Chapter 10

Face-to-Face and Hand-to-Hand

“No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.”

– William Penn

Bellavia’s Battle

Sean Sims’ infantry had been back-clearing in the Askari District all day. They found several weapons caches, but not a single live insurgent. Just after sunset they got involved in a short scuffle—with some of Ramos’ Marines. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the friendly-fire incident, and the Marines and soldiers went back to clearing their own sectors, this time with a little more care.

It had been a long day for Staff Sergeant David Bellavia and his squad. They had been fighting since their entry into the city, so they took some time to rest. As midnight approached, they moved out again and came upon a house that had been left untouched by the bombing and artillery missions. And it was a pretty nice place, complete with a nine-foot wall surrounding its courtyard. Bellavia and his men filed through the open gate to find a beautifully landscaped garden and columns marking the entry. The house was well built, with a sturdy, ornate door.

Sergeant Fitts moved his squad to the door while Bellavia and his men peered in through the living room window. All was quiet inside the mansion. Bellavia’s men spread out in the courtyard and waited for orders, thankful for a couple more minutes of rest while Fitts’ squad cleared the empty house. The front door was unlocked, so the soldiers let themselves in. Bellavia stayed outside to watch through the living room window for enemy movement ahead of the advancing soldiers.

A moment later, Specialist Lance Ohle and Misa appeared in the living room. Ohle moved to the far side of the living room and cracked opened a door. The room erupted in gunfire. Red tracers screamed past Ohle, who stood his ground and fired a burst from his SAW into the darkened room. Misa grabbed Ohle and pulled him out of the line of fire while Bellavia ran into the house to help. When he entered the foyer, there was another explosion of gunfire in the entry. Bullets shattered the ornate chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Bellavia hugged the wall separating the foyer from the living room.

Ohle and Misa were now trapped, hunkered down on the opposite side of the doorway, and many of Fitts’ men were similarly trapped, pinned down on another wall. Ohle had opened a door to a fortified stairwell, giving the enemy a clear field of fire on the Marines’ only exit. They were all trapped in the living room.

There was another door from the stairwell to the foyer. It, too, was open, providing the enemy with another field of fire. Bellavia crouched and moved to the foyer’s stairwell door. When he peeked around the door frame his night vision goggles revealed two men hiding behind two concrete Jersey barriers. “How in the hell did they get those barriers in there?” Bellavia asked himself as he tried to figure out what to do next.

The enemy had built a bunker smack-damn in the middle of the upscale house. One insurgent was manning a Russian-made, belt-fed, PKM machine gun, and the other stood security with two AK-47s. They opened fire again, filling the living room with bullets and tearing away at the wall protecting Fitts’ men. A third insurgent opened fire from the kitchen window. The platoon’s machine gunner responded with a barrage from his 240.

When the firing subsided, Bellavia yelled for help. “Get me a SAW, I need a SAW!”

One of the soldiers in the living room tossed his Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) to Bellavia. “Sarge, it’s loaded with 200 in the drum.”

“Sweet,” Bellavia replied. “On me,” Bellavia announced to the soldiers in the living room. “Pull out. Australian Peel¹ and pull out. On me.”²

The barricaded insurgents continued to fire, wounding two soldiers. More would be hit if Bellavia didn’t act soon. He slowly moved along the wall into the living room toward the bunker door, then lunged ahead. A few quick strides carried him to the center of the living room’s stairwell doorway, where he opened fire with his SAW, squeezing the trigger tightly and holding it down for all he was worth. The insurgents shot back, their bullets splintering the doorway but missing Bellavia, who sidestepped into the stairwell and continued firing. His SAW went cyclic³, spitting bullets out as fast as the weapon could expel them. Fitts’ men peeled off and out of the living room. Bellavia continued to fire his SAW, spewing flames and bullets at 725 a minute. Both insurgents dove for cover, and when Bellavia’s bolt clanked back, the weapon out of ammunition, he dashed for the door and sprinted out of the house.

Any ordinary soldier would have been happy to be alive and elated that he had saved the lives of most of his platoon. But Bellavia felt like a coward: he hadn’t finished the job. Instead, he had run out and the insurgents were still barricaded in their stairwell bunker. Bellavia would never be able to live with himself if another soldier was killed or wounded trying to get to those guys. He had to finish the job.

Bellavia wasn’t stupid, though, so he called a Bradley up to help. Unfortunately, the nine-foot wall didn’t allow the crew to depress their gun to hit the first floor, but the gunner was able to spray the second story with Bushmaster cannon fire while Bellavia tried to frag the house. The grenades and 25mm HE shells had no visible effect. The only way to get those guys was with another assault on the house.

“Bravo Team, on me!” Shouted Bellavia.

Specialists Tristen Maxfield and Ohle rallied at Bellavia’s side. “We’re going back in,” he told them. Staff Sergeant Scott Lawson ran up and asked, “What are you doing?”

“We’re going back in.”

Lawson tightened his grip on his 9mm pistol. “I’m not going to let you go in there alone.”

“You’re fucking coming?” Bellavia asked incredulously.

“Absofuckinlutely,”⁴ Lawson replied.

The four men moved to the front gate and stacked along the nine-foot wall. Bellavia gave the group one last speech. “If we take fire and somebody goes down, no one render aid,” he cautioned. “I don’t care if I’m hit and screaming to Jesus—leave me. Do not look down, do not look back. Continue to move forward and shoot. Kill the threat, or we will all go down.”⁵

Ohle, Maxfield, and Bellavia formed into a three-man wedge and charged through the garden and up to the front door, with Lawson following close behind. They had taken the insurgents by surprise; not a single shot was fired. Bellavia signaled Ohle and Maxfield to the right and left to cover each front corner of the outside of the house. Lawson moved up next to the kitchen window with his 9mm pistol. If the machine gunner inside tried anything, Lawson was waiting to nail him.

Bellavia entered the house alone. He moved into the living room, then into the stairwell. He had surprised the insurgents again. A single shot from Bellavia’s M16 hit the AK-carrying insurgent in the chest. Bellavia turned and watched the other man flee. He fired two shots in rapid succession as the man dashed for the door to the kitchen. Bellavia was moving toward the kitchen when he heard footsteps at the top of the stairs: insurgents were in front and in back of him. Deciding to take the high ground first, he quietly started up the stairs but the insurgent who fled to the kitchen reentered. Bellavia put four bullets into him, and turned back to the stairs. He figured that by now his M16 had to be nearly empty, so he slammed a fully loaded magazine into his rifle.

Footfalls at the top of the stairs alerted Bellavia that someone was coming, so he ducked into a downstairs bedroom and waited. The footsteps overhead grew louder. The insurgent was coming down the stairs: he was hunting Bellavia. The sergeant crouched in the shadows of a small alcove in the darkened bedroom, waiting to turn the tables on his stalker. A silhouette appeared in the doorway and AK rounds filled the room. If Bellavia had not been crouching in the small alcove, he would almost surely have been hit. Instead, the unwounded soldier opened fire, hitting the Muj in the doorway with round after round. The insurgent dropped to the floor.

There was not time to feel any relief, because seconds later a tracer round slammed into the wall only inches from Bellavia’s head. He froze. Someone else was in the bedroom with him.

In the nearly pitch-black room, Bellavia turned hunter and sought out his unseen assailant. He could barely make out his surroundings, but he could see another small alcove, a mattress in the center of the room, and an armoire on the wall—but no enemy fighter. Just as he reached the center of the room, the armoire doors flew open and out jumped a bandoleered insurgent. He stumbled out into the bedroom, close enough to touch Bellavia, and the armoire came crashing down behind him. Bellavia stepped back as the large wooden cupboard hit the floor between the two men. The insurgent opened fire first, wildly spraying the room and hitting Bellavia in the elbow. The sergeant aimed and fired his M16, hitting his enemy in the leg, but the man darted out the door and up the stairs.

Bellavia was now alone in the darkened bedroom, but another insurgent in the house rushed to cover the door. He was trapped. Waiting just outside the door, the jihadist taunted Bellavia in broken English: “I will cut off your head,”⁶ he told his hated American enemy.

And then the fanatic fighter intent on a beheading made a mistake. He peeked around the door jamb, unware that Bellavia had NVGs. When he spotted the insurgent’s silhouette, he squeezed off a single round and watched as the man’s shoulder exploded and he fell screaming into the doorway. Bellavia pumped some more rounds into his opponent.

Bellavia ducked behind the armoire to take stock of his situation. He could hear the moans of another wounded insurgent. Had he done enough damage to proudly walk out of the house and back to his men? Had he done enough to return home to his family with honor? Then he remembered Sergeant Major Faulkenburg, the first man of Task Force 2–2 to be killed, and resolved, “I am not leaving this house, not until this is finished.”⁷

Bellavia stood and slowly headed toward the bedroom door. Both bodies were gone, and there was a bloody trail leading into the kitchen. He decided to go after the insurgent still waiting upstairs, and stepped through the doorway. As he turned to head up the steps, he pulled the magazine from his rifle and replaced it with his last fully-loaded clip.

Bellavia climbed the risers one by one, every few seconds glancing back at the stairwell door; he didn’t want to be surprised by the two men he had already shot or by a third insurgent. Bellavia listened for his bandoleered opponent, but could only hear his own heart pounding. He climbed another step, listening, watching. Now, only two stairs from the landing, Bellavia took another step and slipped in a large pool of blood, falling backward. As he reached to keep himself from cartwheeling all the way down the stairs, the waiting insurgent on the landing fired from just three feet away. If Bellavia had not slipped in the blood, he would have been shot in the head.

Bellavia fired a wild shot and missed, and the Muj fighter turned and ran up the second flight of stairs. Bellavia followed his prey, pausing at the top of the steps to look down the darkened hall. One door led to a rooftop balcony, and another to an upstairs bedroom.

Bellavia pulled the pin from his only grenade and inched along the hallway wall toward the bedroom door. When he reached the door, he opened his hand and the grenade’s spoon popped free. Bellavia counted “One…Two…Three…” and then hurled the grenade into the bedroom, where it hit the insurgent in the head. The grenade fell to the floor and Bellavia ducked behind the hallway wall for cover.

Boom!

Bellavia charged in, weapon at the ready and spotted the insurgent lying in the middle of the room. Bellavia lifted his weapon—and paused. The smell of propane gas filled the room. He froze. Propane tanks were lining an entire wall of the bedroom. Bellavia was standing in the middle of an Improvised Explosive Device. The entire room was a bomb. He couldn’t risk firing his weapon.

Instead, he slammed his barrel into his opponent’s head. The insurgent countered, swinging his AK-47 into Bellavia’s jaw, breaking a tooth before backhanding Bellavia in the face with the stock of his AK. Bellavia reared back to swing his rifle at the insurgent, but the guy kicked him in the groin before he could do so. The pain was agonizing, and Bellavia dropped his rifle. The fight degenerated into a hand-to-hand struggle to the death. After what seemed like an eternity of fighting, Bellavia managed to unclip his Gerber knife from his belt and thrust it into the insurgent’s collarbone. He left the dead man on the floor.

Bellavia picked up his rifle and went in search of the last remaining enemy fighter, whom he found on the balcony. The last shots from his M16 tore into the jihadist, knocking him off the roof.

The fight was finally over.

After several minutes of anxious waiting, the thud in the courtyard announced to Bellavia’s men that he had made it to the roof. The soldiers charged into the house to find the path of carnage their sergeant had left in his wake. Staff Sergeant David Bellavia had single-handedly cleared the entire building.

IED

A Task Force Wolfpack CSSC⁸ convoy had struck an IED on the 8th of November, and two Marines, Staff Sergeant David Ries, and Lance Corporal Thomas Zapp, were killed in the explosion. On the 9th, an ambulance hit another IED on the Shark’s Fin. Dinauer’s battalion surgeon nearly lost his foot, and one of his corpsman had his leg blown off. The supply route along ASR BOSTON was laced with radio-controlled IEDs. There was also high ground south of BOSTON, which made it an excellent spot for ambushes.

Because of the dangers along BOSTON, on the night of November 10–11 Captain Matthew Good decided he would try to move his Task Force Wolfpack vehicle supply convoy of fifteen to twenty 7-ton trucks, HMMWVs, logistic LAVs, and bulk re-fuelers, onto the Shark’s Fin from TQ along MSR MICHIGAN. Dan Wittnam asked Good if he could hitch a ride back to his boats. Good agreed, and Wittnam hopped into the back of the lead 7-ton truck. Good sent two Cobra helicopters down the route to make sure it was clear. Both pilots raced above the road up and back, twice, and reported to Good that the route was clear. Good ordered the convoy forward in the dark of night at 40 mph.

MSR MICHIGAN crosses a large, freeway-style four-lane bridge that rises over the only railroad tracks in the area one mile west of the railroad bridge where Rubio and Parrello had been ambushed earlier in the day. As the convoy approached the overpass, one of the Cobra pilots noticed something in the road at the western base of the bridge, and reported that information to Good.⁹

The enemy had piled a berm of earth across all four lanes and buried an IED in it. The pilot’s report came too late for the lead vehicle, which slammed into the mound of dirt. The watching enemy detonated the IED and the berm exploded. The 7-ton truck disappeared in the dust and debris, falling off the raised embankment. Captain Good watched in horror as the truck vanished. Down below it landed on its left side, spilling the Marines in the back out onto the ground.

Major Wittnam had visions of his fight in Nasiriyah. As he tried to regain his senses, enemy fire erupted around him. He rallied the Marines, who had been tossed in every direction. They quickly checked for injuries. Sadly, the truck driver, Lance Corporal Justin Reppuhn, had been killed when the truck rolled over, but everyone else survived the crash with only a few minor injuries.¹⁰

The Marines from the truck began to return fire and the two Cobras swooped in and attacked the insurgents. It would be hours before Good could calm the shooting, recover his wounded and Reppuhn’s body, clean up the wreck, and move on. He never did recover the 7-ton; they had to blow it in place.

Crossing MICHIGAN

Captain Cunningham’s Marines continued to control the Government Center and the east-west artery to their south, MSR MICHIGAN. They had been fighting insurgents on three sides for most of the day. The heaviest fighting was with the insurgents who had infested the buildings on the south side of MICHIGAN. Cunningham knew he would have to move Marines south of MICHIGAN to completely control the thoroughfare. After speaking with his boss, Gary Brandl, Cunningham planned to push his First Platoon south in the middle of the night of November 10–11. Lieutenant Ackerman would grab a foothold on the Pizza Slice to support the entire company’s move the next day.¹¹

Ackerman preceded his move with another AC-130 strike. Basher zeroed in on a large building on the Pizza Slice and started pounding the structure with 40mm and 105mm rounds to “soften up” Ackerman’s target. By the time they were finished, they had turned the building into nothing more than a pile of shattered glass, disfigured metal bars, and chunks of concrete.

When Ackerman’s Marines slipped out of the Government Center during the night and silently crossed ELIZABETH into the Pizza Slice, they arrived at their destination only to find an indefensible pile of rubble. Ackerman had a decision to make: return to the Government Center, or find another foothold south of MICHIGAN. He opted to go forward.

First Platoon’s Marines crossed the four-lane, divided main road. Before dawn they set up their position in a block-long, multi-story building that housed a butcher shop. Because it smelled like dead chickens and rotting swine entrails, the Marines dubbed it “the Candy Store.”¹² Despite the stench, the building was a good choice. It had few adjacent structures and open fields of fire, it faced MICHIGAN on its north side, and there were empty lots to its east, west, and south. Ackerman set security, and his platoon settled in for the rest of the night.

The enemy was reeling from the massive assault all along the northern edge of the city. Survivors of the onslaught were fighting a delaying action, most falling back to positions south of MSR MICHIGAN, the main east-west thoroughfare. All of Natonski’s battalions spent the night making preparations for their push across Highway 10 and attack into the southern part of the city. November 11 would be the worst day: the enemy would stand and fight.

The morning light exposed dozens of insurgents to Ackerman’s south. They were in the open, preparing their gear and staging for a second day of fighting with the Marines in the Government Center. Ackerman quietly passed the word, and when his Marines were ready he commanded them to open fire. They took the insurgents completely by surprise. Many were killed, and those who were not scattered for cover.

But the enemy regrouped and moved to surround Ackerman’s Marines (First Platoon), upon which they focused there attention. They struck back with a vengeance, attacking the Candy Store with machine guns, supported by sniper fire from every direction.

The fight had been raging for some time when a single sniper round smashed through one of the windows and hit Ackerman’s platoon sergeant, Michael Cauthon, right in his helmet. The impact did not penetrate the Kevlar, but it did knock him unconscious. A second round followed, ricocheted, and hit Lance Corporal Matthew Brown in the leg, severing his femoral artery. Ackerman immediately called for a casevac.

Captain Cunningham dispatched one of his AMTRACs with his First Sergeant to retrieve the wounded Marines, and alerted his other platoons to prepare to cross the road to reinforce Ackerman. But as the track moved out onto ELIZABETH in front of the Government Center, it was hit by an RPG. The grenade hit the left rear of the track in the water-jet exhaust used for maneuvering the vehicle in the water. The round passed through the vehicle’s fuel tank and exploded, spewing burning fuel all over the troop compartment.

First Sergeant Derek Fry ordered everyone out, and then climbed up on top of the track. “Hey, Gunny,” Fry said, “your track is on fire.”¹³

Gunny Ramirez turned and saw the flames. “Oh shit!” he exclaimed. He immediately ordered the driver to stop the track. The vehicle skidded to a stop and the Marines bailed. They forced open a gate to the Government Center and ran to the cover of the nearest building.

Cunningham got on the radio and ordered CAAT gun trucks to take over the disabled track’s casevac mission. The armored HMMWVs raced toward the Candy Store to get to Ackerman’s wounded Marines. Ackerman popped a smoke in the street and then ran out while under fire to flag down the trucks. Seven Marines, including Brown and Cauthon, were loaded into the gun truck and rushed to much-needed medical attention. Fortunately, Dr. Jadick’s mini-BAS was only minutes away in the Government Center. They got Brown to Jadick just in time to save his life. If they had needed to transport him out of the city, he would have bled out.

Meyers and his XO, Markley, were refueling outside the city when Fry’s track was hit. Meyers heard all of the chaos on the radio and called to his XO, “We need to get into the city, right now!”¹⁴

Meyers and his wingman raced south to MICHIGAN, where they maneuvered their tanks into the street and Meyers positioned his between the crippled vehicle and the enemy’s guns. Meyers absorbed all of the enemy fire broadside, as the Marines worked as fast as possible to clear the burning AMTRAC.

Cunningham’s Marines were in the middle of an intense firefight. He had a platoon pinned down south of MICHIGAN with critical casualties, and his effort to evacuate the wounded had just turned into another emergency. Up to his eyeballs in shit, Cunningham was contemplating his next move when Lieutenant Lee and his wingman, Sergeant Ducasse, arrived. RPGs were hitting the side of the building, and Cunningham’s Marines were firing everything they had to cover the burning track and suppress the enemy’s fire. Lee walked up to Cunningham and tried to introduce himself to his new company commander.

“Are you the tank TWO commander?”¹⁵ Cunningham asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine. Get on the net. Talk to Ackerman. That’s your job. GO!”

Lee rushed back to his tank and thundered out onto MICHIGAN in search of Ackerman and his embattled platoon.