Carnivore (16 page)

The crazy thing was, while we got stuck in that one spot for a while, we kept moving, and the fighting never stopped. There wasn't a collection of guys, then a pause, then another; it was a continuation. It never stopped, not for 23 miles. We kept expecting to drive out of it and never did. Well, it felt like never. That night we got hit by everything but tanks; we never identified any tanks.

As we rolled around another corner, we identified and engaged a group of Iraqis with mortar tubes and DSHKs (heavy machine guns we called “dishkas”) on the side of the road. Through the thermal sight we could actually see them hanging mortar rounds. We hit them with the 25 mm, which again performed exceptionally.

All of a sudden, a voice with a southern accent thick as grits came across the radio net—“Somebody stop 'em, they're shooting at womens and sheeps, and them sheeps ain't doing nothing but eating grass!”

It was as if time had stopped. Everybody stopped shooting.

I looked at Soprano, and he looked at me, and at the same time we both said, “Did he say ‘sheeps'?”

The squadron wasn't sneaking quietly through the woods. We were getting engaged by 1000s of Iraqis across a well-planned ambush route, and somebody sitting in a lounge chair on the moon could have heard the racket. We were shooting anything we saw in our thermals that showed hot and wasn't running in the other direction. Did somebody accidentally shoot sheep or civilians standing around watching the fireworks? I do know that the sergeant in Third Platoon who was so worried about them “womens and sheeps” filed a complaint against another member of the unit. We did find some dead sheep (sheeps?) near an Iraqi mortar position, and some of the fighters were wearing traditional clothing, which made them resemble women from a distance, but I never heard about any women being killed. Nobody got convicted of any war crimes.

Dawn started to break, finally, on March 26, 2003, and I was able to see that it was Alpha (Apache) Troop to my front. They were taking such heavy fire that they stopped again and called in an air strike. While we were engaging the tree line full of dismounts, we heard on the radio net that A-10 Warthogs were coming in to drop 500-pounders.

Just then, Soprano jumped from his gunner's seat. “It's jammed,” he said. “Your gun.”

Soprano could shoot that main gun, but when it came to working it he lacked a few skills, and it had jammed on him. I crawled down and started working on it, and in short order I saw that the DU ammo that was in the ready box and loaded into the gun was caked in mud. Clay mud, mud that was so hard it was like concrete. Son of a . . .

The last time we had loaded ammo, Geary and his crew had been in the back of the Brad, and they'd walked all over the loose ammo in muddy boots. It wasn't my job to load the ammo into the ready boxes, it had been Sully's responsibility. How had he not noticed it was caked in mud? Motherf—

While I was yanking and cursing at the gun and mudded-up ammo, the whole troop was upstairs watching and cheering as the A-10s did their passes and dropped 500-pounders on the Iraqi positions. The bombs hit so close our guys at first thought one of our M1s had been hit, but the pilots were better than that. They did two more runs, strafing anybody else still moving with their 30 mm cannons. Everybody was still cheering, and I missed it all.

I popped up, a 25 mm DU round caked with mud in my hand and murder in my eye. It was the round that had been in the gun and jammed it up. I spotted Sully in the back of the Brad.

“Come here!” I yelled at him and tried to grab him. I was going to stab him with that round, I was so mad.

His eyes went wide and he scrambled back from me, where I couldn't reach him. “No. Sarge, calm down!” He wouldn't come close enough for me to brain him or stab him with the round, and that's probably a good thing. Eventually I calmed down.

We weren't taking any more incoming at that time, because we had beaten them. When you've got an entire cavalry squadron on line, just pounding the shit out of everything, any opposing forces fade away or get chewed up pretty quickly. Any hot spot out there we shot, and then we brought in A-10s. After having been on the receiving end of an uncomfortable amount of incoming, the Commander's concern about collateral damage had been greatly diminished, otherwise he'd never have authorized the A-10s to drop their 500-pounders.

We had vastly outgunned and outperformed the Iraqis, but you can't engage that many enemy forces without damage. The squadron lost one M577 APC, two Hummers, one five-ton truck, and one ambulance. My vehicle had been rocked by mortars (again) but had come through it intact. Amazingly enough, we suffered no killed or wounded, even after nine hours of fighting. Nine fucking hours. The hell with “Route Appaloosa”; that stretch of road will forever be known to those of us who were there as Ambush Alley.

Broadhead came the closest to being injured. He'd gotten hit in the wrist with shrapnel from a mortar round as he was closing the hatch on his Abrams—but his watch gave up its life for his wrist. The shell fragment was stopped by the stainless-steel case of the watch. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, and that time we were both.

The cover of
Life
magazine had a picture of Alpha Troop's medic carrying a small child who had been wounded during that engagement. While we didn't lose anybody during the battle, that medic was never able to forget the war and sadly took his own life years later.

We'd been told that there would hardly be enemy activity on the road north to Objective Floyd and had been put in the rear with the supply train to stay out of the fight. The ambush zone no one could have foreseen had stretched for over 22 miles, and we had no idea what to expect next, if anything.

^*
On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom
, by Col. Gregory Fontenot, U.S. Army, Retired; LTC E. J. Degen, U.S. Army; and LTC David Tohn, U.S. Army. Office of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army (2004), p. 130.

T
he troop stayed in place, and the Hemmitt fuelers rolled up and down the line, topping everybody off in a tailgate maneuver. Just sitting there not being shot at was a relief, but it was short-lived. We had rolled through Alpha Troop during the fighting and now pushed through Bravo toward our objective.

Objective Floyd was another damn bridge, this one across the Euphrates. The 1st BCT (Brigade Combat Team) had moved in from the north of An Najaf and locked up another bridge over the Euphrates designated Objective Jenkins, in the small town of Al Kifl. The Division designated every class-70 bridge (any bridge that could take a 70-ton load) in the area as an objective. With 3/7 Cav to the south and 1st BCT to the north, the goal was to isolate An Najaf from any reinforcements. There were an estimated 2,000 or more troops already in An Najaf, and command didn't want any more.

The road split, and Alpha and Bravo Troops took a left and headed north on Highway 9 to secure that area. We went straight, through a small town, crossed the bridge over the Euphrates, and rolled another 900 meters to a one-lane canal bridge.

The Carnivore was in the lead, with Broadhead right behind us, and as soon as we rolled over the little bridge the Iraqis hit us with an antiarmor ambush. At least 50 dismounts appeared, and a volley of RPGs flew at me and Broadhead. Jesus Christ, I thought. Again?

RPGs came over the top of my vehicle. They came so close to me standing in the Commander's hatch that I honestly had to do the
Matrix
maneuver—bend backward in super-slo-mo to dodge the warhead. A smoke trail came across and got in my eyes, and I felt the swoosh,
that's
how close they came. But we were just high enough, sitting on the bridge, that the angle at which they fired sent the RPGs over the top of us.

Broadhead yelled “Contact!” and opened up with his .50.

No shit,
Contact
. I couldn't yell “contact” because I was ducking and diving. The whole squadron was on my ass in 10-foot intervals, so I couldn't back up. About that time an Iraqi technical (pickup truck with a heavy machine gun mounted in back) opened up. The heavy slugs started slamming my hull and whipping past my head. There was a house nearby that resembled a big glass box, and a bunch of people in it started shooting at me as well.

“Somebody shoot that motherfucker!” I yelled as the 12.7 mm tracers buzzed around my head and glass was flying everywhere.

The rest of the troop was lined up along a bit of a dogleg in the road, which was both good and bad. They could see me under fire, so everybody started launching rounds at that house and shooting the shit out of the technical. Rounds from Broadhead were flying in front of me and the rest of the troops' rounds were coming behind me. I watched tracer rounds walk up the fucking road toward me; meanwhile we couldn't get our own main gun low enough to shoot at the guys below trying to kill us. Three more RPGs flew over Broadhead's tank.

“Back up! Back up! Back up!” I yelled at Sperry, not that he needed to be told the obvious. The Carnivore started crawling backward.

“You're coming into my gunsight!” Broadhead yelled at me. The two Bradleys behind Broadhead's tank were trying to turn around, but there was nowhere for him to go.

“You need to move the fuck out of the way, my ass is in peril up here,” I shouted back. There were Iraqis on both sides of the road shooting at us, and RPG rounds were hitting the guardrails and exploding.

Behind us Sergeant Wallace had an angle and was firing like a madman—25 mm, then coax, then 25 mm again. He must have killed 25 guys in less than 30 seconds. While that was going on, Lieutenant McAdams was hanging out of his hatch firing his 9 mm pistol into five Iraqis who were moving in a ditch to his left. It was then that Staff Sergeant Wasson from Third Platoon took an RPG in the back that had bounced off his turret. Luckily the Iraqi who launched the RPG had forgotten to take the pin out, so instead of dead, Wasson was just in severe pain—imagine being hit in the back with a baseball bat by someone very strong and very angry. The RPG made him black out for a minute, but he still stayed in the fight.

We managed to get back across the canal bridge. Both the road and the bridge were narrow there, only big enough for a Bradley to turn around, not an M1. As soon as we got back across and could get an angle, I started pounding that fucking building. I shot into that field at the dismounts and the technical, Sully worked the M240 in back, and Soprano the coax, and we kept at it until we were black on ammo.

I got on the radio and called the supply crew. “I need ammo up here!”

We were still taking rounds when the Hemmitt rolled up the shoulder, backed up to us, dropped the tailgate, and Sergeant Bell in back kicked off a huge amount of ammo. “Thanks, Sergeant Bell, you rock!” we called out to him.

He gave us a thumbs-up and a smile. “Kill 'em all!” he yelled back. I love those Hemmitt guys—no damn armor on their vehicles to speak of, and they'll roll into anything. They're
my
heroes.

The Hemmitt tore off, and I started going through what was there and found I had 120 mm HEAT rounds and .50-cal ammo—exactly what I needed if I was an M1.

Broadhead called me on the radio. “Hey, I've got three hundred rounds of 25mm here . . .”

I said, “I've got HEAT rounds and .50-cal, want to trade?”

That was funny, but I can't give enough credit to those guys in the headquarters support platoon. The PFC driving that fueler or the E5 driving the ammo truck: they won that war, because those dudes kept us in ammo. They would roll right up in their thin-skinned vehicles, ignoring the incoming like it wasn't even there, and top off our tanks or kick out some ammo. And I was always able to get more, no matter how much incoming I was receiving, except for fuel later on in the push, when we were rolling so far ahead of our supply trains we had to siphon gas out of Iraqi tractors. Filling up the Bradley's 150-gallon tank five gallons at a time was no fun at all, but it was better than running dry.

Once we were squared away, command called us up and told us that we were going to hold the canal bridge. The ground was low on both sides of the road, there were guardrails, and there were only a few buildings off to the left, so it was as good a place as any to set up. We positioned the Carnivore just short of the bridge, where the road was wider.

We had no sooner settled into position than a huge sandstorm rolled in. If you've seen the movie
The Mummy
, that's exactly what it looked like. A horseshoe-shaped brown cloud, 10 miles high. Visibility went from 900 meters, to 50, to 10, and it got almost as dark as night. The sand got into everything, but at least I had goggles. I still couldn't see very far, but I didn't get sand in my eyes.

Broadhead and I were at the front of the column of support troops, along with Sergeant Wallace in his Bradley, Sergeant Housey in his M1, and Lieutenant Garrett McAdams in his Bradley. McAdams was a young professional soldier from South Carolina. He had graduated from the Citadel and was so tall and skinny we joked about having to tie him to a rock during the sandstorm to keep him from blowing away.

Third and Fourth Platoons were at the rear of the column, with Staff Sergeant John Williams acting as tail gunner in the Casanova. He started taking small arms fire from the town on the other side of the Euphrates, but not too many people were dumb enough to try to cross that bridge. If they did, they didn't last very long.

Williams was a good man, with a good crew. Sergeant Thomas Hudgins was his gunner, a good ol' boy from Georgia who was always cracking jokes. Specialist John Pecore was the driver. He was a tall kid from Texas, and Williams liked him a lot. Williams's dismount/loader/observer was Specialist Clint Leon, who hailed from Arizona. With them watching the troop's back I didn't have any worries.