No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy

by Jim Proser

  Throughout his life and career, Jim Mattis has continued to speak his mind, often bluntly. At times that trait, among others he learned in Richland, puts him at odds with his bosses in the military, up to and including the president of the United States. His position and their title just never seems to matter.

  1300 Hours—1 April 2003—Southeast of Baghdad

  In the forward command post, on one of a dozen or so TV screens, CNN scrolls news of Colonel Joseph Dowdy’s firing horizontally across the bottom of the screen. General Mattis stands in front of a printout of the battlefield between himself and Baghdad, with blue icons representing his RCT-1, RCT-5, and RCT-7 positions and red icons representing the positions of Saddam’s Al Nida Division fifty miles southeast of Baghdad, on Highway 6 in the city of Aziziyah, and the Baghdad Division another fifty-three miles farther southeast, on Highway 6 in Al Kut.

  Between Aziziyah and Al Kut, a small secondary road, Route 27, intersects Highway 6. Route 27 connects Highway 1 to the west with Highway 6 to the east. It is the hinge in the trapdoor that Mattis is nearly ready to spring.

  Mattis is on an encrypted radio line to Dunford, who is paused on Highway 1: “Be prepared to take the bridge across the Saddam Canal 20 kilometers east on Route 27 at first light on 3 April and continue the attack to the Tigris from there.”17

  The pace in the last hours has picked up since Mattis was “cleared hot” to attack into the “red zone” surrounding Baghdad, a circle drawn around the city where it is expected that Saddam keeps his most experienced and well-equipped fighters. This is where, if the coalition is slimed with chemical weapons, it will happen. For the past hours, a pause in the advance has been in effect from Central Command to allow for the resupply and refueling of the US Army’s V Corps, advancing on Baghdad not up paved highways like the Marines but across the hard desert directly from the west.

  Mattis is chafing at the pause. He developed his “log lite” (lightened logistics) as an essential part of his maneuver warfare plans specifically so his forces could move fast and far without relying on traditional supply lines. His units carry only as much food, water, and fuel as it takes to get them to the next airfield of any kind. In this case, airfields are often created out of Iraqi highways that have the median strips bulldozed out of the way. His reliable Third Marine Air Wing pilots are experts at landing their giant C-130s on four-lane blacktop. Inside the planes are six-thousand-gallon rubber fuel bladders, crates of ammunition, full water tanks, and everything else a rolling attack force needs.

  Mattis calls Dunford back, moving the attack date up a full twenty-four hours:

  “Take the Canal on 2 April.”18

  Every moment his men are paused, waiting in camp or in the field, exposes them to more danger. He doesn’t much care that everybody thinks the rear areas are secure. It was this kind of happy horseshit thinking that got twenty-five thousand British soldiers killed in this same location. Every moment they are paused, Saddam is repositioning and resupplying his forces too, even though they are generally commanded by his two inexperienced sons and their cowardly fedayeen fighters. Mattis has seen these fedayeen scurrying between positions disguised in civilian clothing, using women and children as human shields. His disgust is overwhelming. They are the type of dishonorable cowards he despises, “the most unworthy opponents we have ever faced.”

  He calls Dunford back a third time, asking how soon RCT-5 can attack.

  “In four hours,” Dunford says.

  “Do it,” Mattis replies.19

  Fuck the pause—they’ll pause after he rolls his tanks through Saddam’s bedroom. He turns to aide-de-camp Captain Warren Cook and tells him to get the jump ready. They’re rolling out for Numaniyah. Mattis wants to be there when Dunford’s Fifth Marines spring his trap on the Baghdad Division in Al Kut.

  On Mattis’s chessboard, he is trapping four Iraqi divisions with Dunford’s single Marine regiment. Because Qusay Hussein’s Baghdad Division is expecting Dunford’s attack from the south, he draws three divisions out of Baghdad to defend against it. But Dunford leaves a shadow force behind, pinning Qusay’s forces in place, while he outflanks him, rolling his main force east to Numaniyah and then north, cutting off Qusay’s northern route back to Baghdad and trapping him in Al Kut.

  Bing West reports on traveling across Route 27 toward Numaniyah:

  The contrast between Route 27 and the highways we had so far taken during the campaign was striking. No berms or bunkers dotted the road, and no bulldozers had plowed long lines of trenches. Even the ubiquitous white sandbags, seen in every tiny village at some tiny intersection, were absent.

  No Iraqi military planner—not even Saddam’s son Uday and his fedayeen—had expected the coalition forces to leave Route 1 and turn east onto this secondary road. Civilians were going about their evening business at a steady pace. Most waved if they made eye contact, but none seemed awed or frightened by the hundreds of armed vehicles rolling by. Boys out in a schoolyard playing soccer did not interrupt their game to watch the amtracs clatter past. The friendly and normal atmosphere made it obvious that the fedayeen were not lurking on this route.20

  Mattis and his jump crew reach the Numaniyah airfield south of the city just after Dunford’s Marines complete their move across Route 27 and begin their attack on the airfield, just before dawn. Heavy return fire from the Iraqis crackles and thuds. The airfield is critical for supplying the final push into Baghdad, just over 80 miles north. Saddam has prepared his defenses here for Mattis’s attack.

  Mattis leans forward in his LAV’s commander’s seat, scrutinizing the telltale sounds of the pitched battle just a thousand yards away. Sergeant Ryan Woolworth turns up the speakers on the PRC-119 radio that monitors the various company, battalion, and regimental networks in the area. Mattis listens to the direction and intensity of fire outside with the trained ear of a combat commander, distinguishing between enemy and Marine weapons, gauging distance and position. Over the radio, he hears Dunford calmly commanding the attack at the airport while receiving sitreps (situation reports) on his tanks attacking two miles east, down the main street of Numaniyah toward the bridge over the Tigris. Dunford’s front-line company commanders at the airport call in air and artillery support on Iraqi positions. The end game at Numaniyah begins.

  At 6:30, dawn is breaking over the green marshes of Mesopotamia as the latest of dozens of invading armies over the centuries asserts its will. A brief situation report comes over the nets from Dunford’s command post to all battalions: “Iron Horse [call sign for Second Tank Battalion] has seized the Tigris bridge at Numaniyah intact and are crossing it now. Have taken some RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] hits, but all tanks still in the fight at this time.”21

  Once across the bridge, Second Tank Battalion’s orders are to turn south again, back to Al Kut, attacking it from the north in a pincer move, with RCT-1 attacking up Highway 7 from the south.

  The Numaniyah airfield is quiet except for the distant rumble of a C-130 supply plane approaching from the south. Mattis’s driver, Sergeant Yaniv Newman, herringbones and parks the general’s LAV just off the airfield, and the others in the jump platoon follow it into formation. Objectives secured, and Dunford headed north to Aziziyah, Mattis calls for a few hours of rest for his men. As the others climb out of their vehicles, the general reviews his laptop computer screen one more time. It shows the new positions of his forces on the battlefield. But what has he forgotten? What have his commanders overlooked? Who needs advance orders? What is Saddam’s next move?

  Even though the intensity of close combat is over for the moment, Mattis’s predator reflexes are still engaged, and the chatter in his head won’t stop. To quiet his mind, he may have again summoned his therapist and closest adviser, General Marcus Aurelius. Writing his meditations from the distant past, Aurelius advises the general frequently about what is outside of his control, even as a general: “What is the present state of my understanding? For here lies all indeed. As for all other things, th
ey are outside the compass of my own will; and if outside the compass of my will, then they are as dead things to me, and as it were, mere smoke.”

  * * *

  Aziziyah, at first look from the south, appears like a fortified city, with stout concrete buildings standing shoulder to shoulder above a narrow canal that seems to be almost a medieval moat. The city lies just fifty miles south of Baghdad, and through the centuries has been the capital city’s last line of defense against invaders from the south. At one o’clock on the afternoon of April 3, 2003, everything President Saddam Hussein has left in his arsenal is firing directly at Dunford’s Marine invaders, just across the canal.

  As Iraqi AK-47 bullets whiz by like angry hornets and 155-millimeter coalition artillery shells zip overhead in the opposite direction, detonating on Iraqi Republican Guard positions in Aziziyah with concussive whumps like car doors being slammed, Dunford and Lieutenant Colonel Sam Mundy, the commander of Dunford’s go-to Marine battalion, the 3/5, discuss attack routes into the city. They hunker down in front of a battle map of the city that leans against the rear tire of Dunford’s command vehicle. Their faces only an inch apart, they yell over the deafening clatter of shouting Marines firing M-16s and machine guns back at the Iraqis.

  Yards away, behind his own vehicle, Mattis stands upright, seemingly unaware of the fierce firefight around him. He contemplates his own battle map of the territory between Aziziyah and Baghdad with a dozen red and blue sticky notes pasted to it, red indicating the positions of Saddam’s forces, blue indicating his coalition positions. He yells into a satellite phone over the roar of battle as Marines trot past him toward the front lines, hunched over, keeping their heads down as they press the attack forward. It’s eighty degrees. The dust, diesel fumes from a thousand engines of war, and smoke from burning oil fires nearby make it tough on the grunts, who each carry around eighty pounds on their backs.

  Bing West writes:

  He [Mattis] could see that the Marines, although tired, were continuing to press forward, while the enemy had retreated into the town. He could see with his own eyes that his troops had the initiative. And Mattis always had a sense for the troops. As he was studying the map, a Marine stumbled by him breathing hoarsely in the dust. “Want some water?” Mattis said, gesturing at the gypsy rack that every Humvee carried with five-gallon water jugs. The Marine refilled his canteens, took a deep gulp, and patted Mattis on the shoulder. “Thanks, man,” he said, trotting off, apparently unaware that he was talking to his division commander.22

  Mattis, equally unimpressed, continues his phone conversation with his assistant division commander, General John Kelly, sixty miles back at the Bug. Mattis can likely sense from the attitude of the Marines trotting forward past his position and the tempo of artillery fire into Saddam’s elite Al Nida Division across the canal that Saddam’s final defense perimeter is beginning to give way. If he can break through now, he might be able to thrust his spearhead, Dunford’s 3/5, into the heart of Baghdad and end the killing.23

  But these good Marines have been running and gunning without a break for the past forty-eight hours. They have led the way and won every gunfight since seizing the gas and oil separation plant outside Basra two weeks ago. He can tell from their body language and the grime they haven’t had time to wash off their faces that they need rest. He has to bring up reinforcements.

  “Tell Steve to come up here right away to his friend Joe’s location,” he tells Kelly. “Make sure he knows I want him to bring all his friends with him.” Mattis speaks in this type of familiar, personal code because he doesn’t trust the technology that is supposed to be encrypting his communications. It’s the same reason he relies on old-fashioned maps with sticky notes instead of computer images of the battlefield. The Steve he mentions is Colonel Steven Hummer, who is ordered to break off the assault on Al Kut to the south and hustle his one thousand vehicles and six thousand men up Route 6 to the front at Aziziyah.24

  In Baghdad, Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz holds a news conference assuring reporters that Saddam Hussein is “in full control of the army and the country.” Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf adds to Aziz’s assurances, saying reports of US advances on Baghdad are “illusions.”25

  3

  Liberation

  MARGARET WARNER: We want to talk about your experience running the occupation for these months. The most remarkable statistics, in the months running the huge area of Iraq while the army was taking all kinds of casualties up around north of Baghdad you lost not one Marine to hostile attack. How do you explain that?

  MAJ. GEN. JAMES MATTIS: Well, we didn’t lose one killed. We had about 40 men wounded, but we sat out there to carry out the commander in chief’s intent, and that was that we were going to liberate these people. We were going to try to avoid adversarial relationships and we were going to try to remain friendly one week longer, one day longer, one hour longer than perhaps some of the people who distrusted us coming in might have expected. And that’s worked out pretty well.

  MARGARET WARNER: How did you go about it? I read that you said one of your principles was do no harm. Describe that for us.

  MAJ. GEN. JAMES MATTIS: We went into the attack with the motto that said no better friend, no worse enemy. So if you want to be our friend, we’ll be the best friends you ever had. If you want to fight us, you’re going to regret it. When we were up there in the stability operations, we added to it, first do no harm. In other words, if the enemy tried to provoke us into a fight and that fight would cause innocent people to die, then we would forgo the fight. We would try to find a way to get them another day.

  But we were out to win the trust of the Iraqi people. We knew we were an American foreign force, largely Christian force, and we occupied, for example, two of the holy cities of the Shia. What we did not want to do was find ourselves in a position of creating a conflict. So I sent about 15,000 of my 23,000 men home [in June]. I got rid of all my tanks and armored personnel carriers. Marines went on dismounted patrols. We had wave tactics, waving to the people, assuming we were there as friends. Eventually that expectation paid off.

  MARGARET WARNER: I gather—I read somewhere that you gave your troops instructions about things like eye contact.

  MAJ. GEN. JAMES MATTIS: Yes, when soldiers walk into a city, and they’re foreign soldiers, the first thing people are going to look at is all that gear and the weapons hanging off them. Generally the second place people look is into people’s eyes, to see if they can trust them. So Marines removed their sunglasses and we tried to build the trust one act at a time. They learned quickly to trust us; they would even protest against us at times. On the suggestion of my Catholic chaplain, the Marines would take chilled drinking water in bottles and walk out amongst the protestors and hand it out. It is just hard to throw a rock at somebody who has given you a cold drink of water and it’s 120 degrees outside.

  — General James Mattis, September 26, 2003, interviewed on PBS during the occupation of Baghdad and southern Iraq

  1100 Hours—4 April 2003—Route 6, Advancing Toward Baghdad

  General Mattis’s four jump platoon vehicles roll north, well back in the column and indistinguishable from the 150 other vehicles of the Second Tank Battalion. Humvees and LAVs are in the left lane, and thirty-five M1A1 Abrams tanks in the right. Behind them, extending for 6 miles, is the rest of Regimental Combat Team 5—now the tip of Mattis’s spearhead, aimed at the beating heart of Baghdad.

  The countryside looks like some poorer parts of rural Mexico, semi-arid, flat and featureless dirt dotted with bush scrub. Scattered adobe homes and industrial sites slide by on the right side as the column rolls past a line of trenches belching black smoke that partially obscures the industrial sites. Bing West reports:

  The double column, which extended in length for 14 kilometers, had just straightened out and hit a cruising speed of about 25 kilometers per hour when the battle began. . . . The Iraqis let the Marines’ lead tank company go by, and t
hen as Alpha Company was passing, there was a loud woosh, as if a jet had passed only a few meters overhead, and an explosive blast to the right that seemed as big as a 155mm shell, only with more flame and red sparks. There was another woosh and another boom and another red fireball to the right of our SUV. The company net came alive as the tankers tried to identify the weapon.

  “SAM! SA-7 malfunctioning! He’s aiming for the Cobras.”

  “Negative. Those are Saggers. Repeat, Saggers.”1

  The tankers are trying to determine the weapon they are facing when Second Tank Battalion commander Captain Todd Sudmeyer breaks in, “This is Alpha Six. Pick up the pace. Pick it up. Open some space between us and those palm trees.”2

  The lead tanks put the pedal to the metal while opening fire toward the industrial park with 7.62-millimeter machine guns. On their right, Humvees with turret-mounted .50-caliber machine guns fire into the palm grove in that direction, expecting an ambush from there as well. Tank commanders drop inside their tanks and close their hatches. The TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided) antitank missile and .50-caliber gunners on the Humvee top turrets can’t drop inside a hatch behind heavy armor. The only armor they have are the ceramic plates in their flak vests.3

  The tankers scan the park with thermal imaging to pick up heat signatures of rocket positions and day optics to pick out visual targets. The TOW-mounted Humvees on the right spot a line of Russian T-72 tanks and small armored vehicles called BMPs racing north toward Baghdad through the palm grove about 1,500 meters away. All along the road, impacting bullets from Marine .50-caliber guns throw up sprays of dirt along the six-foot berm.