Lieutenant Boyce, the scout platoon commander, wanted to employ his snipers more dynamically as well. He listened to his shooters and looked for ways to exploit them if and when the lull in the fighting ended. Until that day arrived, the rotation continued, and the snipers grew increasingly frustrated.
For the time being, the rotation stayed the same. Truth was, the battalion was still searching for the best way to approach its mission. Finding the balance between helping rebuild the neighborhood and killing the bad guys living in it took a delicate hand, and Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hendrickson understood all too well that every civilian casualty simply increased the level of resistance his men would face the next time they patrolled the streets.
In an environment like Baghdad in the summer of 2004, snipers can bring all sorts of force multipliers to the table. They can overwatch specific areas to deny them to the enemy. This is particularly useful when trying to keep major roads open to vehicular traffic. Put a sniper team atop a building near a freeway, and those shooters lock that area down. They could deal out death to any cell of insurgents unlucky enough to enter the kill zone to plant a roadside bomb. The minute their shovel hits the dirt, they will end up well aerated by our shooters.
Snipers can also take out heavy weapons teams. Machine guns, mortars, artillery—they are the best casualty-producing weapons on an asymmetrical battlefield. In 2004 the Mahdi Militia possessed ample quantities of all three weapons. They had even mounted heavy machine guns on flatbed trucks, like the “technicals” seen in the movie Blackhawk Down. While the firepower these weapons can pour out at our troops can be deadly, the crews themselves are almost defenseless to a well-emplaced sniper team. When covering a friendly patrol, we make a point of searching for these weapons, and they become our top-priority targets. We remove those threats with our precision fire. Take out the machine-gun crew and that deadly weapon won’t rake through our men. Kill the mortar team and no more rounds explode among them. Once again, our capabilities on the battlefield can be used to save American lives.
A smart enemy knows that these crews are vulnerable, and they will support them with whatever forces they have available. I learned this firsthand during a mission in Somalia in the spring of 1993. At the time, the security situation inside Mogadishu, the capital, was spinning out of control. Dime-store warlords carved out mini-fiefdoms in the city’s streets, stealing food relief supplies from the UN in order to gain power over the starving populace. He who had the food controlled the people in desperate need. We had been sent in to create order out of the anarchy and help the UN regain control over the distribution of relief supplies. Not surprisingly, the tin-pot warlords did not like this at all, and as our deployment wore on, the level of violence escalated.
One night, we established a hide to overwatch several large warehouses full of heavy weapons, tanks, and armored vehicles that belonged to Mohamed Farrah Aidid, Somalia’s most powerful warlord at the time. We had inserted into the area ahead of an American raiding force whose mission it was to seize Aidid’s weaponry. Nobody expected a fight, but when we planned the operation I did not want to take any chances. Should Aidid’s men decide to give us a scrap, my men would be out on a limb, in need of speedy support or reinforcement. Just in case that happened, I brought a machine-gun team and a forward air controller with us and set up on a rooftop overlooking the warehouse complex. That gave us additional firepower, plus access to air power and all the killing force of our AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships.
In hopes of dissuading Aidid’s men from fighting us, we planned a major show of force just before the raiding element hit the warehouses. In this case, a pair of Cobras were to roar overhead and intimidate the crap out of the street warriors. Believe me, there is nothing more gut-liquifying than the sight of an AH-1’s business end pointed your way, bristling with Hydra and Zuni rockets plus a 20mm machine cannon.
The best laid plans …
While our hide remained undetected that night, we heard all sorts of unusual sounds coming from the warehouses. Engines rumbled in the darkness. Men shouted orders. Come dawn, we discovered they’d set up two ZSU-23 antiaircraft gun systems around the warehouses. Manned and ready to fire, they posed a deadly threat to our Cobras. I had a direct line to our task force commander, General Jack Klimp, who ordered me to disable the first ZSU without hurting the gunner. Our objective that day was to seize weaponry, not start a firefight and cause casualties among Aidid’s men.
I aimed at the ZSU’s ammunition feed tray and took the shot with a Barrett .50 cal. The bullet went straight through the feed tray and struck the gunner, blowing him back over his seat and out of sight.
Okay, so that didn’t go so well.
What followed wasn’t any fun either. The other ZSU opened fire on our building, its quad 23mm cannons raking the front facade. My spotter screamed, “They’re tearing the building apart! You gotta stop them!”
I swung my heavy rifle over until the sight settled on the ZSU’s gunner. He went down with one trigger pull. At that point, Aidid’s men opened fire from all over the warehouse complex. Bullets keened and whined around us. So much for avoiding a fight with a show of force. We’d been compromised.
Two Russian-built tanks had been pulled out of the warehouses during the night. Some of Aidid’s men broke cover to try and crew them. We could not afford to face those monsters; their main guns would turn our building to rubble in minutes while their coax machine guns pinned us in place. We ignored everyone else to stop this threat. Not a Somali made it to the tracks, but we had a tiger by the tail. There were too many fighters for us to tackle, and they knew where we were. I could see this ending badly if we didn’t have help soon.
Thank God we planned ahead. Our forward air controller spoke into his radio, and a moment later two Cobras thundered directly over our building and waded into the fight. Their twenty-millimeter guns spewed shells, knocking Aidid’s men right out of their sandals and leaving the battlefield dotted with dead and dying Somali mercenaries. Soon they were dropping buildings with well-placed rocket shots.
We prevailed that day. Looking back, it could have ended much differently. Without the air support, I’m not sure we would have been able to survive. Fortunately, we had backup. But I often wonder what would have happened had those Cobras not arrived so quickly after we had neutralized the antiaircraft guns.
Being detected and overwhelmed by numbers or firepower is a sniper’s worst nightmare. In the unconventional fighting we employ, we are in our element when isolated and working in small teams. Our ability to move with stealth and speed, use concealment to avoid detection, and carry out surprise attacks where the enemy least expects them are key assets that make snipers a force multiplier on the battlefield.
Unfortunately, American infantry leaders are often loath to use us to the best effect. If given a choice, a battalion commander is almost always going to try to overcome resistance with firepower and crushing weight of numbers. The idea of sending a sniper section forward to break the enemy’s will, or eliminate key weapons, seems far too risky. Naturally casualty-averse (and rightfully so), the prospect of seeing their snipers detected and overwhelmed before help can arrive causes our chain of command to be reluctant to employ us. We’ve tried to change that mind-set and show our battalion commanders what we can do by giving them sniper employment classes, but the conventional mind-set remains. When our brethren have been overwhelmed on the battlefield, such as in late 2004 when Iraqi insurgents took out two USMC sniper teams, those commanders who tend to err on the side of caution see their decisions justified. And so, when serving with regular line infantry units, snipers are often underutilized.
But there are always some battalion commanders willing to think outside the box. They’re the ones we love. They give us the flexibility we need to maximize our effect on the battlefield. They take risks, and they pay big dividends. I loved working with those officers during my time in the Corps. They exist all over the U.S. military and can rise to the o
ccasion in creative and unusual ways when circumstances demand it.
Fortunately, the Volunteers had just such a commander. Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hendrickson, 2–162’s police officer and citizen warrior, never considered “inside the box” a comfortable place to be. He could be a stern disciplinarian and taskmaster, but he also listened to the officers and men in his command. Ideas percolated from the bottom up within the battalion, and Hendrickson was open to new ideas from anyone in his chain of command. That flexibility would serve the Volunteers well in the dog days of summer when all hell broke loose once again in the streets of Baghdad.
After going to ground toward the end of the Shia Uprising in the spring, Moqtada al-Sadr gave a rambling, hate-filled speech on July 23, 2004. In it, he attacked both the United States and the current Shia-dominated Iraqi interim government.
A week later, a joint Iraqi-American operation in Karbala captured al-Sadr’s senior commander in that city. The Shia cleric demanded his release to no avail. The situation escalated until August 3 when American troops surrounded al-Sadr’s house and tried to kill or capture him. Somehow he managed to escape. Once clear of the American trap, he contacted all his senior leaders and told them to send the Mahdi Militia into the streets. Kill Americans. Resist to the death.
Two days later, the Second Shia Uprising broke out. For the next week, the Oregon snipers found themselves in the fight of their lives.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gushwa’s Thirty
The best snipers are men who make the most out of whatever circumstance they find themselves in. They are versatile, skilled, and intelligent. The best of us are fleet of foot and fast to react to the chaos of combat. Once in a fight, they dominate the enemy.
Sometime this happens from behind their scopes. Sometimes it happens with whatever weapon is at hand. When a fight comes to them, it is the enemy who suffers. In a fluid environment like Baghdad—or any other urban area—a sniper’s got to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice in any situation, mounted or dismounted. Countless times during the war in Iraq, our snipers were ambushed while either infilling or exfilling an area. Those sorts of situations become run-and-gun-type firefights that resemble some of the scenes in Blackhawk Down.
I had this happen to me while in Somalia in January 1993 after our sniper section wrapped up a patrol to the UN food distribution site in downtown Mogadishu. We climbed into our three Humvees and drove back through the city toward our base of operations at the soccer stadium. That day, I rode in a soft-top Humvee that had no turret or heavy weapon. Our other two rigs carried a Ma Deuce (a Browning .50 caliber M2 machine gun) and a Mark 19 grenade launcher. Those two Humvees were armored, our soft top was not.
We’d been traveling down Route 31 October, the capital’s main drag, when we came to an intersection about a kilometer and a half from home. So far, it had been a milk run.
But at the intersection, Aidid’s fighters were waiting for us with a “technical”—a Toyota pickup with a machine gun mounted in the back bed. They’d emplaced the rig on a side street that ran parallel to our road and used the intersection that connected the two as their kill zone. When we drove by, they poured fire at all three of our vehicles. The surprise attack riddled our lead truck with bullets. Our trail one got hit, too. Somehow my truck lucked out.
In these sorts of situations, the best thing to do is just blow through the kill zone. Aidid’s men had figured that out and had deployed technical at every intersection for five blocks. Every time we crossed a side street, they hammered us. We put the pedals to the floor as our gunners opened fire. The technical crews would blast away at us, then speed down the parallel road to another intersection, leapfrogging the other Toyotas already waiting for us. This way, they rolled the ambush down closer and close to the soccer stadium and gave us no respite.
I had a kid named Lassiter on the Mark 19 that day. He was a great Marine, very reliable, and extremely trustworthy, which is why we took him out on missions with us. At the third or fourth intersection, he was ready for the ambush and sent a 40mm grenade right into the waiting technical. Granted, Toyotas are excellent, reliable vehicles, but they just can’t take a grenade strike. This one exploded and burned quite nicely.
We reached the stadium and the surviving technical pulled off and raced into the city’s dark heart. After we rolled through the gate, we discovered the enemy had shot out all four tires in our lead rig.
Our gunners and our speed made all the difference that day. It also taught us that part of a sniper’s job is to be prepared for any kind of combat, be it a stalk in a ruined cityscape or a road warrior–esque running gun battle. That was a lesson I took to heart, and in the years to come I always tried to train my sniper teams to be as versatile and flexible as possible.
There’s no other way to fight an asymmetrical war.
Fortunately for the 2–162 Scouts, Kevin Maries recognized that need for versatility long before the Volunteers deployed to Iraq. He made sure his snipers cross-trained on every weapon available to the scout platoon. His section drilled with machine guns, M4 carbines, M16 rifles, pistols, and even grenade launchers. They learned to clear jams, load, break down, and clear each weapon.
When the battalion moved to Fort Hood for its predeployment workup, the snipers even manned Humvee turrets and practiced hitting targets while on the move. Anytime the snipers could pick up an additional skill set, Lieutenant Boyce and Staff Sergeant Maries were all for it. They pressed ahead and made the most of every training opportunity.
Specialist Nate Gushwa missed that part of the battalion’s time when Maries gave him the one available (and coveted) slot to the sniper school at Camp Robinson in Little Rock. Maries had seen in this young soldier something unique. He had a fire, a grit that impressed everyone. He kept himself in superb physical shape as well. Since being pulled into the scout platoon, he earned a reputation as a workout fanatic. His tattooed arms were roped with muscles.
Some men are born shots. They have that instinct coded into their DNA. Some men have a phenomenal knack for math and can do the ballistics and environmental calculations in their head on the fly while in the middle of high-stress situations. Others, like Nate, just seemed to know where to lay the crosshairs. It didn’t matter the weapon either. Nate could shoot the hell out of anything from a Crossman pump to an M240 Bravo machine gun.
Born and raised on the Oregon coast, Nate’s dad was the pastor for the local Baptist church. His maternal grandfather taught him to shoot when he was old enough to carry a rifle, and he would hunt raccoons at night with his grandfather, armed with Ruger 10–22 rifles. He was twelve when his grandfather gifted him with his first firearm, a Winchester 94 30/30. Later on in high school, he purchased a Remington 700, the civilian version of the M24 bolt-action rifle he later used in Baghdad. No matter the weapon, one elemental lesson from his grandfather stuck with him. Time and again, he told Nate to take a few easy breaths before taking each shot as a way to calm his system and steady his aim, a lesson he took to heart so well it became an ingrained part of his shooting style.
He grew obsessed with precision accuracy. He practiced his marksmanship nearly every day on a mini-range he’d set up for his BB gun in his backyard. As he got better, he made his targets smaller and smaller. Whenever he could, he went off into the woods to shoot targets or hunt black-tailed deer. He grew into a confident sharpshooter, and before he left high school he could take out a milk jug at six hundred yards with a scoped, customized rifle.
Being a trained shooter, not a natural one, I have nothing but respect for men like Nate Gushwa. Before I joined the Marines, I’d never fired a weapon. I learned everything in the Corps, and while I excelled with an M40 and the Barrett .50 cal, I never developed that touch with our pistols. That’s actually not unusual. Most of us shooters are better on one weapon than others.
Nate Gushwa was the exception to that rule. On a lead-filled day in Baghdad, that unusual ability played a key role in the largest battle fou
ght by 2–162 Infantry since the end of World War II.
AUGUST 6, 2004
NORTHEAST BAGHDAD
The frantic call reached 2–162’s operations center just after lunchtime. An Iraqi police station north of Sadr City reported it was being blitzed by an all-out Mahdi Militia attack. Without assistance, they were sure to be overrun and killed to the last man. Minutes later, the Iraqi Police called in to say another station was under attack as well. Mahdi Militiamen were boiling out of the Sadr City slums and pouring en masse into the area, which on American maps was labeled Zone 22. They were battling the cops (supposedly), laying roadside bombs, and setting up fighting positions and barricades in the streets.
Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hendrickson launched the scout platoon to go investigate. Lieutenant Ross Boyce had five Humvees that day. Four were armored M1114s that could withstand direct hits from most types of RPGs. The fifth, which Boyce put in the middle of his column, was the platoon’s “Rat Rig.” This was a soft-topped, unarmored Humvee commanded by Sergeant Andy Hellman. Andy was a low-key, unassuming scout of average build and stature whose dark eyes hinted at the cagey intellect he possessed. He’d driven around Baghdad all spring in the Rat Rig, taking pride in the ridiculous level of risk such excursions entailed.
Boyce was running lean that day, as many of his men were home on leave. Maries and several sniper teams were still deployed to the MOI and Sheraton, leaving only fourteen men to crew five rigs. Out of necessity, sniper Nate Gushwa manned the turret-mounted M240 Bravo machine gun in the lead Humvee. Darren Buchholz was supposed to go along, too, but he injured his back shortly before the platoon departed and could hardly move. Nate saw him suddenly crumple to the ground next to his Humvee as he was loading his gear aboard. The men carried him to the battalion aid station, where the medics shot him full of painkillers and corticosteroids. He dragged himself back to his room and passed out, feeling utterly awful that he could not roll with his brothers.
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