Poops McGourty

SPC McGourty laying his own surface landmine in the IED crater.

Took the pic down as a precaution. I gotta make sure I keep my nose clean with this blog. And gonna have a talk with the brass to make sure I'm not digging my own grave.

Ponapei and the remains of his challenger. After the IED was defeated, SPC Roby then proceeded to eat its heart to acquire its powers...and because he eats everything. 

SPC Benton

SPC Benton was fine, other than a slight temporary ringing in one of his ears. Asphalt litters his gunner's hole by his left arm. 

SPC ROBY: 1, IED: 1

The anecdote on Election Day is just a tiny slice of the longest day in Iraq. By 20:00, I felt like I was dreaming. I’ve chosen to omit much of the day because nobody will ever understand unless they were there, but I thought the incident towards the end of this post was funny.

A few days ago, we were sitting in my humvee, lined up on the FOB and getting ready to roll out the gate. PFC Langford looked over from the driver’s seat at me and just started laughing out of nowhere.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. I don’t want to say it.”
“Say it.” I said, laughing too now.
“Well…I was gonna say, we’ve never been hit by an IED.”
“I KNOW!” I shouted while laughing. “We’ve made it through so much shit for a year. And every damn platoon in this battalion has been hit by an IED but us. We’ve seen it all. Tank mines, RPGs, machine gun fire, hand grenades. But we’ve never been hit by an IED.”
“Sir, what are you DOING?” SGT P asked me like I was crazy. “Silence yourself.”
PFC Langford and I continued to laugh. “Ahhh, I don’t believe in all that jinx shit.” I said……………………

We’ve spent the last week hardening schools in the various villages and the city to create safe election sites. The mornings started around 0430. Before the sun rose, I would link up with 1LT Monken from support platoon and confirm the HEMTs, PLSs and lowboys with forklifts that were coming with me to the school sites. CPT Fowler and his Avenger Company were responsible for a city. The platoons of Avenger Company along with support platoon managed to harden the sites with jersey barriers and concertina wire. We worked from morning until night. The men ate MREs and water. SPC Stoker slashed his nose on the concertina wire. Many of us were shin-deep in ditches full of feces, trash and stagnant water, while stringing wire around.

I want to take this opportunity to say that support platoon, the Road Warriors of 2-63 AR, are some hard working soldiers. NCOs like SGT Muhtedi and SGT Price and their junior enlisted guys were cross-attached to us for a few days. They went everywhere we had to go, dropping barriers and helping us to create a defendable site out of these schools. And when a last minute election site popped up on Avenger’s radar, they just executed. This was the scene all across Iraq for the line units and support elements.

The Idaho National Guard unit that was attached to us for some time now has been an awesome asset. I got to work with them prior to and during elections and they are awesome guys. These elections would have been a lot more painful if we didn’t have their help in sector.

Another key element to the success was the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Police. They occupied every operating polling site and did a great job of maintaining security at the sites. Because of the ban on vehicular movement, they voluntarily shuttled voters from remote villages to polling sites. They deserve a lot of credit…………….

Anyways...

Election day started for us around 0500. It was supposed to start at 0200. We had been up all day and late into the night for days, hardening sites prior to Election Day. If our engineers hadn’t worked extra hard to get the ballots out on the night of the 29th, the night would have just run into election day. But as our luck would have it, our commander fought to get our SP time pushed back so we could get a few hours of sleep.

We rolled out to the sites early in the morning and ensured that the schools were guarded by the Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army. We made sure they had radios and conducted radio checks with them. If they didn’t have enough food, water, or ammunition, we would drop off some Class 1 or 5.

It was around 1000; we were driving on a main route between villages. There was a reed laying across half of the road. My driver noticed it the few times we passed it before the sun came up, but now it was light out.

“Red, this is Red 8Golf, there’s some wire coming out of that bamboo reed,” SPC Stoker said. He was SSG Terry’s gunner.

This was our third pass of this spot and I was already passed it. We had noticed the bamboo but not the wire. “Red 7, this is Red 6. Go back and take a look at it with your section, my section will pull ahead and pull security.”

I drove our humvees ahead to get in a safe distance. SFC Kennedy was the rear truck commander. He turned his section around to face the reed. His wingman’s gunner started shooting the area where the wire disappeared into the shoulder with the M240. After a few hundred rounds, nothing went off so we continued with mission. As we continued our patrol up and down the main road and back and forth between election sites, a police truck stopped us and wanted to take us to another IED. It was where we had just been.

We didn’t see anything on the first pass, so we turned around and had another look. The police truck stopped and stuck his arm out the window and pointed at the side of the road. He then sped off. “Pull up where he was, Langford."

“Red 7, this is Red 6. Yeah I see a spring here coming out of the dirt. It could be an anti-handling device. The dirt is disturbed. The dirt looks a little lighter colored than the rest of the shoulder.” It was hard as hell to notice. I was amazed that SPC Stoker had even seen the wire coming out of the bamboo reed at the last spot a few hundred meters up the road. If there were IEDs here, the bad guy did a damn good job of burying it. I sat there staring at the little spring coming out of the dirt. Sometimes they plant fake IEDs just to see how you react to them so they can figure out your tactics. Again, I let SFC Kennedy have a go with it while I pulled my section away to a safe distance. His wingman, SGT Blake pulled up to it and let his gunner, PFC Riley, run with the machine gun. After a few hundred rounds and nothing to show for it, SFC Kennedy called up.

”This is Red 7. It looks like we knocked the spring off.”

“Ahhh this thing is a fake,” we said among ourselves in my truck.

We linked back up with bravo section and pulled ahead of them. By now, we had passed this site more than 4 or 5 times just during the morning. Up to this point in time, a soft-skinned police truck stopped at it, and then each truck in my platoon had pulled up to within a few feet of the tiny spring to get a closer look. I was more than half-convinced that these were fakes designed to deter elections. Maybe on a less busy day, we could have EOD come take a look at the site with their robot.

I wanted to go check on one of my election sites so we got lined up on the road and started heading north. We would be passing this spot on the road for the 6th time. I sent a SITREP to battalion using the FIPR on the BFT. To simply put it, email. We were too far out to have radio communication with them so I had been talking to them all morning through text messages. I told them the grid to the possible fake IED as we pushed on.

“Ah hold up Langford. I should probably take a picture of this little spring.” SFC Kennedy had asked if I had taken a picture of the bamboo reed and since nothing came of it, I hadn’t. But this was our second site within 500 meters of each other; I should have a picture of something to show battalion. “Pull up annnnnd…..stop.” The spring just laid there in the dirt just a few feet from me. I looked down at my left shoulder and grabbed the digital camera that was lanyarded to my D-ring on my body armor. I pressed my face against the window of my door to get a better look.

BOOOOOOOOM

Earth went everywhere. “YEAAAAA!” SGT Pritsolas screamed from the seat behind me.

I looked at Langford. He looked at me. Awww man. That sucks, our faces said. After a few seconds, chunks of dirt and asphalt started pouring into the truck from the gunner’s hole. The gunner!

“Benton! You ok?” SGT P hollered up at him.

“Yeah,” he said sadly but hilariously. “I’m ok. It was kinda loud.”

“Didn’t you have your earplugs in?” SGT P asked.

“I had one in, Sergeant,” PFC Benton said apologetically. “But I had to listen to the handmike.” SPC Benton was fine. Luckily, we modified our TTP once we got to Iraq. Gunners always stay squatted down in the hatch now. They only stand when they are engaging or if we are stationary for a long time and they need to pull security. Many gunners were wounded or killed by IEDs because they were standing up. There is no need to stand because the common threat is IEDs, not fighters.

“Is everyone ok?” I asked. “Yeah? Then let’s get the HELL OUTTA HERE!”

PFC Langford floored it as we pulled away. “I think we have a flat tire,” he said. “It feels funny.”

”Red 6, Red 8. Are you ok? Do you need us to send up the medic?”

“This is Red 6. Everyone is ok. Don’t need the medic. We’re going to push ahead and get off the road somewhere safe and check out the truck.”

I pounded at the keyboard of my BFT: JUST HIT BY IED AT LAST GRID GIVEN. EVERYONE OK. POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO TRUCK. 11:17

We pulled ahead into a dirt field and checked out the truck. There were no flat tires.

“Musta been the adrenaline, Sir. I just thought it drove funny,” Langford said.

We started looking for an observer, since there was no question that the IED was command detonated. We looked out into the farm fields and tree lines but saw nothing.

Finally, my crew broke out laughing. Our platoon came up to us.

“Man that was so cool from where we were.” Some one said to me.

“You shoulda seen it, Sir.” SSG Terry said. “It looked like a volcano erupted. The explosion went straight up. I don’t think anything hit you.”

The truck didn’t have a single scratch on it. It was covered in dirt and asphalt but that was it.

SFC Kennedy came up to check on us. He was probably the only one not laughing.

“See! I told you that IED wasn’t fake.” I joked.

SFC Kennedy was just glad everyone was ok. “Man, we were sitting there behind you. I was just telling my crew, ‘The Lieutenant thinks its fake but I’m telling you all it-‘ and then ‘Boom’ that thing went off. Now they just did a good fucking job of hiding that thing. It was hard as hell to tell that something was there but you knew something was up.”

Around 1300, my commander, who was all over the city with the Idaho Nat’l Guard, came to our location to relieve us for chow. I briefed him on the IED that blew us up and told him about the second possible IED. Now that we knew the spot was hot, it was safe to assume that there was another IED a few hundred meters up the road. We headed back to the FOB for about 45 minutes to get fuel and food. We were grateful for the opportunity, even if it was brief.

We came back to our location around 1500 so that the commander could get the hell out of dodge. They had been having fun with the Ma Deuce while we were gone. Using about 200 rounds of .50cal, they had actually uncovered the second IED.

“African 155mm,” CPT Fowler told me. “Check this out. I saw the glimmer of the fishing line running across the road that held the bamboo reed in place.” He opened the trunk of his truck and showed me the bamboo reed with the electrical wire threaded through it. It was a pressure switch with contacts all along the wire. When a vehicle tire went over any part of the reed and wire inside, it completed the circuit and detonated the round. The scout platoon sergeant showed us the 9-volt battery that was buried with the round.

“Well, we’re gonna get outta here and grab some chow now. See if you guys can blow this thing up,” CPT Fowler said. And just like that, they were off like a prom dress.

Sweet.

SFC Kennedy brought his truck up with the M2 .50cal mounted on it. SPC Roby gripped his machine gun and started taking single shots at it. The rest of the trucks were set back a few hundred meters. The last truck was about 400 meters back, right at the crater of the last IED that blew up on us. In the crater was SPC McGourty. He was squatting with his pants around his ankles. He was taking a shit in the IED crater.

POP.
“You can do it, Roby.” A soldier hollered.
“C’mon, All The Way Ponapei!”
POP
He was right in there. A few rounds struck the artillery shell.
“C’mon Roby. You can do it.” SSG Terry shouted.
“YOU SUCK, ROBY!” I screamed.
POP.
SPC Benton and SPC Lewis were filming the scene with their cameras.
“He’s shooting short,” somebody said. “Somebody tell him he’s shooting short.
“He knows that. COME ON BABY” SSG Terry said.

Inside the truck, SFC Kennedy was observing and guiding his gunner.
Pop-BOOOOM. A huge fireball went up. SPC Roby ducked his head real slowly like a turtle. Then suddenly his arms went up, hands in fists. VICTORY. He looked back at us and punched the air a few times with a huge smile on his face.

“HEADS UP!” Everyone screamed. I watched the back chunk of the IED sail up about a hundred feet as it flew backwards. I felt like I was watching it forever as it sailed over all of our heads. “WATCH OUT” I yelled to the guys back there.
“YEAH ROBY”
“THAT’S HOW YOU DO IT!”
“NICE SHOOTIN’”
“ALL THE WAY PONAPEI”

SPC McGourty was still in the other crater. He grabbed his pants and scrambled towards his truck. That giant chunk was the size of cantaloupe, and it even sailed way over their heads way back there. Everyone was laughing in cheering after having taken cover and the shrapnel had finished falling. We walked up to the crater for a closer look. I grabbed a piece of shrapnel the size of a giant dagger.

“Here you go, Roby. A souvenir. Nice job.” I tossed the dagger up towards him in his gunner’s hatch.

SPC McGourty came trotting towards us. He pants were unbloused and his boots were unlaced. Everyone was laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“McGourty shit on himself”

“What do you mean, ‘he shit on himself’?” I didn’t understand if the explosion made him crap his pants or what.

“When the IED blew up, he was making for the truck in a middle of a shit and he got shit all over himself and his pants.”

“OH MAN!” I cried.

Needless to say, I think the elections went quite well. I’m glad the Iraqi people didn’t fear terrorist attempts to defeat democracy and freedom. I also think boycotting a vote is the stupidest, most illogical thing you can do. Doesn’t that make you the loser of that battle, by default? Intentionally not casting a vote? I don’t know.

I think it was an awesome responsibility for the U.S military. And I don’t mean “awesome” as in “cool.” There were men and women of the U.S. military across the country who were directly involved and responsible for making these elections happen and that is an incredible achievement. It was an insane task, given the time line. This is a toast is to all of you soldiers who, like Red Platoon, were out in sector during elections making sure the ballots got safely to where they needed to be. Only you will know the hoops you’ve jumped through to make this thing a success.

Pounding Pickets

Red 6, after pounding pickets. Out of breath and conclusively, out of shape. 

Harden Site...Execute.

SFC Kennedy- Red 7- making NCOs make soldiers make mission happen. 

SPC Dawes

SPC Dawes stringing concertina wire to secure an election site. 

Rambo-Abdullah and Me.

Me and some bad ass Iraqi Army dude. 

Elections

Thanks for the OPSEC heads-up, Big Brother. But all OPSEC info like phase line names are fictional. I check my work before I post it. Just wanted to say again thanks for all of the emails and kind words. I do read every posted comment and email. I am sorry I can't get back to all you. This is the first time I have seen the internet in days. This past week, the line platoons only have time to wake-up, be on mission all day without coming back to the FOB, and getting in near midnite to get some sleep.

The soldiers of 2-63 AR BN are out there hardening the election sites and working around the clock to provide security for the Iraqis. I'm pretty excited about being out there for something historical. Not all my soldiers can be out there but I have guys begging to be taken out in sector. Seeing how bad these locals want the elections to happen has been pretty inspiring for us. I will be posting photos of the guys laying wire and dropping barriers when I have more time, probably after elections are over.

11 November: Tank Mines

“Well that was fun. Let’s go find some more shit to blow up.” SGT P said. It was around 1200. We had just silenced a row of houses where the enemy had entrenched themselves and lit up Outlaw platoon. It was south west of the cloverleaf and in the open desert. The city itself sort of funneled southwest. Picture a big fat Y. Well actually, I guess HY would be a better graphic, since the west side of the city where the Marines were, went straight north and south. We were at the junction of the Y, which was the industrial zone, looking southwest.

“Hey, Sir. Look at all those houses out there. It looks like a whole ‘nother city. Do you think we are going there?” I bent down into the GPSE. Several kilometers away, SGT P was looking at what seemed like an annex to the city. There was an open landfill between the industrial zone and the start of another built up area. But this built up area had magnificent two and three story houses. The houses looked pretty big. And they were immaculate. Unmolested by artillery and main gun rounds.

“No way. There’s no way we’re going down there. That shit looks another city; as big as what we just cleared up here.” I was under the impression that now that we had cleared the industrial zone, we would establish strongholds in the city, and run humvee patrols out of them in an effort to mop up the mess. I also didn’t fully grasp how big the city really was. Nor did anybody at the company level and below know exactly how the plan would unfold from here.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Back at the LRP

“Well the Marines have finally caught up with us. We are moving south to clear everything south of the Industrial Zone,” CPT Mayfield told us.

Shows how much I know.

“Pretty much the entire RCT-7 has the insurgents on the run and they are hauling ass south. The enemy is believed to have fallen back to this location. There are supposed to be civilians in the area so be careful what you shoot at. Get positive I.D. on your targets. Avenger and Terminator are switching spots. So Avenger will be on your immediate right or west flank as we move south. Again, you can shoot anything south of here after you get PID, but check your fires west and east where the Marines are in an outer cordon. We’re expecting the fiercest resistance here.”

I laughed inside. Resistance. I hadn’t seen much resistance. I had seen bad guys on the run, but nobody stood toe to toe with us and fought.

In Baqubah, terrorists in headwraps stood anywhere from 30 to 400 meters in front of my tank. They stopped, squared their shoulders at us just like in an old fashioned duel, and fired RPGs at our tanks.

I didn’t expect much in terms of resistance. But there was a new element. I wasn’t thrilled about facing civilians. So far, there hadn’t been a single civilian in TF2-2’s sector. We had been free to light up the insurgents as we saw them. And because of that freedom, we were able to use main gun with less restriction. But this could make things tougher.

“It’s 1200 now. LD is 1400. We move south. Neil, your platoon leads, followed by Hunter.” CPT Mayfield said.

Getting into the nooks and crannies of the city, I decided to stay task organized. I would take Legion 9 to be my wingman. That little turret could swing so fast in the city, and poles and buildings wouldn’t restrict the short 25mm gun tube. Not to mention the Bradley could run circles around the tank, literally. But my tank would still take point. You can’t beat ol’ Blinkey for armored protection.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I call my baby, Blinkey, ever since she got one of her headlights blown off in Baqubah by an RPG. The RPG had ripped open that little corner of the hull and exposed the depleted uranium armor. She’s taken so much battle-damage that we’re being told she will never return to duty after this deployment. In April, my tank was signed over to Charlie Company when they went to Najaf. She took RPGs and caught on fire then too. She’s been through just about every major battle this brigade has seen. Even when her original crew had not. Supposedly, she will be coded out, ripped apart and studied at a lab. If that’s true, that breaks my crew’s hearts. She has taken a pounding and kept her crew alive. She should be bronzed and placed on a concrete slab at Ft. Knox for everyone to see.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

At 1400, we were poised along PL Mike. It ran southwest along the eastern side of the industrial zone, and then turned straight south to the end of Fallujah which was out of sight.

“Hey Sir, look at that shit.” Across the road, some obstacles and wire were strewn about. We moved in for a closer look. There were a few tires laid out and some other strange obstacles. Some of the discs looked like giant smoke alarms.

“Oh shit. I think those are mines.” And by the size of them, they look like anti-tank mines. “Back up Mewborn. We’ll hit it with .50cal.” We stopped about one hundred meters back.

Df-Df-Df-Df-Df-Df- BOOM. “Jesus that woulda sucked,” SGT P said.

The explosion from the mine was about the size of the tank. It was safe to say we all would have been safe inside the tank, but it probably would have blown our track off. If it had tilt-rods and hit our belly, it might have killed Mewborn in the driver’s hole.

We continued to destroy a few more. Df-Df-Df-Df-Df-Df-Df- BOOM

Df-Df-Df-Df-Df-Df-Df- BOOM. SSG Terry and SFC Lanpher, my infantry platoon sergeant, were blowing up mines on another avenue of approach on our right flank. But they were shooting at the dirt. We were shooting at obstacles in the road. Yet still, they were setting off mines and explosives. SSG Terry waved and smiled at me with a big grin while he popped off more rounds. Brass and links littered his turret top. Damn. I don’t know how they saw shit buried in the dirt. But that is some good work. I was really impressed. It was either SSG Terry or his gunner SPC Stoker who saw that. Or possibly SFC Lanpher and his crew, but regardless, I was in awe. They continued to blow up more mines while I stayed focused on our avenue of approach. We all held our positions.

Suddenly, several tanks came careening out of some alleys from our rear right side and passed right through us. What the hell was going on? I looked at the tank commanders as they rolled by. I saw my platoon sergeant, SFC Kennedy roll by us. His loader, SPC Roby, waved to us as they cut right in front of us. They were followed by 2nd platoon from Avenger company. Then the M88 came roaring by us and the rest of the mechanics tore by in the PCs. Everyone was blowing by us like bats out of hell.

“Jesus Christ, do these guys realize they just drove where all these mines had been? What the hell’s wrong with them?” My section was appalled at how these guys just recklessly cut in front of us with no regard to the mines that had just been there. And these were our own brothers, from our own company.

We watched them push ahead of us a few hundred meters and turn hard right back into the city and disappear. I assumed that the roads had canalized them until they had no choice but to enter our sector in order to position themselves. That’s the problem with MOUT when you’re in armored vehicles. The terrain dictates your entire movement. And it’s very unforgiving.

”All mech platoon elements, this is Red 6. Let’s move forward and get online with Avenger.” I figured if they were that far ahead of us, we might as well be even with them. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to keep track of the front line trace.

We pulled up to the intersection where they turned off. There were two piles of dirt about 15 feet high. The piles were staggered and on either side of the road on our right so it created sort of a serpentine that you had to swerve through if you drove it. I looked west past the berms and saw Avenger organized on our right. They were a few hundred meters due west of us.

“Look at the FUCKING ROCKET!” Someone said over the net. SGT P traversed to the right and sure enough, there was what looked like a huge artillery shell resting at the top of the berm pointed at me. It was so ridiculous. It was poised with the peak of the berm right in its center, so obviously it was placed there. “BACK UP, MEWBORN!”

“Legion 7, Red 6. Can you get on the other side of that thing and hit with 25mm?” I wanted to destroy it but I didn’t want to use main gun. And because of the location and the terrain, the Bradley would be more agile than a tank weaving through there. Plus we couldn’t shoot at it from the way we were oriented because Avenger was on the other side.

SFC Lanpher looked at me and laughed. ”Uh…roger.” He wasn’t too thrilled about having to pass in front of it in order to get behind it to shoot it. But as with everything, it would be funny in retrospect when we made it out alive. We all backed up as Legion 7 pulled in front of us. I looked back and saw all of the scout humvees behind us like little ducklings. 1LT Boggiano wasn’t there though. His platoon was off in the distance to our east. He was screen lining with his platoon in the open desert, observing west into the city we were about to enter.

POCK- POCK- POCK- POCK- POCK- POCK

SFC Lanpher had gotten onto the west side of the berm and started shooting at it from west to east from about one hundred meters away. He had a building behind him and he was down in his turret as his Bradley barked away at the rocket. The dirt all around the rocket kicked up as the 25mm HE was exploding around the rocket.

POCK- POCK- POCK- POCK-ZZZZfffffffeeeeew!

A blazing hot pink bright fire shot out of the rear of the rocket and it launched at the speed of a bullet into the sky. It shot up at a 60-degree angle and disappeared.

“HOLY SHIT!”
“NO WAY THAT JUST HAPPENED!”

”Oh shit, Red 6. Did you just fucking see that?” Legion 7 hollered and laughed over the troop net. I was in shock. It was one of the funniest, most random things to happen. We all had expected the rocket to explode.



Outlaw Platoon. Oh shit.

”Did anyone see where that rocket took off to? Or landed? Outlaw 1 is out there.”

The rocket had launched in that exact same direction. But we didn’t hear an explosion. We continued to laugh some more about what had just happened, but our joy was cut short.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.

“What the fuck is going on?”
The building behind SFC Lanpher was blowing up. I could see the impact of the rounds launching concrete chunks in every direction behind SFC Lanpher. He looked surprised, confused and angry at the same time.

”Jesus Christ. Someone is shooting at us.” SFC Lanpher said over the net.

”Legion 7, Red 6. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE.”

“Langford. Put me on Avenger’s freq, NOW.” Langford bent down and switched channels to Avenger’s frequency.

”This is the Real Red 6. CEASE FIRE. CEASE FIRE. CEASE FIRE. Who’s shooting at us.” I was absolutely furious. We were so close to a fratricide right there.

“Ah Sir. NO ONE was shooting at you.” It was White 7. He clearly thought I was mistaken. Now I was boiling.

”This is Red 6. We are 300 meters DUE EAST OF YOU. Who was just shooting from west to DUE EAST? And from the looks of it, with 25 mike mike?”

Silence.

There was a long pause on the net. ”Red 6, Avenger 7. We were engaging an RPG team to our east.”

”Negative. My Legion 7 just engaged a rocket that was east of you, which put itself into orbit just now.”

There was more silence.

“Avenger 6, this is Red 6. Engaged and destroyed one fortified enemy RPG position. Over.” It was the Bradley lieutenant who was attached to the Bravo section of my tank platoon. He was now using my Red 6 call sign since he was working with my platoon sergeant, SFC Kennedy, who is Red 7.

“Jesus Christ, Langford. Get me off this net.” He switched back to Phantom’s troop net.

“Did you hear them say they got a dude with an RPG.” SGT P asked.

“Yeah no shit. 100 bucks says that RPG was our rocket we just set off.” I was so angry. I had made visual contact with Avenger. They knew we were right around here because they had just blown right past us. I guess this was part of the fog of war. Things can get pretty hairy in a tight environment. Situational awareness is a matter of life and death.

1LT Boggiano had no reports of any rounds impacting, so we knew he was safe. Luckily, we made it out of that ordeal scratch free. But it was ugly. It could have been much worse.

 

Baqubah

Well, a soldier in my battalion came up to me and said, " Congratulations Sir. I had to find out on the 1ID webpage."

11 November: The Grundle of Boggiano

Just to warn everyone, I am not Neil and I don’t write as well as him. My name is Chris Boggiano, and there is a reason why you are about to read one of my stories instead of his. Basically, Neil and I talked over one particular fight that happened while we were in Fallujah and agreed that this story was best told from my perspective, since my ass was the one being saved and he was the one saving it, so I offered to tell all of his fans what happened when Red 6 saved the day.

By the third or fourth day of the battle, TF 2-2 had killed just about all of the insurgents in the northern sector of the Fallujah. We had been holding our positions near Route Julie for the past few days waiting for the marines to catch up on their side of the city. Other than a couple of clearing operations in the area immediately south of Julie, no one had touched the southern half of the Fallujah.

On this particular day, my platoon was tasked with driving into the desert outside the southeast corner of the city to try to spot insurgents on rooftops with our LRAS sight and then call for artillery on them. In the morning, we tried a few different positions, but didn’t have much luck because the land was completely flat. The LRAS can see very far, but unless we had some high ground to look into the city, we could not see past the first couple of rows of houses on its edge. We still managed to call one fire mission and kill two insurgents standing on a rooftop with AK-47’s but other than that we were blind.

Naturally, once my platoon realized that we weren’t being very useful, they started goofing off. Joking around had been a consistent theme the entire time we were there, regardless of whether we were getting shot at or not we were always laughing about something. While we were at one spot just outside the city, we found a giant hole in the ground that everyone deemed a good spot to go and take a crap. As most of my platoon rotated through their turn in the pit, the guys who weren’t down in the hole had to throw stuff at the ones who were. It all started with some rocks and sticks, which brought howls of laughter. A few minutes later, after the usual escalation of pranks, a High-Concentrate smoke grenade landed three feet away from me just after I had dropped my pants and started my business. My ever so clever platoon had waited for the right moment, so they got to watch their platoon leader hop around for a couple of minutes with his pants around his ankles trying to get upwind of a big cloud of smoke.

While all of this hard work was going on, the rest of the troop was clearing along the very eastern edge of the city south of Route Julie. So, the other scout platoon along with the tanks and Bradley’s were basically driving down different streets trying to get shot at and looking for suspicious buildings or weapons caches. Other than some random gunfire though, they had not seen much contact the entire day and were steadily pushing south toward the part of the city that my platoon was watching.

Earlier in the morning, we had stopped and talked with some marines that were part of the unit that was surrounding the city to make sure that no one entered or left. They had a platoon of LAV-25’s, which are like Bradley’s on wheels since they have the same 25mm cannon. After passing them, we moved into our first position and started scanning the city. Shortly after getting there, a sniper started shooting at us from one of the few houses in the open desert to our north. I called the marines on the radio and had them fire some TOW missiles and 25mm rounds into one house in particular that we thought our sniper might be hiding. After they went to work, the sniper stopped taking shots at us so we figured that we had killed him or at least he would think twice before sticking his head up again to shoot at us.

A few hours later, I repositioned my four trucks farther north thinking that the ground there might be just high enough so that my LRAS gunner could see deep into the city. We moved closer to the city, still two kilometers south of the rest of our troop so we could safely call in artillery on enemy targets without having to worry about the rounds hurting any friendlies. The position that I wanted to go to happened to be 100 or so meters away from the house we thought we had taken sniper fire from that morning. I decided that we would drive up there, shoot into the house some more just to be sure that no one was there, and then send some dismounts in to clear it. The house was all by itself and about 300 meters outside of the actual city so we didn’t feel too threatened when we rolled up to it.

Normally, I go on every dismount mission since that is where my platoon’s main effort is and I leave one of my senior NCOs back to take charge of all of the trucks. Well, both of my senior NCOs were arguing over who would get to clear the house so I decided that I would let both of them go and I would stay with the trucks for once. After all, I didn’t think there would be anything too exciting there after shooting it up that morning and again just before clearing it.

Just about everyone in my platoon dismounted from their Humvees and linked up at my truck. The only people staying back would be myself and the gunner on each truck to overwatch the dismounts and communicate with the rest of the troop. Shortly after linking up, everyone took off running toward the front door of the house. It was about 100 meters to the door, so my wingman, SSG Danielsen, ran directly from his truck just as the rest of the dismounts took off running from my truck.

In what turned out to be one of the funniest and scariest moments of the entire battle, shooting erupted from several houses on the edge of the city after they got about halfway to the house. I say it was funny because I watched all of my rough and tough scouts tuck their tails between their legs and turn right around and run away from the house they were supposed to go clear. I couldn’t really blame them though since the house became a whole lot less interesting once the shooting started.

SSG Danielsen never got to link up with everyone else at the door and was stranded by himself out in the open. Once the shooting started, bullets were kicking up the sand at his feet so he ran and dove behind a berm. Another one of my NCOs, SGT Bremer, saw him pinned down, took off running after him across 100 meters of open desert, did the same bullet-dodging dance, and finally dove next to his battle buddy.

SSG Danielsen is a 6’5” tough guy/goofball who’s only been in the Army 5 years but rose through the ranks fast enough to act as my platoon sergeant during the battle. SGT Bremer is a man we affectionately call “Meat,” mostly because he’s the 230 lb. corn fed Iowa type. He’s a lot like a German Shepherd – big, mean looking, and the most loyal guy I’ve ever met in my life. Anyway, both of them were now stuck behind a berm, separated from the rest of their platoon, and listening to bullets hit the sand all around them. Realizing their situation, Meat looked at SGT Danielsen and said the famous line from the Snickers commercials, “Not going anywhere for a while.” After that, they spent the next two minutes giggling like school girls about their predicament while they waited for help to arrive.

For the first 30 seconds after all of this shooting started, I really had no control of anything in my platoon. The first thing that I did was yell for my driver to get back into my truck and drive us straight toward the shooting so that we could go help out the two guys I had pinned down. While that was going on, I called up to my troop commander and told him that the whole side of the city had just started shooting at us out of nowhere. Luckily, the marines and my artillery forward observer were both on my platoon net, so within seconds I had the marines with their LAV-25’s shooting at different fighting positions and an artillery mission in the works. The different fighting positions must have been fortified because they just kept on shooting at us despite our returning fire with Mark-19, .50 Cal, 7.62mm and the 25mm HE rounds.

The next transmission over the troop net was “Outlaw 1, this is Red 6, I have eyes on where your rounds are impacting. Round on the way.”

As luck would have it, 1LT Prakash was monitoring the net and happened to be in the right position at the right time. He was still over 1500 meters away, but since he was clearing the edge of the city with the rest of the troop, all that he had to do was drive a couple hundred meters and he had a clear shot all of the way down to the houses that were firing at us. In what had to be one of the most awesome and beautiful sights I have ever seen, I watched the red streak of a HEAT round – one that I didn’t even ask for – fly from across the horizon and explode in a giant ball of fire in one of the houses that was shooting at us.

“Outlaw 1, was that the house that was shooting at you?”

“That was fucking awesome! Can you do that to the rest of them?”

“Roger, where are they, south or west of that house?”

“Just keep working your way west of the house you just shot at”

“Roger, they’re all lined up like ducks in a row. Round on the way.”

After that, I watched as LT Prakash lobbed HEAT round after HEAT round, systematically destroying every house that had been shooting at us. Within a minute, he had silenced every single enemy gun. We still dropped 15 or 20 artillery rounds on the area after he finished, just to be sure that any bad guys who were still thinking about living didn’t make it out of there, but it was more of an afterthought than anything.

And that is how Red 6 saved the day.


 

10 November: For Shits and Giggles

“Red 6, Outlaw 1. We’re at the clover leaf and there’s a sniper in the building on the south side.”

We drove up on the highway and headed south towards 1LT Boggiano’s platoon. Along the way, we passed a ton of press personnel hanging around Bradleys and PCs. There were Boston Globe folks, CNN reporters, FOX News, Time Magazine, and all the cameramen to boot. Too bad there’s no place on a tank to stick an embedded reporter. This is where all the fun is but the dismounts get all the coverage.

I pulled up to Chris but I didn’t need to ask him where to shoot. There was a building that just finished exploding from Mk-19 grenade rounds. There was brown dust swirling everywhere. Brass shells and links were just littered everywhere. I loved it. We actioned right and faced southwest to poise ourselves for a shelling. SGT P was on it and I didn’t need to give him any guidance. I looked over at the scouts to make sure everyone was clear. They looked at me and put their hands over their ears.

“On the way.” BOOM. “Ha HA!!” The house exploded. At a range of only 300 meters, the house exploded right after SGT P said “On the way.” It’s not like the normal distances for a gunnery range, where you can watch the round travel. It’s more like SGT P was down in his hole, remote-detonating a bomb. He pulled the triggers and all at once, FLASH - the gun banged and the house was blown out. We put two more rounds in it for good measure. It was a big house.

“Hey let me shoot a round!” Chris was at the side of my tank.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We had talked about this before. He missed tanking and he never got to fight his tank in a high intensity conflict. I don’t even think he fired a single main gun round in combat here. 1LT Boggiano had been a tank platoon leader until June of 2004. I had been offered a specialty platoon with the BRT but after some long deliberation, I had turned it down. For a while afterwards, I kept second-guessing myself and wondering if I would regret it. A specialty platoon is an honor and a credit to your ability(and it's also about timing).

Plus with the BRT, everyone said I would have had a lot of face time with the Brigade Commander and would have locked in a good career start. And I would have been living at FOB WARHORSE, which is paradise compared to FOB Scunion. The food, the gym, the nice phones, the entertainment that comes there. The only group that came here was the 1st ID Band. And they were damn good. God bless them for being the only ones to visit us. And I would not have had to pull force protection and guard duty on the towers in this FOB. And no more tank maintenance and changing two sides of track every 3 weeks. The tank maintenance was blowing us out of the water at the time. We had put a year’s worth of OPTEMPO on our tanks in 3 months. The BRT, on the other hand, had humvees which are a joke in terms of maintenance. And they did a lot of the high profile raids and missions. They were around for most HIC situations.

Well the only reason I turned it down was because of the men I was with. SGT P made me laugh my ass off every single day of the week. SSG Terry. Well he speaks for himself. But I remember him saying again and again how we were the tightest this platoon has ever been. And we were like a family. I loved my crew. And my platoon sergeant was an awesome NCO to be partners with. Laid back, easy to work with and competent as hell. There was no way I was going to choose to give up this family. Plus, I had only been with my platoon for 6 months at the time. I wanted to be with them longer. Now I’m on month 16 and still running. That’s unheard of these days. I consider myself the luckiest platoon leader in the army. I joined these guys before the mission readiness exercise in October of 2003. I went to a gunnery in January and deployed with them. We've been through major combat and now we are all coming home together in a few months. It doesn’t get any better than that.

To top it ALL off, I have the coolest commander in the world. I'm not apple-polishing here. My time is up in this company in a few months and he doesn't even read this anyways. But seriously, this man is an awesome dude to work for. He backs me up on everything I do. When stuff goes down with the brass, this man will go to war for me. He never lets anyone outside the company interfere with his lieutenants' business. He never micromanages, he only gives us his guidance and lets us run with it. The times I've brought up ideas on how I've wanted to do things a certain way, he'll just say, "Yeah, and tell me how it goes." No bullshit, this is every lieutenant's ideal commander. Bottom line: This man extends the latitude and trust necessary for platoon leaders to grow. I consider myself lucky to work for a boss like that. He also grab-asses with everyone; officers, NCOs and junior enlisted soldiers are all comfortable around this guy because you can bullshit with him. I think his only pet-peeve is when I cross his First Sergeant. And for those officers out there who are reading, you know it's impossible not to butt heads with the First Sergeant.

I went with my heart and turned the offer with the BRT down. They offered the scout platoon to 1LT Boggiano. His platoon time had been up and he had the choice of becoming an executive officer for a company or taking the BRT. For him, it was a no-brainer. Being a platoon leader is the best job an officer can have. And for him, getting another year of platoon time was the best deal. But Chris always regretted not going into heavy combat with tanks. When he arrived to the BRT, he found those guys talking plenty of shit about tankers. As much as Chris loved being with scouts, he made it clear that he was an Armor officer in a scout platoon leader position. His heart was with tanks.
>>>>>>>.

“Of course you can shoot dude. Hop on up. But you gotta let me shoot an AT-4 afterwards.”

“Yeah of course, no problem.”

“Hey SGT P. 1LT Boggiano’s coming in”

Unlike last time, I wasn’t standing up on the turret this time. I didn’t know what other snipers were around and it was bright daylight out. I watched Chris mash his face into the GPSE to get a sight of the target. He took his time and got a good lase to the house.

BOOM.

“Hey,” someone shouted from the right side of my tank. “Let me know when you’re gonna fire so I can take a picture.” It was SGT Snow, the camerawoman who was attached to the BRT.

“Awesome. Thanks man,” Chris already climbing out of the turret. There wasn't going to be a second shot. I followed him down. We knelt at the right side of my tank and stared at the house. I felt bad that SGT Snow didn’t get her shot of the tank firing.

“Ok, let's go get that AT-4. I’ll set it up for you. And here, take these earplugs. It’s loud as fuck.” Chris pulled his earplugs out of his head and handed them to me. I saw an AT-4 lying in front of the tank in the median. I sprinted towards it so I could get down in the prone fast and launch that thing off.

“NO NOT THAT ONE!!” Chris shouted at me. I skidded like I was sliding feet first into homeplate. I scrambled back to the tank. “That one didn’t fire. We’re gonna need you to blow it up.”

“Ok no problem," I said. "We’ll do that when we’re done here and everyone pulls away. We’ll just hit with .50cal.”

Chris handed me an AT-4 off the back of the gunner’s hatch on his humvee. “Ok, the safety pin is out, the cocking handle is pulled, the sight posts are up. Just look through here, push that red safety in with your fingers and hold it down. Then hit the trigger with your thumb.”

I was excited and nervous. The AT-4 was clumsy. It just rested on your shoulder with a little shoulder backstop. I figured the thing would go launch into the sky when I pulled the trigger. Plus, everyone was watching. What if I missed the house? I’d look like an idiot. SGT Snow started snapping pictures like crazy. I was kneeling at the side of my tank. Don’t miss. Don’t miss. Don’t miss. BANG.

The rocket went straight into a window and exploded into the house. My body shook with the concussion. “Holy shit. That was awesome!”

I ran to Chris and high-fived him like a dork. “That was fun as fuck!” I handed him back his plunger-style earplugs – all covered with my sandy chunks of earwax. Gross.

I climbed back in the tank and told everyone in the BRT to back away. I was going to destroy this AT-4 that apparently shit the bed. Mewborn backed her up and kept her facing due south. I watched the rocket laying on the ground in my .50cal sight and lined her up. “Gimme a range, SGT P.” None of us had seen an AT-4 blow up close by so we didn’t know how far back we needed to be. After a few hundred meters back, I popped off a few .50cal rounds.

Df-Df-Df-Df-Df-Df-Df- BOOM. The AT-4 exploded in the tube.

“Goddddaaammn! That was pretty cool,” SGT P exclaimed. “But I don’t think that AT-4 would do shit to a tank.”

We pulled up to it and drove over the launcher, just to make sure nobody would try to use it against us.

The BRT was ready to penetrate the industrial zone. It was late morning on 10 November. 1LT Boggiano was going to take his scout platoon by themselves out to the south of the industrial zone but east of the city in the open desert. He would continue to observe with his LRAS while we spearheaded the main BRT effort. The plan was to take a building and use it as a stronghold to run missions out of to clear the rest of the industrial zone. My platoon would lead the way and take care of the enemy dismount threat and clear IEDs and explosives, while the scouts would seize a building.

Weeks later back in Baqubah, when the photo of me shooting the AT-4 hit the 1ID webpage, plenty of officers and senior NCOs came up to me to have a good laugh.

“That’s classic. You gotta be the only guy who gets out of his tank - armed with a 120mm main gun guided by the most precise fire control system on the ground – to shoot an 84mm rocket by hand, eyeballing it. Nobody else besides a tanker is going to recognize the idiocy in that.”

What people don’t realize about the tank is that the computer in the fire control system calculates a ballistic solution for each round it fires. The computer gets a range from the laser range finder. Windage data is taken from the crosswind sensor on the back of the turret. Ammo temperature, air temperature, and barometric pressure are all inputted into the computer in the gunner’s station. And finally, as the gunner is tracking a target on the move, the computer calculates and automatically induces lead. So even if you have the red dot on center of mass as the target is moving laterally, the gun will lead the target. To top it ALL off, the stability system keeps your eye on the ball while the tank is running amuck. And by “eye,” I mean “cannon.”

One of my favorite things to watch out of the hatch, is when the tank is bouncing around tearing up God’s earth and the driver is turning left and right. The gun tube stays still as death as long as the gunner squeezes the cadillacs on the GPCH(gunner’s power control handles). While the hull is turning, and the tank is going up and down, and the tank commander is eating the metal off the backplate of his .50cal, the gun tube stays right on target, rising and falling to compensate for the suspension. It’s just sick how badass a tank looks when it’s killing.



 

10 NOVEMBER: In the LRP

Z-Z-Z-R-R-R-R-E-W-W-W-BOOM
“DAMN! That shit was CLOSE!” A single mortar round exploded in our LRP. So much for being on the safe side of the berm. The sound was incredible. I don’t know where they got that whistle sound in cartoons that bombs make when they drop. This sounded like the mortar round was ripping the sky open. The air was actually tearing. Imagine you are standing on the ground, and an elevated passenger train just zipped on its tracks right over your head. That was similar to the shocking and rushing, whooshing feel of the shell zipping by us before it impacted. Fortunately it didn’t hit anybody. So nobody panicked

“That was fucking awesome! Did you hear that sound?” These were the exclamations of exuberant soldiers just witnessing another new mind-boggling event. There was no fear in us at all. I mean, what could you do? You didn’t get hit, so it looks like you made it. And since none of us would trade anything in the world for helping some Marines out in doing something historic, you take the good with the bad.

“Hey Langford, pass me another muffin," I called to my loader. He reached over to his stowage box and pulled a few Otis Spunkmeyer muffins for SGT P and me. This and Gatorade was all we had put in our mouths so far. And for me, plenty of Levi Garret chewing tobacco as well. I never smoked cigarettes, except for that one SGT P gave me right before entering Baqubah. And that was only because in the mad dash of things, I had left my chew behind. But the nicotine helped us all stay awake now. And the muffins kept us full. They were like 300 hundred calories each. And that’s all we had eaten for the past 2 days and 2 nights.

Oh sure, support guys had brought chow out to the LRP. But who had time to eat chow from Camp Fallujah when you were in the middle of battle? Well, the guys on the ammo and fuel trucks did. But we came in to get fuel; there was no time to eat. Our wingmen and scouts were in the fight and we just raced back here to juice up the tanks and get our asses back in the shit. If our pigs didn't guzzle so much JP8, I'd never leave the battlefield.

We had spent the night in our tanks again, observing the eastern side of the city with little activity. There wasn't a soul in sight. For all that hype the intelligence folks warned us about the bad guys having night vision capabilities, they sure didn’t fight much at night.

But now it was morning and it was getting light. It was 0700 on Wednesday, November 10th. The start of the third day of fighting. We had been up since Sunday morning November 7th without getting horizontal even once. We had an hour here and an hour there where we nodded off in our stations but that was really a state of delirium more than anything. Ranger School taught me how to deal with that. But our backs were now screaming at us for holding these positions.


I used the time we had in the LRP to change my socks. Ahhhhh. It felt so good to get fresh air between my toes. But the toes in the middle were all numb. They felt the way your tongue or lip feels after the dentist shoots you up with Novocain. All fat and swollen…and you wanna stab them for fun. Admit it, you all bit your lip or your tongue with your teeth and then bit down harder to see what would happen. Maybe even draw blood. I grabbed my Gerber multi-tool from my belt and pinched my fourth toe hard with the needle-nose pliers. Neat. I pulled the smooth blade out and started gently stabbing at the fat pad part of my toe to see if I would feel something. Nothing. I didn’t pierce the skin but I was definitely pretty numb. No big deal. During Ranger School, my feet went numb. They said it was normal. It was just that the pressure of the boots on the nerves of your feet. I guess after so long it caused some sort of desensitization. I guess I should know more about this since I’m a neuroscience major. Well maybe that’s why I’m a tanker now. Either way, after about 6 months, the feeling came back in my toes. It’s 09 January right now. 2 months later and my toes are still numb from Fallujah. I’ll start worrying when this keeps up come April.

I put the gerber away and pulled some socks out of my assault pack which was strapped to the top of the turret behind our hatches(If you look at that pic of me and SGT P at the bottom, that’s what we are propped up against).

“Isn’t it weird? For the amount that we were getting shot at and the bullets bouncing off the top of the turret, can you believe there’re no bullet holes in our shit?” Langford observed.

He was right. Our assault packs were unmolested. Thank god. We gotta live off this stuff for the next two weeks. I looked around the LRP. There were a few 5-ton trucks scattered here and there with supplies. The fuel HEMMTs were lined up 3 side by side, asses and hoses facing out. Tanks and Bradleys were lining up to get a drink. It was a beautiful thing the way the combat and the logistics creatures come together. After the Fuel HEMMTS, there was a cargo HEMMT stacked with honeycombs full of tank rounds. Another HEMMT had all of our .50cal, and 7.62mm for our machine guns. Once we finished resupplying, we parked the tank to check our oils and hubs. So many things can break down on a tank, they require constant maintenance and checks.

A few hundred meters away, I saw the engineer platoon from Team Avenger. 1LT Dave Meier. I was glad to see him. I was glad that he was alive. I didn’t want to tell him how much I seriously thought he was going to die in there. I felt pretty safe in my tank, but I knew he and his men were in humvees. I found a few tankers too and started asking them all how the assault through the city went.

“You wouldn’t believe these fuckers. It’d be black as fuck out. And ol’ boy is just darting around in the streets thinking he’s being all clever. And you’ll just be like, ‘R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R’ and blast him with coax. And then his partner pulls the SAME SHIT.” We all laughed hard. Me, enjoying the story. My brothers in 2nd platoon enjoying the reminiscence.

“And so his buddy tries to get from one corner to the other where his partner just got waxed. Just A HUNDRED METERS AWAY from us. And he has no idea we’re even THERE! R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R. We’d drop homeboy’s partner. And we would do this to four of five fucking guys. It was ridiculous.” We continued to share stories for a few moments longer. Everyone was having a good time. So far this had been a tanker’s dream. No holds barred. Of course, we probably would not have been joking and smoking if anyone in Avenger was wounded or killed. But since we had all survived thus far, we would continue to play Grab Ass and Fuck Around.

By 0800, we were lined up against the berm, still in the low ground on the safe side. My Bradleys were on the highway by the cloverleaf watching the city with 1LT Boggiano and his LRAS truck. My tanks and the other scout platoon were just waiting for Phantom 6 to rotate us out.

“What the fuck is SSG Terry doing?” I asked SGT P. We were all sitting on top of the turret. We looked back and SSG Terry was just pointing out in front of us and then making a wave motion with his hand and arm, like waves in the ocean. “What the hell is he trying to tell us?”

We looked to the front of us, ahead along the low ground and saw nothing but open desert. Up against the berm a few hundred meters in front of us was a midsize yellow Kia sedan. “I think he’s telling us to go run over it.”

SSG Terry had a big shit-eating grin on his face. Which is always a sign to be careful. “Hey Mewborn,” I screamed down into my turret and at his driver’s hole. “Wanna run over a car?”

“Yeah! Sure!” He hollered back and cranked the tank up. Running over stuff is by far one of the coolest things to do in a tank. Mostly just because you can. And running over a car is probably one of the coolest things to run over, because a car is some serious shit. But when a tank runs through it, it folds like origami.

“SGT P. You TC the tank. I’m gonna record this.” SGT P assumed the TC’s station while I sat on the turret. I jumped off when we reached the car and stood in front of it with my digital video camera rolling. It was already pretty jacked up. The tires were flat and the hood was smashed up a bit like it had been in a head-on collision. We were just going to put it out of it’s misery. And ensure nobody fixed it up to be a VBIED in the future.

The scouts watched with curiosity back at SSG Terry’s position as Mewborn lined the tank up. You had to run stuff over with only one side of track. If you tried to go over it with your belly, you could high center the tank and get it stuck. I learned that the hard way once.

>>>>>>>
There was a mud wall that ran along a palm grove in Baqubah. At night, bad guys always shot at U.S. forces with RPGs from there but we could never kill them in time. The thing was, when they squeezed the trigger, they would just drop the launcher right after it fired and duck. By the time we saw the flash, or more likely, the explosion of the RPG impacting on or around us, the bad guy was no where to be seen. We couldn’t shoot blindly back because there were homes everywhere. And our thermal sights couldn’t see through walls. And when we were in humvees, we wouldn’t be able to see them anyways.

So I decided to take down the walls with my tank. One day in broad daylight, we drove right off of the highway and into the palm groves. I steered Mewborn straight into the wall and the mud collapsed right way. I started turning him in the space he was in and got him positioned to plow through the length of the wall. I figured the tank would make short work of the mud but instead we created a ramp. Mewborn started driving with the length of the wall directly under the belly and sure enough, the tracks were spinning but they weren’t touching the ground. My wingman that day was SGT Garmon and he pulled up behind us. He attached his tow cables to the back of my tank and pulled us off of the mud wall.

Later that evening, SSG Terry chewed out SGT P for not looking out for the lieutenant. I pulled SGT P aside and told him I was glad he let me do that. There are some things in life that I believe are best learned in a trial by fire, especially when the situation and the absence of danger allow it.

“That’s what I told him, Sir. I told him, ‘let the lieutenant learn about negotiating terrain. I bet he won’t ever make the same mistake again.’” I commended SGT P on his development of his lieutenant. He didn’t say it with spite. He meant it earnestly. And I never got the tank stuck again.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I hit the record button and watched Mewborn glide towards the front of the car like a shark moving in on prey. Once he was lined straight up with it, he cranked the throttle. The turbine screamed and whined with power as the tank surged forward. The inertia made the back end of the tank sink down as the front slope reared up like a beast. The first of the black pads of the left track grabbed onto the hood and clawed their way up. The tank rose like it was hurling its shoulder up onto the car. But that didn’t last. It must have been the engine block giving temporary support. The tank came smashing down on the car like it was made of paper. The left track went right along the center of the car and through the hood. The right side of the car remained somewhat upright, unmolested by any part of the tank. The rest of the car was as flat as a tortilla as the tank swallowed it.

“Ha – HAAA! That was cool as shit!” Langford shouted. SGT P looked back to examine his handy work.

Man that was fun. I looked back at the scouts. Some were laughing, some were shaking their heads. Shaking either in amusement or in pity and saying to each other: Oh simple, simple tankers.

I climbed back onto the tank and kicked SGT P to his hole. Our work was done here. We rolled back to where SSG Terry was, when the net beeped and crackled.

”Red 6, Phantom 6. Outlaw is in contact. Move to the cloverleaf and link up with Outlaw 1.”
“This is Red 6, roger. Moving.”

Mmmm...Armor.

Team Avenger sits poised with Bradleys, M113s(PCs), and M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks on Phase Line Julie oriented south into the Industrial Zone on 10 November as the BRT works to assault through it. You are looking due west. In the background, you can see the minarets of mosques everywhere. I was situated here on 9 November during my call for fire mission, looking 2 and a half clicks west. 

Here Comes The Boom

"TOPHAT. TOPHAT". Not all of the tanks can be seen in the picture. Wish we had a panoramic lens. But you are in the black open sea of desert north of the city. And an entire company of tanks is facing and firing south into the breech. 8 November 2004 

Smoke 'Em If Ya Got 'Em

9 November: Rescue and Recover

”Red 6, Phantom 6. I need you to take your platoon and head for this grid. Stalker 6 is tied up to our north. They’ve got men in a building and they’re pinned down by snipers.”

I pulled my tanks and my bradleys off of the east-west highway and headed for the cloverleaf. We sped north, flanking the city and keeping it to our left. It was broad daylight and I looked at the vast desert that the main effort had used as a launch pad. The city looked so damn small in the daylight. It also looked a lot less menacing. We peeled off of the berm and sloped down into the space, hooking a hard left turn and doing a 180 to face back south. We were now poised, looking for the breech point that the task force had used last night to get into the city. In front of me lay what looked like a junkyard. Then there were the railroad tracks that went east and west. Finally, the buildings of the city started. It’s nothing like what you are used to at home. The city is like a decrepit oasis of buildings. It just starts abruptly like a line in the sand.

I went to task organized sections. I took a Bradley to be my wingman and left SSG Terry under SFC Lanpher’s command.

“Legion 7, Red 6. I don’t have a visual on where they are but they should be on the rooftop. And there should be a VS-17 panel hanging over the edge. You take that road to my left and we’ll head down this road straight ahead.”

There were really only two roads that looked good to go down. My nimble wingman probably could have negotiated the littered, tight alleys, but I couldn't have, and then I would not have been able to over-watch him. We stuck to a main road and crawled through the streets. Telephone poles and electricity cables were strewn everywhere like a mess of spaghetti. We approached a stationary vehicle. VBIED. First thought every time I saw a car. We were lucky. Under the Marine ROE, we were allowed to treat every vehicle as a VBIED threat. The innocent had plenty of time to evacuate or get off the streets. Fear of hitting civilians had not been an issue so far because there didn’t seem to be a civilian anywhere.

The scene reminded me of an old Western. Where the good guys and bad guys shoot it out, but the civilians disappear. Right now, it looked like a ghost town. It was silent. Nothing was moving. Machine chattered in the background but that barely counted as noise on my scale.

”Hit it Legion 9.”

POCK-POCK-POCK-POCK-POCK-POCK-POCK

“Holy shit!” I hollered. “Do you feel that SGT P?”

The 25mm was like a sledgehammer when you were right next to it. Oh man, it made my head hurt. SGT P didn’t feel a damn thing down in the turret. But I loved loud noises. I stared at the gun. Each round was a red laser beam zipping out of the cannon. The car danced with each round that impacted. It looked like a beast was inside and he was punching his way out. The hood rose up. The door blew out. The tire exploded. The roof bowed out. It reminded me of that scene in Ghostbusters 2 when Ray puts that pink slime in the toaster and it starts dancing to music. The car didn’t detonate. “Ok, that’s enough”

We continued our slow advance deeper into the city. Man it would be so easy to fuck us up right now. The houses were two-story. And they were right at our sides.

CRACK-CRACK. Someone was taking pot shots at us. Bullets snapped at my waist. But it was getting old. I didn’t even care about bullets. An RPG from the second story would definitely ruin my day. We were standing out of our hatches, looking for our scout platoon trapped somewhere in a building. The top of the turret is extremely vulnerable because the armor isn’t thick on top. Tanks were designed to take a head-on hit. And the gun tubes are just aluminum. CRACK. From what we had heard already, 6 tanks had been taken out of the fight for getting their gun tubes shredded by RPGs and IEDs. I looked to the west and saw that Avenger and Terminator were less than 200 meters on my right flank. Well alrighty then. I can’t shoot west because the main effort was just sitting there in the city still clearing buildings. I can’t shoot east because the BRT was on the berm and my Bravo section was on my immediate left. Wunderbar!

Finally we came upon several soldiers standing up on a rooftop of a building. There was a humvee parked at the bottom. We raced up to it and secured all 4 sides with my platoon. They tried to tell me where the bad guys were. They pointed at buildings that we were right on top of but there was nothing I could do. There were too many friendly units on all sides for us to start blazing away. Besides, we couldn’t positively identify the targets so I wasn’t taking any chances. It’s different when you have nothing but enemy in front of you…but when you are in the middle of battle with friendlies on all sides? Forget about it.
Let’s just get you the hell out of Dodge.”

They mounted up in their humvees and got ready to fall in. My section led the way, wary of an ambush.

“We’re taking small arms from that building in front of us.” SGT P called out.
“Hit it with main gun.”
“On the way.” BOOM

The second story filled with debris but it didn’t explode like normal.

”Hey, to whoever shot a main gun round. It just punched through 4 buildings and kept sailing. It just landed in the dirt.” Someone on the troop net called out.

Hmmmm. Interesting. Note to self: Self, let’s not use MPAT for anything less than 300 meters. “That was an MPAT round wasn’t it, SGT P?” The jury was still out on MPAT. Some say it needs a certain distance before it arms itself. Others argue it just needs a hard enough target to detonate the fuse. Others still argue that if you set the nose cone selector from “ground” to “air”, the proximity fuse will set it off when it gets close to its target, as long as it travels far enough to arm itself first. Either way, this round didn’t go off. It just went on like a steel super bullet. We didn’t take any more contact, so we just high-tailed it to Phase Line Julie, the highway that ran through the center of Fallujah east and west.

The whole TF2-2IN was making its way to the highway. We were going to have to sit here for a while because the Marines were still far behind us and catching up. It was going to be at least another 48 hours until they got where we were.

>>>>>>
“Red 6, Phantom 6. Hunter 1 just hit a land mine. I need you to get him out of that mine field.”

SSG Terry wasn’t too thrilled. It was dark as death out now. Bad things can happen in the dark. Like people getting hurt. It was about 2200. You couldn’t even see your own hand in front of you. I hated when it was that dark. At times like that, I wanted to claw at my own eyes because the darkness felt like a blanket. Stupid no moon.

***
I hadn’t been operating in this much darkness since Darby Phase of Ranger School. I remember the patrols at night were blacker than the inside of a coffin. And there were these stupid holes EVERWHERE. And the summer phase meant a real thick canopy among the trees. So our PVS-14s(night vision) were pretty much useless with no illumination.

“What the hell are all these holes here for?” I screamed as I fell on my face for the umpteenth time. My rucksack came crashing down on the back of my skull as my ankle rolled again and my mouth filled with sand. By now, my ankle had already become numb to rolls. They were so unstable that twisting them was nothing more than a nuisance. There were no ankle braces. “Tie your boots tighter,” was the solution.

“These fucking pigs dig these holes,” someone called out. Some southern boy, no doubt. “They dig around looking for truffles.”

Truffles?!? What the hell are truffles? I saw something about it on that Disney cartoon, Tale Spin. Since when did truffles stop becoming delicious treats with chocolately centers and become mushrooms? And then why don’t they just call ‘em MUSHROOMS?!? Stupid holes in the ground.
***

Of course, that was the intent. We prefer to fight at night and when there is little to no illumination out. Well the army does. I don’t. But the bad guys, they fight at night only when there is plenty of moonlight out. Otherwise they’d probably fall in their own fecal ditches. So we fight when there’s no illumination out. That way, the enemy has no advantage at all. And to combat the absence of natural illumination, we have PEQ-2A IR lasers, and floodlights. And the Bradleys and PCs have IR headlights.

Hunter was one of the scout platoons in the BRT. They were the forward eyes today because they had the LRAS truck. Hunter 1 had taken his truck out in the open desert south east of the city. His mission was to observe everything south of where we had already been fighting. Apparently one of his up-armored humvees hit a tank mine. We peeled off of our position in the city and headed for the cloverleaf. We headed south on the highway, flanking the city and keeping it on our right. Some Hunter guys had marked a place along the highway with IR chemlights where we could cut hard right and head into the open desert to find these guys. We drove through the open desert but I remembered finding that drop off yesterday while heading for the LRP and smashing SGT P’s head into the GPS. We treaded carefully and sure enough, it wasn’t as flat as we assumed. There were 20 foot erosion ditches everywhere. The scout platoon left a trail of IR chemlights for us to follow and we slowly made our way to where Hunter platoon had assembled.

I linked up with their lieutenant and platoon sergeant. Everything in front of them was unknown. It was unclear where the mines could be so they all held up in this location. Except for that one humvee that was disabled. We looked ahead and saw a humvee all by itself. Time for the plow tank to go to work.

“I need to get lined up. I gotta hit him straight on,” SSG Terry barked. Once the plow was lowered into the sand, the tank would not be able to turn. It would only be able to plow in a straight line. With the plow buried, and if he tried to turn, either the plow would rip off of the hull, or the sprockets, which turn the track, would shear right off. SSG Terry positioned himself and then dropped the plow. The motor on the plow had been disabled from long before so it had to be dropped and raised manually. SPC Dawes dismounted from the loader’s station and jumped onto the front slope. He grabbed the cables draped on top of the front slope and yanked. Each arm of the plow lowered slowly to the ground. They looked just like the paws of a giant lion. Once Dawes climbed back in, SSG Terry started moving. The turbine started screaming now that the tank was pushing earth. He moved, but it was slow-going. The earth rose up and spilled to either side as the sprockets strained with torque. After a few hundred meters, he reached the humvee. SSG Terry and his soldiers dismounted carefully and hooked up towstraps from the front of the tank to the back of the humvee. He started pulling straight back, hauling the humvee with him. The tank worked effortlessly as it dragged the three and a half ton truck. It pulled the truck through the dirt like a toy.

The scouts were clearly pleased with the tank’s performance. It was only the second night of the battle and the tanks had come to the rescue and proved their versatility again and again already. Hunter 1 and 4 thanked us again and again but it really was no big deal. For one thing, I didn’t do anything. And for SSG Terry, plowing’s plowing. It was just business as usual. But we were happy to see how grateful people were for having tanks around.

The platoons of the BRT took shifts overwatching the city from our position near the cloverleaf that night. We were still waiting for the Marines to catch up so we weren’t going to make any major offensive pushes until they got on line with us. When we weren’t on shift, we headed back to the LRP to get fuel, ammunition, oils and restock on muffins, Powerbar’s Harvest bars, and cases of Gatorade.

“Back at Warhorse, when I was first briefed this plan in October, I remember them telling me I was getting two tanks from Avenger Company and I was like ‘Great, what the hell do I do with that?’” CPT Mayfield told me back at the LRP. He had been light infantry for his 16 years in the army. He was Ranger-tabbed, pathfinder, airborne and so on. He had the tower of power on his left chest but he never worked with tanks before. He was thoroughly pleased so far and he made no bones about letting us know how much he appreciated our work.

It’s a funny thing about being cross-attached. Being a tanker in a tank company in a tank battalion in a tank brigade, nobody really gives a shit. There’s no love among tankers, and nobody else cares about the work that goes into maintaining a tank. But being attached to light guys is totally different. 1LT Boggiano told me this when he was attached to the engineers. 1LT Boggiano had been the 3rd Platoon Leader in Avenger company. He had been one of my friends and peers in my company. When we left Kuwait in February, they attached him to the 82nd Engineers and gave us an engineer platoon in return. I really hadn’t seen much of him for the rest of the deployment.

I also had a friend who was attached to 25th ID for the offensives in Najaf in April and June. Those guys are light infantry all the way. When you’re a tanker among the infantry in combat, you can do no wrong. It was like walking on water. You could run through houses, knock down forests of palm trees where the bad guys hide. Bullets and RPGs either bounce off of you or explode with a scuff mark on your armor. Your main gun vaporizes terrorists. They just loved having you around. They loved the destruction and mayhem you caused. And they loved the fear of God you struck into the hearts of the enemy. Furthermore, with my new boss for this battle being a light infantry guy, that made me and SSG Terry the subject matter experts on tanking. So CPT Mayfield had no leash on us. And even if he did, he was so happy with our capabilities that it was hard for us to do wrong in his eyes anyways.

The next mission for the BRT was to assault through the Industrial Zone. We were expecting heavy contact here since this is where the terrorists were supposed to have their headquarters. We had been told that they treated these warehouses like planning centers and barracks. We also expected to find VBIED and IED factories, as well as plenty of weapons caches.

Do you smell something?

3rd day of fighting: Here is my loader, PFC Langford, catching some Z's up against the ammo ready-rack door. We slept very little the first week; 15 mins here, 20 mins there, after 60 hours of continuous combat. Of the 4 stations, the loader's is by far the roomiest and the second-most comfortable.

On a separate note, today a funny thing happened. We headed out on a mission using M113s...PCs. Man those things are ridiculous. Big metal boxes with magnesium walls riding on tracks. These things are turbo-charged, diesel-powered, 1960s technology.

"Hey Sir, doesn't that smell like ammunition burning?" Langford said from the driver's hole of the PC.

"Yeah I smell it." It smelled like plastic burning to me. Everything in Iraq smelled like burning though. Some sort of trash was always burning and it always smelled bad.

We drove on. Suddenly, SGT Gwekoh, one of my NCOs, grabbed my shoulder.
"FIRE! FIRE!"

I looked back at SSG Terry in the PC behind me. He looked fine. I didn't see any flames. That's when the smoke started billowing out of the passenger compartment of MY PC.
"HOLY SHIT! FIRE! LANGFORD, FIRE! Get out! Get out!"

He stopped the PC and we all got the hell out of dodge.
"Grab my kevlar, SGT Gwekoh. And grab my rifle. Let's go!" I hollered from the top of the PC. I watched Langford get out of the driver's hole and we leaped off the PC.

"What the fuck are they doing?" SSG Terry asked his driver.
"Maybe there's a fire" SPC Lewis replied.

I hollered for SFC Kennedy to get the fire extinguisher out of his PC and motioned for SSG Terry to pull in front of us to pull forward security. I went to the back of the PC and helped SGT Gwekoh get the rifles, the bags and other sensitive items out. He pulled out a few assault packs in flames. Shit, there goes my soldiers' nice assault packs, gortexes and other crap. I stomped the flames with my boots and when I finished, they were covered in black molten plastic from the assault pack.

"Where's our extinguisher?" I hollered.
"In there." SGT Gwekoh replied. I peeked in the PC. There are two compartments running on both sides of the PC. One holds the radios and other equipment. The other side held M240 ammo, .50cal ammo, flares, grenades, and our assault packs...OH and the extinguisher. Guess which side was on fire? Exactly. We used SFC Kennedy's fire extinguisher and put out the fire.

Apparently the commo cords and antenna wire started arcing pretty bad and started a pretty sweet fire. It was hilarious. Of all the places to have a fire, having one where all of our ordances and explosives, and personal gear AND fire extinguisher was stored is just too funny.

We used the tow cables and towed my PC back to the FOB with SSG Terry's PC. After dropping it off with the mechanics, we grabbed our 4th PC and took back off on mission. That was my first vehicle fire. I hope they are all that funny