War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom Read online

  Other officers and senior non-commissioned officers are much less concerned about the action they have missed and more anxious about what lies ahead. They have seen low-intensity combat before and know it can be just as deadly and demanding as any other form of armed conflict. “This is just another phase in what’s going to be a long war,” says Lt. Col. Larry “Pepper” Jackson, commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment. “My mission is to hunt down HVTs [high-value targets—the U.S. military’s euphemism for terrorist chieftains and enemy leaders], find any evidence of weapons of mass destruction, protect the oil refinery down the road, restore essential infrastructure [electricity, water, sanitation, and medical services], provide security for the local population, and protect my own force from attack by terrorists, Baathists, and criminals. I’ve got plenty to do, but I’ve got great troops to get the job done.”

  “Great troops.” I’ve been hearing those words for most of my adult life. I used to say that—and mean it—about the Marines I led in war and in peace. I have also heard those words a lot since arriving in Kuwait, before the start of the war. Now, having lived with the troops and seen them fight, it’s apparent that they really are just that: great troops.

  I have a standard of comparison. I first saw the carnage of combat as a rifle platoon commander in Vietnam. And I’ve been an eyewitness to the valor and horror of war in Lebanon, Central America, Afghanistan, and Israel. In my experience, there have never been brighter, better-trained, better-equipped soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen, and Marines than those now serving in Iraq. And the credit for this goes to the staff non-commissioned officers, chiefs, and junior officers who held the military together during the budget cuts, social engineering, fruitless deployments, and lack of training in the 1990s.

  In the combat arms—infantry, artillery, armor, airborne, reconnaissance, and special operations—they are all male, since current law forbids putting women into combat units. That doesn’t mean young American women aren’t in harm’s way. Women serve in combat support assignments in every branch of our Armed Forces. That means young American women like Army PFC Jessica Lynch, arguably the most famous female in recent U.S. military history, can easily find themselves under fire. Cpl. Amanda Hoenes of HMM-268 qualified as combat aircrew in Iraq, and during one terrible night over Baghdad in a CH-46, I watched her skillfully employ a .50-caliber machine gun to dispatch the enemy troops who were firing on us. Given our current force structure—with women constituting almost 14 percent of the Army and 6 percent of the Marine Corps—it’s fair to say that this war could not have been fought without the fairer sex.

  Without taking anything away from women like the Army’s Jessica Lynch or the Marines’ Amanda Hoenes and the role they play in our military, it’s still important to recognize that nearly all those on the ground who took the fight to Saddam are males. And while there is no typical soldier or Marine, it is possible to describe the average young American who carries a weapon into battle.

  He’s a volunteer, 19.6 years old, making him about six months older than his grandfather was when drafted to serve in World War II and Korea or his father was when conscripted for Vietnam. He isn’t old enough to buy a beer, and if he were back home in the United States we’d call him a boy. But because he’s in uniform and fighting a war, we call him a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine.

  This young man in uniform was probably a team sports athlete in high school and graduated somewhere in the middle of the pack, making him better educated than any prior generation in our military. Unlike many of his peers, he’s never drawn an unemployment check and he doesn’t ever want to.

  He had a job in high school in order to buy a car that was already about ten years old. He bought the car to take his high school sweetheart out on dates, and when he left for a war halfway around the world, she promised to wait for him.

  Unfortunately, unless they were married before his departure—about 15–25 percent of those who live near their military bases are—she is likely to be dating another guy by the time this Iraqi war veteran returns home. When our trooper does get back, he’ll call her new beau a “wimp.” And she’ll know he’s right.

  About three times a week, he grabs a few minutes to write home. When the mailbag arrives by helicopter, he’s hoping to get a letter from his girl and his mom, though he’ll never admit to the latter. If his girl or his mom sends him a care package with disposable razors, shaving cream, toothpaste, M&Ms, beef jerky, toilet paper, and baby wipes, he’ll share them with his whole squad and be a hero for a day.

  He has a short haircut and tight muscles, and wears a four-pound Kevlar helmet and an eighteen-pound flak jacket to work. He can march all day in one-hundred degree heat with a sixty-pound pack on his back. This young man in uniform knows how to use every weapon in his unit and can fieldstrip and reassemble his own weapon in less than a minute—in the dark.

  Over here he’s gone weeks without bathing but cleans his weapon every day.

  His rifle company gunny (gunnery sergeant in the Marines or sergeant first class in the Army) has been in combat before. Yet this is the first time he and his lieutenant have been shot at. Under fire he obeys orders instantly. But if asked, he’ll always have an opinion on how to do something better. Often he’ll be right.

  He’s been taught chemistry, physics, and ballistics, and can navigate with a map and compass but prefers the GPS he bought at the base exchange. When he catches a break, which isn’t often, he reads paperback books; he loves thrillers.

  Before joining the military he couldn’t be bludgeoned into picking up his room, doing his laundry, or washing the dishes, but now he’s remarkably self-sufficient. He prepares his own meals, washes and mends his own clothes, digs his own foxhole and latrine, and keeps his feet dry and his canteens full.

  The kid who once wouldn’t share a candy bar with his little brother will now offer his last drop of water to a wounded comrade, give his only ration to a hungry Iraqi child, and split his ammo with a mate in a firefight. He’s been trained to use his body like a weapon and his weapon as if it were part of his body—and uses either to take a life or save one, because that is his job. But he’s patient and compassionate too. He will offer his own food and water to enemy prisoners of war, and go out of his way to make certain that captured enemy wounded get medical help.

  The youngster who used to stay in the sack until noon now exists on just three or four hours of sleep a day. When he comes home to the United States, he’ll be, on average, twelve pounds lighter than when he left.

  By now he’s already had more responsibility and seen more suffering and death than most of his civilian contemporaries will see in their entire lifetimes.

  He’s learned a whole new vernacular of foreign-sounding words. It’s not Iraqi Arabic, but military shorthand. He uses words like “CONUS,” “h-hour,” “zulu time,” “incoming,” “snafu,” and “fubar” that mean nothing to most civilians.

  He’s been told that grown men don’t cry, but he has wept unashamedly in public over a fallen friend, because he knows heroes aren’t defined by the way they die but how they live. And though he can now take profanity to the level of an art form, it’s also likely that he has a Bible in his rucksack and isn’t afraid to be seen reading it.

  He’s proud to be serving his country, reveres his commander in chief, and knows that he is respected in return. While he is modest about his own courage and military prowess, he’s absolutely certain that his is the toughest unit in the U.S. Armed Forces.

  When he gets home, he won’t talk much about the horror of war and probably won’t have post-traumatic stress disorder, but he will want more fresh milk, salads, and homemade cookies than anyone ever thought possible. And when he goes to a ball game or some formal event, he’ll resent those who carelessly ignore the national anthem when it’s played or don’t join in when the pledge of allegiance is recited. He’ll put his hand over his heart, gaze at the American flag, and sing or recite proudly and
loudly.

  These are the young Americans who beat the Butcher of Baghdad. Their skill and daring, discipline and endurance are without parallel in the world today.

  “Good troops” indeed. They are a credit to their parents and to this nation. This book is for and about them.

  INTRODUCTION

  REALITY TELEVISION

  AFTER ACTION REPORT

  USS Abraham Lincoln

  Pacific Ocean Vic 131°W, 30°N

  Thursday, 1 May 2003

  0900 Hours Local

  Shortly after my return to the United States from Iraq, President George W. Bush, a former F-102 pilot, wearing a military flight suit, roared onto the flight deck of the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in a U.S. Navy W-3B Viking. Shortly after landing, he welcomed the crew home and congratulated them for serving with distinction in the war against terrorism and during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Later, wearing a business suit, he addressed the nation from the flight deck.

  The president’s remarks had barely been transcribed before the criticism began. Some in the media described the trip to the carrier as a publicity stunt, and castigated the White House for an extravagant waste of tax dollars. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tried to defend the trip by pointing out that the cost of the flight in the Viking would have been nearly the same as the president taking a helicopter, but that a helicopter would have taken longer and would have been more hazardous and, according to the Secret Service, less secure. Fleischer’s defense was ignored.

  Then Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the so-called Dean of the Senate, rose to berate the commander in chief, saying, “To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech.”

  The controversy—and particularly Senator Byrd’s divisive statements—sparked a flood of e-mails from those I had come to know in Iraq and scores of other men and women of the military. Many soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines felt that the criticism of President Bush was an effort to divide them from their commander in chief, a man they may or may not have voted for but whom, in the aftermath of September 11, they widely admired.

  Though West Virginia has more citizens serving in the Armed Forces, per capita, than any other state, Senator Byrd persisted in his attack, prompting a deluge of mail into my office—much of it highly derogatory to Senator Byrd—some of it intended to remind Americans that the good senator had once been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. One such missive began with, “Senator Byrd, who in his salad days spent more time in white sheets than in camouflage uniforms, just doesn’t get it.” Another characterized the senator’s rant as “Byrd Droppings.”

  Yet the media lapped up Byrd’s remarks and raced around Washington seeking more outrageous partisanship to feed the hungry maw of the nonstop news cycle. Forgotten in all of this were the 5,500 officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln. In late December 2002, they had been headed home to San Diego through the Indian Ocean after a six-month deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The crew was looking forward to seeing their wives and children, who were eagerly awaiting their arrival in southern California. Then came their new orders: turn around and head north, back up the Persian Gulf, and prepare for war.

  For the next four months, the crew of the Abraham Lincoln served without leave, carrying out their orders. They had already launched almost six hundred combat sorties in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and nearly a thousand more in support of Operation Southern Watch, enforcing the no-fly zones over Iraq. Then they handled 1,558 combat sorties supporting the Marines, soldiers, and special operations teams of Operation Iraqi Freedom. And they did it all—more than three thousand sorties—without casualties. When their mission was completed, they had been deployed for 290 consecutive days and had traveled more than 100,000 miles—the equivalent of circling the globe four times.

  None of this mattered to the president’s ardent critics, who also chose to ignore the extraordinary compliment President Bush had paid to the crew of “Honest Abe.” By landing on a moving aircraft carrier at sea—an extraordinarily difficult feat—the commander in chief was offering the crew of the Abraham Lincoln the ultimate accolade. He put his life in the hands of a Navy pilot and the crew of the carrier—never doubting that they would bring him in safely.

  All of this was a rude awakening to those of us who had just returned from the harsh realities of Iraq. There, brave men and women were serving in harm’s way, in great personal danger. Even when there was little danger, the requirements of duty and the conditions under which they served were difficult at best and downright horrible at worst.

  But being back home, hearing the commander in chief of the Armed Forces of the United States being described as a “deskbound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech,” and accused of “flamboyant showmanship” and “self-congratulatory gestures” by a U.S. senator, made many of the troops ask “What am I doing here?”

  Before the story waned, Congressman Henry Waxman, citing “clear political overtones,” was calling for a congressional investigation of the president’s flight. But most of the sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln wondered about the political motivations of the president’s detractors. Meanwhile, others in Congress began calling for a “regime change” at the White House.

  Among the troops who communicated with me in the weeks right after I returned home, the strident partisanship of the attacks on President Bush was topic number one. What we didn’t know then was that this was just the opening volley. It was about to get a whole lot worse.

  AFTER ACTION REPORT

  Washington, DC

  Friday, 12 May 2003

  0900 Hours Local

  After the vicious assault on the president, it should probably have been expected that those who were embedded with the troops—and who reported good things about them—would be the next targets. It seems that almost all of us who lived with the troops came away favorably impressed.

  I’ve spent much of my life in the military and have concluded, based on how these warriors performed under combat, that the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen, and Marines serving in Iraq are without parallel. There has never been a brighter, better-trained, better-equipped group of people under arms than those who responded to our country’s call in this war. No military force in history has ever gone so far, so fast, with so few casualties as this group of young Americans.

  I said that repeatedly during my time with the troops and I know no other way to put it. It seemed fairly self-evident to nearly every embedded correspondent, and certainly was to me—and I don’t pretend to be nearly as observant as a “professional journalist.” I didn’t learn journalism at the Naval Academy. But I did learn to recognize courage, competence, commitment, and compassion—all qualities that these youngsters have in abundance.

  I did not expect the ire of the fourth estate for what their colleagues had said—that these young American men and women of the Armed Forces really are remarkable troops. But that’s exactly what happened. Apparently, I and some others who were embedded “lived with the troops too long, got too close to them.” We lost “objectivity,” and became “flag-waving advocates,” as was reported in one weekly newsmagazine.

  Time magazine’s James Poniewozik, among others, scolded us for covering the war from the American perspective, branding us as “biased” for the way we reported the swift victory over the vaunted Republican Guard troops and Saddam’s fedayeen. Harper’s Magazine publisher John MacArthur, citing the way embedded reporters covered Marine Cpl. Edward Chin scaling the statue of Saddam and momentarily draping the huge black metal sculpture with Old Glory, accused not only the embedded media, but also the U.S. military, of being “propagandistic” for “the Bush reelection campaign.”

  The reality is considerably different. Most of us who were embedded with the troops simply allowed the
young Americans doing the fighting to tell their story. They said how proud they were to help liberate a repressed people. They spoke openly about being honored to be in the service of their country. And they showed modesty and restraint in talking about their own courage and military prowess. We didn’t make this stuff up. The troops said it in their own words.

  These words from our troops may have shocked and surprised the editors of the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s, and Time. Just because a young American goes live on FOX News Channel and tells America that he believes his country is doing something right doesn’t mean those of us who held the microphones and cameras have lost our objectivity. The media elites may not like hearing young Americans raised on a steady diet of political correctness, inane sitcoms, and video games talk about virtue, values, and valor—but that’s the way they are. That’s reality television.

  Here is an eyewitness account of the war in Iraq, not as the negative mainstream media and defamatory politicians would like you to see it, but as it actually happened, and often from the perspective of those who should know, because they were there—the men and women of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE ROAD TO HELL

  OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #1

  Kuwait International Airport, Kuwait

  Thursday, 6 March 2003

  2330 Hours Local

  “Are you here as a member of the Armed Forces or as a member of the media?” asks the neatly uniformed but unsmiling Kuwaiti immigration official.

  “I’m here to cover the war for FOX News Channel,” I reply. “Does it matter?”