None Left Behind: The 10th Mountain Division and the Triangle of Death

by Charles W. Sasser

  The six weeks until August and D-Day, when the 2nd BCT would go to meet the monster, passed in a frenzy of activity that gave little free time for the Joes to brood on what might happen to them in Iraq. Soldiers under orders to give up their lives if necessary wanted to believe that the petty rules and chickenshit of the peacetime garrison went by the wayside. Quite the opposite was true. Days on calendars fanned past in updating service records and wills and powers of attorney, in verifying next of kin information, in receiving immunizations . . . There was the constant up-training, classes to attend in ROE (Rules of Engagement) and other subjects, personnel and equipment inspections, equipment to be bundled for shipment . . .

  As always, there was more work to be done than soldiers to do it.

  The worst thing about deployment was the waiting, the painful dragging out of the inevitable, the frustration of not knowing exactly when.

  “I’ll be home in no time, honey. You’ll see,” men reassured their wives.

  “Don’t expect to hear from me right away,” they said. “I don’t know exactly where we’ll be.”

  “If, God forbid, something happens,” they said, “somebody from the army will get in contact to tell you what to do and how much money you’ll get from the government.”

  This would be Sergeant Victor Chavez’ third combat tour since 2001. He had gone home on a quick leave and married his sweetheart, Rebecca. He had to rush to get her into the system as his next-of-kin.

  “We’ll start life when you get back,” she promised. “I’ll be here waiting.”

  Specialist Jared Isbell’s sweetheart told him the same thing. He didn’t know if he believed her or not. He looked at her a long time. Then they kissed, and he looked at her some more before she turned away with tears in her eyes and left.

  The atmosphere grew somber at the end. Small clusters of soldiers gathered outside their barracks in the summer nights to chain-smoke and talk in low tones. Sergeant Montgomery, divorced for nearly two years, could often be seen around Delta Company late at night, reassuring his platoon, letting himself be seen. During its last deployment in 2004–2005, the brigade suffered 29 soldiers killed in action and another 422 wounded.

  One of Montgomery’s section leaders, Sergeant Chris Messer, had a reputation for being something of a hardnose when it came to discipline and training. One night, he let his shell slip a little.

  “Sergeant Montgomery,” he said, “my little daughter is starting to talk. She can say ‘Da-Da.’ ”

  He looked off into the night.

  “Da-Da,” he repeated softly.

  Earlier, he had shown Victor Chavez a small laminated card containing the words to the Prayer of Salvation.

  “Victor, this is in God’s hands now. Victor, I got a feeling I won’t be coming back from this one.”

  Chavez looked at him, slapped him on the back. “Hey, man. Knock it off. You’re coming back. We’re all coming back.”

  The 2nd BCT of the 31st Regiment, over 3,500 soldiers, consisted of two infantry battalions, one reconnaissance/cavalry battalion, one field artillery battalion, one support battalion, and one special troops battalion of MPs, engineers, military intelligence and the like. As deployment date drew near, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Infanti, commander of the 4th Infantry Battalion (4/31st), stood in front of his men on the parade ground for the obligatory gung ho rally before going off to war. A sense of pride enveloped him. These were his soldiers. It was his job, his profound duty to use these men wisely in the nation’s fight against a brutal enemy—and bring back alive as many of them as he could.

  “I want all of you to be assured that no matter what happens,” he concluded, “you are not alone on the battlefield. This I promise you: In the Fourth Battalion, no soldier will be left behind.”

  TWO

  All new soldiers reporting in to the 10th Mountain Division were provided orientation packets. In addition to schedules of events and services and maps of the post, the packet included a history of the Division reaching back to 1916 and the Russian Revolution. The modern 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), “the most deployed unit in the army,” sprouted out of two separate and seemingly disparate roots, the 31st and 87th Infantry Regiments, one of which served not a single day stateside for more than forty years.

  As a result of a treaty ending the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States gained possession of the Philippine Islands and established it as a commonwealth. In 1916, the 31st Infantry Regiment was activated at Fort William McKinley as part of the nation’s defenses. Less than two years later, the 31st along with its sister regiment, the 37th, shipped out to the bitter cold of Siberia to fight off hordes of Red revolutionaries, Manchurian bandits, and Cossack plunderers trying to gain control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

  Sixteen soldiers of the 31st won the Distinguished Service Cross and thirty-two were killed in a war few Americans knew was being fought. As a result of its service in icy Siberia, the 31st Infantry adopted a silver polar bear as its insignia and became known as the “Polar Bear Regiment,” a designation it retains today.

  The 31st returned to the Philippines in 1920 and remained garrisoned in the old walled city of Manila until 1932 when Japanese troops invaded China. The Polar Bear Regiment, reinforced by the U.S. 4th Marine Division, joined a British international force to protect Shanghai’s International Settlement, after which it returned to Fort McKinley.

  The invasion of tiny Finland by the Soviet Union in 1939 germinated the idea that led to the commissioning of the 87th Infantry Regiment. After Finnish soldiers on skis promptly whaled the Russians by annihilating two tank divisions, American skiing pioneer Charles Minot Dole began lobbying President Franklin Roosevelt to create a specialized mountain unit modeled after that of the Finns. General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, liked the concept and ordered the army to take action.

  Skiers, trappers, muleskinners, and assorted other outdoor types volunteered in early 1940 to begin training on the slopes of Mount Rainier’s 14,408-foot peak. The 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment was activated at Fort Lewis, Washington, on 15 November 1941, three weeks before Pearl Harbor.

  The day after Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers attacked military installations in the Philippines. A 31st Infantry soldier at Camp John Hay became the first casualty of the Japanese campaign to seize the islands. Enemy troops landed in both northern and southern Luzon in a rapid pincher movement to capture Manila. The 31st Infantry covered the withdrawal of American and Filipino forces to the Bataan Peninsula, fighting the invaders to a standstill for over four months.

  Finally, starving and out of ammunition, the Bataan Defense Force surrendered on 9 April 1942. Of the 1,600 members of the 31st who began the Bataan Death March, roughly half perished either during the march or during the nearly four years of brutal captivity that followed. Twenty-nine Polar Bears earned the Distinguished Service Cross and one was recommended for the Medal of Honor, but the entire chain of command died in captivity before medal recommendations could be submitted.

  In the meantime, the 87th Infantry Regiment was redesignated as the 10th Light Division (Alpine) and saw its first action in August 1943 during assault landings against Japanese who had occupied Kiska and Attu in the Aleutian Islands. In November 1944, it acquired its modern designation as the 10th Mountain Division and entered combat in Italy three months later.

  The division fought its way across Italy, crossing the Po River and securing Gargano and Porto di Tremosine before German resistance ended in April 1945. The division earned fame in climbing unscalable cliffs in order to surprise and assault German positions.

  Deactivated after the war, the division would be reactivated and deactivated three times during the next four decades. The 31st Infantry Regiment, however, remained on active duty status. General Douglas MacArthur assigned it to the 7th Infantry Division for occupation duty in Korea, where it remained until the occupation ended in 1948.

  The regiment moved to the Japanese island of H
okkaido, but its stay was cut short by North Korea’s invasion of the South in 1950. The 31st returned to Korea as an element of General MacArthur’s invasion force at Inchon.

  After Inchon, the regiment launched a second assault landing at Iwon, not far from Vladivostok, Russia. Polar Bear troops pushing toward the Yalu River suddenly encountered the Red Chinese Army sweeping down from Manchuria. Surrounded in a steel corridor of death, only 365 members of the task force’s original number of 3,200 survived. Lieutenant Colonel Don Faith, who took command of what was left of the 31st Regiment after Colonel Alan MacLean was killed, also died trying to break out of the trap and lead his survivors to safety. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

  Battered and bloody and all but decimated, the 31st evacuated by sea to Pusan where it rebuilt and retrained, then plunged back into battle to stop the Chinese at Chechon and join in the counteroffensive to retake Central Korea. By 1951, the line more or less stalemated along the 38th Parallel.

  For the next two years, the 31st slugged it out with Chinese and North Koreans across a series of cold, desolate hills that bore such names as Old Baldy, Pork Chop Hill, Triangle Hill, and OP Dale. By the time the war ended, the Polar Bear Regiment had suffered many times its strength in losses, and five of its soldiers had won Medals of Honor.

  In 1957, the U.S. Army reorganized infantry regiments into battle groups. The 31st Infantry of the 1st Battle Group remained in Korea with the 7th Infantry Division while its counterpart, the 31st Infantry of the 2nd Battle Group, formed at Fort Rucker, Alabama. After 41 years, for the first time in its history, the regiment’s flag flew over its U.S. homeland. Until then, it was the only regiment in the army never to have served inside the continental United States.

  The Vietnam War was beginning to build up some steam by that time. In 1963, the army abandoned the battle group concept and brought back brigades, regiments, and battalions. The 4th Battalion of the 31st Infantry Regiment (4/31st) was activated at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, in 1965. Less than a year later, it was operating in Vietnam’s War Zone D and around Tay Ninh near the Cambodian border. The 4th Battalion was part of the last brigade to leave Vietnam.

  The Reagan buildup of the armed forces in 1985 finally merged the 31st Infantry Regiment with a reconstituted 10th Light Division to permanent status as the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry). No longer strictly “ski” or “mountain” troops, the division’s strength lay in its ability to deploy by sea, air, or land anywhere in the world within 96 hours of being alerted, prepared to fight under harsh conditions of any sort.

  Throughout the 1990s and early 21st Century, the 10th continued to add to its reputation for being the most deployed unit in the U.S. Army. Its list of tours in far-flung and war-torn regions circumnavigated the globe: Haiti, the Horn of Africa, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Bosnia, Somalia, the Sinai, Qatar, Kuwait, Kosovo, Desert Storm in Iraq, Afghanistan, Operation Iraqi Freedom . . .

  During the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, made famous by the book and movie BlackHawk Down, the 10th Mountain provided infantry for the UN quick reaction force sent into the embattled city to rescue Task Force Ranger. Two division soldiers died in the fighting.

  In 2001, 10th Mountain soldiers were involved in the famous rescue of downed Navy SEALs during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan.

  Four Brigade Combat Teams composed the 10th Mountain Division—the 1st BCT known as “Warriors;” the 2nd BCT “Commandos;” 3rd BCT “Spartans;” and 4th BCT “Patriots.” During its 2004–2005 deployment to Iraq, the 2nd BCT assumed responsibility for the entire sector of western Baghdad, from Abu Ghraib and Monsour to the notorious “Route Irish” running from Baghdad Airport to the International Zone. The area harbored the largest number of enemy in the country, resulting in the highest concentration of casualties among American soldiers operating there.

  And now, in August 2006, soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division were once again going into harm’s way.

  THREE

  As a show of solidarity, of faith in a common mission, Iraqi Army soldiers in their dark-patterned combat uniforms stood formation with U.S. soldiers when Lieutenant Colonel Michael Infanti uncased 4/31st colors during a brief ceremony at Camp Striker in Baghdad on 17 September 2006. Standing at attention under the desert sun, every soldier in the battalion from the greenest private to the commander himself couldn’t help being aware that this war had changed from the lightning strike of 2003 that brought U.S. troops all the way to Baghdad in a matter of weeks. Never in U.S. history before now had American forces been required to participate in large-scale urban fighting while simultaneously rebuilding the combat zone.

  Iraq had descended into a sectarian hell in which thousands of Iraqis were being killed and millions more forced to flee the country. A particularly militant strain of Sunni Islam called Wahhabism flourished as the Sunni minority backed the insurgency in an effort to preserve the political power and economic benefits it had enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. Insurgents and terrorists were attempting to impose draconian Islamic law throughout the country. They carried out summary executions in the streets and villages of those who opposed them or cooperated with Coalition troops and the fledgling Iraqi government; conducted suicide martyr bombings against police stations, schools, and other public facilities; and posted cash bounties on the heads of Iraqi security personnel, National Guardsmen, and foreigners.

  It wasn’t unusual for a village to wake up and find the severed heads of its elders posted in the middle of the road. Even as the 4/31st prepared to move into its AO (Area of Operations), terrorists stopped a van at a checkpoint near Kharghouli Village, doused it in gasoline, and set it afire with the driver still inside. His crime: driving while Shiite.

  American military forces were ill-equipped to cope with the new brand of urban warfare based on raw terrorism. No comprehensive doctrine existed for counterinsurgency outside relatively small units such as Army Special Forces. After the Vietnam War ended, the U.S. military focused training on rapid maneuver and combined arms, the so-called “Air-Land-Battle” concept that worked amazingly well in the quick “conventional” fight to liberate Iraq.

  As the insurgency gained momentum after July 2003, U.S. troops pulled back into huge Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) far removed from the population and began executing “offensive operations” to destroy enemy forces. The U.S. military sallied forth daily in search and destroy missions against insurgents in civilian clothing whom they could rarely identify and whom the general population concealed and protected. American commanders launched large-scale sweeps to roll up enemy leaders and members, fired artillery to interdict insurgent activity, and used airpower to level the houses of those suspected of supporting the insurgency. After each operation, the Americans retreated to their consolidated FOBs and, instead of attempting to secure and hold ground, conceded the cities and countryside back to street gangs of insurgents.

  Each division, brigade, battalion, and even company was left to its own devices on how best to secure and stabilize its AO, “doing its own thing.” Predictably, the situation throughout Iraq deteriorated. Attacks against Coalition forces had grown from about 70 per day in January 2006 to more than 180 per day by the time the 10th Mountain’s 2nd BCT arrived in-country.

  The 2nd BCT commanded by Colonel Mike Kershaw was relieving a BCT of the 101st Airborne Division. To Lieutenant Colonel Michael Infanti’s 4th Battalion and its four infantry companies fell the fertile area south of Baghdad, a hellish hotbed of subversion that had been appropriately dubbed “The Triangle of Death.” During his long reign, Saddam Hussein had given this now-treacherous swath of land to loyal Baath Party members and close friends.

  Infanti’s AO encompassed roughly twenty square miles of terrain whose major feature, the Euphrates River, curved across the bottom to border the AO to the south, southeast, and southwest. The three towns of Mahmudiyah, Yusufiyah, and Latifiyah formed the apexes of The Triangle of Death. Yusufiyah, the regional township of Baghdad Province, la
y fifteen miles south of Baghdad. It was a small center of about one hundred major buildings, fewer than ten of which were over five stories tall.

  The road through Yusufiyah, designated as Route Sportster by the military, crossed the Euphrates River into Anbar Province at the Jurf Sukr Bridge. Control of the roads and the bridge allowed insurgents free movement into and out of Baghdad and Anbar.

  Mahmudiyah, the larger of the three towns, was situated six miles to the east of Yusufiyah along a major north-south highway that connected Baghdad to Karbula further south. About three miles south of Mahmudiyah along the same road lay Latifiyah. Small, dirty, and impoverished, it was considered the most dangerous of the three towns.

  Terrain around the towns was primarily river farmland broken into small family plots and sliced by numerous canals and irrigation ditches.

  “It’s a real mix of bad guys,” 101st Airborne officers advised their incoming counterparts. “Thugs and criminals as well as insurgents. It’s a crossroads for terrorists. They move in and out along lines that stretch in all directions.”

  Three 101st Airborne soldiers had been attacked near the Jurf Sukr Bridge three months before. One was killed outright while the other two were kidnapped. Four days later, their bodies turned up near the old Russian power plant on Route Malibu. They had been burned, beheaded, and booby trapped with explosives between their legs. The Mujahedeen Shura Council, a prominent insurgency group operating in the Yusufiyah enclave, claimed responsibility and released a video to Al Jazeera TV showing the soldiers being executed and mutilated.

  “These people had rather kidnap soldiers than kill them outright,” 101st officers explained. “Makes better TV propaganda. Al Jazeera is always eager to display terrorist atrocities to the Arab world—and the Arab world is always eager to view them.”

  This would be Lt. Colonel Infanti’s second combat tour to Iraq. During the 2004–2005 deployment, he had served as deputy brigade commander. That experience convinced him that the old methods of conducting the war simply weren’t working. Having been promoted to battalion commander, with the autonomy that provided, he had utilized the “downtime” between deployments to study everything he could find on counterinsurgency. He discovered a paper issued by General Creighton Abrams nearly forty years before—the PROVN (Provincial Reconstruction of Vietnam) Report—to be particularly helpful. It recommended that soldiers clear areas of the enemy, then stay and hold those areas while living among the people. Pound hell out of the bad guys while at the same time protecting the locals in order that the communities could rebuild.