My Men are My Heroes

by Nathaniel R. Helms

  In a rare display of very close air support Kilo’s FAC directed nine strafing attacks by Marine Corps F-18s using 20mm cannon fire because rockets and bombs were a “danger to adjacent friendly units,” Smay recalls.

  By late afternoon, about 5:30 p.m., Kilo’s Marines had broken through the insurgent ambush with brute force, but not before they had fired every weapon in their inventory. Smay’s precision air strikes allowed the mud Marines to continue their advance to the intersection of PL Henry and PL Isabel.

  In a final effort Kilo called in four more air strikes that made use of four precision-guided 500-pound bombs to neutralize an active sniper position on top of a mosque minaret. When the smoke cleared the sniper was gone, and so was the minaret, Smay says. Meanwhile, India reached the city’s southern edge.

  Optimism was high back in the rear, Buhl recalls.

  THE VIPERS’ NEST

  Smay’s last mission brought the day’s intense fighting to an end, allowing Kilo to set up a firm base for the night. They picked a huge house, a building photographer Lucian Read would later describe as “almost a palace.” Mitchell thought it was the mayor’s house. Whatever it was, the house was an imposing structure that gave the Marines plenty of room and plenty of cover. As soon as they settled into the debris-filled rooms they posted sentries and put out observation posts (OPs). Queens was no place to let their guard down.

  By nightfall the shooting quieted down except for the AC-130Hs working out in the neighborhood, providing night music that ebbed and flowed with the movements of the insurgents. Basher was busy all night reporting small elements of insurgents darting from building to building and point to point around Kilo, while the OPs called in movement from around the compass. The foreign fighters were smarter now and they didn’t give the Finger of God a lot of time to strike them dead.

  Basher’s syncopated symphony was accompanied by odd bursts of automatic weapons fire that ripped down alleys and boulevards. Sometimes green tracers would arch into the night sky and sometimes the bullet swarms were red. An occasional series of unexplained booms echoed across the city. Now and then a fast mover opened the sky when it climbed out after a pass, or a chopper settled into the LZ at the train station. Occasionally mortars coughed or the artillery on the eastern edge of the city cleared its throat, but compared to the daylight hours it was almost peaceful.

  The Marines off watch settled onto floors, abandoned furniture, and nooks and crannies where they could chow down on some MREs and bottled water before stretching out for two or three hours. But that night nobody got much sleep.

  Given all the movement they detected, it didn’t take long for Jent and Buhl to deduce that Kilo had settled in for the night in a viper pit. Foreign fighters appeared all around Kilo’s firm base preparing for Round Two. The Marines believed getting into the next day’s fight was going to be easy. All Kilo had to do was try to move.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE

  HOUSE OF HELL

  After the intense fighting the day before, the morning of the 13th broke with an eerie calm. Kilo’s Marines were slightly west of PL Henry, still in the old quarter of the city the foreign jihadists had staked out as their own. Kilo’s orders were to push west toward the Euphrates conducting a systematic pattern of search-and-attack maneuvers to clear the foreign fighters that were reportedly all around them.

  Lima was to the north of them clearing stay-behind insurgents. India had pushed down to the southern boundary of Fallujah and was to clear the heavily fortified part of the city by advancing slightly north and west along PL Isabel. Both companies expected another day of fierce resistance.

  Most of the platoon didn’t know it was Saturday, D+6. The days and nights blurred together. For five days the sounds of battle rose with the sunrise, stuttering first, then growing into a roar that filled the day. That roar had not yet happened on this day, so Kasal used the respite to look after his CAAT teams and talk to his far-flung company on the radio.

  Mitchell prepared his Marines for another hard day of fighting, making sure they had all the gear and ammo they needed. Most of the equipment the men carried on their backs in Fallujah was for hunting insurgents. They usually carried six or seven 30-round magazines for their M16s, grenades, satchel charges, SMAWs, squad automatic weapons (SAWs), M203s, and an occasional M240G, the 7.62mm adaptation of the Vietnam-era M60 machine gun. In addition they carried water, ballistic sunglasses, knives, and personal favorites for killing. The rest of their personal gear was stowed in their rucks, currently attached to the AAVs that followed them into the city. Like most mornings in Fallujah the AAVs were parked outside the firm base under guard. This time it was at the fancy residence in a courtyard of sorts.

  It didn’t take long for the Marines to roll up their poncho liners and fall out. It wasn’t as if the men needed time out for a shower. At best they got to brush their teeth, shave, and wash the crud off their hands and faces. As soon as the morning brief and equipment check were over, the Marines prepared to move out.

  “NEVER QUITTING”

  In Grapes’ mind 3d Platoon was the saltiest platoon in the company. Grapes had joined the Marines Corps after 9/11 to defend his country and he was exactly where he wanted to be.

  “For two and a half years I commanded the same platoon,” Grapes says. “We had 43 Marines and two corpsmen. After the battalion returned to Pendleton after our first deployment, I got to retain about eight guys, most of them NCOs. Sergeant Pruitt and I got to build our platoon from the bottom up. Pruitt was a fine NCO and a master tactician—the best in the company. Mitchell was a good NCO, very bright. Nicoll was a good Marine and definitely the most popular Marine in our company and possibly the most popular Marine in our battalion.”

  At Fallujah Grapes had the added advantage of having Kasal along. Coincidence found Kasal with Corporal Hurd, a Weapons Co. CAAT section leader supporting 3d Platoon including Mitchell’s squad. It was typical of Kasal, Nicoll says, to be out in the field with the troops.

  “Kasal is the toughest human being I will ever meet in my life,” Nicoll adds. “His idea of being a leader was never quitting.”

  Mitchell says that he, Nicoll, and Kasal “always seemed to run to the sound of the guns. Kasal liked to be where there was shit going on.”

  Although Kasal liked working with Mitchell’s platoon—after all he knew every man in it—he would have preferred spending time with his other CAAT sections that were spread out all over Fallujah, but the war was in the way. In Queens it was simply too dangerous to move around solo: Insurgents filled in behind the advancing Marines in small detachments of four to eight men—easily enough men to take out a lone Humvee.

  “I just couldn’t get over to the other two sections,” Kasal recalls. “My intent, and I tried it every night, was to get on the radio and run over and join India or Lima, but I wasn’t able to make it over to their positions. We were separated too far.”

  Whatever the mixture of choice, chance, and fate, Kasal found his CAAT section supporting perhaps the most experienced and aggressive squad around, in the heart of the battle for Fallujah as it entered its fourth day. It was to be one of the most intense days of combat Marines of his generation had ever faced.

  HITTING THE STREETS

  At about 8 a.m. Kilo moved onto the street. Grape’s 3d Platoon pushed off first. Each squad in the platoon was assigned a sector to search. 3d Squad took a route that first sent them west, then south. 1st Squad went south. Staff Sergeant Lopez and half of 1st Section of Weapons Co. went with them. Grapes remembers that 1st and 2d Platoons had tanks assigned to work with them.

  Kasal was in Corporal Hurd’s Humvee, which belonged to Staff Sergeant Lopez’ section. Nicoll was up front on point. In back was Hurd’s squad along with his Humvee. The little column slowly snaked its way down the battered street. The air was filled with the smell of smoke from fires still smoldering along PL Henry in the aftermath of the previous day’s fighting.

  The scene was one of devast
ation and despair. Dusty roads were filled with debris, corpses, blown-up cars, pieces of furniture, and Marines very cautiously moving from house to house, methodically looking for combatants.

  Lopez and his team stayed with Grapes and 1st Squad providing overwatch while the Marines searched for the insurgents. Lopez remembers the streets were narrow with poor fields of fire. His Humvee was armed with a TOW, which needs room to arm. Everything was too close for the heavy weapons to deploy effectively, but they were still intimidating, Lopez says. Lopez meanwhile kept his ear tuned to the radio listening for Hurd’s team. He knew that two blocks away Kasal was walking alongside Hurd’s Humvee providing flank security.

  Elsewhere Weapons Co. Marines were providing the same kind of support and cover for India, which had been deep in the fight since the battalion jumped off. Lt Iscol’s advisory team of former mortarmen and the Iraqi soldiers had their own sector. For five days they had been finding and destroying enemy supply and weapons caches spread all over the battalion’s AO. North of Iscol’s team Lima Co. was clearing out the deadly backfill of bypassed insurgents who had a nasty habit of reemerging behind the 3/1 Marines pushing south and west. Weapons Co. Marines gave 3/1 the edge in firepower the insurgents found irresistible.

  “Weapons Co. Marines were in every fight in Fallujah because we had CAAT sections with every company,” Kasal says.

  Kasal’s other sections were always on his mind. He didn’t like being out of touch with his own men. The radio kept him informed of the big events, but it didn’t allow him to see for himself.

  “Being the first sergeant of Weapons Co. was different than being the first sergeant of Kilo because it is so spread out,” Kasal says. “I had 170 Marines doing all sorts of things. They were with the rifle companies; I had mortar guys with Lieutenant Iscol and the ING behind us; and I had Marines securing roads and providing security. And the CO was somewhere coordinating everything. I really wanted to be with my other Marines.”

  Kasal kept waiting for a chance to move through the lines to his other sections but the enemy-infested city made it difficult.

  “We were separated,” he says. “I thought I might be able to jump out of my vehicle, or out of formation with Kilo, and join SSgt Mortimer, who was attached to India, or Sgt Como’s section, who was attached to Lima, or even possibly join Lt. Iscol’s group with the 81s and the ING. However, because of the fighting we were unable to get to other units so I stayed with Kilo.”

  Lopez says Kasal liked to stay on his feet providing flank security for his CAAT teams when they were on the move.

  “Kasal was different than a lot of other first sergeants,” Lopez says. “If you were the patrol leader he would not try to take over your patrol every time we would stop. He would do the 5- and 20-checks. When the vehicle stops the GIBS gets out for security. As soon as he gets about 5 meters out he checks for anything dangerous, and then he goes out 20 meters and does the same thing. Every lance corporal knows to do that. When Kasal was done, he would take cover. He was serving as just another lance corporal, a rifleman.

  “When we came back, if he had a question he would ask you why you did something,” Lopez recalls. “If he made a correction he would make it more like a suggestion. He would ask you why—very professionally, very polite. Kasal was like that all the time.”

  DISCOVERING THE CACHE

  The unexpectedly quiet morning did nothing to calm the entire CAAT section’s jumpiness. There was good reason to be on edge. Kilo had been searching houses for about an hour or so when 1st Squad discovered a huge cache of weapons and unexploded ordnance. That meant the enemy wasn’t too far away. Everything came to a halt until the cache was secured.

  Upon examination the cache proved to be big enough to wipe out a good chunk of the platoon—and to get the attention of 3/1’s XO, Major Watson, who also headed an intelligence team called Bravo Command.

  Watson’s team collected data on recovered ordnance and weapons, as well as the torture chambers, death houses, IED factories, and other infernal services the jihadists provided in Fallujah. His team had provided the world the evidence of the grisly beheading of 62-year-old British civil engineer Kenneth Bigley, who was murdered 22 days after being kidnapped in Baghdad.

  When Watson heard about the cache, he sent McCormack and his intelligence-gathering section from Bravo Command to record the jihadist hardware using digital cameras. McCormack describes the cache as huge. “It included an unexploded 500-pound bomb,” he says. “We used satchel charges and time fuses to destroy it.”

  Lopez’s CAAT provided overwatch while 1st Platoon prepared the cache for demolition. After the charges were set the Marines would back off a safe distance until after the ordnance was destroyed. On the way to the cache McCormack remembers seeing Mitchell walking down the road with one sleeve of his shirt missing, replaced by white bandages that covered a wound.

  “I see this Marine; it’s Mitchell. He’s got the sleeve ripped off of his cammie blouse and he’s got white bandages around his arm. I remember I grabbed the platoon commander and I said, ‘Hey, is that Marine all right? Does he need to get back?’ Grapes said, ‘He’s all right, he just got shot through the arm.’”

  Mitchell was oblivious of the wound, he says: “It happened so fast I hardly felt it. It stung but it didn’t even bleed. The bullet cauterized the hole as it went through. I was stiff and it hurt some to move it, but it wasn’t bad.”

  Mitchell wasn’t thinking about his arm when McCormack spotted him on the road. He was wondering what lay ahead. All the Marines were tense and somewhat numb from the day before. Mitchell was glad to see 3d Squad moved slowly, cautiously, well aware that the foreign fighters were lurking somewhere watching them move ever closer.

  “When we pulled out of the firm base we hadn’t gone too far when we stopped. I think we had gone west for a block and were now heading south just checking out houses,” Mitchell says. “1st Squad was exploding some ordnance they had found so we stopped. Before that we had been searching the houses on both sides of the street, going into each one. The only thing that seemed like it was going on was 1st Squad getting ready to blow the UXO [unexploded ordnance] in place. I don’t remember any shooting. Kasal was with us. His CAAT section was right behind me. He was just hanging out with us.”

  THE BUZZ SAW KICKS IN

  Little did Kasal or any of them know, but only a moment later their lives would change forever. Suddenly, inexplicably, the essential elements that propel the average moment into history and history into legend came into place. Capturing that ordinary moment in an extraordinary time might not have happened at all had photographer Lucian Read not been on that particular street in Fallujah when the moment arrived. He was sitting in one of the Kilo Co. Humvees talking to the Marines manning it. Read was a regular among the Marines of 3/1. In fact he was almost one of them—to the extent a civilian puke can hope to be a Marine.

  All around him the Marines of Kilo were making war in the dispassionate, careful way of routine combat operations. Each man was as taut as a drawn bowstring waiting to run its course. Kasal was standing alone and aloof as was his way, taking counsel with no one. Later he would say the moment had no particular significance to him.

  Mitchell felt something would happen before the morning ran out. So did Nicoll. Two blocks from the epicenter of the moment Grapes and 1st Squad were standing around a cache of weapons preparing them for demolition. Up the street from Mitchell, Pruitt and his men were going through the cautious motions of checking out yet another house, knowing full well that eventually they were going to find something.

  Seventeen months later Read recounted his observations in an interview with Joseph Shapiro on National Public Radio. Read said the fight came as a complete surprise to him. He had been following 3d Platoon all morning while they searched the houses lining the street. Marines were all around him—clearing buildings, smoking, providing cover, and just milling about.

  They were finding nothing so Read decided to ta
ke a break while Kilo’s Marines checked out the last house on the block. He moved over to one of the Weapons Co. Humvees to talk to the Marines inside when the buzz saw kicked on. He told Shapiro: “The house that the fighting ended up in was pretty much the last house,” he says. “I had decided to sit that one out and it turned out there was six guys in there waiting for the Marines to come through the door.”

  After that Read remembers pistol fire, rifle fire, grenades, and Kasal passing by, heading for the sound of the guns. Next to Kasal was Hurd’s CAAT. Read thought that seeing Kasal heading to the fight was extraordinary.

  “It is not unusual for a first sergeant to be in the fight, to be present,” Read says in the NPR interview. “But it is unusual for a first sergeant to put himself on the line like that, to go to a house like that, and to further push on risking injury. It was sort of a mark of the seriousness of that moment that the senior enlisted man—whose job usually would be to coordinate things through the officers for the men—felt it necessary that he was going to have to go in there and do what needed to be done. It speaks to the danger and confusion of that moment.”

  What Read couldn’t know at the time, of course, was that Kasal had learned Marines were pinned down. “The first thought in my mind was that there were three fellow Marines trapped inside a house with the enemy and time was critical,” Kasal recalls.

  “All I could think of was the possibility of Marines being captured later appearing on TV being beheaded,” Kasal explains. “My rank was irrelevant. Three Marines needed help and every second counted. That’s the reason I ran to the house.”

  Kasal wasn’t the only Marine heading to the sound of the guns. Staff Sergeant Jon Chandler, the new 3d Platoon sergeant, Severtsgard, Mitchell, Nicoll, and several more 3d Squad Marines went by with Read and Hurd’s CAAT in hot pursuit; Jensen was still on the .50 cal. “Suddenly a hail of gunfire erupted out of nowhere,” Mitchell recalls. “We all went down to where all the shooting was to secure the area around the gunfire. Kasal and the CAAT section were moving with us.”