An Explosive Experience

It was a cold night in November; a first of many. I didn’t bring my thick black sleeping bag and only had the thinner green summer bag. Who knew Iraq got this cold in the Fall? I thought it was supposed to be a scorched desert! I was waiting for it to warm up a bit in the morning before getting out of my bag so I was sort of half sleeping/half awake. I was tired from an all night patrol and had only been sleeping since about 0430 but by 0830 it was so bright I couldn’t really sleep much longer. That was when the “L-T” (our 1^st Lietenant platoon commander) told me to get up and get my guys up, “Sergeant Williams’ vehicle hit an IED.” That instantly woke me up. I quickly got up, pulled my trousers on and slid into my boots. I didn’t bother to buckle up or lace up yet. I went and rustled up my crew from their various hiding/sleeping spots in, on, and around our humvees. Once I told them all we would be mounting up in a few minutes I went over to see what the story was. Normally we were the night crew and that meant we got to rest in the security of the small outpost compound during the day after going on night patrols. Our only job during the day was to monitor the radio and “blue force tracker” satellite communication system and be a “QRF” (quick reaction force) for the other guys during the day as necessary. This was the one job we all dreaded and hoped would never come. If it was at least a firefight it might be exciting because we could finally get back at some insurgents, but an IED meant anonymous destruction with little opportunity to fight back, and worse, IED’s tended to do very bad things to our vehicles and more importantly its crew. We flew over the small dusty ruts through the desert to the location of the attacked patrol. As we drove I prayed nothing serious had happened. As we neared the site I hadn't received any news of injured persons and took that as good news. Luckily it was. The vehicle had been immobilized by about 30 pounds of HME (Home Made Explosives) stored in plastic jugs buried just under the surface of the dirt road they had been patrolling. It most likely was detonated by a connecting wire strung from across an adjacent canal where insurgents were known to be operating. How clever of them to hide completely out of reach considering the closest bridge was 10k away. Well they weren't out of range of our weapons! Before we arrived another vehicle shot at some individuals across the canal fleeing on a motorcycle. Unfortunately they were not hit. Luckily for everyone the vehicle hit happened to be the only MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle on the patrol, one more vehicle ahead or behind and somebody would have been dead or seriously injured. 30 lbs of HME is enough to completely destroy a Hummer. The MRAP sustained a broken drive shaft, shorn off fuel tank, and various suspension damage and other cosmetic and auxiliary system damage. We were able to tow it back to our compound and the crew was all checked out by our doc for head/neck injuries. Luckily our first IED experience was survivable, it sure wakes you out of any complacency you may have and makes things real for you. On the other hand, because no one was harmed it still may give you a false sense of security.

All quiet on the Western Front

Anbar Province is the Western Front of the war in Iraq if you would still call it a war with fronts in the classical sense. However, this front is quite quiet. Life in and around Fallujah Iraq is very well described by this accurate portrayal, worth a read: http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001542.html

Includes great pictures too.

Army screw up or unfortunate incident?

So while operating in the Lake Thar Thar region, we are often left in the dark as to what the Army is doing just to our north. You would think that with technology and organization improvements of a modern era a quick phone call or comprehensive intel collaboration were easy. Well, it is. The problem is the individuals in the middle responsible for making it happen. They are often not quite competent enough to multi-task like that. Hey its a combat zone, some people have a lot on their plate. One particular night our company is manning the highway checkpoint and we get a call not to travel north of a certain grid line. A few hours later a rainstorm of fire descends from the sky in the distance. A few helicopters and gunships are in action! The next morning our company is called in to assist in setting up a security perimeter for the Army at the location of the previous nights' assault. The scene we enter is the demise of 34 Iraqis: 19 Adult Men (all quoted by official sources as either Al Qaeda operatives, insurgents, or both), 9 Women, and 6 Children (cited by news sources as 15 Civilians). Of course the Adult Male survivors were 'suspected insurgents'. How fortunate that they were able to kill all the ACTUAL insurgents and leave just the SUSPECTED ones living! I guess the Army Helo's have less discrimination when it comes to civilians.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101200590_pf.html

What am I saying here? Well, I am saying the Army is sloppy. Also, when were they going to tell us they had been tracking a known Al Qaeda cell for weeks just miles away from us? Thanks for the heads up. It turns out the story was they had tracked a small group of Al Qaeda planners from another meeting location to this house. When the Army came upon the house they received gun fire from multiple persons in the house. The Army cordoned off the area, returned fire, and called in the Helos for superior firepower. While there was plenty of spent casings in the house, it hardly seemed enough for an air strike. Perhaps they could have used their armored vehicles to create a siege line from a safe distance and let the bad guys run out of gas. Then perhaps they would have had 19 captured insurgents with all the intel they inevitably died with. I am no war planner, and certainly this incident is not the result of failings at higher levels (Generals, President, etc.), but I think sometimes the Army is dumb, and sometimes there are incompetent officers out there doing a bad job. Luckily, the great majority of men are doing an outstanding job. It is too bad seemingly innocent women and children (innocent by virtue of their sex/age) had to die, but the insurgent men made that decision. They fired upon coalition forces with lethal force as if to use the women and children as a screen or shield to hide behind. Certainly they were bad guys. Most farmers and ranchers in this area do not and are not allowed to stockpile Russian made military grade automatic weapons with enough ammunition to cause the Army to call in an air strike.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/12/america/iraq.php
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=9349
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html?ex=1349928000&en=d2a1b1380409154e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/1012/breaking1.html?via=rel
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/13/MNUNSPBFC.DTL

Mass Grave Found

In the Anbar Province of Western Iraq where we do most our work, there is a lot of open rural area and a lot of farmers and ranchers. One particular area in between Ramadi and Fallujah is the Lake Thar Thar region. In Anbar a major freeway connects Baghdad to the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi on the way to Iraq's western border with Jordan and Syria. From this freeway there is a major road which runs north along Lake Thar Thar on the way to Samarra and Tikrit in Iraq's northwestern Salahuddin Province. Given that Samarra is one of Iraq's holiest Shia cities actually populated mostly by Sunnis there is natural tension. Additionally, Tikrit was Saddam Hussein's birthplace and is also a Sunni stronghold. This region has always been a hot bed of insurgent activity since late 2004. Over the course of the last 2 years, especially after the major Marine Corps offensives in Fallujah and Ramadi, most of the insurgents from the "Sunni Triangle" and the whole western Anbar province have been pushed out, most have fled north to the Salahuddin province (an Army area!). As the Army has fought them in the cities of Samarra and Tikrit, the insurgents have all ended up in this rural region between the two provinces near Lake Thar Thar. Thus, it is no surprise that this north-running road has been riddled with IED attacks and the Iraqi Police don't dare spend much time in the area. This is where our first assignment upon entering Iraq came! In order to secure the road for safe transportation for us and civilians, the plan was to place a checkpoint along this road between two small combat outposts.

Task Force Military Police watches over Golden land
http://www.marines.mil/units/hqmc/Pages/2007/OCTContentSorted15.aspx

The checkpoint would be operated by local Iraqi Police based mostly out of Ramadi (30 minutes away). Well, just like all good plans, it didn't work. The problem? Nobody forecast the Iraqi Police response to this assignment-abandon post! It doesn't take a very smart man to decide that they don't want to spend the night at a place in the middle of the countryside where mortars are launched on them continually accompanied by small arms attacks and daily IED blasts! So the plan was modified, now a platoon worth of Marines would stay with the police day and night to help them feel safe and mostly to make sure they don't abandon post. The IHP or IP's as we call them (Iraqi Highway Patrol and Iraqi Police, respectively) would run the checking of vehicles and local patrols, we would tag along as necessary and mostly provide a constant observing eye (overwatch) and respond to any threats as necessary. For the first month IED's went from daily to weekly and machine gun attacks from 500 meters turned into mortar attacks from 2K. The engineers built earthen walls around the compound and huts for the police to sleep in and overall it kept insurgents from moving south of the Thar Thar region and fleeing into Ramadi. This enabled the Army to the north to pin down lots of groups hiding out in the rural areas and flush them out. While operating at this outpost we have seen lots of hostile activity, from IED attacks against us and civilians, to incoming mortar fire, to hostile machine gun fire, insurgents are definately vying for a piece of this region. Luckily our heavily armored vehicles and strong defensive posture have kept us safe and no one has been harmed or injured. One truck had a machine gun bullet weld itself to the armor plate due to the heat and velocity from the impact.


A lot of intel can be gathered from civilians passing through the checkpoint. One day we received multiple reports of insurgents who had taken innocent civilians hostage in an effort to find out who in the community had been informants for the IP's about the whereabouts of insurgents. Supposedly these civilians had been held in an underground shipping container buried a few miles north of us. After verifying this intel with enough of the locals we leaped into action hoping to save some lives and thwart the efforts of the bad guys. Upon traveling north to the nearest Army outpost we learned that we were too late. A few days previous they had recovered the shipping container full of blindfolded and handcuffed corpses.

http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15075&Itemid=128
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i4kR9S0llrozRn2RiLMpz7QykrGw
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breaking-news/world/middle-east/article3133307.ece
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/more+bodies+found+in+mass+grave/1020252

Apparently the terrorist insurgents had been terrorizing locals who cooperated with Iraqi Police. It is unfortunate that these Iraqis had to suffer so much for the sake of their community and their freedoms. Yet despite this, hords of locals continued to loyally assist us and Iraqi Police in the hunt for insurgents in the area. I am convinced that given enough time for economic stabilization and normalization in the country, these people will ferociously defend their liberty. They have sacraficed so much and continue to sacrafice so much more. The last thing we must do is turn our backs on them now. They are doing so well by themselves knowing that we are there to back them up if things get too hard to handle.