War Stories (41 page)

      
With 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines

      
Samarra, 60 km north of Baghdad, Iraq

      
Monday, 14 April 2003

      
2345 Hours Local

Before retiring for a few hours sleep on April 13 we hooked up our satellite gear and dialed into FOX News Channel center in New York. The first report is great news. The Marines of 3rd LAR—part of Task Force Tripoli—have rescued seven American POWs in Samarra. Five are soldiers from the ill-fated, 507th Maintenance Company ambush of March 23 in An Nasiriyah. The other two are Chief Warrant Officers David Williams and Ronald Young, Jr., the Apache helicopter pilots assigned to the 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment based in Ft. Hood, Texas, shot down the same day near Karbala.

The POWs had apparently been moved constantly since their capture. They were rescued in Samarra without a shot fired thanks to information provided by an Iraqi—and the quick response of the Marines.

We took this as a sign that the Iraqis are becoming less fearful of Baath and fedayeen reprisals for cooperating with U.S. forces. It also meant that as 3/5 moved north, they would have one less mission to perform.

After a few hours of sleep, we're on the road. I ride with Mundy, his sergeant major, a gunner, and a driver. Griff is in a Humvee behind us with the battalion XO, Maj. Jason Morris. In front of us are two M-1 tanks and two AAVs loaded with infantrymen standing in the open hatches, their weapons at the ready.

The move through Baghdad goes smoother than expected because of a curfew that keeps civilian traffic down to a minimum, and before Tuesday's dawn we're well north of the city, moving at twenty-five to thirty kilometers per hour. By the time the sun comes up over the Tigris, we're surrounded by fields of grain and orchards of fig trees that give off a much nicer fragrance than do our unwashed bodies.

Using a Blue Force Tracker mounted on the Humvee dashboard and his PRC-119 radio, Mundy keeps careful track of the vehicles in the fast-moving convoy. By the time we reach the outskirts of Samarra, some sixty kilometers north of Baghdad, he's fully closed up and well prepared for a fedayeen ambush just after we cross the hydroelectric dam west of the city. He dispatches two tanks and a rifle company mounted in AAVs, supported by a section of Cobras, to deal with the fedayeen, and rolls into the pharmaceutical plant.

The plant is directly across the highway from a reconstruction of the Tower of Babel and a fortress built by Alexander the Great 2,300 years ago. I decide to go get a closer shot of these while the intel officers and the guys from OGA look for any signs that the pharmaceutical facility is being used to manufacture chemical or biological weapons. But as I'm crossing the highway accompanied by a Marine rifleman, a three-Mercedes motorcade pulls up beside me. Armed men in western dress, who look much like the Iranians I used to meet with when I was trying to get American hostages out of dungeons in Beirut, get out of the first and third cars. One of them opens the back door of the middle Mercedes and a tall Shi'ite imam emerges.

I'm wondering how fast and far the young Marine and I can run after the shooting starts when the mullah says in perfect English, “How do you do? Would you please escort me to your general?”

Realizing that this is my “get out of jail free” card, I reply, “Please wait right here and we'll be right back,” and the PFC and I head for the pharmaceutical plant's main gate.

Since the closest thing we have to a general at this location is Lt. Col. Sam Mundy, he leaves Maj. Morris in charge and goes to meet with the imam. The imam explains that he has just returned to Iraq from exile in Iran and he wants to help us “get rid of the foreigners.”

My Arabic isn't as good as Mundy's, and I think at first that he means he wants to get rid of us, but the imam explains by “foreigners” he means the Syrian, Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Lebanese fedayeen who have “invaded”—his word, not mine—Iraq. The imam, now joined by a local sheikh, invites Mundy and all of our “soldiers” to come to a feast to celebrate the victory over Saddam.

Sam Mundy is not only a warrior, he's also a diplomat. He explains that all of the “foreigners” have not yet been captured or killed, and that while we very much appreciate the kind invitation, it will have to wait.

After another hour of searching the pharmaceutical plant, Mundy decides he needs more expertise to determine whether the plant was making cough drops or something worse. RCT-5 HQ tells him to remain in Samarra overnight and they will send some experts in the morning.

We've just rolled out of the plant to find a suitable place to bivouac his battalion when an urgent call comes in on Mundy's Iridium phone: a Cobra has gone down at the air base about fifteen kilometers east of Samarra. Mundy quickly organizes his TRAP response unit—two tanks, six AAVs full of troops, and four Humvees—and I tag along as we race out to recover the two pilots before the fedayeen can get to them.

The road to the airfield is lined with well-maintained farms—on which Saddam has hidden tanks, armored vehicles, and even disassembled MiG fighters—all abandoned. The up guns on the AAVs—and even some of the .50-caliber gunners on the Humvees—each take turns putting a few rounds into the Iraqi equipment just to make sure that it won't move or be used again.

When we arrive at the air base and find the wreckage of the Cobra, it looks like a giant piece of aluminum foil balled up and tossed on the desert sands. The helicopter had been attacking anti-aircraft weapons around the airfield when it was blown out of the sky by a secondary explosion from one of the hundreds of ammunition storage revetments spread around the field. If you didn't believe in miracles before seeing this wreckage, you'd have to when you learn that the pilots have survived both the explosion and the crash. Though the Cobra was totally demolished, the pilot suffered only a separated shoulder and his copilot/gunner had minor lacerations after crawling out of the wreckage. It's astounding that these guys were recovered alive.

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #36

      
With 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines

      
Samarra, Iraq

      
Tuesday, 15 April 2003

      
2345 Hours Local

It's well after dark when we finally got back to Samarra, where Maj. Morris has coiled the battalion just outside the city for the night. From our bivouac we can see the city lights about a mile to the west. Power was never lost from the hydroelectric generators up here. Though this is Saddam's neighborhood, the locals don't seem to be in mourning.

At 0430 hours local this morning, Maj. Morris joins me in front of the night lens of our camera for the
Hannity & Colmes
show. In response to a question from Alan Colmes, who is wondering how the negative press is affecting morale, Morris responds, “Well, I'll tell you, sir, we've got a great sense of accomplishment. . . . It's a real testament to the skill and fighting spirit of the Marines for getting where we have.” And then Colmes asks about the announcement from CENTCOM that major combat activities have ceased and that all units are to transition into “security and stability operations.” Morris answers, “We're looking forward to this mission, sir. It's going to take us back a little ways. We're not going to be quite as ramped up, but we're ready for it.”

When we finish, Morris asks me, “How did I do?”

I respond, poking fun at my favorite liberal, “You did fine. But you don't have to call Alan Colmes ‘sir.'”

On Wednesday, shortly after dawn, I am sitting on the ramp of an AAV washing my feet and changing my socks—one of those pleasant, solitary rituals that infantry Marines try to practice daily but often don't get to—when Griff comes running up to me with the Iridium satellite phone. “CENTCOM says that the Marines down south have captured ‘Abu somebody' you were looking for,” he exclaims breathlessly.

“Abu who?” I ask, somewhat irritated that my ablutions are being interrupted.

“I don't know,” Griff replies. “Here,” he says, handing me the phone, “talk to New York.”

The foreign desk had the story right. The name is Abu Abbas, and he was captured last night by Marine and Task Force 20 operators during a raid on the outskirts of Baghdad. Abbas is the Palestinian terrorist who masterminded the October 1985 hijacking of the Italian
Achille Lauro
cruise ship.

When I served as the U.S. government's coordinator for counter-terrorism, I was deeply involved in the effort to capture Abbas and his three fellow terrorists. It was an operation in which those who claimed to be our friends thwarted the United States at every turn.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was the first. He lied to Ronald Reagan, and then tried to facilitate the terrorists' escape.

Abbas, the head of the Palestine Liberation Front, had orchestrated the hijacking of the ship and the cold-blooded murder of Leon Klinghoffer. A sixty-nine-year-old invalid, Klinghoffer was shot while he sat in his wheelchair; his body was then dumped overboard. The Egyptians allowed the ship to sail into Alexandria harbor, where officials dispatched by Mubarak took the terrorists off the ship and hid them while arranging for an EgyptAir DC-9 to secretly fly them out of the country.

President Reagan called Mubarak and told him, “I understand the terrorists are in Egypt. I want them.”

Mubarak denied they were still there and claimed that he was sorry and that he didn't know that they killed anyone. Meanwhile, the terrorists were secretly moved to the airport for a flight to Tunis, Tunisia, where Yasser Arafat was quietly preparing a hero's welcome.

With help from the Israeli intelligence services, we confirmed information we had received about the EgyptAir escape aircraft with the terrorists aboard. The plane was then intercepted over the Mediterranean Sea by F-14s from the 6th Fleet and escorted to the NATO base at Sigonella, Sicily.

When the EgyptAir commercial airliner touched down at Sigonella, it was immediately surrounded by a Special Operations unit led by Brig. Gen. Carl Steiner, who boldly opened the aircraft door, faced down the armed guard and terrorists, and took them into custody. As the SEALs prepared to escort the four terrorists to a waiting USAF C-141, they were themselves surrounded by Italian police.
To avoid a “friendly fire” incident with our Italian “allies,” Steiner was ordered to turn the Palestinian terrorists over to the police.