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Fire Fight, September 2006 It was one of those missions where they say the place is bad. One way in and one way out, I’ve always hated to hear that and knew immediately we would have to be alert and ready that night. Tarmyiah is a small town not 20 Klms from Taji a US airbase just north of Baghdad. We were tasked to take a convoy of mostly sand into an Iraqi Police Station construction site. Most of our missions were now being done at night since there was less traffic and of course this particular IP Station was right in the middle of the busiest area of downtown. At the time there was no traffic moving after ten in the evening because of a country wide curfew. We had a mission earlier in the day to the bank in Baghdad but other than that most of the day was ours. You spend a lot of time sleeping not only because of working at night but because the stress of the time just plain drained you. They also say that it’s the bodies way of coping with depression and I must say we were all a little depressed at having been hit so many times in so short of a time period. It rolls over and over in your mind not so much when you are on the mission but before and between. You question why you go through with this, but, you still do it mostly out of pride and dedication to your colleagues. We had fourteen trucks to take into the site, all dumps except for three which were loaded with sand bags. Sometimes you think “we risk our lives for sand, and the desert is full of it” how stupid a thing that is. Everyone says it’s for the money but I don’t think so, not now, to many of us have already made it. Once the mission gets going though you start to focus on what you are doing and that puts all the fear aside. We had an of three gun trucks that’s armored trucks with machine guns mounted and a crew of three. There was a fourth vehicle that we called the Sheep which is usually smaller and faster and can run up and down the convoy keeping it in good order. Managing a convoy is not an easy job. Usually the trucks are not in good working order, the drivers are a mixture of drivers from several different countries and there is usually no common language except for sign language. A good majority of the mission is dedicated to preparing and briefing the drivers on what has to be done to keep us all safe. This particular convoy was mostly Iraqi drivers. They are the most difficult to keep together since Iraqi’s have a tendency to think individually when they come under stress. It certainly proved to be true later that night. We had a good brief and readied all of the trucks most of them seemed worthy we only had a few minor problems that had to be corrected. You always have drivers who don’t have enough fuel and some tires have to be changed before the mission starts. The mission started just after sunset which would allow us to arrive in town just after the curfew began at ten. We had to move out of Baghdad Central through the city and up route Tampa North past Taji onto a side road and eight klms out to Tarmyiah. The convoy was tight and we had little problems until we got to Taji Airbase where we run into an oncoming Coalition Convoy and had to go static and wait for it to pass. After only a short delay we got the convoy moving again. Taji Airbase is surrounded by lights and it’s heavily fortified. But, Al Qaeda had been operating in the area just north without hardly any impending for nearly a year. That area is where Barquba, Samarra, and Balada are located and it’s now where the 30,000 US augmentation force is concentrating it’s clean up efforts. Then it was basically the “Wild, Wild West”. You could almost guarantee that you were going to come into contact with the enemy if you went in there. We had just gotten past the lights of the Airbase when we hit our first IED… We were the rear guard and I was vehicle commander (VC) of that vehicle. It was pitch dark and I was able to see the flash of the blast before I felt it’s shock wave. Of course when things like that happen our first drill is to get out of what we call the “Kill Zone” to move forward if possible pushing all of the trucks as fast as we can. None of the trucks were disabled except for an outer tire on the rear tandem of one of the dump trucks, no one was hurt, there was no follow-up attack, so, we elected to move on to a joint Iraqi and Coalition check point to reconsolidate. It was only about 1 Klm away and there the drivers replaced the tire and we were able to continue the mission within 20 minutes. While there we reported the incident to the Coalition Commander who sent out a “Reactionary Force” who came back before we left with two young men in handcuffs. They had caught them going back out to the same place putting another IED on the road. Moving on to the site we made a right turn off the main MSR and immediately you could see that this was going to be a real experience. That road was covered with IED holes most of them fresh within a few days. We had been told that this area was really bad but we had no idea until seeing it with our own eyes. That’s when the flags went up and you get goose bumps and your hair stands on ends. You know that you are going to be hit and everyone gets geared up for the inevitable. We drove on down the road mostly with lights out avoiding the holes and hoping for the best. It was uneventful and we made it to the site without any complications. The site was just as we had been told in the center of town on Main Street. There was only room for a few trucks at a time to move into the site so we had to set up all around security outside the IP Station. Coalition had a Forward Observation Base within a block from the station and they came out to chat with us while we were on guard. They had a lot of stories to tell about the place and it just fuel our anxiety over our exit expectations. One thing I vividly remembering was one of the soldiers saying, “Oh, you don’t have to worry about coming in it’s the going out that you have to worry about”. It turned out to be worst than I ever expected. We had several contacts in the past but tonight we were to be engaged by an organized and experienced foreign trained insurgent group. Mostly the attacks in the past were with small arms fire or IEDs, unorganized and rarely had we had anyone who stood and fought. This was not to be the case that night. It took nearly three hours to unload the truck plenty of time for the insurgents to plan and ready for us to exit out the same way we came in. They knew that was our only way out of this town and of course they were laying there ready for us when we came out. All went well until about three hundred meters from the check point at the entrance to Tarmyiah we had just left the town when an IED hit the front vehicle of the convoy. It was a small one and did very little damage and we got the classic “Contact, Contact, Contact Right” from the Team Leader “Frazz”. Since we were the last vehicle “Rear Guard” I had a good view of the insurgents on our right side. They were about 50 meters off the road and were positioned on the opposite side of a road that paralleled a farmers field. One of the insurgents had a Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher (RPG) and he was targeting the front of the convoy. He was a bad shot though and his rockets were going everywhere but where they should be. We were most certainly lucky for that and I heard through the chatter one of our Iraqi gunners say “RPG man is shit” I could see that they had at least one machine gun and there were other weapons being fired. What I figured at the time was there were at least ten on their team. As I looked over what was going on and giving my status report I realized that between the three gun trucks we had a good opportunity to catch the insurgents in a cross fire of machinegun fire. I opened my commander’s hatch and began firing with my AK then things started to go wrong. The convoy came to a stand still. Three trucks in front of us had stopped. The driver in the front got out of his truck and for the life of me I still don’t know why he began running round and round his vehicle. The drivers of the next two trucks realized they couldn’t get around and jumped from their trucks and ran off into the dense nod on the left side of the road. By this time I realized that there was no machine gun fire coming from my truck. I was expecting to see tracer rounds going down range onto the insurgent’s position but I didn’t see anything other than my rounds and the rounds of the first gun truck returning fire. I looked back and to my horror the Iraqi gunner in my truck was laying in the floor curled up in a fetal position. At first I thought he had been shot but was quick to realize that, no, he was just scared. Not only did my hopes for a good outcome for the situation go out the window but for the first time in my life I think I went into a rage. Within seconds I was on top with the gun. He had not even bothered to load a round and as soon as I cocked the gun and fired off the first shot it jammed. I cleared the round, loaded and fired the second time and it jammed. It was then I realized that my driver had gone off the road and was headed out into the field to go around the stalled trucks. At the same time our trucks started taking machine gun fire from the insurgents. I could hear the rounds hitting the side of the vehicle and the turret I was so lucky to be inside of. I gave up on the machine gun and went back down into the vehicle to get my rifle at least I could return fire with it. The Iraqi was still laying in the floor. I gave him a swift kick in the ass and told him to get to the back gun port and start providing some fire support. As I moved back up on the turret we had moved almost out of the kill zone before I was able to put down any fire. I got off only one magazine before ceasing fire and moving back to the radio to give a status report. The lead vehicle had gone static and was waiting on us and providing covering fire as we came out of the Kill Zone. Since I was busy with the guns and my driver, Greg, was busy managing a now damaged vehicle going cross country we were unable to pass on our status. They thought we had not made it through and were ready to come back for us. But, we did make it through and had only lost a right rear tire. When I started passing on our status two more rounds hit the turret. Now, it was pitch black and we didn’t have on any lights, either those were two extremely lucky shots or there was a professional in that insurgent team. No one was injured and we later were able to reconsolidate the three lost trucks. We carried on with the vehicle limping down the road for about five klms before we stopped to reconsolidate. The tire was so hot and ruined that we just threw it in the ditch. I was busy giving my gunner my two cents worth and heard the second gun trucks VC yelling at his. I went over and asked Stu what happened to him and he gave me a similar story of how his gunner was doing mostly the same. Of course both of those guys ended up fired there on the spot and were lucky that they even got a ride back into base. There was no room on the team for that, it nearly cost us our lives. We were in the decision process of what to do next when we got a message from the FOB telling us to stay on the road. They had called in an air strike and the Apache’s caught the insurgents out in the open. With two Hell Fire Missiles they killed five of which one was proven to be a sniper and injured two more. We were on that road for another eighteen missions before we were through there. They never gave us any quarter after that first attack. Seems as though we were marked for vengeance and they knew exactly who we were. Fortunately, we had support from the Coalition on many occasions and often the IEDs were found and cleared before we ever ventured into their territory. When the station was finally finished the insurgents went in with an all out attack and blew it up. They are now in the process of re-building it. No one on our team nor the drivers were injured and we later were able to reconsolidate the three lost trucks. It was a lucky situation for us that even though that insurgent team had some experienced leadership it had inexperienced gunners. Mirin123 |
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Was he ok, sounds like he put himself and everyone else in even more danger Melt. Flow. Evaporate into the bright sky 
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