by Jim Proser
Seemingly all at once the tanks of 3/5 lock in targets, and dozens of main guns fire into the industrial park, vaporizing sections of the high cement wall that surrounds it and collapsing structures behind it. The howling thunderstorm of cannon fire drowns out even the 155-millimeter Marine artillery and Cobra helicopter rockets as they begin to rain down on the park and cracks the windshield of Bing West’s Nissan SUV traveling in the midst of the tanks. At the head of the column, Second Battalion tanks take on a Russian T-72 tank and several BMPs that try to block the column, stopping it in the ambush kill zone.
Over the net the news comes that Tank Charlie Six, commanded by Captain Jeffrey Houston, is a mobility kill, meaning that the tank is immobilized by enemy fire but the tankers are not injured. Second Tank Battalion charges forward around Charlie Six and begins littering Highway 6 with burning Iraqi tanks and trucks in its wake.
In Mattis’s LAV, concussion waves from tank cannon fire rock the vehicle as the smell of burning oil smoke seeps into the interior. They roll past dozens of burning vehicles, adding to the smoke from the trenches of oil along the road. The tanks cut through thick black curtains of smoke, spiraling it behind them and into Mattis’s ventilation ducts. Adding to the deafening cannon fire and noxious smoke, a burning Iraqi truck by the side of the road explodes in a tremendous roar as the ammunition inside cooks off. The company radio can barely be heard above the noise. Mattis puts his finger in one ear to block some of the pandemonium around him as he yells into the radio about his next objective, crossing the Diyala River outside Baghdad.
The Marines of RCT-5 fought for ten hours the day before, advancing through Aziziyah, and they looked tired when they started out this morning. Now, Mattis realizes, they will have to dismount and sweep forward on foot at least four or five kilometers to clear any secondary ambushes. That means fighting, sprinting, and flopping, for probably another five hours. It is going to be a long day for them and will delay the crossing of the Diyala River. The column slows down as enemy and return fire dwindles. Damage reports file in from the column. Three Marines are dead and almost a dozen wounded. First Lieutenant Brian McPhillips, twenty-five years old, of Pembroke, Massachusetts, a machine gunner exposed to enemy fire in his Humvee turret, is dead.4
Mattis hears the news. By now he knows many of the hard-charging grunts of 3/5 by sight, and some by first name. He tells his communications technician, Sergeant Ryan Woolworth, to get Lieutenant Colonel Duffy White, commander of the First Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR), on the radio. He wants to know White’s progress in finding fording spots over the Diyala River for the attack into Baghdad.
The column halts for the night at a small intersection surrounded on all four sides by groups of small, shabby car repair garages and stores. Second Battalion tanks pull in, blocking two corners of the intersection as Dunford’s jump platoon claims a third corner as the regiment’s forward command post. Hundreds of war-making vehicles spread out across the hardpan desert around the intersection; the sky flashes red and orange with fireworks from burning Iraqi ammunition trucks. Flaming shrapnel sprays across the sunset sky as Mattis’s jump platoon joins Dunford’s corner command post.
Night and fatigue fall like heavy blankets, silencing the roar and clang of battle. Marines fall fast asleep on the filthy, oil-smelling pavement around the machine shops or in shallow ranger graves next to their vehicles in the hard-packed dirt. Mattis’s platoon shoulders into their sleeping holes, trying to find a soft spot in the earth just off the intersection. Silence finally comes, except for occasional radio chatter buzzing across the net from hundreds of vehicles.
Somewhere out in the dark a pack of dogs fights over a kill, drawing the attention of the exhausted Marines standing the first watch. Somewhere beyond the dogs, an Iraqi rocket team moves quietly to remove the camouflage over their Russian-made BM 21 rocket launchers.
About 2200, the first Iraqi rocket hits at the crossroads with a sharp bang. Then a second rocket hits. The net in Mattis’s LAV blurts coordinates and weapon configurations. Marines on the ground roll under vehicles or just turn their faces into the ground and pray. If tonight is the night their number comes up, there’s nothing they can do about it now. Might as well try to get some sleep. A third rocket hits a shop near the intersection as rockets begin to rain down out of a pitch-black sky all around the Marines.
Nearby, the first watch commander of the Eleventh Marines artillery battalion scans his radar and sees it has picked up the flight paths of the rockets. The radar feeds this rocket flight data into a computer that calculates the flight paths backward to the location of the rocket launchers. The computer sends the launcher coordinates over to a waiting battery of six 155-millimeter cannons. Within seconds, the rocket launchers and Iraqi soldiers manning them explode into fragments under the barrage of Marine artillery.
The rockets stop. In a moment the net hisses with confirmation of the effective fire mission. Mattis and the Marines at the intersection roll over and fall back asleep.
* * *
The Diyala River bordering Baghdad on the southeast is fifty feet wide. Mattis peeks around broken bricks of what used to be the front wall of a burned-out one-room house on the southern bank of the river. Lieutenant Colonel White has assured him it is too deep to wade across, and there are no natural fording spots within twenty miles in either direction that can be used by the tanks and heavy equipment of the Marines. Where the river skirts the city, thirty- to forty-foot sandstone cliffs on both sides of the river stand as natural fortress walls against invaders, as they have for centuries, starting with the first Persian kings.
Mattis’s bombed-out observation post is on top of the southern cliff, directly across the river from the slums of Saddam City in southeast Baghdad. On the far cliff, 155-millimeter Marine artillery shells explode, putting him and the men with him within a “danger close” radius of shrapnel spraying out from each shell impact. He scans past the far, city-side cliff through binoculars, peering down the crooked streets and alleys of Saddam City, the ghetto home of Iraq’s Shia minority. With him Colonel Steve Hummer and Lieutenant Colonel Brian P. “Base Plate” McCoy also take cover as they scan across the river toward the last objective of their three-hundred-mile march up from Kuwait. Base Plate McCoy got his nickname both from his initials and from his reputation for volunteering to shoulder his mortar team’s heavy metal base plate as an infantryman. Now, as commander of the 3/4 Marines, he is one of Mattis and Dunford’s most reliably aggressive front-line commanders, the perfect choice for the age-old infantry ground assault now being readied.
An old-fashioned iron pedestrian bridge sits just fifteen feet to the right of the general’s shattered observation post. Just beyond that, the modern four-lane concrete Baghdad Bridge spans the sandstone palisades into the city. The pedestrian bridge has a six-foot-wide hole blown into its center, but the Baghdad Bridge sits invitingly undamaged and apparently ready for American tanks to take advantage of it. It’s an obvious trap that Mattis is not going to fall into. A few kilometers north, a blown concrete bridge is being repaired while Marine engineers, under small-arms and RPG fire, construct their own pontoon bridges nearby in case the repaired bridge is retargeted and blown again.
Mattis’s orders are to encircle this southeastern part of the city and join up with the US Army’s Third Infantry Division, which has already taken Baghdad International Airport to the southwest. Once the encirclement is complete, Army and Marine battalions will make raids into the city to seize key objectives such as Saddam’s Fedayeen Training Center, the Rasheed Military Complex, the Atomic Energy Commission, and Adhamiyah Palace.5 They are not going to seize and hold entire neighborhoods or large areas of the city, as they did with the smaller cities on the route north. Command-level intelligence indicates that Saddam’s defenses are already collapsing inside the city, and large-scale defections from the defenders are expected.
Mattis and Hummer decide to send the amtracs and LAVs that can “swim” directly ac
ross the Diyala to take up positions outside Saddam City. Tanks, trucks, and Humvees will divert to bridges to the north and south, circle back, and rejoin their units on the other side. Mattis knows he has outrun his supply line and is low on food rations and artillery shells. To conserve artillery, he orders the Third Marine Air Wing to take over most of the preparatory fire missions for the coming assault. The invasion of Baghdad must happen today.
Resting in the house behind the commanders, the men of Kilo Company, some of the “friends” that “Steve” was ordered to bring up two days ago, sit behind the partially collapsed back wall of the house inside a small courtyard. With them are Mattis’s jump platoon, including Lance Corporal Osowski. This close to Baghdad, intelligence estimates that the chance of a chemical attack is minimal, so the men have shed their bulky, hot MOPP suits and enjoy the relative coolness for the first time in weeks.
Among the Marines, M-16 rifles, AT-4 rocket launchers, machine guns, and 60-millimeter mortars are thick wooden planks, metal piping, and a large metal gate Kilo managed to scrounge from somewhere. They are going to use these materials to cover the hole in the pedestrian bridge as they assault Baghdad on foot. A few of Mattis’s dwindling number of artillery shells are directed toward the palm grove that lies on the edge of the city just north of the two bridges—a possible ambush position against Kilo as they cross the pedestrian bridge.
Mattis, Hummer, and Base Plate turn from their observations and walk back to say a few words to the men of Kilo before they begin the assault on Baghdad. Mattis assures Base Plate that his men will have all the cover fire they need to get across the pedestrian bridge. Hummer offers Base Plate his own encouragement, “McCoy, don’t fuck up.”6 Mattis leaves the house satisfied that the assault is well thought out and in good hands.
Across the river, unseen eyes observe the Marines moving inside and around the house. Deafening explosions of Marine artillery begin to splinter the palm grove on the Baghdad side, as something large flies from inside the city and splashes into the river near the house. Radios along the American front line spit out an urgent warning. It seems that Saddam has finally launched his defense of Baghdad. Third Air Wing hunts the Iraqi artillery but not before the first volley finds the Marines.
In the house, Marines start diving for cover, yelling “Incoming! Incoming!”
The next shell lands so close it shakes the earth under the Marines’ feet with a sharp crack so loud that they freeze, expecting to hear screams of pain or see worse. The Marines don’t know whether being inside or outside the courtyard is safer, or if it is friendly or enemy shells they are dodging. Some want to run for different cover, some want to stay. They all start yelling. Bing West reports,
[Sergeant Major] Howell rushed into the courtyard. “Shut up!” he screamed.
“Only the chain of command talks! Sit down along the walls. No one stands up!”
Behind the courtyard an Amtrac was smoking, its turret peeled back like the top of an open can of soup. The back hatch was flung open, and Marines were pulling out the bodies. The radio net was crackling with raised voices.
“Turn it off! Turn it off!” Kilo Six was shouting loudly into his radio.
“Enemy incoming! Enemy incoming! Continue to fire!” someone countermanded him over the radio.
“You continue to fire, and I’m going to shove this handset up your ass. That fire gets turned off now. Do you read me? Now!”7
A Marine artillery commander comes on the net and confirms that it is not friendly fire—Kilo is taking enemy fire. The Iraqi general is picked up by the intercept team, yelling at his terrified taxi driver not to stop driving, or they will be targeted by the Americans. He is also yelling over his cell phone for his artillery to continue firing on the Marines’ position, but no one responds.
Across the river, Kilo Company picks themselves up off the floor and listens for more incoming shells and net reports. They hear Eleventh Marines artillery and Third Air Wing pilots calling in coordinates as they attack a location inside the city.
If the Iraqi general had been able to direct his fire a few feet north and a few moments earlier, inside the house, it would probably have killed most of Kilo, several division commanders, and Mattis. Instead, the blackened bodies of Corporal Martin Medellin and Lance Corporal Andrew Aviles are pulled out of the shattered amtrac behind the house. They are covered, and carried away on stretchers. The Iraqi general achieved a direct hit on the two young Marines. Aviles, only eighteen years old, is the youngest Marine to die in Iraq.
Sergeant Major Howell divides Kilo Company into two assault teams. They pick up their primitive bridging materials and run headlong toward Saddam’s last line of defense beyond the pedestrian bridge. A dead Iraqi lies face up, naked, his bloated belly extended toward the sun at the entrance to the bridge. Weapons up, the assault teams run around the dead body onto the bridge. A gaggle of international photographers, cameramen, and reporters run along with Kilo, televising the latest invasion of Baghdad.
* * *
The planning for Phase IV, the occupation of Baghdad, had not yet started in the fall of 2001. The undersecretary for policy at the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, was sent a report created by seventy national security experts and Middle East scholars called “Iraq: Looking Beyond Saddam’s Role.” The report concluded that occupying Iraq “will be the most daunting and complex task the US and the international community will have undertaken since the end of World War II.” It strongly recommended against dissolving the Iraqi military, saying, “There should be a phased downsizing to avoid dumping 1.4 million men into a shattered economy.”8
In December 2001, the subject of postwar Iraq was carefully considered by a second group of about a dozen Middle East experts including diplomats, State Department officials, and military intelligence officers meeting at the Army War College. After several days of intense discussions the group produced recommendations for the eventual planners, senior military commanders and civilian administrators who would be responsible for the country after Saddam was defeated. They offered exactly the same advice as the first study group. Their report warned, “To tear apart the army in the war’s aftermath could lead to the destruction of one of the only forces for unity within the society,” as would wholesale “de-Ba’athification,” the destruction of the majority political party of Saddam Hussein.9
Because neither study was widely distributed among the Pentagon’s war planners, there was never a detailed Phase IV or occupation phase developed for coalition commanders. The eventual plan, entitled Eclipse II, told field commanders what not to do, but very little about what they should do. Marine commander Mattis, like his British coalition counterpart, Major General Robin Brims, recognized the lack of detail in the Pentagon’s occupation plan and prepared himself and his troops in spite of this lack of guidance. Brims, who had invaded and occupied Northern Ireland for years, knew full well the civilian dimensions involved. Mattis, who commanded a rifle company during the invasion and occupation of Kuwait and then commanded the first task force to invade and briefly occupy Afghanistan after 9/11, had also seen the civilian side of occupation firsthand.
Seven months after the second study group met, postwar planning for Iraq began in earnest. It was rammed through an overworked staff group within Central Command that laid an incomplete foundation virtually guaranteeing the disaster Iraq was to become. Colonel John Agoglia of Central Command’s planning staff said, “End of July [2002], we’ve just finished the second plan [for Iraq], and we get an order from Joint Staff saying, ‘You’re in charge of the postwar plan.’ We said, ‘Oh, shit,’ did a mission analysis, and focused on humanitarian issues, such as minimizing the displacement of people, stockpiling food to stave off famine, and protecting the infrastructure of the oil fields.”10
This rushed strategy by the Pentagon planners lacked deep thinking about the needs of the Iraqi people beyond their basic survival and provided few details on what Iraq’s tribes, communities, and cities would need afte
r their country was invaded and their government overtaken. Mattis’s lifelong devotion to the study of philosophy and experience in occupied territories gave him a much keener sense of human needs, particularly in times of war. He could no more overlook the humanity of the Iraqis he would become responsible for under the rules of war than he could that of his own troops. In Mattis’s educated view, Iraqis and his occupying troops would have to form a community with specific physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
The human aspect of warfare is apparently always first in Mattis’s thinking. After working closely with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld developing maneuver warfare, he then dismissed his superior’s idea of “net-centric” warfare. Rumsfeld had taken warfare into the abstract, insisting that fighting wars had to do primarily with the movement of data. Rumsfeld felt that computers and the internet would now control the rhythm of battle.
In what has become his trademark style, Mattis contradicted his distant boss Rumsfeld in comments to a reporter. “Computers by their nature are isolating,” he said. “They build walls. The nature of war is immutable: You need trust and connection. It is a Marxian view—it ignores the spiritual.”11
In his elevated contradiction of Rumsfeld, it seems Mattis has learned to moderate his comments to the press. Part of his formal press education as a battlefield commander came when he accepted command of the First Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Camp Pendleton in July of 2001. After the ceremony, he encountered his new communications watchdog, Captain Joe Plenzler, a former infantry officer. Plenzler introduced himself as Mattis’s new public affairs officer to which Mattis replied, “What are you going to do? Follow me around and make sure I don’t say fuck?” Plenzler just smiled and said, “Well, if it smoothes your hackles, general, I was an infantryman in your old regiment. I’ll do whatever you need. Just treat me like another gun-hand around the ranch.”