Thursday, 12 April 2007
 

April 12-15 and after, 2003
Jules Crittenden

The next few days begin to merge in my memory, as I began my perambulations around the palace district. I found deCamp outside the Big Head palace, walking up the marble stairs of his grand entranceway. The command tracks and a couple of tanks were parked between the fountain and the pillars, under the noses of Saddam’s four oversized bronze tributes to himself.   

“Nice setup,” I said.

“You gotta love this. This is like Patton in that German palace at the end of World War II,” deCamp said. He led the way up to his operations room, where he had his maps and paperwork spread out on Saddam’s big conference table, with staff officers and clerks in Saddam’s big ornate chairs at a couple of other desks and tables around the room. ...

It was good to be home that summer, to give my kids gifts like a day at the beach with their dad. But I told my buddy Mike Kirsch, a CBS Miami reporter who would know what I meant, that I was losing the power of being dead already, and I hated it. Each day home was sapping me of its strength, and I felt misplaced in this most familiar of places. I was waiting for this peaceful life to regain its weight. It took a very long time.

i

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 12, 2007 at 01:25 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 11 April 2007
 

April 11, 2003 
"Critter" Crittenden

We slept in the Jumhuriyah intersection again. I had a spot on the roof of the first sergeant’s M113 this time. In the morning, sitting on top of Ortiz’s 113, I began to see non-embedded press filtering through. I called out to some of them.

“Where you from?”

“New York Times”

“Oh yeah? Boston Herald.”

“You’re a reporter? You look like one of the GIs.” ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 11, 2007 at 12:52 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 10 April 2007
 

April 10, 2003
"Criitter" Crittenden

I woke up at 4 a.m. to a horrendous amount of gunfire across the river. I got up and walked over to Capt. Carter.

“What’s going on over there?”

“Same thing as here yesterday, just dealing with pockets of stuff,” he said.

“It sounds like the end of the world over there,” I said.

“That’s the Marines. They like to shoot a lot,” Carter said.   

After the sun came up, Pasto went over to the concertina wire to talk to some Iraqis who were emerging out of the slums in greater numbers to talk, gawk and importune. When he came back, he reported, “One of those guys just asked, ‘Does this mean we’re all going to be American citizens?’”

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Pasto said. ...

Howison, in his track commander’s hatch, said, “I just heard over the net, Tusker Six says the war is over. Victory Six is coming up. They want everyone in full uniform, Kevlars, top and bottom, no American trash lying around, no graffiti, no American flags flying.”

Victory Six was the commanding general. Clean up, get dressed, behave. It was definitely over.

We drive under the arch into the palace district.  ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 10, 2007 at 12:11 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 09 April 2007
 

April 9, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

... Late in the afternoon, I called up the Boston Herald to dictate the day’s story. Deputy Managing Editor James MacLaughlin told me there was big news on CNN. The Marines had just liberated Baghdad. They were in front of the Palestine Hotel, where they pulled down a statue of Saddam. Did I know anything about that?

No, I didn’t, but that was great news. Nothing against the Marines, but the Army had been here for two days before they showed up, fighting a series of pitched battles that precluded statue toppling, and we were two miles north of Firdas Square dealing with some troublesome Syrians and an idiot gunman. Who does history record as liberating Baghdad? The ones who pulled up in front of the international media’s digs at the Palestine. Some jarheads in an M88 tank hauler with a length of chain and a press gaggle.

Another RPG came screaming up obligingly up the street as I dictated my story and exploded high over the square, to make the point.

“Hear that?” I said. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 9, 2007 at 12:11 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 08 April 2007
 

April 8, 2003   
"Critter" Crittenden

I had fallen asleep to the sound of sporadic tank fire up surrounding streets, but when I woke around 0400, it was because of the din of a great deal of sustained fire up where the Assassins had spent the night, inside the palace complex about a half mile northeast of us. I climbed up on top of the 113 to see if Howison knew what was going on. But he had switched his radio over from Assassins net to Cyclone the day before, and now he couldn’t find Assassins.

I wanted to go there, but the 113 didn’t have orders, and the idea of walking through pitch dark toward a firefight, unarmed, without night vision, and with no clue which way the fight was oriented, was a non-starter. So we sat, paced, smoked, ate MREs, and listened to the mounting fire. ...

At 10:45 a.m., Wolford passed on the word that an Iraqi radio had been captured. The Arabic-speaking counter-intelligence officers were listening to it a forward observer’s chatter. ...

Conflicting information started coming in about the suspected Iraqi forward observer. ...

In the middle of our conversation, Tomlinson, who was listening to the radio on his headphones while we talked, told me one of the tanks up on the bridge had spotted someone with binoculars talking into a telephone in a tall building downstream, and they were getting ready to fire.

The tall building was the Hotel Palestine, a name I didn’t know at that time although I had laid eyes on it when we rode along the river the day before. The TV cameras up there, which Sgt. Shawn Gibson says he never saw, famously recorded his turret turning, his 120 mm main gun elevating, and then the flash. On the 15th floor of the hotel, Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian cameraman for Reuters, and Jose Cuoso of Spanish Television, were killed by the blast. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 8, 2007 at 12:33 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 07 April 2007
 

April 7, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

Yesterday I received an email from Omar Fadhil, who has been reading this series. He said he is enjoying it and wanted to thank me for my “bravery.” I feel very small receiving that kind of praise from someone like Omar, and I will dedicate what little I have to offer today to Omar and his brother Mohammed, who have to be brave every day of their lives, because they are Baghdadis: ...

One of the White Platoon tanks, equipped with a heavy mine-clearing plow, was called forward. Then we rolled toward the gate, where flames and black smoke were swirling around the destroyed remains of several vehicles and gum emplacements. The bodies of several Iraqi soldiers were lying in the road, partially blackened and slumped in puddles of their own blood, legs, arms and heads skewed all wrong from the force of the tank fire.  The massive gateway to the palace district looked like a concrete Arc d’Triomph. Its heavy wrought-iron gates, emblazoned with the Baath Party’s fascist-looking eagle crest, were twisted and hanging off the concrete pillars where the lead tank had smashed through them.

We rolled into the palace complex, down a broad avenue lined with hedges and walls, with palaces and government buildings, one after another, behind them. The column halted on the boulevard outside the gates of a massive Versailles-like palace, topped with four gargantuan, identical busts of Saddam in an Arabesque war helmet. We stared dumbly at them. ...

I turned around to look toward the roadside hedges and the ditches under them as the tanks opened fire. I realized I was looking straight into the faces of three Iraqi soldiers. They were no more than 30 feet away, staring back at us from the shadows under the hedge, where they lay in the shallow ditch.  ...

When it quieted down on the boulevard, Wolford ordered his tank platoons to begin clearing the surrounding streets and palace grounds. The 113 followed Wolford and the Red tanks as they busted through the metal gates of one of the palaces. The heavy armored vehicles clanked through rose gardens, past ornamental ponds and a playground. White ducks in one pond swam away from us in alarm.

“Everyone gets a bath tonight,” Wolford said. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 7, 2007 at 01:47 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 06 April 2007
 

April 6, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

It was almost exactly a year after the fact that I met Larry Gwin. Joe Galloway had steered me toward him, when I told Joe I wanted to talk to local veterans of the Ia Drang battles for the 40th anniversary. In those days I pretty much just wanted to talk to combat veterans, people who knew about it. Larry, formerly of Alpha Co., 2/7 Cav, had 45 combat assaults behind him, a Silver Star and a Purple Heart, and had lived through a couple of the worst days in US military history. He was an investment lawyer downtown, and we met in the kind of place investment lawyers have lunch. When we had eaten and talked and raised a glass to those not present as Larry always sees to it that we do, we walked out of there into the sunlight, and Larry said, “So, you’ve seen the elephant.” ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 6, 2007 at 12:36 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 05 April 2007
 

April 5, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

... It was after I stormed off from the stupid fight with the Bradley’s crew that I got the news about Michael Kelly.

I was probably no more than 5 or 10 miles away when it happened, but it was two days after the fact before I found out about it. I called my wife on the sat phone, looking for a distraction from the argument and needing to touch base with home. I hadn’t spoken to her in days.

“A reporter was killed.  He was from Massachusetts.”

“Who is it?”

“His name is Michael Kelly. He was from the Atlantic Monthly. Do you know him?”

I was stunned.  I had seen him briefly six days before at al-Hindiyah.  I didn’t know him well, but I liked him.  He was supposed to be hanging out with higher command, to write the big-picture story about how the 3rd Infantry Division won the war.

My wife had been reading my reports every morning in the newspaper, and as she told me later, was becoming increasingly dazed. Kelly’s wife Max told me much later she did not believe her husband would be in combat, and my wife also didn’t believe the Army was going to put us where it did. But there it was when she opened the newspaper in the morning. Then Kelly was killed. He was drowned April 3 along with Sgt. Wilbert Davis when their Humvee came under fire and veered into a canal. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 5, 2007 at 01:11 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 04 April 2007
 

April 4, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

Baxter and I were sitting on my cot, backs against the Bradley’s skirt plate, eating MREs for breakfast and talking about Sgt. Lustig. He was the tough platoon sergeant who didn’t talk much and always meant exactly what he said. He was the one with “ACHTUNG BABY” stenciled on his tank’s gun tube. His platoon was always out front, the first to receive contact.

“He’s like fucking Satan,” said Baxter. “He don’t hesitate to blow these motherfuckers away. That’s why I told him, ‘If you were going to Hell to fight the devil, Sgt. Lustig, I’d go with you.”

“What did Lustig say?”

“He said, ‘Thank you, Pvt. Baxter, I appreciate that.’”   

I pretty much felt the same way. Lustig and Wolford were aggressive, didn’t flinch, but knew when to pull back or hold their fire. They made sure things happened. They were hardasses and didn’t have the rosiest personalities, but they looked after their men. People like that would keep you alive, but there was more to it than that. They were leaders. No frills, not much charisma. But I was beginning to realize, like Baxter, I would follow them anywhere. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 4, 2007 at 12:27 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 03 April 2007
 

April 3, 2003

"Critter" Crittenden remembers:

We crossed the Euphrates around noon. I was asleep in the back and missed it. Another brigade, bounding ahead of us, was responsible for all the wreckage around the bridge. I learned later my friend Sig Christenson of the San Antonio Express-News had spent the night under heavy fire there, at Objective Peach. Sig had expected to die there. ...

I’m not sure I’ve done full justice to the Abrams’ 120 mm main gun. It can knock the turret off a Soviet-made tank, turn a Japanese SUV into a flaming hulk, take down walls and empty out rooms. It does these things with uncanny precision, tracking high-speed targets and hitting them without fail.

Its sound has several distinct parts to it. There’s the massive BOOM of the propellant charge; the air-ripping noise of the round headed downrange; and finally the high-explosive impact. All compressed into one concussion-inducing noise.

Fired in anger, it felt and sounded exactly like the Angel of Death hurling down the vengeance of an angry God. Horrific and biblical in its proportions.  If you think that sounds at all melodramatic or trite, then you are not sufficiently familiar with the 120 mm main gun. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 3, 2007 at 12:52 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 02 April 2007
 

April 2, 2003

"Critter" Crittenden remembers:

I came across his name unexpectedly, while scanning a list of the war dead online during a slow afternoon at work. It was nearly a year after the fact. Whatever my wife might say about my obsessing on Iraq, this reading of names wasn’t something I did on a regular basis. It happened occasionally when one link led to another, and I found myself scrolling down, looking for the names I know. This was a particularly good list. It was organized by date. It included each dead soldier’s hometown, age and the circumstances of his or her death, when available. That was how I discovered who U.S. Navy Lt. Nathan D. White was, and realized I had witnessed his death. ...

And so we were hanging by the track, smoking, when we saw a bright light arc up from the rear, miles back. The Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems always launched four at a time, four streaks that would burn out partway up the sky, the rockets sailing silently several thousand feet over our heads, until they lit up the opposite horizon, a big whitish-yellow glow to be followed a few moments later by distant booms, way over there where men theoretically were dying.

But this was just one streak, burning steadily as it rose way up to the top of the sky. There, it flared briefly and abruptly changed direction. Now it was streaking back in the direction from which it had come, gradually descending, becoming faint. Then it was gone, swallowed up by the vast and utter darkness of a dusty desert night. The dull noise of a distant explosion followed some time after.

“What the fuck?” said Smitty.

“That was different,” Baxter said.

There probably was not much that would have distinguished us at that moment from any Bedouin who might glance up, momentarily transfixed by a shooting star or a mysterious light in the sky heralding the birth of a prophet, then push on through this desert, having other business to attend to. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 2, 2007 at 10:13 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 01 April 2007
 

April 1, 2003

"Critter" Crittenden remembers: 

The company spent the day after the action at al-Hindiyah back out in the desert, rearming and cleaning up.  Sgt. Will took apart the housing of the 25 mm cannon and the 7.62 mm co-axial machine gun. The ammunition feeders were entirely clogged with road dust, after 10 days on the road and the three-day dust storm, hence the jam the day before at Hindiyah. 

We were full of ourselves with our successful action. We had good reason to be. None of us were dead.  No one had even been scratched.  A U.S. Army tank battalion against what turned out to be an infantry battalion of the Republican Guard’s Nebuchadnazzer Division, recruited from Tikrit, dug in and fighting.

An RPG a couple of feet lower would have taken out Harry McFarland and Willie Cooke in the lightly armored medic track.  The tank commanders went into a rain of RPGs and small arms fire up in their hatches.  Someone reported the Fox News crew was sprayed with shrapnel down by the bridge, but the word came back they suffered no serious injury. An RPG burned a hole through the skirt plate of a Bradley there, but didn’t penetrate the hull.  Any one of those half-dozen GIs could have got it in the brief firefight with the holdouts, or all of them. I had come within 25 feet of those Iraqis in their overgrown ditch moments before the shooting broke out, and they had to have been watching my approach before some quirk prompted me to look over at Wolford and the interpreter, C.J. Grisham, checking bodies for documents out in the field.  I have never believed in things of this sort, but I’ve examined that situation to see if it was my dead mother gently guiding me to make that 90-degree course change away from that encounter, just as it must have been her hand my 5-year-old son felt on his shoulder, stopping him dead in his tracks when he ran ahead,  just short of the alley when a truck came roaring out.  I don’t have any answer to any of that.  ...

***

Sometimes this Old Dog's a little slow on the uptake. "C.J. Grisham" is "CJ" at A Soldiers Perspective. Don't miss his excellent related post here.

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 1, 2007 at 01:21 PM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 31 March 2007
 

March 31, 2003

"Critter" Crittenden remembers:

Around two in the morning, I lay awake on my cot under the Bradley’s bustle rack. There was a heavy, choking fear crawling between my gut and my throat. I wondered how I could do this to my wife and children, and I wished I was with them. I thought about whether I was going to be killed outright by a clean shot, burned to death inside the track, or just horribly maimed in a few hours time when we went in. I know I wasn’t the only one in camp doing this. ...

And we came out of the desert at dawn. The tanks kicked up dust by mud hut farms, their skull-and-crossed-saber guidons whipping in the wind.

“This all looks so ancient … Nothing has changed here in 2,000 years,” said the LT, up in his turret hatch. There were people in the doorways of the farmhouses watching us pass.

As we neared al-Hindiyah, Wolford radioed the order to pour on speed for the assault. Our vehicle lunged forward, the vibration and already deafening track and engine noise intensifying as Baxter accelerated. It was the 21st century equivalent of a cavalry charge. It felt like surfing toward rocks, on a massive heavy metal wave. The anticipation of fire brought all our senses alive and we were all wired, beneath the mutual small-talk and joking pretense that this was all somehow normal, a Monday morning carpool to work. I suppressed the thought of fire coming through the steel walls of the Bradley and being dead in a few minutes, and it was not so hard, as we became engaged. Our Bradley was in line behind the Red Platoon tanks, where the Bradley’s fire-support team could call in artillery as needed, with White and Blue Platoons following. The Red tankers just ahead of us reported Iraqi RPG teams scrambling into roadside ditches as we approached.

“We’ve got contact,” Lustig said over the radio, matter-of-fact and cool about it. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 31, 2007 at 12:33 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 30 March 2007
 

March 30, 2003
Critter Crittenden

... Capt. Wolford devoted his briefing around midday to blunt tactical advice, to make sure the company approached this situation with the correct degree of aggressiveness.

“Once the fighting starts, if there are people in the streets, in civilian or military clothing, they are the enemy and they will die,” Wolford said.

“There are some towers and high ground. We will shoot all towers,” Wolford said. “They have used car bombs and suicide bombers … If they don’t stop, fire a burst of 7.62. If they turn around, then they were probably going to the store to get some Saddam beer. If they don’t stop, kill them.”

He talked about the paramilitaries some units had encountered at Nasiriyah and As Samiwah, believed to be a combination of the fanatical Saddam Fedayeen and civilians forced to fight when their families were taken hostage.

“I don’t think they are fighting for the regime. I don’t think they are fighting for the freedom of Iraq. But make no mistake about it. They will fight,” Wolford said. “Like I told you a thousand times, they put one round on you, you put one thousand rounds on them, until those pajama-wearing motherfuckers stop firing. They put one AT (anti-tank) round on us, you blow the whole block up. There is no collateral damage concern that will stop us carrying our mission out. When we’re done, we’ll rename the place Assassin town, because we’ll own it.

“The brigade commander doesn’t say he wants the enemy captured. He doesn’t say he wants the enemy on the run. He says he wants the enemy destroyed. So kill him.” ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 30, 2007 at 12:29 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 29 March 2007
 

March 29, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

We must have sensed the lounging around out in the desert was about to come to an end, because over our MREs and canteen cups of instant coffee that morning, we got religious. I recited the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me down the path of righteousness for His name’s sake … Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”

I like the way, once you get into the Valley, it shifts from “He” to “Thou.” The relationship gets more intense.

Baxter chimed in with his own favorite: ...

Early that evening, when it was dark enough that we had to use a shielded red light, Wolford called his lieutenants and platoon sergeants together around a map spread across the hood of his Humvee, to brief them on the plan to attack the Euphrates bridgehead town of al-Hindiyah at dawn on the 31st. Our company would punch through town to the bridge. While the rest of the battalion held the town on the west side of the river behind us, the 14 Assassin tanks and our fire-support Bradley would cross to the east side. The strength of defenses around the town and the bridge was not known. A couple of Iraqi bases were located within 10 miles or so, at al-Hillah to the east and Karbala to the northwest. Strength of Iraqi forces there was also not known. Our job was to lure them out. We were the bait. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 29, 2007 at 01:08 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 28 March 2007
 

March 28, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

Late on the afternoon of the 28th, Cyclone Company’s tanks bounded ahead of us. They chose a route directly through our camp, kicking dust over everything. We now had the relative security of a kilometer or so between us and enemy contact. We set up camp chairs at dusk, admiring a brilliant desert sunset as we ate our MREs. The LT remarked, “It’s surreal. It’s hard to believe we’re at war and there are people out there who want to kill us. Back home, our families are probably all freaked out, thinking we’re in all kinds of danger.”

There had been heavy fighting around Nasiriyah, and GIs had been killed and captured. We were aware of that, but didn’t know much about it. ...

We were beginning to doze off when the mortars positioned a few hundred meters ahead of us opened up. The radio in the track, on loudspeaker, told us the scouts out in the open desert north of us had spotted some dismounts and a truck. Fire blasted out of the mortar tubes mounted in the M113 tracks, and a few seconds later, the impacts lit up a small piece of the horizon, the sound following several seconds after that. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 28, 2007 at 11:12 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 27 March 2007
 

March 27, 2003 
"Critter" Crittenden

On the morning of the 27th, it was clear, and after three days of dust and more than a week on the road, it was cleaning day.  They hauled up a 500-gallon water buffalo full of rotten-smelling treated water … all the water anyone wanted. ...

We had been the most-forward placed conventional unit in Iraq for most of the past week.  Beyond our line of tanks was the open desert, and beyond that, Karbala, the Republican Guard and the approaches to Baghdad.

Iraqi raiders had hit units on our flanks and to our rear, invariably with disastrous results for the Iraqis – 40 dead one day, 150 dead another day – but our company had yet to see direct action. We were now poised to fight through the so-called Karbala Gap for a strike on the Republican Guard south Baghdad, but we were being held back awaiting “situational development.’’ The terms of that were not defined for us. We are all tired of waiting.  Capt. Wolford said we should be careful what we wished for. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 27, 2007 at 01:48 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 26 March 2007
 

March 26, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

I used my GPS and walked tank to tank through the dust storm to Johnson’s tank to see how he was doing after his night out. I climbed up on the tank’s big deck and lowered myself down through the hatch into the turret. It was significantly more cramped than our luxurious Bradley digs, and smelled of rank sweat and grease down there. I guess it’s like houses. You don’t notice the smell of your own, but other people’s smell different.

“I thought last night was the last night,” said Johnson, 26, a gunner from Panama City, Fla.  ”I ain’t leaving this tank again unless I have to go to the bathroom, and then I’m tying cord around me.”   

Around sunset the night before, when the storm was at its worst and the air all around us had turned blood red, Johnson had climbed out to walk over to the next tank in the line, 200 meters away. He wanted to tell Sgt. John Miller, newly shifted from Johnson’s tank to the next one as tank commander, that he couldn’t find Miller’s big missing bag of M&M’s. Johnson figured he’d stay and socialize with the other crew for a while.

“At first I could see the tank,” he said. “Then the sand kicked up and I lost it. I turned around to go back to my own tank, but I couldn’t see it anymore, either. I lost my direction.” ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 26, 2007 at 01:10 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 24 March 2007
 

March 24, 2003

"Critter" remembers:

Throughout the night of the 23rd into the 24th, there were reports from Attack, the battalion’s mech infantry company and Cyclone, the battalion’s other tank company position about a mile or so south of us, of Iraqi dismounts raiding into our area. They killed about 20 of them.  They were also mortared several times.

“I’m not going to be able to sleep with crunchies running all around,” said Smitty, using the term treadheads employ to describe the human things that get in the way of their tracks. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 24, 2007 at 01:20 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 23 March 2007
 

March 23, 2003

"Critter" remembers:

Smitty and I had spent most of the last 40 hours in a six-by-six vibrating, roaring steel box, just two small dust-clogged periscope blocks for a view.  The good news was it was just Smitty, even with his elbows and knees and size 14 boots everywhere. A lot of guys were packed in spaces like this in sixes and eights, and had to switch leg positions in unison. Smitty and I had enough room to take turns sacking out on an improvised duffle bag mattress on the floor.  ...

Around midnight, we pulled up on the southwestern flank of Najaf. Rogue, or 1/64, our sister battalion, was engaged in a fight up ahead. Rogue had encountered technicals – gun-mounted pickup trucks – and Iraqis in a trench complex. They killed about 40 of them. ...

Our fire-support Bradley was stopped in the middle of the road, facing north. In the bright morning light of March 23, the one lone tank 100 feet up the road and a couple of others in the fields on our flanks were the northernmost U.S. conventional forces in Iraq. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 23, 2007 at 02:06 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 22 March 2007
 

March 22, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

We had been rolling for about 30 hours when we pulled up in the vicinity of As Samiwah. Someone passed the word that some Hajjis were coming down along the column.

I looked around the side of the Bradley, and there they were. Three men in dishdasha robes and a boy. They were carrying MREs. As they came along, I said, “Marhaban,” and “Salaam aleikum.” They said some things back, delighted to be addressed in Arabic.

“Sahafi Ameriki,” I said by way of introduction. “American press.”

It was one of the few things I knew how to say, but they thought that was remarkable. They pointed around, asking if everyone was Ameriki.

“Na’am. Everyone’s Ameriki.” 

They looked at Smitty, six-foot-six, black, and skinny with a big head made bigger by his Kevlar. One of them pointed at Smitty, and asked if that one was Ameriki, too.

“Na’am, even him. Ameriki.” ...

In front of the M113 in line behind us, there was a black soldier on his knees on a prayer rug. He was a Muslim, taking advantage of the stop to catch up on his prayers. When they noticed him, the astonished Arabs looked at me and asked, were their eyes were not deceiving them, could this possibly be an Ameriki Musselman?

“Yep,” I said, “Musselman Ameriki.”

They discussed this unexpected phenomenon,  ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 22, 2007 at 03:45 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 21 March 2007
 

March 21, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

After the 155mm Paladins had blasted the Iraqi border positions, and the engineers and infantry moved in to clear a path, we dozed in the Bradley, waiting for the order to roll. Snippets of information were passed around.

“They’re saying the Iraqis are destroying their own infrastructure so they can blame it on us,” the LT said. ...

We got the order to roll around 0600. The column stopped and started, like bad rush-hour traffic, as 4,000 vehicles made their way to the breach in the berm on the Iraqi border.

“Shit, look at that column, all the way to the horizon,” the LT said from up in his hatch. “What’s the fucking holdup? This will take us three days. The war will be over before we get there.

“When we get back to the States and they ask what I did, I’ll just say, ‘I don’t like to talk about it.’” he said. “That way they’ll think I was in the shit.” ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 21, 2007 at 01:06 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 20 March 2007
 

“Someone’s in for a rude wakeup.” -- Updated

March 20, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden

The war started quietly just before dawn. I woke up in my sleeping bag on the Bradley’s lowered ramp and looked at my watch. It was 0429 hours local time, about half an hour after George Bush’s deadline elapsed.  Col. Perkins had said we’d be parked under the air corridor the cruise missiles would pass through enroute to Baghdad. They’d be 350 feet overhead. 

Ten minutes later, still lying in my bag with the night’s chill creeping in, I heard them. Small whiny jet noises, accompanied by a odd waffling sound of air turbulence. One after another. Voom, voom, voom. I counted 20, about $30 million worth and thought, “Someone’s in for a rude wakeup.” ...

***

Four Years On
Jules Crittenden

Anniversary roundup: The AP’s Jennifer Loven on Bush’s Iraq speech is worthless, as usual,   setting up cherrypicked targets for the Dems to swing at with predictable rejoinders, or for the AP itself to belabor with poll results, none of which offer anything of any use to either Iraqi or American interests. Ignores polling that fails to stay in lanes.

WaPo does considerably better.

Here’s the actual speech: Bush calls for courage, patience, resolve. Withdrawal a recipe for disaster.  ...

***

Don't miss Bryan Preston's excellent related post here.

So, Mr. Hitchens, Weren't You Wrong About Iraq?

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 20, 2007 at 01:27 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 19 March 2007
 

March 19, 2003

"Critter" writes:

“Baxter, Baxter, driving to war,” said Lt. Nick Kauffeld, standing up in the dust in his commander’s hatch, in the Bradley’s turret.   

“Just sit back, boss, I’m driving this mule. Y’all just sit in the wagon and enjoy the ride,” Baxter said, down in the driver’s compartment.

“Smitty, can you hear me, babe?” Baxter called over the intercom. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 19, 2007 at 02:07 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 18 March 2007
 

March 18, 2003

March 18, 2003
Critter

In the middle of the afternoon, I was dozing in a little hollow in the sand, my head on a sandbag in the shade of the maintenance deuce and a half.  Spec. Willie Cooke, who drove the medic track, and Spec. Emeka “Easy” Ezekwem, one of the mechanics, sat down beside me in the shade and began talking God and war. 

Easy: “We say, ‘The baby lion or lioness, it does not die in a strange land. If it must die, it must get to its own root, or house, to its own land to die. God knows why I am here. God has a purpose. You read that Bible, you see God’s promises.” ...

The word came that afternoon that it was time to break camp. GIs were breaking down the platoon tents.  We would sleep in, around or on the tracks that night.  The GIs worked into the night. Everything was going into the tracks. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 18, 2007 at 08:42 PM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 17 March 2007
 

March 17, 2003
Jules Crittenden

Like the rest of the world watching from afar, those of us here in the desert camps in Kuwait sense that we are within days of rolling. 

Like the rest of the world watching from afar, those of us here in the desert camps in Kuwait sense that we are within days of rolling.   

Tankers and maintenance crews are test driving each tracked vehicle and truck. Tank commanders meet daily around roped-off squares of desert by the command post tent, with colored yarn strung between large spikes to mark the “phase lines” of the battle plan. Toy tanks are maneuvered to show how each phase of the battle will be executed.

“Let’s talk about the enemy, because this is the next place the enemy could influence us,” the CO says. “This right here could be our next fight. That’s why we’ll move two tanks platoons forward quickly and hope that motherfucker brings the fight on.”

Soldiers sit on the lowered ramps of 113s to get a last “high-and-tight” haircut. The live ammo was issued last week, and each morning after formation, tankers sit cleaning their sidearms, listening to the Voice of America and the BBC on shortwave radios for news that might offer a hint of when this thing will happen. Then a commotion breaks out, and the news spreads fast. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 17, 2007 at 01:13 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 16 March 2007
 

Bill's Nibbles // Open Post -- 2007.03.16

Some things I might do more with later and some things too short to excerpt and too good to not mention. I occasionally move things from Bill's Nibbles to longer posts as the day goes on.

Please feel free to use this post for comments and trackbacks not related to other posts on the site. If you leave a trackback your post must include a link to this one and, as always, comments claiming the sun will rise in the west tomorrow, Chimpy McHitlerburton lied, etc. will be deleted without ever appearing on the site.

• March 16, 2003
  The calm before the storm.

• On going back again
  Greyhawk: I'm busy these days getting ready for my second tour in Iraq. Sometimes I'm asked why - especially since I'm eligible to retire - I would go back. ...

• Good News Bad News
  Jules Crittenden: You’ve got your good news, you’ve got your bad news. Now, for some completely different news: ...

Yes, posting's been sorta light today. I was up late last night arguing with an obstinate PC (actually, googling up a fix for an IE 7 bug as it turns out) and I plan to start my blogging day earlier in the day tomorrow than I usually do. I can't make it to The Wall but I'll have eyes and ears there with my number programmed into their cell phones and my day will start early, so I decided getting some rest today was more important than most of what I might have posted about otherwise.

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 16, 2007 at 02:50 AM in Critter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 15 March 2007
 

March 15, 2003
Critter Crittenden

In the other platoons, soldiers are working on graphics, marking up plastic overlays to show routes and objectives on the maps for the battles to come. Some soldiers break down their weapons and clean them. Others climb up on their tanks for preventative maintenance – lubing, checking and tightening bolts – looking for bigger problems to report to the maintenance chief. Capt. Wolford and Lt. Tomlinson, the XO, head across the desert in their Humvee for another in the endless round of planning sessions at battalion headquarters.

First Platoon is the duty platoon today and will be burning dukie. It is the most hated task, but the one that seems to be conducted with the most laughter. I’ve somehow made it made it this far in life without seeing shit burnt, so I come along. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 15, 2007 at 01:54 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 14 March 2007
 

Critter

March 14, 2003
Jules Crittenden

The mechanics had the power, and I needed to sort out some power issues. On the first full day with the company, between Sgt. Lustig’s preparing of the drunk soldier’s statement and his delivery of ass-chewing, I had gone over to the section of desert that was designated as the company’s maintenance area. Staff Sgt. Melvin Jacobson, known as Sgt. Jake, examined my power pack and the  inverters I had jury-rigged with jumper cables and cigarette lighter outlets. He said no problem. I could plug into their generator-powered outlets or clip onto their batteries anytime.

Jake, a Georgia good old boy, looked like a perpetually irritated, red-faced leprechaun. He had stubble on the sides of his head like everyone else, but said the Army regs allowed up to three inches of hair on top, and he had all three inches flying wildly off the top, usually with some sand and dust in it. He was gruff and demanding, throwing barbs at his men constantly, but with a sentimental core. I liked him immediately. Jake seemed to like the idea of having his own pet reporter, ...

I just created a new post category called "Critter." Read the post to learn why.

***

Greyhawk's impressed too. 

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 14, 2007 at 03:15 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, The American Warrior, US Army | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 13 March 2007
 

And thus will it ever be

March 13, 2003
Jules Crittenden

I woke to the sound of soldiers snoring and beginning to stir around 5 a.m., and joined them out by the 500-gallon water buffalo shaving and brushing teeth in the cool desert air before the company’s morning formation. I spent much of that morning sitting on my cot, writing on my laptop. Lustig, the platoon sergeant, was busy with pen and paper on his cot nearby. The hungover soldier lay in the fetal position, sick as a dog, on someone else’s cot at the opposite end of the big platoon tent, as far away from Lustig as he could get.    

Around mid-morning, Lustig called the soldier over and began reading out loud. I was a little surprised that this personnel matter was being handled about six feet away from me, but Lustig ignored me, so I just kept typing. Fly on the wall. Lustig told the soldier to sign the statement.

In the afternoon, I joined the rest of the platoon in the tent for a map-reading refresher course. During a break in the class, Lustig came forward to address them.

“Listen up!” Lustig snapped. Ferocity wound up like a spring, just like I said. Quiet but intense.  Human panther. ...

Read the whole thing.

Contributed by Bill Faith on March 13, 2007 at 04:38 AM in Critter, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est, The American Warrior, US Army | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack