Bailey had grown up with stories of the military from his grandfather, who had fought in the U.S. Army under General Patton. Like many African Americans, Bailey had more of an affinity with the Army. The Army had a longer tradition of recruiting African Americans. The U.S. Marine Corps only recruited African Americans from the mid-1940s. That’s why he’d been on an Army ROTC program, studying biology and chemistry at a small college in Tennessee. He’d wanted to go to jump school to be a Ranger, but there weren’t enough places and he didn’t want to wait an extra year. It was only when he met a Marine captain at the student center who goaded him about not being tough enough for the Corps that Bailey started to become interested. Me, not tough enough? I’ll show you. He decided to go to the summer Platoon Leaders Class at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. When he got back to college, he sported a military-style haircut and went around giving the Marine “hoorah” cry. He was captain of the football team, and it wasn’t long before the rest of his players started cutting their hair and acting like marines, too. With the promise of $900 back pay, he turned his back on the idea of becoming a teacher or a professional football coach and signed up for the Marines. He took his football training with him, though. He likened his role in the Marine Corps to the best college football coaches, such as Woody Hayes at Ohio State and Ara Parseghian at Notre Dame. They talked about winning and he wanted that same aggressive spirit in his marines. The Marine Corps’ history, traditions, and customs excited him. He loved the commercial in which a young recruit climbs a wall and around him appear flashes of the Corps’s history and weaponry to support him on his ascent. We are standing on the shoulders of our history and the traditions of our Corps. He loved it that his call sign was Viking 6 in recognition of the 2nd Marines’ long history of cold-weather training in Norway. That’s what it’s about. Tradition and history.
For years he had been frustrated. Each time there was a major fight, he was elsewhere. He missed out on Beirut. When Grenada happened, he was at school. Then, during Desert Storm, he was on ceremonial duties at Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. He felt like an unused player in a football game who was always sitting on the sidelines. He took comfort in the fact that Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t see combat until he became a general officer.
Twenty-eight years after joining the Marine Corps, he was finally at war. Now I’m playing. Now I’m in combat as part of the toughest and the best. It was like a big football game. Nothing he’d learned in training prepared him for the reality of it. Once the adrenaline flows, no one knows how they are going to react.
He concentrated on getting all the regimental assets working for the battalion. He was also concerned about the flanks. We need to bolster our force to get through the rest of the day. We need to make sure we have the firepower to hold onto what we’ve got. He thought about what he could do to anchor his position as the day went on. The 1st Marine Division was still pressing to go through. There was nothing on the road between 2/8, heading for the Euphrates Bridge, and his regimental HQ. He started working on a plan to get 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines and the LAR battalion to reinforce his position.
“Have we got air up there?”
The question was aimed at his air officer, call sign Bear. Bailey wanted to make sure Grabowski had all the assets he needed, whether it be attack aircraft or casevac helos.
As he watched the smoke billowing up on the horizon, the helicopters pounding the enemy positions, and the civilians fleeing the city, he didn’t debate the right or wrong of what they were doing. He took an oath that he would uphold the Constitution of the United States. He was patriotic. He would do what the country asked him to do. He was asked to go to war and he was there. One hundred percent.
19
Captain Eric Garcia was at Task Force Tarawa’s command post, some sixty-five kilometers south of Nasiriyah, when he got the call to scramble. He was in the middle of a brief with air officers from the task force, getting updates on the weather, intel, and the combat situation. Reports were coming in that 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines were suffering casualties in Nasiriyah and needed a casevac immediately. Garcia had been briefed that the enemy threat was medium to high, and he was told to expect a hot LZ. He had already had one casevac mission canceled. Now at last I can get to the front line and play my part. A few hours earlier, he had flown in from the USS Saipan, floating off Kuwait, to conduct a turnover with the existing casevac crews. They did three days in the field, then three days rest back on ship. It had been a quiet start to the war. Nothing much had come in since his ship had arrived in the Persian Gulf except for a few training accidents and minor civilian injuries. Garcia’s war had consisted of sitting for three days in a landing zone at Camp Ryan in Kuwait with nothing to do except keep fit, check and recheck his equipment, and go to briefings.
It was early afternoon when he lifted his twin rotor CH-46 helo off the ground. Nicknamed the “frog,” the CH-46 was a squat and bulbous, Vietnam-era Marine transport helicopter that could carry twelve personnel with equipment. They were robust and hardy helicopters. Many of them still displayed patches covering up bullet holes from Vietnam and Korea.
The sky was clear and visibility was over seven miles as he directed the helo over a parched landscape toward Nasiriyah, using Route 7 as a guide. All he could hear through his headphones was the throb of the twin rotors and calm radio chatter directing him into the city. To his right was another CH-46 as his wingman. They always flew in pairs. Out in front were Huey and Cobra gunships to escort him into the city. The CH-46 only carried defensive weapons. On each side of the helo sat a gunner manning a .50-caliber machine gun. Garcia was happy to have the two gunships to clear the way for them. Up ahead, a cloud of smoke rose into the sky as the artillery fired a round. When it exploded, it sent a thick black plume of smoke spiraling into the air from its target. This is for real. There’s real stuff going on here.
Garcia never quite understood how he’d got to be a Marine pilot. As a young kid, growing up in El Paso, Texas, he’d certainly had no burning ambition to fly planes or helicopters. Yes, he’d joined the Marine Corps reserves straight out of high school and had trained as an artilleryman, but he wasn’t planning to make a career out of it. What he really wanted to do was go to premed school. His parents, both born in Mexico, had become American citizens and were proud of what he was doing with his life. Then, somewhere along the way, he ran into a marine who suggested he try out for Officer Candidate School. Before he knew it, he was taking his flight exam. The Marine Corps paid for twenty-five hours flying time in a small commercial plane, and he was hooked. Flight training at the naval air station in Pensacola was something else. There he got to train in a T-34, a small, fixed-wing plane with a turbine engine. It was like going from a Volkswagen to a Ferrari. There was no turning back. He got his wings in December 1996, and he’d been flying CH-46s ever since. He was fond of the old workhorse. The helo was reaching the end of its life cycle and lately he’d been testing its replacement, the new Osprey with retractable rotors that allowed it to lift like a helo but fly at the speed of a fixed-wing plane. But the CH-46 would do for now. He knew its speed, range, and carrying limitations. You can’t treat it like a race car, but it’s steady and reliable.
“Parole 26, this is Parole 25.”
Garcia called up his wingman.
“When we get there, I want you to hold off just to the east.”
Ahead he could see the dusty mass of the labyrinthine low-rise buildings of Nasiriyah. Puffs of smoke billowed up between the buildings. The grunts are involved in some sort of firefight. Marine pilots, especially the helicopter pilots, had a good relationship with the infantry on the ground. The grunts liked to complain that jet pilots were soft because they didn’t get down and dirty on the ground. They went easy on the helo pilots because they supported them directly in combat. Garcia got on the radio for an update on casualties. He knew for sure that they were going in for at least two marines. As he hovered south of the city, all his though
ts focused on his job: staying clear of the gunships that had escorted him in, listening to the radio, and making sure that he was aware of what was going on around him. I’m going to get in there and do what I need to do.
In the rear of the CH-46, Navy corpsman Hospital Man 3rd Class Moses Gloria was giving his Black Hawk bag one last check. He’d been sent to Afghanistan right after 9/11 and had treated several combat injuries, so he knew what medical equipment he wanted to carry. He’d modified the bag he’d been given and added a few things. He’d taken Israeli bandages that he found more adaptable than the standard Vietnam- and Korea-vintage dressings. He also brought along QuikClot, a powder that speeded up the coagulation of blood.
“It’s just like pixie dust. Sprinkle it on a wound and it will stop the bleeding.”
That’s what they told him in training, but he hadn’t yet used it in combat. He tried to keep calm and said a bunch of Hail Marys to himself. He was amazed at how hyped up he was. When he’d returned from Afghanistan he’d thought of himself as a combat veteran who knew it all, even though he was only twenty-six. The other medics thought he was a jackass and full of it. The truth was, he was still suffering from the experience. When he got back, he found he put on loads of weight from eating crappy food, drinking too much beer, partying too much, chasing too many women. Now he knew it was his way of trying to forget about the bad things he’d seen. Even seeing those hollering and giggling girls having a good time in the mall used to upset him. Jeez, they don’t know what life is about. They shouldn’t laugh. There’s too much nasty stuff out there. It was sometime before he realized that their carefree existence was the way of life he was trying to protect.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”
Looking out of the window, he could see the reassuring presence of a Cobra gunship, their escort. The marines had come up with the idea of casevac to save more lives. Medevac meant taking injured from one safe place to another. Casevac meant getting the wounded out of a war zone. When the call had first come through, there was talk of mass casualties. Now he heard Captain Garcia calling in over the radio to clarify the mission. Moses Gloria didn’t know whether the casualties were civilians, Brits, or marines. He just knew they were going into a hot LZ. They were going to land in an area where they would be targeted.
“. . . pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
Moses Gloria had been born on an army base in Honolulu. His parents were from the Philippines, but his dad had joined the U.S. Navy and Gloria had spent most of his childhood traveling from base to base in Saudi, Italy, Greece—pretty much all over the world. He thought of Maryland as home because he’d got a scholarship to the University of Maryland in College Park. He had ambitions of being a lawyer or a politician, but the pressure of being the first in the family to go to school got to him. His grades started slipping, and he dropped out of school. Joining the Navy was the safest thing he knew. It was only when he got to corpsman training that he realized that he might not spend all his time in a clean white naval hospital on shore surrounded by pretty nurses. They’d showed him and other new recruits a video of the Vietnam movie, Full Metal Jacket.
“See that guy who’s running around while marines are yelling out, ‘Doc’? Well, that’s you.”
The Marine Corps didn’t train its own combat medics. It took those trained by the Navy. Most Navy corpsmen like Gloria ended up being with the Marines, and most guys liked it. Gloria didn’t look like the sort of guy who would be happy running around a battlefield in the dirt. He was short and chubby. He looked as though he enjoyed the good things in life. Yet he found he got a lot more respect from the marines than from officers in the Navy. The grunts just loved their docs. They were held in special esteem. Gloria would have to put up with the grunts making fun of the rest of the Navy, but they treated him as one of their own.
Garcia was now a couple of kilometers south of the city. He saw the Cobra and the Huey go in with guns blazing to clear the ground and make sure it was safe. Apart from the two corpsmen in the rear, he had his copilot and two aircrew who manned the guns and loaded the equipment. They were all vulnerable. The CH-46 had very little armor. The cockpit might stop a round, but the main body of the helo was just thin metal. A round, or piece of metal traveling at speed, would penetrate right through it. In the cockpit, Garcia sat on a bulletproof seat and wore fragmentary armor, which would stop shrapnel but not a well-aimed shot. If an RPG hit one of the rotors it would desync them; they would hit each other and the helo would drop out of the sky.
He now had direct comms with Captain Jim Jones, the forward air controller on the ground, whose call sign was Koolaid.
“Parole 25, you are clear to land.”
Garcia’s body tensed. He was the lead as his wingman anchored toward the east. He flew over some palm groves, uneasy because he couldn’t see what was underneath. He reached the river, followed the bridge across, and saw vehicles maneuvering on the road and figures fighting it out in the streets below.
“Parole 25. Watch for the smoke.”
It was Koolaid, letting him know where to land. Instructions were coming over the radio thick and fast. Garcia focused on avoiding the accompanying Huey. He didn’t have time to feel scared. He saw the purple smoke and dropped onto an east-west road. It was pretty open, and he saw an ambulance off to the side of the road. Garcia brought the bird in. As soon as they landed, they started taking fire.
“Parole 25. You have to reposition.”
The FAC sounded calm. They were in a bad spot. He wanted to bring him back down, farther north along the north-south road. Garcia didn’t know it, but that was the road the marines were calling Ambush Alley.
“Roger that. Show me where you want me.”
“Popping smoke.”
One of the lessons the Marines had learned in Vietnam was that neither the ground forces nor the pilot would announce which color smoke was being popped. The Vietcong would listen in and pop the color called to try to lure the helo into an ambush.
“I see purple smoke.”
Garcia confirmed the color and came in for a second time. The smoke was billowing up between some power lines. It was too tight, so he looked for somewhere with more space. Right across the street he saw an alleyway. It’s tight, but we can get the CH-46 in there. As he came down, he saw marines forming a perimeter to protect the helo. Garcia circled the CH-46 and slowly dropped the bird into the middle of the alleyway between two six-foot-high walls.
As the helo came to a rest, he heard the AAVs around him directing suppressing fire toward two buildings to his right. His copilot, Captain Tod Schroeder, got jumpy, pulled out a 9 mm sidearm, and held it out of the window. Garcia thought it was kind of funny. Why’s he doing that? We’ve got two .50-cal machine guns on either side of us.
He monitored the chatter between the FAC and other aircraft. A huge dog was standing to the side of the road, taking it all in impassively. Garcia turned to Schroeder.
“It can’t be that bad if the dog is not freaking out.”
Just at that moment, a Huey flew overhead and the dog took off in fright. So much for my theory.
Moses Gloria checked his medical gear one last time. In the rear of the helo, he had the litters prepared to bring in the casualties. He went through his ABCs. Airway, breathing, circulation. Make sure we have our airways out, nasals and orals are reachable, bandages open and ready to go, IVs set and flowing.
He heard the pilot and crew chiefs talking on the radio.
“Taking fire from eleven o’clock. Now from two o’clock.”
“Shall we fire back?”
“Hold fire until it’s direct fire.”
He prayed one last time and waited for the first casualties to arrive.
“Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
20
As the CH-46 came in to land, Captain Dyer, in Dark Side, was maneuvering his tank around the foot of the Euphrates Bridge. Next to him, his FAC, Major Hawkins, w
as busy talking on his handheld radio, running air down Ambush Alley and making sure that helos were still flying over the tanks stuck in the mud in the east of the city. Dyer had his own priority, though. A lone sniper had been shooting at him for the past thirty minutes and he had been unable to locate him. I’ve got to find him. It’s only a matter of time before he gets me.
Each tank was working an area of about five hundred meters. Each time Dyer maneuvered his tank within his area to get in a better position to help the marines on the ground, the sniper seemed to seek him out.
Another round cracked past his ear. That was close. It sounded like a baseball bat striking concrete. I’ve got to find that son of a bitch. The bullet had come from one of the buildings on the east side of the street, but it was difficult to know which one. He must be properly trained. He is located somewhere deep inside, hidden well away from the window. He hoped he wasn’t firing from too high up, because his gun tube could only be elevated to a certain height. He scanned the windows for any signs of the sniper.
At that moment, his radio crackled with a transmission. The message was unusually loud and clear.
“This is Palehorse 3. We need assistance. We need tank support.”
Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War Page 27