Probing the Battlefield
As all the forces were converging around Fallujah in September and October and making their preparations for the attack, the 1st Marine Division conducted feints and short-term raids from every corner of the city. Natonski continued to run patrols and operations in the area to stretch his muscles, but without showing his hand. The forays remained small and never more than company-sized operations. Colonel Shupp conducted shaping operations every four days to keep the enemy off balance. One night he peppered the city with an artillery barrage of flares, turning night into day. Next, he flew a standard Marine Corps C-130 over Fallujah to simulate AC-130s. (At night, Shupp’s Marine transport plane sounded exactly like the Air Force’s deadly gunship.) Natonski wanted to make the enemy believe that the attack would come from east to west, but careful not to overplay his hand, he periodically probed from the north and south as well.
Each new event excited and confused the enemy. Every incursion or probe prompted insurgent leaders to grab their cell phones and radios and fill the airwaves with expectant chatter. “This is it!” they would exclaim back and forth. “They are coming tonight! Prepare everyone!”
Colonel Bristol gathered intelligence during each outing. This created a loop in which the information gathered during one operation led to a new operation, and that information provided new intelligence for the next one. For example, one night F/A18s buzzed the city at supersonic speed, blowing out windows with a boom loud enough to wake the dead, while UAVs watched for enemy movement and the Radio Battalion listened for their reaction. When an enemy concentration was identified, a Joint Directed Attack Munition (JDAM) was dropped on the building, triggering additional movement and chatter. The Marines then simply followed the insurgents as they moved to their next site. They could run, but they could not hide.
General Metz cautioned the Marines not to exceed the IO threshold, so their feints and raids had to be conducted with some restraint. There would be no heavy artillery barrages and few air attacks. The focus was on low-risk targets, with a goal to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. The Marines ran large and small patrols, sometimes encountering IEDs or ambushes. They ran company-sized feints, cordon, and search operations, and triggered several firefights as a result. The Marines kept the enemy guessing as to where the real attack would come.
The Marines demonstrated less restraint on the eastern edge of Fallujah. The Askari neighborhood, dubbed the “Military District,” was a newly constructed area. Its single-family homes were larger and the streets were wider than in the older neighborhoods farther west. The Marines had been sparring with the enemy along the eastern side of Fallujah for many months. Few, if any, civilians remained in the homes along the eastern edge of town. Most of the buildings were enemy bunkers, riddled with bullet holes and pockmarked by larger caliber rounds. Attacks on the eastern edge of Fallujah would not impose significant new damage or endanger civilians, so with platoon- and company-sized operations the Marines reinforced the enemy’s belief that they would attack from the east.
On the night of September 24–25 (Colonel Shupp’s birthday), RCT–1 conducted a large shaping attack. Under cover of darkness, Shupp moved tanks and armored vehicles to the northeast corner of Fallujah to destroy captured HESCO barriers the insurgents had used to block entrance into the city along the north-south streets. Shupp had two companies of Marine Corps tanks, Alpha and Charlie companies of the 2nd Tank Battalion. Captain Chris Meyers, the Alpha Company commander, conducted a tank attack with infantry support from Olson’s 2/1 and Malay’s 3/5 Marines. Shupp watched the operation from the Potato Factory, an agricultural facility with refrigerated storage capability at the northeast corner of the Cloverleaf. At one point he looked toward the city with his night-vision goggles and spotted small flickers of light. It reminded him of the Super Bowl or an Olympic Stadium, complete with thousands of camera flashes. But the flashes were not from cameras, but from hundreds of enemy fighters firing on his Marines.
The enemy had spent months erecting barricades and planting IEDs all over the Military District. Insurgents had stolen Jersey barriers (like you see on interstate construction projects) and HESCO barriers from ambushed American convoys. When no stolen barriers were available, they plowed earthen berms across major thoroughfares inside the city. Bombs were buried in the streets and mines were sowed in the courtyards. Entire homes were transformed into massive booby traps, with explosives stacked from floor to ceiling.
On one occasion, an American aircraft dropped a bomb on a suspected cache in the Military District. The bomb triggered secondary explosions, confirming the Marines’ suspicions. Then, to everyone’s amazement, a series of IEDs exploded along the street for about two blocks. Another five or six explosions erupted on an adjacent street, one right after the other. The discovery of so many IEDs planted around the edge of the city reinforced Natonski’s belief that he needed to get his Marines past these urban minefields quickly. He needed to disrupt the enemy’s command and control and not allow them time to blow any other strings of explosives. If a two-block-long string of IEDs had blown while Marines were in the street, an entire company could have been lost in the blink of an eye.
The Marines constantly shifted their focus to keep the enemy off balance. On October 14, 2004, Captain Meyers’ Alpha Company, 2nd Tanks conducted a daylight feint in the northwest corner of the city. At 2200 Colonel Patton’s 1st Battalion of the 503rd Infantry Regiment attacked up the Shark’s Fin, while 3/5 and Captain Robert Bodisch’s Charlie Company, 2nd Tank Battalion attacked to clear and seize the Soda Factory in the southeast. The Marines wanted to make the enemy believe this was the beginning of their advance to retake Fallujah, whereas in reality they were just trying to expose more enemy positions.
Captain Meyers’ friend, Robert Bodisch, grew up near Austin, Texas. He joined the Marine Corps Reserves right after high school, completed his degree at Texas A&M, and was commissioned as a Marine Second Lieutenant. Bodisch’s first assignment was as a tank platoon commander at Twentynine Palms. He served a stint as an intel officer but returned to tanks at Camp Lejeune to become the Charlie Company Commander in the 2nd Tank Battalion.
Bodisch attacked from the southeast in the lead tank and pushed forward across the sandy desert into the Industrial District, followed by twelve AMTRACs carrying India Company, 3/5. The enemy responded to the oncoming armor vehicles with direct and indirect fire from AKs, RPGs, machine guns, and mortars. Colonel Shupp had set up his Regimental mobile CP in the desert between the city and Route MOBILE, but discovered his view of the fight was blocked from that position. He called Major Arnold and told him he wanted to move. As soon as they pulled up stakes and displaced, a mortar barrage peppered their just-abandoned site. Once Shupp set up in his new CP, the enemy started firing 120mm rockets by lying them on sand ramps and shooting them toward the Marines on a flat trajectory. The rockets screamed above Shupp’s head like line drives at Wrigley Field.
Bodisch’s tanks knocked down a wall and Captain Brian Chontosh’s infantry charged through and overran the buildings in the Soda Factory. Chontosh’s infantry didn’t stay long; they cleared the buildings and withdrew before sunrise. The next day, October 15, the Darkhorse Marines waged a six-hour battle along MSR MOBILE, during which eleven men were wounded.
The final shuffling continued. Ten miles west of Fallujah, Lieutenant Colonel Dinauer arrived in Habbaniyah on the 24th. He brought with him one of his battalion’s LAR companies and two-thirds of his headquarters and maintenance Marines. The rest of his Wolfpack stayed behind to continue patrolling the border in western Anbar Province. Those Marines Dinauer arrived with immediately came under the command of Gary Patton’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team. Dinauer’s first task was to conduct a relief-in-place on the peninsula with the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment. As soon as Task Force Wolfpack was in place, 1–503 moved to Ramadi. Dinauer’s staff, meanwhile, set to work planning its attack on the Shark’s Fin.
Within days, the Kurds of the Iraqi 36 Commando Battalion showed up in a convoy of thin-skinned Toyota pickup trucks. Dinauer’s Executive Officer was Major Ken Kassner, an infantryman by profession and a grunt by trade who grew up in San Antonio and attended the University of Houston. Kassner managed to convince a Marine artillery battalion at the Marine base at al Taqaddum to offer up its platoon of 7-ton trucks to the Iraqi commandos.
On the afternoon of October 25, RCT–1 conducted one of its final feints, a leader recon3 of the northern approaches, the attack positions, the railroad station, and the regimental breach site 300 meters north of Fallujah. Colonel Shupp’s commanders traveled in nine M1 Abrams tanks and eight LAVs. At MSR MOBILE’s Check Point 84, due north of Fallujah, the reconnaissance patrol split into two groups. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani and the LAVs drove west cross country to identify approach routes and reconnoiter each of the battalion’s anticipated attack positions. Bodisch and his VIP loaders (Shupp, Malay, Buhl, Piddock, Griffin, and Captain Russell from the Combat Engineers) drove south on Sichir Road, a hardtop route running from MSR MOBILE into the center of Fallujah. Shupp rode in the lead tank with Second Lieutenant Joe Cash. The plan was to turn right just north of the cemetery halfway between CP84 and the northern edge of the city, then along dirt roads across open terrain to the western side of the railroad station.
As Cash drove south, Shupp thought something was wrong: he could see the cemetery on his right. “Cash, you just missed your turn, buddy,” Shupp commented over the tank’s intercom.
“Naw, sir, we’re alright,” Cash replied, just as the tank rolled to a stop at the Sichir Road railroad crossing. Not only had they missed their turn, they were now fewer than 300 meters from the edge of Fallujah. Shupp thought to himself, “This is just supposed to be a recon. I don’t want to start the fight now.” He ordered Cash to backtrack. As Cash was reversing, Shupp spotted wires on the railroad bridge. The structure was mined.4
Bodisch’s tanks found the right route and again moved to within 300 meters of the city, this time just west of the railroad station so that the commanders and engineers could survey their breach site. Within fifteen minutes enemy mortar rounds started falling on the Marines, followed by small arms fire and RPGs aimed at the tanks. The tankers remained exposed just long enough for the commanders and engineers to view the breach site before withdrawing.
Tanks would prove to be a critical asset in the coming attack. Captain Christopher Meyers, the Alpha Company, 2nd Tanks commander and the son of a former Marine, had spent his entire career in Marine tanks. He was well-versed in armor tactics and logistics. Alpha Company, however, was shorthanded. Meyers had only two platoons and the two tanks in his headquarters section—he had left his other platoon out west to support operations along the border. Alpha Company had been supporting 3/1 and RCT–1, but as RCT–7 arrived in Camp Fallujah, Meyers’ ten tanks were chopped to Tucker’s regiment.
Meyers’ BLUE (3rd) Platoon commander was a former Gunnery Sergeant-turned-officer, 2nd Lieutenant Jeffery Lee. Married, 36-years-old, and with three children, Lee had been in the Marines since his high-school graduation in 1988. He, too, grew up in tanks, first as a driver, then a loader, a gunner, and finally a tank commander. After spending fourteen years as an enlisted Marine, Lee decided that he wanted to become a decision-maker—an officer. Now, on the eve of the Marines’ largest tank fight since Vietnam, Second Lieutenant Lee had a tank platoon of his own. There were few Marines in the entire Corps more qualified to lead a platoon of tanks into the fight in Fallujah.
On Saturday, October 30, 2004, some of Meyers’ tanks and Light Armored Vehicles supported Ramos’ Hawaii Marines as they conducted an operation in the southeast corner of Fallujah. It was “only” a large feint, but it involved nearly the entire battalion. While some of Ramos’ Marines attacked across rugged terrain into the southeast corner of the city, others conducted a sweep through the Zaidon—even though Shupp had warned Ramos, “Whatever you do, don’t go into the Zaidon.”5 Meyers’ tanks pressed forward in broad daylight with infantry support from 1/3 to an earthen berm one kilometer from the southeast edge of the city. Gil Juarez’ LAVs attacked on the left flank into the southern part of the town. Some of the less intelligent enemy fighters revealed their positions by firing on the advancing Marines, who responded with nine artillery missions and rockets, bombs, and mortars. D9 bulldozers worked behind the advancing Marines, clearing lanes and building defensive berms as if they were preparing for a much larger attack.
Late that afternoon, Ramos ordered Meyers’ tanks through the berm. Lieutenant Lee’s tank led the advance and hit a mine on the far side, blowing one of his tracks off the road wheels. Meyers and Sergeant Jose Ducasse (Lee’s platoon sergeant and wingman) raced to Lee’s aid, pulled their tanks alongside the crippled M1A1, and began firing into the city while Lee and his crew abandoned the tank. The tankers called for their M88 tank retriever to rescue the stricken vehicle. The enemy continued firing at the stationary tank during the entire retrieval operation. The sun had set by the time the tank was dragged out of the line of fire and moved to the rear for repair.
Just as Ramos was disengaging and starting to wrap up the operation, he got word that Captain Jay Garcia’s Bravo Company Marines had been hit by a suicide bomber. Garcia was completing his operation in the Zaidon and had already mounted up his Marines in 7-ton trucks for the ride back to Camp Fallujah when disaster struck. Garcia was riding in the lead vehicle over a small bridge when he looked right into the eyes of the driver of an approaching SUV—and knew immediately what was coming. The suicide bomber, his white Suburban loaded to the roof with explosives, raced past Garcia’s vehicle, swerved sharply and rammed into the first 7-ton truck. The explosion was tremendous and killed eight Marines: Lance Corporal Jeremy D. Bow, Lance Corporal John T. Byrd II, Sergeant Kelley L. Courtney, Lance Corporal Travis A. Fox, Corporal Christopher J. Lapka, Private 1st Class John Lukac, Private 1st Class Andrew G. Riedel, and Lance Corporal Michael P. Scarborough. The blast wounded ten more and left the truck a mangled, burning wreck.
The enemy followed up with the ultimate in drive-by shootings. As the truck burned and the column was responding to the chaos, insurgents raced cars onto bridges and past the convoy, grenadiers and gunners firing RPGs and spraying automatic gunfire toward the crash scene. Gil Juarez raced to the site with some of his armored vehicles to stamp out the remaining enemy resistance and aid in the recovery mission. The casualties were evacuated and every Marine body was recovered. The survivors didn’t get back to Camp Fallujah until well after midnight.
A Bit of Housekeeping
Ever since the brutal beating and murder of the Iraqi National Guard’s leader Lieutenant Colonel Suleiman al Marawi6, many of his Fallujahan guardsmen had become corrupt. The Marines kept them at arm’s length, but had continued a dialogue in hopes they would clean up their act. By now one thing was certain: the Marines did not want them armed and roaming their rear area north of Fallujah during the coming fight.
On the first day of November, a Darkhorse patrol drove to the Iraqi National Guard camp at Saqlawiyah. Members of the patrol told the Iraqis that they had a Marine who wanted to be promoted in front of his Iraqi brothers, and called the Iraqis into formation. Jason Arellano was promoted to sergeant in front of a formation of less-than-enthusiastic Iraqi National Guardsmen. During the ceremony, Lieutenant Michael Cragholm positioned his handful of Marines to cover the sketchy Iraqis. Afterward Cragholm moved to the armory and spent several minutes visiting with the officer in charge. He told the Iraqi that he had to inspect their weapons. After some coaxing, the Iraqis opened their armory for the Marines.
“These weapons are in terrible shape,” the Marine armorer explained to the soldiers. “We need to take them back with us to repair whatever we can. We have new weapons back at Camp Fallujah,” he continued. “If we can’t repair yours, we’ll replace them with brand-new weapons.”7
Through his interpreter, Lieutenant Cragholm directed the Iraqis to gather up the weapons and load them into his trucks. The handful of Marines then drove off with all the rifles, 102 in all. This was one Iraqi National Guard unit that would no longer pose a threat during the attack.
Final Preparations
The forces under Formica, Rainey, and Newell began shifting their attention to Fallujah in the first week of November. Newell sent an advance party to Camp Fallujah to participate in the continuing planning process. Once Rainey’s 2–7 Cavalry troopers received their warning order, he sent some of his staff officers, including Major Tim Karcher, the Battalion’s Operations Officer, to Camp Fallujah to get acquainted with the Marine commanders and to integrate themselves into the planning process.
In the pre-dawn hours of an early November morning, 2–7 left the enormous military compound at Taji. 2–7 moved south to Baghdad, hooked up with Formica’s vehicles near Baghdad International Airport, and drove west to Camp Fallujah. The Black Jack Brigade rolled west on Highway 10 from Baghdad on a tactical road march, with Colonel Lewis’ Kiowa and Apache helicopters flying cover overhead. The endless stream of armored vehicles was a massive show of force.
Rainey’s troopers were itching for a fight. Their tanks and Bradleys were locked and loaded and every soldier in every vehicle was ready for battle. If insurgents decided to attack this convoy, they would be obliterated. Captain Edward Twaddell III, A/2–7’s Company Commander, a United States Military Academy graduate, began his Army career as a paratrooper before becoming a cavalry trooper. Twaddell had been in command of Alpha Company since November of 2003. Captain Peter Glass, a Citadel graduate, led Rainey’s armor company, commanding fourteen M1 tanks in C Company/3–8. According to Rainey, “Captain Pete Glass is about as aggressive a dude as there is in the Army.”8 Glass and Twaddell had swapped a platoon, so Twaddell had two Bradley platoons and one tank platoon, while Glass had two tank platoons and one Bradley platoon. Captain Chris Brooke, another Texas Aggie, led Rainey’s other mechanized infantry company, C/2–7, which was understrength with only ten Bradleys in all.
Jim Rainey’s Ghost Troopers and the Black Jack Brigade arrived at their positions outside Fallujah in early November. They were all in place within seventy-two hours of the attack. Under the cover of darkness Formica conducted a seamless transition with RCT–1, while 2–7 slipped into Camp Fallujah to take its place as one of the clouds of the gathering storm. When the enemy woke up the next morning, they faced the Black Jack Brigade in the south. Formica had a considerably larger force and completely different weapons systems than the commands it replaced.
Once the Black Jack Brigade was in place, no one got out of the city in any vehicle. Spike Knight knew where all the ratlines were. It is debatable whether or not they got there in time: if the brigade occupied these positions just a few days earlier, Zarqawi and other insurgent leaders might have been trapped inside the city. Regardless, the time for leaving Fallujah had passed. Any insurgents still inside would either surrender or die.
On Thursday, November 4, 2004, Task Force Wolfpack officially came under Colonel Michael Shupp’s control. Lieutenant Colonel Dinauer was ready for the fight. Some of his Marines had built a mockup of Fallujah and the Shark’s Fin on the floor of their command post. They were very creative, using broken glass, bricks, spray paint, and anything else they could get their hands on to create their objective. Shupp visited the Wolfpack only days before the battle. All of the Wolfpack leaders, including Juan Rubio and Major Wittnam’s boat captains, were summoned to the final briefing.
When Rubio and Brian Parrello walked through the front door of Wolfpack’s headquarters and saw the assembly of majors and colonels and the elaborate mock-up on the floor, it sank in that this operation would be unlike any other. This was a big deal. This one would make the history books.
“Holy shit!” Parrello said to Rubio. “This is really happening.”9
Dinauer’s staff briefed the soldiers, sailors, and Marines in the room on the entire plan one last time. Afterward, Shupp stood to give a final pep talk. He, too, confirmed to his men that they were all about to become a part of history, and that victory was certain. He left them with a final thought: “Take the fight to the enemy, but fight with firmness, dignity, and respect. You are warriors, not criminals.”10
Colonel Newell’s 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment was stationed at Forward Operating Base Normandy near Muqdadiyah, 75 miles northeast of Baghdad in Diyala Province. These soldiers had the longest trek to Fallujah. Task Force 2–2 traveled from Muqdadiyah to Camp Fallujah in several serials.11 Their tanks and Bradleys were hauled on low-boys, with the crews in their vehicles ready for action.
Captain Sean Sims, A/2–2’s Company Commander, led the first serial. Sims was an inspirational leader, another graduate of Texas A&M and friends with Chris Brooke, one of his counterparts in 2–7. Sims loved the Army and his men loved him. Alpha Company was the only full-strength company going to Fallujah in Task Force 2–2. Like most of the other units converging on the fight, Colonel Peter Newell had to leave a portion of his command behind to maintain the operational tempo in Diyala Province. Still, Sims had the full complement of his mechanized infantry company at hand. He had two Bradley platoons, one tank platoon, and a platoon of engineers. Captain Paul Fowler led Alpha Company of 2–63 armor. He had a full complement of men but only two platoons of tanks. His third platoon rode in HMMWVs. Captain Kirk Mayfield had only one platoon of Bradley fighting vehicles in his Brigade Reconnaissance Troop (BRT), F Troop, 4th CAV.
Newell’s Battalion Surgeon, Major (Dr.) Lisa DeWitt, and her medical team were traveling in Sims’ serial in their M113 and HMMWV ambulances. DeWitt had been in the military less than a year. She was an experienced emergency room trauma physician who decided to join the Army to do her part in the global war on terror. The Army had sent her to Kuwait to bandage cuts and treat automobile accident victims. When her tour there was finished, she decided that she wanted to get closer to the action, so she hitchhiked her way into the heart of Iraq and volunteered to become 2–2’s surgeon. Sims was one of her favorites. He was easy to talk to, and it was clear to her that he cared about the well being of his men.
One of Sims’ finest squad leaders, 29-year-old Staff Sergeant David Bellavia, rode into battle with his men. Bellavia was just an average American guy who grew up in New York. Just like Brian Parrello, he had aged in the shadow of older brothers. Bellavia struggled in college and in his effort to find the man within himself. He joined the Army in search of that man and evolved into a modern-day American warrior. Bellavia had already acquired the reputation as a “go-to” guy—always in the thick of the fight, always trying to become a better soldier and leader, and, like Sims, always concerned about the welfare of his men. Bellavia rode into this fight with both the bravado of an untested soldier and the apprehension of a combat veteran. Sims, Dewitt, Bellavia, and Task Force 2–2 arrived at the last rest stop before Hell—Camp Fallujah—on the 5th of November.
Task Force Blue Diamond conducted a dress rehearsal on the night of November 5 to validate the battalions’ movement routes and identify some of the enemy’s positions. The rehearsal lasted all night and ended at sunrise the following morning. Colonel Tucker wanted to go out during the rehearsal on a leader recon to personally view his regiment’s planned breach site. The colonel, Brandl, Ramos, and Newell spent a couple hours training as tank crew loaders before Meyers’ tankers drove them to the northern edge of the city.
Similarly, when the 1st Marine Regiment started its infiltration on November 6, Captain O’Palski’s Force Recon Platoon took 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines’ company commanders out on foot for a leader reconnaissance of the approach to the apartment complex northwest of Fallujah. Starting after sunset, they walked all the way to the railroad berm and then worked their way back through the apartment complex, moving in so close that they could see Iraqi families watching television in their living rooms.
All in Place
Fallujah was like a filthy window that hadn’t been cleaned in a hundred years. Colonel Mike Shupp knew that the city had to be completely cleared, or the cancer of ruthless insurgency would return.
RCT–1 was to conduct a rapid penetration to disrupt and defeat the enemy. “We knew this was going to be a full-on fight,” Shupp explained later, “and that the enemy was well prepared.”12 Shupp also knew that if the city was not cleared, the cancer of ruthless insurgency would return. So, he tasked Colonel Rainey’s mechanized battalion with conducting the penetration down PL HENRY, and his Marines with the deliberate clearing behind Rainey’s troopers.13 Rainey wanted to concentrate his forces, using Glass’ Cougar tanks to conduct the rapid penetration, and Twaddell’s Apache tracks to attack through the city to seize Jolan Park. Rainey’s troopers would not stop to clear each building. Instead, they would conduct a mounted attack, leaving the follow-up to Colonel Buhl’s 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, which would sweep behind Rainey’s soldiers on foot and search every room in every house.
Next to Buhl, Pat Malay’s Darkhorse Marines would attack into the northwest corner of the city, clearing from 3/1’s right flank to the Euphrates River, all the way down to MICHIGAN. Malay, Major Piddock, his S-3, and the Gunner believed that the enemy would hunker down. Darkhorse Marines would have to root them out, house-to-house and room-to-room. Malay and Piddock planned to move their Marines through the city like a giant squeegee across the filthy windows, and then backtrack to clean off the remaining specks.