Sun man sees surrender ("troops shot their own commanders")

The Sun ^ | March 21, 2003

[Cultural Jihad]

Sun man sees surrender

PHOTOGRAPHER Terry Richards, 52, has been with The Sun since 1980 and has previously covered the Afghan war.

This time Terry, of Essendon, Herts, joined 40 Commando Royal Marines on HMS Ocean and followed their attack on Al Faw in Southern Iraq. Here is his amazing report and pictures.

IRAQI troops shot their own commanders with Kalashnikov rifles — so they could surrender.

I overheard a Marine reporting to an officer what the captives had admitted to him. And I don’t blame them for it.

Not when you have just witnessed the awesome sight of 40 Commando Royal Marines capturing a key oil refinery — and seen doomed Iraqi fighters crumble at their gunposts.

Faced with the astonishing firepower and determination of these elite Marines, even hardened soldiers would crack.

As for this poorly-equipped Iraqi force, it takes just two hours for Our Boys to blast a devastating hole through their shattered morale.

Scores of demoralised men with fear in their eyes and white flags waving above their heads capitulate under a barrage of bullets at the Al Faw refinery.

They look a beaten, bloodied and bedraggled bunch. Some have suffered life-threatening wounds in the two-hour firefight with the Marines.

The injured are patched up by the British troops, while all prisoners are searched for concealed weapons.

Surrender ... captive waves white flag

THE GENEVA CONVENTION

A captive waves a white flag with his face obscured in accordance with advice from the MoD. Under the Geneva Convention PoWs must be shielded from public curiosity.

Those fit enough are ordered to put their hands on their heads. Others are commanded to lie spread-eagled in the dust as they are checked over.

The Iraqis desperately try to give their captors money but, of course, none take it.

They keep repeating: “It’s your money, it’s your money.” The Marines’ superior skill, will and firepower has simply overwhelmed the Iraqis.

I am lucky enough to be the first photographer into enemy territory and it is a genuine privilege to work with this highly-trained elite troop.

I had a place on an assault helicopter as we took the 45-minute midnight flight to swoop on Al Faw from our Camp Viking desert base on the Kuwaiti/Iraq border.

It was delayed due to bad weather and because the landing site was not quite as it first appeared from the satellite photos.

The objective was simple — to secure the oilfield so Iraqis could not blow it up.

Hold it there ... Marine searches Iraqi prisoner

There was a tangible sense of fear among the men that the Iraqis would deliberately unleash an ecological disaster.
Our assault helicopters landed inside the giant oil installation in pitch dark.

The Marines hit the ground running, forming a perfect arc and setting off light sticks to guide a path through the blackness.

That allowed me to make a 200-metre dash to a building pinpointed as a safe haven from which to watch the action unfold.

I took pictures of the landing using hi-tech infrared night vision equipment.

When the firefight broke out I was kept at a safe distance — but still felt the hairs on the back of my neck bristle.

The sound of crackling gunfire filled the air for two hours as the enemy faced the full awesome force of belt-fed GP machine guns and SA80 assault rifles.

Even after the refinery had been secured and I could join the Commandos, there was still mortar fire trained on us.

Still a threat ... Our Boys check for hidden weapons

It was taken out shortly afterwards, but there were dangerous skirmishes well after the main firefight was won.

My heart was in my mouth because I knew we were inside enemy territory. I just kept my head down and concentrated on the job in hand — the only way in a combat situation.

I saw how the Commandos handled the prisoners and can report their treatment was exceptionally good.

Before the Al Faw operation I had spent a week with the Marines on HMS Ocean.

We were going to be lifted off the ship by helicopter but there was a change of plan.

Instead, we landed on a stretch of coastline known as Green Beach — and we were completely unopposed.
We were then transported by lorries for half an hour into a secret desert location called Camp Viking.

We were told we were within striking distance of the Iraqi border.

Help at hand ... medic treats a prisoner's wounds

Living conditions were basic. For three days we survived on minimal army rations and lived in tiny foxholes — just holes in the sand.

I was well looked after by Sergeant Major Greg Fenton. He is a great bloke and made sure I coped.

The foxholes had to be at least three feet deep to give protection from mortar fire.

On the second day a fierce sandstorm blew up out of nowhere. It was unbelievable — the sand gets in your mouth, up your nose, everywhere.

On the last day there we received about eight gas and Scud alerts.

I had to wear my protective chemical suit and was ordered to keep my gas mask within a metre’s reach at all times.

At times it felt like the Scud warnings were coming every five minutes. Luckily no missile landed near us.

At the end of the third day we were flown into Al Faw — and an experience that will never leave me.

Other pictures:

Awesome ... invasion
copters leave HMS Ocean

Spearhead ... a Royal
Marine moves into AlFaw

Mercy ... Marines medics
help an injured Iraqi

Surrender ... captured
Iraqis with hands bound

[FairOpinion]

Another article with a little more info, from UK Times:


Conscripts shoot their own officers rather than fight
From Tom Newton Dunn with 40 Commando near al-Faw, southern Iraq
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-619488,00.html



IRAQI conscripts shot their own officers in the chest yesterday to avoid a fruitless fight over the oil terminals at al-Faw. British soldiers from 40 Commando’s Charlie Company found a bunker full of the dead officers, with spent shells from an AK47 rifle around them.
Stuck between the US Seals and the Royal Marines, whom they did not want to fight, and a regime that would kill them if they refused, it was the conscripts’ only way out.

In total, 40 Commando had collected more than 100 prisoners of war yesterday from the few square miles of the al-Faw peninsula that they controlled. Two of them were a general in the regular Iraqi Army and a brigadier. They came out from the command bunker where they had been hiding after 40 Commando’s Bravo Company fired two anti-tank missiles into it. With them was a large sports holdall stuffed with money. They insisted that they had been about to pay their troops, to the disbelief of their captors.

These were the men who had left their soldiers hungry, poorly armed and almost destitute for weeks, judging by the state we had seen them in, while appearing to keep the money for themselves.

It was only as dawn broke that the 900 Royal Marine commandos, who had moved forward during the night, realised the pitiful shape of the enemy. The first white flag was hoisted by three soldiers in a trench just outside the complex’s north gate, which had been surrounded by heavy machinegunners from Command Company.

They were taken prisoner by Corporal Fergus Gask, 26, who may have accepted the first surrender of the war. “We started engaging their positions with GPMGs (general purpose machineguns) when I noticed this white flag go up,” he said. “I didn’t know whether it was a trick or not, but I approached the trench anyway, probably a pretty silly thing to do if I think about it.

“But as soon as I saw their faces I knew they were genuine. They actually looked very relieved they didn’t have to fight any more. And they became very pleased to see us when they realised we weren’t going to do them any harm.”

The dawn light appeared to have provoked an exodus.

Small groups of dishevelled Iraqis were standing up all around us with their hands in the air, or with a dirty white T-shirt tied to a stick waving above them. Every time you turned around, a new trickle of silhouettes emerged from the horizon walking slowly towards us. One Marine joked: “Oh no. They’re surrendering at us from all sides.”

Each prisoner was thoroughly searched before he was accepted into captivity in a procedure that the commandos had clearly practised many times. The injured were quickly treated and a handful received almost immediate helicopter evacuation from the oil terminal to HMS Ocean, where a temporary hospital for PoWs has been set up.

As a new day began, so did the Marines’ gradual expansion outwards into the large expanse of waste ground that is still pockmarked with shell craters from the Iran-Iraq War.To save them having to translate from Arabic maps, 40 Commando named the clear paths they had established or wanted to seize with London street names: Downing Street, Abbey Road or Fulham Road.

Engineers, meanwhile, began the work of shutting down the many oil pipeline valves.

[Justice]

Super post. Very Interesting! Nice HTML work putting it together too.

[Jhoffa_]

I don't blame them, I would do the same thing in a heartbeat.

Some tyrant abducts you, starves you and then expects you to kill anyone he points at just so you can win the pleasure of remaining in a tyranny surrounded by billboard sized images of that nutcase day and night?

No thanks.. That kind of "patriot" I am not.

[Aracelis]

Respectful Royal Marines ping!

[PhilDragoo]

What a refreshing change for a journalist to speak in glowing terms of "our boys".

Decimate the ranks of the septic western press pool and clone the Sun man.

Absolute stunning performance by these commandos.

When they're done they can take out the Labour Party and give Tony Blair a clear field of fire to follow us to Teheran and Pyongyang.

[A CA Guy]

Wow CJ!

[PianoMan]

That is hilarious! "After I hard day of defending Our Leader I like to chill on the stoop with some OE"...*bleah*

[Aracelis]

One Marine joked: “Oh no. They’re surrendering at us from all sides.”

lol...poor chaps.

[piasa]

Iraq is so corrupt that when their prisons are overflowing- or whenever Hussein had a hankering for it- prisoners are simply culled down to the desired number through arbitrary executions. From what I understand, the prison guards are known to go about town finding the relatives of prisoners in order to extort money from them in exchange for not putting loved ones on the death list.

So in Iraq, bribe money can mean the difference between life and death.

These captives, in fear of their lives and the unknown, were likely just trying to buy themselves some insurance in the only way they know.

[VOA]

I am sure those Iraqis are pleasantly surprised that they don't need to give
money to be treated decently.

Poor guys are probably in about the same mental state I was in when the Iron Curtain
and the USSR started crumbled...
all I could think was "this is too good to be true...what's the catch?".

I pray Duyba and his GI Joes and Tony Blair and his "Tommy Atkins" can
swiftly, painlessly finish this job and help these guys become former prisoners and future
friends.

Heck, if I had the disposable income, a trip to a country that is the site of
two big military campaigns would sound interesting...

[Bogey78O]

It's a shame people become like that.

[freebilly]

These captives, in fear of their lives and the unknown, were likely just trying to buy themselves some insurance in the only way they know.

No doubt they've been taught that the US and British forces would capture and execute them....

[FairOpinion]

Heck, if I had the disposable income, a trip to a country that is the site of
two big military campaigns would sound interesting...
----

I am sure it will be. Also it's a county of great historical heritage, which has been suppressed in the mandatory Saddam worship.

IRAQ HISTORY
http://home.achilles.net/~sal/iraq_history.html


In ancient times the land area now known as modern Iraq was almost equivalent to Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates (in Arabic, the Dijla and Furat, respectively), the Mesopotamian plain was called the Fertile Crescent.

This region is known as the Cradle of Civilization; was the birthplace of the varied civilizations that moved us from prehistory to history. An advanced civilization flourished in this region long before that of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, for it was here in about 4000BC that the Sumerian culture flourished .

The civilized life that emerged at Sumer was shaped by two conflicting factors: the unpredictability of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which at any time could unleash devastating floods that wiped out entire peoples, and the extreme richness of the river valleys, caused by centuries-old deposits of soil.

Thus, while the river valleys of southern Mesopotamia attracted migrations of neighboring peoples and made possible, for the first time in history, the growing of surplus food, the volatility of the rivers necessitated a form of collective management to protect the marshy, low-lying land from flooding. As surplus production increased and as collective management became more advanced, a process of urbanization evolved and Sumerian civilization took root.

The people of the Tigris and the Euphrates basin, the ancient Sumerians, using the fertile land and the abundant water supply of the area, developed sophisticated irrigation systems and created what was probably the first cereal agriculture as well as the earliest writing, cuneiform - a way of arranging impression stamped on clay by the wedge-like section of chopped-off reed stylus into wet clay.

Through writing, the Sumerians were able to pass on complex agricultural techniques to successive generations; this led to marked improvements in agricultural production.

[happygrl]

Thanks for both your posts FO.

Remarkable stories of our remarkable men.

Go Brits!

[Cultural Jihad]

Every time you turned around, a new trickle of silhouettes emerged from the horizon walking slowly towards us. One Marine joked: “Oh no. They’re surrendering at us from all sides.”

: )

[jimtorr]

I'd just like to add one thing: the Sumerian culture seems to have appeared on the scene full blown. None of the normal development stages have ever been found. It's possible that the people whose descendants became the Sumerians migrated to the area from elsewhere.

[Iris7]

Americans and British troops have worked together well in the past. In the Spring of '45 the British were on the north and the Americans on the south end of a line just inside Germany. The Rhine had been crossed earlier.

The Germans were convinced by skillful disinformation the Americans would make a holding attack, and the British the breakthrough, so the Germans massed against the British. The British attacked, pushing hard, the Germans committed their reserves, lots of shooting.

Well, right to the South General George Patton had been waiting for the commitment of the German reserve. He attacked under an artillery barrage and shattered the German force before him. His armoured Corps was loose inside Germany, and the only nearby dangerous German units were locked in battle with the British. Patton was just the man for what came next - a long range armoured attack intended to unhinge the German defenses. It went well. Patton's Corps was the right fist, the British army the left fist. The Germans truly got their rear ends kicked.

[happygrl]

I like that imagery: Americans and British comprising a two-fisted boxer.

We're making another good fight story together to put in the history books.

[American in Israel]

I am sure those Iraqis are pleasantly surprised that they don't need to give money to be treated decently.

Actualy they are scared sh*tless, when the money is refused, they figure they are dead men. It's a cultural thing.

[Riley]

I think that you are correct.

baksheesh

SYLLABICATION:	bak·sheesh
PRONUNCIATION:	bkshsh, bk-shsh
NOUN:	Inflected forms: pl. baksheesh A gratuity, tip, or bribe paid to expedite service, especially in some Near Eastern countries.
ETYMOLOGY:	Persian bakhshish, present, from Middle Persian bakhshishn, from bakhshdan, bakhsh-, to give presents, from Avestan bakhsh-. See bhag- in Appendix I.