by Jim Proser
But hazardous duty seems to be the proving ground of a grunt’s supreme virtue, contempt for death. In his book Blood Stripes: The Grunt’s View of the War in Iraq, Captain David Danelo describes how suspected IEDs were dealt with in Fallujah at that time: “When the unit noticed an object that appeared to be hiding an IED, a Marine would walk up and kick it. If his foot hit metal, the unit would cordon the area and call in an explosive ordnance disposal team.”
To “pogs”—people other than grunts—this seems like an insane technique. But according to Captain Danelo, the reason behind the technique was his fellow Marines’ devotion to the Spartan way. He recounts in his book, “The Spartan king Leonidas, who died with his men at Thermopylae, sacrificing himself for the sake of his country’s independence and way of life, was once asked to name the supreme warrior virtue, from which all other virtues derived. ‘Contempt for death,’ he replied.”61 For Mattis, some contempt for death is obvious in his personal choice to stay on the front lines. But he doesn’t presume the same for members of his jump platoon.
The jump platoon’s mission is to protect Mattis and maintain his fully functioning command post as he runs from one end of the battlefield to the other. The platoon is called a jump because it jumps into action on a moment’s notice to take the general wherever he wants to go. With Mattis, this could be at any hour, and generally to the most dangerous places by way of very dangerous routes. General Conway feels he has to say something: “Jim, you keep running around like this and you’re gonna get hit.”62
Mattis shrugs off the warning. It’s simply part of his job. He can’t be effective unless he knows exactly what his men are facing, what their plan is, and how they’re feeling. In April, after the first time Mattis’s jump is hit by an IED and small-arms fire, he calls his hand-picked chaplain, Father Bill Devine, from his command vehicle and asks the priest to be present when the men return to Blue Diamond. At the base, Devine remembers, “He said to them if anyone wanted to transfer out of the jump, there would be no loss of respect for them. He told them, just to see me, the chaplain, and there would be no questions asked. No questions asked at all. Not one of them ever came to me. None.”63
Mattis later commented on this phenomenon of selfless commitment, even to the risking of one’s life, that warriors have to each other and the mission, “The combination and focused direction of social energy and spiritual power makes a military organization so tight, all the commander has to do is point his unit in the right direction and tell them what they already know. Social energy is the framework through which spiritual power flows. Social energy is the pipes and hoses. Spiritual power is the fuel.”64
As the battle for Fallujah descends into a bloody siege and the jump is decimated by one casualty after another, ending up with one of the highest casualty rates of any unit in the fight, these men in Mattis’s small band never waver in their commitment. They demonstrate the spiritual power that Mattis cultivates with such care and depends on for success. This particular jump platoon, because of its commitment and spiritual power, makes a deep and lasting impression on the general.
1830 Hours—5 April 2004—Jolan District, Fallujah
Dusk settles over Fallujah. A full moon peeks over the horizon drawing nervous howls from alley dogs on the hunt for a rat among the strewn garbage. Light breezes off the Euphrates rattle through the date palms as the temperature drops quickly. Down the wide streets from the northwest and up from the southeast, Toolan’s clanking, groaning steel giants roll forward like medieval nightmares. Marines on foot follow the tanks, watching rooftops for moving silhouettes.
Overhead, the gunship Slayer One, an Air Force C-130 loaded with infrared targeting scopes, Gatling guns, and a 105-millimeter howitzer, contacts Echo Company on the ground. Bing West reports on the conversation:
“Oprah, this is Slayer One. About one hundred meters south of your strobe I see a group of about twenty in a courtyard. Want me to take them out?” The Air Force officers in the AC-130 were informal and low-key. “Slayer One, this is Oprah,” Captain Michael Martino, a forward air controller with Echo, replied. “We’d appreciate it.” The ensuing burst of 20mm fire had a low, ripping sound, like a chain saw cutting through hard wood. “This is Slayer One. Scratch that group. We’ll make another pass over your sector. If we don’t see anyone else, we’ll swing over to War Hammer.”65
The bodies of about twenty young men of Fallujah are now torn to pieces and scattered across the courtyard. These young, naive Fallujans begin to die by the dozens. They charge into the open and at the Marines as if they believe the Americans will run when gunfire starts. They are trained enough to know not to bunch together where one round might kill or wound several, but their training obviously hasn’t covered how to fight Marines. In these early hours of the battle, these youngest jihadis die first.
The evening calm is breached by sporadic gunfire and RPG explosions as Toolan presses forward, diagonally bisecting the city on his mission to take its center. Loudspeakers mounted on roving Humvees begin to blast young Fallujan fighters with the filthiest insults that Marines can imagine, which are then interpreted and screamed at the insurgents by Iraqi interpreters. This is followed by heavy metal music from AC/DC and Metallica to further infuriate the fighters and drown out the evening call to prayers. This psyops assault has some success in coaxing infuriated fighters to leave their positions or betray their location by firing at the noise. In both cases, these infuriated young fighters are next to die in the assault.
These local psyops are outmatched by international psyops conducted by the Al Jazeera live broadcasts. Reporter Mansur with cameraman Mushtaq show fearless local citizens firing machine guns and strolling nonchalantly through the open Jolan market carrying loaded RPG launchers.66 Mansur breathlessly narrates the wanton murder of Fallujan women and children at the hands of the Marines. Of course, no such murders are taking place. Seeing these reports in real time, residents grab their children and a few baskets of food and belongings and flee the city. Checkpoints are soon flooded with tens of thousands of refugees, who are directed to holding areas of concertina wire.
Emboldened by the live coverage of their heroic fight and believing Al Jazeera’s reports, the estimated twelve or so “hardcore” groups of insurgents pour on their attacks from several fortified positions along both lines of Toolan’s advance. Almost immediately the operation is behind schedule. The most intense close-combat fighting since Hue City in Vietnam spatters blood across the streets. Local fighters are well supplied with RPGs, machine guns, mortars, and anti-aircraft weapons, some of it supplied by the Iraqi police.
Mattis’s carefully calibrated assault to separate the insurgents and spare the civilian population quickly devolves into a brawl as Fallujah civilians pour out of the city and stop feeding information to Blue Diamond about the leaders of the revolt. Fallujah’s two main hospitals close, in spite of the hundreds of injured being laid at their doorsteps. To make matters even more miserable, the weather turns freezing cold, and it begins to rain.
The Marines and the insurgents fight on through the night, the Marines gaining ground slowly, taking regular casualties while the insurgents now die by the hundreds. Panicked civilians are caught in crossfires or are deliberately used as shields by many of the foreign fighters who make up a large part of the insurgency. Given the time for proper intelligence preparation before the assault, the fact of large numbers of foreigners would almost certainly have been uncovered. Intense and consistent local resident outreach could have provided the wedge between bad guys and local citizens that Mattis and Conway have used before to avoid the kind of bloody mayhem they are in now. Now it is up to the grunts to win most of the ten-second gunfights happening throughout the city.
Bing West describes the common infantry technique used in Falluja:
The basic tactic was called the stack. A dozen marines in a squad lined up outside the courtyard wall and shouted and stomped, hoping any insurgents inside would fire prematurely. U
sually they didn’t. The marines then breached the outer iron gate, ran across the tiny patch of grass, and flattened themselves along the wall next to the front door. On signal, the door would be smashed in and four marines would rush into the front room, each pointing his rifle toward a different corner, each betting his life that none of the others would freeze or not shoot quickly enough.67
This last step in the stack is duplicated in every room of the house and is exactly what Mattis hoped to avoid. In his cultural sensitivity meetings in Camp Pendleton, this was the intended method of searching an Iraqi house: “If you knock at the door for a ‘cordon and knock,’ try not to look directly into the house when the door opens. If searching, be careful. Do not destroy possessions and furniture and ask the leader of the household to open rooms and cupboards. Nor should that man be dishonored before his family. If something is found, do not throw the leader of the house to the ground in front of his family. Give him some honor. Tell them he needs to explain to his wife and children that he is coming with you.”68
But Bing West, in his The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq, records what actually does happen in Fallujah, with some units encountering stiff resistance and others more sporadic fighting: “Lima Company of Battalion 3–1 had twenty-five fights inside houses, killing sixty insurgents while losing five Marines. In three days, the thirty-eight Marines in 1st Platoon of Lima Company engaged in sixteen firefights, losing three killed and twelve wounded and evacuated, while killing thirty-eight of the enemy.”69
West doesn’t mention civilian casualties in this instance, but there are many. Civilians’ bodies and their wounds are broadcast live around the world by Al Jazeera, along with outraged claims of an American crusade against Islam taking place in the revered City of Mosques. As well as a general nightmare of close urban combat, it is an epic international public relations disaster. There are no American or European media crews to give the other side of the story, as was promised in Washington when they ordered the hasty attack. The news reporting and the fighting feed on each other, quickly spiraling down to basic savagery, some of it staged for the cameras.
The siege of Fallujah grinds on through the next two days and nights as fighting also erupts throughout Central Iraq and along the Lower Euphrates. The Mahdi Army, the local militia of media savvy Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, begins attacks in Baghdad. Foreign fighters do the same in Ramadi. Civilian foreign workers are taken hostage in the British-controlled southern city of Basra; some are killed immediately, the others held to barter for political and military concessions. Elements of the Iraqi police, and even the future American-equipped and trained Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, turn on the coalition or simply abandon their posts.
Predictably, leaders around the world begin to condemn American aggression. The Iraqi Governing Council, the future government of Iraq, threatens to disband. Leading council member Pachachi pounds his desk: “These operations by the Americans are unacceptable and illegal!”70 Rumors fly that British prime minister Tony Blair has informed President Bush that he will withdraw from the coalition if the offensive is not stopped.
On April 8, General Abizaid finally gives an interview to an American reporter, saying, “We’ll get Fallujah under control.”71 But the very next day the order comes down to stop the offensive. Again, this is exactly what Mattis warned against. He is furious, lashing out at General Abizaid, his superior officer. Marines and US soldiers have just been killed, and for what? “If you’re going to take Vienna, take fucking Vienna!” he yells at Abizaid, paraphrasing Napoleon. Abizaid stays quiet and takes it, letting Mattis blow off steam.
Ricks reports on the situation in Fallujah: “Mattis believed he had the enemy on the ropes and was within a few days of finishing them off. The insurgents lacked bunkers and ammunition. They weren’t able to get additional supplies through the cordon the Marines had thrown up around the city.”72
Mattis rounds up his jump, and once again they run the gauntlet out to Toolan’s command post. “He was very frustrated,” Toolan will recall. “It was hard for him to tell me. He didn’t understand why we were told to stop.”73 Mattis has lost thirty-seven Marines killed, and dozens wounded.
7 April 2004—Fallujah
After three days of fighting, Marines control a third of the city, including the city center and most of the insurgents’ key defensive positions. The Marines tighten the cordon around the outskirts and hold their part of center city but, under orders, leave the rest to the insurgents. It’s a standoff for Mattis, but a victory for al-Qaeda and Iran. Like a western sheriff who came to clean up Fallujah, Mattis stands defiantly in the center of town, facing down the villains every day.
Mattis loses no time turning his attention to the rest of Anbar. He is true to his often-quoted reply to a sour, doubtful reporter: “Failure? I can’t even spell the word.”74
Out in the far northwest desert is an obscure and powerless group of tribes called the Desert Wolves. Several Marine commanders have established outposts and have actively been cutting cooperative deals with local sheikhs. The commanders follow the plan used in the Shia south; they put pockets of coalition forces in and among the population and then grow Iraqi security forces, including police, from inside the population. It is the same basic law of counterinsurgency that Mattis has drummed into every grunt’s head—the people are the prize.
Lieutenant Colonel Nick Merano, commander of Mattis’s old outfit, the 1/7, is having great success creating platoon-sized combat outposts with the Desert Wolves. While Fallujah is still simmering with hatred, everything is cool with the Desert Wolves and the coalition. Neighboring commander Lieutenant Colonel Scott Shuster describes what a successful CAP effort looks like in northwestern Anbar: “I’ve got three municipal mayors and three municipal councils. And then I have a regional mayor and a regional council. So I’ve got four governments I’m interacting with. Also there is the dynamic here between the tribes and the local government . . . [in which] the tribes decide what’s going to happen. They’re the executive agent. The municipal or civil government acts on the desires of the tribes.”75
Conway and Mattis jump on the success happening at the far ends of Anbar in al-Qa’im. They start building out this success to neighboring tribes and reporting on it directly to Washington. Pacification is going to spread like a growing ink spot across the map, they decide, all the way back to Fallujah and on to Baghdad—an outside-in strategy. They are going to clear, hold, and build between al-Qa’im and Fallujah isolating the city and cutting off access to the rat-lines of outside support.
A meeting is set in late June with key tribal leaders near al-Hit. Word is out that the Americans are making deals, and al-Qaeda is making only misery for the Sunnis. The sheiks know that Conway and Mattis have been flying other Anbar leaders to Kuwait and Jordan to show them what is possible when they cooperate with America. On the other side of the coin, Mattis remembers clearly the duplicity and sabotage he encountered when negotiating with certain civic leaders in and around Fallujah, and he is wary of Iraqi promises.
Mattis’s jump is driving east from Ramadi to the meeting. A convoy of US Army MPs is traveling in the opposite direction. As the two convoys pass, they are both hit by a massive IED car bomb planted in a pickup truck parked on the median, killing and wounding men from both convoys. While the general and a few others tend to the wounded and dying, someone spots a group of likely attackers speeding away. A perfectly timed explosion like this one could only be triggered by someone close by, with a clear view of the flow of traffic. Speedy driver Wike jumps behind the steering wheel of the closest Humvee, and Mattis’s men who are able jump in with him. They tear off after the attackers. A group of MPs follow close behind in their own vehicle. A few miles down the road, Mattis’s posse catches up to the muj (mujahideen fighters). It is over in seconds. The posse opens fire and kills them all, leaving their perforated bodies leaking across the middle of the road.
When he walks into the meeting with t
he local sheiks, a half hour late and with his mens’ blood on the pants of his uniform, Mattis is in no mood for games. Conway is already well through the customary niceties of tea drinking and small talk when Mattis’s turn comes around in the long-winded greetings and acknowledgments. Everyone knows what they are there for. The Marines offer security, working electricity, and running water; the sheiks offer peaceful cooperation and support. Mattis cuts out the small talk, looks each sheik in the eye, and with barely restrained emotion says some version of his now famous threat, “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”76
Today Conway doesn’t recall Mattis’s exact words at the meeting but remembers clearly it was a threat. He remembers Mattis’s growing mistrust of the sheiks at this point, his emotional distress from seeing his beloved jump platoon wounded and bleeding on the road, including Staff Sergeant Jorge Molina Bautista, who died in the attack just moments earlier, and the blood on Mattis’s uniform. Yet he remembers the commander was disciplined and businesslike in the negotiations.
At the meeting, Conway checks the reaction around the room, and everyone seems to be okay with the general’s opening threat. They all know of Mattis and what he is capable of, if provoked. Conway breaks the tension and continues to lay out the rewards and responsibilities being offered to the sheiks. It won’t be the last time Conway covers for Mattis’s plain speech.