Brooke only had ten Bradleys and little infantry, so he broke his company up into two-vehicle sections. On his left flank there was a 500-meter gap between HENRY and GEORGE, between his Bradleys and RCT–7’s units; on his right was the entire 1st Marine Regiment. Brooke decided to devote all of his attention toward that 500-meter no-man’s-land. Glass and Twaddell had bypassed a lot of stuff in their charge south, so Brooke’s first task was to make sure the buildings along HENRY were clear. He had his Bradley sections drive up and down HENRY, and his men clear suspected buildings on the east side of the street.
Once he was comfortable that HENRY was clear, Iraqi security forces started moving in and Brooke began concentrating on the blocks to his east. His method was to send a section of Bradleys driving east on one of the side streets until they were fired upon. In most cases, the Bradleys would almost immediately come under coordinated salvos of RPGs and heavy small arms fire. In response, the Bradley gunners would return fire into the offending building, while Brooke’s Fire Support Team called in either artillery or an air strike. As soon as the indirect fire mission was set up, the Bradleys would withdraw, the bombs and mortars would fall on the target, and the Bradleys would push forward again. The process was repeated every time they encountered an enemy position.
Brooke kept this up all morning, venturing farther into the gap between RCT–1 and RCT–7 and deeper south toward CATHY.
1/8’s First Big Fight
For most of the night, Captain Theodore Bethea’s Charlie Company and Captain Read Omohundro’s Bravo Company had been fighting their way down ETHAN, with Meyers and Klingensmith’s tanks in the lead and Basher flying overhead. There was heavy fighting from the Braxton Complex all the way down to CATHY. By sunrise, Brandl was ready to attack the al Hydra Mosque Complex.
At first light Bethea called in a barrage of white phosphorous to screen Charlie Company’s movement. Marine artillery shells screamed in from the east and giant air bursts hurled hundreds of four-inch smoking balls to the earth. When some of the burning balls landed around the Marines in the street, the infantrymen had no choice but to run for shelter in nearby buildings. Some of the fireballs also landed on the tanks, where they burned and burned, but did no damage to the armored vehicles. None of the Marines were injured.
It was a dark and gloomy morning, with fog and smoke obscuring Meyers’ gunner’s view. Still, Sergeant Jonathan Ball could make out silhouettes in the distance: insurgents were running in and out of the Hydra Mosque dead ahead at the next intersection. Without warning, five Muj fighters ran into the street and into Ball’s view directly in front of Meyers’ tank. Ball flipped his switch to coax and opened fire, rotating the turret as the insurgents scrambled for cover. He mowed the last three down.
The Hydra Mosque and Cultural Center were critical RCT–7 objectives. The mosque was on the southeast corner of CATHY and ETHAN and the Cultural Center was across the street on the southwest corner. In addition to being a significant command-and-control node, the Hydra Mosque was also a major staging and re-supply center, as well as a source of sniper and machine gun fire. Brandl expected a tough fight.
Bravo Company was to take the Cultural Center and provide cover to the Charlie Company Marines and the Iraqis while they cordoned off the Hydra Mosque. At sunrise, Omohundro’s Third Platoon began the assault on the Cultural Center while First and Second Platoons provided covering fire. As the Marines moved to cross CATHY they were ambushed. Third Platoon was hammered, its Marines pinned down on three sides.
Sergeant Lonny Wells was the first hit. Gunnery Sergeant Ryan Shane rushed into the street to help his wounded comrade. Wells was badly wounded, and the Marines on the north side of CATHY could see his crimson pants and a trail of blood as Shane dragged him across the street. Shane was halfway across the street when he was shot just above the tailbone and fell to the pavement. First and Second Platoon’s Marines opened up with everything they had, laying down a massive covering fire, under which Hospital Corpsman Joel Lambotte and a handful of Marines rushed to drag Wells and Shane to the north side of the street. The enemy continued firing on the Marines in the open. Sergeant Kenneth Hudson, Private First Class Samuel Crist, and Lambotte were all hit trying to retrieve their wounded comrades. Captain Steve Kahn, the Weapons Company Commander, got on the radio and called for a casevac.
Meyers, Klingensmith, and their wingmen rushed into the fight to help the embattled infantry. Meyers turned right on CATHY and Lieutenant Klingensmith turned left. With their four tanks they set up a 180-degree cordon at ETHAN and CATHY. Meyers started firing at insurgents as they crossed ETHAN from east to west, and Markley cut down the enemy running across CATHY from north to south.
Meyers ground slowly west and stopped at the next intersection, which was across the street from the Cultural Center. Like so many others, his gunner, Jonathan Ball, had joined the Marines the day after 9/11 and was a veteran of the march to Baghdad in 2003. Now he scanned his turret slowly back and forth, electric motors whining, like a robotic dragon searching for a kill. Ball had only a narrow view through his high-tech gunner’s sight, so he had to continually scan from side to side. During one of his slow sweeps he noticed an RPG team sneaking north up a narrow alley. They were rushing from one clump of bushes to the next, hoping to avoid detection by the metal giant. Ball stopped his turret; the dragon had found its next prey. The insurgents in the alley jumped into the street in an effort to get in their shot before the menacing monster in the intersection could fire, but Ball was too fast for the enemy. He sprayed the RPG team with 7.62 rounds, cutting them all down. When he was confident they were no longer a threat, he returned to continuously sweeping the giant turret, searching for his next target.
Neutron, the Navy SEAL sniper team attached to Omohundro’s company, was moving toward the Cultural Center when its corpsman was shot in torso. He lay on the ground with a sucking chest wound as the SEALs called for a casevac. Showing a keen presence of mind, the corpsman bandaged his own wound.
Navy Commander Dr. Richard Jadick, a former Marine, had volunteered to deploy to Iraq with 1/8 as the Battalion Surgeon. He left Camp Lejeune only days after the birth of his first child. Jadick was the first to get the SEAL casevac call. When he heard that the corpsman had been wounded, he jumped in a HMMWV and raced into the city, leaving Dr. Carlos Kennedy to run the Battalion’s Aid Station.
The wounded corpsman was stable by the time Jadick and his team reached him. They loaded the wounded sailor onto a M1138 ambulance and headed north. On the way back to the BAS, however, Jadick received an urgent call for another casevac: Bravo Company was caught in the ambush near the Cultural Center. Major Kevin Trimble got on the radio.
“Doc! Doc! Bravo Company is getting hit hard down at the Cultural Center. They have casualties!”
Jadick made the split-second decision to take his existing casualty to the Cultural Center so he could tend to the newly wounded Marines, too. He ordered the driver to turn around and they all headed for the fight.9
Jadick’s ambulance pulled up next to Wells, Shane, Crist and Hudson on the north side of CATHY—right in the middle of the fight. Jadick spotted the wounded Marines lying in the street once the ramp dropped. Lambotte was kneeling, working on Wells. An RPG whizzed over the top of the tracked ambulance and another exploded in the street. Jadick froze for what seemed like an eternity as he watched two Marines in the street take down two insurgents trying to shoot into the back of his ambulance.
Jadick’s mind raced. “This is where I am supposed to be,” he thought to himself. “I need to take the next step.” His rational side held him back, but the doctor and Marine in him prodded him forward. “You can’t fail,” he told himself as he jumped from the vehicle.10
Jadick made a quick assessment of the wounded and turned to work first on Lonny Wells. Wells had been hit in the groin just below his protective armor, and the bullet had torn through his femoral artery. He was bleeding out. Jadick tried but couldn’t stop the blood flow. Bullets flew overhead as Jadick did his best to help Wells, packing his wound and applying pressure until he died in the street.
Within minutes, another Marine was brought to Jadick. Pfc Paul Volpe had been shot in the exact same place, even the same side. “Doc, I think Volpe is dead,” someone told Jadick.
“How long?” Jadick inquired.
“No more than three minutes. We scooped him up and brought him right here,” a voice replied.
Volpe was bleeding profusely from his groin. Jadick reached into the gaping wound with both of his hands, grabbed a handful of tissue, and squeezed as hard as he could as he ordered fluids started. It worked. Within a short time he felt a pulse, and Volpe’s eyes fluttered. He had enough red blood cells to get him back to Bravo Surgical. This Marine would live.
Jadick wondered, “Would Lonny Wells have lived if I had been there a minute earlier, or if I had been more aggressive?” He knew that he had to be closer to the fight if he wanted to save Marines’ lives.11
While Omohundro’s Marines were fighting on the west side of ETHAN, Bethea occupied the last covered and concealed position on a roof across the street from the Hydra Mosque. Lieutenant Klingensmith’s tank section was already out in front of the infantrymen on CATHY. Bethea ordered Klingensmith’s tank section to blow several “mouse” holes in the north and west walls of the mosque, then move east to take up a blocking position on CATHY. Bethea started the attack by having one of his platoons lay down a smoke screen from the roof, after which Bethea’s attached Iraqi soldiers charged across CATHY to occupy the mosque, with the Marines following them inside. Bethea and Omohundro secured the entire facility by 1300.
Brandl moved to the Hydra Mosque to visit his Marines that afternoon. Worried about a counterattack, he set his defenses. Colonel Tucker showed up while Brandl was with Bravo Company. Tucker instructed him to press the attack, and asked if he could move up his assault on the Government Center to early the next morning. Captain Cunningham with Alpha Company was north of the berm, waiting for orders to attack; all Brandl needed was the green light. Brandl told his boss that it would not be a problem.
Pushing South
East of Brandl’s Marines, Ramos’ battalion moved forward with Bravo and Charlie Companies abreast and Lieutenant Lee’s tanks in the lead. They pushed toward the Mujareen Mosque, just north of Dave’s Field. Charlie Company moved south through a residential neighborhood for less than a kilometer before reaching the mosque. The Marines pushed rapidly forward, bypassing all of the houses in the neighborhood. Charlie Company’s mission was to get to the next objective as quickly as possible: Ramos was conducting a penetration to MICHIGAN, and he would worry about clearing the buildings later. By the time Tennant and Lee reached the Mujareen Mosque, it was empty. Lee’s driver pushed in the gate and Tennant’s Iraqis charged inside.
Lee and Ducasse ended up in a junkyard just north of Dave’s Field. As soon as the tankers arrived, they could see enemy snipers in the minarets of the Blue Mosque only 500 meters to the southwest. Lee sat in the northeast corner of Dave’s Field all day. He had a clear field of fire all the way down to MICHIGAN. Newell’s attack in the east was forcing the survivors west toward Lee. None of the fleeing insurgents made it across the open field; Ducasse and Lee mowed them all down.
With Lee in the field, Tennant’s Charlie Company was directed to hold the Mujareen Mosque. Alpha Company’s Marines passed through Tennant’s lines and attacked south to MICHIGAN to continue Ramos’ penetration to the center of the city. They reached MICHIGAN before nightfall. Once Ramos went firm, Charlie Company sat tight at the Mujareen Mosque and started sending out patrols. Juarez’ Marines in their LAVs and gun trucks shifted to performing route security along MICHIGAN and ETHAN, conducting continuous around-the-clock patrols along the two major arteries in and out of the city. Lieutenant Lee and his wingman returned to their re-supply point and waited for their next assignment.
Jim Rainey had been pounding Jolan Park (OBJ PENNSYLVANIA) the entire night. He had pushed AC-130s to the park every chance he got, and he used his 120mm mortars when Basher wasn’t available. At sunrise, the enemy responded with their own mortar fire. They used the large water tower in Jolan Park as a reference point and walked their rounds in on Captain Twaddell’s vehicles. They also sent teams into the street. “There were several folks that tried to go stand out in the middle of the street with an AK-47 and face down a Bradley,” remembered the captain. “It ended badly for them.”12 They offered little real resistance to Twaddell’s attack.
By the time Twaddell rolled into Jolan Park that morning, the enemy had had enough. Twaddell swept through OBJ PENNSYLVANIA in a mounted attack. His troopers drove to the southern boundary, dismounted, and cleared on foot, from south to north. All they found were streets littered with rubble and shattered buildings surrounding the city’s amusement park—complete with a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round. The enemy had fled. OBJ PENNSYLVANIA was secure by noon.
For the rest of the afternoon, C/3–8 held along HENRY and A/2–7 held at Jolan Park. Rainey had to do two things: position C/3–8 to make a turn west, and leverage all of his fires. By now the enemy’s plan was all jacked up, and he was trying to reposition, so Rainey wanted to get his UAVs up to disrupt him further by shooting fires and dropping bombs on him as he fell back. Rainey decided to pound OBJ VIRGINIA just as he had pounded Jolan Park, and by doing so, cripple the enemy before rolling his battalion into the fight again.
Buhl’s and Malay’s Marines swept behind Rainey’s tanks and Bradleys, clearing every building in the Jolan District’s tangled alleys. Some of the alleys were so narrow that even a HMMWV couldn’t pass through. On the 9th, the Marines encountered only sporadic resistance, mostly from insurgents who had been trapped by Rainey’s lightning advance.
The grunts were laden with body armor, helmets, grenades, ammunition, and breaching equipment, while the enemy fighters were largely barefoot and agile—able to easily outrun their pursuers. Nonetheless, Malay’s and Buhl’s Marines pushed relentlessly forward, with Bodisch’s tanks in the lead on the wider streets. Most of the insurgents scampered away to the south as the Marines approached, but occasionally some stood and fought, usually from a single building. Mindful of booby traps and car bombs, the Marines stopped frequently, waiting for one of Bodisch’s tanks to destroy any vehicle they found. As a result, their advance was painfully slow, moving about 200 meters every four hours.
The Darkhorse rifle companies had their hands full in the Jolan District. Clearing each building in the initial push was time-consuming and manpower-intensive. Lieutenant Colonel Malay ordered Major Todd Desgrosseilliers’ Task Force Bruno to start the detailed back-clearing. Mortarmen, clerks, and comm techs grabbed their rifles and volunteered to help Desgrosseilliers clear behind the assaulting infantry companies. Desgrosseilliers drew his men and vehicles from the battalion’s 81mm mortar platoon. He commandeered gun trucks from CAAT, AMTRACs from the AAV Platoon, and a D9 bulldozer and Marines from two platoons of general support engineers. Task Force Bruno was like a pickup football team.
Later, this ad hoc approach would settle into a predictable pattern. Each morning Marines would volunteer to go into the city to help in the clearing of a stretch of buildings. Usually, Desgrosseilliers would muster about forty Marines for the task. They entered every building, searched every room, catalogued every weapons cache, and collected every weapon. They gathered up massive amounts of sensitive documents. And they cleared away rubble and enemy dead.
Meanwhile, around noon, Timothy Jent of 3/1 reoriented his Marines to the west and crossed behind 2–7 and ahead of 3/5 to attack toward the Euphrates River. Jent’s thrust became the division’s main effort and would remain the main effort until they reached the southern edge of the city. Jent’s Marines swept through the shops just north of Jolan Park, then headed for the Kabir Mosque on the bank of the Euphrates. Every storefront was filled with weapons and ammunition; there was so much ordnance it took the Marines two days to clear it out.
Once Buhl did a battle takeover from Rainey’s troopers at Jolan Park and his Marines became the main effort, he really brought the combined arms strength of the MAGTF to the forefront of the battle. Now he owned the battle space in front of his Marines; now he could use indirect fire. In the following days he would expend 5,700 81mm mortar rounds. He would also fire Rainey’s 120mm mortars nearly dry, depleting 2–7’s supply of ammo every day.
The day had been relatively quiet for McNulty’s Kilo 3/5, who watched as Buhl’s men passed in front of them. McNulty’s Marines spent all day clearing empty houses. They went firm for the night just south of BETH, close to a neighborhood mosque with a green metal roof. By sunset, Bitanga’s Lima Company was moving south again as McNulty and Chontosh came on line with his unit. Finally, Bitanga’s Marines pushed through the Palm Grove and cleared the buildings the enemy had been holding all day.
OBJ VIRGINIA was a school just south of PL ELIZABETH in what was called the “Pizza Slice.” The school was directly in Rainey’s planned path of advance. One of Rainey’s objectives was to secure the bridges at ELIZABETH and FRAN. Rainey had been pounding VIRGINIA all afternoon in preparation for his attack, and he expected a difficult fight to get to the bridges.
At dusk, Captain Glass turned west with his C/3–8 tanks and attacked. His soldiers had no trouble taking the objective, but as soon as he arrived he was counter-attacked from an adjacent mosque and cemetery. The mosque commanded a view of several avenues of approach and was occupied by at least fifty enemy fighters firing heavy machine guns and anti-tank weapons. The barrage pinned down Glass’ infantry.
Rainey jumped on the radio to call for indirect fire support, but was stymied because the mosque was on the protected target list. Even though Rainey’s men were being fired upon from the mosque and the rules of engagement clearly allowed Rainey to order his troops to return fire, everyone was sensitive to the fact that they would be firing on a mosque. The artillerymen wanted to get permission to fire, just to be safe. So Rainey spent the next hour talking with several different headquarters in an effort to set up the mission he knew needed to be performed. It wasn’t that the guys in the rear didn’t want him to shoot; it was just that he had to explain repeatedly, to everyone up the chain of command, that his men were under fire from the mosque. Each headquarters passed Rainey to the next level. Meanwhile, Glass held his ground, returning fire with his Bradleys and tanks, but until the enemy fire could be silenced his dismounts couldn’t finish clearing VIRGINIA.