Carnivore Read online

  Soprano engaged the Iraqis who were farther out and firing RPGs at us. Looking back behind me, all I could see were white lines from the firefights. The barrel of Broadhead’s .50 was white hot. I fired the AK-47 I’d picked up to replace my gunner’s shredded M4, reloading from the pile of loose mags we’d collected at As Samawah. When Sully’s ready box was empty, if he didn’t have time to fill it between incoming, he fired his M4/203 into the enemy. They were everywhere.

  Up ahead I saw the back of a Bradley. We’d caught up with the forward unit and had to stop. All the ready boxes in my Bradley were out of ammo, and my crew was scrambling to upload. Sully was getting the ammo ready when I saw eight mortar tubes and more than 100 dismounts in the wood line to my left.

  “Contact left, one hundred meters, multiple dismounts and mortar tubes!”

  All I could do was watch as the mortars fired at me and the dismounts charged the road. The first mortar round knocked me down into the turret. Mortar rounds hit almost on top of the Bradley. A direct hit would kill us all. I heard our vehicles in front and behind me start hammering the wood line. Broadhead called over the radio.

  “Red 2, stay down inside the turret, you’ve got guys almost on top of you. I’m going to take care of it.”

  I kept inside the turret, opened the turret shield door, grabbed Sully by the leg, and pulled him down into the safety of our Bradley. Heavy machine-gun fire hit the side of my vehicle and raked back and forth.

  “We’re getting hit!” Sully yelled.

  “No shit!”

  Then Broadhead’s calm voice came over the net: “Red 2, you’re clear.” Broadhead had hosed down my Bradley with 7.62 mm machine-gun fire, killing three Iraqi soldiers trying to climb aboard. Dismounts were swarming everywhere.

  If you’re wondering what the hell had happened to Alpha and Bravo Troop, when they went rolling down the road they weren’t getting much fire. The Iraqis could see that both troops consisted of armored vehicles, so they were waiting for a more inviting target—which was us. When Alpha and Bravo did receive fire, they usually did the smart thing and hit the gas pedal. They just didn’t know we were getting hammered as hard as we were.

  The Squadron Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Terry Farrell, was riding with Alpha Troop. He had no idea what we were going through until the squadron Executive Officer (XO), First Lieutenant Keith Miller, called him up. Miller was riding in our train. He was normally a happy-go-lucky guy, a third-generation soldier who had joined our troop just before we headed to Kuwait, but when he was finally able to get through to the Colonel on the radio, he in no uncertain terms expressed his wish that Alpha and Bravo start killing the bastards shooting up the supply train. That’s why we ran up on the back of a Bradley—Alpha was stalled in a big firefight and had stopped to slug it out with the Iraqis instead of speeding out of the kill zone like they’d been doing.

  I had never seen anything like what was happening in front of me at that moment. My entire troop was all firing at the same time, in every direction. It was massive—120 mm, 25 mm, .50-cal, and 7.62 mm, tracers and explosions, incoming AK and RPG fire, Iraqis running and screaming, BMPs blindly firing straight across the road. We might have technically been in their kill zone, but in fact they were in ours. Our training and weapons and armor were the best in the world. We were just too well equipped.

  The cross talk over the radio was constant and, considering what we were facing, surprisingly calm and professional. I heard everyone from Staff Sergeant Harris, our maintenance Platoon Sergeant, to First Sergeant Grigges. Everyone was working the net, laying fire into the Iraqis, calling out targets. Sergeant Christner had his Bradley firing on an Iraqi mortar position to our left front. Enemy mortar rounds landed all the way around him, but his crew was very lucky and didn’t take a hit. Every round he fired hit true, and the mortar team died in place. Staff Sergeant May, Christner’s M1 wingman, fired 120 mm HEAT rounds into another mortar position.

  Geary’s Bradley was running a lot better and he got some payback—his 25 mm was barking like a mad dog in a cat farm. He only stopped firing long enough to reload his coax machine gun.

  I heard Harris talking to Sergeant Willey, and with their .50s they were killing Iraqi troops who had moved to within feet of the road. They couldn’t use the sights on their vehicles because the Iraqis were too low and close, so they were holding their NVGs (night vision goggles) with one hand while they fired their .50s with the other, walking the tracers into the dismounts. Third and Fourth Platoons were firing up 200 dismounts in a nearby wood line. Sergeant First Class Lessane and Staff Sergeant Hamilton, from Fourth Platoon, were engaging dismounts who had been trying to work their way up to the support vehicles in the dark. They didn’t even get close.

  Remember how Williams’s fuel cell had been cracked right after entering Iraq? Well, at this time, he had commandeered Sowby’s Bradley and was towing the Casanova behind it. He ended up renaming his new ride Casanova 2. His 25 mm was to the front, though, and he was able to slew his turret and engage targets as fast as he could identify them. We emptied and reloaded our ready boxes at least twice. The wood lines on both sides of the road were on fire before we finished our very slow roll-through.

  The crazy thing was, while we got stuck in that one spot for a while, we kept moving, and the fighting never stopped. There wasn’t a collection of guys, then a pause, then another; it was a continuation. It never stopped, not for 23 miles. We kept expecting to drive out of it and never did. Well, it felt like never. That night we got hit by everything but tanks; we never identified any tanks.

  As we rolled around another corner, we identified and engaged a group of Iraqis with mortar tubes and DSHKs (heavy machine guns we called “dishkas”) on the side of the road. Through the thermal sight we could actually see them hanging mortar rounds. We hit them with the 25 mm, which again performed exceptionally.

  All of a sudden, a voice with a southern accent thick as grits came across the radio net—“Somebody stop ’em, they’re shooting at womens and sheeps, and them sheeps ain’t doing nothing but eating grass!”

  It was as if time had stopped. Everybody stopped shooting.

  I looked at Soprano, and he looked at me, and at the same time we both said, “Did he say ‘sheeps’?”

  The squadron wasn’t sneaking quietly through the woods. We were getting engaged by 1000s of Iraqis across a well-planned ambush route, and somebody sitting in a lounge chair on the moon could have heard the racket. We were shooting anything we saw in our thermals that showed hot and wasn’t running in the other direction. Did somebody accidentally shoot sheep or civilians standing around watching the fireworks? I do know that the sergeant in Third Platoon who was so worried about them “womens and sheeps” filed a complaint against another member of the unit. We did find some dead sheep (sheeps?) near an Iraqi mortar position, and some of the fighters were wearing traditional clothing, which made them resemble women from a distance, but I never heard about any women being killed. Nobody got convicted of any war crimes.

  Dawn started to break, finally, on March 26, 2003, and I was able to see that it was Alpha (Apache) Troop to my front. They were taking such heavy fire that they stopped again and called in an air strike. While we were engaging the tree line full of dismounts, we heard on the radio net that A-10 Warthogs were coming in to drop 500-pounders.

  Just then, Soprano jumped from his gunner’s seat. “It’s jammed,” he said. “Your gun.”

  Soprano could shoot that main gun, but when it came to working it he lacked a few skills, and it had jammed on him. I crawled down and started working on it, and in short order I saw that the DU ammo that was in the ready box and loaded into the gun was caked in mud. Clay mud, mud that was so hard it was like concrete. Son of a . . .

  The last time we had loaded ammo, Geary and his crew had been in the back of the Brad, and they’d walked all over the loose ammo in muddy boots. It wasn’t my job to load the ammo into the ready boxes, it had been Sully’s respons
ibility. How had he not noticed it was caked in mud? Motherf—

  While I was yanking and cursing at the gun and mudded-up ammo, the whole troop was upstairs watching and cheering as the A-10s did their passes and dropped 500-pounders on the Iraqi positions. The bombs hit so close our guys at first thought one of our M1s had been hit, but the pilots were better than that. They did two more runs, strafing anybody else still moving with their 30 mm cannons. Everybody was still cheering, and I missed it all.

  I popped up, a 25 mm DU round caked with mud in my hand and murder in my eye. It was the round that had been in the gun and jammed it up. I spotted Sully in the back of the Brad.

  “Come here!” I yelled at him and tried to grab him. I was going to stab him with that round, I was so mad.

  His eyes went wide and he scrambled back from me, where I couldn’t reach him. “No. Sarge, calm down!” He wouldn’t come close enough for me to brain him or stab him with the round, and that’s probably a good thing. Eventually I calmed down.

  We weren’t taking any more incoming at that time, because we had beaten them. When you’ve got an entire cavalry squadron on line, just pounding the shit out of everything, any opposing forces fade away or get chewed up pretty quickly. Any hot spot out there we shot, and then we brought in A-10s. After having been on the receiving end of an uncomfortable amount of incoming, the Commander’s concern about collateral damage had been greatly diminished, otherwise he’d never have authorized the A-10s to drop their 500-pounders.

  We had vastly outgunned and outperformed the Iraqis, but you can’t engage that many enemy forces without damage. The squadron lost one M577 APC, two Hummers, one five-ton truck, and one ambulance. My vehicle had been rocked by mortars (again) but had come through it intact. Amazingly enough, we suffered no killed or wounded, even after nine hours of fighting. Nine fucking hours. The hell with “Route Appaloosa”; that stretch of road will forever be known to those of us who were there as Ambush Alley.

  Broadhead came the closest to being injured. He’d gotten hit in the wrist with shrapnel from a mortar round as he was closing the hatch on his Abrams—but his watch gave up its life for his wrist. The shell fragment was stopped by the stainless-steel case of the watch. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, and that time we were both.

  The cover of Life magazine had a picture of Alpha Troop’s medic carrying a small child who had been wounded during that engagement. While we didn’t lose anybody during the battle, that medic was never able to forget the war and sadly took his own life years later.

  We’d been told that there would hardly be enemy activity on the road north to Objective Floyd and had been put in the rear with the supply train to stay out of the fight. The ambush zone no one could have foreseen had stretched for over 22 miles, and we had no idea what to expect next, if anything.

  * * *

  * On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, by Col. Gregory Fontenot, U.S. Army, Retired; LTC E. J. Degen, U.S. Army; and LTC David Tohn, U.S. Army. Office of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army (2004), p. 130.

  CHAPTER 12

  JUNKYARD DOGS

  The troop stayed in place, and the Hemmitt fuelers rolled up and down the line, topping everybody off in a tailgate maneuver. Just sitting there not being shot at was a relief, but it was short-lived. We had rolled through Alpha Troop during the fighting and now pushed through Bravo toward our objective.

  Objective Floyd was another damn bridge, this one across the Euphrates. The 1st BCT (Brigade Combat Team) had moved in from the north of An Najaf and locked up another bridge over the Euphrates designated Objective Jenkins, in the small town of Al Kifl. The Division designated every class-70 bridge (any bridge that could take a 70-ton load) in the area as an objective. With 3/7 Cav to the south and 1st BCT to the north, the goal was to isolate An Najaf from any reinforcements. There were an estimated 2,000 or more troops already in An Najaf, and command didn’t want any more.

  The road split, and Alpha and Bravo Troops took a left and headed north on Highway 9 to secure that area. We went straight, through a small town, crossed the bridge over the Euphrates, and rolled another 900 meters to a one-lane canal bridge.

  The Carnivore was in the lead, with Broadhead right behind us, and as soon as we rolled over the little bridge the Iraqis hit us with an antiarmor ambush. At least 50 dismounts appeared, and a volley of RPGs flew at me and Broadhead. Jesus Christ, I thought. Again?

  RPGs came over the top of my vehicle. They came so close to me standing in the Commander’s hatch that I honestly had to do the Matrix maneuver—bend backward in super-slo-mo to dodge the warhead. A smoke trail came across and got in my eyes, and I felt the swoosh, that’s how close they came. But we were just high enough, sitting on the bridge, that the angle at which they fired sent the RPGs over the top of us.

  Broadhead yelled “Contact!” and opened up with his .50.

  No shit, Contact. I couldn’t yell “contact” because I was ducking and diving. The whole squadron was on my ass in 10-foot intervals, so I couldn’t back up. About that time an Iraqi technical (pickup truck with a heavy machine gun mounted in back) opened up. The heavy slugs started slamming my hull and whipping past my head. There was a house nearby that resembled a big glass box, and a bunch of people in it started shooting at me as well.

  “Somebody shoot that motherfucker!” I yelled as the 12.7 mm tracers buzzed around my head and glass was flying everywhere.

  The rest of the troop was lined up along a bit of a dogleg in the road, which was both good and bad. They could see me under fire, so everybody started launching rounds at that house and shooting the shit out of the technical. Rounds from Broadhead were flying in front of me and the rest of the troops’ rounds were coming behind me. I watched tracer rounds walk up the fucking road toward me; meanwhile we couldn’t get our own main gun low enough to shoot at the guys below trying to kill us. Three more RPGs flew over Broadhead’s tank.

  “Back up! Back up! Back up!” I yelled at Sperry, not that he needed to be told the obvious. The Carnivore started crawling backward.

  “You’re coming into my gunsight!” Broadhead yelled at me. The two Bradleys behind Broadhead’s tank were trying to turn around, but there was nowhere for him to go.

  “You need to move the fuck out of the way, my ass is in peril up here,” I shouted back. There were Iraqis on both sides of the road shooting at us, and RPG rounds were hitting the guardrails and exploding.

  Behind us Sergeant Wallace had an angle and was firing like a madman—25 mm, then coax, then 25 mm again. He must have killed 25 guys in less than 30 seconds. While that was going on, Lieutenant McAdams was hanging out of his hatch firing his 9 mm pistol into five Iraqis who were moving in a ditch to his left. It was then that Staff Sergeant Wasson from Third Platoon took an RPG in the back that had bounced off his turret. Luckily the Iraqi who launched the RPG had forgotten to take the pin out, so instead of dead, Wasson was just in severe pain—imagine being hit in the back with a baseball bat by someone very strong and very angry. The RPG made him black out for a minute, but he still stayed in the fight.

  We managed to get back across the canal bridge. Both the road and the bridge were narrow there, only big enough for a Bradley to turn around, not an M1. As soon as we got back across and could get an angle, I started pounding that fucking building. I shot into that field at the dismounts and the technical, Sully worked the M240 in back, and Soprano the coax, and we kept at it until we were black on ammo.

  I got on the radio and called the supply crew. “I need ammo up here!”

  We were still taking rounds when the Hemmitt rolled up the shoulder, backed up to us, dropped the tailgate, and Sergeant Bell in back kicked off a huge amount of ammo. “Thanks, Sergeant Bell, you rock!” we called out to him.

  He gave us a thumbs-up and a smile. “Kill ’em all!” he yelled back. I love those Hemmitt guys—no damn armor on their vehicles to speak of, and they’ll roll into anything. They’re my heroes.
/>   The Hemmitt tore off, and I started going through what was there and found I had 120 mm HEAT rounds and .50-cal ammo—exactly what I needed if I was an M1.

  Broadhead called me on the radio. “Hey, I’ve got three hundred rounds of 25mm here . . .”

  I said, “I’ve got HEAT rounds and .50-cal, want to trade?”

  That was funny, but I can’t give enough credit to those guys in the headquarters support platoon. The PFC driving that fueler or the E5 driving the ammo truck: they won that war, because those dudes kept us in ammo. They would roll right up in their thin-skinned vehicles, ignoring the incoming like it wasn’t even there, and top off our tanks or kick out some ammo. And I was always able to get more, no matter how much incoming I was receiving, except for fuel later on in the push, when we were rolling so far ahead of our supply trains we had to siphon gas out of Iraqi tractors. Filling up the Bradley’s 150-gallon tank five gallons at a time was no fun at all, but it was better than running dry.

  Once we were squared away, command called us up and told us that we were going to hold the canal bridge. The ground was low on both sides of the road, there were guardrails, and there were only a few buildings off to the left, so it was as good a place as any to set up. We positioned the Carnivore just short of the bridge, where the road was wider.

  We had no sooner settled into position than a huge sandstorm rolled in. If you’ve seen the movie The Mummy, that’s exactly what it looked like. A horseshoe-shaped brown cloud, 10 miles high. Visibility went from 900 meters, to 50, to 10, and it got almost as dark as night. The sand got into everything, but at least I had goggles. I still couldn’t see very far, but I didn’t get sand in my eyes.

  Broadhead and I were at the front of the column of support troops, along with Sergeant Wallace in his Bradley, Sergeant Housey in his M1, and Lieutenant Garrett McAdams in his Bradley. McAdams was a young professional soldier from South Carolina. He had graduated from the Citadel and was so tall and skinny we joked about having to tie him to a rock during the sandstorm to keep him from blowing away.