Chapter 12

More Heroes

“When a man gives you his word, it’s set in stone. When a Marine gives you his word, it’s set in blood.”

– HM2 Juan Rubio, USN, 12/6/07

The Fighting Intensifies

After the morning courtyard attack, Lieutenant Colonel Newell gave the order to move everyone back to Phase Line ISABEL, and then called in artillery and air strikes to clear the buildings around the ambush site. Jim Rainey’s Cougar tanks had been pushing south down HENRY all night, bounding from one phase line to the next. Twaddell’s Bradleys followed Pete Glass’s tanks, leaving two armored vehicles at each major intersection. By dawn, Twaddell was spread out a mile and a half along HENRY, from DONNA to ISABEL. And once again, as soon as the sun came up, the enemy attacked.

Twaddell and Glass started taking intense RPG and mortar fire. Glass’ tankers were beginning to run low on fuel, so Twaddell took the lead while Glass returned with half of his company to refuel and rearm. Instead of just sitting there “eating mortars,”¹ Twaddell recalled, he pressed the attack.

As his Bradleys ground west along ISABEL toward ISAAC, Twaddell was busy in the turret of his track commanding a company-plus attack. The captain was on the radio with his platoon leaders and his boss; he was constantly checking his map and trying to maintain situational awareness; and he was busy maneuvering his vehicles away from the mortar barrage.

As he glanced down at his map around 0900, Twaddell saw a bright flash between his knees. As he would soon learn, an insurgent had jumped from cover as Twaddell’s vehicle passed and fired at it with an RPG, which punched through the lightly armored ramp and screamed through the troop compartment, filling the inside of the vehicle with smoke. The projectile hit Sergeant Brian Newman first, tearing off his left arm, after which the deadly dart passed through the interpreter, “Izzy,” killing him instantly.

Once the grenade whizzed through the troop compartment, it blew through the front of the track. “The penetrator passed through the turret shield, into the ammo ready box and detonated a couple of rounds,” recalled Twaddell.² The lethal round must have been some kind of Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP). The through-and-through hit killed one Iraqi and severely wounded another soldier, yet left only a tiny hole the size of Twaddell’s thumb in his back ramp.

It had been nearly twenty-four hours since Major Kassner had been wounded in the rocket attack on the Fallujah Hospital, yet he still refused medical attention. When Lieutenant Colonel Dinauer found out, he ordered his XO to return to the Surgical Shock Trauma Platoon at TQ.

Kassner reluctantly complied and hitched a ride back to TQ. After he was evaluated and his wounds had been properly dressed, he asked his nurse, “Have you received any pilots recently?”³

“Yes, I think we did,” she replied.

Kassner said, “I’d like to see him.”

“I think he’s in another ward.”

The nurse helped Kassner, grabbing his IV bags and whatever else was plugged into him. Together, they walked over to the tent where Captain John Towle was supposed to be, but his bed was empty.

“Where is this Marine?” Kassner’s nurse asked the nurse on the ward.

“An ambulance just took him. They’re medevacing him,” the ward nurse replied.

Kassner looked at his nurse. “I’d like to try to find him.”

The two raced out to the parking area and found the ambulance. Kassner climbed in the back with his IVs and found the wounded, sedated, and heavily bandaged Cobra pilot. When Kassner confirmed this was his man, he began asking him questions. Because his ears were still ringing from the rocket attack, he had no way to know he was shouting.

“WHAT’S YOUR NAME?” Kassner asked.

“Gorby,” the pilot answered.

“IS THAT YOUR NAME?”

“It’s my call sign.”

“I JUST WANTED TO SEE HOW YOU ARE DOING.”

“Who are you?” the wounded Marine aviator asked.

“MY MARINES AND I CARRIED YOU TO THE HELICOPTER.”

Captain John Towle leaned over and grabbed Kassner’s hand. “Thank you.”

“TAKE CARE,” Kassner added, and climbed out of the ambulance.

Back at MICHIGAN, meanwhile, Willie Buhl’s Marines prepared to move south behind Jim Rainey’s tanks and Bradleys to clear the southern half of the city. Captain Timothy Jent’s Kilo Company attacked down HENRY. When Jent’s First Platoon turned south onto HENRY, the daylight revealed a string of five 155mm artillery shells strung out down the middle of the road. Lieutenant Adam Mathes, the First Platoon commander, halted the attack, with the rest of Jent’s Company grinding to a stop behind him.

At the head of the attack, Mathes called for an EOD team to deal with the daisy-chained IED. They had only been stopped a short time when enemy 82mm mortar rounds started landing all around them. A Marine was hit and a Corpsman nearly lost his arm to a large chunk of shrapnel. A Navy SEAL sniper team, riding near the front of the column, jumped from their vehicles and raced to the wounded men’s aid—just as the next round came screaming in. The explosion that followed wounded nearly all of the SEALs.

Lieutenant Mathes was facing a complex situation: he had a wired explosive device in the street ahead that could take out his entire platoon, and perhaps most of the company; mortar rounds were already landing on his position and had caused multiple casualties; and, to make matters worse, the enemy had opened up with small-arms fire.

RPG teams were another threat, and they appeared quickly, hitting Bodisch’s tank at the intersection with three rounds. Mathes had a real fight on his hands, and Jent’s entire company was stalled. The enemy was shrewdly exploiting the 500-meter seam between Brandl and Buhl’s Marines.

Colonel Shupp, who was waiting impatiently for a report on Buhl’s attack south, finally decided to go forward again. Shupp ran to the roof of a Russian-style apartment building that faced MICHIGAN to get a view of the situation. Brandl’s infantry was stalled, but Jent finally got the IED defused. Still, he continued to take fire from the east side of HENRY as he pressed forward with his Second Platoon.

Bodisch kept his turret oriented to the left across HENRY, the regimental boundary. All of Bodisch’s fire was going to the east. Not knowing that Brandl’s Marines were involved in a fight of their own blocks away, Bodisch kept asking about the Marines on his left: “Is our left flank protected?”⁴ He could see the enemy running alongside his advance. They were moving to every intersection and popping off RPGs. Lieutenant Smithley, Bodisch’s XO and wingman, was second in line behind his company commander’s tank on HENRY. He watched as RPG teams fired on his boss, then he cut them down with his 240. Team after team met the same fate: they would jump out to launch on Bodisch’s tank, and a few seconds later take dozens of 240 rounds.

During the day’s fighting, Corporal Robert J. Mitchell, Jr., a squad leader in 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3/1, was shot through the triceps. The corpsmen wanted to casevac him, but he insisted on staying in the city with his Marines. Because the injury was not life-threatening, they bandaged his through-and-through wound and let him return to his squad.

By day’s end, Jent’s Marines had reached a compound of buildings at the intersection of HENRY and ISABEL that could only be described as a palace—a walled compound that took up an entire city block and included two large three-story homes. The buildings in the compound were the dominating structures in a neighborhood of smaller, one- and two-story houses. Jent’s Kilo Company occupied this palace and went firm for the night.

At sunset, Brandl’s Alpha and Bravo companies were on the move again, pushing south to HEATHER. Omohundro’s Marines sustained more casualties as they cleared houses. One of his men, Corporal Nathan R. Anderson, was killed by insurgents disguised in Iraqi National Guard “Chocolate Chip” uniforms.

Just after midnight, Corporal Jacob Knospler, one of Omohundro’s squad leaders, led his Marines into a house in search of a safe place to catch a few hours of rest. They moved cautiously inside, tossing grenades into the darkened first-floor rooms before moving to the stairs to clear the second floor. Knospler took the point, climbing the stairs in the dark.

Without warning, an insurgent lobbed a grenade down the stairwell that hit Knospler in the face and exploded. Two more grenades bounced down the stairs past Knospler and detonated, peppering six more Marines with shrapnel. In shock, Knospler stumbled back down the stairs, staggered out of the house, and collapsed in the street badly wounded.

Bravo Company corpsmen whisked Knospler into a vehicle and raced him back to Jadick’s mini-BAS at the Government Center. By the time he arrived, he was drowning in his own blood. Jadick rushed to the wounded Marine and found him unconscious and not breathing. His lower face had been blown away, including his teeth, his tongue, and his entire jaw.

Jadick suctioned his airway with a stainless-steel turkey baster and, astonishingly, Knospler gasped for air and sat up—awake. Jadick pushed as much morphine as he thought Knospler could tolerate and told him, “We’re going to ride back together.”⁵

Jadick and his corpsmen bandaged Knospler’s face as best they could—surprisingly, he was not bleeding too heavily—but Jadick was still worried about his airway, which could swell shut at any moment.

Miraculously, Knospler turned out to be a walking wounded. Jadick and an Army medic, Specialist Kristine Knight, helped Knospler to her waiting M113 armored ambulance. Knight was one of a handful of women attached to an ambulance company from the North Carolina National Guard. Jadick had “borrowed” her ambulance when he opened the mini-BAS, and Knight was one of the few women working at the front lines inside the city. She had been ferrying wounded all day, but this was the worst injury she had encountered.

Knight sat at Knospler’s and Jadick’s feet inside the darkened ambulance, ready to intubate her patient, if needed. Jadick held Knospler’s head so that fluids would not flow into his airway, and worked for the entire thirty-minute trip back to Bravo Surgical to keep the young Marine from reaching up to touch his face. Knospler couldn’t talk, so he knew something was wrong; Jadick just tried to keep him from realizing how bad it really was.

“It’s going to be OK,” Knight kept telling Knospler, as she prayed harder than she has ever prayed in her life. “You’re going to be OK.”⁶

Knight’s ambulance rolled up to Bravo Surgical, where the waiting stretcher bearers whisked Knospler into the trauma room. The ER physician and surgeons rushed him into surgery to start repairing his mangled face. Hours later Knospler emerged from surgery—alive.

Saturday, November 13, 2004 – D+6: Junkyard Dogs

The enemy was now fully aware this fight was nothing like the first battle for Fallujah, so they did one of the few things they could do: they went to ground. Instead of fighting in the open they set Chechnyan ambushes, turned more bedrooms into bunkers, and even hid behind mattresses and inside bureaus waiting for some lance corporal to appear in the doorway.

Newell’s soldiers continued pushing south into a flat open space filled with industrial waste. The ground was covered with mountains of trash, piles of metal filings, and dozens of junk cars. The area was nearly impassable.

South of the junkyard was another residential area. The Shuhada District was erected without any sense of organization, a hodge-podge of a 1,000 haphazardly placed buildings. This is where Al Qaeda had set up house. They had forced all of the civilians from the neighborhood and emptied the structures. They controlled access in and out of the district, and they expanded their defenses into the industrial area. Shuhada was a well defended stronghold.

By the morning of November 13, Task Force 2–2 had pushed through the junkyard. Newell was shifting units in preparation for clearing Al Qaeda’s Shuhada stronghold. At 1030, Captain Sean Sims pulled up in search of a rooftop OP to utilize for the push south. Compared to the last few days, it was a relatively quiet morning. Some of Sims’ soldiers pointed out a building that First Platoon had occupied the night before. From the ground it looked as if the roof would provide a commanding view, so Sims decided to investigate.

“Sir, do you want me to send a squad with you?”⁷ Lieutenant Meno asked his boss.

“No, it’s OK,” Sims replied. “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I have my guys. I’ll be fine.”

Sims never went anywhere without Corporal Travis Barreto and Specialist Joseph Seyford. They were “his guys,” his personal security detachment. Air Force Staff Sergeant Greg Overbay, Alpha Company’s Joint Tactical Air Controller (JTAC), and Sergeant Sean O’Brien, Captain Cobb’s forward observer, were also moving around with Sims.

Before they entered the building, Sims sent Barreto up an outside wall to the roof. Once atop the building, Barreto found a stairwell leading back down. He covered the stairs, making sure no one came up or went down. Sims, Overbay, Seyford, and O’Brien entered the front door of the building, with Sims, Overbay and O’Brien carrying M16s, and Seyford his SAW. Once in the hallway, Seyford peeled off the stack to check the first room on the right while Sims and Overbay moved deeper into the house.

When Seyford stepped into the room, two insurgents hiding under a blanket jumped up and started firing their AKs. Seyford returned fire and O’Brien quickly backed out of the house. The room filled with flying bullets, passing each other in midair. All three men were tangled in an eight-foot gunfight. Seyford, who was struck in the left shoulder, shot down both insurgents. The enemy fighters tried to get back up, but the wounded American butted both of them with his SAW, then turned to get the hell out of the room. In a dying effort, one of the men lifted his rifle and shot one last time, hitting Seyford in the left leg. He half-crawled, half-dragged himself down the hallway yelling, “Barreto! Barreto!”

Manning the roof, Barreto heard the gunfire but held his position until he heard Seyford’s call for help. Instead of running down the stairs, he jumped from the roof and rushed to the front door, where he found Seyford struggling to make it to safety. Overbay was already out of the house. He, too, had been shot. Barreto grabbed Seyford and dragged him into a small alley.

With Seyford safe, Barreto went in search of his captain. He stopped at the front door and called out, “Captain Sims!” He was just starting to call out a second time when a grenade rolled out of the door. Barreto dove for cover just a moment before it exploded. Unscathed, Barreto returned to the doorway.

“CAPTAIN SIMMS!”

Still there was no reply. By now a squad from First Platoon had showed up and stacked itself at the door. The remaining insurgent rolled out another grenade to cover his escape, scattering the squad.

BOOM!

The squad regrouped and rushed into the house shouting, “Captain Sims? Captain Sims!” They found him in the back room, dead on the floor. In less than twenty four hours, Alpha Company, 2–2 Infantry had lost both its Company Commander and its XO. The losses of their admired leaders devastated the men of Alpha Company.

Devastated or not, there was still work to be done. Task Force 2–2 pushed south through the Shuhada District to the southern edge of the city. They consolidated, brought in Iraqi Intervention Forces, turned around, and went back up to the industrial area to systematically clear every building.

A Different Battle

As noted earlier, the enemy fighters holding the southern part of Fallujah were composed of large numbers of foreigners from Syria, Saudi Arabia, and a dozen other countries. The terrain was different too, with many more detached houses and deliberate fortifications. Some of the houses were rigged with explosives, and many rooms were filled with mattresses and other items to protect their defenders. Fortunately, many of the enemy’s positions were oriented to the south or west toward the Euphrates River.

Buhl’s Marines were more cautious entering these homes. If they suspected that enemy fighters were holed up inside, they blew in the front door with HE, then fired a thermobaric⁸ charge in to drop all the floors. It wasn’t long before The Thundering Third ran out of SMAW thermobaric rockets. In an urban fight, you can never have enough rockets and grenades. They are like hamburgers and beer at a Marine picnic: consumption is always proportionate to availability.

Buhl’s India Company lost a Marine to a suicide bomber on the 13th as it was sweeping toward a mosque with a blue and white minaret. The bomber rushed out of one of the nearby houses toward the Marines, who opened fire and filled him with 5.56 rounds. Somehow the fanatic jihadist managed to stagger forward and detonate his explosive-filled vest. The explosion blew the bomber to pieces and killed Lance Corporal Justin D. McLeese.

The mosque had been a gathering point for insurgents in southern Fallujah. The structure was heavily guarded, and the enemy had set supporting machine gun positions in nearby houses. They fought stubbornly to protect one of their last strongholds in the city. When the American forces first rolled down HENRY, the enemy had fired RPGs at Pete Glass’ tanks from the mosque compound and its minarets. Kilo Company had cleared the mosque on the 12th and found a cache of mortars and RPGs inside. By the 13th, the mosque had changed hands more than once. Each time the Marines thought they had cleared the stronghold, enemy fighters returned to occupy it.

When India Company’s Marines re-entered the mosque on the 13th, they found dead and wounded insurgents from the previous fighting. The Marines ordered the injured to show their hands and remain still, but one of the insurgents refused to comply, pretending he was dead.

“This guy’s not dead,” a Marine blurted out. “He’s faking.”

After days of fighting and surviving booby-trapped bodies and houses, the Marines were in no mood to take chances. They had already encountered enemy fighters feigning surrender, and others disguised in Iraqi National Guard uniforms. They had seen their friends die at the hands of suicide bombers. They were not going to fall for any further jihadi treachery.

A young Marine who had been wounded the day before, but had remained with his squad, moved forward to take a look. The insurgent was still playing possum and ignoring their commands. When he moved slightly again, the Marine shot him in the head.

“He’s dead now,” he announced.

Kevin Sites, a freelance NBC correspondent, and his camera man had followed the Marines into the mosque and captured the entire incident on film. He showed it to Colonel Shupp and Lieutenant Colonel Buhl when he returned to the train station. Shupp immediately reported the incident to Division. The Marines authorized the release of the news footage, and within hours it was available on every television and computer in the world. The young Marine was removed from the battlefield pending a complete investigation of the incident. He was returned to duty when it was later determined that he had followed the established rules of engagement. For now, however, the enemy had their first media victory.

Unlike the Americans, the enemy had no rules of engagement. They fought from mosques, minarets, hospitals, and homes. They used tunnels, spider holes, and underground complexes. They routinely feigned surrender or injury. They used women and children as shields. They booby-trapped the dead and fought to the death from fortified positions. Natonski’s young soldiers and Marines, however, were held to a higher standard. In today’s world of instant communication, satellite television links, and the internet, nearly every action is scrutinized by the entire world. Enlisted soldiers and Marines could lose the battle in the media with one moment of poor judgment. Operation Iraqi Freedom produced the “strategic corporal.” Despite this, explained one battalion commander, the young American “corporals and sergeants out-fought the bad guys and left them lying dead in the streets.”⁹

Cunningham’s Marines had finally reached HENRY. Gary Brandl was traveling with Alpha Company when they reached the regimental boundary. Bravo Company, on the left, had already linked up with Newell’s soldiers. The built-up areas of the city had narrowed to a mile-and-a-half corridor south of the garbage fields, bringing Natonski’s battalions closer together. Cunningham’s men ran into dozens of entrenched fighters, many of whom were squirting over to the west side of HENRY.

Brandl got on the radio to his boss, Colonel Tucker. “We really need to coordinate with Willie’s guys,” he told Tucker. “They’re pressing and we’re pressing. We kind of need to link up and press together.”¹⁰

Tucker agreed and coordinated with Shupp to push to the edge of the city in a coordinated attack. Brandl and Buhl’s Marines would finally link up just outside the southern mosque. Cunningham moved his Marines south across the garbage field to come online with 3/1, closing the seam between the two regiments.

RCT-1 and RCT-7 fought the rest of the way to the edge of the city side by side.