My Men are My Heroes (14 page)

Soon AAVs filled with Alpha Co. Marines pushed across the Euphrates River bridge. Bravo Co. was right behind them. As soon as the tracks got across the bridge, the lead AAV was challenged by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) shot from a white van with a blue stripe. The track's driver swerved. The RPG missed. But the tension was palpable, and soon there were other obstacles: The tracks encountered mud and broken sewer mains that turned the ground they were crossing into sludge pits. After penetrating into the eastern edge of the city the tracks began getting stuck.

Meanwhile, Iraqis were firing RPGs out of windows, doorways, and cars. Alpha called for reinforcements and got M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks for support. The tank's 120mm stabilized main guns, coaxial machine gun, and the always fearsome M2 Browning .50-caliber heavy machine gun—better known as “Ma Deuce”—are great equalizers. The tanks belonged to a company of Marine Reserve tankers assigned to Task Force Tarawa. Their firepower was a greatly needed addition to Alpha's limited means. The tanks allowed the badly hit Marines to hold their ground while reinforcements moved up. But within a few minutes the same bad luck hit the reinforcing tanks—they got mired in the same mud and muck.

1/2's original mission—to secure the southern bridge across the Euphrates and push on to the Saddam Canal bridge—was a bust. Now their best hope was to hang on to the southern bridge
and push another company to the canal bridge and hold that as well. Charlie Co., in trace behind the now mired Bravo Co., got the call. When Charlie's AAV started taking hits and several Marines died, even that became questionable.

Adding insult to injury, two Air Force A-10 “Warthog” attack aircraft strafed Charlie's column with their 30mm Gatling guns, destroying two AAVs. An accident investigation by the Department of Defense and Central Command released March 29, 2004, exonerated the Air Force, deciding the unfortunate combat mishap was a consequence of the fog of war. Before the fight was over, 18 Marines were killed and 17 were wounded.

In the late afternoon of March 24, 3/1 received word that the 2d Marines Division had taken heavy casualties. 3/1 was ordered in to open up Route Moe.

Lima Co. was ordered into the city first. First Sergeant Ruff, who shot it out with the insurgents at Failaka Island, was still ramrodding the company. He had come to Lima from a cushy assignment teaching at the Naval Reserve Officer Training Program and was not an infantryman. This was a big challenge, Ruff admits.

“Learning what to do as an infantry first sergeant was tough,” he says, “but I had the help of the other first sergeants in the battalion, especially First Sergeant Cadle and First Sergeant Kasal.”

Lima's Marines were still riding in their AAVs when they arrived at their departure area near the bridge. Ruff supervised their dismount and watched while his NCOs got them into the appropriate order and led them off to battle.

Ruff says they were receiving “a little bit” of fire. The battalion logs show that the Marines were taking automatic weapons fire, mortars, RPGs, and sniper fire. After Lima's Grunts got organized
into a solid line, the tracks moved up behind them to provide suppressive fire from their heavy weapons. It was a gutsy move by the track crews: Despite their size and bulk, AAVs are not tanks and are not intended to defeat heavy fire from mortars and RPGs. The proof was already burning just to the north of the southern bridge where two AAVs were still cooking off.

Lima was assigned a 700-meter stretch of Moe to secure. India Marines leapfrogged across Lima's line to form another line farther north. Kasal fidgeted all night waiting for Kilo to get orders to join in, but India's position was as far as 3/1 moved until dawn. All night, dug-in enemy pounded them with mortars, RPGs, and harassing fire. It was a tough place to be, even for seasoned veterans, and most of the young Marines in 3/1 were facing combat for the first time.

The tracks faced west and east to protect Lima's flank and rear along an exposed line that meandered beside Route Moe for about a mile. Fortunately the AAVs met only sporadic fire as they rolled into town behind Lima and India's protective screen. An occasional RPG raced past, and a few more skipped along the road or flew overhead without doing any damage. More fire came from small arms. Ruff was on foot moving up and down the company line encouraging his Marines, keeping them under cover, and directing whatever fighting was going on.

Kilo spent the night south of the bridge listening to the clamor of war, itching to get into the fight. Kasal and the other staff NCOs and officers kept busy making sure the company was ready to enter the cauldron the next morning. They passed out ammunition, went over the rules of engagement, checked the men's equipment, and checked and rechecked their maps and orders. Kasal slept when he could—a few minutes here, a few more there—something he says didn't bother him all that much. Almost two decades as a Marine had taught him how to catch catnaps that kept him alert.

When they moved into the city just after dawn, Kilo's job was clearing the street to the west of Route Moe. That road was now almost 4 kilometers of wall-to-wall enemy with automatic weapons, RPGs, heavy machine guns, and a few automatic cannon that could cause real pain. So-called Saddam Fedayeen (freedom fighters)—young Sunni supporters of the regime trained to fight as guerillas infested the town. The buildings and walled squares where the insurgents were hidden was an ungraceful collection of one- and two-story boxes made with thick walls and roofs to keep out the unremitting heat.

The buildings made great fighting positions. Iraqis could move from window to window without being detected or hit, and even from house to house through a maze of connecting alleys. An Nasiriyah was a perfect warren for the Saddam Fedayeen.

Kasal was in the thick of it from the first light of day. “We had to clear out all the buildings within a block in the whole length of the street, including the southern bridge across the Euphrates all the way to the bridge at the north end of the city,” he says. “What we did was clear houses, city blocks, everything. I ran from position to position directing fire, helping Marines, inspiring Marines. It was the first time any of my Marines had been in combat.”

As the fighting grew fiercer, Kasal got busier. Thankfully it was in the mid-80s and not as hot as it would be later, but running in the sun wearing the impermeable MOPP suit and weighted down with at least 80 pounds of body armor, ammo, weapons, and other gear made it sweltering just the same. Adding to everyone's discomfort was the constant incoming small arms, RPGs, and mortar fire that splashed on the baked ground, spreading white-hot shrapnel and snapping bullets through the smoke-filled air.

Occasionally the Marines would spot their tormentors. Most of them were wearing civilian clothes or all-black ninja-style suits that marked their antagonists as the ruthless Fedayeen—Saddam's youthful hired thugs emboldened by drugs and
Baathist rhetoric. The Marines' Rules of Engagement (ROE) prohibited them from simply killing anyone they saw moving about. A Marine had to see a weapon or some activity smacking of hostile intent before he could open fire. Obeying the ROE was a vexing, complicated situation for the young Marines, and it required constant leadership to enforce—especially after Marines started taking casualties from Iraqis who fired on them, then put their weapons down and walked away. The enemy knew what it was doing.

Corporal Nicoll was a rifleman on a fire team in Kilo when it went into the city. A fire team has four men and is usually the smallest maneuver element in a rifle company. He remembers his first combat as surreal. “They were playing AC-DC's “Hells Bells,” Nicoll recalls of the trip in. “Somebody played it over the loudspeaker. It was hurry up and wait, hot as shit. We wore MOPP suits and spent our time breathing exhaust fumes. Three days is a long time all packed in there. People would get claustrophobic and start hitting the walls, freaking. We were glad to get out and fight.

“We sat outside of An Nasiriyah that night,” Nicoll continues. “They told us what had been going on. I talked to Staff Sergeant [Christopher] Pruitt, my platoon sergeant. We were just watching the tracers and artillery. We were far enough from An Nasiriyah not to get shot at. I wanted to do it, get it over with. I kind of knew I was going to do okay—I knew I was going to because I was with my boys.

“We drove into the city on tracks. We started taking fire so we pulled off, the doors dropped, and we all got down on the street and shot people as they popped out. It was amazing. There were people all around us. One gunner left a pile of dead bodies, six or seven bodies right in front of us. It was incredible.”

When 3/1's Grunts identified shooters, they took them out with M-16s, SAWs, M203 grenade launchers, hand grenades, and
shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapons (SMAWs)—the Marines' favorite building busters. Backing them up was Weapons Co. armed with Ma Deuce, 81mm mortars, 40mm automatic grenade launchers, and TOW and Javelin antitank missiles that would definitely do damage when they found the enemy. Weapons Co. in turn was backed up by the powerful gunners on the AAVs and Abrams tanks.

Unlike the enemy, the Marines of Kilo were lying in the street, totally exposed to the Iraqis. It was a tough place to be a Marine and an even tougher place to be a Marine first sergeant. Devoid of cover, Kasal, Ruff, and the other leaders moved from position to position completely exposed to enemy fire. Worse, their constant movement identified them as leaders, earmarking them for special attention. Kasal and Ruff both say they never gave much thought to being exposed because it was the only way they could direct their men.

“If I would see something wrong, I would run over and correct it—misaimed fires, uncoordinated fires, whatever,” Kasal says. “I would go with a squad to clear a building, help evacuate wounded—basically try to be everywhere, directing, guiding, encouraging, inspiring. The only cover we had was what we could find: a wall, a fence, the side of a building. Sometimes I was just out in the middle of the street.”

That's the way it went as they progressed through the city clearing buildings, securing the route, and ensuring an uncontested passage for the units that followed them. Eventually they made it out the other side of the city. Incredibly, 3/1 escaped without any fatalities.

After An Nasiriyah the division encountered only light resistance and sporadic hit-and-run ambushes in central Iraq. The anticipated hard combat the Marines expected never
materialized, but they soon outran their supply. They were down to eating one or two MREs a day and using their water sparingly. The battalion had to slow down until they received some support.

Kasal was glad for the pause. His Marines would finally get some time to take off their boots and change their socks and at least get out of some of their clothes for a few hours. They were still wearing MOPP suits and all their armor. Even then, the war was never far away, he says.

“We did an operational pause just south of Al Kut,” Kasal says. “We set up a defensive perimeter. While we were set up there, this car comes down the road toward us. Behind it was an Iraqi truck. We kept trying to get the car to stop, but it wouldn't stop. The next thing you know, the truck starts shooting at the car.”

The Marines turned their machine guns on the truck and destroyed it, Kasal says. “We lit up the truck, and a bunch of Iraqi troops jumped out and we lit them up and killed them. Then we ran out to the car. There was an Iraqi family inside—an old man, his wife, and his two daughters. The wife was killed and the daughters were wounded when the Iraqi soldiers opened up on the car. We medically treated the two daughters, and then we took the girls with their father and medevac'd them back to the rear for treatment.”

Kasal later discovered that the unfortunate family were Shiites fleeing the Iraqi army. The predominantly Sunni soldiers had been raping and torturing the Shiites as they retreated. The victimized family hoped to reach the Marines before the Iraqi soldiers captured them. To Kasal's deep disappointment it was not to be.

Intelligence later revealed the bulk of Saddam Hussein's military forces had either melted away or retired to Baghdad for the final fight. The foreign fighters had not yet arrived in strength and the only real resistance was from the Saddam Fedayeen,
Kasal says. Most Iraqis still smiled at Americans. Most Marines thought they had won the war and the Army would now move in and administer the peace.

Despite the euphoria Kasal had reservations about celebrating the conclusion of the war. Things had just been too easy. Everybody with weapons had disappeared. Somebody had to have them. Kasal figured 3/1 would be back sooner than later.

“I didn't think it was over,” he says. “I was more worried about going back to Pendleton because the battalion was going to lose a lot of good people who were waiting for discharge or schools or getting transferred when OIF started. I was worried about what would happen to the battalion. It was the senior battalion in the regiment and the best battalion I had ever served in.”

Except for the Marines and soldiers who still mourned their dead, the nation quickly forgot the cost of the seemingly easy victory. In terms of history it was almost a bloodless war. For a time it seemed peace and stability would soon follow.

It was not to be, of course, but the shooting wouldn't resume again for a while. 3/1 went home by plane in late May 2003. After a month stand-down while everybody took leave, the battalion reformed at Pendleton. As Kasal had feared, the Thundering Third swiftly changed its face as more and more men left for Civvy Street, schools, and assignments that had been on hold while they fought the war.