Posted on 04/18/2005 11:34:12 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
As the convoy approached Mosul, an Iraqi man looked toward Tech. Sgt. Bob Busse and slid his hand across his throat.
A short while later, the assemblage of about 70 gun trucks, armored Stryker vehicles, tractor trailers and heavy equipment transporters entered a section of Mosul that only a few days prior was the scene of a bustling outdoor market.
On this day, however, “it was eerily quiet,” said Tech. Sgt. Robert Weis, who viewed the abandoned setting from the driver's seat of a 5-ton Air Force gun truck. “We looked at each other and said, ‘this is not good.'”
The voice of the convoy commander came across the radio, “This is where we've been hit before.”
The ambush begins
“ When he said that, he might as well have hit the button to start the attack,” said Staff Sgt. Bill Halstead, a gun truck commander in the next-to-last vehicle. Two vehicles at the front of the convoy were suddenly disabled by an improvised explosive device and were blocking the road. The convoy came to a halt, with its maneuverability severely restricted by steep curbs on both sides of the road.
From Sergeant Busse's position about three-quarters of the way toward the end of the convoy, the ensuing melee began with a few shots that sounded like firecrackers.
“ Then all hell broke loose,” said Sergeant Busse, who saw the trail of a rocket propelled grenade streak above his truck, quickly followed by the sound of a large explosion. From his .50-caliber gun box on top of the truck, Tech. Sgt. Michael Mauro witnessed a swarm of Iraqi insurgents suddenly appear from alleyways, rooftops and windows of two- and three-story buildings on both sides of the road.
“ It was a well set up ambush,” Sergeant Weis said.
From every direction came a barrage of RPGs, Molotov cocktails, mortars and the hissing of bullets whizzing by from AK-47 assault rifles. Sergeant Busse saw an Airman in the gun box in front of him take a shot to the leg. Sergeant Mauro aimed his .50-cal toward a window where he spied two silhouettes and opened up a burst of about 30 rounds toward them while yelling, “Let's get out of here!”
Then, realizing the power of his .50-caliber, Sergeant Mauro contained his fire to minimize the shrapnel effect caused by bullets penetrating the walls of nearby buildings, sending cement debris back toward the vehicles. The noise of that weapon left Sergeant Busse almost deaf for the next three days.
Sergeant Halstead left his truck from the commander's position in the passenger seat and sprawled out on the hood. Doing so allowed him to direct his fire to the left without shooting across his driver. A thick cloud of smoke descended from above where his gunner operated an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon.
“ I was never so scared in my life,” Sergeant Mauro said of the moment.
“ We were just shooting at silhouettes in every window and rooftop,” said Sergeant Weis.
“ Am I ever going to get out of it,” Sergeant Mauro recalled thinking. “It was crazy. It was crazy. It was crazy.”
“ All I remember is shooting to the left and to the right,” Sergeant Busse said. “It was like a blur. I saw no faces.”
Time seemed to slow down. The noise of battle seemed muted, and the scene before them appeared foggy, or as if viewing through a fish bowl.
Survive the chokepoint
The convoy began to slowly move forward again, but that was a small consolation when they realized what they were approaching. It was a chokepoint where passing vehicles were bearing the brunt of intense enemy fire.
“We were thinking, ‘If you were in that area you were no good,'” Sergeant Busse said. As they approached the chokepoint, he felt like he was waiting in line at an amusement park. “It was like being on a Disneyland ride. ‘OK, guys, now it's your turn to go through the gauntlet.'”
Sergeant Weis remembers a “fight or flight” sensation as they drew closer to the chokepoint, and also described the feeling of being on a bizarre type of carnival ride he didn't want to be on but couldn't get off.
Just as they entered the chokepoint, Sergeant Halstead said, “This is it,” and switched his M-16 from single fire to automatic to lay down a suppressing fire. As they entered the worst of it, he looked up to check his gunner who was “smoking a cigarette and frying his weapon up at the same time.”
Saving a Soldier
Once safely through the chokepoint, Sergeant Weis approached the burning vehicles and navigated past them. He soon approached a tractor-trailer barely moving. Unable to pass it on the narrow street, he finally managed to pull beside it and yelled, “Are you all right?” “I'm hit, I'm hit,” said a female Soldier barely able to steer after a bullet struck her in the left shoulder.
As heavy insurgent fire continued from both sides of the road, Sergeant Weis managed to maneuver his truck close enough beside the wounded Soldier so that Sergeant Busse could grab her and switch positions in their respective trucks while Sergeant Mauro continued to lay down suppressing fire from above with his .50-caliber.
As Sergeant Busse entered the tractor trailer, the truck commander was firing out the passenger window. The mayhem escaped him for a second when he thought, “Wow, this is nice,” as he noticed the Army truck was equipped with air conditioning and comfy “air ride seats.” He was jolted back to reality by a loud noise from the top of the truck cab, and quickly put the truck in gear and got out of town.
Soon the convoy was exiting the worst of the violence and at about the same time began receiving fire support from an Iraqi national guard unit. Then they were safe within the confines of Camp Diamondback where the Soldier was treated for a minor bullet wound.
The fight had lasted about 40 minutes, but it seemed as if only a few minutes had passed, they said. Almost miraculously, only a few Airmen and Soldiers received minor injuries, while enemy losses were reported at 48 dead, 22 wounded and 15 detained.
Coping with war
When Sergeant Halstead called his wife later that day, he told her, “Honey, you almost lost me tonight,” but he didn't go into any detail except to say, “It was bad.”
“ We were thrilled to find out no one was killed,” Sergeant Mauro said. “Someone was looking out for us that day.”
None of the four men said they thought about dying during the ambush. They were focused on what they had to do.
“ The more you talk about it, the more you think, ‘Man we got lucky,'” Sergeant Weis said.
But memories of that day in August have remained on their minds more than they care to remember. Sergeant Busse said he sometimes has trouble sleeping and will wake up at 3 a.m. thinking he's still in Iraq. “There,” he said of nights in Iraq, “I woke up and kept my eyes shut hoping I was back home.”
The war changes you, said Sergeant Weis. He was always an easy-going guy before Iraq, but now approaches life with a bit more of a “matter-of-fact” attitude.
“ If you drive around Iraq and nothing ever happens to you, you could be OK. But we had IEDs hitting beside us, in front and behind us. You deal with this every day, and you get kind of desensitized to it.”
But they're proud of how they performed the day of the attack in Mosul and are relieved that everyone in their unit came home alive after eight months.
“ We did good that day,” Sergeant Busse said.
“ I was proud of being a Marine,” Sergeant Mauro said of his time in the Marine Corps, “but I would go to war with these guys any day.”
The four Air National Guardsmen in this story were deployed to Iraq for eight months in 2004 with the 1058th Aerospace Expeditionary Transportation Company at Camp Speicher near Tikrit. Their mission was to provide security for military and civilian convoys. Their home unit is the 106th Rescue Wing at Westhampton Beach, N.Y. The fifth member from the 106th deployed to Iraq, Tech. Sgt. Thomas Connell, typically traveled with the 1058th but was detached as a .50-caliber gunner on another mission the day of the Mosul attack. The Aug. 4 attack in this story was but one of several they encountered in Iraq, but it was the most dangerous. As a result, Sergeants Busse, Mauro and Weis were nominated for the army commendation medal with valor. Their company received 18 Purple Hearts. Sergeant Busse is a corrections officer with the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department in New York and lives in Shirley Long Island, N.Y.; Sergeant Halstead is a New York City corrections officer from Massapequa, N.Y.; Sergeant Mauro is a locomotive engineer with the Long Island Rail Road and is from Baiting Hollow, N.Y.; Sergeant Weiss is a corrections officer for Suffolk County in New York and is from Hampton Bays, N.Y.; Sergeant Connell is a tractor trailer driver for the U.S. Postal Service and resides in Medford, N.Y.
Heroes UP!
Bumparooni!
Anyone who does that should be shot dead on the spot. He's one of them.
Prayers UP! for our Men and Women in uniform!
Thank you LORD for protecting them today and always!
BTT!
Amen!
We can't know what might have happened otherwise but the question can still be asked: Do women belong in combat situations?
I be happy to provide the answer you seek, FRiend.
Not only "no", but "Hell NO!"
my question is : Why don't they have air cover from helicopter
gun ships when running danger zones like this ?
They have to have Little Birds , Apaches and Cobras on call , where are they??? And when things get really bad (like this)
why not pound the buildings into the dust with an AC-130 ???
They have to know these things, why aren't they doing them?
Calm down.
As the tactical operations officer (and Army Aviator for 23 years) for an Aviation Brigade that returned from Baghdad last summer, I can assure you, had attack aircraft been in the area, they would have been there.
You cannot "cover" every convoy along every road throughout every part of the country. You would need thousands of attack helicopters and crews to do this. To put it into perspective, it would take an entire battalion of Apaches to provide continuous coverage of one convoy on one day.
As for the AC-130s: at any given time, there are only a handfull in country, and they have more important, critical missions to do than providing security to a convoy.
Convoy security is best handled by a well-armed, well-trained, well-led group of troops in the convoy itself.
...“ Then all hell broke loose",....God bless you guys...watch your back.
...“ Then all hell broke loose",....God bless you guys...watch your back.
Thank you for your service and welcome home.
My beloved was also stationed in Iraq and convoys as he said were dangerous it was just the way it was. They did all they could to protect those traveling on that one dangerous road, I am sure you know which one but things happen.
Beloved's driver/medic was murdered on their return to camp. It was random but not unexpected one just hopes you never get in their sites.
Your comment was excellent, thank you very much.
You are right, there is no way to cover everyone's six but they do a pretty damn good job.
Dang! Now I can't whine about the Air Force's lack of "face time" with the enemy! ;-)
Good job and I'm glad the unit didn't suffer any losses.
He's definitely not one of the attackers!
Amazing -- a day in Iraq for a few of our finest. They're the best.
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