Carnivore Read online

  Broadhead ducked down and got on the radio with command. “Contact! Contact! I have troops engaging me with small arms.” He provided our location and, just to make sure, asked, “Am I cleared to return fire?” I am almost positive this was the first engagement of the war involving regular army troops, just after 7 A.M. local time, March 23, 2003.

  Captain McCoy responded immediately. “Roger, White 4, return fire.”

  Broadhead opened up with his .50-cal on the fortified position, and the sound of the big gun was huge, echoing off every wall and building along the road. As powerful as the .50 is, it didn’t do shit against the concrete and sandbags. The Iraqis kept firing back, now at us, too. Some ducked down, but the rest just stood in the middle of the road. At that distance, mostly firing on full auto, they were doing good to just hit the road near us. Well, nobody said every fight had to be fair.

  “Gunner!” I called out to Soprano. “Targets, three hundred meters, HE, fire!”

  Whatever doubt I might have had about the fighting effectiveness of the Bradley and its 25 mm main gun was quelled right then and there. Our main gun barked a short burst, and the Carnivore shivered from the recoil. The 25 mm high-explosive rounds landed in the middle of the men shooting at us and bodies flew everywhere. Their bunker was hit, one of their vehicles was struck—the HE was like an explosive tornado right in the middle of them.

  “Shit, that worked,” Soprano said.

  I grabbed the Commander’s override, which gave me control of the main gun, and turned the 25 mm on their bunker. With just a few rounds I destroyed it. Broadhead and I kept firing, taking out another 10 or so guys in the open.

  Four Iraqis jumped into a truck and hauled ass in the other direction, and Broadhead and I lit it up. The truck flipped over and went off the road.

  “Red 2, let me call this in,” Broadhead radioed me.

  “Copy.”

  Broadhead called in a contact report to command, and I relinquished control of the main gun to Soprano again.

  A few seconds later, Broadhead was back on the radio. “Red 2, White 4, proceeding toward the objective.”

  “Roger that, on your ass.” We still hadn’t reached our objective, the railroad bridge, which we could see in the distance. “Sperry,” I told my driver, “stay with him.”

  Broadhead took the lead, running straight down the middle of the road, and we pulled up onto the road behind him. We rolled slow and careful, checking either side for threats or an ambush, but there was nothing. All the civilians who’d wandered out to rubberneck as we’d rolled up had vanished. As we approached the bridge, I found myself staring at all the dead men, even though I’d seen plenty of bodies before.

  “Keep your head on a swivel,” I told my guys.

  Right after we’d crossed the canal bridge, an Iraqi army truck appeared in the distance, heading straight for us. It stopped and spun around, and we could see it was full of Iraqi soldiers. There was a civilian pickup truck between us and the army truck, so we couldn’t fire. At this point the adrenaline got the better of Broadhead, and he started chasing the army truck in Camel Toe. The huge diesel engine roared. I was his wingman, so I told Sperry, “Stay on his ass!” We immediately took off after him.

  We drove right over the railroad bridge and kept going, past our objective, leaving the rest of the troop on the other side of the bridge. At that point the M1s were almost out of fuel, and the rest of them were waiting for the fueler to catch up. Sergeant Christner’s Bradley had some sort of comm issue and lost radio, and everybody else was way back there wondering what all the shooting was about.

  As we went roaring down the road chasing Broadhead in his M1, Sully saw three dismounts firing at us from the left, trying to set up a machine-gun position. He turned the M240B on them and killed them all with a long burst, and I looked back to see what had happened. Nineteen years old—that was the first time he’d ever pointed a gun at another human being, much less pulled the trigger, but he didn’t hesitate. I was tough on them, treated them like the kids they were sometimes, but my crew wasn’t stupid: we were at war, and they knew it. War means killing the other guy before he kills you. We soldiers don’t make policy or decide whether to start a war, but we damn well are going to do the job we’ve been trained for if we’re sent into battle.

  The Iraqi army truck we were chasing turned into some sort of walled compound on the left side of the road. I watched as Broadhead’s M1 pulled into the gate and just stopped, blocking it. Even over the roar of the Bradley I could hear the shooting.

  “Knock down the wall next to him!” I yelled at Sperry.

  It’s hard to argue with mass, and 34 tons (plus ammo) beats concrete every day of the week. As the dust settled I popped out of the hatch and beheld absolute mayhem.

  The compound wasn’t big, maybe 20 by 40 yards, and there were vehicles and Iraqis in uniform running everywhere. Everyone I could see had AKs or RPGs, and they were firing at us with all they had. The truck we had chased was right in front of us, the back of it still filled with Iraqis.

  “Shoot!” I yelled at Soprano.

  “What?” he yelled back. The noise was incredible. We were only feet apart and could barely hear each other.

  “Shoot!” I yelled back. “Shoot the fucking guys!”

  “Where?”

  “Where?” I yelled at him in disbelief. “They’re everywhere! Pick a direction and fucking start SHOOTING!”

  At that point one of the 15 or so guys standing in the back of the truck launched an RPG at me. The backblast from the rocket engulfed the man behind him in smoke and steam, and blew him out of the back of the truck. As I watched the RPG flying toward me, it was as if time had stopped. The round came at me like someone throwing a softball. The RPG went right by my face and smashed into the antenna mount next to me. Unbelievably, it did not explode but went spiraling smoke up into the air, landed somewhere behind my Brad, and then exploded.

  RPGs were everywhere in Iraq. The launcher is a simple tube the user rests on his shoulder, and the rockets are inserted into the front of the launcher. Press the trigger, and the rocket-propelled-grenade’s motor is ignited and it shoots out, deploying stabilizing fins as it goes. For what they are, they’re reasonably accurate, but how effective they are ultimately depends upon the skill of the user. Generally, the Iraqis couldn’t shoot worth a shit.

  Soprano was still looking at me like he was confused, so I grabbed the Commander’s override and launched six 25 mm HE rounds into the back of the truck. Bodies went flipping everywhere, and the truck broke in half. Apparently that truck was so close Soprano couldn’t see the guys in the back of it in his sight, which was still set on low magnification. My grabbing the override was all that Soprano needed to figure out what was going on, and he got back on the gun. The truck went up in flames.

  I pulled my Beretta pistol out and fired seven shots into two Iraqis who had come out of their bunkers right next to my vehicle. When I shot at them, they were less than two feet away from me and climbing up. The first Iraqi fell after the third shot and I had to fire four more times at the second Iraqi before he fell. Then the pistol jammed.

  Iraqi soldiers were all around us, mere feet from the Bradley, getting closer, and they kept trying to climb up the sides. One came out of a building, firing at me. Most of the rounds hit the turret and bounced off, but at least one of the rounds hit my vest. I fell down into the vehicle, thinking I was dead. Surprisingly, I wasn’t, even though I didn’t have a plate in my vest—only the command group had armor plates. Turns out it was a pistol round, a 9 mm or .380, and only went through the first layer of my vest. I had a purple bruise on my chest for three months from that bullet. I grabbed Soprano’s M4/203, popped back out of the hatch, and started taking enemy out. I was shooting people charging me, hiding behind vehicles, climbing up the sides of my Bradley. It was insane. We were taking a huge volume of fire, from every direction.

  There was a small guardhouse right next to Broadhead’s tank. A guy k
ept popping out of it and firing his AK up at him. Broadhead turned the M1’s main gun on it and from point-blank range let go with a 120 mm HEAT round. The little building disintegrated, and concrete blocks went flying everywhere. My Bradley got hit with concrete chunks as well as body parts. Broadhead continued to light up the dismounts with his .50 and fired main gun rounds into the buildings.

  There was another small pickup truck full of about six guys in uniform trying to get away, and Soprano hit it with the Bradley’s main gun. His first round hit a soldier in the chest and he literally disappeared. The next three rounds destroyed the truck and everything in it. I wouldn’t have believed the 25 mm was able to do that much damage if I hadn’t seen it myself.

  Sully was in the back, firing the 240 into a group of Iraqis charging us. Soprano was chewing everything up with the 25 mm, and I was nailing guys with the M4 as fast as I could pull the trigger, reloading, and shooting some more. I saw movement to the right and yelled, “Pivot right!” Soprano slewed the turret.

  There was a group of five or six Iraqis holding their hands up or on their knees, hoping we wouldn’t kill them. Iraqis were bleeding out everywhere, vehicles were on fire, screams filled the air, and I could see about 60 Iraqis on the ground in the immediate vicinity, dead, dying, or wounded.

  Everyone in the compound was wearing what we called “salad suits,” which was the Iraqi military camouflage. We found out later we had rolled into a Ba’ath Party police station, and that was their uniform of choice. Police or not, they were all trying to kill us, but we didn’t even know the compound was there until we drove into it.

  “Sully, on my six!” I jumped down from the Bradley with the M4 and Sully joined me, while Soprano and Sperry provided overwatch. Sully had his M4 in his hands and was trying to look everywhere at once.

  “Hey, I see movement around back, I’m going to check that out,” Broadhead yelled to me.

  “Roger, I’m going to clean this area up.” I was looking for prisoners more than anything. I told Sully, “Cover those guys, and see if anybody else wants to surrender—but watch your ass!”

  There was a brand-new New Holland tractor just sitting inside this compound, and it seemed out of place to me. I shot it a couple of times with the M4. Soprano was in the turret, hand on the Commander’s override of the coax in case something happened. The area was a kaleidoscope of smoke and flames and blood and moans.

  Three guys showed themselves in a nearby building, and I shot them with the M4. Somehow we’d parked the Bradley on top of a bunker, and I saw movement inside it. I stuck the muzzle of the M4 in there and emptied it. In all I fired fourteen 30-round magazines through that M4 on three-round burst, but I finally was out of ammo. After tossing the M4 on top of the Bradley, I picked up an AK-47. Sully was rounding up casualties in the open, and I started checking buildings. There were a few guys moving around inside one of the rooms and I emptied the AK through a window at them, then reloaded and went in and cleared it. Finding fresh magazines for that gun was never a problem; there were rifles lying everywhere.

  I found one guy hiding in a little building, and as soon as I walked into the building he came at me. I buttstroked him with the rifle and knocked his two front teeth out. He half fell into me, and I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, took him outside, and threw him on the ground. He was an officer, obviously—he had the best uniform on, and it was all clean and pressed.

  Between Sully and me we rounded up close to 15 EPWs (enemy prisoners of war). Broadhead was still running around in the field beyond the compound we were in, dealing with machine-gun and mortar teams and dozens of dismounts with AKs (although we didn’t know that at the time, we could hear the shooting). As we were standing there, about eight vehicles drove up on the road and stopped next to the compound. Most of them were pickup trucks, and all of them were painted white with orange fenders and/or bumpers front and back. We’d never seen those before but naturally assumed they were Fedayeen vehicles, because that’s who got out.

  The Fedayeen Saddam was a loyalist paramilitary group established in Iraq in 1995. Saddam used them to do all sorts of nasty stuff. Wearing black track suits and carrying AK-47s and RPGs, they looked like Iraqi ninjas. From the eight vehicles about 60 men dismounted, not much more than 30 meters away from us. The funny thing was, they never even looked in our direction—they were gesturing and pointing at the bridge, the direction we’d come from. We didn’t fire on them immediately because we weren’t quite sure whose side they were on; we’d been told the Iraqis would greet us with chocolate and American flags and puppies. I wondered if perhaps they were there to help us.

  Most of them ran to the first truck, a Toyota with a heavy machine gun in the back of it. There was a guy there giving directions, pointing back at the canal bridge, which was being held by an M1 and a Bradley. Sully and I looked at each other, him with an M4 in his hands and me with an AK.

  “What the fuck?” I said. Did these guys really not see us? Standing broadside to us, only 30 yards away, were 60 guys and 8 vehicles, and they don’t even know we’re there?

  I signaled Soprano in the turret to get ready to fire, and Sullivan and I took aim. He took the guy on the machine gun and I aimed at the guy who I thought was in charge.

  “Wait until I fire,” I told my crew, as I was still waiting to see whose side the Fedayeen were on. When they took out an RPG launcher and aimed it at the bridge, I knew. I had the AK on full auto and fired three rounds, hitting their Commander in the chest; he turned and fell to the ground. Sully took out the machine gunner and Soprano let about 35 rounds of 25 mm fly into the men and the vehicles on full auto. They were so close Soprano could hardly get the barrel of the gun down low enough to engage them, and we had the same problem with the coax, but where that main gun did hit it was the nastiest thing I had ever seen. We were out of HE in the ready box, and so Soprano engaged them with DU (depleted uranium) rounds. The 25 mm ripped and dismembered the men all to hell, turned them inside out, and the trucks broke apart like toys; meanwhile both Sully and I were shooting everybody we could see with our rifles.

  The weird thing was, they didn’t seem to know where the fire was coming from; I think they thought our guys at the bridge were shooting them. One of the Fedayeen ran and hid behind a wall, but the wall was between him and the bridge, not between him and us. We could see him fine. He was about 50 feet away from me, on the far side of the road, and I was shooting at him and shooting at him and the damn AK was not zeroed. It wasn’t a hard shot, he wasn’t really moving, just squatting behind that low wall with his rifle, but I couldn’t hit shit. The rounds were flying over his head or hitting the dirt at his feet, and he had no idea where the bullets were coming from. I wasn’t the only guy shooting at that time, and wherever Broadhead was it sounded like he was in the middle of a small war.

  Finally I shot at the wall, just to see where my AK was hitting, then adjusted my aim and with the last shot in the magazine hit the man in the head. He fell over sideways and didn’t move. By that time pretty much everybody else in and around the trucks was dead. Two of the trucks had tried to get away, but didn’t make it.

  “Stay with them!” I yelled at Sully, pointing to the EPWs still cowering on the ground. I grabbed another magazine for the AK and headed for the road on foot.

  Everybody was down, but not out, and there were a number of Fedayeen crawling around in the ditch beside the road with their AKs. I shot half a dozen guys, then ran back to Sully and the Iraqis, and everybody was right where I left them.

  “All right!” I started looking for the guy with the good uniform and found him in the group.

  “Call the Commander,” I yelled up to Soprano. “Tell him we’re going to be bringing him prisoners.”

  Mr. Iraqi Officer with the nice uniform just looked at me as I pulled him up and started walking him to the back of the Bradley. Only one or two of the EPWs could fit in my overstuffed Bradley, and officers are usually the only guys who know anything. He was bet
ween me and the other prisoners as I pulled him toward the back of the vehicle. Just then a mortar round landed right in the middle of the group of prisoners on the ground. I was blown backward onto my ass and tasted blood, but I seemed to have all my parts. There was shrapnel in my hands, but luckily I still had my CVC helmet on, with its Kevlar cover. It protected my hearing and my skull. If the ground hadn’t been sand, or those prisoners hadn’t been there to absorb the blast, or the EPW I’d been bringing to the Brad hadn’t been between me and the mortar explosion, it probably would have killed me.

  The Iraqi I was leading got hit by a big piece of scrap metal and most of his nose was gone. Blood gushed down his face and was coming out of both of his ears. Some of the prisoners I’d grouped together on the ground were screaming and spurting blood, and the rest weren’t moving at all.

  “Mortar!” I yelled to my guys. “Get ready to move! Get ready to move!”

  The hell with taking any prisoners. “Run!” I told the Iraqi I’d dragged over to the Bradley. He probably couldn’t hear me with the blood coming out of his ears, but when I kicked him in the ass he got the message and took off running. There was no need for him to die, and I had a feeling things were going to get messy. The other EPWs still able to move understood my hand signals and made for the buildings as well.

  You never know what’s going to happen in a war, but that guy, that officer, he made it back to our troop’s position later so he could be treated for his wounds. Not only did half his nose get shot off, he took a bullet in the stomach. He was the one who told us that the compound we rolled into was a police station, even though they were wearing military uniforms. Headquarters ended up medevacing him out of there. I wonder where he ended up.

  CHAPTER 9

  CARNIVORE, CAMEL TOE, AND CIRCUS FREAKS

  I climbed into the back of the Bradley and had just gotten into the turret when another mortar round hit the top of a palm tree over us and exploded, like an air burst.