OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #15 OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #15
With HMM-268 Detachment
Somewhere on Route 1, north of the Euphrates River
Wednesday, 26 March 2003
1030 Hours Local
“It was MOASS—the Mother of All Sand Storms! If you were a tank commander, you couldn’t see your front slope. If you were a driver, you couldn’t see your ground guide.”
—Gunnery Sergeant Erik Benitez, USMC
We can finally see more than a few meters around our helicopter. The worst sandstorm any of us has ever seen is finally blowing itself out.
It began after dark on Monday, March 24, with a low-pitched moaning wind that lashed into the helicopter, whipping dirt around inside the bird. The temperature dropped as the wind rose, and even though we were all wearing our chemical protective suits, I had to wrap up in my poncho liner to stay warm enough to sleep.
When Griff and I arose at 0330 hours to set up our gear for a 0400 “hit” on Hannity & Colmes, the wind was blowing so hard that we had to use a sandbag to anchor our satellite antenna to keep it from blowing over. And when we went on the air, the image, green-tinged by our night lens, sparkled as though sprinkled with pixie dust—an effect caused by ionized particles of sand suspended in the air.
Unfortunately, the blowing sand has the same effect on the night-vision goggles used by the Marines, considerably reducing the effectiveness of their NVGs. Some of the pilots suspect that this condition was a factor in the terrible crash of one of the squadron’s CH-46s on the first night of the war. Whether or not it was a problem then, it is certainly one tonight. On the roadway fifty meters to our west, the never-ceasing stream of armored vehicles, trucks, artillery pieces, and tanks moving past us to the north has slowed to a crawl because the drivers can’t see the rear of the vehicle in front of them. I’m glad that our birds haven’t been called out for a cas-evac. The idea of flying at night through this pea soup at 120 knots (about 138 mph) only fifty feet above the ground is not appealing.
Dawn was late this morning—made so by the unearthly haze of wind-whipped sand. Although the sun came up, it didn’t change things much. Only the color of the haze shifted. During the day the powdery dust turns everything—earth, sky, vehicles, even the haze-gray helicopters—the color of rust. It coats our clothing, lines our nostrils, cakes our skin, and stings our eyes if we venture outside the helicopter without dust goggles. Worse yet, it makes it almost impossible for the young Marines looking for the enemy to see anything much beyond a few meters—day or night.
Because the storm has already slowed the pace of operations, many of those in the RCT command group who have been very busy for five days and nights suddenly find themselves with little to do. Some catch up on much-needed sleep. Others engage in “bull sessions”—a long-standing military tradition, but one seemingly little enjoyed so far in this operation. Over a generously offered cup of hot coffee, prepared on the hood of a Humvee, I eavesdrop on a long discourse by two CIA paramilitary officers who are debating whether the storm that has descended on us is properly described as a sharqi or a shamal. They decide to resolve the issue by consulting the two Kuwaiti officers who are accompanying RCT-5 as interpreters. Unfortunately, the Kuwaitis are brothers and they disagree as well, prompting one of the Americans to observe with a shrug, “And it’s been that way over here for thousands of years—the people in this part of the world can’t even agree about the weather. Let’s just say that this is a sandstorm of biblical proportions.”
Climbing to the top of a one-story building that had once been a schoolhouse—turned into a small arsenal by Saddam’s Baath Party cadre and now a CP for RCT-5—I find a four-man Marine fire team on lookout. Each member of the team has staked out a corner of the rooftop. They’re wearing their helmets, body armor, and chemical suits, and in addition to their dust goggles, they’ve wrapped their faces Bedouin-style with the dark green slings from their first aid kits. The wind is fierce. It’s actually cold. I ask the fire team leader, a corporal, what he sees.
The young Marine NCO looks at me somewhat skeptically and replies, “The entire Iraqi army could be out there and we wouldn’t know it until they were knocking on the front door.”
That may be true for this fire team, and perhaps for every other infantryman on the ground beneath this dust storm. But if the Iraqis thought that the sand blinding us had made them invisible, they were dead wrong.
Even as we stand on that windswept roof, unable to see anything more than a few yards away, we can hear the sound of the 11th Marines’ 155mm howitzers firing RAP rounds over our heads. They aren’t shooting in the blind. Although the dust storm prevents forward observers from spotting or adjusting fires, the batteries of big guns, multiple-launch rocket systems and the big-payload, high-altitude strike aircraft like the B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s still have plenty of good targets.
Iraqi artillery, rocket, and mortar men, normally wary of firing for fear of being hit almost immediately by an air strike, have been emboldened by the sandstorm’s concealment. Last night, as the dust cloud enveloped, they started peppering the Marines’ front-line units with 122mm Katyusha rockets, 152mm heavy artillery, and 82mm mortars.
But even before the Iraqi rounds hit the ground, American counter-battery radars linked to fire-control computers are plotting the location of the enemy launchers. And literally within seconds, whole battalions of American 155mm artillery pieces fire back at those who had just fired at us. These highly sophisticated measures can’t prevent the Iraqis from firing at us through the rust-colored sky. But the quick response almost guarantees that those enemy gunners who do so will never fire again.
The sandstorm’s restricted visibility means that low-level fixed-wing and rotary-wing close air support are out of action—and the Iraqis know it. But what they don’t know is that high above them—aboard U-2, JSTARS, and EP-3 aircraft—automated target plotters are observing Iraqi troop movements and communications. The sensors aboard these platforms are generally unaffected by the reduced visibility on the ground, and within minutes of the detection of an Iraqi convoy or radio emission, one or more of a wide variety of GPS-guided munitions is very likely to come streaking out of the sky to obliterate the target.
While standing on the roof of the school–turned Baath ordnance depot–turned U.S. Marine CP, we can hear over the wind the sound of aircraft at high altitude. And minutes later we feel, as much as hear the rumble of a large warhead detonating well off to the north. Whether it was a two-thousand pound AGM-130 or JDAM or the explosion of a five-thousand pound GBU-37, we can’t tell. All we know is that some unsuspecting Iraqi who thought he couldn’t be seen has just been hit—prompting a predictable response from the Marines: “Yeah, man! Get some!”
A few minutes after this invisible demonstration of American military prowess, Griff appears out of the orange mist at the base of the building and shouts up to me, “We have a cas-evac. Let’s go.”
As I climb down to the ground and head inside for the mission briefing, my first thought is that the artillery barrage or the high-altitude strikes we’ve just heard might have hit “friendlies.” But when I join Lt. Col. Jerry Driscoll, the air officer is updating him, and I learn that’s not the case. Two RCT-5 Marines have been seriously wounded by an RPG during a skirmish with an Iraqi infantry patrol. Driscoll and his wingman, Capt. Aaron “Fester” Eckerberg, plot the grid of the pickup zone and the en route checkpoints on their charts, jot down the frequency of the unit waiting for them on the ground, and quickly head for the helos. Though the weather is deteriorating by the minute, neither pilot challenges the wisdom of making the run. A company commander under fire has called for an emergency cas-evac. It’s Driscoll’s job to pick up the wounded and save their lives by getting them safely back to a hospital. No questions. No complaints.
We stumble through the gathering gloom back to the aircraft. Griff and his camera are aboard Fester’s bird, and I strap in with my camera on Driscoll’s #12 while he briefs the crew and our two shock-trauma corpsmen on the mission. As we lift off, the crew chief, Gunnery Sgt. Jesse Wills, observes over the intercom, “Nice day for flying, eh, Colonel?”
Driscoll responds, “Ah yes. Red Dragons . . . real players.” As I hang out the right side hatch with my camera, I notice that Capt. Eckerberg’s CH-46, though only seventy-five feet away, is nearly invisible in the dusty haze. We’re heading northwest up Highway 1 toward Ad Diwaniyah, but instead of flying at twenty-five to fifty feet at 120 knots, we’re at seventy-five feet—and traveling at less than fifty knots. Ahead of us, through Driscoll’s windscreen, the ground is barely visible. There is no horizon and everyone aboard is now looking outboard or ahead for power lines, radio towers, light poles, and highway overpasses in hopes that we see them before running into them.
It takes nearly forty minutes to get to the casualties. A lieutenant, commanding the rifle platoon that had called for the cas-evac, does a good job directing us to his location, about 1,500 meters east of the highway. Though we can’t see him and he can’t see us in the soup, he succeeds in bringing us in by the sound of our rotors flapping around him in the orange muck.
And now, for a few moments, the sandstorm works to our advantage. We have flown past the Marine position, and over the radio, the platoon commander tells us to turn back to the south, but in so doing we fly directly over the enemy force that attacked his platoon an hour ago. As we make our approach, I can hear the distinctive “crack” of AK-47s firing in our direction. But the Iraqis or fedayeen can’t see us and are firing wildly. I thank God once again that these guys don’t know how to shoot.
Somehow Driscoll finds the zone and we land to find that one of the two casualties—the platoon’s Navy medical corpsman, hit by the full force of an RPG—has died without regaining consciousness. The Marines who race aboard our CH-46 gently lower the litter holding his body to the floor of the helicopter and run back out again.
The other casualty, a Marine corporal, has multiple fragment wounds—one of which is a life-threatening piece of shrapnel from an RPG that has penetrated his abdomen. Driscoll orders the wounded corporal to be loaded aboard Eckerberg’s aircraft, and then as we launch, he calls DASC on the secure radio to inform that we’re headed for the Army shock-trauma hospital set up at the Tallil FARP, some fifty miles to our southeast.
But now the full effects of this sharqi or shamal—or whatever this sandstorm is called—descend upon us. Unable to see the ground from fifty feet, Driscoll brings us down to twenty-five feet and reduces air speed to less than thirty knots. As we arrive back over Route 1 and turn left, we’re virtually air-taxiing—the wheels just off the ground, the rotor tips barely visible in front of us. We’re making our way slowly down the highway with Eckerberg’s helicopter following—we think—some one hundred feet behind. Col. Driscoll says over the intercom, as calmly as if he were out for a Sunday afternoon drive, “Gunny, keep a sharp eye out. I sure don’t want to bump into someone coming this way in our lane.”
We creep along this way for a half an hour—Wills hanging out the right side door as the helo edges up to overpasses, light poles, and power lines, hovers up over them, then carefully comes back down on the other side of the obstacles. But then Capt. Eckerberg radios that he’s developing engine problems. Driscoll tells him to set his bird down on the roadway, and we do so as well.
After a half an hour or so, Eckerberg reports that he thinks he has the problem fixed, and we resume our harrowing low-speed, low-altitude, low-visibility flight. But after a half an hour or so of this nerve-wracking “flying,” Eckerberg calls in again and says he’s about to lose his left engine and is putting his bird down on the roadway once again. We do the same, and this time Driscoll shuts down, telling Gunnery Sgt. Wills to head back down the highway to see what he can do to fix the problem.
Lt. Col. Driscoll, copilot Capt. Bill Pacatte, the .50-caliber gunner Cpl. Harold Stewart, and our two corpsmen stay with the bird to protect it. I agree to accompany Gunny Wills back to Eckerberg’s helo. We each grab an M-16 and some magazines, and I take my GPS and strap on my Camelback water bladder, and then we head out back down the highway, thinking that Eckerberg’s broken CH-46 is at most a few hundred yards behind us.
Unfortunately, it’s not there. After walking in the orange fog about a mile and finding nothing, we turn around and head back to our helicopter. Neither of us wants to end up like the Army Black Hawk crew or the survivors of the 507th Maintenance convoy—as captives being paraded before the Al Jazeera and Iraqi state-run television cameras.
Later, Griff Jenkins fills in the blanks about what happened aboard Eckerberg’s helicopter. He was there and records the events in his own “After Action Report.”
GRIFF JENKINS: AFTER ACTION REPORT
With HMM-268 Cas-Evac Detachment
Wrigley FARP, Route 1, Vic Euphrates River
Wednesday, 26 March 2003
1030 Hours Local
When we lift out of the zone behind Lt. Col. Driscoll’s helicopter, everyone aboard knows that our flight to the hospital with this wounded Marine on board is going to be tough. We lose sight of the colonel’s bird almost immediately after he took off. Chief Tom Barry and Petty Officer Jason Comeaux, the two shock-trauma Navy medical corpsmen aboard our CH-46, start treating the wounded Marine corporal as soon as he is brought aboard. He’s been hit pretty badly by an RPG and has a piece of shrapnel in his gut. The docs say he is in danger of internal bleeding and going into shock. While Capt. Eckerberg and his copilot, 1st Lt. Ryan Sather, fly us through the dirt cloud, the two corpsmen start an IV on the wounded Marine and wrap him up in a shock blanket.
These two medical corpsmen are tough, brave, yet amazingly gentle men. Chief Barry has been in combat before and Comeaux is a para-rescue specialist from the Navy-Marine Cold Weather Survival School in Brunswick, Maine. They have just given the wounded Marine some morphine to ease his pain when Capt. Eckerberg has to put the helicopter down on the roadway because of an engine problem.
We have been trying to follow Lt. Col. Driscoll’s helicopter back to a field hospital at the nearest FARP, but in this weather, it’s impossible to see the other bird. Visibility is down to less than fifty feet and the air is thick with orange dust. As Capt. Eckerberg has the crew chief trying to fix our engine problem, Chief Barry says, “We’ve only got hours here, we don’t have days to get someone with a gut wound into surgery.”
When we shut down on the road, all we know is where we were from the GPS fix, and that we can’t start our engines. We have no idea how far ahead of us Col. Driscoll’s bird is and I can’t call on the Iridium sat-phone because the battery in my phone was dead.
About two hours after we shut down we can hear—over the noise of the wind—the sound of gunfire and what the Marines say is mortar or RPG impacts about a kilometer off to the north. From the volume of fire it sounds like a really intense firefight and it seems to be getting closer. To make matters worse, we have no idea where the nearest “friendlies” are. For all we know, the next thing we might see is a group of Iraqis or fedayeen on “technicals”—those pickup trucks with a .50-caliber mounted on the back—roaring down the road behind us.
To protect the helicopter and our wounded corporal, Capt. Eckerberg assumes the role of “fire team” leader and assigns sectors of fire for our two .50-caliber machine guns and the three M-16s we have aboard the aircraft. Magazines and ammo are handed out to our crew chief Sgt. Derrick Dickerson, Cpl. David Chastain, and Lt. Sather and they prepare for the worst. Inside the bird, Chief Barry and “Doc” Comeaux have me playing the role of nurse for Frank, our badly wounded corporal. While one of the docs stands guard, I help the other change Frank’s IV bags, pat his lips with a moistened gauze pad because he is so thirsty, and help him to relieve himself.
By the time it gets dark, Frank’s temperature is rising, his pulse and blood pressure are growing steadily weaker, and he’s passing blood in his urine. Chief Barry is concerned that we’re going to lose him and spends the whole night with him inside the CH-46 as the wind buffets it from side to side. At times it seems as though one of the gusts will literally tip this twelve-ton helicopter over on its side.
So that Chief Barry can stay with Frank, I take his turn on watch—cradling an M-16 instead of the Sony video-cam in my lap as I hunker down behind a small berm just off the road where the damaged helicopter is parked.
I’m not ashamed to say that I’m afraid. With all the dust being whipped through the air, none of us can see even ten feet in front of us—even with NVGs. Periodically through the night there is the sound of gunfire. Some of it seems very close—other firing is farther away. At one point, over the noise of the wind, we hear an artillery barrage hit not too far away. I ask Sgt. Dickerson if it was “ours” or “theirs.”
He replies, “It’s probably ours . . . most likely RAP rounds. Sure as hell hope that the 11th Marines know we’re out here.”
Just after dawn on Tuesday, March 25, a Marine Humvee with a big American flag fastened to its side came creeping down the road. It’s a good thing that it wasn’t an Iraqi or fedayeen vehicle because we couldn’t hear or see it until it almost hit the back of the helicopter. The driver, a Marine lieutenant colonel named Stroehman, commands a special Marine Air Wing support unit that’s establishing FARPs behind the RCT-5 route of advance on Baghdad. He and a small detachment had been reconnoitering a location for a FARP just south of our position when the sandstorm hit. He and his men had been “holed up” along Route 1, waiting for the storm to pass.
Lt. Col. Stroehman informs Capt. Eckerberg that enemy patrols have been moving in between the lead elements of RCT 5—where we had picked up Frank, the wounded corporal—and the main body of the regiment, about eight miles to our south. He points out our vulnerability to anyone coming down the highway, and when he learns that we have a severely wounded Marine aboard and cannot “light off” our engines, he comes up with an ingenious solution—towing our helicopter to a safer location where he has established a defensive position.
By late afternoon, using a strap from a large cargo net and his Humvee, Lt. Col. Stroehman finally has our helicopter safely inside his little defensive perimeter and has gotten up on his radio to Lt. Col. Driscoll and the FARP at Tallil to inform them that we are alive, safe, and in need of a cas-evac for our wounded Marine.
Doc Comeaux and Chief Barry discuss loading Frank on Col. Stroehman’s Humvee and trying to crawl down Route 1 to the field hospital at Tallil but decide against it since we don’t know if the enemy is between here and there and darkness is already settling in again.
Through the night—though we’re safer here from the enemy—Frank suffers even more than the rest of us from the sandstorm. Dust cakes around his nostrils, mouth, and eyes. He can’t wipe it away or blow his nose because of the IVs flowing into the veins of his arms. Just before morning, there is an enormous electrical display of lightning, thunder, then rain and even hail. The sound of the frozen water beating against the aluminum skin of the helicopter is unnerving.
For a while, I try wearing my gas mask to keep the fine airborne grit from filling my lungs but the filters soon clog with dust and I realize that there’s nothing that can be done to keep from being sandblasted. The docs are now administering some antibiotics to our wounded Marine in hopes that it will reduce the infection that seems to have taken hold in his stomach wounds. But other than morphine, there is little we can do to ease his pain. Throughout the long night, each time the wind buffets the CH-46 we can see him grit his teeth as everyone is pummeled like a load of laundry in an unbalanced spin cycle.
On the morning of March 26, the wind drops a good twenty to twenty-five knots to a strong but steady breeze and we can finally see the glow of the sun—still overcast, but the storm is obviously blowing itself out. As the ceiling lifts and visibility improves slightly, a UH1N comes hovering down the road at about twenty knots, looking for fuel. Lt. Col. Stroehman directs the bird to land next to a fuel truck and tells the pilot, Maj. Tim Kolb, about the plight of our wounded corporal. Maj. Kolb instantly agrees to take him down to Tallil.
We carry Frank to the Huey in the litter on which he had lain since we picked him up more than thirty hours ago. As we slide him off the stretcher and strap him to the midship troop seat, Frank grits his teeth in pain but never makes a sound. He is one very tough Marine.
With the weather clearing and our wounded Marine finally on his way to lifesaving surgery, we can finally take a break. Doc Comeaux and Chief Barry are napping for the first time since we started this cas-evac mission. Then Col. Driscoll’s helicopter comes flapping slowly toward us, about thirty feet above the ground.
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #16
With HMM-268 Detachment
Pac Bell FARP on Route 1
North of the Euphrates River
Wednesday 26 March 2003
1830 Hours Local
As the weather cleared this morning, one of Jerry Driscoll’s persistent radio calls is answered by Lt. Col. Stroehman, the 3rd Marine Air Wing officer responsible for establishing forward arming and refueling points in the trace of the RCT-5 attack. Over a secure voice channel, Stroehman reports that he has towed Capt. Eckerberg’s aircraft to a safer location where a FARP—code-named Pac Bell—is being constructed.
As soon as Gunnery Sgt. Pennington has enough sand cleared out of the air intakes, Driscoll fires up the engines and we air-taxi back to where Griff and Fester are grounded with a helicopter that won’t start. By the time we arrive, their WIA Marine has been airlifted out aboard a passing UH1N. As soon as we shut down, Pennington heads over to Eckerberg’s aircraft to see if he can troubleshoot the problem.
When Chief Barry comes aboard our helo, he has to step around the body of our dead corpsman. His face and upper body are covered with an orange shock blanket and the chief is understandably agitated that the body of one of his medical specialists killed in action more than thirty-five hours ago has yet to be evacuated.
On the other side of the sand berm that serves as the highway median strip, the chief sees something no one else even knows is there—an Army H-60—parked in the sand. It is one of several aircraft forced to land during the height of the sandstorm.
Since Driscoll’s bird is going to have to remain here until repairs can be made to Capt. Eckerberg’s helicopter, Chief Barry heads over to the H-60 to ask them to take the dead corpsman back to the Tallil field hospital, where there is a graves registration unit, so that procedures to notify next of kin can commence.
He’s back in a few minutes. Choking with emotion, he says, “They are doing a ‘preflight’ on their H-60 but the pilot says he doesn’t have room to take the body.”
I tell the chief, “Let me take care of this.” I walk over the dune to where an obviously exhausted pilot is climbing down from atop his helicopter, having just scooped buckets of sand out of his engine intakes. There’s a large red cross on the side of his bird.
Without preamble, I say to the pilot, “We have a dead Navy medical corpsman aboard our helicopter and his body needs to get back to a field hospital. The chief who was just here tells me that you don’t have room.”
“That’s right, I’m overloaded and with all the sand in my engines, I can’t haul any more weight.”
“What do you mean, you don’t have room?” I answer angrily. “That’s what this helicopter is for—taking casualties to the rear. That’s what the Red Cross on your door is all about.” And with that I rudely reach around him and slide back the hatch. Inside, strapped to the seats are cases of water and rations.
I explode. “This is outrageous!” I shout at him. “You’re going to carry food and water back to the rear and you won’t carry a corpsman who was killed trying to save the life of a Marine?”
Clearly incensed by my offensive words and behavior, the tired young pilot firmly closes the door of his helicopter, turns back to me. Gesturing to the bird, he says, “Look, I’ve signed for what’s in here. I didn’t sign for a dead Navy corpsman.”
At this point I lose it. More than thirty years ago in Vietnam, a valiant Navy corpsman saved my life. In my anger and exhaustion, I have probably heard the pilot’s words as much more derogatory than he meant them. In my fatigue, I am not being reasonable. I grab him by his flight suit and am about to swing at him when his copilot and crew chief jump between us and break up the fracas.
Disgusted, I walk back to our bird, only to discover that Doc Comeaux, the door gunner aboard Griff’s bird, and several of Stroehman’s men have witnessed the whole episode. A short while after the H-60 takes off—without our dead Navy medical corpsman aboard—some of them come to talk to me about the incident.
They see it as a case of righteous indignation—believing that the H-60 pilot deserved a good thrashing for refusing to take the corpsman’s body with him. But having calmed down, I disagree.
I explain. “Set aside whether a former Navy welterweight boxing champion pushing sixty could have prevailed over a man half his age if the altercation had gone the distance. There are really two other issues that matter more: First, I lost my temper—never a good thing to do in any circumstance. Losing your temper always clouds your judgment. In combat that can get good men killed. And second, because I lost my temper, I didn’t accomplish the mission.”
I add, “My reason for approaching the pilot wasn’t to exchange blows with a thirty-year-old. I went to persuade him to evacuate the body of our dead corpsman—and I failed.” The H-60 has departed and the body of Navy Hospital Corpsman Third Class Michael Vann Johnson, Jr., is still lying on the ramp of our helicopter.
He is finally taken to the rear about four hours later when a CH-46 from HMM-268 shows up with the repair parts for Fester’s broken helicopter. They take the body aboard on the way back to Ali Al Salem Air Base. I regret that it took so long to notify his family in Little Rock, Arkansas, of their terrible loss.
With the new parts installed, and the sandstorm now well past, Griff sticks a camera in Capt. Aaron Eckerberg’s exhausted, dirt-streaked face and asks for his thoughts on “The Sandstorm from Hell.”
“I’m just happy to be alive” is all he can manage to say.