OCTOBER
BACKGROUND
October witnessed important shifts in the Bush administration's footing with respect to Iraq. On 2 October David Kay, leader of the U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, reported that no weapons had been found after a three-month, $300 million search. This, combined with the continuing lack of a demonstrable connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, undercut much of the original logic for the invasion of Iraq. Arguments supporting the war increasingly turned to the bloodthirsty tyranny of Saddam Hussein as being a disaster to his own people and ultimately, if not immediately, a danger to the rest of the world. The replacement of his pariah regime with a functioning democracy in strategically located, oil-rich Iraq would have a salutary effect throughout the troubled Middle East.
This grander vision for Iraq required more in the way of effective reconstruction and international support if it was to succeed. On 5 October National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice assumed control of the reconstruction of Iraq. This migration of responsibility into the White House underscored a renewed emphasis on building Iraq into a viable state. Diplomatic efforts on the part of the United States and the United Kingdom secured a unanimously approved United Nations Security Council resolution supporting an international force, led by the United States as executive agent, for Iraqi stabilization and reconstruction. The practical effects of such an endorsement were not immediately apparent to the troops on the ground.
Meanwhile, death and destruction continued. Indeed, 27 October was the bloodiest day since the fall of Saddam Hussein, with thirty-five people killed and twenty-two injured in suicide attacks on the Red Crescent headquarters and three police stations in Baghdad. Ba'athist diehards were still a threat, as were foreign terrorists determined to derail the coalition vision for Iraq and a not-particularly-Ba'athist native resistance to troops too often perceived and portrayed as infidels and occupiers. Cooperation among these several sources of resistance was difficult to ascertain. It was probably messy, as was the relationship of all three groups to common crime and criminals. Iraqis surveyed during this period believed themselves more vulnerable to crime than to political violence.
Foreign terrorists were not geographically constrained and could strike virtually anywhere, though they were more efficient if they
had safe havens from which to
base themselves. Ba'athist hardliners were diminishing in number but tended to locate in the pockets of native resistance. This resistance did have a geographical aspect to it. Television viewers were becoming familiar with the so-called Sunni Triangle and such hotbeds of resistance as Fallujah, Ramadi, and Samarra. Insurgents within these sizable towns actively contested the presence of coalition troops. Over time they wittingly or unwittingly provided havens for foreign terrorists, Ba'athists, and criminals as well.
Captain Brown's foray into Samarra should be viewed in the context of attempting to pacify a geographical center of resistance. By and large the fighting, though chaotic, went his way. As we shall see, during his second fortnight in Samarra his command was attacked only once; whereas during its first week it was attacked several times a day. Achieving this relative security necessarily involved heavy-handed treatment that incarcerated hundreds, cowed thousands, and tenuously persuaded the remaining population that cooperating with the coalition was the better option. There were, however, no reliable Iraqi military forces or political infrastructure to turn the city over to after it had been subdued. There also seemed to be no practical limits to insurgents' capabilities to replace appalling casualties.
2 October: We did the Op Order for Operation Industry Clean Up
in the morning and then rolled down there for a daylight leaders' recon. What a huge chop shop! It's about 500-plus buildings of car shops and machine shops. Our hit time is 0700, and we are the main effort. Funny, I've been here twelve hours and we are the battalion main effort already. They are really pouring on the support for us, so that's a good deal. The neighborhood is
rough. We rolled out with the tanks in lead; they isolated the area and used the ICDC to keep people back. They actually are a good asset when told exactly what to do and fixed in place. We were supposed to do a walkthrough and investigate suspicious-looking areas ... okay, that's all of Iraq for you. We roll in and go through a couple of shops. Within five minutes we got seven RPGs, fifteen AKs, and a bunch of demolitions for IEDs. Okay, this place gets rolled. Every lock comes off every door, and every room gets searched. We go into a frenzy. Guys are bashing locks with sledgehammers and crowbars. We start pulling stuff out of the woodwork. Multiple IED labs complete with initiating systems. Weapons market-type activity ... fifty RPGs in a shed, blasting caps hidden in air filters ... game on.
We detain some guys out in the street, and they get cuffed and bagged. I get them with the psyops campaign. I start teaching them some Spanish words
so they can get by when they spend the rest of their life in Guantanamo Bay. They freak out. One of the four-foot-tall, 250-pound mothers comes out and starts pleading for us not to take her son to Cuba. I tell her the only way he can stay in Iraq is to tell us the owner. They, of course, sell someone out ... probably not the owner, but he will be of equal intelligence value. The lady starts kissing me all over. The guys are laughing and snapping pictures. She holds her face up to mine, cheek to cheek-hilarious. I tell her we won't send her son to Cuba, but the rest of the guys are going. They start crying and
selling out everyone. The MPs start moving the 5-tons forward and policing up the material ... they have to get a flat rack and do multiple turns for all the crap we are finding.
They push a psyops team to us. They have this huge speaker system and start blasting the command message. I police those guys up and give them a new mission: rock and roll music. We get "Welcome to the Jungle," Metallica, and all kinds of other stuff. It's hilarious. The locals are terrified of us. We are all in BDUs and camo'ed up. Even our interpreter is frightened of us. He keeps asking me what kind of special unit we are. The scene is classic. Guns and Roses blasting down the street and 100 infantrymen smashing locks and pulling out mortars, blasting caps, recoilless rifles, AKs, machine guns, ammunition, RPGs, Russian Mark-19s, sniper rifles, and weapons we had never seen before. It was the largest collection of weapons the brigade had found since April, when the stuff was still in bunkers. It was the largest cache outside of bunkers that I have ever heard about. It was pretty funny because Lieutenant Colonel Sassaman said I'm giving you forty-eight hours to clean up Samarra and then I'm coming up there to check
on your progress. Morale was sky high, although we were smoked. It was pretty cool doing a mission this size and being the ranking guy on the objective ... talk about free rein.
We finally finish up the objective, and I get the word we still have to run the worthless all-night OPs. My guys are smoked. I can't believe it. We leave the objective and head back to get the guys chow. I plan on inserting the OP ... with the entire company
and section of tanks. The tankers love us now. They are struggling with the whole self-imposed restrictive ROE. I can't believe no one came down here and searched this place. Oh well, you lose your rights when you harbor weapons for terrorists. I sent up the report that we broke a couple of locks and knocked down some of the doors of the more suspicious areas ... I didn't say it was 500 locks and suspicious doors and multiple cars (they had a report of a vehicle-borne improvised explosive
device). The higher-ups are absolutely thrilled. That always helps. The BUB went well, and the battalion commander told all the guys that went on the battalion mission that they did a good job.
3 October: Apparently, Anaconda is under mortar siege again, so our absence
was noted. Competency is a curse. We came back to our dirt field and got the guys ready to insert the OP. I missed breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I did have a powerbar, though, vanilla. We rolled out to test-fire our weapons-a novelty around here.
As we were getting ready to shoot, a call comes across the net that they got a man down and need an aerial medevac out on Route 1. I got the company ready to roll. The TOC kept on denying these guys assets. They want a better grid, description of injury, condition of vehicle, what happened, who the unit is, the helicopter can't land out there (what, in a desert?), etc. I am getting furious. The guy is pleading on the net, and we are talking about recovering the truck he got hit in. I am furious. I keep on trying to get a grid, but no dice. I can't get through. We rolled the whole company south hoping to get something. The attack aviation guys finally just took charge of the situation and worked it from their angle. You can just hear the guy bleeding on the net, and I felt so absolutely helpless. I sat on the Bradley and cried with frustration. By the time they relayed the grid to us, attack aviation had the medevac bird inbound. I was so pissed. They were calling up about applying a tourniquet, he's going into shock, amount of blood lost, tourniquet ineffective, lips blue, starting CPR, continuing CPR. Yeah, thanks for the bird-you're about thirty minutes too late. Our policy is any wounded American in sector means it's a race for all combat vehicles to get there.
Here, it felt almost like what is the minimum I need to do to get through this. I and the XO were both incredibly frustrated. I don't know if they could have saved him, but we sure could have done a helluva lot better on that one.
We drove down and set in the OP and then ran the gauntlet back. Very scary place. After that incident, I just had everyone punch up
HE. "I'm trying to level this town without my boss finding out." (I adapted this from the British: "I'm trying to burn this country
to the ground without my boss knowing about it ... the problem is he can see what I am doing from the base camp.") It is peaks and valleys here. You destroy a weapons market and an American soldier dies (first reports are he was the Air Defense Artillery Battalion CSM). Tragedy. I think the politicians would have a completely different perspective on this country if they spent twenty
minutes dealing with the a-holes I have to deal with out here. I don't know if I should feel good about finding all those weapons or just scared at how much stuff is out there. Oh yeah, they are supposed to launch surface-to-surface missiles at the battalion TOC tomorrow. Hopefully, we found most of those missiles today.
4 October: We had a couple of boring periods of time. We rolled the whole company out after someone told
us they were going to attack; but they wouldn't let us go into the city, just around the base. I figured we would go test-fire some
weapons at the range for a deterrent. Of course, someone at battalion no-goed that idea because we couldn't see far enough to clear
the test-fire range ... it's a berm. People just don't all think the same. I was standing outside by the track when Whoom! Whoom! Incoming mortar rounds ... great. I jumped into the XO's track, and we closed the ramp. We had guys just standing around
outside watching the explosions. I started yelling for them to get inside the buildings. Once they realized what was going on, everyone ran for cover. I guess we just got used to loud explosions all the time. They fired six rounds, and then we rolled out looking for them. We set up a traffic control point and worked on really inconveniencing the people of Samarra. They really do piss
you off.
Our daytime patrols have not been very eventful. We just question the guys that are rude to us and go search their houses. This one
kid was acting like a punk toward me, so we searched his house. I told the dad the only reason I entered it was because of his kid acting like a punk. All the women just started wailing at the guy. Good action. We did the nightly OP insertion. So nerve-racking driving down these alleyways with zero standoff. They have every advantage in the world ... zero standoff, surprise, and very easy escape if they act swiftly. We dropped the OP and rolled back. As we were driving along, we smacked a wall that we couldn't see due
to the washout from all the light on our NODs. Pretty funny. It was in the industrial area that we pulled all the RPGs out of the other day, so no heartburn about running into stuff down there.
We came back up Route Rattler when all of a sudden my vehicle lost internal commo. My driver stopped according to standard operating procedure, and the convoy kept rolling. We had a break in contact of about 800 meters by the time I
got down and told the XO what was happening. Fortunately, my radios still worked, and we just had the XO pull forward so that we could follow him. This sucks. Donk! RPG zinging left to right across the field by the lead
formation. You got to be kidding me. This is like one of those Ranger School missions where they throw all these variables and mishaps at you. I can't talk. They are shooting RPGs at my brand-new platoon leader; he reports being attacked by bottle rockets, and we have a break in contact. The dismounts get out and start shooting at something, so I think we are taking small-arms fire ... total chaos. We pull up to the dismount point, and I hop down to try to figure it all out. We start talking to the locals and find out the getaway vehicle was a white Opel. They must have thought his Bradley was the trail vehicle. It took forever to gain situational awareness, and you just don't have that kind of time. We have to action left immediately and start suppressing suspected enemy vehicles and locations. We cleared some houses and then came back home without incident and without commo. Contacts like that are so frustrating.
6 October: Well, we are still sleeping out in the moon dust and it's day seven ... great. I am sure we won't leave by day ten. We did our daylight patrol down by the Golden Mosque. They had all kinds of shops and cool crazy stuff going on. We saw an Arnold Schwarzenegger gym with a bunch of dudes working out in it ... probably coordinating their next attack. The Golden Mosque has the tenth and eleventh caliphs buried underneath it, so it's quite a historical site. There were thousands of people out there giving us a mixed reception. We practiced all our urban movement techniques, and the guys looked really good doing it. They have definitely come a long way with MOUT. We rolled back for the BUB and dinner prior to making the nightly gun run.
I guess the battalion had a rough night last night. An RPG hit one of the tanks and took off a guy's arm and took out another guy's
eye. They were sitting at a site pulling fixed security on a dam. The same place every night for the same amount of time. Ridiculous. Violates every rule in the book, and I just can't get them to listen to me about that kind of stuff. Well, that sucks. We went out on the gun run. The dropoff was good, and we moved back with the infantry walking by the burnt-out hotel. It took us a little while to get moving, but it looked pretty good. Donk! Here comes the Roman candle ... It's so surreal. You just sit there mesmerized watching the RPGs fly by your face. So pretty.... Oh, sh-!
"Contact front," I yell. "Start firing coax forward now," I yell. My turret is facing left, and my gunner opens up on the empty shop stand.
"No not you, turn it to the right." The XO's track keys off our blasting at the shop, and he opens up on it. What is in that shop? Right now we are engaging two areas: my "evil" shop and the target area. The infantry lays down a base of fire on the two targets. We start the infantry moving after the initial fusillade. Rounds you fire make a certain sound. Rounds fired in front of you make another sound. Rounds fired from behind you forward make a third sound, and rounds fired at you a fourth. All four combined with an RPG floating by makes for quite the experience. Looked crazy. Rounds just zinging down the street ... fortunately, after two seconds they are all ours. "Cease fire. Is anyone hurt?" We start taking the Green 2 [standard status] report and trying to get situational awareness. It's so hard to figure out which way to move after such a violent response-we shot rooftops, the RPG launch site, and the evil store. During the shootout someone hit a transformer behind us that sent electricity screaming down to the next one that blew up quite spectacularly above my head. It makes it crazy when you don't know exactly what is going on and you're getting showered with sparks.
We got the infantry moving down the right alley and apprehended their getaway car with seven RPGs and four launchers. They would have shot a lot more had our initial actions not terrified them. Okay, score! I go to get down on the ground, and rounds start zinging by me. Sh-. I jump back in the track. What was that ... oh, that's 2d Platoon shooting out a light. Ricochets. I flip out. The XO flipped out real bad on them, so I got back into chill-out mode and started searching some houses in the local area. Adrenaline and stress are crazy high. We finish questioning some guys. They, of course, love America and want to help ... since we have lots of guns pointed at them and they are terrified. We then have the Bradley that got shot at run over the getaway car. We take off the plates and find one of the guys' sandals. I want to conduct Operation Cinderella next for these a-holes. We roll back to the CP without issue. What a terrifying sound the RPG makes in a condensed city, it sounds like a M203 on crack! You just sit there flinching until you see it fly by. Then it's game on ... crazy times.
8 October: Everyone was raving about our actions on contact. I am just pissed that the insurgents got away. They decided to let us go on the offensive now and start doing some raids. We performed the gun run without incident. We went down the route that provides the most standoff and fewest alleyways to take keyhole shots at us. I think we might just roll that way more often and fight them on our terms. Varying the route is good, but they are working
interior lines on us and engaging us from the worst locations. If we role the easy route, one of two things happens: they don't engage us, or they engage us on our terms. It's like building an engagement area. The danger is IEDs and the ambush ... but that is happening on every route-might as well take the punches on our terms where we can engage them best.
We got back and had an informant give us the call for an on-call raid. I got the MPs, scouts, and a portion of Alpha Company attached to me ... I got everything outside the wire. The scouts mark the objective, and we move through the two buildings real quick and smooth. I start talking to the detainees, and they are not the right ones. They show us the guy's house. We hit that house and get four more males. They tell us another bad guy lives next door ... what the hell. We take that house too. We go through what we thought was a door, but it was a wall to their living room, and the family was sitting in there watching TV. Way scary for them. The lieutenant colonel is on pins and needles when we are operating out there. I think he thinks we are going to have an international incident ... we are just trying to detain every of-age male in Iraq. We get a couple of AKs and then pass the
detainees off to the MPs. Turns out, the third and fourth houses have the bad guys. Good score, but battalion is a little edgy with
how we just haphazardly enter houses down there. Sometimes, it's just Jerry Springer actions. You have to own the town, or they won't respect you. Squeeze them tight all the time is how you gain respect in this town. I have read all the hearts and minds literature; it won't work in Samarra. I wish it would, but it is a different mentality here.
We roll back. The next day we do our standard protect FOB Stoddard by patrolling along the riverbank looking for a red Suburban. Once the Apaches came on station, we got to chase every red car in the city. That night we have a simultaneous takedown with SF at 0300. We roll out at 0250. I have one platoon isolate the objective at 0310, and 1st Platoon goes in at 0315. We pull a Brad up to the wall, and the guys climb on top of it onto a roof. They start freezing the inner courtyard down while guys hop down to enter the house. The gate comes open; the men come out. I ask them their names ... score-they incriminate themselves. My flashlight broke, so I have been using my under-gun light to shine in their faces ... that is more intimidating. We process them and load them in one of the Brads. I have them cut one of the old men free ... we got our targets. We speed away 0325. The isolation platoon links up at 0330, and we roll to the CMOC [Civil-Military Operations Center] to drop them off. The SF guys are finishing their objective about the
same time ... damn, we are getting good. They have only twelve guys going in with nontactical vehicles. We got eighty guys moving around with all these Brads, and they are just a little bit faster than us. At 0340 we pass the prisoners off to the MPs and roll into the command post at 0350. The SF guys call me up and say we got their two targets. It was just one of those sweet operations that you are glad to be part of-more bad guys off the street. The offensive is so much better.
9 October: "Hey, do you like getting donked?""Hell no, I hate that noise.""Yeah, me too."It's always amazing to me how we deal with terrifying situations. We get RPGs launched at us from these narrow alleyways and fifteen minutes later we are joking about it, knowing we are going to get donked again. We had to patrol down some narrow streets during our daylight patrol. We are just cruising down the streets dodging low-hanging wires and trying to figure out how to clear through this sector. I am watching the infantry on the ground, and they are doing well. Crack! Crack! We are shooting around a corner. I am two Brads back from the squad shooting, and I can't see the target around a building. "Get the Brad out into the street to support the infantry," I yell. The problem is that part of the squad is shooting across the front deck, using it as cover. We got the Brads moving, and the squad starts running down some roads. I don't even know what we are shooting at yet, but we follow the infantry ... it's a great squad.
Situation on the contact: RPG firer is in a white man-dress with face covering. We engaged him before he could get a shot off. We are getting better. Target acquisition is so hard, and the infantry was shooting at 150 meters from alternate firing positions around a corner ... that's tough. We did the chase for awhile. All I am thinking is "please don't donk me, please don't donk me." I
really don't want to hear that noise again.
We start pulling spider-web checkpoints around the area. I link up with the squad that fired, and we start walking the area. I have
a fire team with me, and we move to the firing position. I try to feel where the shooter would go. We move down the alleyway and over toward a rooftop where they thought they saw him. I get up on the rooftop and spot an abandoned building. We
start clearing it; I feel much better being in a stack clearing rooms than in a Bradley about to be donked.
The guys are good; they just fall in behind me, and it's one man, two man, etc., as we clear the building ... cache. We grab a bunch of AK-47s and magazines. I get back on the roof, and we start hopping buildings ... so Mogadishu. We reach an impassable area
and clear down into someone's house. I love top-down attacks because you are coming down the stairs freezing all the homeowners down, and they freak out because you entered the house from other than the front door. I talk to them for a little while and then we move on; I have to go to the BUB. The general is there, so everyone is a little stressed. I guess the general just listened on the radio to our contact-he wants us to fight. It was a real good action. We don't realize the second- and third-order effects of our fighting these guys, but human intelligence has increased three times since we got here. I still don't want to get donked. The BUB proved pretty standard. I had to pick up a photographer for tonight's patrol. I gave him the "don't do anything stupid" brief and never be more than ten feet from a soldier. They don't realize how rough this town is ... I don't think anyone does. We head back to the CP and pick up the company for the night patrol. Standard OP dropoff (I think that OP is so worthless) and we put the infantry on the ground at Power Line Road. They clear the alleys while the tanks and Brads secure the field to the right. We get all the infantry loaded back up and start moving north. Donk! "Sh-!" Boom!
i>
"What do we got?" I yell.
"Trail tank hit."
"Move to secure it."
"It's taking forever ... how bad hit?"
"I don't know. There's smoke coming out of it."
"Sh-, we need to start shooting now. Figure out where it came from and fire coax."
The tank blew a halon bottle, and no one could breath for a couple seconds.They come up on the net and say it was from the field to
the south.
"Get on line and open up in that field." I crosstalk with our OP, and we fire a burst into the area where the contact came from-my coax jams but comes right back up. It's a pain in the butt because I have the computer right in front of the gun door, so I get squashed in the turret whenever I have to fix it with all my gear on. "Hey, are those rounds anywhere near you guys?" I check just to be sure. "No. You're good, sir." Okay, blast it. There is an all-out fusillade into the open area. We have another explosion to the north, and I send a platoon to check it out-it's not a donking, though. We work on the field area for a little while and check on the tank-no damage. That is really scary-we've had two tanks go down in this city to RPGs already. Not too comforting ... they are destructible. I don't think the reporter liked the patrol too much after the donk. The tankers think they might have hit something out in the field. I call the whole thing off, and we move back to the base. I hate this town.
I read a general's letter in the Assembly [the U.S. Military Academy alumni magazine] where he begrudges the "noise-ex"-firing at unknown targets to suppress the enemy. Let me tell you-I am a huge fan of the noise-ex. It ain't right on a live-fire range, but in combat it's a necessity to scare the sh- out of the enemy, build confidence in the men, and take the wind out of the enemy's sails. They shoot at us only once for a reason-the noise-ex. Prior to the arrival of our bullish tactics, we had
multiple shots and reloads from the enemy in this city. Now they shoot and run ... fast. Shoot as much as fast as you can at the enemy regardless of straight-up target acquisition-if you saw him there before, shoot there and continue to look for him. Recon by fire-this is not a surgical operation. There is a time and place for that-it's called a raid-and we are very good at that. Controlled execution of a great deal of violence is the order of the day for the Bradleys. If you think you can argue against me on that point, then you haven't been there. Good luck, you'll lose.
11 October: I thought we were going to leave on 10 October, but they argued for us to stay here and guard the bank during the Iraqi currency exchange ... great. That's a definite way to get shot. Park your Brad next to a bank offloading a bunch of money. They don't want the money; they want to donk you, just read the graffiti. Our patrols during the day are pretty quick. I don't think anyone wants to mess around on the ground anymore. Everyone is on pins and needles. It doesn't take much to get violent with these guys. I don't blame them. The populace of this town is never going to like you, so they need to fear you.
The mortars continue to fall. The ADC-S came to visit our FOB. Right after the helicopters landed ... Boom, Boom, Boom ... 82-mm. mortars. I don't think he believed that could happen. We pushed down for the thunder run and split into multiple elements on different routes. I wanted to work the periphery of the city, where they had a lot of contact before. This time I put the tanks and Brads farther out of the city with a little standoff and let the infantry clear the alleyways. We worked a bunch of different areas simultaneously en route back. We are not supposed to patrol at night. I take half the battalion out with me every time we roll. No one donked us, so we felt pretty good as we headed back to the FOB.
We parked the Brads and then Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Mortar barrage. I got into the back of 65, and we shut the ramp. We were screaming for battalion to counterfire. Okay, they fired two rounds ... great job guys ... they fired twenty at us. It's almost like we don't want to win because that would mean we have to be violent. This town will never like you; they must fear you. We sent the platoon to man the bank. Yeah, they got donked with an RPG two hours into it. They returned fire with small arms and searched all the houses next to the alleyway. This place sucks. We need to just leave and let them screw up again and then reinvade
properly-in a manner where all the RPGs don't just disappear into the countryside.
12 October: So they want to send us into Zone 8 for our last few days here. That's cool. It's the worst place, but we know how to fight it now. We keep the Brads and tanks on the outside of the city and let the infantry walk the streets. We keep a loose outer cordon with some decent standoff so they can't take keyhole shots at our vehicles. The system works pretty well. The infantry walked down, and the Brads kept their standoff to the east. We had a good system going on, and the infantry did very well. One platoon caught a guy burying AK-47s in his yard. I guess it's the town crop. We policed up that guy and
his weapons while the other platoons continued to clear. We had a little separation on line as we moved through the city. The other
two platoons reached the LOA [limit of advance] early, so we had them pulling local security as the other platoon moved down after securing the local bad guy.
I started getting antsy because we were sitting there a little longer than I wanted, but time moves so slow when you feel the pressure. I kept on pestering Blue to pick up the pace, but I feel pretty good about the standoff in the field. Suicide to attack from the open field to the south, and they would
get tagged by the infantry trying to come out of the alleyways. Donk! "Sh-! RPG! Contact!" Crack, Crack, Crack goes the coax. Chaos until they report a red motorcycle moving north. We blast it. I try to establish a cordon with the Brads. The motorcycle screams down the gauntlet of infantry who blast it as we move the Brads north to cut them off. Two guys on the bike, one dead guy slumped across the back. We are tagging the bike with small arms, but you need to hit it with HE in order to stop it. I've extensively studied the effects of small arms on vehicles recently; our bullets just rip through them, causing less damage then one would think. Vehicles will travel for a while on flats and all shot up. We go on a red-motorcycle bloodlust for awhile-detaining every guy on a red motorcycle and running over his bike ... winning the hearts and minds ... not my job. Let the State Department do that. That goes on for about thirty minutes before I call the search off. He will either go to the hospital or bleed out. I talk to Staff Sergeant De Wolfe, whose track shot him. I was around the corner, so I couldn't see the engagement.
"Hey, did you hit the guy?" I ask.
"You know, sir, how in the Westerns where they have the shootout and the guy gets hit and flips over in the air ... yeah, that happens with coax too. The RPG hit the berm in front of us. It was actually kinda funny that they thought they could shoot us like that."
"So you hit him?"
"I'm 100 percent sure. His buddy put him on the back of the bike around the corner from us. My gunner said he is dead."
"Okay, good engagement. Let's roll."
We remount the Brads and roll north on Power Line Road with the tanks. The engagements are so fast. It's over in thirty seconds. They fire and flee. We fire and pursue. Unfortunately, they have every advantage in regards to hide and seek ... except when they try to run the infantry gauntlet ... bad route selection. The guys are getting much better at returning fire and pursuing immediately. I make the turn onto Albino Street. Donk! "Sh-! RPG! Contact right-they shot at the XO's track."
"Cunningham, turn the car around," I yell.
"Are you for real?"
"Yeah, let's go."
We reach the field just in time to see all of Blue Platoon screaming down the alleyway. That is an awesome sight. Brads move down Italian-style alleyways at forty-five miles an hour crushing everything in their path. We drop the ramp and grab some guy running from us. He has a motorcycle, a military build, and a bad attitude. They detain him. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong company, a-hole. You know who's shooting if it ain't you. He's going to the CMOC. He doesn't want to cooperate after the platoon tied him up.
Controlled violence. We don't mess with them once handcuffed. If they get roughed up in the detention process ... tough. We lack the Los Angeles Police Department's training in the use of less-than-violent detention means. If they are in the alley, they are spotting for the bad guys or firing. I hate the double donking. It's not even dark yet. We get back to the CP and AAR the contact. It was some good action. It is such an unnatural action to move toward the contact, but it's our reflex now ... muscle memory. I don't really have any improvement AAR comments. The company is on it. The city knows it too ... that's why we get more intelligence and only single RPG shots now. They know the fusillade cometh, and we always roll ten Brads deep with well-trained infantry on the ground. The platoons move so smooth in the city, soft-clearing all their sectors. You can tell these guys have been working together for awhile. It's not like everyone knows only what they need to do. They know what they need to do and what everyone else on the ground needs to do ... as well as what everyone in their platoon is doing at any given moment. Clear high, low, car, deep, doorways, high/low corners, Rolling T in the alleyways, left side covers right's deep high and vice versa, trail element picks up the rear, and Brads cordon off. It's a constant clearing drill, and they all know it. I guess it helps when you have the "in your face" impetus of a Somalia-type town complete with mini-shootouts to learn in.
15 October:Well, the HETs are coming tomorrow to take us back to our old area. I guess the LSA is under siege, and Lieutenant Colonel Sassaman wants to burn my old town to the ground-he just might do it. Plus they just don't have the facilities for us to stay in up here. We need to get out of the heat, sand, and dirt. So frustrating living in the worst living conditions in the division. I feel sorry for Aggressor Six [A/1-66 Armor commander]; he so
wants to win and he always rolls with us. You just feel so lonely out there. We rolled out to test-fire the weapons prior to our day patrol ... last one up here. I looked over toward the ruins and figured ... company picture. Easy last day. We went down to the coliseum built during the twelfth caliph's reign. Pretty sweet. We got some good pictures and then rolled out for a quick patrol in Zone 6. We had some grids from the Q36 radar of mortar-firing locations that I wanted to check out. Chief Albreche, aka Radar, from the Q36 radar, wanted to come with us. He's an old guy with Somalia experience, and he loves infantry patrols. We hit the dropoff point; and five minutes later Red One, First Lieutenant Terrence, calls up ... we got a cache.
"Okay, how big?"
"Give me a minute and will send more info."
"Okay."
"A guy in a yellow number 22 soccer jersey ran from the cache site."
Five minutes goes by, and my dismount RTO Cutuca calls up in his thick Romanian accent, "Sir, I have number 22." Hilarious. Sweet action. We caught him trying to get into a taxi. I hop down and push security out. I know the donk is coming. We pull out 10 RPG launchers, 3 mortar tubes, 35 rockets, numerous small arms, and enough demo to bring down the Sears Tower ... with enough det cord to stretch from here to Baghdad and back. We grab up the shop owners, discuss the living conditions at Guantanamo Bay, and then have them stack all the stuff in the street. I get battalion to push the MPs and a 5-ton down to cart this stuff away. I don't have nearly enough space. This place. The MPs show up with the 5-ton and Mike, the interpreter. I love that guy. I think the feeling is mutual because he loves coming out with our company. We detained two uncooperative guys that definitely looked foreign, with the wahabi beards. We put them up against the wall blindfolded and flex-cuffed. I had the shop owners load the truck while we pulled security. I am all about employing the local populace in our endeavors to clean up their country. We get the stuff loaded.
Donk! "Sh-!" The XO and I slide back into the store and stare at the 5-ton with all the demolitions loaded on it in front of us ... I sure hope it doesn't hit there! Game on! We step out of the building and Blue's Bradleys are coaxing the RPG site 600 meters away. We start sprinting across the field.
The XO and I get the step on everyone, so we are way out front ... I sure hope they follow me. It's a Civil War charge across the field. I look over my shoulder, and everyone is running toward the contact. Good. The other Brads start roaring up as we continue to engage. My driver pulls up next to me ... it's kinda comical. I jump up on the Bradley and start doing the company commander thing as we roll. We cordon off the area and roll through ... lots of blood in the vicinity of the RPG alley. Destroyed car with blood in it, dead guys on the street ahead. We search the area for a little while, but these guys can just vanish it seems.
We continue the hunt when Crack, crack, crack go the small arms. We're in small-arms contact with a black BMW that tried to blow through our cordon-it's the same BMW we have seen at the other contacts. My wingman, the XO, heads south while I go north. There are abandoned motorcycles all over the streets ... time to win the hearts and minds with our motorcycle campaign. They really should just ban them; they use them at every contact. I hear a long burst of coax and then get talked onto my wingman's location. We pull up ... he found the car. Jimmy looks at me from up in the turret and just shakes his head. The car is smoked. I have no idea how it kept rolling, kudos to BMW. Our marksmanship is pretty good. I can say from the number of bullet holes in the car, but it just kept rolling on flats. The driver lived, but I am not sure how.
We got three more dead guys in the car ... lots of holes. The interesting thing is that they have bandages from previous wounds ...
you have to wonder if these guys have donked you before. There is blood all over the seat and pieces of bone where the driver sat. We hunt him for awhile; he is bleeding bad. He must have gotten in another car because we lost the trail. The BMW is still running,
playing Arabic music. We call up to have them check the hospital, but somehow the guys we shoot never go to the hospital. One of my
future platoon leaders took a bullet or shrapnel to the leg, and we work the medevac for him as we simultaneously go after this guy. We block the road off, but some jackass wants to run on through. The guys are on edge since we are supposed to have a car bomb in the next few days, so they take his car down with M240. The wheels come off ... it's not a BMW. They move on the car and find it's clean, although we did shoot the dumb ass in the leg: 7.62-mm.... compound fracture. It's nasty looking, too-I tell the CLS to throw some gauze on it, and I recruit a local to take him to the hospital.
These people just don't take us seriously in this town. We so easily could have killed him. If I see two Bradleys blocking the street, an armed soldier signaling for me to turn around, and everyone else turning around, I would not try to squeeze by ... taking Albino over Market Street just ain't that important. Okay, good action guys, keep moving. We police up the scene a bit, make sure the MPs got away and our medevac is good. We remount and head out. So much for a quiet day. The battalion is very pleased with the actions. Our guys are on it. We just can't find all the guys we shot, but we are hitting them. This stuff doesn't bother me until I think about it later, and then I realize how much this whole thing sucks. It could be so different for these people if they just accepted that it's over and they need to work with us to set up a new government. So much potential, so many a-holes.
We all get back to the CP, and I call everything up. Second Lieutenant Tumlinson is fine and will be returned to duty. Good. I hate
that part. They asked me what I did with the bodies of the bad guys ... I left them there. I don't have any bunk space where I am. Okay, we'll send the Iraqi police. We probably will have a riot now. I go to bed and tell the CQ to wake me at 0645. Crazy day. One
of the tanks hit a mine going into its perpetual blocking position. I wonder why they put that mine there ... is it because we go there every night? The night proves really quiet. The SF guys are getting lots of intelligence for future raids. We have definitely
stirred up the hornet's nest, but it has caused people to fear us. Once they fear you, they try to cooperate with you more and then
you can go quietly and get the bad guys instead of having a running gun battle through the middle of town each night. The guys did awesome in the actions, and we saved some American lives tonight by getting that cache off the streets. I just wonder how much sh- is still out there.
16 October: It will be good to be back in our old AO. At least they are only indirectly opposing us through mortars on Anaconda and IEDs on the road. Boom! Boom! Boom! It's 0635 and we are getting mortared ... up in the morning, out of the rack ... greeted at dawn by a mortar attack. I hate this place. I roll out with a platoon to Anacondafor a meeting with [Maj. Gen. Antonio M.] Taguba [then the deputy commanding general for Third Army, a colleague, friend, and neighbor of Captain Brown's parents]. I don't know who he is, but he seems real nice. Must be a friend of my parents. The aide kept asking me if I was the right Captain Brown, and I kept telling him I didn't know, but I was willing to go with the flow. The general was great. Real nice guy and talked about stuff we wanted to talk about. You don't
get that very often. Felt so good to be back inside my big bunker with huge standoff. It will be nice to go for a run without mortars falling, foot-deep moon dust, or an ever-shrinking, claustrophobic perimeter. Turns out the guys we smoked today were involved in a plot for a suicidal car bombing. They may have been trying to recon our perimeter under contact for future operations. Suicide bombers terrify me. Well, he was half successful ... with the suicide part. Found out my plebe roommate, Jeff Sutton, died in a climbing accident in Alaska. Unreal.
18 October: We got back to the bunker and were to stand down for maintenance and a general refit after the previous craziness. In the midst of our stand-down, we get reintegrated into the battalion-as the main effort for three different missions over the next thirty-six hours. Cool. I just can't get any good sleep lately. Our first mission is site security for the Balad City elections. So funny going through Balad because they all love you there. I am still in the street-fight mode during all our leader recons, and I think I am freaking everyone out. You just can't relax. The elections prove a great feat. The locals respond extremely positively, and lots of people vote; some liked it so much they voted twice. It's hilarious explaining democracy to them. Sassaman keeps on telling them that they will follow the same voting rules as they did under Saddam when they elected him. I love the reactions from the locals. No violence at all. Amazing. If they held an election in Samarra, we would have an all-out civil war.
In the midst of the elections, I have to go run a raid on some wahabi extortionists. We call it the Red Rose Raid. Brigade assembled all this stuff for a Jerry Springer-type raid. We have an informant wearing a yellow shirt and ball cap who will make a money drop at the butcher shop. He must pay some wahabis for "protection." They have the fake money in a black trash bag. It proved
total Matlock amateur hour. We put a squad in overwatch from an abandoned building and established an outer cordon with the Bradleys to go into effect on bag drop at high noon. Everything gets set in nice and smooth. We got eyes on, and everyone is in place ... except the wahabis never show. Everyone is shocked, except for us. We do these stupid single-source Jerry Springer raids all the time. The guy probably crashed someone's car and owes him money. We all had visions of a great takedown but knew that it would turn out as bad information.
After we called off that debacle, we headed back out to the election site to finish with the "vote must right to democrats always" election ... that's what
their banners read. It ended well, and we moved right from there out into counterambush sites in the vicinity of the mortar firer's position. The night before they started lobbing these trash-can rockets at the LSA. They are huge and apparently
pretty loud. They jerry-rig an initiation system, and they fly away ... no one knows how to aim them, so they go all over the place. With 15,000 people packed onto the airfield, though, the insurgents really don't need to aim the rockets. The LSA sustained four injuries. Well, nothing happened while we were out there, and it proved another really long night. The next morning we went to
the Eagle Prayer Breakfast and then had the combat stress guys come out and talk to everyone. I finally got to sleep in my bunker. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a normal day.
24 October: We have had a couple decent days, but the randomness goes on and on. I have gone from one battalion commander who only acts on very specific information to a battalion commander who wants us to act on everything. We went into these shops located a kilometer from the "Snake" [LSA Anaconda] and cleared them out prior to receiving a follow-on mission to find Saih Mohammed Huseen, a weapons dealer in our area who is hiding weapons in a well. The information smells very Jerry Springer. It's a double-house takedown, so we give a quick Frago and drive down the road. The TAC showed up with some reporters, and they interviewed me and the XO about the raid.
"Are you surprised that you didn't find anything here?" she asked.
"Hell no, we never find stuff when we are looking for it," the XO tells her.
She keeps on saying that she knows me and Jimmy from somewhere, and this is driving the S-3 crazy because he likes her.
We go on the raid, and the guy is not there. I work my Arabic with one of the locals and he shows us the well, the guy's house, the car, where he went, when he'll return, and everything else. Of course, battalion will not listen to what I am saying and we go on a clear-the-whole-block tirade, finding nothing ... except for a hole near the well where the weapons might have been. We have quite a traffic jam built up by the time I get to the road; the Air Force plans on dropping two 500-pound bombs, so we have to clear the area. I get bored with the random house clearings that we always go on; so I walk down the line of cars, spot the white Opel and green BMW. Bingo. I walk up to the car, hand the guy a piece of paper and pen and tell
him to write down his full name. Yep, it's him. The Iraqis always think I am screwing around with them when I have them write stuff down in Arabic, but it's my JV attempt at being Matlock. I BS with the guy for a little while as I move a squad up
to detain our target and the five guys from Baghdad with him. Everything in this country is so random ... our successes, our failures, everything. We police those guys up and hand them over to the TAC and torment old Roy some more.
Staff Sgt. Cory Blackwell on a cordon and search operation
Raiding a house just outside Balad
The Air Force drops two 500-pound duds. Awesome. We just put 1,000 pounds of IED-making material into someone's backyard. We so talked up the event like it would be the greatest thing ever and really loud: 2,000 meters away ... nothing. We part ways with the TAC and head back to our CP. They move out with their circus of random people and vehicles. As we make the left to go onto AanacConda, the TAC comes into contact ... three RPGs. I turn our formation around, and we start moving down the road to
their action. Fortunately, nothing is hit. They return fire. It came from across the canal. I can't believe the TAC didn't hit anything with the amount of ammo expended. You know contact comes from that side of the canal, so three-fourths of the formation watches that side. We drop off the infantry and cross over a little footbridge to clear the field areas and houses around the area,
finding nothing. It's so frustrating, and the lieutenant colonel and S-3 are pissed. You have to scan always, and we never let the gunners stand up outside the wire, especially at night.
I think everyone thought scanning while moving was kind of an NTC, OC-type deal [this expression refers to techniques stressed by observer-controllers supervising training at the National Training Center] until we went to Samarra. The open field contacts with your thermals up ... we were begging for that kind of easy contact in Samarra. We finished up there and left. I don't know why I was so frustrated with that contact; none of my guys even got shot at, and I really don't know what exactly happened. I just can't help but be critical of every failed engagement these days, and it seemed like such a perfect location to seal the deal. You don't get the wide-open field shots often. We never have. I think I am also frustrated because this area has not had a direct-fire contact in such a long time. You start to think it might be getting safer. It sure freaked out all those reporters.
29 October: Well, we continue to lie out in the field and wait for mortars to fire, but they don't fire when we are in the area. They have good intelligence, and we just keep the screws turned on them tight. I heard the report that Samarra lost two soldiers and had four wounded in a mortar attack. It's so sad, but they still won't counterfire. I think they should just call in all the leaders and lay it out for them. A mortar fires from the city, we will fire back at it. Clean up your city. We laid in 48-hour ambushes and then pulled out. An hour after we pulled the guys out, they called us and said they want us to go to 24-hour operations in our area. Great. Then after the 24-hour operation, we want you to lay in 48-hour ambushes, and we will minimize our presence during Ramadan. Okay, so minimize your presence but conduct continuous
operations. I am really confused. My gunner and driver did get to go on leave. They both have newborn babies at home, so that's great. It sucks that we will get to send so few guys home. I am hoping for 20 percent, but we will see. Some days time can just drag by.
31 October: I have been delinquent in my efforts to remain up to date. I got "stuck" up at brigade for the great Cobb and Datray court-martial. It proved a comedy of errors, but the judge saw through the whole thing and sentenced Cobb to six-and-a-half years. That's a long time. I felt really bad for Cobb and talked to him about it afterward. He is going in at the age of eighteen and coming out at twenty-five. That period of life encompasses so much. Hopefully, he'll be able to turn things around while he is at Leavenworth. Well, brigade was good for me. It felt like R&R. They had these couches that we would sleep on and e-mail and phone access. They also had three outstanding hot meals a day in a wonderful dining facility. I know exactly how to lose touch with reality-move into Anaconda. I don't know what reality is, though. Maybe I am the abnormal one living in an evil fantasyland outside the wire. The vast majority of people in Iraq do not make it outside the wire on
a daily or even weekly basis. After a few days it started getting really weird being up there ... no sense of mission, purpose, or hope.
They had the pictures of the M1A2 that got blown up across the river. Not reassuring. Total catastrophic kill with the turret thrown 100 feet. One guy lived. That is not supposed to happen to main battle tanks. It is the first ever catastrophic kill by the enemy on an M1. All the other incidents have been chalked up to friendly fire or just not catastrophic. Needless to say, it terrifies us all, since a Bradley weighs as much as the M1's turret.
Everyone tends to find fault with the person that got blown up. I think it is a defense mechanism to keep you going. They were briefing that the reason they got blown up stemmed from them continually going to guard this pump house. Well, that's their mission. The pump house did not leave, and there is only one dirt road to get up to it. Fixed-site security is a no-go: it makes you predictable and enables the bad guys to bury a 500-pound IED in the trail you have to use. We are basically doing fixed-site security around the towns for Ramadan. I continually try to get out of it, and we vary our positions. There are only so many places
you can go though without entering the city. It's all about minimizing yourself as a target. Patrolling exposes you to more terrain
that in turn exposes you to more hazards, but not patrolling emboldens the
enemy and allows him to attack LOGPAC convoys and support areas. I can't figure it out.
We had to pick up two New York Times reporters and head back to the base after the trial. As I finish talking to the brigade
commander, I hear from the brigade XO that I have a Bradley on fire. He starts in on me and demands why I have a Bradley 200 meters
north of Lion FOB. I look over at the colonel incredulously, and he looks back at me the same and nods.
"That's where I live, sir."
"Well, how long have you lived there?" he asks, trying to save face in front of the colonel."
Oh, since we got to Balad 125 days ago."
"Oh, I didn't realize that." The XO backs down ... good situational awareness.
My first sergeant comes across the net and says it's over for the Bradley. We keep on reporting its status every twenty minutes ...
like something has changed. The rounds are cooking off, and TOW missiles are flying. Fortunately, we got everyone out of there in time. I can't move down the road, so we go around the north side and take Route Ginger. Quite a fireworks display. The official report reads something like this:
B32 and B33 had LOGPAC security on 30 October. As they returned from this duty, they smelled raw fuel and decided to stop at the
UMCP en route back to our CP at Lion FOB. Sgt. Jacobs, the company mechanic, diagnosed a leak in the fuel line and replaced this line. The track worked without incident, and the crew fueled up at the FTCP [Field Trains Command Post]
since they were low on fuel from the mission-not the leak. The track worked without incident until it arrived 200 meters shy of Lion FOB. The track stalled. The crew restarted the engine and heard a loud pop. S.Sgt. Zawisza, the BC, directed the driver, Pvt. Santiago, to open the engine access panel. Flames shot out of the engine and the sides. The BC directed the driver to drop ramp, and he ran to the back and fought the fire with fire extinguishers. The driver's compartment had flames on the floorboards, and they all got off the track. After using all B32's fire extinguishers, the crew got more from B33 and started pulling sensitive items off the track. They pulled the halon bottles but to no effect since the hatches had all been opened. By this time, the hull was engulfed in smoke and flames, and they could not retrieve the CLU or any more sensitive items, though they tried desperately. The BC succumbed
to smoke inhalation and the B33 BC made the call to evacuate the immediate area, get S.Sgt. Zawisza to the medics, and avoid the round cookoff that followed shortly thereafter (2 x TOWs, 2 x AT4s, 1,200 7.62-mm., 120 AP non-DU, and 230 HE). Lion TOC sent their QRF to cordon off the area and designated the "safe" perimeter. They evacuated all personnel behind this line, and Lion 6 took charge of the overall situation. S.Sgt. Zawisza received oxygen from the Bravo Company medics prior to a command-directed evaluation at 21st CASH.
It made for an extremely painful night. No one wants to believe that a Bradley is just imploding. The next morning we dragged it off the road so al Jazeera couldn't film it. Everyone was freaking out about some reporters seeing it. The irony is the New York
Times guys were in the backseat and took zero interest in the whole thing. Lieutenant Colonel Sassaman was real cool about it and just yelled at me for some guys taking their Kevlars off. "I don't give a rip about the Bradley burning to the ground, but I do
care about guys taking stupid, needless risks with their uniforms outside the wire." I agree. The next day folks descended on the scene and wanted assessments.
"If you drive a car 250,000 miles and one day it catches on fire out on the highway ... do you really ask yourself how it happened?" I understand all the safety implications; but I also understand that we drove 530 kilometers on the Bradleys last week and that was pretty much a normal week. The high
The end of B32
end is often 700 kilometers in a week. We'll see how this one turns out. I am sure somewhere along the line it will
be my fault. The next morning we had a raid up in Alpha Company's sector. I swear they pull us into these things so they can be the
main effort. That's cool, though. It allows us to put 100 kilometers on our Bradleys. Yeah, we had two Bradleys go down on that movement. Recovering the Bradleys is so painful, but the XO is the one that really has to suffer through it. The raid/clearance goes pretty well. We had a bunch of reporters with us and, fortunately, no bad guys.
Most of the entertainment came from the girls' school we went into. The kids are so beautiful. We played chalkboard games for awhile before calling off the search. We do a lot of these unactionable-intelligence clearance drills, but it's good to go on the offensive, and it keeps the guys sharp. After finishing the recovery of the Bradleys, we moved back across the river and headed home to take a nap and shoot at the range.
The next day we went up to the TOC for a meeting and to watch the Ghazani tribe for Halloween. Their tribe jams stuff into their bodies to celebrate events. Apparently, we arrested their leader and were going to release him when he offered to eat the long fluorescent light bulb in return for his release. Well, he did it and cut his mouth to shreds. So we invited the tribe back to celebrate Halloween, and they pierced their body in all kinds of ways I never thought imaginable. They jammed knives into their heads. Crazy. This explains a lot about their ability to get away from us after being shot. Sassaman called off the event before they started shooting each other in the love handles with pistols. I have never seen so many freaks on Halloween. Unreal.
"Contact" comes across the battalion net. No grid, no call sign. We are trying to figure it all out. Everyone starts calling their units, and we get an "up" from all elements. We continue to try to figure it out.
"We need a medevac. We have limbs everywhere," a frantic call comes across the net. It has to be the brigade commander's Humvee convoy. All elements start moving onto Route Linda to find the element in contact. I call Red 4 [1st Platoon sergeant] and tell him to move west on Linda until he comes in contact. Red 4 gets moving and finds the brigade commander's convoy. He reports up the grid.
"Hey Sergeant First Class Berg, you are in charge of the scene. Secure the site and work the medevac piece. Put tourniquets on the guys and move them
to the CASH. You are only ten minutes away," I instruct Red 4. He calls back and reports on the situation. We have three BRT soldiers wounded, but they have no CLS bag, no litter, no commo, no grid, no security; any one of those mistakes in B/1-8 IN would have afforded you the opportunity to improve your stomach muscles through a mnemonic we call the flutter kick.
"Hey Berg, you are the man down there."
"Yeah sir, tell me something I didn't already know," he replies cockily. He is great, and his cocksure attitude makes us all calm down. First Lieutenant Frank, my old FSO, now in the BRT, gets on the scene, so I start feeling a lot better knowing we got two solid guys down there. They get the security situation under control, and the bird comes in with no more issues. I feel so bad for those guys. I know exactly what they are going through under their first contact. It always goes badly your first time around, and you beat yourself up for it over and over again. Return fire, establish security, treat and evacuate your casualties. Easier said than done. It sucks because I have to roll back through that area tonight. We leave the TOC for the white-knuckle ride down Linda.
"Hey sir, it's Frank on your company net," Frank calls up as we roll by.
"Yeah Frank, sounds like it was a rough one tonight."
"Yeah, it didn't go according to plan. Berg and Red Platoon were great, though."
"I know. I felt so much better once you two came up on the net. I knew you'd know what to do."
"Exact same circumstances as the one we had back in July."
"Sure sounded like it. Tough trying to figure it all out, isn't it?"
"We just took the same actions we did back then, but this time I was in charge ... treating casualties, controlling aircraft, providing security," Frank said.
"Well, I knew you would do it well. You the man."
"Hey, sir."
"Yeah, Frank."
"I am real glad I was in Bravo Company."
"Me too, man, me too."