We Were One

AS HE STUDIED THE EMPTY GAS STATION THROUGH HIS night vision goggles, Sergeant Bennie Conner stamped his feet to get rid of the shivers running through his body. With the onset of fall, Iraq turns cold at night, a bone-numbing cold. As September drew to a close, the nights and days and operations seemed to blend into each other. Memories of the various “ops” were blurry, because in most cases nothing happened. First Platoon’s duties were less combat than police work.

Tonight’s patrol would turn out more memorable than the others. Third Squad was looking to ambush any insurgents planting IEDs on Route Michigan, a main supply road that ran past Camp Abu Ghraib to Baghdad. The Leprechaun deployed his men on a tiny slope that overlooked a gas station on Route Michigan. The station was always busy during the day, but closed at night. A thick stand of tall grass lay in front of the squad, so Conner moved up and down the line, pushing his Marines deeper into the grass to get a better view of their target. The wind blew gently on their faces as they crept through the tall strands of dry foliage. The night was quiet, except for the occasional dog’s bark. Radio silence was broken by Hanks’s laughter over the radio.

As October approached, 1st Platoon was still providing security around Abu Ghraib Prison and conducting SASO operations in Fallujah’s suburbs. The enemy in 1st Platoon’s sector remained unseen, like ghosts, while the local population seemed mostly friendly, at least during the day. As in Vietnam, distinguishing between friend and foe was a constant challenge.

In contrast to 1st Platoon, whose area of operation was relatively calm, the rest of the Thundering Third was tormented incessantly by IEDs, ambushes, and rocket attacks. Fallujah had become the biggest staging area in the country for the mujahideen. According to Lieutenant Colonel Buhl, jihadists “sallied out from Fallujah and attacked us every day.” The battalion’s Command Chronology reveals the situation faced by the Marines: “The enemy, at this point, was fully established and operating in his safe haven of the city of al-Fallujah. He had steadily increased his operational capabilities over the past six months since the failed political settlement of Operation Vigilant Resolve [the aborted attack on the city by Coalition forces in April]. At this point he was able to conduct multiple coordinated attacks all around the city of al-Fallujah . . .” While they were stepping up their attacks against the Marines, the muj were also busy turning Fallujah into a fortress.

Every day, jihadists from around the world were traveling via “rat lines,” a series of safe houses that stretched from Syria into Fallujah. The so-called insurgency inside the city was more than just a home-grown opposition movement. In reality, it was a motley assortment of “foreign fighters, criminal elements, Islamofascists, former Baathists, former regime elements who want to return to the days of Saddam, and Islamists who don’t want to see democracy in Iraq,” according to Lieutenant Colonel Scott Shuster, plans officer for 1st Marine Division. Foreign fighters from no fewer than eighteen different countries played significant roles in the defense of Fallujah. Entire companies of Jordanians, Syrians, and Saudis were posted in the southern portion of the city. Seasoned Islamist fighters from Chechnya were spread in ones and twos throughout Fallujah. Because they were dispersed, the Marines inferred that they were training their comrades, passing along the expertise gained while fighting the Russian army in the brutal battle for Grozny. The city’s defenders swelled to somewhere between seven and ten thousand strong.

The mujahideen dug trenches throughout the city, deployed numerous IEDs, and converted thousands of Fallujah’s 39,000 buildings into bunkers. They used nearly half of the city’s mosques, along with most of the hospitals and schools, as supply dumps or strong points. “In one mosque, every room contained different munitions, rockets in this room, mortars in that room, machine gun rounds in that room. Mosques were used as fighting positions or to store weapons. Yet God forbid I should attack the building, or it’s on the news that the Marines desecrated a mosque,” recalled one senior Marine.

According to America’s usual rules of engagement, buildings like mosques and hospitals are supposed to lose their immunity when they are put to military use; yet the political leadership above the Marines refused to allow these targets to be attacked. “On the Marine Expeditionary Force level, we had all kinds of targets we wanted to prosecute. MNFI (Multi-National Forces-Iraq) would not clear the fires.” As one senior Marine put it, there was an “unwillingness of senior commanders outside the Marine Corps to employ all of our assets, out of concern for the information operations threshold—the potential for insurgents to exploit collateral damage in the media.”

Absurdly, RCT-1 (Regimental Combat Team 1, which included 3/1) was not allowed to adequately soften up enemy defensive positions before the assault with “preparatory fires,” or bombardments by planes and artillery, until they were fired upon by the mujahideen inside Fallujah. The civilian leadership and the Pentagon brass were so fearful of inflicting excessive civilian casualties that they tied the hands of the commanders on the ground with questionable rules of engagement, putting the lives of Coalition soldiers at risk. A Marine with intimate knowledge of the air bombardment said, “Only about thirty shaping attacks [to destroy bunkers and enemy positions] took place when about three hundred were needed.” As the battle raged, a senior officer observed, “Blood is on someone’s hands.”

What the CIA and Pentagon brass did not know, or at least did not acknowledge in their orders until a day or so, after the attack began, was that hardly any civilians remained in Fallujah. The Marines had been ordered to draw up contingency plans for dealing with 15,000 displaced civilians, but the great majority had heeded weeks of warnings from the U.S. military to flee the city.

Because of the political constraints, the mujahideen were able to build trenches and berms with impunity. They even conducted indirect training in broad daylight. “We saw them practicing with indirect fire, mortars, but we weren’t allowed to shoot. We could not get clearance,” recalled Lieutenant Colonel Shuster.

Once again the “insurgents” seemed to take advantage of a paradigm shift on how war is now fought. Some military experts argue that the entire world has become a battlefield. The human element and world opinion has become paramount and can shape a conflict. The fulcrum for this shift is the global media which through its reporting can influence world opinion. Single events such as the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal or the accidental bombings of civilians in Lebanon can change the course of an entire conflict. Tragically, our troops are often caught in the middle of the politics.

At the highest levels, diplomats were still seeking a political solution to the Fallujah problem. Negotiations between the interim Iraqi government and the mujahideen in Fallujah continued into October, culminating in mid-October with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld flying to Baghdad. Iyad Allawi, interim Iraqi prime minister, told Fallujah’s ruling council, the Shura, to hand over Zarqawi and all foreign fighters. They refused. As the talks dragged on, precious time was lost, and the mujahideen continued to gain strength. Finally, at the end of October, the provisional government and the Coalition forces gave up on the negotiations, and decided to send in the Marines.

Fallujah promised to be an urban battle of epic proportions. Every single one of the city’s 400,000 rooms would have to be cleared, bulldozed, or blown to pieces. The assault plan for the city called for six battalions of Coalition forces, about seven thousand American and Iraqi troops, to strike the city from the north. Assaults normally require a three-to-one numerical advantage; but in one of the few instances in modern warfare, the defenders in Fallujah would outnumber the attackers. In 3/1’s case, the defenders had at least a two-to-one advantage over the attackers. The strategists planning the battle were counting on the U.S. military’s ability to concentrate its superior firepower, technology, and troops at any given point on the battlefield, while forcing the defenders to remain dispersed. American dominance of the air space over Fallujah would make it difficult for the mujahideen to maneuver their troops or concentrate in units greater than platoon strength. As Lieutenant Colonel Shuster put it, the plan relied on “pitting three hundred Marines against a single enemy platoon.”

Fallujah’s defenders enjoyed a number of advantages in addition to numerical superiority. The dense city concealed their locations. They were on home turf, and had many places to hide and prepare ambushes. The rugged urban terrain would negate important elements of America’s high-tech digital technology. For example, online maps wouldn’t work inside the city, forcing the troops to rely on radios. Above all, the mujahideen had months to train and to prepare their defenses.

Mujahideen training consisted primarily of studying the Koran and learning how to handle weapons. Much of the training was conducted indoors, in large warehouses, sheltered from the watchful eyes of American spy satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Muj pamphlets taught fighters to defeat U.S. body armor by aiming for the side of the vest, between the ceramic plates, or by aiming at the face. Manuals described how to make IEDs, and how to conceal objects inside vehicles, so that ambulances could be used to transport men and ammunition. For many of the jihadists, the focus was to prepare men to kill an American and martyr themselves in the process.

While the mujahideen were getting ready to do battle, the Marines were training intensively as well. Conner made his men build a schoolhouse out of sandbags and scrap wood to serve as 3rd Squad’s private lesson center for house clearing and urban warfare. Conner wanted a sanctuary, a place where his squad could come together undisturbed to brush up on their combat skills. It was also the squad’s last teambuilding exercise. As Derick Lowe recalled, “Initially, we just put some benches out. That didn’t cut it; he wanted a roof and everything. We had to tear it down and redo it until we finally had it the way he wanted it.”

Inside the sandbag schoolhouse, the men practiced clearing houses, casualty evacuation techniques, and the other urban combat skills. The men never had a break. “With the other squads there was a lot of off time, but we were always training or teaching each other classes inside the schoolhouse. Conner prepared us for combat and nothing else,” recalled Derick Lowe.

Clearing rooms remained the focus of Conner’s training. Back in the States, some of the men initially hesitated before entering a room. “After we threw in the practice grenade, sometimes you’d have to nudge them into the freaking room,” recalled Sojda. Now, most of the Marines controlled their fear and were ready to lay down their lives for their brothers in arms.

To further toughen his Marines, Conner made his men carry twenty-pound sandbags in their combat packs everywhere they went, even to the chow hall. The move caused consternation among the grunts. “We were walking around like stupid motherfuckers,” recalled one of 3rd Squad’s Marines. This “tough love” was Conner’s way of developing mental toughness in his Marines, to give them the edge.

Lima’s first test under Captain Heatherman was to stage a feint attack outside the city on October 18th. Feints were intended to keep the insurgents guessing about which direction the main assault would come from, and to draw defenders away from the actual path of the assault in the north. During the exercise, 1st Platoon, much to the disappointment of the men, stayed behind to guard the area around the prison. “We thought we would never get into the battle, that our job might just be guarding the prison. It seemed like 2nd Platoon was going on all the cool missions. We wanted to see what Fallujah looked like, since we had been hearing about it since April,” recalled Conner. The men felt let down.

First Platoon’s first real taste of fire came on October 21, when Lima Company conducted another feint attack. In Operation Black Bear II, Lima Company, reinforced by a sniper team, a mortar section, assaultmen, tanks, and engineers, rolled out of Camp Abu Ghraib to probe the defenses on the eastern side of Fallujah. The feint provided useful information to the Marines.

Lima Company drew a lot of fire from the mujahideen during the operation, but nobody was hit. From a tactical perspective, the company experienced teething pains getting everyone into attack positions. However, the operation provided a valuable dress rehearsal before the real attack. After a few hours, Lima withdrew from the engagement and returned to Camp Abu Ghraib, much to the chagrin of some of the men.

“This is bullshit. Since when do Marines retreat from a fight?” griped Hanks. The bellicose lance corporal was speaking for most of the platoon. Out of patriotism, sheer boredom, and a desire to avenge lost comrades, 1st Platoon was itching for a fight. “All we wanted to do was start hooking and jabbing,” recalled Conner. The men handled themselves well; outwardly, at least, no one flinched from the exposure to indirect fire.

Throughout the remainder of October, Fallujah’s terrorists harassed the battalion on a daily basis. Mortars and rockets hit Camp Abu Ghraib, and several Marines were wounded by VBIEDs. The insurgents launched their most dangerous IED attack on October 23, when the battalion commanding officer Willie Buhl’s convoy was struck by a “platter charge” IED mounted on the back of a bicycle. A platter charge IED consists of plastic explosive sandwiched between two pieces of flat metal. The plastic propels the metal platter into the target. The device is capable of penetrating an up-armored Humvee. The attack wounded four Americans, including the intelligence officer for the U.S. Army’s 1/5 Cavalry Battalion, who was inspecting the area before his unit took over the al-Karmah and Shahabi areas of operation. The attack was the ultimate eye-opener for the army battalion commander and his staff, who received a firsthand introduction to the dangers of Fallujah.

One of the deadliest outposts outside the gates of Camp Abu Ghraib was the Delta Iraqi National Guard base. Third Squad’s close friend, Sergeant Greg Smith, a sniper who frequently deployed with 1st Platoon, was assigned to Delta on the evening of October 25th. As the sun was going down, Smith and his spotter were going over their next mission, checking their maps and drawing out the mission in the sand, when the mujahideen launched a devastating attack. “We heard a high pitched scream,” recalled Smith. “A 122mm rocket came sailing over our heads. A tenth of a second before it hit, it illuminated the Marines standing next to me. It blasted Corporal Brian Olivera, who moments earlier was showing pictures of his newborn baby boy, and blew me backwards against the wall. Dust was everywhere, so thick you couldn’t see your own hand. I stood up, and after trying to catch my breath, I looked down and warm blood was pouring down my fingers. I felt my chest, it was bleeding. There was a hole where my collar bone was supposed to be. It was ripped open. I put my hand inside the hole created by the shrapnel. It felt like worms moving around inside there.” The rocket hit the center of Delta’s compound, wounding fourteen Marines and killing Olivera.

Smith’s collarbone was vaporized by the rocket. He almost died from blood loss when his wounds reopened during the helicopter ride to Baghdad. After surgery in Baghdad and Germany, Smith was sent home. The flight to the United States should have been a comfort, but in the plane Smith experienced an overpowering dose of the horror of war. “They put us in the back of a C-17. The back of the plane contained hooks for all the stretchers. They were all fully loaded with the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan. They started hanging Marines; people were screaming in agony and pain. They were hanging from the ceiling all the way down to the floor. The nurses were giving people injections, running back and forth. I looked up. The guy above me was missing half his head. The nurse was trying to comfort him, and she said she had to go since they were losing someone in the front of the plane. She ran up to help him, the flight nurses were amazing. I was in a lot of pain. As I looked up blood was dripping down on my face from the man in the stretcher above me. I remember the faces of the guys. That stays with you.”