Posted on 03/24/2003 4:15:36 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
NEAR NAJAF, Iraq - As the sun sets, nearly 3,000 vehicles are lined up single file on a highway deep inside Iraq.
"Holy ... will you look at that," says Capt. Chris Carter, commanding officer of A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, glancing over his shoulder. "Looks like a traffic jam in Atlanta."
Seated in the right hand chair in the turret of a Bradley fighting vehicle, Carter, from Watkinsville, Ga., begins singing. The five others in the vehicle hear him over their headsets, the only way possible because of the roar of the diesel engine and the clack-clack of the metal tracks.
It's been more than 24 hours of hard driving to get here, about 60 miles from the holy Shiite city of Najaf. After 14 hours more on the road, A Company would see its first combat of the war.
Spc. Zachary Watkins, driving the Bradley, requests Hank Williams Jr.'s, "Family Tradition."
"I said leave me alone, I'm singing all night long," Carter warbles in a perfect country and western croon. The others join in. After a few bars, they can't remember the rest.
"I forgot the words," sings Carter. "I guess we'll just ride in this Bradley singing all night long. Cuz it's . . . family tradition."
So it goes, on the road to Baghdad as coalition forces speed toward the waiting enemy.
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It was dawn on Friday when A Company, known as "Attack," began rolling toward the Iraqi border. Overnight, members of the 1st Marine Division had begun the ground war, crossing the six-mile demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait, heading north toward Basra, Iraq's second largest city.
Carter's A Company was temporarily assigned to the Army's 4th Battalion, 64th Regiment, a fast-maneuver unit that comprises part of the Second "Spartan" Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division.
The 3rd's two other brigades had already moved north with the main thrust, heading for An Nasiriyah, where coalition forces would experience their first heavy casualties over the weekend.
Spartan Brigade was to sneak in behind them and make a flanking move west across the desert, intending to surprise the enemy by turning up near Najaf.
At 6:30 a.m., Carter's Bradley cleared the final sand berm in the demilitarized zone. Carter's voice crackled in the headsets: "Gentlemen, we are now in Iraq."
Riding next to Carter was Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings, his bald-headed master gunner from Sarasota, Fla. Ivings, Carter and Watkins, the driver, had an easy rapport, a product of hours spent together in tight quarters.
Ivings had strapped a pink and white stuffed bunny to the top of their vehicle and Carter kept threatening to get rid of it, part of their constant ribbing.
Three other men - the secondary gunner, secondary driver and a communications man - were also crammed into the Bradley, which is like an iron box on the back of a high speed bulldozer.
They are part of the armored portion of the brigade, dubbed Team Heavy Metal, more than 70 M1-A1 Abrams tanks and 60 Bradley fighting vehicles, leading the way. More than 2,000 support vehicles - Team Rock and Roll - would follow.
Team Heavy Metal crossed the desert in a wedge formation, kicking up waves of dust as they passed rusted hulks of Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers destroyed in the first Gulf War.
It was three hours of orangey, flat terrain before they saw the first signs of life. Bedouins grazing their sheep, goats and camels, came out of their tents to watch the 21st Century army rumble past.
At 11 a.m., the convoy stopped for a few hours to refuel and clear their air filters, then got underway again.
Through his thermal sights, Ivings spotted a child playing on a rusting tank hulk.
"If I saw the American army coming like this, I don't think I'd be playing on an old Iraqi tank," he said.
By nightfall, the convoy hit rougher terrain. Bouncing up and down the gullies, Watkins struggled to keep their Bradley from overturning.
It was 4 a.m. when they reached the first assembly area where they waited for the support vehicles to catch up. The men, surprised they hadn't seen any fighting yet, tried to catch a few hours of sleep.
"This war is boring," said Watkins, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
By sunrise Saturday, it had started raining, turning the sand into a muddy mess.
Around noon, in nearby As-Samawah, an Iraqi armored battalion was spotted making a move as if it were going to confront the convoy. The 1st Battery of the 9th Field Artillery opened fire. The Iraqi units stopped.
The radio crackled with a report from a scouting party. About 45 Iraqi soldiers had approached as if to surrender, then raised their weapons. The scouts killed them.
Mid-afternoon, they broke camp for Najaf. By nightfall, nearly 3,000 vehicles were on one highway. Commanders, more worried about rear-end collisions than being spotted by the enemy, ordered their men to drive with their headlights on.
At 8 p.m., the lead unit, 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, encountered Iraqi Baathist Party militia in pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns. They were maneuvering in muddy farmer's fields, where the tanks and Bradleys risked getting stuck.
The convoy pulled over to allow the artillery unit to move up and join the fight. A few hours later, news came that the 1st Battalion had knocked out 12 trucks and captured 20 prisoners.
The convoy rolled on briefly, only to stop again as the artillery units lit up the night sky. The Iraqis, thinking they were being attacked by planes, fired bursts from an anti-aircraft gun.
Just after midnight, Col. Philip DeCamp, 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment's energetic leader, called a meeting of his commanders, including Carter.
"We've got a big ass firefight, it's like the OK corral out there," said DeCamp, jabbing his finger at a spot on a map spread out in the back of Carter's Bradley.
He told his battalion leaders to move into the fight, replacing the tiring 1st Battalion.
Looking at Carter and using his company's nickname, Decamp said: "Attack, you've got to get them out of there. Just hose them down if you see anything hostile."
DeCamp, a Desert Storm veteran, barked orders for his tank commanders to use a shell that explodes in the air against the enemy's infantry.
"You hit them with an impact air round and it looks like a bowling strike; all the pins fall down."
As Carter conferred with his platoon leaders later, his style was more laid back. He spoke slowly with his easy drawl.
Still, he was excited. "The game is on," he told his men.
"If you see a silhouette with a weapon, kill it," he said. "You think they are using a building, you see suspicious activity, shoot the building."
As they prepared to move forward, word came that 100 Iraqi fighters already had been killed and 15 of their vehicles destroyed in the fight.
At 5:15 a.m., A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, made its first enemy contact of the war.
It was pitch dark, except for the lights of Najaf in the distance and some street lights around a nearby grain elevator.
A Company was guarding the southern edge of the battle zone. Infantry soldiers piled out of their Bradleys and fanned out.
In front of them, an abandoned commercial building, with sandbags on the roof, sat next to a mosque. The mosque had an antennae strapped to the minaret. Just behind the buildings were several houses, one with a white flag in front.
Through the Bradley's scope, Ivings spotted a man moving furtively around the commercial building, about a thousand meters away.
American tanks opened fire. In support, Ivings fired his 25 mm cannon, equipped with high explosive, depleted-uranium shells.
"Wow, look at that," Ivings said, as two basketball-sized holes open up in the building. He was unused to the full strength rounds. Troops use weaker munitions in training.
He fired again, knocking down the wall. "Whoa, that was awesome."
Carter ordered a humvee, equipped with a computer and megaphone, to roll up to the building. Inside, soldiers typed in a message and out it came, loud, in Arabic: Please lay down your weapons and come out. Carter ordered his infantrymen to search the building.
Ivings thought he saw a man with a white turban in a nearby trench.
"Do you have hostile intent?" Carter said.
"Yes!" Iving said excitedly, then quickly said, "No!"
He paused. "He's in the trench . . . Do I have permission to fire?"
About to fire the Bradley's cannon, he suddenly stopped.
"Hold it, hold it," Ivings said. "It's a horse."
The infantry search of the building turned up nothing. Later, Ivings was teased mercilessly about the horse.
"I could only see it's head and it looked like a turban," he said in his defense.
Carter hushed him. "We would have never lived that down," he said.
The convoy packed up and rolled on past Najaf.
Toward Baghdad.
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Chris Tomlinson has been on assignment for about three weeks with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division. Michael Luo is a national writer based in New York.
So basically, in spite of our setbacks, a cavalry scout outfit--that is probably only supposed to do route recon and security and avoid directly engaging the enemy if possible--wiped out, in a single meeting, twice the number of soldiers we have lost to the Iraqis?
Wow, that really gives me "second thoughts" about this war. Not.
Good post. Thanks. Mud, our guys rock!
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