American Heroes

by Oliver North

  SSG Compton does a quick inventory of our defensive weapons: eight Beretta 9mm pistols, three M-16s, a 240-Golf machine gun, two .50-caliber machine guns—one of them jammed—and a Sony video camera.

  The whole scene—downed U.S. aircraft in enemy territory, the irrigation ditch—reminds me of the final scene in the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri. In the film, based on James Michener's novel, William Holden and Mickey Rooney are gunned down by Chinese communist troops, and they take refuge in an irrigation ditch.

  I volunteer to fix the jammed .50-caliber, telling the Marines, "I've seen the end of this movie and it's not pretty." No one knows what movie I'm talking about.

  As it turned out, we didn't need any of the hardware. By the time the AV-8 Harrier and a couple of F-18 jets had expended all their ammunition, there were no Iraqis left to come after us.

  When I finally got back to RCT-5 and HMM-268, Griff and the air crews were asleep in the CH-46s. But as I climbed into a litter for a brief nap, Lt. Col. Driscoll looked up and whispered, "You OK?"

  "Yes," I replied.

  "Good. You're grounded."

  An Av-8 Harrier aricraft such as this one came to our rescue when we were shot down north of Baghdad

  MONDAY, 7 APRIL

  The second "Thunder Run" into Baghdad began shortly after sunrise with a terrible roar. COL Dave Perkins's 2nd Battalion Combat Team had just begun moving toward the so-called "regime district"—a complex of Baath party offices, palaces, and parks on the west side of the Tigris River—when an Iraqi rocket landed in the midst of his mobile command post. The high-explosive warhead wrecked a dozen vehicles, killed five soldiers, and wounded thirty more. Yet, in less than an hour, Perkins reconstituted his Task Force 1-64 command group and joined the seventy M-1 tanks and sixty Bradleys in the two-pronged attack into the power center of Saddam's regime.

  For the next two hours, Perkins's armor engaged in a series of running gunfights to blast their way through Iraqi and fedayeen roadblocks. By noon, 2nd Bn Combat Team had established a perimeter around the presidential pal-ace, convention center, and the Al Rasheed Hotel. The hotel was home to dozens of journalists and foreign supporters of Saddam's regime. But the fighting had just begun.

  In order for Perkins's armor to hold the ground they had seized, they had to be resupplied. To ensure that fuel and ammunition could get through, GEN Blount ordered that Task Force 3-15, commanded by LTC Steven Twitty, seize and hold three key intersections on the highway into western Baghdad. Though these strong points were designated "Larry," "Moe" and "Curly" on the battle maps, holding them turned out to be anything but funny.

  By mid-afternoon hundreds of fedayeen—intent on becoming "martyrs"—were attacking all three perimeters. The foreign fighters arrived on foot, in commandeered trucks, stolen taxi-cabs, and cars packed with explosives. Volleys of mortar rounds and RPGs rained down on the soldiers, usually followed by human wave suicide assaults. U.S. casualties mounted, among them CSM Robert Gallagher, a grizzled veteran Army Ranger, previously wounded in 1993 in Somalia. Shot through the calf on strongpoint "Curly," he continued to fight, even as a medic applied a field dressing to his wound.

  Command Sergeant Major Robert Gallagher

  In 1993, CSM Gallagher was part of Task Force Ranger (75th Ranger Regiment), which attempted to capture Somali warlords in Mogadishu. During the fierce fighting on 3–4 October, he was severely wounded. Ten years later, in Iraq, the reporters traveling with his unit, Task Force 3-15 IN, jokingly nicknamed him "Black Hawk Bob." The name stuck. The sergeant major cultivated a hearty, gruff persona with his troops, and they affectionately called him by his nickname, although never to his face.

  Gallagher's years of experience with 75th Ranger Regiment (Gallagher and Chuck Holton served four years together in the same battalion) served Task Force 3-15 IN well. He brought that elite force's training and combat techniques to his new unit. He instituted focused training when the soldiers reached Kuwait. The soldiers completed an exhausting but confidence-building regimen. The support soldiers trained alongside the infantrymen, learning to clear trenches, destroy bunkers, and engage targets from any position. Drivers and assistant drivers went through ambush training using live ammunition. Even the fuel handlers attached to the task force completed a live-fire exercise. This paid huge dividends later.

  Derived from interview with CSM Robert Gallagher, 19 May 2003, as reported in "On Point—The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom" by the Center for Army Lessons Learned (call.army.mil)

  CSM Gallagher with his crew

  Though bloodied, the strong points held. At dusk, a resupply convoy of twenty armored vehicles and fifteen trucks led by Army CPT Ronny Johnson ran the fedayeen gauntlet to resupply Perkins's soldiers camped on the grounds of Saddam's west Baghdad palace.

  The previous tenant was nowhere to be found.

  TUESDAY, 8 APRIL

  By dawn on 8 April, Saddam Hussein's regime had all but collapsed, but the fighting wasn't over. Fierce battles ensued as the 1st Marine Division took two badly damaged bridges leading into the city.

  Late in the afternoon, Griff and I rolled across the Diyala River with the 3rd Bn, 5th Marines, and linked up with the Army's 3rd ID.

  To enter the city center, our column had to traverse "Saddam City." More than a million displaced Shiites lived there in a group of crumbling, multistory, Soviet-style apartments without running water or functioning sewage systems.

  It's worse than anything I've ever seen in Calcutta, Haiti, or Bangladesh—teeming with naked children, their stomachs distended from malnutrition, raw sewage running in the streets, and piles of trash. Some of it is smoldering with a stench that is enough to make even the troops we're with—who haven't bathed in weeks—smell good.

  Despite the conditions, or maybe because of them, the streets were lined with thousands of waving and cheering Iraqis. Ragged children splashed barefoot through puddles of stinking effluent, chasing our convoy. Within a mile or so, the Marines gave away every morsel of food in our vehicle.

  As the sun set, we were finally allowed to remove the baggy chemical-biological protective suits that we had been wearing since leaving Kuwait. The Iraqis were unlikely to use such weapons in their capital—we hoped.

  We kept the suits nearby, just in case.

  WEDNESDAY, 9 APRIL

  The streets were lined with cheering Iraqis as Lt. Col. Brian McCoy pushed his dismounted 3rd Bn, 4th Marines infantry, followed by dozens of tanks and other vehicles. The parade ended in downtown Baghdad. When they reached Firdus Square, they found a large crowd taking out their pent-up fury on a forty-foot, black metal statue of Saddam Hussein. After pelting the sculpture with stones and garbage, the Iraqis enlisted the support of the Marines in removing this eyesore.

  With the cameras of the international press recording it all, Cpl Edward Chin climbed the King Kong-sized statue of Saddam and draped an American flag over its head. The Stars and Stripes covered Saddam's head for a brief moment. Then, after replacing Old Glory with an Iraqi flag, Cpl Chin secured a chain around Saddam's neck and hooked the other end to the winch cable on an M-88 tank retriever.

  As the statue pitched forward on its pedestal, the crowd roared its approval and began to clamor over the fallen idol, attacking it with hammers, stones, and—in an Arab insult—with their shoes. When Saddam's huge head was detached, the cameras caught children jubilantly beating on it. The symbolism was inescapable: Saddam Hussein had been toppled. Strangely absent from the U.S. broadcasts were the retired generals and admirals who just days before had prognosticated that it would take months of heavy combat and thousands of U.S. casualties to take Baghdad.

  A Marine watches as the statue of Saddam topples

  THURSDAY, 10 APRIL

  Though Saddam's regime was finished, the fighting in Baghdad wasn't over. Intelligence indicated that a special Republican Guard
unit and numerous fedayeen had taken refuge inside the presidential palace complex on the east side of the Tigris River.

  Dunford chose Lt. Col. Fred Padilla's 1st Bn, 5th Marines, reinforced by armor, CIA specialists, and a contingent of Delta Force operators, to seize the complex.

  In order to take advantage of his troops' NVGs and thermal sights, Lt. Col. Padilla's column—more than seventy tanks, AAVs (armored assault vehicles), LAVs, and Humvees—started rolling through Baghdad's streets well before dawn. But as his lead tanks reached the Jamhuriyah Bridge, the column was hit with a barrage of RPGs and automatic weapons fire from the Al Khulafa Mosque.

  With the length of his column under attack and suffering casualties, Padilla made a bold decision. He was uncertain about when the rest of his battalion could close up on the palace complex, his battalion's primary objective. So he ordered his lead element, supported by four tanks and a platoon of AAVs, to smash their way into the palace grounds. It was during this protracted engagement, while trying to evacuate a wounded Marine from Alpha Company, that GySgt Jeffrey Bohr was felled by AK-47 fire from a nearby building (see citation on p. 149).

  Once inside the walls surrounding the palace complex, Padilla's Marines seized enough open space to bring in helicopters to evacuate their casualties. I jumped aboard a CH-46 flown by Maj. Don Presto for the flight into the "Palace Zone."

  Lt. Col. Jerry Driscoll, CO of HMM-268, briefs his pilots and aircrews before launching for the "Palace LZ"

  Each trip out of the Palace LZ leaves the back of our CH-46 looking like a charnel house. Blood-soaked battle dressings, IV bags, latex gloves, pieces of Marine battle gear, and puddles of blood are all over the deck. Each troop seat along the right side of the bird has a pool of blood in it. I suddenly wonder, after all these years, if this is why the nylon webbing is dyed red.

  On our third trip into the zone, a Marine captain with battle dressings on his legs and arms hobbles aboard with the litter bearers. He has dirt and blood all over his face and hands, and his flak jacket is shredded. The wounded Marine taps me on the shoulder and hands me a piece of cardboard—torn from an MRE case—on which he'd scrawled a note to his commander: "Send more ammo of all types."

  I take the piece of cardboard and tuck it into my flak jacket and then try to help him into a troop seat, but he waves me off and says, "I'm not going. I have work to do."

  Suddenly he stops, looks at me again, and shouts over the roar of the helicopter and the gunfire, "Ollie North? What are you doing here?"

  I point to the FOX News patch on my jacket and shout back in jest, "Making a war movie."

  Without another word, he whips a little disposable camera out of his cargo pocket, wraps an arm around my shoulders, holds the camera out in front of us with his other bloody paw and yells "Smile!"

  It's one of those weird moments in the midst of horror that make the inhumanity of war just a little bit more humane. Before I can force the photographer into a seat, he turns and limps off the helicopter. On the back of his flak jacket is stenciled his name: "Basco."

  RCT-5 came in hard on Saddam's palace

  I delivered the "need more ammo" note to the RCT-5 Bravo Command command post when we stopped there between missions. One of the other birds evacuated Capt. Basco after he collapsed from loss of blood.

  The gunfights at the mosque and the palace complex were the last major battles in the capital, and one of my most memorable moments in the campaign.

  On one of the early cas-evac flights, we had taken aboard a young lance corporal named Mejia whose forearm had been smashed by a bullet. Despite his wound, he had helped carry another litter-borne casualty. When we arrived at the aid station, I helped Mejia down the helicopter ramp. He insisted that I place him next to the litter he had helped carry aboard the helicopter.

  The young Marine then sat down between the handles of the stretcher and cradled the bloody head of his comrade. The wounded Marine had an IV in his arm, the bag of saline fluid suspended from an M-16 jammed into the ground. I asked the lance corporal if I could get him some water but when he looked up at me, tears were running down his face. He said simply, "He's dying, isn't he, sir?"

  I choked. "I think he's already gone, son."

  Mejia brushed some dirt off the dead man's face and after a moment, looked back at me. Then, through his tears, the young lance corporal said, "He was my gunny, sir. He was a really good man. He was my hero—not just for the way he died, but for the way he lived."

  There are people with gray in their temples who don't understand what that young warrior knew. A hero isn't something you are; it's something you do.

  The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the Silver Star Medal (Posthumously) to Jeffrey E. Bohr Jr., Gunnery Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy while serving as Company GySgt, Company A, 1st Bn, 5th Marine Regiment, RCT-5, 1st Marine Division, I MEF, in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM on 10 April 2003. With his company assigned the dangerous mission of seizing a presidential palace in Baghdad and concerned that logistical re-supply might be slow in reaching his comrades once they reached the objective, GySgt Bohr selflessly volunteered to move in his two soft-skinned vehicles with the company's main armored convoy. While moving through narrow streets toward the objective, the convoy took intense small arms and RPG fire. Throughout this movement, GySgt Bohr delivered accurate, effective fire on the enemy while encouraging his Marines and supplying critical information to his company commander. When the lead vehicles of the convoy reached a dead end and were subjected to enemy fire, GySgt Bohr continued to boldly engage the enemy while calmly maneuvering his Marines to safety. Upon learning of a wounded Marine in a forward vehicle, GySgt Bohr immediately coordinated medical treatment and evacuation. Moving to the position of the injured Marine, GySgt Bohr continued to lay down a high volume of suppressive fire, while simultaneously guiding the medical evacuation vehicle, until he was mortally wounded by enemy fire. By his bold leadership, wise judgment, and complete dedication to duty, GySgt Bohr reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

  FRIDAY, 11 APRIL

  It was the first day since the 20th of March that Griff and I hadn't heard the sound of nearby gunfire. Actually, the most memorable part of the day was our report on Fox & Friends. Somehow they had found the wounded Marine who had taken my photo—Capt. Basco—and I got to interview him from his hospital bed in Landstuhl, Germany. As amazing as it was to be talking from Iraq with a man in Germany over a satellite connection to New York, I was most impressed by the top-notch level of care our wounded warriors were receiving.

  SUNDAY, 13 APRIL

  After spending Saturday flying around and not seeing much, Palm Sunday services were a welcome respite. It was standing-room-only for the Marines. I've been to hundreds of these chaplain-led worship services. They are ad-hoc affairs held on the hangar deck of an assault landing ship, a bomb crater at Khe Sanh, an artillery revetment at Con Thien, a jungle-covered hillside in Central America, a bunker in Beirut, a sweltering tent in Kuwait, and countless other "field expedients." But none of those venues were more memorable than that gathering of 250 bone-weary, grimy young men clad in their battle gear, standing, sitting, and kneeling in the dusty courtyard of a bombed-out Republican Guard barracks in Baghdad.

  The chaplain's words were inspiring and almost prophetic. He used the Gospel text about Christ entering Jerusalem a week before His terrible death as a lesson for the young Marines gathered for worship. "The crowd's cheers turned to jeers. Jesus didn't live up to their expectations," he said. "Most of the people didn't understand His purpose in being there and turned on Him."

  "Marine" Chaplain Carey Cash, USN

  In a way, the same thing was happening to these Marines. Most of the people in Iraq welcomed them, showering t
hem with flowers, handing them little hand-made American flags, and loving them for having ended Saddam's reign of terror. But back home, it seemed as though their victorious entry into Baghdad, like Christ's entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, was widely misunderstood. Complaints in the U.S. press about "failures to prevent Iraqi looting," the destruction of "cultural sites," the "inability to get water and electricity flowing" seemed grievously unfair to these boys-turned-men who had fought so hard and sacrificed so much to get this far.

  WEDNESDAY, 16 APRIL

  The night had been remarkably quiet. Most of the organized fighting had stopped except for a handful of armed clashes and sniping incidents in Baghdad and Mosul. Most of the gunfire seemed to be the work of irregulars, the fedayeen, or the tens of thousands of criminals that Saddam released from prisons just before the start of the war.

  Shortly after dawn on Wednesday, I was sitting on the ramp of an AAV (armored assault vehicle) washing my feet and changing my socks—one of those pleasant, solitary rituals that infantrymen try to practice daily but often cannot—when Griff came running up to me with the Iridium satellite phone. "CENTCOM says that the Marines down south have captured 'Abul somebody' you were looking for," he exclaimed.