With the new plan, Colonel Shupp told Lieutenant Colonel Malay that his Marines would be staying in the Jolan District, north of MICHIGAN. Shupp wanted Malay to rid the northwest quadrant of the city of every single insurgent. The Darkhorse Marines continued their squeegee clearing.
Brian Chontosh’s India Company Marines continued to push east and south to a point only one block west of HENRY. On that last block there was a school directly to their east. They couldn’t attack in that direction because Chris Brooke’s men were just ahead on HENRY, along with their Iraqi soldiers. Instead, Chontosh moved his Company north and slid his 1st and 3rd Platoons toward HENRY, where his Marines attacked south, online.
They immediately ran into a pocket of jihadis. Lance Corporal Klayton South was shot in the face as he entered one of the first houses with four other Marines. Two of the Marines managed to dive for cover behind a flight of stairs, but the remaining two were hit by enemy fire coming from one of the downstairs rooms. Sergeant Michael Meisenhalder was in the house next door when he heard the shooting. He immediately left his house and rushed to the sound of the gunfire.1
Meisenhalder, the Platoon Scout, surveyed the scene: two Marines had reached safety in the stairwell, but three Marines lay wounded on the floor. An open door led to an interior room, and Meisenhalder focused his attention on it. He laid down a covering fire into the adjacent room as a corpsman dragged South to safety. As Meisenhalder moved toward the open door, a barrage of tracer rounds flashed through it, the bullets passing so close he could feel their heat on his face. Miraculously, none found their target.
Meisenhalder jumped back out of the line of fire and pitched a grenade into the room. By now, Captain Chontosh and Lance Corporal David Jelinek were at Meisenhalder’s side. They, too, tossed several more grenades into the room and then charged in after they exploded. Somehow, the insurgent was still alive and shooting. Chontosh put two rounds into him and Meisenhalder shot him in the head, ending the short standoff.
With enemy fighters in buildings all along the block, Second Lieutenant James P. “JP” Blecksmith, Chontosh’s Third Platoon commander, took to the roof to get a better view of the area. Blecksmith, physically imposing at 6’3”, had been a football star at the Naval Academy. He was also smart, with an incredible sense of humor. JP hadn’t been on the roof long when an enemy sniper in a white man-dress fired a single shot from across the street. The bullet missed Blecksmith’s SAPI plate, passed through his Kevlar vest, and killed him instantly.
The radio call went out immediately: “Blecksmith’s down.”
Marines rushed to his aid but he was already gone. The loss of Blecksmith stopped India Company’s attack in its tracks. Blecksmith’s Marines hadn’t even finished clearing the first block when Captain Chontosh ordered his men to fall back, then pounded the buildings with repeated air strikes. Before nightfall he moved his men farther back to the west to prepare to try again the next day.
Meanwhile, Back on the Shark’s Fin
Ever since the opening moments of the operation, a West Coast Marine attack helicopter squadron, HMLA-169, had been making gun and rocket runs in support of the attack into the northwest corner of the city. On the morning of the 11th of November, one of its Cobras ventured too close to the river and was shot down over the Shark’s Fin.
Major Kassner was headed for the Fallujah Hospital compound when he got word of the helicopter crash. He immediately diverted his three-vehicle patrol to a grassy field north of the intersection of MSR BOSTON and MSR MICHIGAN. Kassner’s Marines jumped from their vehicles and spread out across the field to secure a landing zone for a medevac. Captain Victor Pirak’s C/1–9 soldiers secured the crash site and got the pilots out of the aircraft. One of the Marine aviators walked away from the crash, but the other was seriously injured. Pirak’s men rushed the wounded Marine to the hastily secured LZ as Kassner called in the medevac and marked the LZ with smoke.2
Kassner helped three or four other soldiers and Marines carry Captain John Towle into the waiting casevac bird. Once the helicopter had lifted off, Kassner and his men jumped back into their vehicles and continued their journey to the Fallujah hospital to check on Captain Collier. Collier and his Iraqi Intervention Force soldiers had been providing security at the hospital compound since the beginning of the operation. Kassner visited frequently to check on them.
By the time Kassner arrived at the hospital it was after noon. An Iraqi government delegation, including the Iraqi Minister of Health, was conducting an independent assessment of the ability of the facility and staff to provide medical care to the civilian population. Kassner hadn’t been there long when the enemy attacked with several volleys of rockets.
As with most of their attacks, the enemy was relying on volume rather than accuracy of fire. Some of the rockets screamed past the hospital and exploded behind the compound, some hit to the left of the hospital, and some in front. Kassner’s immediate concern was for the Iraqi VIPs inside. He and Lance Corporal Hutchinson raced out into the courtyard to try to get one of Pirak’s Bradley Fighting Vehicles that was dug in along the bank of the river several hundred meters away. The major wanted to load the Iraqi officials into the Bradley and evacuate them as quickly as possible.
As they were heading for the radios in their vehicle, the eighth or ninth rocket slammed into the hospital, blowing the glass out of the entrance. The deafening explosion knocked Kassner to the ground. He promptly stood up, ears ringing, and ran back into the hospital all the while thinking that the hospital had suffered a direct hit.
As it turned out, the rocket had missed the entrance and exploded on the roof; no one inside had been injured. When Kassner entered the lobby, one of the Iraqis standing in the hospital shouted at him, ran over, and pointed at his arm: Kassner’s right hand was bleeding profusely, and his right sleeve was soaked in blood. Shrapnel from the rocket had ripped into his hand and arm.
Once Kassner realized that everyone in the hospital was safe, he turned to run back to his vehicle. His main concern now was to get the civilians out of the hospital compound before another rocket found them—and he had to find the source of the rocket fire. These tasks seemed much more important to him than taking care of his wound. One of the men traveling with the Iraqi Minister of Health had noticed Kassner’s wound and followed him to his vehicle. While Kassner was talking on the radio, the guy took some bandages out of Kassner’s first aid kit and started wrapping up his hand and arm.
Kassner’s focus—everyone’s focus—was to neutralize the enemy targeting them and to get the folks out who needed to leave. Kassner called in the Bradleys, loaded up the half-dozen VIPs, and had them driven away from the heart of the enemy’s rocket barrage. Ignoring proper medical treatment, Kassner simply returned to the battalion command post.
Preparing to Attack the Southern Half of the City
As soldiers and Marines were preparing to pour south across MICHIGAN, General Natonski and Lieutenant Colonel Bristol paid another visit to Colonel Tucker at the Government Center. Natonski decided he wanted to visit Captain Bethea’s Marines before they pushed south. There was a large open field between Brandl’s command post and Charlie Company. Natonski set off across the muddy field, followed by Bristol, Tucker, L’Etiole, and his security detachment. “Next thing I know,” remembered L’Etiolee, “everybody is shooting at us”3 from the three large buildings and a minaret south of MICHIGAN. Any number of windows could have shielded the snipers. The Marines were an enticing target: Bristol is even taller than Natonski, who stands 6’ 3.” About halfway across, a bullet impacted between Natonski and Bristol, who was trailing his commanding general. “I didn’t even know that a bullet had hit right behind me when I made a quick pivot to go talk to some Marines,” recalled Natonski.4