None Left Behind

 

NONE LEFT BEHIND

 

ALSO BY CHARLES W. SASSER

 

God in the Foxhole

Devoted to Fishing

OSS Commando: Hitler's A-Bomb

The Shoebox: Letters for the Seasons
(by Nancy Shoemaker; edited by Charles W. Sasser)

OSS Commando: Final Option

At Large

Dark Planet

Patton's Panthers

Going Bonkers: The Wacky World of Cultural Madness

Crosshairs on the Kill Zone

Hill 488
(with Ray Hildreth)

Magic Steps to Writing Success

Encyclopedia of Navy Seals

Detachment Delta: Operation Cold Dawn

Detachment Delta: Operation Aces Wild

Detachment Delta: Operation Deep Steel

Detachment Delta: Operation Iron Weed

Detachment Delta: Operation Punitive Strike

Taking Fire
(with Ron Alexander)

Arctic Homestead
(with Norma Cobb)

Liberty City

Operation No Man's Land
(as Mike Martell)

The Return

Doc: Platoon Medic
(with Daniel E. Evans)

At Large

Fire Cops
(with Michael Sasser)

First SEAL
(with Roy Boehm)

Smoke Jumpers

Last American Heroes
(with Michael Sasser)

In Cold Blood: Oklahoma's Most Notorious Murders

Always a Warrior

Shoot to Kill

The 100th Kill

Homicide!

One Shot—One Kill
(with Craig Roberts)

The Walking Dead
(with Craig Roberts)

No Gentle Streets

 

 

Charles W. Sasser

THE 10TH MOUNTAIN DIVISION AND THE TRIANGLE OF DEATH

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS  
   NEW YORK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NONE LEFT BEHIND
. Copyright © 2009 by Charles W. Sasser. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

 

www.stmartins.com

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Sasser, Charles W.

None left behind : the 10th Mountain Division and the triangle of death / Charles W. Sasser.—1st ed.

   p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-55544-3

  1. Iraq War, 2003—Campaigns—Iraq—Baghdad Region. 2. United States. Army. Mountain Division, 10th. 3. Counterinsurgency—Iraq—Baghdad Region—History—21st century. 4. Battles—Iraq—Baghdad Region—History—21st century. 5. Iraq War, 2003—Regimental histories—United States. I. Title.

 

DS79.764.U6S37 2009

956.7044'342—dc22

2009028680
    

 

First Edition: December 2009

 

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

 

 

To the brave soldiers of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the fine soldiers who participated in sharing their experiences, filling in the gaps of history, and re-living with me the drama that appears in these pages. I am particularly grateful to Lieutenant Colonel Paul Swiergosz, who paved the way for my research and in the process became a friend; to Lieutenant Colonel Richard Greene, current commander of the 4/31
^st
, who so graciously accepted me back into the Army fold and opened doors to greater understanding of his men and the 10
^th
Mountain Division; to Mr. Benjamin Abel, 10
^th
Mountain Division Public Affairs Office, who helped me begin the process; and to Mr. Harrison L. Sarles, Director, Army Public Affairs, for his understanding and stamp of approval.

While the core of this book is built around interviews with soldiers of the 10
^th
Mountain, a variety of other sources also contributed: official U.S. Army military documents and After Action Reports; diaries; newspapers, books, and other published accounts; interviews with witnesses other than members of the unit and with other authorities. I wish to thank all these sources for helping make this book possible.

Thanks yet again to Mr. Marc Resnick, my editor at St. Martin's Press, who launched this project by sending me a news clipping; and to my longtime agent and friend, Mr. Ethan Ellenberg.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the following authors and published works, from which I drew inspiration and guidance in writing this book:
Warrior King,
by Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman (w/Joe Layden, St. Martin's Press, 2008);
The Iraq War: A Military History,
by Williamson Murray and Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, Jr. (Harvard University Press, 2003);
Digital Soldiers: The Evolution of High-Tech Weaponry and Tomorrow's Brave New Battlefield,
by James F. Dunnigan (St. Martin's Press, 1996);
The Highway War,
by Maj. Seth W.B. Folsom (Potomac Books, 2006);
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell,
by John Crawford (Riverhead Books, 2005);
Dawn over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military Is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq,
by Karl Zinsmeister (Encounter Books, 2004);
Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare,
edited by Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian (Osprey Publishing, 2008);
Baghdad at Sunrise,
by Peter R. Mansoor (Yale University Press, 2008); “Iraq's Forbidding ‘Triangle of Death,' ” by Anthony Shadid,
Washington Post
Foreign Service, Nov. 23, 2004; “5 Soldiers Named in Rape Case,” CBS News, July 10, 2006; “The Massacre of Mahmudiya—The Rape and Murder of Abeer Quassim Hamsa,” expose-the-war-profiteers.org, Dec. 22, 2008; “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Concerns,” ABC News, Dec. 15, 2004; “Army Changes Tack in Treating Combat Stress,” by Ryan Lenz, AP, June 4, 2006; “Final Rites for a Humble Kid,” by Mark Berman,
Washington Post,
May 30, 2007; “Abducted Soldier Found Dead,” McClatchy Newspapers, July 12, 2008; “Byron W. Fouty,” Yahoo News, May 16, 2007; “Luck Runs out in ‘Triangle of Death,' ” by Cal Perry, CNN, Oct. 31, 2005; and the “Sermon by Reverend Jimmy Layne on Biblical History of Iraq, June 2007.”

Finally, an extra special thanks to my wife, Donna Sue, who has suffered my writing of books throughout the years.

 

NONE LEFT BEHIND

In the late spring of 2008, I rode my motorcycle from Oklahoma to the U.S. Army Military Academy at West Point, New York, where soldiers of the famed 10
^th
Mountain Division were instructing officer cadets in the skills of warfare at a remote training area known as Camp Natural Bridge. The 2
^nd
BCT (Brigade Combat Team) of the 10
^th
Mountain had recently returned (November 2007) from a fifteen-month extended tour of duty in Iraq. It was the 10
^th
's fourth combat deployment since 2001—three to Iraq, one to Afghanistan.

While interviewing soldiers at Natural Bridge for this book, I began to hear incredible and horrifying tales about the S-curves on Malibu Road. The 4/31
^st
(4
^th
Battalion, 31
^st
Infantry Regiment) of the 2
^nd
BCT had been assigned to pacify an area about twenty miles south of Baghdad known, appropriately, as “The Triangle of Death.” The AO (Area of Operations) along the Euphrates River adjoined Anbar Province, the most violent and dangerous in Iraq. Of the more than 3,000 fatal casualties suffered by the United States in Iraq since 2003 and the start of the war, over 1,000 had died in this region. Chaos, anarchy, violence, and fear ruled.

To date, no Coalition troops had permanently penetrated all parts of The Triangle of Death. Delta Company of the 4/31
^st
, roughly 150 infantrymen at full strength, assaulted into the AO to establish a Company FOB (Forward Operating Base) and two smaller patrol bases along a twisted four-mile length of Route Malibu that soon became known as the “S-curves.” The gauntlet had been cast; the enemy immediately picked it up.

The courage and warrior fortitude of Delta and the 4
^th
Battalion would be tried and tried again in The Triangle of Death where the hard, dirty, exhausted infantrymen of the 10
^th
became a macrocosm of the war in Iraq. As one soldier put it, “We don't commute to work, it commutes to us.”

The core of the book is built around dozens of interviews I conducted at Camp Natural Bridge and elsewhere with officers and soldiers of the 4/31
^st
. As they shared their experiences with me, they made a single concordant request: “Please tell the story the way it really was.” That I have tried to do.

It has often been noted that a thousand different stories may emerge from even a single shared event. Therefore, the recounting of events in this book may not correspond precisely in all instances with the memories of everyone involved. I have necessarily filled in narrative gaps by utilizing my own knowledge and experience with war and with men at war to recreate certain scenes and dialogue. After all, few of us remember past conversations word for word or past events in detail, especially if they occur under the stress and confusion of combat. Where re-creation occurs, I strived to match personalities with the situation while maintaining factual content. Where conflict, doubt, or hazy recollection arose, I selected the general consensus and went with that.

Actual names are used throughout except in those rare instances where names were lost due to imperfect memory or lack of documentation, where privacy was requested, or where public identification would serve no useful purpose and might cause embarrassment. In addition, all data has been filtered through the author. I am certain to have made errors in a work of this broad scope with so many men involved. While such errors may be understandable, I nonetheless take full responsibility and ask to be forgiven for them.

I apologize to anyone omitted, neglected, or somehow slighted in the preparation of this book. I do not intend to diminish your accomplishments or war records. It is merely that I had to focus on a smaller number of you in order to make this book manageable.

I am an old Army veteran, having served twenty-nine years (active and reserve), including a deployment as a Military Police First Sergeant during the 1991 Iraqi war, Operation
Desert Storm.
I thought I knew American soldiers, beginning with the Vietnam War era. What I encountered in the officers and soldiers of the 10
^th
Mountain Division reinforced my faith in America. If we can field such magnificent men as these in times of peril, then all is still well with the nation.

Sergeant First Class Ronnie Montgomery never passed the large glass case at 4
^th
Battalion headquarters on Fort Drum without stopping. Framed photographs of young men in uniform looked back at him, some smiling, others wearing the sober expressions of youth just out of high school and boot camp who were starting to realize that decisions have consequences. The memorial case had been almost empty fifteen months ago when the 2
^nd
BCT (Brigade Combat Team) of the 10
^th
Mountain Division deployed to Iraq. Now it was nearly full.

Montgomery, thirty-six, was a career six-footer with a broad face burned by the Iraqi sun and hair so high and tight that he hardly had any. His company alone, Delta, had contributed nine faces to the case. Not that they needed to be framed and displayed to be remembered. Who they were, what they were, was forever branded on the souls of those who survived the S-curves on Malibu Road in Iraq's Triangle of Death.

Manticore,
as Montgomery recalled, was playing on the SciFi Channel in 2006 when the 10
^th
Mountain began preparations to deploy its BCT to the Sandbox. The B movie proved popular among Fort Drum soldiers primarily because it featured a U.S. Army squad from the 10
^th
. Tasked to locate and recover a missing news crew in a small Iraqi town, the squad arrives to find locals slaughtered by a mythical winged creature awakened from its long slumber by a terrorist leader determined to drive Americans from his land by any means. From the movie sprang a kind of dark proverb circulated among the soldiers: “In Iraq, monsters come out at night.”