Hunting Down Saddam (25 page)

The damage to the enemy is manifest. His anger and carelessness continue to cost him in deficits he cannot repay. The city takes on an apprehensive calm. So continue the gurgling gasps of a dying regime. Their lifeblood now draining, it is only a matter of time. Meanwhile a new Iraq is born.

Hot!

AUGUST 24, 2003
“REGULARS, BY GOD!” “DEEDS, NOT WORDS.”

We finally won the battle to get e-mail. It took a lot of effort, but now the soldiers can at least drop a note every few days with better turnaround on news to their families. We set up three terminals for the soldiers to use in the battalion headquarters and the companies rotate on a schedule.

Beginning the 27th of July, CSM Martinez and I made the rounds to the companies to award the Combat Infantry Streamer to each Infantry Company guidon (unit flag). It is a great honor to the units and one of which they are very proud. Also during these visits, we took the opportunity to talk to the soldiers about their concerns. These ranged from the need for certain items of mission-essential equipment, to small comfort items to help them relax when they are not on patrols, to how to better communicate with their families. We have been able to improve in all of these areas. We fought to get the newer body armor vests for all of our soldiers and won, though not without exertion. Now all our soldiers are better protected.

After coming back on the 27th from Bayji (north of Tikrit) where B Company is, we had activity that quickly reminded us that we have much work to do even while feeling proud of our accomplishments. Someone placed a bomb in front of a house in central Tikrit. The blast blew open the gate and damaged the wall of the courtyard. The Iraqi family there asked our soldiers to help them move to relatives that night as it was after curfew. My operations officer, MAJ Brian Luke, obliged and as the family was escorted a few blocks to the east, one of our soldiers noticed a shovel leaning against a wall.

SPC Garcia began to look at the dirt and the shovel. Within minutes, 44 antitank mines, 20 lbs. of C-4 explosives and 200 lbs. of propellant were unearthed. More digging: 9 grenades, 4 mine initiators, an AK-47, and 30 60mm mortar rounds soon followed. This same building had been cleared not a few days before.

As this developed, a burst of gunfire erupted to the south in an arc across the main highway toward the governor's building. A Company soldiers soon enveloped an area of two warehouses. The soldiers entered the first and spotted five men, one armed with an SKS rifle. The Iraqi man immediately dropped it when he saw the Americans and our men quickly deduced that these men were just food guards.

They continued on to the next warehouse. A man stood in the shadows as the soldiers approached. SPC Morgan entered with his fire team and shouted at the man to come forward in English and Arabic. The man darted into the shed instead, and appeared a second time with an AK-47. SPC Morgan aimed his rifle at the man and killed what turned out to be the assailant that had attacked the governor's building. An enemy and lots of deadly mines and explosives were now in our hands.

We continued to thin the ranks of those attacking our men the last week of July and we also received detailed information as to the location of an important bodyguard of Saddam Hussein. This particular man was often seen in photos with Saddam and his family. The locals also knew him as a vicious murderer.

In a lightning raid, the Recon Platoon and A Company secured three houses in residential Tikrit. We were looking specifically for three men; two were bodyguards and one an organizer for the former regime. Within forty-five minutes, we had all three men. The raid made national news and the men were extremely valuable to our efforts.

The main target—Saddam's personal bodyguard—didn't give up without a fight. Our scouts found him upstairs, emboldened with liquor, attempting to grab a Sterling Submachine Gun. Butt strokes and quick action prevented his death. He swung at the men but soon found himself being dragged down the stairs, his head hitting each step. Subdued and in his courtyard, with slight bleeding to the forehead, bulbs flashed from the several media present. The news quickly spread in Tikrit to the elation of all, who now saw this former cutthroat of Saddam brought into our custody.

The 30th and 31st became eerily quiet. This was perhaps the first time in weeks that nothing happened—no gunfire, no attacks, nothing.

Our raids continued with success. On the 1st of August, we bagged three more men—all with ties to Saddam. While I cannot specify the ties, I can say they were involved with the personal family duties and staff. Now each raid seemed to feed upon the other, with encouraging results.

The Candy Box

Discouraging news shortly followed. We learned from a frantic local sheik that same evening that the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein were to be delivered to his village the next day and then buried in the local cemetery. Not pleased at the news—as this village also has our men in it—we worked all evening to confirm this. We were told to do nothing. The corpses were to be turned over to the Red Crescent after being flown to our city. We were instructed to provide no escort or involvement.

We watched at a distance as three corpses (the third being Mustafa—Qusay's fourteen-year-old son killed while firing an AK-47 under a bed) were laid into the dirt. Arrogant men, some veiled, surrounded the graves in pathetic prayerful worship over these murdering lifeless forms. They piled dirt mounds above their sunken corpses and then secured an Iraqi flag to each mound with dirt clods along the edges. The funeral passed uneventfully. But a candy box in the middle of the main highway in town would shatter the quiet of the previous two days.

The enemy launched an attack in the early evening using improvised explosives. The first was nearly identical to the second except in result. Each bomb appeared to be a box (one candy, the other Kleenex) packed with C-4 explosives and nuts and bolts serving as projectiles. How they were detonated remains unknown.

Our Recon Platoon traveled up the main highway through the city center. Congestion by the telephone exchange offices narrowed the lanes to one. A median, elevated with planters, served as a directional backstop for the candy box concealed among so much other trash in this unsanitary country. The first scout passed by but the second seemed to disappear in a concussive mass of flame and smoke. Glass flew everywhere from the telephone exchange building. Policemen inside were knocked off their feet. Windows from a taxi full of kids blew into the youths as the pavement took on an appearance of an unfinished mosaic of glass.

Our soldiers in the third humvee quickly dismounted to see if they could assist but the truck was not there. Its driver, his eye bleeding and his arm filled with fragmentation, threw the vehicle into low gear and nursed the humvee with four flat tires out of the blast zone. The soldier in the back seat took searing heat and fragmentation to the neck and left arm. His left eardrum registered no sound.

Men yelled to each other as the staff sergeant—unscathed in the front-right seat—assessed his men in the vehicle. The gunner up top could be seen bleeding from the face and neck. But all were moving and so was the vehicle. The scouts continued their wobbly ride toward our compound. The perforated vehicle went through the gate. The men cleared their weapons with bloody hands and then made their way with assistance to the aid station. Two have returned to duty and the third will need more time for his ear to heal but will recover.

The second bomb detonated approximately twenty minutes later and about two miles north along the same road. Military Police vehicles, similar in appearance to our scout vehicles, became the unintended target. No major damage occurred in the mistimed blast except a few headlamps and cosmetic damage to the fiberglass hood of a single vehicle.

After talking to my wounded scouts and seeing that they were going to be OK, we continued on with our combat patrols. That night I headed south along the highway to the burial village and located the new graves of Saddam's sons. Flushed with the emotion of having three more of my men wounded, and having drunk two quarts of water, I paid my respects on the graves of Uday and Qusay Hussein.

We spent the day of the 3rd of August planning for a simultaneous raid on each side of the river. We were looking for two individuals who have been organizing attacks on our soldiers. Our intelligence was good and we found the locations of the farms and a house in the northern suburb. The targeted men were not there, although their families were. We found important photos, information, and documents. The raid proved successful however as the next morning one of the two men sought came to the civil-military relations office to complain about the raid on his undamaged house. We took him to our complaint department where he has remained ever since.

Our combat patrols continued in the city with ambushes laid out for an elusive enemy. Assailants with RPGs fired on a C Company patrol near the Women's College but hit nothing. A Kellogg, Brown & Root worker driving north of Tikrit did hit a mine, however, and lost his life in the ensuing blast. It was a terrible tragedy that illustrates the dangers in the use of contractors on the battlefield.

On the night of the 5th, our men saw a small group walk across the main street in town with an RPG launcher and AK-47s. Seeing no clear shot, they waited. Soon a man appeared around a corner with an RPG at the ready. Our men fired first, wounding the man in the leg. He shrieked in pain and then calm settled over the alleyways.

The next night, the 6th, we captured the head of a Feda-yeen cell in a hotel raid covered by a full complement of media. We detained thirty-nine individuals (we released thirty-eight) but among them was our man. Two of his new recruits fled the following day but we caught them motoring south toward Baghdad based on a tip from the locals. Later, a merchant brought us their RPG launcher with three rockets. He said he saw them hide it earlier and brought it to us once he learned we had captured them. We continue to see the Iraqi support increase along with each success.

But the arms still flow into the city. Locals had told us so and the merchants from the market complained to the governor and police about it. They said that the weapons were being used to attack them and the Americans. We decided to set daylight ambushes on the Friday market to curb the flow.

At 0730 on Friday the 8th, we finally confirmed that the complaints were true. Our snipers noticed two men in a red car pull into the field surrounded by the market shops along the streets. The field is also used as a “flea market” where anyone can vend his wares or produce. These two men decided to vend weapons. They laid out wheat sacks filled with AK-47 magazines and grenade launcher attachments. Next, they set up various other small arms items on the now empty sacks. Finally, they pulled an AK-47 out of the trunk. The men reported it but wanted to be sure these were weapons dealers. After small devices and electronic switches for bomb making and then more AK-47s appeared, the men engaged.

The sharp
crack
of a sniper rifle drew little attention at first. A vendor selling crackers not ten feet from the arms traders took little notice, thinking the men were testing the weapons. But then he noticed that one man holding a weapon jerked and suddenly dropped it, his arm bleeding profusely. The driver of the red car, unaware of what was happening, watched as one of two other men present handled weapons. The man turned around with an AK-47 seeking the direction of the fire. A round ripped through him. He ran forward, weapon in hand. Another round found its target. Then he slumped to the ground.

The driver ran frantically to the car, attempting to flee. Our sniper squad leader gauged the approximate location of the driver through the hood—the car was facing away from him—and fired. The round perforated the hood and then hit the man in the head. He stumbled out of the car and died. The last armed man stood little chance. A round through his leg cut him down and he dropped the weapon. The engagement was now over.

The Recon Platoon then rushed to the site. A sea of confusion billowed among the locals. A clear path parted around the arms dealers as the crowd receded from the site. A bystander had already stolen one of the AK-47s but everything else was still there when the scouts arrived. Soon soldiers from A Company cordoned the market. We secured the scene. The two wounded were transported to the Tikrit hospital. Iraqi police appeared and assisted in crowd control and body recovery. The press arrived and we gave a full account of our ambush.

Not waiting for the details, the French AFP media went to the hospital and found two boys from a village about thirty kilometers across the river that had been injured by an unexploded shell of some kind in an unrelated incident. Assuming that the boys were somehow connected to our actions against the enemy, they flashed pictures around the world stating that we had wounded the boys with grenades at the market.

Fortunately, the rest of the media not only have higher standards, but also reported the facts. Some (not many) in the media asked me why we did not give the arms dealers any warning. I stated that they became combatants as soon as they produced weapons and that no such warning had ever been afforded my men. Our actions sent shock waves through the town and effectively curtailed illegal arms trade in the city. The governor thanked us for our actions as well as the mayor. The police chief stated that the two men we killed from the red car were known thugs that smuggled weapons from a major military complex on the outskirts of Baghdad. They would show samples, fill orders, and arrange deliveries. What is certain is that we see no more weapons traded openly in Tikrit.

The enemy, not able to take us on directly, began to focus more on explosive devices and land mines in his attempts to strike at us. Over the next week we discovered some of these before they could be used and each week we discover some new attempt before it strikes. We are thankful for the prayers that make this possible.