by Oliver North
The first call for a cas-evac came in a little after 0700 hours. Less than three minutes later we were in the air, flying up Route 6 at 50 feet and 120 knots, en route to pick up three of Mundy's Marines who had been wounded by Iraqi mortar fire.
As we fly up the highway, "fire trenches" burning bright orange are sending plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky. The roadside is littered with wrecked Iraqi trucks and armor, some of it still burning. The troops, with their penchant for pithy vernacular, have taken to referring to the wrecked enemy equipment as "roadkill."
As the CH-46s land on the green smoke that marks the pickup zone just outside Al Aziziyah, my camera catches a platoon of dismounted Marines, all prone and pointing outward. Directly on the nose of Driscoll's bird is an M-1 tank, buttoned up, its turret traversing back and forth as the gunner trolls for targets. Smoke is rising from several multistory structures in the city. While the litters with the wounded are loaded in the back, an F/A-18 rolls in low and drops an MK-81 one thousand-pound bomb. By the time the sound of the concussion reaches us, the jet is already out of sight in the blue sky above and we are airborne with the casualties aboard.
It went like this for the rest of the day. In Al Aziziyah, 3rd Bn, 5th Marines, encountered both fedayeen and elements of the Republican Guard Al Nida division. As casualties increased, so did the calls for Red Dragon cas-evac helicopters. Lt. Col. Driscoll and his aircrews were constantly in the air—and getting shot at.
As we approach the pickup zone, a smoke grenade pops just as Driscoll lifts the nose of the CH-46 to flare for landing. I'm leaning out the right side door of the helicopter with my video camera when I see an RPG whizzing toward us from a grove of trees. I'm not supposed to, but instinct takes over and I yell, "RPG, three o'clock, incoming!" into the intercom mike on my helmet.
The engines screech and the rotor blades sound as if they might break as Driscoll pulls up, momentarily arresting the helicopter's descent. The RPG passes beneath us and detonates against the berm beside the roadway to our left.
The Marines below us, having seen where the RPG came from, open fire in a furious fusillade. Directly below us there is a swirling sandstorm generated by our rotor wash. Leaning out the door, GySgt Pennington calmly says over the intercom, "Straight down, twenty feet, sir." Trusting the judgment of his crew chief, Driscoll lowers the twelve-ton helicopter straight down and drops the ramp. The armored assault vehicles and the dismounted troops keep the enemy in the tree line pinned down. The litter bearers, running hunched over, bring the three wounded up the ramp and snap the litters into the straps on the left side of the bird. The two corpsmen, Docs Newsome and Comeaux, are already evaluating them and starting IVs to reduce shock as we lift off. The whole process—from landing to takeoff—has taken less than four minutes.
By late afternoon the 2nd Tank Bn had broken through the Iraqi defenses at Al Aziziyah and Mundy's infantry was clearing Iraqi defenders from the streets and alleys. Mundy's last task, accomplished just before nightfall, was to push a rifle company across a small bridge over the Tigris River. By the time his Marines won the sharp, pitched battle at the bridge, RCT-5 had captured three crossing points over the waterway.
After dark, Dunford moved his command post forward, beyond the town Mundy had just secured. Griff and I rode with them up Route 6 in a Humvee. Through our NVGs we could see dozens of shattered Iraqi tanks and other vehicles littering the edges of the highway. It was clear that the Iraqis meant to hold Al Aziziyah—but had failed. A good number of the Iraqi tanks had been destroyed, not while facing the oncoming Marines but while heading northwest in retreat toward Baghdad.
After a few hours of sleep, Griff and I dragged our broadcast gear out of the Humvee and plugged in to file our report. When we came up on the satellite link, Greg Kelly, embedded with 3rd ID, was reporting on the furious day-long battle to capture Saddam International Airport. The videotape he and Mal James shot and fed over a satellite dish back to Fox News Center in New York was some of the most dramatic combat footage I've ever seen.
When we went live on Hannity & Colmes at 0330, the star-lit sky was once again full of RAP rounds as the 11th Marines' artillery softened up Iraqi defenses around the Tigris River town of Tuwayhah, less than thirty-five kilometers from Saddam's capital. I concluded my report by stating the obvious:
"The U.S. Army in the west and the Marines in the east are literally knocking on the gates of Baghdad."
8
INTO BAGHDAD AND BEYOND
"There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"
— Baghdad Bob
"I got on FOX News and said, 'I know where he is, tell him to stay there for 15 minutes and I'll come get him' because we were right outside the Ministry of Information."
— LTC Eric Schwartz, commander, Task Force 1-64, 2nd Bn Combat Team, presidential palace, Baghdad
Mal James en route to Baghdad
FRIDAY, 4 APRIL 2003
The final push into Saddam's capital became a grueling operation for the soldiers closing in from the west and the Marines battling in from the east. In the pre-dawn hours of 3–4 April, the Army's 3rd ID was heavily engaged at the Saddam International Airport. Greg Kelly and his FOX News field producer/cameraman, Mal James, covered the withering gunfight and actually broadcast some of it live, via their satellite dish.
Kelly and James had been embedded with the 3rd ID all the way from Kuwait and had already covered the fight at An Najaf and the breakthrough at the Karbala Gap against the Medina division of the Republican Guard. Both of them had narrowly avoided serious injury or death when the armored column in which they were embedded came under fire.
Greg Kelly with the 3rd ID
Late on 3 April, a company-sized unit from 3rd ID, consisting of fewer than twenty Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, conducted a "reconnaissance in force" action west of the airport and seized two intersections on a key approach. Told to "hold in place," they did so against overwhelming odds throughout the night. By dawn on 4 April, the small unit had withstood over a dozen assaults by Republican Guard armor and dismounted fedayeen.
By late afternoon on 4 April GEN Blount's 1st, 3rd, and 4th Brigade Combat Teams of the 3rd ID had seized the airport and were defending it against determined Iraqi counter-attacks. T-72 and T-55 tanks attempted to retake the airport, supported by armored vehicles and truckloads of suicidal fedayeen. It was during these fierce engagements that SFC Paul Ray Smith of B Company, 11th Engineer Bn, saved the lives of scores of U.S. soldiers.
A 3rd ID Bradley enters Baghdad
MEDAL OF HONOR CITATION
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty:
Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with an armed enemy near Baghdad International Airport, Baghdad, Iraq, on 4 April 2003. On that day, SFC Smith was engaged in the construction of a prisoner of war holding area when his Task Force was violently attacked by a company-sized enemy force. Realizing the vulnerability of more than one hundred soldiers, SFC Smith quickly organized a hasty defense consisting of two platoons of soldiers, one Bradley fighting vehicle, and three APCs. As the fight developed, SFC Smith braved hostile enemy fire to personally engage the enemy with hand and anti-tank weapons and organized the evacuation of three wounded soldiers from an APC struck by a RPG and a 60-mm mortar round. Fearing the enemy would overrun their defenses, SFC Smith moved under withering enemy fire to man a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on a damaged APC. In total disregard for his own life, he maintained his exposed position in order to engage the attacking enemy force. During this action, he was mortally wounded. His courageous actions helped defeat the enemy attack and resulted in as many as fifty enemy soldiers being killed, while allowing the safe withdrawal of numerous wounded soldiers. SFC Smith's extraordinary hero
ism and uncommon valor are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the 3rd Infantry Division "Rock of the Marne," and the United States Army.
On 5 April 2005, two years and a day after he was killed, SFC Smith's eleven-year-old son David received the decoration from President Bush, making his dad the first recipient of America's highest award in the war on Islamic terror.
SATURDAY, 5 APRIL
The 1st Marine Division was closing in on Saddam's capital from the east. Keeping the ever-lengthening supply lines open fell to Task Force Tarawa—a task that was becoming more challenging by the hour.
Griff and I spent most of the 4th and 5th of April with the HMM-268 Red Dragons, flying cas-evac missions for Joe Dunford's RCT-5 as it led the Marine advance. The closer we got to Baghdad, the "hotter" the zones became. When a Marine M-1 tank was hit by an ATGM (anti-tank guided missile)—either a Russian-supplied Sagger or one provided by our NATO allies, the French—Driscoll led a flight of two CH-46s "downtown" in Al Aziziyah. It was a hair-raising trip.
Gunny Pennington and Cpl Kendall are crouched down behind their locked and loaded .50 caliber machine guns. Driscoll is making radio calls to the unit on the ground with the casualties. A Marine on the ground advises that they have "popped a smoke" and that the zone is "tight" and "hot." Driscoll's response is a laconic, "Roger, one Phrog inbound."
We sweep down a city street, just clearing the utility poles and rooftops. As Driscoll slows to a hover, a black-clad figure leans out a second-story window and points an AK-47 at us. Pennington sees him and says without preamble, "Firing the right side fifty."
The noise of the gun opening up just two feet in front of my camera is deafening as the black-clad shooter disappears amid chunks of flying brick and mortar. Somehow Driscoll manages to put the CH-46 down in the middle of an intersection. His wingman lands about twenty-five meters behind us. As the rear ramp drops down, there are power lines all around us. Marines, dismounted from their vehicles, are firing into the buildings in every direction. An M-1 tank's main gun booms above the din.
As the dust from our landing clears, Marines and Corpsmen carrying litters start running in a low crouch for the back of our helicopter.
As the casualties are being loaded aboard, an RPG passes in front of the helicopter, exploding in the dirt about fifteen meters beyond us, prompting Driscoll to call over the radio, "How much longer, folks? This is a pretty sporty zone."
While I'm considering this description of the hottest LZ I've ever been in, three Humvees race up from the left, machine guns blazing from their rooftop turrets. It's the mobile command post for "Grizzly Six," Col. Joe Dunford, the commanding officer of RCT-5.
With the fedayeen pinned down by heavy fire from the Humvees, eleven casualties aboard our helicopter and ten on the bird behind us, the two heavily loaded helicopters lift a few feet off the ground. With power lines just inches away from the blade tips, they rotate 180 degrees so they can head out over "friendlies."
Driscoll's helicopters performed like this for forty-eight hours, carrying water and ammo to the troops in the field and evacuating wounded Marines on the return trip.
On one mission, our bird was hit by machine gun fire, severing a fuel line. Marine ingenuity took over. Within minutes the crew chief had it fixed, using only his Leatherman tool.
By the end of the day, HMM-268 had evacuated more than three dozen critically wounded Marine casualties. One of them was a staff sergeant who had walked aboard the helicopter while helping to carry one of his wounded comrades on a litter.
We've been admonished not to show the faces of U.S. casualties, so my camera catches only his right hand, wrapped in a blood-soaked battle dressing, as he sits down in one of the troop seats.
On the way to the Army shock-trauma hospital, I run out of videotape. We arrive at the hospital, and I help unload the litters so the most seriously injured will be treated first. The corpsmen tell the "walking wounded" seated in the troop seats to wait. After the last litter case is off the bird, I turn to help the staff sergeant with the wounded hand and notice that he is nearly unconscious. As he tries to stand, I see he has been sitting in a pool of his own blood. I yell for one of the docs, who runs up and opens the staff sergeant's flak jacket. He's been gut shot—his intestines are bulging out through the wound. The doc yells, "Keep him awake!" and runs to get a litter team.
As we gently load him on the stretcher, I ask him, "Why didn't you say something?"
He says, "The other guys were hurt worse than I am."
As darkness fell on 5 April, the Marines were ready to cross the Diyala River and more than twenty-five hundred Republican Guard had surrendered to Task Force Tarawa. Iraqi officers were deserting their troops, and friendly intelligence reported that the fedayeen were executing Iraqi deserters.
THE "THUNDER RUNS"
Early in the morning, COL Dave Perkins, commanding the 3rd ID's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, put together what he dubbed Task Force 1-64—a column of M-1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles—and charged into the heart of Baghdad in a show of force, in order to further demoralize the enemy. Supported by low-flying A-10s and 3rd ID artillery, the armored column took the Iraqis completely by surprise.
Ironically, as COL Perkins's Task Force 1-64 was blasting their way into the heart of Baghdad, the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, appeared on Iraqi and Arab TV to announce that Americans were nowhere near Baghdad. As he was speaking, FOX News put up a split screen showing U.S. Army tanks parked on the lawn of one of Saddam's downtown palaces. Though enemy fire hit every vehicle in Task Force 1-64, only one Abrams tank was lost. The crew was safely recovered, and there were no U.S. casualties.
Hundreds of Syrian, Jordanian, Saudi, Egyptian, and Yemeni fighters had come to Iraq as fedayeen, intent on becoming martyrs while fighting Americans. Soldiers and Marines grimly obliged. The regular Iraqi Army and even the Republican Guard may have tried to flee or be taken prisoners, but I saw only two of the fedayeen taken alive. Both were badly wounded.
SUNDAY, 6 APRIL
A beautiful chapel service provided a brief respite from the war. Sam Mundy's sergeant major had put together a little choir of Marines for the chaplain. Griff's camera recorded the manliest rendition of "Amazing Grace" I'd ever seen—to the accompaniment of artillery.
The respite didn't last long. A few minutes after the chapel service, Capt. Shawn Hughes, one of the Huey pilots from HMLA-267, asked if I'd like to go along on a reconnaissance mission. I quickly agreed. Since there was only one seat available, Griff stayed behind.
A "field expedient" chapel service on the way to Baghdad
We flew north to the Diyala River, marking possible crossing points on the cockpit GPS. About half an hour into the mission, Capt. Hughes received a call over the radio asking him to do a BDA (battle damage assessment) on a nearby Iraqi air base that supposedly had been hit by a coalition air strike.
My map showed the base, and below the name was the notation "abandoned." But as we approached the air field at about seventy-five feet and one hundred knots, the place was anything but. Russian-built MI-8 helicopters on the tarmac told us that if it was targeted by an air strike, they missed.
None of the hangars seemed to have been damaged, either. As the two Hueys wheeled around the far end of the field, men in green uniforms ran from a building, uncovered wheel-mounted anti-aircraft machine guns and started blasting away. Others were already taking a bead on us with AK-47s.
The GAU-17 Minigun can fire several thousand rounds per minute
Over the radio I hear the flight leader say, "We're taking fire." As Hughes veers the bird to make it harder to hit, my camera mike catches the roar of the mini-gun beside me as SSG Compton tries to hold his bursts on target.
As we whip over a truck loaded with troops, they all open fire, and the lead bir
d runs into the hail of bullets. Through my camera lens the fuel spewing from the Huey's belly looks like something out of one of those old World War II movies, with planes falling out of the sky, trailing streams of smoke as they go down. If one of his anti-aircraft flares goes off right now, or if the bird is hit with a tracer round, it will disappear in a fireball.
I hear over the headphones, "I'm losing fuel pressure and power. I'm going to try to make it across the Diyala." Hughes responds with a terse "Roger."
Both birds have been hit, and there is no time to find the perfect LZ. As the two damaged helicopters settle in on a farmer's field next to an irrigation ditch, Hughes is calling out a distress signal.
The TRAP call is heard by an AV-8 Harrier flying several miles south of us. Hughes tells him that both aircraft have sustained battle damage, but that we have no casualties, yet. He passes on the grid coordinates of trucks we saw loading up with Iraqi troops. The AV-8 heads off to hunt after passing our coordinates to Highlander—the LAVs of 1st LAR Bn. They are several miles south and headed our way fast.