War Stories (38 page)

At this point several people inside the bird—myself among them—are yelling into the intercom, “We're taking fire—three o'clock!” Cpl. Kendall, manning the .50-caliber machine gun on the right side of the aircraft, has been searching for the source of the fire. He spots a dozen black figures on the roof of a building about three hundred meters to the west and says, “Right side fifty firing.” It's not a request or even an exclamation, it's just a simple declarative statement spoken so calmly I hardly pay any attention, fully engrossed in videotaping the action going on around us.

Suddenly, the muzzle of the big .50-caliber, about eighteen inches in front of my lens, erupts with a blast that almost blows out my eardrums. The videotape shows my reaction. The camera jerks back and up. There is a spastic pan across the ceiling of the helicopter. Finally, the lens points back out the hatch and at the roofline, where Kendall's rounds are impacting our antagonists. Pieces of brick and mortar fly off the building with puffs of dust as the big armor-piercing bullets hit home. And through all this, the audio track records the loud, steady, metallic hammering of a very long string of fire from the .50-caliber; then another, shorter; and finally a third burst, just a few rounds.

The barrel of Kendall's .50-caliber is red hot and smoking. Spent brass shell casings are all over the floor of the helicopter, but the Iraqis or fedayeen or whoever they were aren't shooting at us any more. The
bird is still half-hovering over the Tigris, and Maj. Don Presto, who hasn't budged an inch through all this, comes up on the intercom and says, “So, Corporal Kendall, did you get some?”

“Yes, sir!” Kendall replies. “I got some.”

Dash Two has finished loading eight wounded Marines aboard. Now it's our turn. Presto hovers up a few feet and sideslips into the landing zone as Dash Two lifts off. My camera records our rotor wash flattening the shrubbery, blowing the trees and dust about as we touch down. Once again, litter bearers race for the tail ramp, crouching low, hurrying. Nobody wants this big noisy thing on the ground any longer than necessary. We take eight wounded aboard, and as we lift, there is another furious burst of fire—the unmistakable
crack, crack, crack
of AK-47s.

By the time we have dropped the wounded at the nearest Army shock-trauma hospital, 1/5 has more casualties. We quickly refuel, pick up more ammunition, and head back. The second trip is much like the first—except this time it's full daylight and the birds are clearly visible to anyone who wants to look up and take a pot shot at them.

We go in first this time, and my camera catches a terrible moment. The wounded are loaded very quickly and we take no fire while we're on the ground, but as we start to lift off, an RPG whizzes across in front of the bird, hits in the dirt just behind us, and explodes right in front of two Marines. It looks to me like one of those blown straight up in the air by the blast is Spaz, the air officer. As Don Presto pulls up hard to clear the buildings to our south, somebody says sadly over the intercom, “They'll be on our next lift.”

The trip out of the city to the field hospital is another adventure in low-altitude express delivery. We're flying so low and so fast that it seems impossible not to hit something. When we arrive at the Army field hospital, we have to orbit around for a few minutes because the
other two HMM-268 helicopters are in the dusty hospital LZ unloading casualties from the battle at the mosque.

By the time we head back for our third lift of the day, the back of our CH-46 looks like a charnel house. Blood-soaked battle dressings, IV bags, latex gloves, pieces of Marine battle gear, and puddles of blood are all over the deck. Each troop seat along the right side of the bird has a pool of blood in it and I suddenly wonder, after all these years, if this is why the nylon webbing is dyed red.

On the way to the palace for our third casualty pickup, two U.S. Air Force A-10s fly the route in front of us, not going much faster than we are. As we're coming down the river I can hear Spaz on the radio talking to the Warthogs, telling them to strafe the 14th of July bridge. A group of fedayeen have run onto the span and are delivering enfilade fire on the Marines surrounding the landing zone. It's probable that the RPG round that just missed our helicopter on the last run has been fired from the bridge. The A-10s do as asked, and this time we take no fire from the bridge as we slide into the zone.

The troops on the ground now have a little SOP worked out as well. While we're landing, on the ground, and taking off—when a helicopter is most vulnerable—the troops around the landing zone unleash volleys of aimed fire at every window and rooftop they can see, pinning down the Iraqis or fedayeen who would otherwise be shooting at us.

Immediately after we land, a Marine with battle dressings on his legs and arms hobbles aboard with the litter bearers. He has dirt and blood all over his face and hands, and his flak jacket is shredded. Since I'm almost out of videotape, I'm helping to load the litters into the straps. The wounded Marine taps me on the shoulder and hands me a piece of cardboard—torn from an MRE case—on which a note has been scrawled in black grease pencil:
Grizzly Six, send more ammo. All DODICs needed urgent. Spaz
.

Translated from Marine jargon into English, the note means, “Col. Dunford [the officer commanding a unit is always known as the “six”], send more ammunition of all types.” In short, Padilla's 1st Battalion, 5th Marines has been battling for so long they are running dangerously low on everything: 5.56mm, 7.62mm machine gun ammo, hand grenades, AT-4 rockets, mortar rounds, 40mm grenades for the up guns on the AAVs, 25mm ammo for the chain guns on the LAVs, even .50-caliber and 120mm HE for the tanks.

I take the piece of cardboard and tuck it into my flak jacket and then try to help the wounded Marine into a troop seat, where the docs have been putting the “walking wounded.” But he fights me off and says, “I'm not going. I have work to do,” and then looks me in the face.

Suddenly he stops, looks at me again, and shouts over the roar of the bird and the gunfire “Ollie North? What are
you
doing here?”

I point to the FOX News Channel patch on my jacket and shout back in jest, “Making a war movie.”

The remark reminds him that he has one of those little Kodak disposable cameras in the cargo pocket of his utility trousers. He pulls out the camera, wraps an arm around my shoulders, holds the camera out in front of us with his other bloody paw, yells “Smile!” and snaps a picture of the two of us.

It's one of those weird moments in the midst of horror that make the inhumanity of war just a little bit more human. Before I can force the photographer into a seat, he turns and limps off the helicopter. On the back of his flak jacket is stenciled the name Basco.

The moment is gone the instant we take off. We lift off and make a hard, climbing right turn over the wall separating the palace grounds from the surrounding neighborhood. Two fedayeen with AK-47s are crouched right below us on a rooftop. They are invisible to the troops on the ground but right in the sights of Cpl. Kendall.
This time when he says “Right side fifty firing,” I'm ready. The twenty-five or thirty rounds from his machine gun cut them down just as one of them rolls to point his AK-47 at us. They never get a chance.

The rest of the day is more of the same. I give the “Need more ammo” note from Basco to “Hamster” at the RCT-5 Bravo Command CP when we stop there between missions. On one of our trips into the zone, one of the birds evacuates Basco, though I don't know which trip or which bird. I was told that he eventually passed out from loss of blood.

Our last cas-evac mission of this very long day is well after dark. Though most of the fedayeen have been killed by then, several stole away from the gunfight with RCT-7 at the university and made their way into the brush along the east side of the river. A Marine sniper with a night scope in the second story of the wrecked palace had been dealing with them handily until the helicopter landing in the zone blocked his line of fire.

While we are picking up the last load of casualties, one of the fedayeen in the bushes across the river decides to open fire across the three hundred meters of open water. Instantly, across the front of our bird, the red beam of a laser target designator can be seen through our NVGs and a voice comes up on the radio, “There's your target.”

Cpl. Amanda Hoenes, crouching at the left side .50-caliber and peering through her NVGs out her gunport, says calmly, “I have a target. Left side fifty firing,” and opens fire in short, steady, ten-round bursts. The rounds hit right where the laser touched the far bank. The shooting from the far bank stops. An AK-47 is no match for a .50-caliber in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Amanda Hoenes knows how to use a .50-caliber.

Though the palace complex is secured shortly after dark, no one wants to risk moving the helicopters there for the night. So after our last cas-evac mission, we land back where we started the day—at the RCT-5 Bravo CP, up Route 2 in northeast Baghdad. The day has been physically and emotionally exhausting, but sleep evades me. I can't get out of my mind a comment made by one of the young Marines earlier in the day.

On the second or third lift we had taken a young lance corporal who, although wounded in one arm, was helping to load another Marine who was dead or dying. When we arrived at the Army shock-trauma hospital, the facility was so busy they had set up a triage outside, and Don Presto shut the bird down to keep from blowing desert grit on the wounded, who were lying on litters or just sitting on the ground in front of the hospital tents. I aided the wounded lance corporal down the ramp and was about to ease him to the ground, but he insisted that I place him near the litter holding the Marine he had helped load aboard the bird.

The young Marine sat between the handles of the stretcher and cradled the head of the bloody comrade who still had an IV in his arm, the bag of saline fluid suspended from an M-16 jammed into the center of the litter where it folds. I asked the lance corporal if I could get him some water but when he looked up at me, tears were running down his face and he said simply, “He's dying, isn't he, sir?”

“I think he's already gone, son” was all I could manage.

The boy brushed some dirt off the dead man's face and, after a moment, looked back at me as I crouched beside him. Then, through his tears, with wisdom many twice his age never have, the young lance corporal said, “He was my gunny, sir. He was a really good man. He was a hero. Not just for the way he died. He was a hero for the way he lived.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #32