Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War

by Tim Pritchard

  “Get ready to dismount—ramp opening.”

  The tracks wheeled around and came to a halt, back-to-back in a defensive position. The hydraulic rear ramps slowly dropped, letting light flood across the marines inside. Anderson fought with the others to scramble out. As the marines came tumbling out, it was chaos. Blinking in the sunlight, Anderson ran in all directions, disorientated, looking for cover as he’d been trained. Gunfire echoed all around.

  “Dismount.”

  “Get over here.”

  “Get the fuck down.”

  Sergeants and lieutenants were shouting out orders. Cobras and Hueys were clattering overhead. Mortar crashed into the dust around him. There was fear, excitement, and the rush of adrenaline all mixed up together. He tried to work out where he was. He saw the river behind him, the wide road running into the city. He looked for his fellow squad members, but all he could see was a blur of running bodies. This is like a video game. But I’m in it.

  As soon as the ramp on his track dropped, Lance Corporal Christopher Rigolato headed for the cover of a wall. An RPG smashed into the telephone pole above his head. Rigolato felt overwhelmed with confusion.

  “Move over here.”

  “Move, move. Let’s go.”

  “We’re moving to the other side of the road.”

  It was his platoon commander yelling at them. Rigolato and most of 2nd Platoon were just north of the bridge on the west side of the four-lane highway he knew as Ambush Alley. It looked a long way to the other side, maybe fifty meters. There was no cover. It was just a wide-open expanse of road. When the order came, he gripped his M16, jumped over a metal barrier, put his head down, and ran as bursts of machine-gun and small-arms fire erupted all around him.

  Lance Corporal Dante Reece, with the rest of 3rd Squad alongside him, tried to cross the road after him. Reece was struggling to get his heavy squad automatic weapon across the metal barrier. They had just gotten halfway across the road when an RPG came flying out of a building from the north, whizzed toward them, and passed right through the middle of the squad. It had missed him by inches. Reece looked at the others in surprise. Sweat and dirt stained their faces. Reece couldn’t take it in. He felt he was in denial. He tried to pull himself together. This is for real. This is for real. But he still wasn’t sure if this really was happening.

  Anderson followed them across the road at a sprint.

  “Anderson, over here.”

  Gratefully, he dived behind a mound of earth, pleased to be back with his squad again. With Lance Corporal Van Gipson he formed a line along a berm, covering the southern flank toward the river. Incoming rounds started hitting the ground around them, sending up dirt as they cracked by. Anderson turned to Gipson with wide eyes and they both rolled down into the ditch, laughing. Some reacted to fear by sweating and trembling. Anderson and Gipson laughed uncontrollably.

  “They’re actually shooting at us.”

  The two of them lay in the ditch panting with elation. Then seconds later, reality set in.

  What happens if I get shot? For the first time, Anderson was scared. He didn’t have time to linger on his fear. If it’s my time, it’s my time.

  From the TC’s hatch Brooks watched his marines dismount and scatter into a 180-degree perimeter. He was heartened at the way they reacted. He’d seen many of them in action at the combined arms exercise over the summer when they’d practiced as a helo-borne company. Several had struggled through training, getting things badly wrong because they were either out of shape, lazy, or just slow. He knew some of them had checkered backgrounds, were troublemakers, and carried a whole lot of baggage with them. Now, amid the flying metal, the explosions, and the swirling dust, he saw all that stuff go away. Individually, they were nothing special, but when they came together they were amazing. They were moving together, reacting to what was going on around them, taking the initiative. There was a coherence, which gave him an enormous sense of pride. He was surprised that the marines who had struggled with training were now the ones who seemed to be taking control.

  With all the noise and chaos, Brooks couldn’t actually see who was firing at them. He had a good view up the road into the city, but there was no sign of tanks, artillery, or mortars. He didn’t see anyone in uniform. But something was going on. He pulled out his binoculars. Figures appeared in the alleyways ahead of him, on roofs, in windows, and then melted into the background. The situation felt sinister. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it reminded him of the opening scenes of the movie Black Hawk Down. The figures didn’t appear to be armed, but there was something about them that put him on edge. In the distance, he saw white pickup trucks and orange-and-white taxis congregating in the middle of the highway and then careering off down side streets. One taxi filled with young men and flying a white flag came hurtling toward them before screaming into a side alleyway. Something is about to happen. He wondered whether the white pickups were technicals, improvised fighting vehicles that had been used with success against U.S. forces by irregular fighters in Afghanistan and Somalia.

  He looked back to check that the rest of Alpha Company had made it across the bridge and that they had it secured. Then he called the battalion commander.

  “Timberwolf, this is Tomahawk 6. We’ve seized the Euphrates Bridge.”

  He wanted to be more exact.

  “Timberwolf, this is Tomahawk 6. We have secured the bridge, but we are coming under increasingly heavy fire.”

  He got on the radio to his platoon commanders, who had now taken up position on either side of the road, just north of the bridge.

  “Keep your eyes on those people.”

  His marines had spent months training for legitimate target identification. They didn’t want to fire on unarmed civilians, so they had been taught to zero in on hands to look for signs of weapons. He got back on the radio.

  “Hey, if you see an Iraqi with a weapon, then we need to take care of it and we need to kill that Iraqi.”

  The rate of fire was increasing, but it was still something they could easily cope with. There was a brief lull, and then he sensed that it was about to happen. It’s going to boil over.

  When it came, it reminded him of one of those light dimmer switches that is suddenly turned up. All at once RPGs and small-arms fire rained down on them from all sides. Small 60 mm commando mortars were coming in on them from the gaps between houses. To the north, east, and west he saw Iraqis dressed in black running out of alleys, dropping to one knee, and firing off round after round of grenades. Muzzle flashes lit up windows, mortars threw up splashes of rocks and dirt around him, and the sound of rounds cracked just yards from his head. Oh Lord. What have we got ourselves into?

  3

  To the north and east of Alpha’s position, on the east side of Ambush Alley, Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski was trying to deal with the chaos unleashed by so many vehicles floundering in the mud bog. Some marines were already out of their vehicles, waist deep in mud, trying to attach towropes. Others were lying in small depressions in the ground, behind mounds, or against walls providing the tankers and trackers with some protection so they could get on with their job. Keeping well away from the mud bog, Grabowski ran to the rear hatch of the C7, which was already half submerged. He couldn’t get too close. Standing a couple of meters away from it, he looked into the rear hatch where his fire support–coordination center team was frantically working away at calling in air support, mortar, and artillery fire for the battalion. He yelled into the back of the track.

  “Have you got comms?”

  His air officer made a slashing movement with his hand.

  “Sir, I haven’t had comms since we entered the city.”

  “Well, keep working on it.”

  The C7 was pushed up against a two-story house. Grabowski wondered whether that was masking transmissions from the PRC-119 radio. It worked on line of sight and was limited to a range of twenty-five kilometers. Any obstructions could block the transmission. The area was also
crisscrossed with overhead high-voltage power lines. He wondered whether that was causing electromagnetic interference with the high frequencies of their VHF radios. Thankfully, no one had yet suffered an electric shock from their antennas hitting the power lines. All units had been told to get off the radio when they got close to high-tension lines.

  How are we going to get those tanks out? Grabowski knew that the tank company’s combat trains had some M88 tank retrievers with them. Doctrinally, the 88s follow in trace of the tank company, but because one of the 88s was towing a broken tank, Grabowski had ordered the combat trains to the rear so that they wouldn’t slow the battalion’s movement. Now he realized that they were dozens of kilometers from where they needed to be. He got on the radio to Captain William Blanchard, the AAV company commander. Until he got those 88s up, he couldn’t get those tanks out. If I don’t get those tanks out, I can’t push forward.

  There were now some seven vehicles floundering in the mud. As one of the tracks tried to pull another track free, it also became caught. One of the CAAT Humvees tried to ram another of the Humvees to push it out. It knocked the Humvee free, only to sink into the mud bog itself. A group of Iraqi civilians stood on their doorstoops and watched the marines helplessly running around trying to free the tanks, Humvees, and tracks.

  Staff Sergeant Harrell, the CVS pharmacy shift manager, had maneuvered his tank close enough to Staff Sergeant Insko’s tank, Death Mobile, to reach it with one of his inch-and-a-quarter-thick steel tow cables. He jumped off his tank, ran around to the rear of Insko’s tank, and dug away at the mud with his hands in an attempt to get to the attachment points. Just when he thought he could attach the cable, the mud flowed back into the space he had just cleared. Two attempts ended with broken cables and hooks. Finally, he managed to connect one end of the cable to the front of his tank and the other to the rear of Insko’s tank. Slowly, his driver reversed away from the mud and pulled Insko’s tank clear. Now free from the bog, Staff Sergeant Insko maneuvered Death Mobile around a corner to support the rest of the platoon. He had nearly reached Staff Sergeant Dillon’s tank when Insko felt Death Mobile jolt. Once again, his tank slowly started to sink back in the mud.

  Nothing was going right. Harrell kept back a wave of panic. We’re stranded. The sound of the helicopters flying overhead, pushing back the encroaching Iraqis, reassured him. The boom of a main tank round reverberated around the maze of streets and alleys. It was a warning shot to any enemy that tried to get too close.

  Corporal Neville Welch, the fire team leader with Bravo Company, now had a clearer vision of the layout of the eastern part of the city. It was set out in a grid pattern of sorts. He’d begun to recognize which streets were likely to be dead ends. His squad leader had ordered him to take his fire team and start expanding the perimeter farther into the city to keep the Iraqi fighters away from the mired tanks. Using walls and vehicles as cover, his four-man team gradually pushed farther out from the tanks, keeping a couple of meters apart so they didn’t provide an easy target for the Iraqis shooting at them from the roofs and windows. The marines were taught to turn defense into offense. The harder you hit the enemy on the battlefield, the more protection you will have. Catch the enemy off guard and you’ll lessen his chances of interfering with what you want to do.

  “Jones. Get your head out of your ass.”

  He tried to keep his team alert. None of them had slept much, and he was aware that he had to keep talking to them, encouraging them, and watching for anyone lagging behind.

  “Nguyen. Keep up and stay close.”

  He demanded fire discipline. The Iraqis were firing at random. He kept his shots down to ten to twelve rounds per minute. He only squeezed the trigger when he had selected his target. Exceeding that rate was a waste of ammo.

  Slowly, some order appeared out of the chaos. Fire teams were working within their squads, and soon the squads were working within their platoons.

  “First Squad, secure the right flank. Second Squad, you take the rear. Third Squad, you take the left flank.”

  The barrage of rounds that had greeted them when they first arrived was calming down. Welch and the other infantry marines had pushed the security perimeter well away from the tanks and kept any Iraqi fighters at bay. Crouched behind a wall, M16s and M203 grenade launchers pointing at windows and roofs, Welch and his fire team maintained a precarious peace and waited for their squad leader to give them their next order.

  4

  As Bravo Company and Alpha Company had moved out to cross the bridge, Charlie’s twelve tracks and three Humvees had pulled out from the fields and onto the road behind them. At the head of the column were the three tracks of Second Lieutenant Mike Seely’s 3rd Platoon, followed by Captain Wittnam and Lieutenant Tracy in the command track with Lieutenant Reid and the fire support team’s track just behind. First and 2nd Platoons followed the FiST track with the Hummers, one equipped with Avenger missiles for air defense, and the first sergeant’s medevac track brought up the rear. The original plan called for Charlie to keep close to Bravo Company so that they, too, were protected by the tank platoon assigned to Bravo. But the last-minute change of order meant that Alpha Company was sandwiched between the two companies, leaving Charlie exposed at the rear.

  In back of track 201, sixth in line, Private First Class Casey Robinson still wasn’t sure where they were going. That’s the trouble with being a grunt. Nobody tells you anything. Information was handed out on a need-to-know basis. Apparently I don’t need to know. When he joined the USMC, he thought they would be treated well, given some respect, but after two years he knew that as a grunt, he was the lowest of the low, the bottom of the barrel. Many of his brothers in arms were from broken homes, had police records, and were condemned to live out shitty little lives. Some of them were aware, deep inside, that joining the marines was their chance to make something of their lives. Others didn’t want to make it. Robinson was one of those who didn’t yet know. He knew he performed excellently in the field. But there was something in him that wanted to destroy and rebel against all he’d achieved. He was proud of being a grunt, proud of being hard, proud of being a rebel, proud of getting into bar fights. Every fight he’d been in was a badge of honor. Only grunts understood. The POGUES didn’t have the balls.

  He adjusted the barrel of his squad automatic weapon, pointing the M249 out toward the fields on the west side of the road. With him, pulling air security from the hatch, was his team leader, Corporal Wentzel. All the other marines were inside the track, keeping their heads down.

  He knew that the other companies had set off some minutes before, and he’d seen the CAAT vehicles roll ahead of them. He expected to see them in the distance. But they had all taken off so fast that all he could see ahead was an open road.

  He tried to listen to the snatches of information on the radio.

  “Sitrep . . . squad-size element . . . out in the open, west of main MSR. Small arms. Basic infantry.”

  “Receiving mortar fire from inside the city.”

  “Gunfire one hundred meters north of railway bridge. West of MSR.”

  So much information was being passed over the net that he had trouble taking it in. He wasn’t a radio operator, but he could tell that there was too much talking on the radio. As the amtracks sped toward the railway bridge, he noticed a new urgency to the radio transmissions. Something bad is going o f. Without knowing how, he picked up from the transmissions that things were beginning to spin out of control. There was very little he could do. He didn’t know much more than that he was in Iraq and the marines were on their way to Baghdad. The higher-ups said they were there to liberate the Iraqi people. But Private First Class Robinson didn’t give a shit about that. He would struggle to write a high school essay about Iraq or its people. He hadn’t a clue about Shias and Sunnis. All he cared about right now was getting out of the track, firing his weapon, and staying alive.

  Ahead of him, to the side of the highway, he saw the charred, smoking h
ulks of some trucks. Shards of glass from the peppered windshields littered the highway; a mangled gas mask, a lone helmet, and some spent ammo lay in pools of blood. Robinson had no idea that they were U.S. Army trucks. Others in the tracks who had heard the radio transmissions knew exactly whose trucks they were.

  “Get up here and look what happened to the friggin’ Army.”

  Twenty marines fought to pop their heads out of the hatches. They let out a collective whistle.

  “The Army fucked up again.”

  They laughed uneasily.

  Captain Wittnam, in the fourth track from the front, also saw the railway bridge and, at its foot, the burned-out 507th Army vehicles. Whoa. They’ve had a tough time. He thought about telling his platoon commanders more of what he knew of the 507th, but he didn’t want to distract them. He wanted his men to think that things were going well. He needed them focused on their mission to take the bridges. Panic was a virus that replicated itself at speed. Under certain conditions, one small setback can quickly accelerate into a military disaster. That was not going to happen with his company.

  One by one, as the Charlie AAVs pushed northward, marines posting air security saw the burned-up smoking vehicles. Lieutenant Reid, in the fifth track, looked over his shoulder and saw some crashed Humvees and two U.S. Army trucks with flames pouring out of the trailers. What the fuck?

  He got Lieutenant Pokorney on the radio.

  “Fred, do you see that? Holy shit, man, that’s an Army truck. What the fuck is going on?”

  He looked in disbelief at the windshields riddled with bullet holes and the flames licking the canvas covers. He couldn’t resist taking out his camera and snapping a couple of pictures.