“Hey, L.T.?” Specialist Timothy Grom removed his NVs and flicked a light on a stain next to the front door. The smear of fresh blood gave soldiers hope that at least one of their buddies from the crater watch may have been through here alive.
As Springlace’s soldiers finished securing the house to use as a CP for a wider search, Lieutenant Tomasello’s Fourth Platoon jogging down from Inchon reached First Platoon’s truck, left in the road with its engine running and the radio chattering up a storm from all the activity on the net. Corporal Mayhem called out a warning, thinking the occupants may have been overrun and the truck booby-trapped.
He walked around it at a safe distance, keeping low from the cook-off in the burning trucks, exploring the interior with a flashlight beam. The turret gun was missing. Other than that, everything looked okay. First Platoon would likely have taken the machine gun on a dismount.
Lieutenant Tomasello raised First Platoon on his radio. “Delta One-Six, this is Four-Six. You copy?”
“Affirmative, Four-Six. Can you see the house? We’ve taken it.”
“Roger, One. Stand by ten mikes [minutes].”
Tomasello left James Cook and Michael Smith behind to guard the truck. The rest of the platoon located the cut gaps in the concertina and in less than ten minutes linked up at the house with First. After a discussion between the two leaders, they left a couple of Joes at the house to keep it secure while the reinforced patrol set out once more with Rhodes on point to look for survivors. Hope was rapidly dwindling. Wind whipped smoke and the stench of burning flesh through the trees and across the fields.
The patrol took a side road through a little cluster of houses, all of which were abandoned with no sign of the soldiers from crater watch. Rhodes came to the T of another dirt road that headed west to intersect with Malibu. A broken thermal scope from a GI’s rifle lay in the dust next to fresh truck tracks, more evidence that all the watch may not have perished at the scene of the attack. Someone could have escaped.
The other possibility was too awful to contemplate—that GIs had been seized by insurgents to be used later in ritual beheadings for Arab Al Jazeera TV.
The twin flames on Malibu were starting to burn down. Only an isolated shot rang out from the cook-off, most of the ammo having already been consumed. At Lieutenant Springlace’s direction, Rhodes selected the dirt road back toward the light. Platoon members from First and Fourth followed in tactical formation, feeling safe enough now to loudly call out the names of the missing, in fading anticipation of a response.
FIFTY-NINE
About forty minutes had passed since First Platoon dismounted and took over the abandoned house as a search CP. The patrol led by Lieutenants Springlace and Tomasello followed the dirt road back to Malibu where drag marks, blood trails, footprints, and tire marks signaled two things: First, that this had been the escape route; second, that prisoners had been taken; but who and how many could not be ascertained without further investigation.
Dawn was rapidly approaching, brightening the flatlands and chasing shadows out of the palms. The upper rim of the red sun slipped into view to take a look at the still-smoldering trucks, the worst devastation and loss of life experienced by 4th Battalion since it pushed into The Triangle of Death over nine months ago. The fires burned down and most of the ordnance cooked off, leaving only the hissing of errant blazes as they gutted the blackened truck hulls and worked on the charred stumps of corpses now clearly visible inside the hummers. Most of the guys were too shocked to speak. They stared numbly until a sergeant from another company finally spoke for all of them.
“Nobody should ever have to see something like this.”
Daylight revealed a scene buzzing with activity. Company elements and QRFs dispatched by 2nd BCT and 3rd ID, by 1st Cav and the 6th IA, were perimetering off the road to search for evidence and organize a sweep in force across the nearby countryside. EOD arrived on the scene, quickly defused and dismantled IEDs left in the road, and began a mine check of the rest of the area. Tracking dogs were on the way. Black Hawk helicopters and Apache gunships buzzed low overhead now that the wind was laying, circling, looking, their rockets and guns armed and ready.
Sammy Rhodes and Specialist Chris York volunteered to go up to the trucks to count bodies and see if enough remained to make a visual identification. Two corpses in the front seat of the south truck were seared beyond recognition. They were still steaming. One of the bodies was upside down with what was left of its head stuck in the sizzling springs of the seat, its feet and arms having been mostly consumed by the blaze. The stench of charred flesh stuck to the inside of Rhodes’ nostrils; he was afraid it would be with him for the rest of his life. He figured he had attended his last backyard barbecue.
Two more sets of remains, likewise unrecognizable, occupied the front seat of the other blackened truck. An unexploded enemy grenade lay in the road at the front of the vehicle. Blood and footprints around the hummer and in the ditch indicated what must have been a brief but fierce hand-to-hand combat.
“They wouldn’t have taken Anzak unless they killed him first,” York said.
That accounted for four of the eight soldiers on the crater watch. The morning light soon disclosed a fifth caught in concertina wire at the side of the road about fifty meters away. PFC Chris Murphy lay face down on the ground, his IBA and helmet cast aside as though he had shed them to lighten his load in his desperation to get away. Bullet holes stitched his back from the knees all the way up to the base of his neck.
EOD checked the body for wires or anything else suspicious. Corpses were often booby-trapped to kill other soldiers who came to remove them. One of the most common methods was to plant a live grenade underneath the dead soldier, the pin removed, so that it exploded as soon as someone disturbed the body.
Specialist Brandon Gray, the big, strong farm boy from Oklahoma, lay on top of Murphy, hugging his friend close, tears in his eyes, and rolled with the body to one side, using it as a shield in case something detonated. That was the only safe way to do it other than attaching a line to a foot or arm and dragging the soldier from a distance away. To Murphy’s friends, that seemed too callous and disrespectful.
Someone checked for a pulse, a futile gesture fueled only by hope. Christopher Murphy from Lynchburg, Virginia, was dead. Sammy Rhodes and Sergeant Alan Ecle stood and looked down on the young GI. He lay with his hands folded across his chest the way Gray had arranged them. His unmarred baby face looked serene and peaceful in the sunrise. Rhodes felt the urge to reach down and shake him out of sleep.
“Hey, Murphy, wake up. We gotta go, man.”
Specialist James Cook, now in Fourth Platoon but formerly a member of First, had been Murphy’s best friend. He broke down and wept.
SIXTY
The attack on Malibu Road was the bloodiest single incident in the AO since the 101st Airborne lost its soldiers near the JSB nearly a year ago. It was also the second largest capture of American GIs so far during the Iraq War, the worst since the seizure of Jessica Lynch and five other soldiers when their convoy took a wrong turn into An Nasiriyah on 23 March 2003. Insurgents had pulled off one of the most successful and sophisticated operations the 4/31st had encountered so far. Brigade and Battalion S-2 (Intelligence) sections came down, measured and examined the site, and estimated that twenty or more fighters were responsible for the ambush, not counting support personnel and organizers.
The U.S. Army and all its components lived and fought by the creed, the promise, that no soldiers would be left behind. If you were wounded, killed, or captured in action, the army would do everything in its power to get you to a hospital, recover your body, or liberate you. Within an hour after the occurrence, virtually every unit in Iraq was mobilized to locate the missing Americans. That included the American embassy, Special Operations, and the CIA.
Inchon and the other two battle positions along Malibu teemed with the frenzied activity of a major military operation. Most of 4th Battalion that was avail
able, as well as assets from Brigade, the 3rd ID, the 1st Cavalry, and other outfits in the region, blitzed into The Triangle of Death. An IA armored battalion and an American battalion of 19-ton Stryker battle wagons rumbled down Malibu to assist in the hunt. Outposts normally equipped to handle platoons overflowed with companies and even battalions.
Helicopters and jets filled the skies. Soldiers on checkpoints and roving patrols cordoned off the full swath of the 2nd BCT’s 330-square-mile sector while handlers with dogs trained to find bodies or bombs picked through cattails from one end of the road to the other. Choppers dropped leaflets asking for help. Trucks with loudspeakers roamed the area urging people to come forward. Dismounted patrols of very pissed-off troops swept the roads, kicking in doors and herding anxious Iraqis to holding areas.
None of the locals dared protest. The gloves were off. Bare knuckles were showing. GIs were in no mood for more bullshit. It would not be a good day for an insurgent. Even Crazy Legs had gone underground and couldn’t be found.
“I don’t want a hole in the perimeter big enough for a gnat to get through,” Colonel Infanti directed. “If they still have our soldiers, I don’t want them to be able to move out of the AO.”
Soldiers cleared entire villages, searching houses, bringing in even some women and children as well as males of military age as possible witnesses or potential accomplices, creating long files of dark, staring eyes. Anyone who hadn’t already fled in fear of arrest found himself at Inchon or one of the other battle positions. They weren’t exactly prisoners, not being flexcuffed, but they still weren’t going anywhere. Hard-eyed young American soldiers surrounded them and segregated them into two separate groups—women and children in one, men and older boys in another. A dozen IA police interrogators, the most trusted of them, along with U.S. Army Special Forces Green Berets wearing beards and ragged clothing in order to blend with the population, isolated the captives for questioning. Nobody asked about their methods. Time was crucial. After 48 hours at the latest, whatever information prisoners might possess would be useless. The bad guys would have gone into hiding or changed their routines.
While all this was going on, Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery’s Second Platoon drew the grim task of cleaning up the ambush site. By now, the two trucks were incinerated, leaving nothing except blackened cabs dropped down onto wheel rims with the rubber burned off. The Joes wore gloves to rummage through the ruins to pick up body parts—shards of bone, charred flesh—and place them reverently into body bags. Grave Registrations people would have to sort through it all later to identify which belonged to which slain GI.
They worked mostly in sickened silence, the nauseating smell of burnt flesh and bones bringing tears to their eyes.
Hulls of 7.62 AK-47 cartridges strewn on the road attested to the swiftness and ferocity of the attack. Insurgents must have outnumbered the crater watch by at least three to one. No American bullet hulls lay about. The spate of rifle fire heard by soldiers at Inchon and at 152 was all from enemy weapons. Apparently, Sergeant Connell and his men had not gotten off a single shot in the surprise raid.
Evidence left at the scene and witness statements from those Iraqis who lived in the vicinity, and who could still be located, painted a dark portrait of stark terror compressed into a few short minutes. Wind and the darkness of the night would have contributed to it.
Murphy appeared to have been the only man with a chance at escape—and that a slim one before the insurgents picked him off with automatic rifle fire. Claw marks showed where he continued to pull himself through the weeds until he became entangled in concertina and his executioners caught up to him.
Blood trails, drag and scuffle marks, plus the smear of blood inside the farmhouse, indicated that the three Americans apparently taken captive were wounded. An Iraqi witness who fled his house out of fear of involvement was hiding in shrubbery, watching. One of the Americans, he said, a big man, was beating up on two of the insurgents and was getting the better of them when a third ran up and belted him from behind. He and the other two prisoners were thrown up onto the bed of a bongo truck and hauled away.
Unlike World War II or Vietnam, where mutilated corpses had to be identified using dental records, fingerprints, and dog tags, modern DNA technology made identification faster and more certain. There was no problem with Chris Murphy since his body remained relatively intact. Hard as it was for them, platoon members confirmed his identity.
The other victims took longer. Still, Delta Company knew within a relatively short period of time the names of those slain in the action and those whose status became known as DUSTWUN (Duty Status and Whereabouts Unknown). In addition to Christopher E. Murphy, 21, the others found slaughtered were SFC James D. Connell, 40; PFC Daniel W. Courneya, 19; Sergeant Anthony J. Schober, 23; and IA interpreter Sabah Barak, about 30.
Missing in action were Specialist Alexander R. Jimenez, 25; PFC Byron W. Fouty, 19; and Joseph Anzak Jr., 20.
Probably no non-urban terrain in Iraq posed more challenge in conducting a search than that in The Triangle. Criss-crossed by irrigation ditches and canals flowing from the Euphrates River, dotted with family farms growing barley and wheat and goats, studded with villages and towns, it afforded enough hiding places and safe houses into which a thousand insurgents might vanish. Even if they were cornered, it was unlikely they would surrender peacefully after what they had done. Previous patterns revealed how, turning suicidal and even more homicidal, they would first execute their captives, then take as many other Americans with them as they could before they committed suicide by blowing themselves up.
Soldiers in Iraq knew only too well what awaited GIs if they were taken alive by radical Islamic extremists, to whom life was cheap and who thought nothing of torturing and executing their victims. The worst nightmare an American commander could have was of his soldiers being kidnapped and beheaded live on television for the world and their families to see. Colonel Infanti added five more casualty cards to his collection. Three of his soldiers remained missing, unknown whether they were dead or whether they were alive and being held in some moldy basement while savage Islamics sharpened their big knives and prepared to present their next macabre feature to Al Jazeera TV.
SIXTY-ONE
The massacre occurred before dawn on Sunday. Information about it remained sketchy most of the day throughout The Triangle of Death, except for those soldiers and outfits chopped down to Malibu Road who were actually involved in the search. Future history professor Big Willy Hendrickson had been temporarily assigned to Brigade at Mahmudiyah to pull tower guard for a battery of field artillery. Another soldier relieved him before sunrise. He was standing outside on the sprawling compound, smoking a cigarette before he hit the rack for some sleep, when another Bravo Company Joe rushed up with news he picked up at the chow hall.
“They’ve killed a bunch of our guys!” he blurted out.
Hendrickson dropped his cigarette, freaking out because he thought it might be some of his buddies in Bravo.
“Who?” he demanded, unable to get out more past the stricture in his throat.
“I don’t know. They say the ragheads kidnapped some of them.”
Hendrickson forgot all about sleep. The two GIs broke for Brigade TOC, the nerve center for 2nd BCT in Iraq. The whole place seemed to be going ape shit. Off-duty soldiers not tapped for immediate duties hung around outside the TOC trying to pick up what information they could. The air was full of aircraft coming and going.
Piecemeal, Hendrickson learned that the victims were with Delta Company down on Malibu Road, not from his Bravo. He felt relieved that the dead weren’t some of his own friends. Better they be from some other outfit than from one’s own.
Guilt followed relief. How could he feel better about the deaths of some Joes over others? History in the making could be so fucked up.
Chaplain Jeff Bryan was on his way to Delta Company to be with Captain Gilbreath’s grieving soldiers when Hendrickson got a chance to speak with him.
The chaplain knew only that five had been killed and three were missing. The only name Hendrickson knew was Specialist Alex Jimenez’, that because of its connection with the battalion CSM.
“This is a chaplain’s nightmare,” Chaplain Bryan said. “I have to ask them to trust in God and His wisdom after a disaster like this.”
“Chaplain, do you believe there really is a Big Plan for the universe?”
“Don’t you, my son?”
Sometimes Hendrickson didn’t know what he believed. History was full of mankind’s follies; foolishness and cruelty repeated endlessly.
An hour after the chaplain departed, a headquarters sergeant burst into the tent where Hendrickson and the other Joes on tower detail were bivouacked.
“Gather up all your shit and get on the flight line,” he said. “You got one hour. You guys are flying out.”
A Black Hawk dropped them off in Yusufiyah at 4th Battalion’s compound. By noon, Hendrickson found himself reassigned as a replacement for one of Delta’s dead and missing. It gave him a funny feeling, taking a KIA’s place. He also felt like an intruder when he linked up with First Platoon’s surviving members at Inchon. They were supposed to be getting some rest following the chaplain’s visit. None of them could sleep. The hate fest among them was something palpable and contagious. Some were crying from anger, loss, and frustration; others were cursing. Even Cookie Urbina’s Brown Dog went around alternately whimpering and growling with his tail tucked between his legs, as though he sensed First Platoon’s loss. Some of the guys were talking up some pretty wild stuff.
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