Rage Company

by Daly, Thomas P.

  “Well, come on, get back,” said the lieutenant. It was Jahner’s turn to move. The first elements of the formation began to reenter the house. When Shearburn got close enough, he stopped and waited for the rest of his men to get inside. Once they all crossed the threshold that was Route Gixxer, he made his way toward the door.

  A few feet from it, Cullen heard a loud thunk, a sound similar to that of a mortar being fired. He pushed the Marine in front of him in the direction of one of the house’s pillars. Then he dove behind a pillar on the other side. The platoon commander was barely behind the column before there was a thunderous explosion 25 meters away. After Cullen regained his senses and ensured that everyone was okay, he realized it wasn’t a mortar blast. The short amount of time between firing and impact meant that it was another IRL from the orchard: the enemy’s final, parting shot of the firefight.

  The two sides continued to exchange periodic bursts of fire. Miraculously, there were no casualties on the American side. Inside the house, the platoon commander went up to the roof and got the standard updates from his squad leaders, the most important of which was the ammo report. He learned that the platoon as a whole was down to 30 percent ammunition, had no M203 grenades, and had only half of its SMAW rockets remaining. A silent, uneasy calm lay over the Julayba skyline.

  Cullen looked around at the other men on the roof who had entered the field with him. The necessary purging of fear that’s required after such an event was taking place. Each man was coming to terms with the near-death experience in his own way. Some took off all of their gear. A few ate, some hugged each other; another high-fived the guys around him. Cullen reached under his shirt and pulled out the Saint Christopher medal his parents had given him. They had told him that his grandfather wore one during World War II and it worked. Now it protected Cullen. It wasn’t the only religious symbol the lieutenant carried; the soldier’s prayer card was in his left breast pocket. He pulled it out and read the prayer, given to Charlemagne by Pope Gregory.

  A couple of months earlier, when the company first arrived in Ramadi, Shearburn had asked his parents to send enough of the prayer cards for his entire platoon. After a mission brief, the platoon commander set the cards down on a table and told his men to each take one. If religion wasn’t their thing or they didn’t want one, that was fine. There was no pressure; the cards stayed on the table indefinitely for the men to take as they pleased. Eventually, the cards disappeared.

  After reading the prayer, Lieutenant Shearburn looked at the other men on the roof again. Most of them were doing the same thing he was, reading the card. Individually, the men took as long as they needed. Then, with the night beginning, they headed inside. Each man had to pass Shearburn to do so; he was sitting next to the doorway that led to the stairs. A few of his men expressed their thoughts on the way down. “Fucking-A, sir, this shit works,” said one, holding the prayer card in his hand. Another told Shearburn he would never take it off his body.

  A minute later, the lieutenant’s calm moment on the roof was interrupted by Rage 6 on the radio. “So, were you able to do a detailed SSE on the vehicle?” asked Captain Smith. There were plenty of things the platoon commander wanted to say, but he kept it simple: “Negative.”

  The absurd question planted an idea in Shearburn’s mind. He decided to do a detailed search of the irrigation canal that night. After waiting for it to get darker, he briefed up Anderson and his squad. Then the Marines left the safety of the house and moved out of the village, heading north. The squad’s fire teams bounded in the darkness, each one covering its assigned sector of fire perfectly during the movement.

  Shearburn avoided Gixxer. Earlier, he had noticed a large, six-foot wall that lined the road between him and the orchard. Gaping holes were visible in the cinder blocks. The lieutenant feared that it may have been where the enemy stuffed the wall with a shape charge or other explosives, a standard tactic.

  The Marines stayed a few hundred meters north of Gixxer as it ran east-west. Once they got to the village that Guinn had been in earlier and Gixxer turned north, they crossed. The group was now in the village that Lance Corporal Carter had outflanked the PKM in. Within minutes, they entered the orchard. The lieutenant leaned against the cold ground and looked out at the field he had nearly died in earlier. He could not fathom how the enemy hadn’t hit him or any of his men.

  Anderson and his squad searched the dry canal. The men were amazed at how detailed the enemy’s recovering of items was. There were no shell casings from expended ammunition, no bodies, only the visible impacts from the Americans. It was impressive. Cullen knew that the insurgents collected shell casings to stuff inside antipersonnel IEDs and suicide vests, but this was ridiculous.

  Farther down the canal, the Marines found two IRL stands. Over the next hour, they uncovered a total of two IEDs: an acetylene torch canister set up as a bomb, and a propane canister stuffed with PE4. There were also signs of the casualties the Marines had inflicted. An empty chest rig, pieces of clothing, and a face wrap were strewn about, probably ripped off a wounded man. Cullen decided that he needed to search the canal in the light of day. It offered substantial cover and provided a clear view of the surrounding farmland. Something had to be there.

  The IEDs hadn’t been hooked into an initiation device yet, so Staff Sergeant Eagle blew them where they were found. Then the squad headed back to the rest of the platoon at the strongpoint they had come from. As they left, a few of the men noticed white wire hanging in multiple trees.

  0200, February 2, 2007

  At the platoon strongpoint, Lieutenant Shearburn was arguing with Captain Smith about how to resupply his platoon. Rage 6 wanted the lieutenant to send a squad of his Marines back to the COP to collect the necessary chow, water, and ammunition. Then they would carry the platoon’s worth of supplies back to their strongpoint. It would have been about a 5,000-meter movement. Cullen’s problem wasn’t that his men would carry such a heavy burden so far. It was that they would make the movement low on ammo, with the prospects of enemy contact high. Pathfinder was even coming to Julayba to clear the roads that night; why couldn’t Captain Smith task them with clearing a route to his men?

  The radio stalemate eventually ended when Lieutenant Grubb offered to meet the squad from Rage 1 halfway. Hours later, the resupply was complete.

  With a new stockpile of ammunition, Shearburn decided that he would press the issue with the enemy. The villages and the urban area north of the field were clearly hostile. The streets were always deserted during the day, and the people were overly fearful when the Marines entered their homes. He decided to shift his strongpoint to the mansion that Guinn had occupied during the ambush. Using it as an over-watch, he would take Brown’s squad to the orchard and search it in the morning.

  At 0500, Guinn’s squad left with Lieutenant Shearburn to reoccupy the sprawling compound he had been in earlier. Once on the roof, the lieutenant knew he had to control the structure. It dominated the surrounding neighborhood and every key route that connected the Albu Musa and Albu Bali tribal areas. Cullen was unaware that he was establishing his platoon in the heart of al Qaeda’s command-and-control network for the Ramadi -Fallujah corridor.

  The remaining two squads left the former strongpoint, one at a time, and headed for the new position. The Marines renamed the house OP Rebel. Anderson’s squad went on rest. Guinn’s set up security. At the first sign of light, Brown left with the platoon commander for the orchard.

  Moving through the deep ditch, the Marines immediately discovered what the white wire was for. Shovels were hanging beneath the wires in the tree. In the earth, small culverts had been dug beneath the trees that contained hanging wires. After the Marines removed a few shovels-full of dirt, the standard white rice bag or plastic barrel was revealed. The rice bags and the plastic containers protected the contents of the small holes: insurgent weaponry. The next hour of digging revealed the following: five U.S. style 155mm rounds, one Soviet Bangalore, seven 60mm mortar r
ounds, two 82mm mortar rounds, one 5” IRL, one 5” rocket, one 57mm rocket, thirteen pounds of an unknown explosive, seventy-nine mortar fuses, ten mortar boosters, twenty Draganov rounds, six phone base stations, twelve Soviet-style red/green star clusters, five hundred feet of wire, four motorcycle batteries, a steel cutting saw, various assortment of tools, and a pile of clothes with black masks.

  Staff Sergeant Eagle supervised the inventorying of the items. Once the list was compiled and the cache contents consolidated, he prepared the site to blow the items in place. Shearburn asked Captain Smith for permission to detonate the explosives. He was denied. Per the ROE, EOD had to supervise. To Rage 1, it was more bullshit. EOD would take hours to show up, reinventory, and then blow the cache. The last thing Cullen wanted to do was sit in the orchard longer than he had to.

  Yet he had no choice. For the next two hours, the Marines sat in the orchard awaiting EOD. Finally, they got a call on the radio. “Rage 1, this is Rage 6; EOD and Rage Mobile are at the intersection of Gixxer and Nova. I want you to patrol the route along Gixxer they are going to take, sweeping it for IEDs.”

  Cullen was confused. EOD drove a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle. Why on earth did his commander want him to sweep the street with his dismounted infantrymen? The platoon commander voiced his concerns. Still, he received the same order from Captain Smith. Livid at the order, he executed it anyway.

  The men painfully patrolled down Gixxer until it intersected with Nova. Somewhere in the neighborhood, an insurgent was furious with himself for not setting an IED on Gixxer. A dozen Marines were walking down the street in the light of day. It was probably the easiest target an insurgent could wish for. Luckily for the Marines, there were no blasts.

  Inside the COC, we could all feel the tension between Rage 1 and Rage 6. Until that point, Captain Smith had been making tough decisions. I could see the movement of the QRF during the previous day’s engagement both ways. Yes, the roads were dangerous and there were plenty of triple- and quadruple-stack IEDs being found in Julayba, the detonation of which would send a humvee flying through the sky. But Captain Smith had given in to battalion’s demand to do a detailed SSE sooner rather than later. If he wasn’t going to send the QRF in case of an emergency, he could have told battalion to pound sand. The SSE would wait until dark. Obviously, that’s not how it went down.

  Waiting for EOD that day wasn’t even a choice for Rage 6. We told battalion about the cache as soon as Shearburn found it. Once battalion knew it existed, they expected us to use EOD to destroy it, in accordance with MNF-W ROE. To do otherwise would be violating an order set in place by a three-star general. We had violated the rule before, but Captain Smith was going to follow it this time.

  With that said, those of us in the COC did not understand why Captain Smith wanted Shearburn to patrol Gixxer for IEDs. It wasn’t the only time he would give such an order. A few days later, he made Lieutenant Thomas do the same thing. When I finally grew the balls to ask him why, he told me that dismounted Marines will spot the IEDs before the vehicles do. They are slower, more attentive.

  I didn’t agree. Between Captain Smith and me, it was a difference of tactical thought. For Lieutenant Shearburn, it was dangerous.

  The dismounted patrol linked up with the four-vehicle convoy at the intersection. The senior EOD engineer opened the door to his vehicle as Cullen came close.

  “Is that road clear?” asked the engineer.

  “It is now.”

  The engineer was perplexed. He asked Lieutenant Shearburn why he was clearing the road for armored vehicles. Cullen ignored the question.

  The patrol turned around and went back to the orchard the way they came, only this time armored vehicles were between the columns of men on either side of the road. When they finally arrived at the orchard, EOD began to reinventory the cache’s contents. Lieutenant Shearburn and Staff Sergeant Eagle watched in boredom as their numbers were slowly confirmed.

  Cullen heard one of his Marines yelling at the turret gunners on Rage Mobile’s three humvees. It was Corporal Chris Barnes. Apparently, the gunners had all been seated in their turrets—no scanning, no aggressive posture. Each was motionless and waiting to react. Barnes clearly didn’t appreciate the lack of a defensive posture. Shearburn returned his focus to the inventory.

  The boredom dragged on. Then it ended. The sound of an incoming rocket screeched toward the Marines. It was followed by an explosion. Shearburn ran toward the rocket. It had been fired north on Gixxer, down the axis of the road, targeting the vehicles of Rage Mobile. One of the turret gunners pointed toward the orchard, yelling at Shearburn that the rocket had careened away from the trucks at the last second.

  The lieutenant looked over and spotted Corporal Barnes. The Marine was staggering, eyes glazed over. His tan trousers were quickly turning red. The squad’s corpsmen rushed to the scene and cut away Barnes’s trousers to see the extent of the injury. All along the Marine’s right side, from the small of his back down his legs, there was blood. Shearburn called in the Medevac. Within half an hour, Barnes was at 1/9 Infantry’s aid station. There he received good news: the wounds were superficial and shrapnel had not penetrated any of his major organs.

  EOD eventually blew the cache, and Lieutenant Shearburn headed back to OP Rebel. There he, his platoon sergeant, and Staff Sergeant Eagle planned their defense of the OP. Over the next five days and four nights, the enemy would test the obstacle plan they came up with. The Marines were not alone in the neighborhood; only a few meters separated the opposing forces. Somehow, all of the Marines of Rage 1 would live to tell of the small-unit fighting that took place.

  Every day and night brought another encounter. In the silence of one night, a team of insurgents crept in close and threw a grenade at a rooftop sentry. The grenade bounced just short of the top of the house and detonated below. Another night the enemy set off a trip flare outside the COP. The flare illuminated multiple shadows in the orchard, which the Marines cut down with automatic rifle fire. The shadowlike insurgents removed any bodies before the arrival of the squad that Shearburn sent to conduct SSE. On a separate night, the enemy engaged the OP in a short but intense firefight. The two sides were in opposing buildings. As on the previous night, a team of insurgents maneuvered into another trip flare. Again, the Marines shot at the shadows but never found any bodies, not even blood.

  When Lieutenant Shearburn’s seven-day patrol finally ended, he recommended to Captain Smith that they make OP Rebel permanent. The enemy wanted the Marines gone for a reason, and Cullen did not want to give them the satisfaction of withdrawing. For the moment, his recommendation was ignored. Rage 1 was ordered back to COP Melia. The Albu Musa tribal area reverted to its uncontested status. Control returned to al Qaeda.

  12

  DEADLY GAMES

  February 5, 2007

  The company staff gathered inside COP Melia’s COC. The plan of rotating platoons in and out of sector was starting to take shape. Lieutenant Thomas and Rage 2 were about to go on rest back at Corregidor, returning from a four-day platoon-size operation that saw them clear the banks of the Euphrates along the western side of Julayba. Rage 3 was headed out, tasked with doing a similar sweep on the eastern side.

  I sat at my laptop next to the radio watch. Near the computer was a pile of SanDisk memory cards containing photos of the numerous small tactical caches that James Thomas and his men had found. The pictures showed bags of explosives buried in dirt along the river, metallic IRL stands, sniping platforms with corresponding welding equipment, and the usual mortar rounds, accompanied by larger-caliber artillery rounds. While I put all of the information together to pass to battalion, the platoon commanders chatted behind me. “Every time I went close to the river, I got shot at,” said Lieutenant Thomas. He was sitting next to Jahelka on the COC’s brown and yellow couch.

  “Anything sustained?” asked Jahelka.

  “Only during the day; at night, it was always just a few shots of harassing fire.”
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br />   Captain Smith came into the room. He reviewed the tasks he had previously given Jahelka: sweep for caches along the eastern side of Julayba near the Euphrates, then establish a patrol base northwest of the Gixxer-Nova intersection. The patrol base would be about 3,000 meters from the cache sweep. From that position, Rage 3 would spend the next few days patrolling the surrounding area. They would take the place of Lieutenant Shearburn’s Marines. Instead of swapping positions with Rage 1, Captain Smith was shifting the focus of Jahelka’s men to the tribal area on the northwestern side of Julayba. He wanted to see the response Jahelka received from the locals.

  An hour later, Rage 3 left. The platoon moved to a house between the Albu Musa and Albu Bali tribal areas and strongpointed. There they waited for the day to end before they began their sweep for caches.

  Richard Jahelka looked out at the almond-shaped piece of land jutting off the eastern edge of Julayba. It was the perfect spot for an insurgent cache: not too far of a canoe trip from the other side and relatively isolated. The terrain was perfectly flat and open, meaning the enemy could easily keep an eye on whatever was hidden there. With dusk enveloping the landscape, the platoon of Marines moved onto the open ground.

  The lieutenant directed his squad leaders over the PRR. “Collard, put your squad in the building and take up an over-watch position. Ahlquist and Conley, let’s start around the building, doing a wagon-wheel in the immediate area.” The building Collard headed to was the only one on the awkwardly shaped peninsula.