This guy earned the title, "war correspondent."
Where reality TV gets deadly
Embedded journalist James Hider spent 12 hours with US forces in Fallujah before he was wounded
"The Australian."
THE green video screen in the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle is the ultimate in reality television and that is how we watched the battle of Fallujah unfold as our 30-tonne steel beast advanced into the district of Jolan, a rebel bastion, in the small hours of yesterday.
Outside, in the bomb-blasted streets, up to 5000 diehard insurgents were out to kill. Inside, on a screen accurate enough to show rats scavenging on the rubbish piles, the battle between luminous green tanks and luminous green gunmen seemed almost abstract.
Only the shock of the explosions and the occasional back blast of dust when a gunner opened fire reminded us we were in the midst of the most desperate urban battle since the fall of Baghdad. That, and the shrapnel that went right through my arm later in the morning.
The assault had begun with a day of intense bombardment of the rebels' positions on Monday. Artillery, tanks and warplanes pounded the buildings where guerillas were believed to be lurking, ready to detonate huge buried mines as the US army advanced.
Airbursts of shrapnel sent a vast jellyfish of smoke drifting into the city, raining fire on guerillas perched on the rooftops. As night fell over the darkened city, the explosions lit up the sky and US troops preparing to fight pulled up deckchairs to watch the show.
Two US marine battalions then stormed Fallujah's disused train station and a block of apartments on the edge of town. Sappers blasted a hole through the railway embankment, dropping trails of explosives to clear a path through a guerilla minefield.
At 2am our column of about 20 tanks and Bradleys of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, rolled in, not knowing whether the guerillas had died, fled or were waiting further back with more booby traps or even the cyanide gas they had boasted of possessing.
Progress was a mere crawl as the drivers spotted huge IEDs -- improvised explosive devices -- that can blow a Bradley in half. The gunners fired into them, triggering a series of massive explosions.
"There were too many IEDs to count," said Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Rainey, the cavalry battalion commander who rode into battle with his men.
Watching the green screen was nerve-racking. With buildings wrecked and streets churned up, there were potential booby traps everywhere. Then, as the column lumbered down a main road, the guerillas appeared.
They emerged from gates, alleyways and rooftops, alone or in small groups. Wherever they faced an armoured vehicle, they died where they stood.
The resistance was determined, but hardly the apocalyptic showdown the guerillas had pledged. They had threatened to throw hundreds of suicide bombers at the Americans. But in the darkness they were at a disadvantage, stumbling blind while the US gunners could see clearly.
As the column advanced, our Bradley fell back slightly. Ahead of us an Iraqi man appeared at his garden gate with binoculars. He peered at the front of the column. Three times he ducked in and out, before our vehicle lurched forward for a closer look.
Popping out again, he held a rocket-propelled grenade that he pointed straight at us. The turret commander yelled to the gunner: "Get him, get him, get him." Facing the barrel of the RPG, we silently wished the same. The man ducked back as the gunner fired, killing him on the spot with a high-explosive round.
As dawn broke, the firing subsided. Long columns of marines, fresh from skirmishes on the edge of town, headed into Jolan's streets to the accompaniment of heavy fire. Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers walked through the breach in the berm, looking more like a World War II army than a 21st-century force before they, too, marched into the rattle of gunfire inside the city.
Then, in a surreal turn, the US army's psychological warfare team drove in from the desert, Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries blaring from loudspeakers: war imitating the movies, imitating war.
As the pitch of the battle rose again, we reached the cavalry's provisional base, a former school seized from the guerillas. Ducking through classrooms and over bulldozed walls to avoid snipers, I felt an intense burning in my left arm after an RPG hit the ground close by. I only realised I had been hit by shrapnel when I reached up with my right hand and felt gushing blood.
We ran back to the Bradley, which evacuated me to a rear base hospital rapidly filling up with wounded US and Iraqi troops, as well as injured Iraqi fighters handcuffed on bloody stretchers.
The Times |
