgent sniper range.
Minutes later, the Marines’ search bore fruit. The radio crackled, “Rage 6, this is Rage 2 Actual, we have discovered a small cache of rifles and grenades. How copy, over?” said Lieutenant Thomas.
The response was short: “Solid copy.”
The intel on the insurgent sniper range in the marketplace’s alleyways was confirmed by the contents of Rage 2’s cache. Unlike most insurgent AK variant weapons, the rifles in the cache were all scoped. The insurgents were perfecting their marksmanship skills less than 500 meters from COP Firecracker. Leaving weapons in the street was also evidence of the truth behind Lieutenant Mann’s concerns. The insurgents had not been expecting us to prosecute targets within Qatana. They were accustomed to the less direct approach from 1/6.
I moved up to the roof to get a better view of the objective area. I found four Marines scanning the skyline, waiting for an insurgent to show himself. I leaned against the cold wall with the fire team leader. Unexpectedly, a string of five successive blasts ripped into the street below. Each one was small, nothing more than a breaching charge of C4. The few glass windows that were still intact shattered downstairs. Profanity-laced tirades were audible from the roof—like those of us perched above, the Marines occupying the rooms below hadn’t known the blast was coming. Rage 6 was the most upset. I could hear him yelling at Rage 1, who was across the street. He berated his platoon commander to such an extent that his voice was noticeably strained afterward.
I headed down from the roof and back to the first floor. Apache 6 came on the company net, requesting the nature of the explosions. They didn’t like the answer. “Controlled detonations by Rage 1, over,” said Captain Smith. Rage 6 asked for Rage 1 Actual, Lieutenant Shearburn, to come to his position. The tw
o men argued over whether Rage 1 had given advance warning before the blasts, intended to gain entry to the locked portions of the marketplace. The conversation ended awkwardly.
Rage 1 Actual looked at Rage 6; something was coming over the PRR in his ear. “Sir, we got something,” said Lieutenant Shearburn.
The two men left to link up with the squad that found what could only be described as an insurgent armory. After blowing down a locked market stall door, the Marines of Rage 1 had found every tool known to be used by Iraqi insurgents. The cache contained all the things you would expect an insurgent to have. It was huge.
Moments later, Rage 2 found another cache in the alleyway. The hide site contained a grenade and a sniper rifle. We spent the next two hours consolidating all of the items in one place. It would make the destruction of the assorted insurgent materials much easier for EOD. I watched Lieutenant Thomas and a few of his Marines, who were carrying the weapons they had found, walk down Fire Station toward Rage 1. They turned down an alley and disappeared into the shadows.
Five minutes later, a solitary figure emerged from the alley. The Marine recognized me standing in the school’s double-door entrance.
“Daly, you need to see this. Come on,” said James Thomas. I followed him south down Fire Station to the same point his shadow had originated from. The massive dome of Qatana’s central mosque dominated the horizon about 200 meters away. An ornate minaret stood behind it. I thought about the fact that I was walking the streets of Ramadi with only one other American. It happened to be my college roommate.
We approached two Marines standing outside a market stall door. Farther down the street, a squad was searching and clearing more of the marketplace. All of the structures were a single story.
I ducked my head as I went through the small door. I was immediately standing among two dozen Marines who were sifting through every type of Soviet-style weapon I could think of. The tools of war were being stockpiled by category. Assault rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, and matching ammunition were spread about the room.
In the far corner, our public affairs Marine was videotaping the find. He stood over garbage bags full of plastic explosives. Next to him, one of the Marines shined his flashlight against the wall. The light revealed a half-dozen bloodstains below a row of grotesque hooks. This was how al Qaeda controlled the population.
Farther down the wall, a few shelves held cases of small-arms ammunition. I moved about the room, stepping on several garbage bags that overflowed with copper wire. Next to them lay four blue Iraqi police vests with their corresponding ballistic plates placed on top of them. In the center, next to the growing pile of weapons, were multiple metal stands that served as stabilizing rifle platforms or support for homemade rocket launchers.
I looked back toward the entrance. Two Marines, each carrying 122mm artillery rounds, were straining to put the shells on the floor. When one of the Marines almost dropped a round, I took note of all of the explosives in the room. Our company commander, four of his lieutenants, and three SNCOs were in the same place. If something exploded, the company would have been almost leaderless. I ignored the thought.
Standing among the piles of insurgent materials, Lieutenant Shearburn and Captain Smith began to discuss how to continue the advance. Shearburn’s squads were supposed to be progressing on the clear. With such a large find, however, the Marines were busy consolidating and compiling a list of the cache contents. Captain Smith decided to send two of Rage 3’s squads past Rage 1 and have them search the area around the ISI’s executive compound.
I decided to head back to Rage 3’s over-watch position. I shared the 100-meter walk with Sergeant Martin Bustamante, the public affairs Marine who had videotaped the cache. On our way, we passed a group of EOD engineers looking for the cache site. I left Bustamante at the school and led the lost EOD team to Rage 1. When we entered the market stall, the EOD engineers were horrified. They immediately told Captain Smith that we, as in anyone other than EOD, were not allowed to move any explosive material from its original position.
Captain Smith responded by noting that we had our own combat engineers who were supervising the effort. His reply led to a bitter exchange. EOD did not consider our engineers to be versed enough to spot insurgent trickery; for example, IEDs could be left in the open for us to find, but as we remove them the real IED will be set off. They also quoted the ROE as stating that only EOD could touch any sort of cache, regardless of its size. If we found a solitary weapon, they expected us to secure the site, radio for EOD, and then wait while they removed it. With such an approach, the city of Ramadi would never be cleared.
Captain Smith gave up on the conversation. He left Staff Sergeant Jerry Eagle, our senior combat engineer, to handle the issue. Rage 6 and the rest of the headquarters Marines at the cache site went back to the school. I went with them. As we walked through the door, Rage 3 said on the radio that they had found a new cache. Lieutenant Jahelka described a room with ten barrels of Iraqi currency, artillery rounds, and miscellaneous IED-making materials.
I took a seat on the school’s concrete hallway floor. Outside, Marines were ferrying weapons and ammunition to EOD’s vehicles. The items that were in good-enough condition would be given to the Iraqi army for use. The rest were going to be detonated in place by EOD. There would be two explosions: one for Rage 1 and 2’s caches and another for Rage 3’s. They were going to be large blasts. The combined weight of both caches was a few thousand pounds of explosives.
Captain Smith began to pull each of his platoons back to the school we were in. The complex was a solid structure, and, unlike many of the surrounding buildings, its foundation had not been significantly damaged by the war. Plus, Shearburn had already blown out all of the remaining glass windows. It was the best position to seek shelter in for the coming explosions.
Hours passed before EOD was ready to detonate the charges. Eakin notified battalion, which subsequently ordered all units to acknowledge that they were under the protection of cover. Once given the green light, the EOD technician gave a five-minute warning to the first and larger blast. The grotesque hooks and bloodstained walls I had seen were about to be blown hundreds of feet into the Qatana sky.
Two minutes . . .
One minute . . .
At forty-five seconds, the Marine at the door freaked out. “Who is that?!” he shouted over and over. Captain Smith ran to his side. I moved to a window in an adjoining room.
It was the worst possible sight. A squad of our Marines was walking down the alley where the cache was located. Only a few hundred feet separated them and the impending explosion.
“Run, damn it! Run!” screamed Captain Smith, who was now outside the school, waving at his men. His strained voice cracked with each shout, giving in to its overuse that evening.
Every member of the exposed squad began to sprint as he realized what was about to happen.
Eakin’s lone voice cried out, “Thirty seconds!”
It was repeated by a hundred men, urging their comrades to move faster.
At fifteen, the first fire team had almost reached the school. The last had just turned onto Fire Station Road, nearly a hundred meters away.
They were each carrying a full combat load, and I didn’t think they were going to make it. At ten seconds, I moved back out into the hallway.
The entire company was now echoing the EOD technician’s countdown, second by second. Some of the stationary Marines were already scolding the members of the squad who were now under cover.
I stared at the door. As we said, “One!” the delay in the radio transmission caught up to us. Between the flash of light and the audible sound of the explosion, the last man from the squad and Captain Smith ran through the door. Their heads hung waist level as they slid behind the wall next to the entrance.
The concussion of the blast shook my inner being. Looking out the window, I watched the fireball and the subsequent mushroom cloud from a detonation that had just sha
ken the whole of Ramadi. I thought about the young children I had met earlier that night. I wondered whether this was the largest blast they had ever heard.
After confirming that everyone was, in fact, under cover, the EOD technician set another, less eventful, ten-minute countdown. Once the explosion had come and gone, we began to prepare for our movement back to COP Firecracker. Only three hours of darkness remained, not enough to restart the clear.
One at a time, the platoons left the school. Rage 1 went first, moving the 100 meters north to Racetrack, which they would follow back to the COP. After Lieutenant Thomas and Rage 2, I left with the headquarters element. As I exited the school and walked onto Fire Station, the city’s minarets began to announce the morning’s call to prayer. The devout prayers, which I did not understand, made for a highly emotive experience.
Turning onto Racetrack, I looked east. Six or seven vehicles were outside the future COP Qatana, with countless Marines moving in and out of the structure. Comanche was fortifying their new home. The double-column formation slowly moved down the road, each man listening to the singing of a dozen Muslim clerics.
With two large blasts, the seizing of what could only be described as an insurgent armory and bank, Rage Company had just destroyed the capital of al Qaeda’s Islamic caliphate. Reassured by our success, I entered the confines of COP Firecracker. Twenty minutes later, asleep on my cot, I was unaware that Lieutenant Grubb, Rage 4 Actual, was about to endure the insurgents’ response.
6
DEMONS OF HURRICANE POINT
December 19, 2006
Lieutenant Andrew Grubb was looking at Racetrack from a south-facing window in the second floor of Ramadi’s former Ministry of Oil building. The three-story structure was a perfect vantage point for Rage 4’s platoon commander to observe the construction of COP Qatana through his NVGs. The dark street below contained a dozen small puddles from a light rain that ended the day. A tank and two seven-ton trucks full of sandbags stood over the reflective water. Grubb nervously watched the Marines of Comanche Company move in and out of the building that 1/6’s intelligence section had warned was rigged to explode. The fact that combat engineers had swept the building with bomb-sniffing dogs was of no comfort.
Rage Company Page 12