Click The Logo To Donate
Posted on 04/09/2003 10:18:14 AM PDT by Defiant
Iraqis killed after ambush by grenade
U.S. soldiers trap two attackers in bushes
HILLA, Iraq -- At times, this war has felt like an abstraction for the American side, a near-industrial exercise involving coordinated airstrikes against a specific grid on the map, followed by artillery strikes aimed with computer guidance systems, followed by tanks and then by infantry.
Tuesday, while some of the killing was done from the air and with artillery, two Iraqi soldiers on a roadside were in grenade-throwing range, hiding in the bushes as they made what would turn out to be their final strike.
The Iraqi attack came as U.S. forces moved to seize the last of three cities in a religious triangle here -- including Najaf and Karbala -- where Shiite Muslims are have generally opposed the government of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim.
The tanks rolled first toward Hilla, a town about 50 miles south of Baghdad where Iraqi authorities say dozens of civilians have been killed in recent days in U.S. attacks.
They were followed by infantry trucks carrying about 120 soldiers from the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. The soldiers got off the vehicles to check a grain warehouse at the side of the road. Sgt. Chuck Shy, a mechanic who had volunteered to help drive the troops into combat, hopped down.
"All I could see was a muzzle flash from the bushes," he said. He remembers diving to the ground, returning fire, a loud explosion, a bright flash.
A grenade had been hurled from those bushes. It landed 10 feet from Shy, then burst into uncountable bits of shrapnel. A few pieces tore into his face. Stunned, he hustled to the other side of the truck.
"I'm a soldier, but I'm a mechanic," he said. "I mean, we're trained for this, but I clean my gun once a week, that's about it."
The blast echoed down the convoy. Eight or nine vehicles to the rear, Sgt. Maj. Iuniasolua Savusa heard the explosion and rushed toward it, ordering the soldiers to take up combat positions along the shoulders of the road. He reached Shy's truck.
"I asked, 'Where did the grenade come from?'" Savusa said.
"I told him, 'It came from the bushes,'" Shy recalled.
The sergeant major reached onto the front seat of a truck to get a grenade from another soldier. Age 44, 5 feet, 11 inches tall, 195 pounds, Savusa worked methodically. As shots rang from the foliage a few yards away, he unpeeled the top of the protective canister, pulled the safety pin, and lobbed the grenade into the bushes.
"He threw it overhand and that was the end of the firing from the bushes," Shy said. "He came down here like John Wayne."
"It doesn't surprise me a bit. I expect it of Sgt. Maj. Savusa," said Col. Michael Linnington, whom Savusa serves as right-hand man. "That's the way that he leads. From the front of this brigade. He is a warrior. He exudes the warrior ethos."
"You've got to go to the sound of battle and direct soldiers in order to gain an upper hand on the enemy," said Savusa, a 27-year Army vet from American Samoa.
Afterwards, three or four other Iraqis retreated, firing as they went, according to the Americans.
Maj. Gen. Petraeus, who commands the 101st Airborne Division, called Savusa's actions heroic.
"He identified where the enemy location was and with total disregard for his own safety grabbed a grenade, engaged the enemy with it and killed both. Sgt. Maj. Savusa always has been a hero to a lot of us and even more so now."
Savusa, 34, is no stranger to combat. Last year he helped lead 3rd Brigade troops during Operation Anaconda, one of the biggest battles in the war against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
He was nonchalant about his exploits Tuesday.
"It's not hard. It's kill or be killed," he said. "My ears are ringing like a son of a gun."
The Kiowa helicopters pummeled the grain silo complex for nearly an hour, and infantry troops stormed into the building where they found huge stashes of weapons and some Iraqi fighters holed up on the second floor.
By nightfall, the 3rd Brigade troops had found nine caches of weapons scattered across western and southern Hillah. The haul included 1,000 air defense artillery rounds, several hundred mortars, hundreds of rocket propelled grenades and tens of thousands of small-arms ammunition.
The U.S. troops also discovered 50 Iraqi military fuel tankers and uncovered a warehouse packed with stashes of food and supplies that should have been distributed to the Iraqi public through the U.N. sponsored food for oil program. That included hundreds of thousands of bags and boxes of sugar, soap, baby formula and other supplies.
"He was sitting on it, not distributing it to the people who, if you look around, really need it," Linnington said.
The troops plan to hold the food and turn it over to new civilian authorities once they are established to distribute it.
Soldiers placed the bodies of the two dead Iraqis by the roadside and covered them with blankets. Savusa walked over and ordered the U.S. troops to get out of their defensive position in a foxhole the Iraqis had dug. Then he ordered the soldiers to bury the bodies in the foxhole. He said it was out of respect for the dead.
"I've got kids too," said Savusa, father of five. "It is sad to see somebody die for no particular reason except that someone brainwashed them to fight for a lost cause. Now there are some fatherless children out there."
A brigadier general, Benjamin C. Freakley, strode up to the fighting, yelling at the soldiers to spread out so that a single grenade could not kill a dozen soldiers at a time.
A voice answered: "Sir, are you crazy? You don't belong up here."
Freakley answered: "That's all right. But right now you need to disperse. You OK, boys?"
Another voice answered. "Sir, I've don't think I've ever been more scared."
The general answered: "You'll be fine. Just fight through it."
About 10 or 15 feet away, the body of one of the two Iraqi soldiers lay face down in the dust, fingers partially clenched. His uniform was dark olive, almost black; the boots were new; his hair looked to have been freshly trimmed in a military cut; he seemed to have a sturdy, muscular build.
"That was a suicide mission, to take on so many soldiers at this close distance, when the soldiers have so much more than you," Savusa said.
Freakley suggested that the Iraqis may have been scared out of their hiding spot when the infantry soldiers left the trucks and started walking around just a few feet away.
On the other side of the road, the camp site for the Iraqi team was still fresh. Blankets were placed neatly on the ground, a tea set was stacked up, and half-eaten pita bread was left on a plate. A tee-shirt, apparently field-laundered, swung from a tree limb for drying.
When the fighting had quieted, the general called to Staff Sgt. Thomas Massey and Pvt. Rob Maher to retrieve blankets from the Iraqi camp, to wrap the bodies.
The dead men had fine watches. One wore a wedding band. The blankets were of good quality, it seemed to Maher. "The way I look at it, he's just a soldier, doing our job," he said.
Massey answered: "True. And the job is dog eat dog."
They carried the blankets to the bodies. The air heaved and spun with humidity. In the trenches, the U.S. soldiers fidgeted, sipped water, watched for more fire from the warehouse. A breeze passed, and set swaying the ferns on the side of the road where the Iraqis had hidden themselves, and where they now lay still.
"He was sitting on it, not distributing it to the people who, if you look around, really need it," Linnington said. The troops plan to hold the food and turn it over to new civilian authorities once they are established to distribute it.
This part of the story needs to broadcast far and wide.
THAT is what it means to be a soldier! DE OPPRESSO LIBER!
Savusa, 34, is no stranger to combat
Man, the guys been in the Army since he was 7!
This is the kind of multiculturalism I LIKE!
And later in the story...
Savusa, 34, is no stranger to combat. Last year he helped lead 3rd Brigade troops during Operation Anaconda, one of the biggest battles in the war against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
WHOA! The guy enlisted when he was 7. That's one heck of a soldier!
LOL, I saw that too, but previously it said he was 44, so that means he enlisted when he was 17.
"As the grounds-crew entered the opposing team's dugout, the body of one of the visiting players lay face down in the dust, fingers partially clenched around a can of Skoal. His uniform was grey; the cleats were new; his hair looked to have been freshly trimmed in a mohawk cut; he seemed to have a sturdy, muscular build...."
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.