Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War (11 page)

II

AMBUSH ALLEY

1230–1600 Hours

1

Gunnery Sergeant Randy Howard, commander of 2nd Platoon, Company A, 8th Tank Battalion, led his four tanks at full speed back from the refueling point, up and over the railway bridge to rejoin Bravo Company. Second Platoon tanks had been assigned to Bravo Company to “mech” them up into Team Mech, a mechanized unit with an armored punch, for their attack into the city. The other tanks from his company were still back in the rear refueling. As Howard crested the railway bridge, he saw the smoking T-55 tanks that the CAAT vehicles had shot up moments earlier. He was shocked at how the day had quickly escalated into a series of violent firefights.

The CAAT vehicles and Bravo’s AAVs parted to let Howard’s tanks come through to the head of the column. Captain Newland, the Bravo Company commander, was waiting for him. He was anxious to get moving toward the Euphrates Bridge. There was a quick discussion, then Howard jumped back on his tank and led the column the two kilometers or so from the railway bridge to the Euphrates. Behind him were the CAAT vehicles, Bravo’s AAVs, and the forward command element. But it was Gunnery Sergeant Howard and his four tanks that were the tip of the spear. He passed through some sort of palm tree grove and then, up ahead, he saw at last the plain concrete bridge span with a slight rise as it crossed the Euphrates River. As the tanks rumbled across the bridge, he went through his mission again. He could see the mouth of Ambush Alley, the route that went from the foot of the Euphrates Bridge to the northern bridge over the canal. He knew that he had to avoid that route by looking for a road to the right, one that would take them through the eastern part of the city.

Howard had joined the Marines relatively late in life. He was thirty-three when he walked into the recruiting office. The recruiter had said he was too old and suggested he joined the reserves. He knew he wasn’t going to run around with the grunts so he looked for a different Military Occupational Speciality.
I’m not going to hump a pack around at my age.
He chose to be a tanker. Right out of tank school, he’d been sent to fight in Desert Storm. Now, fourteen years later and having spent one weekend a month and two weeks per year training at Fort Knox in Kentucky, he was once again in combat.

It was 1245. Howard saw the edge of the city and Ambush Alley cutting right through it. As he dropped into the city from the bridge, he looked to the right for a turn to take him through the city outskirts. But all he saw was a wide, open, dusty expanse of land. It was not how he’d imagined it from the maps. He saw no roads off to the east of Ambush Alley. He didn’t realize it, but to turn east, he first had to turn west and then double back on himself toward the river to get on the road that headed east, along the Euphrates. The only option he saw from his position was to move north along Ambush Alley. As he got closer, he saw that the mouth of Ambush Alley was a wide four-lane highway, crisscrossed with telegraph and power poles, and with a concrete strip down the middle. The city looked to him like a mass of gray, low-rise buildings, haphazardly laid out in a way that seemed to bear no resemblance to the straight, well-defined lines on his map. A dusty haze covered the whole city, making it even harder to distinguish between its various features. It looked like the sort of place you might get lost in and never find your way out from. He listened for instructions on the radio, but the radio was silent. All of a sudden he felt alone. With no order to the contrary from Captain Newland, he pushed forward.

It was the muzzle flashes he saw first. They were bursts of light from windows, roofs, and bunkers dug in by the side of the road. Then he felt a few rounds whiz by his head. He saw black-robed Iraqis running from one building to another. Then another group darted across the street in front of him. More appeared in an alleyway to his left. A “technical,” a white pickup with a gun mounted in the back, poked its nose out of an alleyway to the side of him. Howard traversed the turret and shot it on the run with the main gun.

Two tanks behind, in
Death Mobile,
Gunnery Sergeant George Insko, the 2nd Platoon sergeant, scanned the area on the left side of the road. Through his sights, he saw a game of soccer in progress on a dusty field. He watched as one by one, the group of men stopped playing and looked up in surprise at the tanks on the road. Then, in one rush, they all charged toward him.
Why are they trying to rush unarmed at a tank?
Out of the corner of his eye he saw that they were running toward a stash of weapons near a building only twenty feet away. The marines in the tanks let out a spray of fire from the coax, scattering the group and knocking some of them to the ground. Those who survived just picked themselves up and reached cover by running into a passage between some buildings. From the roof of a mosque, a machine gun opened up on them. There was an MPAT round in the chamber of the main gun. Insko was not supposed to fire at places of worship unless he identified them as a legitimate target. With a huge
boom,
the roof of the mosque crumbled, spilling body parts out into the street below.

Randy Howard, at the head of the column, was about three blocks into Ambush Alley wondering what the hell they were getting into when his radio crackled into action.

“This is Mustang 6. Make a right when you can. Repeat, make a right.” It was the Bravo Company commander, Captain Tim Newland. He was worried that Howard was going to lead his tanks and the rest of Bravo Company straight up Ambush Alley. Howard found an opening to his right.

“Driver. Hard right. Hard right.”

He was glad to be off the main highway in the shelter of buildings. They were two-story-high cinder-block structures, closely packed around a network of paved and unpaved streets and alleys, some no wider than twenty meters. In front of many houses were courtyards enclosed by three-meter-high walls. He weaved his way through the streets on the east side of the city, hoping to get to the large open area he’d seen on the map. The streets were so narrow that the side of his tank scraped walls and telephone poles.
We’ve got to be careful that we don’t hit some high-tension cables and electrocute ourselves.
Figures ran in and out of buildings ahead of him. Cars and trucks quickly disappeared each time he emerged from around a corner. He saw muzzle flashes from windows and roofs, but the sound of gunfire was muted by the roar of his M1A1. In gaps between the houses, he saw pools of green, stagnant water. The area was littered with junk and mud puddles. The paved streets gave way to what looked like hard-packed mud roads. He was about eighty meters ahead of the rest of the convoy and had just emerged into a wide-open area when he felt the tank grind to a halt.
Why have we stopped?
Then suddenly his driver spoke to him through the headset.

“Gunny, we’re stuck.”

Howard looked around him. He felt his tank slowly shift and realized with horror that he was sinking. It was one of the most shocking feelings he’d ever had. He just couldn’t quite believe it. His M1A1 tank just kept sinking until the treads were almost completely covered in mud.

“What the fuck?”

Iraqis, some in uniform, were now running through the streets toward him. Some were preparing grenades as they ran.
They are going to overrun
me.
He pulled his pistol out. His driver tried to work his way out of the mud but the treads just dug in even deeper.
This is it. This might be the
end of me.

“We’ve got another tank stuck.”

He knew that his wingman, Staff Sergeant Dominic Dillon, was coming up behind him. For some days the turret power on Dillon’s tank had been malfunctioning and the only way to work the turret was to turn the turret by the manual hand crank. Fortunately, the main guns on both tanks were still functioning. He looked back and now saw that Dillon’s tank, thirty meters or so behind him, was also floundering in mud. Neither of the tanks was going anywhere. The well-planned maneuver was turning into a chaotic debacle. Howard yelled into his headset.

“Watch out for anything. Kill whatever you can. Just keep them off us.”

The third tank, Gunnery Sergeant Insko’s
Death Mobile,
came around the corner. Insko had heard the yelling over the radio and knew that the other tanks were stuck. He tried to take extra care, maneuvering over what he was sure was hard-packed mud. He couldn’t believe it when he, too, ground to a halt, and watched in horror as his tank also started to sink. He jumped off the tank, but he tripped and landed with such force that he swallowed the mouthful of tobacco that he was chewing. For a few seconds he just lay there gagging and puking as rounds landed around him.
I’ve got to warn Harrell.

Insko, whose civilian job was as a network engineer at the University of Kentucky, quickly got on the radio to Staff Sergeant Aaron Harrell, who commanded the fourth tank, and warned him to stay away. Twenty-eight-year-old Harrell, a shift manager at a CVS pharmacy, had had a mechanical failure and had set off a minute later than the other tanks. Fortunately, he had missed the initial turn and had made his way to the group of tanks by an alternative, safer route. The sight that greeted him shocked him. In his eight-year career as a tanker, Harrell had been involved in many recovery operations, but he had never seen tanks stuck like this. Three tanks were completely immobile in thick, squelching mud. They were buried up to the top of the treads. The stink was awful. Harrell saw that what he thought was hard mud was just a thin layer of hard crust concealing a bog of watery mud and sewage.
What do we do now?

Corporal Neville Welch was posting air security in a track near the front of Bravo’s column as they followed the M1A1 tanks across the bridge.
This is
it.
He felt the marines inside the track below him tense up with anxiety. He scanned the horizon and kept up his mantra.
I’m not going to be hit. That’s
not my way of doing business.
It was a refrain he’d used since they crossed the Line of Departure in Kuwait.
We are not here to interview people. We
are here to kill Iraqis. We’re here to get the message to Baghdad that this is
a reality. And I’m coming back alive.
It was the same harsh determination that had got him out of Guyana into college in the United States and had made him plunge into the serious business of studying hard to get his degree. Some of the other marines saw the mission as a great adventure. Welch didn’t. From day one, he had not had a humorous moment. He knew a guy named Elik who had picked up a discarded Iraqi RPG and fooled around with it. His entire face got lit up. No, this was serious, and he wasn’t going to take anything for granted. And when it was all over, he would know that he had made his contribution. Even though he still spoke with a Caribbean accent, nobody would be able to claim to be more American than he was.

The bridge was a plain two-lane span with a low barrier on either side. As they crossed it, Welch felt a chill.
They might blow the bridge. It might
be booby-trapped.
He was acutely aware of his own nervousness and shouted down to the marines in the belly of the track.

“Get your asses up here and provide more firepower.”

Sandbags lined the top of the hatch to give rifle support and to slow down incoming rounds. Inside, some marines were nervously flicking through their one copy of FHM magazine or eating MREs from the two boxes that they kept with them. Anything to distract from nerves and anxiety.

Inside one of the tracks behind Welch, another Bravo infantryman, Lance Corporal Leslie Walden, nervously fingered his M16. His emotions were all mixed up and his stomach was churning. He heard rounds smacking against the side of the track and the marines up in the hatches firing back. He’d read all the intel briefs and knew what was supposed to happen once they got to Nasiriyah, but somehow it didn’t seem to match the reality of being in the rear of a track and being shot at. He had no idea what was around the next corner.
At some stage, I’m going to have to get out of
this track and face what is waiting for me outside.

As the convoy came over the bridge, a large, smiling portrait of Saddam Hussein came into view on the right-hand side. Some marines on air security reached for their disposable cameras and clicked away. Neville Welch was glad that at last they were doing something concrete. The drive up had been so long, boring, and featureless. But now the air was thick with nervous excitement. They had reached a town, they were seeing things they hadn’t seen before, they were going into battle. The odd crackle of gunfire rang out from the opposite bank. Welch couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Whoever was firing at them seemed to be poor marksmen. Somehow they managed to miss seriously hitting any of the twenty vehicles in the long, lumbering column.

The convoy came off the bridge and Welch saw in front of him a wide, dusty four-lane highway dotted with telephone poles and power lines. On either side were large open areas that gave way to a labyrinth of two- and three-story buildings stretching into the center of town. Figures were swarming up ahead of them. About two hundred meters along the road, the Bravo convoy turned to the right into an area of low mud brick houses, separated by large algae-covered pools of mud. As the convoy of tracks passed, Welch saw Iraqis standing by the side of the road looking up at him, almost nonchalantly, as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

Some of the kids started waving at the convoy as it weaved between the houses. The marines in back of the track, M16s and pistols at the ready, waved back.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a burst of gunfire cracked through the air above Welch’s head. Marines ducked into the amtrack, dropping their pistols and coming back up with their M16s. The .50-caliber machine gunner on the amtrack let out a short burst at the windows of one of the mud brick houses, tearing chunks from the building. The convoy kept moving. Marines who had been waving at the kids seconds before were now raking gunfire into the surrounding buildings.

A cry went up.