Part 43 (1/2)

And at the time, it was funny, in a perverse kind of way.

You didn't know which direction they'd attack from, but the tactics were almost always the same. The insurgents would start out with automatic fire, pop off a bit here, pop off there. Then you'd get the RPGs, a flurry of fire; finally, they'd scatter and try to get away.

One day, we took out a group of insurgents a short distance from the hospital. We didn't realize it at the time, but Army intel pa.s.sed the word later on that the insurgent command had made a cell phone call to someone, asking for more mortarmen, because the team that had been hitting the hospital had just been killed.

Their replacements never showed up.

Shame. We would have killed them, too.

Everyone knows by now about Predators, the UAVs that supplied a lot of intelligence to American forces during the war. But what many don't know is that we had our own backpack UAVs-small, man-launched aircraft about the size of an RC aircraft kids of all ages play with in the States.

They fit in a backpack. I never got to operate one, but they did seem kind of cool. The trickiest part-at least from what I could see-was the launch. You had to throw it pretty hard to get it airborne. The operator would rev the engine, then fling it into the air; it took a certain amount of skill.

Because they flew low and had relatively loud little engines, the backpack UAVs could be heard on the ground. They had a distinctive whine, and the Iraqis soon learned that the noise meant we were watching. They became cautious as soon as they heard it-which defeated the purpose.

Things got so heavy at some points that we had to take up two different radio bands, one to communicate with our TOC and one to use among the platoon. There was so much radio traffic back and forth that comms from the TOC would overrun us during contact.

When we first started going out, our CO told our top watch to wake him every time we got into a TIC-a military acronym that stands for ”troops in contact,” or combat. Then we were getting in so much combat that he revised the order-we were only to notify him if we'd been in a TIC for an hour.

Then it was, only notify me if someone gets injured.

Shark Base was a haven during this time, a little oasis of rest and recreation. Not that it was very fancy. It had a stone floor, and the windows were blocked by sandbags. At first, our cots were practically touching, and the only homey touch was the banged-up footlockers. But we didn't need much. We'd go out for three days, come back for a day. I'd sleep, then maybe play video games for the rest of the day, talk on the phone to back home, use the computer. Then it was time to gear up and go back out.

You had to be careful when you were talking on the phone. Operational security-OpSec, to use yet another military term-was critical. You couldn't say anything to anyone that might give away what we were doing, or what we planned to do, or even specifically what we had done.

All of our conversations from the base were recorded. There was software that listened for key words; if enough came up, they'd pull the conversation, and you could very well get in trouble. At one point, somebody ran their mouth about an operation, and we all got cut off for a week. He was pretty humiliated, and of course we reamed him out. He felt appropriately remorseful.

Sometimes, the bad guys made it easy for us.

One day we went out and set up in a village near the main road. It was a good spot; we were able to get a few insurgents as they tried pa.s.sing through the area on their way to attack the hospital.

All of a sudden, a bongo truck-a small work vehicle with a cab and a bed in the back where a business might carry equipment-careened from the road toward our house. Rather than equipment, the truck was carrying four gunmen in the back, who started shooting at us as the truck drove across the fortunately wide yard.

I shot the driver. The vehicle drifted to a halt. The pa.s.senger in the front hopped out and ran to the driver's side. One of my buddies shot him before they could get going. We lit up the rest of the insurgents, killing them all.

A short while later, I spotted a dump truck heading down the main road. I didn't think all that much about it, until it turned into the driveway of the house and started coming straight at us.

We'd already interviewed the owners of the house, and knew no one there drove a dump truck. And it was pretty obvious from his speed that he wasn't there to pick up some dirt.

Tony shot the driver in the head. The vehicle veered off and crashed into another building nearby. A helo came in a short while later and blew up the truck. A h.e.l.lfire missile whooshed in, and the dump truck erupted: it had been filled with explosives.

FINALLY, A PLAN

By early June, the Army had come up with a plan to take Ramadi back from the insurgents. In Fallujah, the Marines had worked systematically through the city, chasing and then pus.h.i.+ng the insurgents out. Here, the insurgents were going to come to us.

The city itself was wedged between waterways and swampland. There was limited access by road. The Euphrates and the Habbaniyah ca.n.a.l bounded the city on the north and west; there was one bridge on either side near the northwestern tip. To the south and east, a lake, swamps, and a seasonal drainage ca.n.a.l helped form a natural barrier to the countryside.

The U.S. forces would come in from the perimeters of the city, the Marines from up north, and the Army on the other three sides. We would establish strongholds in various parts of the city, demonstrating that we were in control-and essentially daring the enemy to attack. When they did attack, we would fight back with everything we had. We'd set up more and more footholds, gradually extending control over the entire city.