Posted on 04/05/2003 2:31:52 PM PST by l33t
Scenes from Baghdad Airport
"We are on an offensive-oriented mission. Our job is to destroy the enemy. We defend the airfield by destroying the enemy around us." So explained Lt. Col. Scott Rutter, commander of the 2-7 Mechanized Infantry Battalion, at a command briefing to his officers Saturday afternoon.
The 2-7 Battalion, together with the 3-69 Battalion from the 3rd Infantry Division First Brigade, took over Saddam Hussein International Airport on the western edge of Baghdad late Thursday night.
The airport is surrounded on all side by sites of vital importance to the Iraqi regime. These include Special Republican Guard headquarters, barracks and bases, two presidential palaces, one of which is Saddam's official residence. As well, there are two suspected chemical and biological warfare plants located in close proximity to the airport.
While 3-69 took over the main terminal building, the 2-7 Battalion is stationed at the entrance to the airport complex on Highway 8 that connects Baghdad to the airport.
"We are blocking potential enemy reinforcements along Highway 8 from the city of Baghdad. This protects friendly forces securing Baghdad International Airport. It is a major enemy avenue of approach in their bid to kill soldiers and interdict operations," says Major Kevin Cooney, the 2-7 Executive Officer.
Firday morning, while forces stationed in the terminal met with light pockets of resistance from Special Republican Guard forces still within the airport complex, the 2-7 Battalion was barraged by enemy fire. From 0730 to 1130, Iraqi forces attacked the battalion with tanks, mortars, artillery, RPGs and light arms fire, most of this emanating from a presidential palace 500m away from battalion headquarters. As well, the Iraqis attempted to attack the battalion with an exposives-laden firetruck that was destroyed by an M-1 A-1 Abrahms tank round. During Friday morning's fight, soldiers destroyed three Iraqi T-72 tanks with shoulder-launched Javelin anti-tank missiles.
The Iraqis ambushed the battalion engineering company that was securing a POW collection point 500m from headquarters. One soldier was killed and six were wounded by shrapnel blasts. The wounded were MEDIVAC'd to an army surgical hospital in the rear.
At the same time, the 2-7 Alpha Company conducted room-to-room search-and-destroy missions in a nearby Special Republical Guard compound. The complex had already been bombed in Air Force operations Thursday night. However, the soldiers, led by Rob Smith, engaged pockets of resistence still holed up in the rubble. "Most of the soldiers we saw were eager to surrender," Smith says.
In all, the battalion destroyed Friday six tanks and eight armored personnel carriers and killed five Iraqi snipers.
According to intelligence officer Derek Smits, "From the accounts we received from the soldiers after the shooting ended, the Iraqis were trying to fight their way out of the airport and the presidential palace and escape to Baghdad. The troops saw them attempting to blast through a wall to escape the palace," he said.
Iraqi radio reported Friday morning that thousands of civilians would march to retake the airport at 1500. The US forces began precision aerial bombing a Republican Guard camp at 1430. "Note the timing of the bombing," Rutter remarked. 1500 passed with no Iraqi attempt by civilians nor military to retake the airport.
On Saturday morning the 3rd Infantry Division 2nd Brigade assumed positions through the center of Baghdad along Highway 8, thus splitting the metropolis in two. In so doing, the US forces are now blocking cross-town traffic of Iraqi forces. The 2nd Brigade met with only light resistance and the city was effectively cut in half before 9am. Four US soldiers were wounded and evacuated by 2-7 medics and scouts already located along the highway.
Learning from the previous day's experience, the battalion beefed up its offensive operations on Saturday, taking positions inside Special Republican Guard headquarters and directly outside a presidential palace. "Yesterday the Iraqis attacked us in an effort to put us on the defensive. They tried to dislodge us from a blocking position on the highway but it did not work. By nightfall their attacks ended. Our one offensive yesterday, which met with minimal contact from the enemy, was sufficient to stop their operations," says Rutter.
The ground troops have found that even after Air Force bombing reduced Iraqi complexes to rubble, Iraqi forces often remain or attempt to return. Infantry offensives are necesssary to flush out these structures and occupy them. "We don't want to repeat the mistakes made in Vietnam when US forces took terrain and then left -- only to be attacked again from the same locations. The infantry is the only branch of the military that can both seize and hold terrain," remarked Cooney. As the battalion's Alpha Company used TOW anti-tank missiles to destroy two Iraqi T-72 tanks and kill ten Iraqi infantrymen still within the already bombed-out presidential palace, Bravo tank company patrolled a bombed-out Republican Guard training camp. There, evidence of precision Air Force bombing from the previous night was clearly at hand. Buildings reduced to smoldering gray brick rubble abutted others left largely unscathed. From one such building, an Iraqi sniper shot at M-1 A-1 Abrahms tanks. Rather than send in forces to find him, Company Commander Captain Jimmy Lee destroyed the building with high explosive charges. The sniper appeared shortly thereafter. As he lay on the ground he held up a press card and claimed to be a journalist stuck at the compound. "The guys asked me what to do," Rutter, who was with Bravo tank company, said. "I told them to handcuff him because he was just shooting at us."
Earlier in the day, Iraqi television reported that US forces had not entered Baghdad and that the Iraqi army had retaken the airport. This was interesting news for soldiers, particularly from the 101st Airborne Division's 3-187 Battalion that entered the terminal buildings on search-and-destroy missions Saturday morning. Their initial search of the VIP terminal turned up, "gold, china, jewels and other expensive items hidden at the site," said Major Rod Coffey, the 2-7's Operations Officer.
As the sun began to set Saturday evening with black smoke billowing out over an expanse of several hundred meters from the Special Republican Guard's base, 2-7 soldiers took a sanguine view of their experience as the most combat-tested battalion thus far in Iraq. "Here we are at what two days ago was Saddam Hussein International Airport. We completed our mission to date and are thinking about our next one," says Staff Sergeant Patrick Taylor.
As he watched an Abrahms tank tow a track from a disabled 1-33 armoured vehicle, Master Sgt. Timothy Cabell put things in perspective. "We were able to do something that many armies have tried in the past to do but failed. We made it here to the airport at night through the maze of streets of the towns along the Euphrates River. Thank God for our technology. Without our night-vision, our GPS and our troop grid tracking systems, I don't know how we would have done it."
A CALL CAME over the radio 2:30pm Saturday afternoon: Two truckloads of Iraqi civilians, displaced since the US army took over the Saddam Hussein International Airport in Baghdad late Thursday night, would be moving through the lines escorted on either side by Army vehicles. The call was a warning not to shoot; the civilians had already been interrogated by the 3rd Infantry Division 1st Brigade and were cleared to relocate inside the city.
This call was necessary because US troops, fearful of terrorist attacks, have orders to shoot any civilian vehicle attempting to come through the lines.
These instructions are well placed. Since US and British invaded forces Iraq 2 weeks ago, there has already been one successful car bombing in which four soldiers were killed, and countless attempted attacks. During the 3rd Infantry Division's advance across the Karbala Gap on the way to Baghdad Wednesday night, the Iraqis repeatedly tried to ram US forces with explosives-laden pickup trucks. Two white pickup trucks were destroyed by tanks as they drove full speed towards them.
"I think the Iraqis are pathetic," says 1st Brigade Commander William Grimsley. "What can a '74 Datsun do against an M-1 A-1 tank? They don't seem to understand that these tanks can see as well at night as they do during the day and can shoot exact targets from 3500m."
Fear of collateral damage to civilians apparently kept the Air Force from bombing special Republican Guard enclaves around the Saddam Hussein International Airport ahead of the ground forces' advance on the target late Thursday night. These Republican Guard units then used these bases to attack soldiers from the 1st Brigades' 2-7 Mechanized Infantry Battalion on Friday morning. One soldier was killed and six were wounded during the ensuing exchanges of fire.
The Battalion Commander, Lt. Col. Scott Rutter, expressed anger at the reticence to bomb the Iraqi bases prior to his battalion's entry to the area. "If you are expecting casualties, you have to be willing to accept collateral damage," he said. For his part, Rutter focuses his men on one simple goal for their mission: "Kill the enemy," he exhorts his officers and soldiers at every opportunity.
When reports came in Friday afternoon that the Iraq government was calling for civilians to march on the airport at 3pm that day to retake it, Rutter was unmoved.
"You have to assume that in any civilian crowd there will be one guy with an RPG for every ten civilians. Your mission is to protect the force and kill the enemy," Rutter told his troops.
Iraqi civilians stayed away from the airport Friday -- and Saturday's civilian convoy passed through the line without a hitch.
That's putting it directly!
Good thing Al Gore or Hillary Clinton isn't trying to run this war ...
I thought I was going to see pictures.
Reminds me of General Meyers at a press conference during the early Afghan campaign remarking on a "successful outcome" of an operation. One reporter asked him what he meant by successful outcome.
Meyers answer was simple-- "Dead Al-Qaeda".
'Saddam's information minister: 'They are nowhere NEAR Baghdad! That was ANOTHER town they raided! They have NOT taken control of the airport! I call on civilians to go and retake that airport which the Americans have not taken!! Saddam Hussein is alive and well and running the government!!!'
Who're we gonna believe? <G>
God bless all of the allied troops.
I misread that name at first, and almost choked.
Peter, is that you?
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