The good captain, p.33
The Good Captain, page 33
On occasion a vehicle would be damaged or destroyed, usually by an IED, and we would spring into a practiced battle drill, initiated with the code words “broken arrow.” Some units would evacuate their casualties and abandon the vehicle, only to see footage on al Jazeera of insurgents dancing on it a few hours later. In Dragon Brigade we formed a perimeter, called in the QRF, alerted higher headquarters, and dispatched a vehicle recovery team with security from the base camp. Secure radios, night vision devices and other sensitive items would be secured as soon as casualties were treated on site and evacuated. Even totally destroyed vehicles would be recovered. As finding an enemy to fight face-to-face was always a problem, we welcomed the opportunity to stay and fight, knowing we could build up combat power much faster than the bad guys.
But exactly who were the bad guys? On arrival, we weren’t given a “playbook” spelling out the local tribes, insurgent and terrorist networks, or criminal gangs who often attacked coalition soldiers for payment. Often, we had no idea who was firing mortars or rockets at us, or sniping at our guard towers, or ambushing our mobile patrols. In the greater Baghdad area, we faced al Qaeda in Iraq (led by the notorious Zarqawi), Iranian-supported Shia militias, Baathist remnants, pissed-off tribesmen indignant over some real or perceived affront, and everything in between. We had taught these groups not to talk on their hand-held radios, which we monitored. Accordingly, our knowledge of their whereabouts and intentions was weak at best. Some of our best information came from interpreters, local tribal leaders or Iraqi Army commanders we managed to befriend. Very little came our way from our own intelligence chain or intelligence agencies back in the U.S.
As soon as we got settled in, I instituted a weekly awards ceremony to recognize deserving soldiers from across the brigade. A common practice, we added to it by taking a picture of each soldier receiving his or her award and sending it, with a short note, to the awardee’s parents. I often received heart-warming responses. Across the nation, thousands of mothers and fathers had entrusted to us the most precious things they could possibly offer. We all saw leading these wonderful young people as a sacred trust, as it surely was.
As we got our teeth into the mission, I grew increasingly concerned about the soldier’s load. Since the World Wars, basic soldier equipment in many ways had evolved only slowly. We still wore or carried a helmet, web gear, canteens, first aid pouch, ammunition, and so on. In the 1980s, based partly on our experience in Grenada, the Army went through a light infantry “renaissance” and staff officers got serious about lightening the soldier’s load. It was decreed that the load for the “approach march,” which included a heavy rucksack, should not exceed 72lbs, while the “combat load” should be no more than 48lbs. These standards greatly reduced the burden on the infantry soldier and were graded events at our combat training centers.
After 9/11, however, the introduction of body armor capable of stopping rifle bullets greatly increased the weight of our ballistic vests, originally much lighter and intended to stop shrapnel and pistol rounds. Our rifles were lighter than in past wars, but we carried more ammunition. Many items of equipment were added that never existed before, like close combat optics for every weapon, “camelback” water bags, GPS hand-held navigational devices, night vision goggles, bulkier first aid kits and much else. Although our soldiers often moved mounted, for dismounted operations and foot patrols their fighting load regularly approached 100lbs, and for machine gunners, mortar men and combat medics, often much more. In practice, this meant that our soldiers usually fought standing up, as getting into the prone firing position and back up, over and over again, just wasn’t possible. As a commander, and not burdened with hand grenades, a grenade launcher, a machine gun, or a sniper rifle with their heavier ammunition, I would carry just under 90lbs—the lower limit for an infantryman in that war. I would rarely accompany a unit on foot for more than a few hours. Many troopers carried far heavier loads for many hours every day.
Though well intentioned, each new item penalized the combat soldier, now less mobile and more quickly fatigued, especially in the extreme temperatures found in Iraq. A lightly equipped enemy was generally able to break contact and elude us at will. Better protection undoubtedly saved lives, but the casualties we suffered because our troopers could not move under fire were surely significant. Unfortunately, we did not have discretion to leave behind heavy body armor or other items deemed essential. The few commanders who tried were sternly rebuked. Later, the Army would discover that some 40 percent of infantrymen came out of Iraq or Afghanistan with chronic back injuries. Two thousand years ago, the Romans wrote of “the toil, the incredible toil, of the march.” Not much had changed since the time of the legions.
On earlier deployments the state of our technology had limited us to infrequent phone calls to our families, but by 2005 all that had changed. Soldiers could now talk daily to the rear, and they did. This was widely seen as a morale booster. Beverly and I, however, kept to a weekend schedule. I found it impossible to live in both worlds simultaneously. I’d look forward throughout the week to our weekend reconnect, and she was careful not to burden me with the small crises that I couldn’t influence anyway. For my part, I did not share my worries and cares, not wanting to import that trouble and strife into her world. It was enough to hear her voice and see her smile, and to chat with the kids for a few precious moments. It worked for us.
In spring, summer, and fall the temperature rose well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, regularly exceeding 120 in mid-summer. Rainfall was unknown. Many soldiers worked outside on 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, wearing full equipment. Soldiers wore gloves with their sleeves down to protect against the searing heat and possible burns from touching scorching metal. NCOs checked them constantly to ensure they were properly hydrated, rested, and rotated into shade where possible. But the strain was intense, and some soldiers simply broke down.
As part of the daily routine, we would be told by our EOD commander when to expect to hear programmed detonation of unexploded ordnance (UXO). Almost every day, our forces would encounter live IEDs or other booby traps. They would call in EOD, who would defuse and transport the explosives to a safe location and set them off. Knowing when this happened was helpful, as it helped to distinguish between real explosions or attacks and controlled detonations. Typically, we’d be told “UXO 20/50” or some variation thereof, meaning that any loud explosion at 20 minutes past the hour or 50 minutes past would not be enemy generated. These timings would be varied each day to ensure the enemy did not mask a real attack during these events. Each day I would write these numbers on the back of my hand with a sharpie for easy reference. Throughout our year-long deployment I’d often be asked by visitors, staff officers or my superiors to explain the strange numerals on my hand, which would change every day. Always, I’d provide a humorous explanation (“Oh, that’s the number of days until my next colonoscopy”). I never revealed the mystery, contributing to a growing reputation for inscrutability.
Although our soldiers were sometimes shot at in the towers (usually by snipers or small arms, but on occasion even with rocket-propelled grenades), the greatest threat inside the sprawling VBC perimeter was from indirect fires in the form of rockets or mortars. The standard rocket was a 122mm weapon, looted from old Iraqi Army stocks. The 122 could be set up quickly using an improvised bipod, enabling the firer to escape immediately after launch. It had a flat trajectory, was extremely fast, and impacted with an ear-splitting crash. And it could be devastating. In one attack on Camp Liberty, a single rocket killed one soldier and wounded 22.
Drawing on my experiences in training, after every rocket or mortar strike, we immediately dispatched an assessment team to do crater analysis to determine both the exact type of weapon and its direction of fire. By carefully tracking this data we quickly built a picture of locations and timings for all rocket and mortar attacks, showing when, where and with what the enemy was likely to strike. VBC was also home to a number of counterfire radars that in theory could track mortars and rockets in flight and locate their points of origin. We could then focus our intelligence and surveillance assets in those areas and either target the shooters, or at least force them to move around and change their “pattern of life.” Over time, we were able to reduce these kinds of attacks by some 50 percent but rockets and mortars would continue to plague us throughout the deployment.
One attack in particular proved exceptionally devastating. When off duty, soldiers lived in trailers protected by 10-foot-high cement barriers. (Congress had forbidden us to construct hardened buildings to ensure there would be no “permanent presence.”) These protected them well against flat trajectory rockets, and as most mortar attacks were fired from small 60mm tubes, usually with only two to three rounds to ensure a fast getaway, casualties were rare. In this case, however, a concentration of twelve 82mm mortar rounds impacted squarely in a troop living area, demolishing a trailer and gravely injuring the six female soldiers living there. I arrived on the scene just minutes later to see our combat medics evacuating the worst casualty. As I rolled up and dismounted, the smell of high explosive still hung in the fetid air. Soaked in blood, the wounded soldier was strapped to a backboard, an IV forced into one arm and a breathing tube inserted. As she was loaded in a field ambulance the senior medic gave me a quick update: “She’s litter urgent, in shock with multiple lacerations, a collapsed lung, head wounds, blood loss and a fractured femur.”
Translated, his terse summary meant that she would die in less than two hours unless she received advanced trauma care. Accordingly, she was flown by helo to the “Level III” facility in the Green Zone in the center of Baghdad, staffed by some of the military’s best trauma surgeons. There she was stabilized. That night, she was placed on a fully equipped “Nightingale” fixed-wing medevac plane and flown to Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany, and ultimately on to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. Hundreds of badly wounded soldiers would make that flight, and most would survive—a testament to the skill of our medics and surgeons. In Iraq, if you were not killed outright, you had a fighting chance of survival no matter how badly you were hit.
Two months after we arrived, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment arrived at VBC, led by an iconic colonel named H. R. McMaster. Famous as the hero of the Battle of 73 Easting in the Gulf War as a young captain, McMaster wore a Silver Star and was also the author of a best-selling book about command failures in Vietnam. A former West Point rugby player, the brawny, bullet-headed cavalryman crackled with intensity. We had been friends for years and the reunion was a warm one.
In his first week, McMaster lost his sergeant major to an IED strike. What followed was unlike anything I had seen before. McMaster pursued the insurgents responsible for hours, massing tanks, attack helicopters and everything he could muster, finally driving them to ground and wiping them out. He broke crockery doing it, crossing unit boundaries, uncovering other sectors and in general raising hell. Monitoring his radio nets, I was impressed by his driving forcefulness, even ferocity. Here was someone very special.
McMaster soon found himself at odds with the Corps, for complex reasons. For months he had trained to operate in Baghdad, only to learn soon after arriving that he would be pushed up north to Tal Afer. The Corps planners began to dismember his regiment, slicing off one of his three ground squadrons and making a play for his aviation squadron as well. Any commander would be frustrated if dealt this hand.
H. R. was however cut from sterner stuff, and he pushed back hard, alienating his paratrooper bosses. At the price of angering the generals he held on to his helicopters and forced the Corps to give him more infantry. During his tour he would be injured in an IED strike that upended his vehicle, but he remained in command for the duration. His “clear hold build” approach to operations in Tal Afer proved enormously successful and was adopted by the White House as our strategy for all of Iraq, infuriating his superiors. In retaliation they damned him with faint praise on his command reports, hoping to side-line him from future promotion. Though he would always have detractors, his many admirers, of all ranks, recognized his talent and he would rise to three stars, concluding his career as national security advisor. For my part, I considered McMaster probably the best battlefield commander in the Army, and certainly the most interesting.
In May of 2005, I fielded a phone call from the current head of the Sosh department, who offered me the services of six Sosh captains. I took my obligations to the department seriously and wanted to help. Still, I proceeded cautiously.
“How long can I have them for?” I asked.
“Thirty days,” was the answer.
It was all I could do not to slam down the phone. The idea here was clearly to “credential” these officers with a combat patch and a campaign ribbon or two before bringing them back for the fall semester. They would hang around my headquarters for a few weeks offering advice, but not much more. I felt a visceral distaste for military tourism and said so. It would be some years before I would be invited back to the annual Sosh reunion.
As our year wore on, we battled rockets, mortars, small arms fire, and IEDs, but the most terrifying threat of all was the suicide bomber. As we had seen in the Marez attack, a single individual on foot and wearing a vest could cause incredible damage. A vehicle-borne suicide attack could be truly catastrophic, as an enormous weapon could be housed in the vehicle. Invariably, suicide attacks were carried out by Sunni fighters affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Most were foreigners recruited to carry out “martyrdom operations.” Every day we carried on a cat-and-mouse game with the enemy to prevent a high-profile suicide attack inside our thinly guarded perimeter, knowing that a successful strike would generate international headlines and cause massive loss of life.
Here we took no chances. Civilian vehicles could enter at only two of our six control points; the rest were restricted to U.S. military vehicles. At an outer station, the occupant would be stopped at a barrier and instructed to dismount and come forward (soldiers manning the checkpoint would remain under cover some distance away). He would be searched, checked for official MNF-I issued ID and temporarily held inside a concrete barrier. A handler and dog would then carefully circle and inspect the vehicle.
In this battle the Army threw every kind of technology at the problem: electronic sniffers, “Z Backscatter vans,” infrared systems and much else besides. In the end, nothing worked better than our military working dogs. Highly trained and incredibly sensitive, they simply could not be fooled, though the enemy tried. In the course of our mission, we encountered vehicle-borne explosives rigged inside ice, surrounded by blood bags, or shrouded in animal carcasses. Nothing worked. Invariably, the dog would alert on a vehicle carrying any explosive—even loose rifle bullets stored in the trunk. At that point, the driver would be detained, EOD would be summoned, and the vehicle would be blown in place.
Most working dogs were German Shepherds or similar breeds, unsuited to extremely high temperatures, and their handlers went to great lengths to care for these precious animals. In hot weather the dogs were rotated every 20 minutes into air-conditioned kennels in military vehicles. The animals wore leather booties to protect their feet from the searing concrete as well as “doggles,” specially fitted tinted goggles to protect their eyes. Inseparable, handlers and dogs ate, slept, and worked together, and given the high stress they operated under they served six-month and not 12-month tours. TF Dragon was given 20 teams, but we could have used twice that number.
Our challenge was greatly complicated by the fact that more than 2,000 Iraqi civilian workers and scores of large trucks entered the VBC perimeter daily. Here we could not accept risk, no matter how inconvenient our safety measures might be. Every morning our soldiers searched every entering Iraqi carefully. If found with weapons, cell phones, cameras, or fake IDs (literally a daily occurrence), they were turned over for interrogation and possible detention. Trucks entered at a specifically designated entry point and were taken into a large sterile holding yard where their cargoes were downloaded and searched by dogs. Only then were they uploaded onto our own trucks, which never left the perimeter, and taken to the job site. During our deployment, several large bombs were found in this way that, if detonated, could have killed and wounded hundreds. All of this was laborious and time consuming, but it was the only way to be sure.
A few months into the deployment, my force protection cell came to see me with an unusual request. After careful study they had concluded that we could improve our observation of the area if we constructed large towers in the four corners of the base complex. A month later they were in place, paid for with force protection funds and erected by one of the large contractors present at VBC. Each was 10 stories tall, equipped with a .50 caliber machine gun, a .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifle, FM and landline communications, and a large telescope. Atop each was a sensor suite of television and IR cameras which fed into the BDOC. The towers were roofed and manned by four soldiers, led by a junior NCO, at all times. The first nine stories were simply an iron framework, with an interior stair, but the top story was essentially a small room surrounded by a 4-foot bulletproof wall. A rope and pulley system enabled the occupants to bring up heavy items like water, rations, heavy weapons, and ammunition.
The towers were imposing and gave us the ability not only to see for miles in all directions, but to place heavy fires along the perimeter if needed. Early on, however, we identified a challenge. In the dust and dirt and wind, our sensor lenses quickly became obscured and required regular cleaning. This was both difficult and dangerous, as climbing atop the tower roof 10 stories high required strong nerves. CSM Zacheus gave the task to the brigade signal section. Fashioning safety harnesses out of modified parachute straps they happily took on the challenge.
