In the morning, both sides launched heavy artillery barrages at each other. Marine 105mm shells pounded the north bank, blowing apart buildings and Republican Guard dug-in defensive positions in preparation to the assault.
The rain of high explosives killed or wounded dozens of the elite Iraqi troops, but their artillery exacted chilling revenge. Just before our attack began, their spotters on the far bank must have seen the Marines gathering to storm the bridge. They called in a fire mission, and three heavy shells landed in quick succession right among the American spearhead. One scored a freakish, one-in-a-million direct hit on an Amtrac parked near the south end of the bridge. The blast wounded several Marines and killed two of the vehicle’s crew, Lance Corporal Andrew Aviles and Corporal Jesus Medellin, instantly.
While the Iraqis continued to lob shells at 3rd Battalion, the American barrage lifted. It was time for the assault element to go forward. Jason Delgado and the other scouts charged across the bridge with the Marine infantry. They weaved around shell holes the size of Volkswagens torn in the roadway as two or three Iraqi mortar rounds exploded nearby. Fortunately, none of the assaulting Marines were hit by shrapnel. They pressed on, climbing around debris and ducking whenever bullets pinged off the bridge’s steel structure or whined overhead.
When Jason reached the north side of the bridge, he saw the bodies of uniformed Iraqi Republican Guard troops splayed in the dirt, victims of the preassault artillery bombardment. He ran past their ragdoll corpses and into a nearby one-story cinderblock building. He and his spotter climbed onto the roof to cover down on the main road stretching from the bridge northward into Baghdad.
The rest of the snipers found good positions to do the same thing. I came across a short time later with Colonel McCoy. We would need every gun in this fight, for surely the Iraqis would counterattack this position since we were the biggest threat to Baghdad they faced.
Snipers usually operate in pairs, each team covering a particular compass point. This time, the platoon knew where the enemy would be coming from, and we worked together to concentrate our fire on any approaching targets to ensure they would not get close enough to harm the Marine infantry steaming across the bridge to expand our toehold on the north bank.
While behind his M40 bolt-action rifle, Jason heard a warning transmitted over the battalion radio net. The Iraqis were using ambulances loaded with explosives as suicide vehicle bombs. The snipers were told to be on the lookout for anything resembling an ambulance.
“That’s pretty fucking low,” Jason muttered under his breath.
The snipers had a clear view of the road to Baghdad out to at least nine hundred yards. At the edge of their field of vision was a small rise, then a gentle curve. On either side, pockets of surviving Fedayeen and Republican Guards took potshots at the Marines streaming across the bridge.
A white pickup truck appeared in the road. It rounded the bend, disappeared behind the slight rise, then came into view again, head-on to the snipers. By this time, I had set up shop across the street from Jason. As the rig sped toward the bridge, Jason and I could see the driver wore a green Iraqi Army uniform. He also had on what looked like a long brown leather hat like Russian tank crews wear. A passenger stood in the pickup’s bed, wearing a red headdress and hefting an AK-47.
We coordinated our ambush over the radio. At four hundred yards, I gave a short count, and we opened fire simultaneously. Jason’s range to target was 395 yards. Mine was 411.
The driver died instantly, struck twice from our 7.62mm M40s. As the truck drifted to a stop, the passenger bailed out. We hit him, too. We later discovered he had a pistol concealed in the small of his back at his waistline. Those shots were Jason’s first with his M40 bolt-action rifle.
What were these two guys doing? Certainly they were not the vanguard of a Republican Guard counterattack, but perhaps they were scouting forward to find out the situation at the bridge. Our artillery bombardment probably destroyed communications between their headquarters echelons and the front-line units, leaving the Iraqi leadership in the dark.
The snipers hunkered down and waited to see what would follow. An ambulance loaded with explosives? Another truck bomb? The thought of one of those coming at the bridgehead left the entire scout platoon tense and edgy. Marines have a raw spot for suicide truck bombs. The one Hezbollah drove into the barracks at the Beirut airport in the 1980s killed 241 of our brothers. Though many of the men in 3rd Battalion hadn’t been born when that happened, Marines never forget their heritage, history—or old wounds that had yet to be avenged.
That truck bomb in Beirut turned out to be the largest nonnuclear explosion detonated since World War II. Say what you will about the Middle East; the people there know how to build things that go boom.
Whatever happened, Jason and the other snipers were determined to keep the Marines around us safe from such a fate. It was crucial that we stop any vehicle from reaching the bridgehead. But with enemy soldiers and Fedayeen militia still moving around the position, there was no way to establish a traffic control point.
The bolt-action M40s would have to do the job. The snipers resolved to fire into engine blocks at five hundred yards. If the vehicles didn’t stop, the drivers would die at three hundred.
What followed was the worst twenty-four hours Jason endured in combat. It was also mine. We remained in our positions without food and without water resupply all day, through the night, and into the next morning as wave after wave of civilian vehicles streamed down the road at us. Some were driven by uniformed Iraqi soldiers. Some were driven by panicked civilians. They were intermingled, and the Americans at the bridge could not distinguish who was a suicide bomber and who had simply driven into the battle crazed with fear and unable to think.
At five hundred yards, we shot into the engine blocks, but too many times the vehicles kept going. Innocents died, but a lot of enemy fighters did as well. For Jason, the hours became a blur of rage and angst as he was faced again and again with a devil’s choice: hold fire as a van or truck crossed the three-hundred-yard threshold even after the warning shots and risk the lives of every Marine on the north bank, or take the shot. Not a man in the scout platoon wanted the deaths of American Marines on his conscience, so we all took the shots. And each time Jason pulled the trigger, his conscience grew burdened with the result. So did mine. We were in an impossible position.
Only later in the insurgency did the Marines learn that the insurgents forced civilians to drive into our checkpoints around Iraq ahead of a suicide bomber. That kept our soldiers and Marines guessing, always wondering if the next vehicle would blow them apart or not. The Jihadists used any means necessary to coerce these innocents into their vehicles. They threatened to kill them, or kill their families. Often, they took families hostage to ensure the civilian would carry out his orders.
And the most insidious part of this tactic was the propaganda value the insurgents made when American troops killed those civilians. They counted on it, and trumpeted America’s barbarity on their Jihadi websites. Their willing accomplices in the media followed that lead, and all too many times young soldiers and Marines who were faced with this choice, incomprehensible to their fellow Americans back home, were eviscerated by our own news outlets.
Snipers are not soulless warriors. Snipers are not men without conscience. They are guardians of the infantry first and foremost. And on that bridgehead, the snipers of 3/4 performed that task with all the judgment, skill, and professional resolve they possessed.
But it came at a terrible cost. The Diyala River bridge scarred us all.
In the aftermath, when the platoon was finally relieved, Jason and I drifted back to get hot chow and some sleep. Filthy, stinking, and hollow-eyed, we staggered out of the fight, rage and anguish poisoning our souls.
All of this was made worse by the press, of course. Johnny-come-latelies showed up at the bridge in the wake of the fight to see its aftermath. They didn’t report on the armed men in civilian clothes w
e’d killed. They didn’t report on the Fedayeen or the uniformed Iraqis mingled with the civilians who died as they barreled down the highway toward the bridge. They just reported the civilians, and never understood the agony Jason, Jesse, and the rest of us endured as we struggled to make the decisions that kept our Marines safe.
By the time we advanced into Baghdad a few days later, and Saddam’s statue fell, Jason Delgado had nothing left to prove to himself, or anyone else. Warriors emerge from the crucible of the fight. Men go into it with expectations of how they will react when touched with fire. The flames sear in different ways. Some break and have not the psychological tools to cope. Others rise to the occasion. And some give up all hope and cast their lot with fate. Men who believe they have nothing left to live for are among the most dangerous—and brave. They don’t give a fuck.
When Baghdad fell that April, the snipers of 3/4 no longer gave a fuck. Constant combat and exhaustion had etched away everything but their sense of professionalism and duty. Below both was the rage, nebulous and unfocused.
From atop a skyscraper, Jason and Jesse Davenport watched Baghdad devolve into chaos as its citizens embarked on looting sprees. Random acts of violence broke out in the street below. The two snipers grew jaded to it, and only intervened when somebody below posed a significant threat to innocents still trying to get by with their lives. They were still guardians, but this time, they were protecting Iraqis from other Iraqis.
Atop a fifteen-story building in the government district one day in mid-April, Jesse caught sight of a young Iraqi male as he opened fire randomly with an AK-47. This wasn’t celebratory fire—we’d all seen a lot of that since the fall of Saddam’s regime. This was a kook with an assault rifle who ran into a street spraying gunfire at the people milling about there.
Jesse took aim with his M40. Jason read off the range: a hundred and eighty yards. The gunman sprinted down the street below, shooting wildly. Fifteen stories in Bagdad usually put us at about a hundred and fifty feet over street level. Jesse had to compensate for the steep angle of elevation. He calculated the shot and placed his scope’s reticle low on the target. Snipers call that the “angle of the dangle.” When up high shooting down, you aim low. It takes an accomplished marksman to get comfortable with such shots. The Marines and Navy now have a shooting school dedicated to the art of high-angle shooting.
Jesse Davenport was a natural at it. Once again, Jason Delgado witnessed him make an incredible shot only a few could possibly make. The gunman was running erratically, which meant Jesse had to track him. Simultaneously, he factored in the lead necessary to hit him as he moved, the angle of the dangle, wind, and distance.
Jesse pulled the trigger and blew the madman off his feet in a dead sprint. He flopped to the ground, a 7.62mm bullet hole in his forehead. It was one of the most technically challenging shots any of the 3/4 snipers took during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Not long after, on May 3, 2003, Jesse and Jason were up on a thirty-story building, covering a contingent of Marines ordered to secure millions of dollars from a partially looted bank. Looters still roamed in packs, and the scene below was one of chaos and sudden ignitions of violence. Jesse was spotting for Jason that day, and as they glassed the frenzied scene below, they discovered a group of armed males rushing toward the melee. Several of them carried AKs, and they hefted them about and fired at random.
Not only were they a threat to other Iraqi civilians, they posed a threat to the Marines at the bank. Jesse lased them. Two hundred yards out and thirty stories below. Jason took aim and settled his reticle on one of the males who wore a green and white tracksuit. He carried both an AK and a long, sheathed knife on his belt. He and his pals ran along the street, their backs to the American snipers as they shot up the neighborhood with full auto bursts from their AKs.
These guys needed to be stopped. Jason took the shot. His round missed. The men kept running toward the bank. The New Yorker, perplexed, racked his M40s bolt and drew another bead.
He missed again.
He got up and ran with Jesse to the far side of the roof to see if his zero was off. He aimed at a water tank atop another skyscraper and pulled the trigger. The shot went exactly where he’d wanted it to go.
Why had he missed Green Tracksuit then? As he rushed back to his original position, it dawned on him—he’d been shooting high. Quickly, he calculated the angle of the dangle, set the reticle below Green Tracksuit’s waist, and fired.
The bullet hit the man in the kidneys. He spun and dropped as his astonished friends stared at him. They froze, totally captivated by the Shock Factor. Jason chambered another round and waited to see what they would do.
It took several seconds for the spell to be broken, but when it was, the gunmen panicked. Some dropped their weapons, others bolted into a nearby alley, running as if the Devil himself was on their heels. To a man, they left their fallen comrade to die in the street.
That single shot was all it took to break their morale and render them no threat at all to the Marines at the bank. The Shock Factor’s power on the human psyche was something Jason would never forget.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The 440
HUSAYBAH, IRAQ
SYRIAN BORDER
SPRING 2004
For all its intensity and the toll it took on Jason, the drive to Baghdad was cake compared to his second deployment, this time with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines.
After a very brief stay at home following the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom I, Jesse Davenport, Jason, and a few others from the 3/4 Scouts were sent to join 3/7 as it worked up for operations in Anbar Province. The battalion arrived on the Iraqi-Syrian border in February 2004, just as the war entered a new and deadly phase.
For the first and only time during the Iraq War, the diverse and fractious insurgent groups attempted to spark a national uprising. Cooperation between the Shia militias and the Al Anbar Sunni rebels took place at a high level, including a secret planning conference later discovered to have been held in London mosques.
The killing of four American Blackwater contractors at a bridge on the outskirts of Fallujah on March 31, 2004, sparked the uprising. Within days, almost every province in Iraq seethed with violence and rebellion. The Coalition was caught completely by surprise, especially in the south where the Shia were considered to be pro-occupation.
All across southern Iraq, Shia militias and insurgent groups struck at the Americans and nascent Iraqi security forces. Entire towns and cities fell into their hands. The militias, including the notorious Mahdi Militia, used their success to terrorize the local populations as they enforced their radical brand of Islam. Shop owners selling Western DVDs were told to shutter their doors. Those who didn’t were dragged into the streets of Basra and Najaf to be beaten or murdered. Women who did not cover themselves completely when they went outdoors were shot or beaten—or worse. Couples who dared display affection to each other in public were set upon by the militias, pummeled and left bleeding in the streets as examples.
The British and American forces in the south were spread very thin. Nobody had expected this sudden onslaught, and the majority of the Coalition’s fighting power had been deployed in Baghdad or Al Anbar Province. This sudden development threatened the supply lines to Kuwait, and in many places the highways the logistical convoys used were overrun and fortified by the Shia insurgents.
The U.S. had to switch gears. The offensive began just as the first wave of troops were rotating home in what was one of the military’s largest relief in place operations ever. Tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines who had been trying to establish order for the past year suddenly found themselves forced to call their families and tell them they would not be home after all. The 1st Armored Division was among the first units to have their deployment extended. Instead of going back to Kuwait, then home, the tankers and mech infantry were thrown into a counteroffensive in the south, supported by the freshly arrived 1st Infantry Division.
As the
battle raged from Baghdad to the Kuwait border, the Marines in Al Anbar Province bore the brunt of the Sunni half of the national uprising. The press focused on Fallujah, where the Marines launched an assault into the city to clear the rebels out. Breathless reporters recounted street fights raging throughout Fallujah, but they ignored the broader scope and context of what soon became a transformative moment in the history of the Iraq War.
The battle for Fallujah soon got mired in politics made worse by intervention and micromanaging from Washington. Elsewhere, the Sunni insurgents managed to cut the main supply route from Baghdad through Anbar Province in at least two places. Those bold moves forced the Marines to react; they pulled troops out of other areas and cleared the highway. In Ramadi, the insurgents launched a series of coordinated attacks that rocked the Marines and Army units there. Everywhere, the Americans were reacting to the enemy. The Sunnis held the strategic initiative.
On the western edge of Al Anbar Province stood the city of Husaybah. Long an outlaw stronghold during the Saddam regime, it was sort of Iraq’s version of the Mos Eisley Space Port from the first Star Wars movie. When Obi Wan told Luke, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…” he could have been referring to this last outpost on the Syrian border. Remote, far from centers of authority, Husaybah was Iraq’s lawless Wild West.
The place functioned on greed, corruption, and smuggling. The border crossing was the city’s main source of revenue. Everything from oil to booze to weapons came across the frontier there, and the Iraqi security forces manning the checkpoints simply took their cut and looked the other way.
When the insurgency gained traction through the fall of 2003, Husaybah became one of the key resupply routes for the Sunni rebels. Syria was to Al Anbar as Pakistan was to the Taliban in Afghanistan—a safe zone from which to shuttle men, materiel, and weapons into the fight.
Shock Factor Page 17