It's burning hot outside. The temperature is well over one hundred degrees,
and the air conditioning on our up-armored humvee barely does a thing unless you press
yourself right up against the vent. I'm really tempted to let down the window,
but even when the wind blows out here in the desert it just feels like a blowdryer to your
face. Also, we're stopped, and it's hardly safe
to let down your bullet-resistant windows in this part of the country when your vehicle
is at a dead stand still. I am a fire team leader, and my team and I
are providing escort security for a VIP in the Humvee in front of us. Directly in front of his Humvee is two others,
and the lead Humvee's stopped because of a suspicious pile of trash on the road ahead. By now everyone's on edge when they travel
these roads, the insurgency has been hiding IEDs in everything from children's toys to
random piles of trash, and triggering them as a NATO column moves by. We've been stopped for about a minute now,
and I'm getting really nervous. This is my first deployment, and I've heard
stories about what happens when your convoy sits still for too long. On the radio I hear the VIP- some general-
call out to the lead vehicle, “Just shoot the damn thing and drive past!” That actually sounds like a great idea, and
moments later the lead vehicle opens up with the .50 caliber machine gun in its turret. There's a dull 'thump' sound, and past the
three vehicles in front of me I can see a cloud of dust rising up into the air. Yep, it was an IED after all. Suddenly I'm more nervous than I was before,
if that's even possible. We were supposed to have an MRAP with us to
clear the way, that's a mine resistant ambush protected vehicle that we've been told can
take an IED to the face and keep on trucking. They just got in-theater though and as usual,
maintenance issues means they weren't ready to go when we needed them. The lead vehicle is waiting until visibility
is restored before pressing forward again, no point driving straight through a thick
dust cloud and into whatever may have been waiting for our lead vehicle to take that
IED and get knocked out. There's zero chance any insurgents in the
area know of our VIP cargo, but to them hitting one convoy is as good as any other- they just
want to score casualties. Still nervous about sitting still, I tell
our Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher gunner who's looking behind us and providing rear
security to keep his head on a swivel. Then, it happens. There's a dull 'thwack-thwack-thwack' sound
and three cracks appear on the driver's side bullet resistant front window. I can see dull sparks from rounds pinging
off the armor of the humvee in front of us. Without needing to be told, the M60 gunner
in that humvee immediately spins his turret and starts putting out fire into the field
to our left, where the firing is coming from. My mouth goes dry- this is it- and I very
desperately want one of two things to happen- I want the convoy lead to order us to dismount,
because sitting in a humvee is not a good place to be when the bad guys have RPGs, even
if you're driving an uparmored version like we are. I also want the convoy to just press forward,
pedal to the metal. Get the hell out of here. That's exactly what doctrine states in most
situations- you push out of the ambush zone. But we don't move. Then we get a question over the radio, are
we receiving fire to the rear? Negative. After a moment the convoy lead asks for our
gunner to lay down a 100 meter by 100 meter barrage on the field we're taking sporadic
fire from. I yell at my gunner, who seems eager to obey
the order. A half-second later there's the dull thumping
from the huge automatic grenade launcher, and in my stomach I can feel the impact of
the 40 millimeter grenades exploding. He puts out fire in a 100 by 100 meter square
as instructed because we can't see the shooters, and in my head I remember practicing the same
tactic when I too qualified on the Mark 19. I always pictured myself painting a giant
box, the grenades being full of paint, and making sure every single square inch of that
box got filled in. The fire we were taking dies off long before
our gunner finishes his job, then immediately turns his turret around to provide rear security
again. We sit in silence for a few moments, and then
the order to go forward is given again. I look down at my watch and incredibly, only
two and a half minutes have passed since we stopped for the suspected IED. My first combat felt like hours, and it was
barely 150 seconds. Later, we get word that a security sweep of
the area found the remains of three bodies. When I hear the news I realize that these
guys weren't the real deal, probably just some fired up kids hoping to take out some
Americans and make a name for themselves. The real insurgency is a lot better at their
jobs. It's now two days later, 1800 hours. We just got out of a briefing for tonight's
op and are headed for chow. We've been tasked with providing security
for some intelligence guys as they lead us to a house in a local village, tonight's going
to be a snatch and grab. The target is a bombmaker who is suspected
of being pretty high up in the chain, and likely the guy who either built the bomb the
teenagers who got themselves KIA the other day tried to use or planted it himself and
left them behind to try and take out some Americans. The intel guys suspect that he's been sent
here by his higher ups to try and bolster the local insurgency, this area has been relatively
quiet for years but we're getting intel from locals that insurgent forces are moving back
in. If we can take this guy alive it'll be a huge
intelligence victory, so we were told over and over again how important it is we practice
strict fire discipline. Also the house is located in the very center
of the village, and packed right in next to two other houses, one on each side. The walls in most of these houses are really
thin, and even our M4s can punch through those walls and hit someone on the other side. Limiting civilian casualties is critical-
nobody wants to be responsible for killing a civvy. I'm scared to death, but I try not to show
it for the sake of my team. The prospect of going into the middle of a
village to snatch a high ranking enemy VIP makes my stomach churn. We've trained extensively for urban combat,
even went through FBI training in close quarters battle, or CQB, and I know it can be a nightmare. There's too many places to hide or get ambushed
from. Civilians everywhere. In military parlance, it's a total shit show. Also, tonight we can't go in with heavy weapons,
we're limited to just M249 SAWs on the humvees, and even those are for emergencies only. The M249 is like the smaller cousin of the
M60 or M240 bravos, and there's something about seeing the big 60s or 240s on a turret
that makes me feel safer. Or preferably, a .50 cal and Mark 19. Everyone's in high spirits though. Only one other guy on our team has seen combat
before, our sharpshooter. He doesn't really like to talk about it, but
none of the snipers ever really do. Through a long range scope you can see the
faces of the people you shoot at, that makes the war real personal for these guys. It's now 0100 hours, and we're rolling down
a back road enroute to our target. The great thing about this part of the country
is that few of these places have electricity, and the clear desert skies let you see more
stars than you've ever seen in your life. The star light is good for us, lets us drive
our humvees and one escorting Bradley without headlights, everyone uses night vision instead. Our vehicles may be loud, but we want to give
the enemy as little heads up as possible. A half hour later we're rolling into the village,
and everyone's on high alert. I remember asking during the briefing why
we didn't just stop short of the target and hoof it, I'd feel safer approaching on foot
without the vehicles making a bunch of noise and alerting the village the moment we enter. They want this to be a quick operation though,
literally drive up to the guy's front door and yank him out before anyone has a chance
to react. On paper it seems like a good idea, in reality
I have my doubts, and those doubts grow as I start to see curtains being pulled back
in windows and faces looking down at us in surprise. We're at the target block of houses within
a minute of arriving though, and I find myself hopeful that we were fast enough to take off-guard
anyone who might be protecting this enemy VIP. I tell our driver to pull to the back of the
houses, us and a second team are tasked with securing the rear of the buildings and making
sure nobody makes a run for it or tries to ambush us from this location. We're out of the Humvee in seconds, taking
up positions overlooking the rear and corners of the five block row of houses. I look back and see my gunner in the turret
behind the 249, and something in my gut tells me to get him off that turret. This is supposed to be a fast op, in and out,
so it makes sense for him to stay in that turret. But I can't explain it, something tells me
to get him and that gun down, so I do. He ends up taking position by one of the tires
of the Humvee, proned out and gun facing down the road we're on. I can hear the entry team bash the front door
in, and on cue two of our guys back here pop flashbangs inside the two windows on the rear
of the small target house. Up front they do the same thing, and almost
simultaneously there's the roar of four or five bangers going off at once. We have no idea where in the one-story house
this guy is at, but we're not taking any chances. If he was awake and waiting for a fight, I
guarantee he's no longer in a condition to do so. Everybody gets tense, waiting for the sound
of gunfire... but there's nothing. Just the screaming of some civilians. A man, his wife and kids run out of one of
the next-door houses and take off down the street, fleeing in terror. We let them go. Then there's a call over the radio. We hit the wrong house. The intel guys screwed up, bad. The only people inside are an old woman and
her two older daughters. The old woman's in bad shape from the bangers,
and she needs medical treatment asap. I hear the call to abort- we lost the element
of surprise and the last thing our twenty man crew wants to do is get caught with our
pants down, as they currently are, in the middle of this village. Everyone starts rushing for the humvees. Up front, they're taking the old woman and
her daughters into the Bradley so they can rush them back to base for medical attention. Briefly, I think about my own grandmother-
what if it had been her in that house? We made this mess, now we gotta clean it up
and make it right. Suddenly there's light, then heat. Finally, a roar. I'm staring up at the sky and can barely hear
anything. Slowly, my hearing comes back. Then I look over at my humvee just forty feet
away- it's in flames. Took an RPG and it looks like the gas tank
got hit, there's burning diesel everywhere. Immediately I look for my gunner, and I see
him, miraculously, laying down fire towards a house a block over. The thick, heavy-duty tire and axle somehow
protected him from the blast. War is so random sometimes. My head's all fuzzy, and as I look at my gunner
firing away I keep remembering- don't fire unless you need to, and keep off the 249s
unless absolutely critical, there's civilians everywhere. I open my mouth to tell him to stop firing,
but then I see the dust being kicked up all around me. Little explosions of dust everywhere, and
I realize- we're being shot at. A lot. My hearing finally comes back as I crawl for
cover behind a short concrete wall. The air is full of sharp cracks, and it dawns
on me that that's the sound of being on the wrong end of a bullet. I make contact with my team, checking for
any casualties. Everybody's fine, but the other team with
us has a guy down. My mind races as I take stock of the situation,
we're being told to extract asap, but I radio back that our Humvee's out and we got one
casualty. The fire's coming from a house directly up
the street from us, and I realize that this was probably the house we were looking for
all along. Just our luck to be caught right out in the
open in front of it too. There's fire coming from two of the front-facing
windows, and somewhere to the left of the house in another building as well. My guys are returning fire best they can,
and the 249 is chewing up the front of the house, but having to stop for reloads every
thirty seconds or so. He's got no assistant gunner with him this
time to help him reload, we weren't supposed to need it. I can see figures darting out of the house
to the left and right, and I realize they've figured out we're just a small team, not even
a full-strength platoon's worth of soldiers- and three of them are intel guys I'm not sure
have fired a rifle since basic. I remember my training, we studied the Russian
invasion of Afghanistan a lot. Their biggest mistake was staying put when
under fire, letting the mujaheddin maneuver on them and outflank them. They took huge casualties because of that. We don't stay put. I order my saw gunner to stick with the other
fire team to protect the wounded- now they have two- and I take my two other guys and
make a break to our left. We duck behind another row of houses and start
slowly sweeping forward. We may be understrength, but we've been trained
to fight aggressively. A second fire team from the front of the house
is mirroring our movement on a parallel street. One of their humvees got knocked out as well,
and we're down to two humvees and the bradley- not enough room to move everyone out. We didn't bring spare vehicles, because again,
was supposed to be in and out. The US military has learned from its mistakes. Too often units have sat still, holding defensive
positions waiting for extraction or a chance to make a break for it, raking up casualties
the whole time. Not us, we got one way out of this mess and
that's to jump straight into the teeth of it. We take four guys completely by surprise-
they're practically jogging down the middle of the street, not even bothering to move
tactically, rifles up. Guess they expected us to hunker down, to
sit still. Their mistake, and they pay for it. It's a lot like shooting targets at the range,
few quick squeezes on the trigger and its over in a couple of seconds, the three of
us opening up almost simultaneously. We're now just a few houses over from the
new target house, which is being hammered by one of the front team's 249s and incredibly,
still has people shooting back out of it. The other fire team maneuvering up also ran
into their own bad guys, but they got pinned down in a firefight. Guess their perps were smarter about how they
moved towards an ongoing fight. We've fixed the number of hostiles by now
though- two still firing inside the house, and three engaging the fire team maneuvering
up the street across from us. There's another estimated three down inside
the house, two in front of it after trying to make a break out the front door, plus the
four my team got. That's 14 hostiles total, nine now KIA, who
were all either living in, or next to, the target house. Suddenly I'm really happy we didn't hit the
right house, it would've been a blood bath for the entry teams. It's a small village though, and the good
news is that with so many hostiles in one spot, it's unlikely there's reinforcements
coming from elsewhere. This gives me an idea, it's insane and I surprise
myself when I realize I'm already transmitting it over the radio. I'm even more surprised when we get the go-ahead. We've been cleared to storm the house, take
out the last two guys, hopefully seize the enemy VIP still alive. All with a three-man assault squad. It's insane, I keep telling myself as we move
towards the rear of the house, guns up and eyes trained on the windows and doors around
us- but specially the rear door of the house. It's been left wide open, probably from the
haste the guys trying to maneuver on us were in. I'm afraid, damn afraid, I'm about to literally
jump into the shark's mouth and take my guys with me- but I push it out of my mind. I realize that this is the first time I've
been afraid since the fighting actually started. I've been running on pure adrenaline, brain
falling back on training. I go back to that place, and try to think
about what's coming next as just another training exercise. Just another breaching exercise, move in,
shoot the stationary target dummies, don't shoot the civilian dummies, reset the course,
do it all over again. At the back of the house I peer in one of
the rear windows- there's what looks like a messy bedroom that sleeps at least a dozen
guys, blankets all over the floor, but it's clear. The back door leads to what I'm assuming is
a hallway. Slowly, the three of us maneuver on that door,
stopping just to the right of it. This was my stupid idea, so it's my head that
peers out and into the open door- long hallway, and I can hear what sounds like two guys firing
from one of the rooms at the end of the hallway. Looks like they didn't leave any rear security. Again, probably expected us to sit tight,
defend our casualties and wait for extract. This is a new war though, we don’t sit and
wait for air support anymore. Hit us, and we’re going for the jugular. I call for the gunner still putting fire on
the house to aim high. The machine gunner is now shifting his fire
up, hitting the roof of the building so he doesn't inadvertently put rounds through the
thin walls and into us. By keeping up the firing though, he's drawing
the attention of the two guys still inside, making them think they're still taking direct
fire. I take point. Again, it's my bad idea, might as well be
the first in. Also, it's my team. The thought of one of these guys buying it
and me going home safe because I was second or third in scares me more than this firefight. We stack on the side of the door, just like
in training, ready to burst in almost simultaneously. The third man on the stack squeezes the shoulder
of the second guy, who in turn squeezes my shoulder- that's the cue, and on getting that
squeeze I silently whip into the door, rifle up and ready. It's supposed to be a four man stack, but
we adapt. I push past the first door on the left and
the two men behind me whip into the room. I hold position just past the door, still
focused dead ahead where the shooting is coming from a room further down the hall on the right. A second later the two come out of the room,
whispering all clear. We press forward once again. The hallway is tight, too tight for the guys
behind me to safely fire if anything happens without running the risk of hitting me in
the back, so I'm all the security I have as we move forward. I'm duck-walking, my feet spread widely apart
and chest forward to the enemy. That way if I do take a round, it'll go straight
into the thick armor plate covering my chest. It's an awkward technique to learn at first,
but we've practiced it so long that it's as easy as regular walking for me. I keep expecting someone to pop out ahead
of us, but nobody does. The two firing away in the room ahead and
to our left are still completely unaware we're in the house. There's a body up ahead, lying in the hallway. By now we're close enough to the front that
I can see all the bullet holes in the walls from where our rifle and machine gun fire
tore straight through the thin walls of the home. This guy must have caught rounds that came
through the closed front door when the fight started. I take a quick look at the body which is lying
face up, and then call for the man behind me to cover me as I take a knee real quick. His rifle goes up as I duck down, checking
a photo in my pocket the intel guys provided us with. Yep, it's him, the bombmaker. Now just another KIA. The entire mission is basically pointless
now. Just two loose ends left to tie up. The saw gunner out front has been strafing
the far left side of the house and the roof, to make it seem like he's still opening up
on the bad guys shooting out the windows. Now I call to him over the radio, and he pulls
his fire up even higher, putting it clear over the roof of the building and into the
sky. Me and my team are directly outside the bad
guy's door now. I don't feel anything. Just another run through the CQB course back
home, nothing to it but swing in, fan out, take out your dummy targets, and press on. I feel that squeeze on my shoulder, and operating
purely from instinct, I swing into the doorway and press forward. In CQB you slice a room up into individual
fields of fire, and each man has his own slice. It's vital you clear your slice first, even
if there's no bad guy there, because if you ignore it to open up on a bad guy in somebody
else's slice, you could miss someone, and now that bad guy you didn't put down is going
to put you and your team down. I swing into the room and press forward, just
like in training. First man in, I'm responsible for the far
left rear corner of the room, away from the front-facing windows. Away from the bad guys. The second and third man are in the room just
split seconds after me. There's silence at first, then the roar of
gunfire coming from my guys. My slice of the room is clear, so I turn to
the known threats, but they're already down. They never saw us coming. Never dreamed we would do anything but hunker
down and try to defend ourselves. In combat, whoever has the initiative is typically
the victor. We've been trained to be aggressive, to seize
the initiative and deny it to the enemy, keep him off balance. Tonight that training saved our lives. I think about this night later, and I find
myself glad that my slice of the room had been clear. I'm glad it wasn't me that had to put down
a hostile at point blank range. Close enough to see their face.
