Posted on 04/15/2004 6:24:42 PM PDT by BenLurkin
CAMP VICTORY, Kuwait - Practically everyone in the 1498th Transportation Company of the California National Guard has a story to tell about Fallujah - most of them scary.
This is a story written in the eye of the storm. It is written after the opening rounds of the Marine Corps assault on barbaric insurgents inside Iraq's toughest town. By the time this story reaches print, the second stage of the battle may already have opened, or have been decided in the city of 300,000.
It was during the early stages of this siege, in the fighting around Fallujah and nearby Ramadi, that Marine Staff Sgt. Allan Walker, 28, of Palmdale was killed.
Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, is a city about the size of Lancaster and Palmdale combined. Staff Sgt. Dwaine "Ranger" Brooks of Lancaster is one of the few who have a few good words about Fallujah, describing it as a pretty town by Iraqi standards once you've gotten past the battle damage on the outskirts.
After days of fierce firefights and missile strikes, with hundreds of bodies buried in the local soccer fields, there is more battle damage than the last time Brooks passed through Fallujah driving a heavy equipment transporter truck for the Guard.
At this writing, soldiers from this California National Guard company are deployed in camps across Iraq, one of them the Al-Asad air base in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, where some of the fiercest fighting has taken place.
The combat support truckers have maintained position within the security perimeters of the bases while the main supply routes such as MSR Tampa that are the arteries of logistical support across the Montana-sized nation of Iraq have been closed.
The Antelope Valley Press editor was accompanied by a Guard lieutenant and sergeant into Baghdad last week during the fierce opening rounds of a showdown between U.S. forces leading the coalition and Islamist radicals who want to force the coalition forces to leave Iraq.
In sight of the editor and his escorts, a black cloud erupted above the Abu Gharaib section of Baghdad that signaled a fatal ambush on a fuel convoy manned by GIs and drivers for the Texas-based contracting company Kellogg, Brown & Root.
At this writing, three days later, news reports indicate seven KBR employees vanished in Iraq, disappearing from the ambushed section of highway as smoke from the attack drifted over Baghdad International Airport.
"We watched it as it happened," said Lt. Hatem Abdine, executive officer for the 1498th, who accompanied the Valley Press editor as an armed escort along with Sgt. Abdul Magid Sughayar . "This history was happening, and we were there when it happened."
The attack on the KBR convoy underscored the role of the combat support truckers of the California National Guard. Guard troops often provide armed escort security for KBR drivers.
When it became apparent that KBR drivers had vanished, presumably taken hostage, the company ordered a halt to all its driving operations. As of this writing, a number of KBR drivers are mixed with troops from the 1498th at various locations across Iraq. It was unclear when all would be able to return to base.
"They have better security with us," unit 1st Sgt. James Earl Norris explained. "Those KBR fuel convoys have up to 30 trucks with only a couple of gun trucks for security. When they're with us, we've got all kinds of stuff," meaning a lot more soldiers, and a lot more guns.
That sums up just a few developments of the past few days.
What triggered the siege of Fallujah was the murders of four American contractors whose bodies were burned, desecrated and strung from a bridge outside the embattled redoubt of some of the most vicious elements of the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
At this writing, negotiations reportedly involved whether fighters in Fallujah would turn over the killers and desecrators of the contract security workers.
In the recent days' fighting, medical workers inside Fallujah say 600 have been killed, and insurgents have claimed many were women and children. A Marine Corps spokesman denied that claim.
"What I think you will find is 95% of those were military-age males that were killed in the fighting," Marine Lt. Brennan Byrne told The Associated Press.
The Marines arrived in country with a mission that had a paradoxical description upon arrival. Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis advertised that Marines skilled in the rudiments of Arab culture and language would try to apply a "velvet glove approach" and woo the local populace, even in havens for insurgents such as Fallujah and nearby Ramadi in Anbar Province.
Mattis cautioned his Marines not to let insurgents' vicious tactics make the troops hate all Iraqis. Even then, in early March, other seasoned American soldiers were skeptical about prospects for success with the velvet glove in areas that derived benefits from Saddam's rule.
On a recent visit to Lancaster to accept the key to the city, 101st Airborne's 2nd Brigade commander, Col. Joe Anderson, a veteran of nearly a year of policing Iraq, spoke on the subject. Anderson's "Strike Brigade" laid the siege that killed Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, who were, after Saddam, the most dreaded murderers in the regime.
"I have the highest respect for my brothers in the Marine Corps," Anderson told the Antelope Valley Press. "But I think they are going to find that velvet glove treatment is going to hold for about five minutes in the Sunni Triangle."
It did not hold much longer, in fact. But Mattis also declared that the Marines' arrival in the Sunni Triangle to replace the 82nd Airborne Division would pose a historic test for the 1st Marine Division from Camp Pendleton.
In his letter to sailors and Marines, he said the division's return to Iraq after last year's war "will be our Guadalcanal, our Chosin Reservoir, our Hue City." And he said that when "a piano mover is called, Marines don't move the piano bench, they move the piano."
And it is just so, outside Fallujah, where tonight a cease-fire that could change at any moment is holding. Many veterans old enough to remember Vietnam liken the fighting of the past week to the Tet Offensive, a turning point in the Vietnam War. Their worry, Sgt. Jeff Barkey of the 1498th said, is that Americans understand that it is U.S. coalition forces who are controlling the battle, not the insurgents.
At this writing, Main Supply Routes Tampa, Jackson and others are closed to convoy traffic. So, National Guard truckers remain at their stations, awaiting developments, awaiting the next page of history.
"I wish I could be up there with them," said 1498th Spc. Albert Lopez. "I want to be there supporting them."
And it was the same in the Victory tent set aside for "Morale, Recreations and Welfare." A room full of GIs watched the news, captivated, waiting, waiting the next move.
Joseph Galloway, military co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young," and dean of war correspondents for Knight Ridder Newspapers, sent an e-mail message to the AV Press editor in the aftermath of the KBR convoy ambush in Baghdad.
Galloway related this account of the fighting in Fallujah.
"One of our KR photojournalists got winged," he said, during fighting that killed 13 Marines and hundreds of Iraqi fighters.
Galloway continued that to protect the Knight Ridder photographer, the Marines stuffed him into a sewer, "then climbed up and stood on his back as a firing platform. Those are hard guys."
Those are the Marines who are surrounding Fallujah tonight. They have ceased hostilities for an interlude, but Iraq's top U.S. commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and Gen. John Abizaid, Central Command's chief, declared U.S. forces ready to fight, fix and finish the forces that oppose them.
In the base camp tents of the 1498th, Sgt. Doug Duhaime of Hesperia and Spc. Nathaniel Fisher recall their last convoy through Fallujah, which took place only days before the killing of the four contractors, the event that triggered the current siege.
"It was March 25, about 9:30 a.m.," Fisher said. "We've been through Fallujah a lot, and it's one of those places that is never friendly. People don't smile. They'll wave their shoes at you." Showing the bottom of a shoe is a sign of hostility in the region.
Trucks from the National Guard, carrying heavy equipment, moved across a bridge over the Euphrates River. Suddenly, an enormous explosion rang the ears of all the convoy drivers.
"It was an IED," Fisher recalled, referring to the remotely detonated roadside bombs that pose grave dangers to convoy traffic.
"We started returning fire," Fisher said. "We all returned fire."
A videotape of the ambush taken by one of the drivers reveals a sharp, sudden, large explosion, with recorded radio traffic of convoy leaders urging everyone to drive like hell to get off the bridge.
"Duhaime, veteran of nearly a year of convoys, noticed a pair of men who appeared to be Iraqi police in a white pickup truck at the end of the bridge.
"They threw their weapons into the truck," Duhaime said, believing they wanted to show that they were not hostile.
But Duhaime noticed the Iraqis weren't wearing the badges and shoulder brassards commonly worn by Iraq's new police forces, and that made him suspicious.
Meanwhile, the Guard truckers returned a hail of gunfire that suppressed further attack.
"We fire back every time, and we fire a lot," said Sgt. John O'Hern. "That's how we've made it this far for so long."
A few days later, the private security contractors, reportedly former Army Rangers and an ex-Navy SEAL, were massacred, burned and desecrated, then their bodies strung from a bridge in a town of which the name has become a symbol for hostility to attempts to restore peace and security to Iraq.
Staff Sgt. Linda Freeman remembers her truck stuck in Fallujah last year, and the way the sweat drenched her and her heart pounded as she tried to get the vehicle moving again and out of harm's way. Staff Sgt. Michael Dufresne helped her get the truck unstuck.
"Eighty-Eight Mike is the job description, military trucker," he said Monday. "But we've had to do everything in this war. We've had to be military police. To protect our convoys, we've had to be infantry."
On Monday night, the eye of the storm, the truckers and trucks were protected behind the security of fortified camp walls while the Marines made their preparations to move the piano, not the piano bench.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Editor Dennis Anderson rejoined California National Guard troops, many of them from the Antelope Valley, with whom he embedded last year before the invasion of Iraq. He reunited with them during the past week as the battle of Fallujah opened.
Thank you, Dennis Anderson, and Antelope Valley Press.
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Joseph Galloway, military co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young," and dean of war correspondents for Knight Ridder Newspapers (there's some good news, Ronnie), sent an e-mail message to the AV Press editor in the aftermath of the KBR convoy ambush in Baghdad.
Galloway related this account of the fighting in Fallujah.
"One of our KR photojournalists got winged," he said, during fighting that killed 13 Marines and hundreds of Iraqi fighters.
Galloway continued that to protect the Knight Ridder photographer, the Marines stuffed him into a sewer, "then climbed up and stood on his back as a firing platform. Those are hard guys."
The attack on the KBR convoy underscored the role of the combat support truckers of the California National Guard. Guard troops often provide armed escort security for KBR drivers.
When it became apparent that KBR drivers had vanished...the company ordered a halt to all its driving operations. As of this writing, a number of KBR drivers are mixed with troops from the 1498th at various locations across Iraq.
"They have better security with us," unit 1st Sgt. James Earl Norris explained. "Those KBR fuel convoys have up to 30 trucks with only a couple of gun trucks for security. When they're with us, we've got all kinds of stuff," meaning a lot more soldiers, and a lot more guns.
That sums up just a few developments of the past few days.
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Re-ping, in case Cannoneer's is buried under my day's pings. This one's special.
Stay safe, you two!
Related (Chaplain who loves his Marines and God):
8 The View from a Chaplain serving in Iraq (Fallujah) ~ "We must stay the course."
honestly,if I read one more snide comment about how the Guard is somehow not doing the hard work of this war, I think I will scream.....
God bless our troops.....
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