Posted on 11/07/2005 7:07:10 AM PST by Valin
It was called "Operation Dawn - al Fajr." D-Day was November 7, 2004, 1900 hours (7 pm Baghdad time). The fighting that followed was to be among the fiercest urban warfare battles fought in American history. There is and has been a great deal of controversy surrounding this attack on Fallujah. This report will address none of that controversy. Our primary focus is on the American military people who participated in Operation Dawn. We want to help our readers understand the kind of environment our forces faced in this battle, what the strategy and tactics were, and what the fight was like. We are going to do this in as detailed a way as our resources permit. Know this. It all came down to that 18 -19 year old who led his fire team into battle. These young men "towered over their peers outside the military in maturity and guts."
(Excerpt) Read more at talkingproud.us ...
The battle for Fallujah, part one
By Tom Lasseter
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12016086.htm
FALLUJAH, Iraq -
11.8.04, Monday.
Capt. Sean Sims watched artillery shells fall and explode in a blast of sand and rubble, close enough to hear but too far to see what they hit. It was Sims’ first daylight look at the rebel-held city of Fallujah on Monday afternoon, just hours before he would lead his men deep into its heart.
A Marine Harrier jet screamed overhead. A Mark-19 automatic grenade launcher nearby let loose - bomb-boom-boom - sending grenades to burst in the distance.
As commander of Alpha Company, of the 1st Infantry Division’s Task Force 2-2, Sims drew a mission the U.S. military had sought to avoid since the start of the Iraq war: house-to-house fighting in an urban landscape that gave rebels many places to hide, significantly offsetting the superior firepower of U.S. troops while risking civilian casualties and vast property destruction. It would be the most intense urban combat for U.S. troops since the 1968 battle for Hue, in Vietnam.
Sims’ men would win the battle, yet no one would feel like celebrating. Killing the enemy, they learned, was sobering. More so was the loss of friends.
Sims would not come back.
Before his men left the Forward Operating Base near Fallujah that morning, battalion commander, Lt. Col. Pete Newell, gathered them in a circle. “This is as pure a fight of good versus evil as we will probably face in our lifetime,” he said.
Alpha Company was heading to the city’s eastern corridor, the Askari neighborhood, from where they would turn south into industrial districts and finally hook back to the west, running for six bleary days with almost no sleep.
Although most of the city’s 300,000 residents had fled, intelligence briefings suggested the Askari neighborhood - home to many former officers in Saddam Hussein’s army - had been turned into one big bunker, with car bombs, booby traps and snipers’ nests.
None of the young American men had ever set foot in the town, shared a cup of tea with a resident or seen the ornate blue domes that topped the mosques.
After Sims took in the view, soldiers of Alpha Company scrambled to a road overlooking Fallujah. Then sniper fire began and the battle was joined. Some soldiers emptied their M-16 clips, some yelling, others laughing as return sniper fire pinged off the Bradleys and pavement around them.
“Lord, I have to say a special prayer now,” the 32-year-old Sims said in the soft-spoken accent of his hometown of Eddy, Texas.
He hustled up a berm to the road to link up with the Task Force 2-2 reconnaissance team.
Crouched down on his right knee, Sims watched the insurgents’ mortar rounds land, and a minute or two later he heard the retort of U.S. artillery. A few hundred yards away, the outskirts of Fallujah rose out of the desert in a warren of sand-colored houses.
Satellite images after recent airstrikes showed dozens of ensuing explosions that probably resulted from roadside bombs.
“Everybody realizes that it's something that will affect the rest of our lives, in terms of seeing that type of combat,” Sims said a few days earlier. “When the first bullet impacts, you know the eyes of the world are going to be on you.”
Near Sims, a sniper lay on his belly with a rifle scope pressed against his eyes. A five-man insurgent team was scampering in and out of the buildings of Askari. One rebel appeared to be carrying mortars.
More bullets flew by, and the mortar rounds grew closer. Capt. Kirk Mayfield, of the recon team, yelled, “Everyone behind the truck.”
Standing next to his Humvee, Mayfield screamed for U.S. mortar strikes on the five-man team. After the ensuing rumble, a voice called over the radio: “Can I get a battle damage assessment?”
“An assessment?” the reply came. “There is no more building.”
Sims laughed to himself.
Sniper shots zipped by, pinging off the Humvee.
“Where is that sniper? Here it is,” Mayfield barked, turning to a gunner behind an automatic grenade launcher. “Blow him away.”
The red-hot streak of another bullet whizzed past. The gunner shot round after round, with explosions echoing across the town, then pulled a pair of binoculars to his face and announced, “He is not there anymore.”
Sims called over to his men, “Let’s go,” and they went scrambling back down the dirt berm.
At about 7 p.m., he lined up his vehicle behind his First and Third platoons as they braced for the fight.
Sitting in the back of Sims’ Bradley Fighting Vehicle, Corp. Travis Barreto, from Brooklyn, leaned over and tried to get a glimpse through one of the small rectangle windows at the back of the truck.
A truck pulled up carrying a rocket with about 350 feet of cord attached to it and 5-pound blocks of C4 plastic explosives spaced out every foot down the line. With a small whoosh, the rocket flew forward and a wall of flame shot up. Roadside bombs planted by rebels exploded, one after the other.
Barreto cheered.
“You know we're going to destroy this town,” said Barreto, 22.
“I hope so,” replied the soldier sitting next to him.
Phosphorous shells came next, releasing bouncing white orbs of smoke. The gunner on top of the Bradley began firing 25 mm high explosive rounds, filling the cabin of the Bradley with an ammonia-like smell. Barreto looked outside the window again and could see only smoke and flashes of light.
The U.S. artillery shells were coming in “Danger Close” - the thin line between uncomfortably near and death.
Insurgent AK-47 fire rang off the sides of the Bradley. Explosions sounded to the rear, but it was impossible to tell which belonged to roadside bombs and which were rocket-propelled grenades.
As the hours passed, soldiers tried to grab a few minutes of sleep, slumping their heads on the next shoulder. Each time they began to drift off another explosion would jolt them awake.
Large concrete barriers and parked cars blocked in the road in some places. The big M1A1 Abrams tanks lined up and pounded the obstacles with 120 mm shells, shaking the air.
Sims followed his platoons, which moved a few blocks at a time, one in front of the other, before stopping. The rear hatch of the Bradley lowered amid yells of “Dismount! Dismount!” The soldiers, having ridden in a tight, sweaty box through the battle - their knees cramped and aching - ran out, then slammed to their knees and took cover beside a wall. Then came “Go! Go! Go!” and the men busted through the front door of a house and, waving their rifles, cleared rooms before storming upstairs.
Sims parked his vehicle with two others in a blocking position on the road outside before following to the rooftop, where his soldiers set up a lookout.
With bullets whizzing, Sims and his men crouched down with the third platoon and assessed the battle. Barreto, acting as a guard, crouched next to Sims with a dazed look on his face.
“It’s weird how we can be looking at the rooftops and there’s no one,” he said, “and all of a sudden they’re shooting at us.” An AC-130 airplane flew overhead, shooting its cannons in a low roar.
The third platoon reported that the house next door had a jumble of wires leading to a propane tank. Fearing a booby trap, Sims got on the radio and called for a tank to level the building. The call came back: the road was too narrow. Well, Sims said, blow a hole through a wall and drive through it.
“It’s difficult terrain,” Sims yelled over the noise around him. “We’re having to move deliberately through the rubble.”
He took another look around the rooftop, then scurried back downstairs and into his Bradley.
Mortar rounds began to fall, at first far away, then closer and closer as unseen insurgents walked their mortar tubes forward a few feet at a time. Sims’ Bradley was stuck between two other vehicles, but to veer off the road would risk hitting a mine or bomb. Another mortar fell, and its shrapnel tattooed the side of the Bradley and rattled those sitting inside. “Kill those bastards, kill those motherfuckers,” someone screamed in the darkness.
No one said another word.
The MSM is sad...that it can no longer write, and bash the administration, about the quagmire in Falluja.
In looking around for something on this Talking Proud (Source) is VERY GOOD.
Note: I agree about the MSM. Some of the stuff I was was....well not very acturate.
The "Battle of Fallujah" should never have occurred.
The entire city and everything in it should have been levelled to the ground with intensive air and artillery and rocket attacks. No American serviceman should have been put in harm's way conducting this operation/
It was one of Bush's most egregious foreign policy mistakes.
I watched "Shootout" on the history channel yesterday showing the 1st two "Battle of Fallujah's".
I think this is the third attempt.
Unfortunately, that doesn't work. In the end analysis, you have to close with and destroy the enemy. That's our soldiers' job. As precise as our stand-off weapons are, they can't match the precision of aimed, direct, small-arms fire, delivered by a well-trained, well-equipped infantryman.
Just blowing up a town merely provides lots of good cover.....
"I think this is the third attempt."
Note the date.....
Fallujah Today: http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/199AE91259084273852570A9005E2829?opendocument
"It was one of Bush's most egregious foreign policy mistakes."
Incidentally, this particular battle had nothing to do with the President's foreign policy, per se. No specific battle does. How to conduct a particular battle, how to reduce a specific enemy, is a decision taken by the local commander. It's an operational and tactical decision, not policy/strategic level.....
How can we possibly win this without the support of French troops?
10-28-05 The two battles I saw were 04 and early 05. Remmber the Marines were sent in and were forced to withdraw by politicans - then re-entered 6 months later.
I guess we won't quibble over 2nd or 3rd.
I understand your statement in the first posting.
However, I would think that if a city was reduced to a pile of rubble and cinders and a cordone of entrenched troops placed around it to blow away anything that tried to crawl out, it would provide an object lesson, be more effective and result in the loss of fewer American military forces.
With respect to this posting, I saw several posting on this forum during the Fallujah incident in which it was stated that the American military forces on the ground were preparing to do exactly what I just suggested, until a plane load of beaurocrats from Washington - perhaps from the U.S. State Department arrrived and stopped it.
I would rather see 1,000 Iraqis blown to kingdom come than one Americna military man or woman injured - if such were possible.
"How to conduct a particular battle, how to reduce a specific enemy, is a decision taken by the local commander. It's an operational and tactical decision, not policy/strategic level....."
I totally agree that is how it SHOULD be done. But i have read of incidents throughout American history and the hsitory of other countries when politicians intruded themselves into military decisions that disagreed with the opinions of military men on the ground - generally with negative results.
What have you been smokin'? Blowing up the town destroys the people within it, and lets the people within that survive KNOW that we are superior. It also saves OUR peoples lives, and lets them know that each of them is more important than thousands of the enemy. If you were sitting outside the city walls, knowing that you were going in, would you want to wait until the city was leveled? Or go door to door?
If we stare flattening cities, there will be civilian casualties, large numbers of them, and that would be on our head. I hate the thought of losing anyone in our brave military too, but indescriminately flattening civilian areas would make us no better than the terrorists who have been killing thousands of Iraqi civilians the past two years. It was one thing in WWII when we didn't have tactical weapons and pin point bombing, and having to flatten whole cities to get the nazis and japs to submit, but now, we do have that. And muc as I don't like risking American lives, we have a moral obligation to minimize civilian lives lost, and not be like the terrorists who don't care who they kill. You can never evacuate a city entirely.
If this was a war in America, if America was not a super power, I would CERTAINLY not want a stronger foreign power who came to help us to just start devestating entire cities because it had a terrorists element inside it. Especially if I had family and friends in one or more of those cities. As it is, our military did an AWESOME job, they lost a minimum of troops, and in the battles of Najaf and Fallujah, over 4,000 troops were killed in just a few days. That's straight from MikeinIraq, who was there for a year and worked at Central Command in Bagdad. That is a military victory, and nothing Bush or anyone in the military should be ashamed of.
Yeah, after he is told he can't have air support, and it will not be bombed first, and to stay away from the mosques. All he is left with is, send in the ground troops, and try to keep your casualties low. If there is a commander that would rather go in without first having air support, or before bombardment, he is not much of a commander. In war, the point is to make the other bastard die, not minimize casualties of those that surround the enemy. Kill them all, let Allah sort them out.
"A truck pulled up carrying a rocket with about 350 feet of cord attached to it and 5-pound blocks of C4 plastic explosives spaced out every foot down the line."
Great story. I have to question the report of a five pound block of C4 every foot though.
It certainly shoudn't have taken two battles. I disagree about destroying the ville though. There WERE innocents in there. This is my main beef. They were assaulting and they stopped out of a misguided sense of "restraint" and "mercy" under pressure from the msm and un, which never met a terrorist they didn't like because that was the only group the 'restraint' benefitted.
The true civilians were in for five more months of oppression and abuse at the hands of the taliban like thugs because the 'tolerance' and 'restraint' didn't take their plight into consideration -- it was all for show, for public consumption.
Bush genuflected at the altar of PC, and people suffered and died needlessly for it. But it's a religion of Peace and Love, so...
If we could get the french troops in Iraq, they could teach us how to chase teenage Iraqi's into electrified french, causing a massive insurrection, and then teach us how to put out car fires.
Fantastic!!
God Bless our troops and our President.
MUST READ
No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah
Bing West
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0739325566/104-3660606-6320766?v=glance
From the Inside Flap
This is the face of war as only those who have fought it can describe it."–Senator John McCain
Fallujah: Iraq’s most dangerous city unexpectedly emerged as the major battleground of the Iraqi insurgency. For twenty months, one American battalion after another tried to quell the violence, culminating in a bloody, full-scale assault. Victory came at a terrible price: 151 Americans and thousands of Iraqis were left dead.
The epic battle for Fallujah revealed the startling connections between policy and combat that are a part of the new reality of war.
The Marines had planned to slip out of Fallujah "as soft as fog." But after four American contractors were brutally murdered, President Bush ordered an attack on the city–against the advice of the Marines. The assault sparked a political firestorm, and the Marines were forced to withdraw amid controversy and confusion–only to be ordered a second time to take a city that had become an inferno of hate and the lair of the archterrorist al-Zarqawi.
Based on months spent with the battalions in Fallujah and hundreds of interviews at every level–senior policymakers, negotiators, generals, and soldiers and Marines on the front lines–No True Glory is a testament to the bravery of the American soldier and a cautionary tale about the complex–and often costly–interconnected roles of policy, politics, and battle in the twenty-first century.-
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.