On the roof, Private First Class Robinson’s black thoughts were returning. What the fuck am I doing here? He thought of all his buddies that he’d grown up with in Santa Cruz and wondered what they would be doing now. Some would be surfing, others would be earning good money in the construction business. He thought of them partying on the beach. None of them are holed up in a shitty house in a far-off country being shot at by hajjis.
It was unbelievable. They were part of the most formidable military force in the world, yet none of its might, expertise, or technology had been able to get them out. They were surviving on their own guts and wits. Robinson wasn’t looking to blame anyone, but it was hard not to feel that those higher up had let them down badly.
The clatter of a Huey woke him up. He was horrified to see it bearing down on them, guns aimed directly at their positions. Everyone on the roof put their fists on their head to signal they were friendlies and started yelling.
“Friendly. Friendly.”
The helicopter came in for a closer look and gave them the thumbs-up sign. He flew over them, went across the street, and launched some missiles at buildings across the way.
Castleberry, Robinson, and Worthington talked to each other. They talked about a lot of things. Castleberry smoked a cigarette, even though he hated the things. They talked about their girls and wives, about getting them all together once they got out of this mess. It seemed like hours since the tanks had thundered past without seeing them; in fact, it was only about thirty minutes. And then they heard the roar of a tank again.
Peeples had crossed the northern bridge and was scanning the buildings along Ambush Alley, looking for signs of marines in the city. He guessed they must be near where he had seen the torso of the dead marine on his way northward earlier. He spotted movement on the east side of the street and saw the disabled AAV. He ordered his driver to pull up alongside a building. He jumped off, ducking to avoid the fire, and ran to a house. He’d got the wrong one. He needed to be next door. He crawled through a fence to get there. Waiting for him on the other side was a group of marines. They were ecstatic and hyped up. He was the first officer they had seen since they’d been holed up in the house. Now people knew where they were.
“What the hell is going on? How can I help?”
“There are guys who’ve been bleeding for two hours. If we don’t get them out of here right away, they’re gonna die.”
There was no room in the tank and not much room on top. But Peeples saw a way that he could get some of them out of there. By turning the turret sideways, he could put the injured marines on the flat, exposed part of the tank and drive them back to the northern bridge.
Castleberry was pleased. What an awesome idea. If they could get the wounded to safety, the marines left in the house would feel much happier about staying there longer. Smith, Wentzel, and Olivas helped him load up the injured men onto the tank while the marines on the roof covered them with fast and furious fire. Some of the wounded could be helped along; others had to be carried because their legs were shot out. Castleberry held Elliot’s hand as he loaded him onto the tank.
“It’s going to be okay, Elli. We’re going to get you out of here. You’re going to be okay.”
“Thank God. Thank you. Thank you.”
Castleberry gave Elliot’s hand a squeeze.
“When you get back, you can have a shave and a rest. Save your energy. You’ll be fine.”
Peeples then came up with a plan to get everyone back.
“Right, fellas. This is what we are going to do. I’m going to drive my tank slowly back to the north bridge and you can walk by the side of the tank so you are protected on one flank. You’ll just have to deal with the other flank yourselves.”
Castleberry and Robinson looked at each other. They had never heard such an absurd idea in their lives. Walk back up Ambush Alley with people coming out from the side of the road shooting at us!
Worthington was horrified. I’ve been across the bridge twice already, and I’m not going back across with anything less than a battalion.
“That’s not going to work, sir. We have too many people. If we start getting hit, we’re going to be fucked.”
He was also worried about leaving behind the CLU, the sighting system for his Javelin.
“Sir, I cannot leave without my sight. It costs two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
Peeples couldn’t believe it. They were in the middle of a war zone, and he was worrying about a piece of equipment.
“We can forget about the damn sight.”
Peeples thought they had the place pretty secure. Maybe they could hold out a little longer. He climbed back onto his tank and gunned up the tank, ready to take off with the wounded.
“We’ll get the rest of you out of there soon enough.”
For Castleberry, Worthington, and Robinson, it was a huge relief to have got the wounded away. The worst part was sitting there watching their fellow marines slowly bleeding to death while there was nothing any of them could do for them. As the tank left, Castleberry looked at his hands. There was blood up to his elbows. It wasn’t enemy blood. It was blood from his own marines. It was a sight that he knew would live with him forever.
Marines on the roof were ready to fight again. They were reinvigorated. They had enough ammo and no wounded to slow them down. Once again, Ortiz felt the adrenaline coursing through his veins. We gotta do what we gotta do to survive.
25
Back at Task Force Tarawa’s command post, Brigadier General Rich Natonski was trying to picture the battlefield. He was working out of two light armored vehicles, positioned back to back, with a tent covering the gap. He’d let Lieutenant General James T. Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, know that his lead elements had run into the Maintenance Company’s convoy. The general had been as surprised as they all were. Now, six hours later, he was struggling to keep up with developments. Reports coming back to him were sporadic and confused. He hadn’t been expecting a big fight in Nasiriyah. He’d known that the Iraqi 11th Infantry Division was based up there, but they’d received reports that its soldiers were carrying civilian clothes. As soon as the first shots were fired, he thought they would get rid of their uniforms and run away. That’s how he’d planned the battle. But it wasn’t happening like that. He could hear the artillery going off. All hell was breaking loose. It’s like the gunfight at the OK Corral.
One of his staff came through with the latest information.
“Sir, they are reporting mass casualties.”
What is going on? Natonski felt the fog of war descend on him. He’d read a lot about it, but he’d never experienced it so clearly. In spite of all the planning, the battlefield had become confusing, chaotic, uncertain, and unstable. Nobody seemed to have a clear idea of where the different companies were located. There were reports that Bravo and the forward CP were lost somewhere in the city. There was hardly any news from Charlie at all. He found it hard to believe that the remnants of the Iraqi army and a few fedayeen fighters had the firepower or determination to hold up one of his armored battalions. Where the hell are they?
Protected by marines from Bravo Company, Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski was plotting his next move on an improvised map he’d drawn in the dirt at his position in the open area to the east of Ambush Alley. Just when he thought that he was reestablishing some sort of control, he began to receive reports from his air officer that a Huey pilot had spotted some marines on the roof of a house in Ambush Alley. What is going on? How did they get there? He was surprised at how little he knew of what was going on around him. In training during the CAX at Twentynine Palms, they were given a scenario and had to react to it. That was difficult. But now he realized how difficult it was to react to a scenario that was constantly changing and which you didn’t fully understand. He called his staff together, drew lines in the sand on his improvised map, and began to work out a plan to get the marines out of there. The Huey pilot had given them a rough
location for the house: a few hundred meters north of their pause, on the east side of the road. As soon as they got confirmation that the tanks and tracks stuck in the bog were out, they would move up Ambush Alley with their tracks on the west side of the road. He would place his soft-skinned vehicles on the east side of the road to give them some cover from most of the fire, which was coming from an area to the northwest described on their maps as the Martyrs’ District. When they got to the house, marines in the soft-skinned Humvees would jump out and grab the marines from inside.
As Grabowski was talking, Major Sosa could see Iraqi civilians walking around the outer edge of the open area where they had stopped. Others were waving flags from rooftops. What does that mean? Gradually, more and more people, including women, children, and old men, began to gather and slowly pressed toward them. Some were smiling and waving. Sosa and the marines with him became concerned. Are they pleased to see us, or is this an orchestrated ploy? His big fear was that civilians were being used as human shields by the fedayeen and that at any moment someone in the crowd would open up on them.
“Keep those people back.”
Shots were fired in the air and interpreters yelled at the crowd to stay away and go back to their houses. Some refused to move and just stood, looking on as if it was normal to have hundreds of marines, tracks, and Humvees bristling with weapons camped out in their backyard.
The women wore traditional burkas. It made him uncomfortable to see the women wrapped in their headscarves. He didn’t know much about the culture, but he sensed the oppression. It might have been an excuse, but it made him feel better about what they were doing. To the side of the square, an Iraqi civilian was being looked after by a corpsman. He’d been shot in the abdomen and was lying on a stone slab near the parked vehicles. The corpsman hooked up the IV bag and began to work on him. They bandaged him up and turned him over to some civilians. Sosa watched with unease as the man got up, blood still coming out of his stomach, lit a cigarette, and walked off as though nothing had happened. He’s probably going to die, and he’s carrying on as if it were normal life.
Corporal Neville Welch of Bravo Company was one of those making sure the throng of Iraqis didn’t get too close. No one in the crowd seemed to have weapons, but Welch was ready for them. He kept his mantra going in his head. I am going to get out of this alive. If you want to take me on, I’m going to drop you. From the rooftops, a fedayeen let off the occasional round. But Welch had good cover, tucked in behind a thick wall in the shelter of a building. His marines had superior marksmanship. If his team saw anyone crawling around on roofs or balconies with hostile intent, they were taken out. He had no idea how long they had been fighting or what was going on elsewhere. His knowledge of the battle was confined to a twenty-square-meter area around him and the few marines by his side. How will this end?
26
At the mud bog on the east side of the city, marines were still desperately trying to haul the tanks, Humvees, and tracks out of the mire. It had become worse by the hour. Staff Sergeant Aaron Harrell, the twenty-eight-year-old marine reservist who worked as a CVS pharmacy shift manager, had heard that the tanks from 3rd Platoon, which had been delayed because of the refueling, were going to be arriving any minute to help them out. He saw them charge around a building, heading toward the area covered in pools of green mud and slime that they were calling the shitbog. He tried to wave them down, but he was too late. Captain Cubas and Gunnery Sergeant Alan Kamper of 3rd Platoon had also been deceived by the terrain, and now their tanks also became hopelessly mired in the muck. It didn’t matter from which way you came—the ground was nothing more than a thin crust, covering watery mud.
Kamper was horrified to see flames coming out of the rear of his tank. The protection filters in the NBC system, designed to protect them from nuclear, biological, or chemical attack, appeared to have caught fire. There was screaming and yelling as the crew evacuated. The driver, Lance Corporal Joshuah Mouser, hauled himself out of the driver’s hatch at the belly of the tank just as an Iraqi, armed with an AK-47, appeared at a door right in front of him. Mouser only had a pistol with which to fire back. The tank’s gunner, Sergeant August Nienaber, tossed Mouser his pistol. With a pistol in both hands, he looked like some Western gunslinger. Mouser fired both pistols at once, scaring the Iraqi so much that he dropped his AK and took off running. He picked up the dropped weapon gratefully. He had shot all fifteen of his 9 mm rounds.
“There’s enemy infantry coming around the wall.”
Harrell, along with several other tankers and Bravo Company’s executive officer, First Lieutenant Judson Daniels, ran to help in the fight. The tanks traversed their turrets and managed to fire a couple of rounds to push back any enemy fighters. Cobra helicopters and Huey gunships thundered in low over the area, making gun runs on the enemy to keep them away from the recovery operations.
Gunnery Sergeant Randy Howard looked around at the chaos. At forty-seven years old, and after fourteen years in the reserves, Howard thought he’d seen it all. In civilian life, he had a comfortable job remodeling houses in Kentucky. He took another look around at the yelling, frightened marines, the Iraqi fighters shooting off rounds at him, the tanks sinking in mud halfway up their treads, and wondered what possessed him to join the United States Marine Corps. I must have been insane.
What worried him was the state of the young marines from Bravo Company who were posting security. Some were just out of high school. They need someone to hold their hands. He hoped they would be able to hold back the crowds of Iraqis from overwhelming the stuck vehicles. They had set up a strong perimeter around the tanks, but he could see that they were wide-eyed with fright and apprehension. In their eyes, he was an old man. In peacetime, it meant they teased him about being old and stuck in his ways. At war, it meant that they looked to him for guidance. He got off his tank and went to each of them to reassure them. He’d seen a lot in life, and although his insides were churning, he was not going to lose his head now. If you run around acting like a fool, nobody is going to listen to you.
From the briefings in the weeks before, he’d been given the impression that the Iraqis would be giving them a warm welcome. I imagined the Iraqi women would be greeting us with flowers in our gun tubes and holding up babies to be kissed. Instead, he was ducking his head from the rounds streaking around him and making sure the kids posting security stayed awake.
“Hey, keep your eyes open for all those ragheads running around.”
Howard tried to get through to the battalion staff on the radio, but there were always too many people talking on the net. They were now low on ammo. Some of his marines had taken the AK-47s from dead Iraqis and were using them to keep the waves of enemy fighters at bay. He looked around once again at the scene. We badly need the M88 tank retrievers here. Trying to pull the tanks out with tow cables just wasn’t working. The tow cables were too short, and the tracks and mobile tanks couldn’t get close enough to pull them out without sinking into the mud themselves.
“Timberwolf. We need the tank retriever up here.”
There was no reply.
Howard was pleased that he had Harrell with him. Harrell had been working on the recovery effort and now came up with an idea to make the inch-and-a-quarter steel tow cables longer. He connected two cables using a piece of scrap metal and a clevis, a U-shaped piece of metal, that marines found lying around in the mud. He twisted them together to make them stronger and attached a third cable to give them length. He attached one end to his tank and the other to the tow bolt on Staff Sergeant Insko’s tank. As he was working on the recovery effort, a lance corporal, shaking with fear, came up to him.
“Are we going to get out of this hole?”
“We’re going to be fine. Get back and work on getting your tank out.”
Putting his tank in reverse, Harrell slowly sucked Insko’s tank, Death Mobile, out of the mud. Then they managed to get Staff Sergeant Dillon’s tank free. Things were looking up.
> 27
At Alpha’s position by the Euphrates Bridge, in an alleyway off Ambush Alley, Captain Garcia was waiting patiently for confirmation to lift his CH-46. The casevac was taking longer than he would have wished, but he remained calm and focused. It wasn’t the ground fire that was the most immediate threat. He wanted to make sure he knew where the Hueys and Cobras were overhead so that he didn’t hit them when he took off.
Marines dragged in the first patient on the back of a wooden board. They dumped him on the ramp and ran for cover under a hail of fire. Moses Gloria, Hospital Man 2nd Class Mark Kirkland, and the loading chief pulled the wounded marine in. A second patient stumbled forward on foot and fell to the ground a few meters from the aircraft. Gloria ran out, helped him in, and sat him on one of the troop seats at the back. He and Kirkland immediately set to work. Over the roar of the rotors, they yelled at the one marine who was conscious.
“Where are you hit? Are you okay? Do you have any other injuries?”
The marine grabbed his leg, but he didn’t want help.
“Just take care of my buddy, I’m fine. Look after my buddy.”
The other marine was on a litter on the deck of the helo. Gloria threw in a nasal airway down his nostril and got some IV fluids into him. He was unconscious and had injuries to the lower limbs, but he was stable. If they managed to get him out of there to a shock and trauma medical platoon on the ground, he should make it. The marine was Corporal Matthew Juska, who’d been found alive in the wreckage of track 206.
Gloria went back to the first marine. There was something about his injuries that worried him. The leg was bandaged, but he was losing blood. He did a body sweep under his arms. When he pulled his hands back, they were covered with blood.
Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War Page 30