In a few short seconds the world had gone
from right side up to upside down and submerged in two and a half feet of water. Our humvee had been roaring along at a decent
clip next to an irrigation ditch when my driver panicked, swerving to avoid incoming fire. He cut the wheel too far to the left and misjudged
the distance between the humvee and the ditch, and moments later we were upside down and
rapidly filling with water. It's the dry season, so there's not much water
in the irrigation ditch, but that doesn't matter much when you're stuck upside down
in the narrow confines of an up-armored humvee. I felt myself panicking, the humvee was too
tight a fit to squirm my way right side up, and the water was rising fast, already almost
to my elbows. My head was completely submerged, and in the
shock and surprise of the accident I had inhaled a large gulp of dirty ditchwater when we landed
roof down. I forced myself to calm down, during training
I'd learned to hit a place of 'nothingness' as I called it, a place where I pushed everything
out of my head- pain, fear, anger- all gone and replaced with a semi-calm sense of purpose. The rising water threatened to rip me straight
back into the real world though, and I had to move fast. The heavily armored humvee door took all my
strength to open with half of it underwater, and I barely managed to make it out before
passing out. Thankfully the open window made it so I wasn’t
pushing against the full weight of the water or I would’ve never made it out. Gulping fresh air and fighting the stars exploding
in my vision, I struggled to retain consciousness and after a few moments, immediately started
assessing the situation. The humvee was upside down and buried to just
below the bottom chassis leaving the wheels and part of the body sticking out. Across from me my driver had managed to crawl
out, and I spotted the rear passenger side door being pushed from the inside. Immediately I ripped at the door, helping
our assistant gunner to crawl out of the drowned humvee. Our gunner though hadn't been so lucky. He had been in the turret when the humvee
flipped, and now lay crushed under the vehicle. No chance of saving him, he'd probably died
on impact or shortly after. The sound of a world gone mad brought us all
back to reality. Overhead, Apaches were flying fire support
missions all over the insurgent-held city, and getting back about as good as they got. This entire war we'd enjoyed almost complete
superiority on the ground and in the air, but this city was an enemy stronghold and
they'd been preparing for this fight for weeks. Heavy machine guns reached up to meet the
Apaches, their armored canopies ringing out with the sound of heavy impacts and forcing
the choppers to pull back for safety. Damn tough birds that they were, I had heard
that we'd lost at least one today, shortly before my personal world went upside down. The insurgent fighters were taking an absolute
pounding on the air and on the ground, and just about every weapon in the US military's
arsenal was being brought down on their heads like the wrath of God himself. They would lose this fight eventually, both
sides knew this, but they didn't care- they just wanted to make this as costly a victory
as possible for the Americans and their NATO allies. How can you truly win a war against an enemy
that doesn't count success by objectives seized or destroyed, but by the sheer cost in human
lives they can inflict on their foe, with no regard to their own losses? In hindsight, I guess I knew back then that
we wouldn't. The roar of what seemed like a jet engine
came to a sudden stop right above us in the ditch. An Abrams crew had seen us flip into the irrigation
canal and taken up an overwatch position, part of the crew jumping out to help us back
up. One of the crew asked me if we needed a medevac,
I shook my head and told him to make a note of the accident location- someone from the
graves service would need to return and pick up a body here. Suddenly, the Abrams roared, firing off a
canister shot into a nearby building. The grapeshot munition is like a giant shotgun
shell, and absolutely devastating against enemy infantry. A few bad guys had appeared on the balcony
but the gunner had spotted them before they could open up on us, sending hundreds of steel
pellets their way at the speed of sound. The small building was effectively turned
into swiss cheese. We'd been part of a small two-vehicle convoy,
and the first humvee finally noticed that we weren't following anymore. They probably tried to reach us over the radio
but our radios and a large amount of our gear had been lost in the humvee. Mine had gotten ripped loose from my body
armor as I struggled out of it underwater, and realizing that I was completely unarmed
I hopped back down to fish up my rifle from inside the humvee. I was glad I couldn't see much through the
murky water, knowing that the crushed remains of our gunner were still sitting there. Our lead humvee returned and took stock of
the grim situation. We were officially down a man, bringing our
nine man force- they were carrying an extra passenger- down to eight. Our objective was simple, and the situation
on the ground so damn chaotic and out of control that it was determined only two small teams
would be sent, in effect making us little more than an oversized squad. Our small size would make us more mobile,
and we'd have to be if we were going to be successful. Somebody in the city was coordinating enemy
radio communications, and despite the electronic warfare guys doing a hell of a job suppressing
enemy signals, you can never be 100% successful with such a large area to cover. Every time a drone in the air zeroed in on
the suspected transmitter, it went off the air and popped up thirty minutes later somewhere
completely different. They wouldn't stay on the air long enough
to get a good lock and have one of the flyboys drop a nice JDAM on their heads either, and
despite the entire city being a warzone, there were enough civilians on the ground still
that command absolutely forbade anything less than precision strikes. In a way I was proud of that decision, US
forces shouldn't be slaughtering civilians, but in another way it also meant that now
the eight of us had to find our highly mobile transmitting friend and silence him personally. And it had already cost one life. Luckily for NATO forces, the equivalent of
a city administrator had brought us detailed info on the city's infrastructure early in
the fight. It was his hope that the intel would save
civilian lives, and he was dead right. The intel however also let us pretty quickly
figure out that our insurgent radio dj was using a series of sewer and irrigation tunnels
to move around. We guessed that he was receiving general orders
over cell phone or even satellite radio, both of which can be a lot harder to jam, and then
relaying orders to fighting units over regular radio before disappearing again, preventing
us from pinpointing his location. With the city plans though we were able to
dispatch several small teams to sewer entrances throughout the city and start the hunt. Most of them even made it in one piece We re-geared up with spares from the first
humvee and took off on foot, our assigned entry point not too far from our present position. Besides, with so much lead in the air it was
actually safer to move on foot, vehicles were drawing too much unwanted attention from anti-tank
weapons and RPGs. Thick foliage grew near the irrigation ditch,
giving us plenty of concealment as we pressed forward, finally arriving at a large metal
grate. A circular saw made quick work of the old,
rusty metal, and in moments we were plunging into the underground darkness. I remember hearing stories about the tunnel
rats of vietnam, and I shuddered every time I heard them. I had no problem jumping out of airplanes,
swimming through snake and croc-infested swamps, or doing any number of extremely unpleasant
things- but going underground, now that was terrifying. If I was going to buy the farm, I wanted to
do it topside, not in a hole in the ground barely big enough to squeeze through. Luckily these irrigation tunnels/sewers were
rather large, big enough to stand up in and for two men to walk side by side. Still, it gave me the creeps. Down here though the air was at least cool
and the sound of the fighting above was muffled by the earth. Occasional blasts- probably air strikes- sent
dirt falling from the ceiling though and I worried about a collapse. I took point along with one of my own guys,
he was a loaner from British SAS but we'd gotten close over the last few weeks. I could tell he liked the prospect of what
we were doing about as much as I did, but we pressed on anyways. Flashlights were out of the question, the
water was waist deep here and would reflect the light around corners and give us up from
a mile away. Instead we slipped on our night vision and
lit the way with infrared flashlights. The water level gradually dropped as it shot
off through smaller exits cut along the stone wall, finally reaching to just above our knees. We were moving silently as we could, but sound
does strange things underground- specially when mixed with running water. Up ahead there was a major intersection, and
I heard the sound of men talking far away, only to suddenly see three men with flashlights
appear at the intersection from another tunnel. They hadn't been far away at all, they had
literally been only meters away from our location but the strange tunnel acoustics made their
voice seem very far. Our two groups were equally surprised, but
we reacted first. With such a narrow tunnel, only us two at
the front could open fire without hitting the person in front of us, and we both hit
our marks- unfortunately we had been aiming at the same guy. The other two turned runners, shouting a warning,
but we dropped the second guy almost immediately. The third managed to run out of our line of
sight and down the tunnel he was traveling originally, but not before one of us wounded
him. The gig was up, he was rushing to warn somebody
of our approach. No time for stealth now, so we booked it-
no easy feat in knee-deep water. I actually laughed, I remembered back in training
having to run through thigh-deep water for PT and thought to myself, when the Hell would
I ever need to do this. I think that sometimes I laugh at inappropriate
moments because the only other option is sheer panic and bowel-emptying terror. Here we were running down a darkened tunnel
and chasing a guy warning the entire world that we were coming. Just one bad guy with a machine gun could
gun us all down in the tight confines. For a wounded man, the SOB ran fast and hard,
always just out of sight enough to prevent a clear shot. Finally he broke into what through our night
vision looked like a large room and we could hear the sound of many other men angrily shouting
and likely preparing to end our day in the worst way possible. When you've trained with a team long enough,
there's little need for words, and it's sort of a beautiful, terrifying thing. I often wonder what we could accomplish if
men could cooperate so closely together, so efficiently, in anything other than murdering
each other. With just a few short words, those of us in
front dropped to a knee, and those of us behind us hurled a combination of fragmentation grenades
and bangers into the room ahead of us. The room erupted in a staccato burst of explosions
only partially muffled by the grenades landing in what was now ankle-deep water, but the
bangers still put out one hell of a light show. I'd squeezed my eyes tightly shut to avoid
ruining my night vision, but could still see the brightness through closed lids. The moment the light went away we charged
forward. Light was coming in through holes in the roof
of the large aqueduct so we'd ripped the night vision off our heads. The contrast between light and dark though
made it incredibly difficult to see targets as my eyes fought to adjust to the new lighting
conditions. The bad guys though had it far worse than
us, who'd been prepared for the incredibly disorienting blast of the bangers in such
a tight space, though I'm pretty sure my hearing was permanently damaged for it. Compared to the bangers going off, the roar
of rifles in tight confines sounded like angry popcorn noises. These things always seem like an eternity,
but actually only last a few seconds- if that. The large room had practically no cover to
hide behind, only a few large pipes crossing through the opposite side of the room. It was in effect like shooting fish in a barrel-
for both sides. We however had the advantage of having deployed
a generous amount of disorienting flashbangs and frag grenades before entering. By the time it was over, their guys were dead,
but two of our own didn't look good. An enemy grenade had landed right at the feet
of one of them, and curiously enough I don't remember this happening at all. It happens like that though, you lose entire
sections of your memory in these situations- that's why after action reports are so important. His feet were shredded, he'd end up losing
everything below the knee on both legs, but he'd live. The other guy had taken several AK rounds
straight to the chest plate of his body armor, and they hadn't penetrated. The impact trauma though was too much for
his heart to handle- he'd die shortly later from internal bleeding and trauma to his heart. Yeah, you can still die in body armor even
if your armor holds up. Another team ended up finding Iraq's most
wanted DJ and permanently taking him off the air, and my best guess is that the guys we
found were a security element waiting for him to show up, make his transmissions, and
then help him get away again. I guess we accomplished our mission, and I
guess we had a pretty good loss ratio to boot, far better than any of us had expected. Underground fighting is just... ugly, and
costly. But to this day I can't stop thinking about
my turret gunner, crushed to death by a flipped humvee. I think about being trapped under that filthy,
rising water. I can't do those closed-up water slides at
water parks anymore, you know the ones with the black tube that you slide down in as it
twists and turns. I can only do the open top ones, the one time
I tried a few years ago I ended up breaking down in tears. Some teenage kid in line laughed as I was
helped down the stairs back to the bottom, I guess everyone just assumed I'd reached
the top and been too scared to take the plunge. Did you miss the first parts of the How I
Survived Combat series? Go check it out now or if you’re all caught
up then go watch this one instead!
