by Oliver North
There is a roar as three of the rockets ripple out of the pod on the left side of our helicopter. Although I don't recall being startled by the sound, the tape later shows that my camera jerks and then quickly focuses back on the trajectory of the three deadly missiles. They are fleschette rounds. Each warhead contains thousands of tiny metal darts set to detonate twenty feet from the target. They perform as advertised, and puffs of red smoke from all three missiles erupt over the Iraqis. They are cut down in an instant by a shower of steel.
Ashby pulls up and hard left, the G-force pushing me back in my seat. The camera points off at a crazy angle, and Ashby's voice comes over the intercom: "And they all fall down." No euphoria, no joy, no sadness—simply a statement of fact.
The view from a UH-1N armed Huey helicopter in flight
QUAGMIRE
A resupply convoy headed for the front lines
FRIDAY, 28 MARCH 2003
NORTH OF AD DIWANIYAH, IRAQ
At 0300, Griff and I set up our satellite gear for our regular report on the Hannity & Colmes show. We were surprised to find out from FOX News that the U.S. Central Command had ordered an "operational pause." This was so supplies of food, water, fuel, and ammunition could catch up with the ground forces before the final push on Baghdad. The Marines gathered around us were stunned by the information, since there had been no serious shortages of anything but sleep and showers. In the eight days since the war started, the logisticians had been doing an amazing job of pushing forward all necessary supplies—plus spare parts and the myriad items of equipment needed to keep a military force of this size and complexity on the move day and night.
I made my way to the RCT-5 canteen to scrounge a cup of hot coffee and found a tired and exasperated Col. Joe Dunford. He cautioned me that we could not air the information because it involved current and future military operations. Then he told me he had just received orders to turn around and move back south because CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) was concerned that we were inside the "red zone" for chemical attack. The Marine columns advancing on Baghdad from the east on hard-surface roads were in reasonably good shape logistically. But the Army's V Corps pushing up through the western desert was in need of fuel and ammunition after their heavy engagements at Najaf.
As ordered, his five thousand Marines turned around and rolled back down the road to the Route 1/Route 8 interchange.
Back in the United States, the second-guessing of the Pentagon was well under way. Much of the so-called mainstream media said that Operation Iraqi Freedom had run afoul of bad planning. Once again, retired generals took to the airwaves with dire predictions about how many months it would take to capture Baghdad. The word "quagmire" was used as if coalition forces were bogged down in a swamp.
This created consternation for those who gathered around our tiny TV set to watch what was being said about the "pause" and the move to the rear. They heard the "talking heads" saying that the Marines had to stop because they had outrun their supplies. This was being said even while four-engine Marine C-130s landed on the nearby highway to disgorge tons of supplies and pump thousands of gallons of fuel into waiting tank trucks and fuel bladders.
One afternoon after we had pulled back, we were preparing to go live on our network morning show, Fox & Friends. The producer called me on my satellite phone to say that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and several other newspapers were beating the drum about the Marines being out of food, water, and ammo. I told him it just wasn't true and that I would be glad to put some Marines on live to tell the American people how things really were.
The producers in New York said, "Great, let's go now!"
Standing in front of the camera, I asked a nearby Marine gunnery sergeant if he had anyone available to go live on FOX News. In an instant, Sgt Jason Witt was on my left and a young lance corporal was on my right.
Without time to brief the young Marines on what was happening, I could hear Steve, Edie, and Brian, the hosts, talking to me through my earpiece. Their first question was about the Marines having outrun their supplies.
I turn to Sgt Witt and ask: "Have you guys been hungry out here?"
"No, sir," he replies. "We've been well taken care of."
"And how about thirsty?"
"No, sir . . . we're good."
"And ammo?"
The sergeant grins and answers, "Good on ammo, and morale is good, sir."
I turn to the lance corporal, "The New York Times says the Marines are out of food, water, and ammo. Are you hungry?"
"No, sir."
"Are you thirsty?"
"No, sir."
"Are you short on ammo?"
"No, sir."
"Well, what do you need?" I persist.
Without a moment's hesitation, the young Marine replies, "Just send more enemy, sir."
To some, these two Leathernecks probably sounded as if they were spouting macho Marine bravado. But they had all been told before they left Kuwait that they were going into the attack "light" on supplies. All the Marines had been informed that they would receive two MRE rations per day, a total of five thousand calories. They were also told, "Potable water will be delivered in bottles, so don't waste it on bathing. Ammunition and fuel are the number one priorities for resupply, so don't waste them either. When you can, shut off your engine. And if you find uncontaminated Iraqi diesel fuel, use it."
Marines who have been in the service for more than a few years joke that the official motto of the Marine Corps may be Semper Fidelis, but the real slogan is, "The Marines have done so much with so little for so long that we now can do anything with nothing forever." For them, this was "business as usual."
"The Marines have done so much, with so little, for so long that we now can do anything, with nothing, forever."
MAKE READY TO MOVE OUT
Unmanned aerial vehicles became indispensable as the war went on
MONDAY, 31 MARCH 2003
During the "operational pause," 3rd Bn, 4th Marines, part of RCT-7, cleared Route 17 of fedayeen like those who had shot at our Huey helicopters over Al Budayr on 27 March. There were gunfights every day, most of them against bands of foreign fedayeen and roving Iraqi irregulars.
Because these "irregulars" were all but invisible to high-flying surveillance aircraft, the Army and Marines made increasing use of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft—UAVs or RPVs. One of these units set up on a nearby roadside airstrip. Griff and I were allowed to videotape the takeoff and recovery of several Pioneer UAVs, the less expensive predecessor to the now-famous, sleek new Predators. We filed this report:
Pioneer UAV ready for takeoff
Leaving its launch rail
Hurled into the sky from an elevated launch rail by compressed air, and recovered on a highway, the boom-tailed Pioneers have a GPS tracking system, cameras, emission detectors, and electronic sensors jammed into their fuselage. And even though each one costs nearly a million dollars, they are all flown under remote control by young enlisted Marines. When an RPV spots an enemy force, emplacement, or equipment, fixed wing, rotary wing, or artillery fire can be brought to bear on the target in a matter of minutes. The VMU-2 control van also has the ability to transmit the image of what the RPV is seeing in real time to ground combat unit commanders or to print out aerial photos of the area over which the RPV has flown.
When one of these Pioneer UAVs spots a group of Iraqi soldiers or fedayeen massing, the area is first hit with artillery fire and then Cobras are called in to follow up. These attacks are so devastating that the survivors often surrender, some of them waving white flags at the low-flying RPVs.
After one such event, Griff and I became participants in a surreal scene like something out of a movie. As we were setting up our camera and satellite transceiver for a live shot back to New York, two young military-age Iraqi males carrying white flags walked up behind Griff
and surrendered to him. We quickly summoned MAJ Sara Cope, the commanding officer of the Military Police detachment, and she had them taken into custody. She later told us that they had given themselves up because they were hungry and thirsty. This somewhat deflated Griff's claim that they had done so because he looked so tough in his FOX News baseball cap.
DRIVE NORTH
Thankfully, Iraqi indirect fire was usually inaccurate
TUESDAY, 1 APRIL
On 1 April, the "operational pause" ended with a vengeance. By midnight, three reinforced battalions of "Fighting Joe" Dunford's RCT-5 were on the move, back up Route 1 under a dramatic display of artillery fire. Throughout the night, bright orange RAP rounds arced over our heads, pounding enemy posi-tions that had been reoccupied when the Marines were told to reverse course for the "pause."
Though I've spent a quarter of a century in the Marine Corps, I was still amazed at the speed with which the Marine columns raced north toward Baghdad. With the exception of contingents in Afghanistan and small detachments deployed with Marine expeditionary units elsewhere around the world, the Marine Corps had committed all of its tank and LAV battalions, over half its infantry and artillery, two-thirds of its engineers, all of its bridging equipment, over half of its helicopter assets, and nearly the same proportion of its AV-8 and F-18 fixed-wing aircraft to Operation Iraqi Freedom. In all, more than sixty thousand Marines, more than one-third of the entire Marine Corps, were in this fight. And so, when I MEF gave the order to "get up and go" after the "tactical pause," the Marines were determined and ready.
Beside us on the highway there is a steady rumble as Dunford's one thousand tracked and wheeled vehicles move north up Route 27 headed for the Tigris River. Behind us at Ad Diwaniyah, RCT-7 is in a series of running gunfights with fedayeen and Iraqi irregulars. Over the last twenty-four hours, the Iraqis have been lobbing 122-millimeter rockets at the Marines from within the city. Several of these Soviet-era BM-21 rockets have hit in the vicinity of the RCT-5 command post, causing us to scramble for cover. On two occasions we were ordered to "mask up" for fear that they might be firing chemical warheads. Though these rockets are wildly inaccurate, each one is packed with 140 pounds of high explosives—and no one wants an Iraqi rocketeer to get lucky.
Enemy resistance as we moved up the highway was sporadic, nothing like the sustained fighting that Task Force Tarawa endured at An Nasiriyah. There, dismounted infantry battled from block to block and house to house against fedayeen, who had the advantage of sheltering themselves among the civilian population.
RCT-7 dispatched 3rd Bn, 4th Marines, reinforced by a company of tanks, to enter Ad Diwaniyah and root out the fedayeen and Baathists loyal to Saddam. The smart ones surrendered; those who didn't died. By early afternoon, enemy resistance inside Ad Diwaniyah had ceased. So had the rocket fire.
By nightfall on 1 April, 1st Bn, 5th Marines, succeeded in smashing through a dug-in Iraqi infantry company that had been defending the bridge over the twenty-meter-wide Saddam Canal—the last obstacle before reaching the Tigris River at An Numaniyah. Off to the west, the Army's 3rd ID, with Greg Kelly embedded, was battling their way toward the Karbala Gap southwest of Baghdad. But neither of these were big news. Instead, the "scoop of the day" was from CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar, which had handed out a terse news release that left more questions unanswered than it explained:
1 April 2003
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
U.S. ARMY POW RESCUED—OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM:
Coalition forces have conducted a successful rescue mission of a U.S. Army prisoner of war held captive in Iraq. The soldier has been returned to a Coalition-controlled area. More details will be released as soon as possible.
While we were preoccupied with the realities around us, all kinds of speculation had floated around about the engagement in which eighteen vehicles of the 507th Maintenance Company from Fort Bliss, Texas, had become separated from the rest of their convoy and fallen prey to a fedayeen ambush.
According to those I interviewed who were on the rescue, the operation was put together very hurriedly on 31 March. An Iraqi civilian in An Nasiriyah had told a Marine sergeant that an American female soldier was being treated for severe injuries in the city's Saddam Hussein General Military Hospital. The information was passed up the line. Before long Task Force 20 (TF-20)—a secret unit comprised of CIA paramilitary personnel, Delta Force operators, and Navy SEALs—was given the job of getting her out.
The wounded POW information could have been a ruse to lure U.S. troops into a trap. Many Iraqi schools and hospitals had been converted into arsenals by the fedayeen. So Special Ops command put together a "raid plan" by the end of daylight on 31 March. The mission required the Marines to create a diversion several blocks from the hospital while an Army Ranger security cordon was established around the medical facility. Then Task Force-20 operators would swoop in by helicopter to take down the hospital, rescue any American POWs, and extract them before the Iraqis could react.
According to the eyewitnesses I talked to, the plan went flawlessly. At precisely 0100 hours local on 1 April, the Marines kicked off an impressive display of firepower with troops, tanks, and artillery as the Task Force-20 operators flew in aboard TF-160 Nightstalker helicopters to seize the hospital, with AC-130 gunships providing cover.
The lights went out in the hospital as planned. The Iraqis—disoriented by the Marine fire on the other side of town, the noise of the helicopters, and stun grenades—offered little or no resistance. The rescue team, using NVGs, was able to search the buildings and grounds for other Americans. They apparently found Army PFC Jessica Lynch exactly where the source said she was, an unarmed Iraqi male nurse standing beside her bed.
As it turned out, several Iraqi doctors, fearful that she might die, had intended to turn her over to the Americans but were afraid to do so because of the fedayeen. During the raid, one of the hospital staff members led the commandos to the morgue where the bodies of two deceased Americans were located and pointed out where nine more bodies were buried outside. After evacuating PFC Lynch by helicopter, the Rangers retrieved the bodies of the other American dead. There has been a lot of speculation about the mission in the years since. But according to my storyteller, at the time it was a "perfect operation. No American casualties. No Iraqi casualties. Mission accomplished."
Captured when her convoy was ambushed in An Nasiriyah, Lynch was rescued by U.S. Army and Marine units
PFC Jessica Lynch en route home
ACROSS THE TIGRIS
The U.S. M-1 Abrams tank is the most accurate armor platform ever built
TUESDAY, 2 APRIL
By dawn on 2 April, the 2nd Bn, 5th Marines, and 2nd Tank Bn had battled their way through An Numaniyah—a city of about seventy-five thousand people—and were firing at Iraqi armor across the Tigris. The Iraqis, caught completely by surprise at the Marine advance up Route 27, had failed to destroy the heavy span over the Tigris at An Numaniyah.
I walked into the RCT-5 command post and found Joe Dunford patiently talking to his tank battalion commander on the radio as if chatting on the phone with an old friend. No bravado. No tough talk. Just two warriors who respected each other, knowing the lives of their men hung in the balance if they made the wrong decision.
As the sun crests the horizon on his right, Lt. Col. Mike Oehle, the commanding officer of 2nd Tank Bn, can see the Iraqis on the far side of the Tigris through the thermal sights of his M-1 tank. The enemy has a handful of T-72s, some BMPs, and dug-in infantry with RPGs. Oehle's unit has already taken some RPG hits coming through the city, but his command is intact, and so is the massive concrete-and-steel span across the muddy Tigris. Incredible as it seems, the Iraqis still have not blown the bridge.
Crossing the Tigris on the concrete bridge at An Numaniyah is a terrible risk. The threat of being cut off by a superior force on the other side is very real. So too is the possibility that
the Iraqis might have the bridge registered by artillery, rigged with high explosives or even chemical weapons. Dunford asks Mike Oehle if he thinks the bridge can be taken. Oehle says, "We can do it."
After a brief but furious fight supported by Cobra gunships, the bridge was in American hands and the lead elements of 2nd Tank Bn crossed the Tigris. That night, they used the cover of darkness to rearm, repair, and refuel, in preparation for the run to Baghdad.
PRESS ON TO THE CAPITAL
Lt. Gen. Jim Conway and Maj. Gen. James Mattis decide to "Go heavy kinetic all the way to Baghdad"
WEDNESDAY, 3 APRIL
The order came down by radio during the early hours of 3 April, and Dunford wasted no time carrying it out. Before dawn, Lt. Col. Sam Mundy's 3rd Bn, 5th Marines, supported by a company of LAVs and a company of tanks, kicked off up Route 6 beneath a barrage of artillery. With the first hint of dawn, the Cobras went to work, buzzing up and down the highway over Mundy's column like pairs of angry wasps, looking for targets. As they closed in on Al Aziziyah there was plenty to shoot at.