Baghdad's Liberation
By James Kitfield, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, April 11, 2003
nationaljournal.com
BAGHDAD -- In the end, it was the battle rage of the soldiers in the 3rd Infantry Division that delivered the shock long expected in the Iraq war. Relentlessly pushing well beyond its original targets, its brigades spread dangerously thin and battling for control of something the Army secretly called "Objective Lions," the 3rd I.D. was days ahead of schedule in bringing its guns to the gates of Baghdad. Ever since breaching the Karbala Gap at midnight on April 2, a linchpin objective in Operation Iraqi Freedom from day one, the soldiers of the 3rd I.D. had advanced as if driven by a dreadful purpose.
A daringly aggressive move, and a path of utter destruction, by the Army's 3rd Infantry Division led to the capture of Saddam Hussein International Airport and the collapse of the capital. It also led to painful and personal losses.
After capturing two earthen bridges and meeting stiff but poorly organized resistance in the Karbala Gap, the 1st and 2nd Brigades of the division raced on to seize "Objective Chargers," another of the targets that Army planners had designated with the names of pro football teams. Farther on, at "Objective Peach," elements of the 1st Brigade fought the most fiercely contested and perhaps pivotal battle of the war for a key bridge across the Euphrates River. Finding the bridge rigged with explosives and a dug-in Iraqi reconnaissance company holding the eastern bank, Lt. Col. Rock Marcone, commander of the lead battalion, the 369th Armored, ordered the first contested river assault by U.S. infantrymen since World War II.
"I had guys on the high ground providing suppressive fire, smoke generators going to provide cover, and infantrymen and engineers assaulting across the river in boats under enemy fire as the Iraqis tried to blow the bridge," Marcone said in an interview. "For about 45 minutes, we had every kind of contact imaginable happening at once, and that bridge could have gone either way. In the end, my guys cut the detonation wires just as the Iraqis were trying to blow the right span, and we saved the bridge. Once I got both my armored companies across the river, we killed the Iraqi reconnaissance element, expanded our bridgehead, and set our defense."
Still the Iraqis weren't finished. From a captured logbook, Marcone and the 369th learned that the commander of the 10th Brigade of the Republican Guard's Medina Division planned to launch a counterattack to retake the strategic bridge. When the Iraqis returned that night, the 369th was waiting. As the 10th Brigade attempted to retake the bridge, the 369th engaged in its first armor-on-armor battle, "and the 10th was supported by an Iraqi commando brigade," Marcone recalled. "After we killed the commander and defeated the 10th Brigade, I passed our 2nd Brigade through to continue to seize and attack, and take decisive action."
Expected to consolidate their gains and complete the flanking envelopment of the Medina Division, 3rd I.D. units instead drove on to capture the strategic crossroads of Highways 10 and 8 at the southern entrance to Baghdad. Once again, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, 3rd I.D. commander, was determined to press ahead. Sensing that the enemy's will was breaking, Blount wanted to go after "Objective Lions," the queen in the Army's Baghdad gambit.
From his forward assault command post, V Corps commander Lt. Gen. William Wallace had carefully tracked the 3rd I.D.'s rapid advance, and he considered halting it to consolidate the gains. Wallace wondered whether Blount considered how spread out, and how exposed to a potential counterattack, his combat brigades and screening elements were. How did Blount account for the risks of attacking such a heavily defended target without careful reconnaissance and intelligence mapping of the enemy's positions and strength?
In that critical moment, Gen. Wallace fell back on the gut instincts encouraged in all U.S. Army leaders. Field commanders are given great sway in determining, in the heat of combat, how best to exploit a reeling enemy. Wallace gave Blount and the 1st Brigade the go-ahead. The 369th Armored, having fought two battles in less than two days, and with only three hours' rest, was ordered to spearhead the 1st Brigade assault on Objective Lions -- now revealed as Saddam Hussein International Airport.
A Bad Day
Even as the 369th Armored and other lead elements were engaged in a vicious firefight with Special Republican Guards at the airport, senior staff officers at V Corps's Forward Tactical Headquarters watched the battle anxiously. "If General Blount and the 3rd I.D. aren't reined in at the airport, we're afraid he'll turn his tanks toward downtown Baghdad and keep going," said Col. Stephen Hicks, the operations officer, or "G-3," for V Corps's forward headquarters. "They've been here a long time. I think they want to get this done and go home."
The successful breaching of Karbala Gap, envelopment of the Medina Division, and subsequent encirclement of Baghdad that included capture of its main airport -- all in a synchronous, nearly continuous offensive maneuver during April 2, 3, and 4 -- was the turning point that U.S. war planners had long envisioned.
Intelligence intercepts heard a desperate Iraqi military command ordering the remnants of its Republican Guards to fall back to the inner city for a final defense of Saddam's presidential palace -- only, in many cases, no one replied. U.S. forces captured whole Iraqi brigades south of Baghdad and found their equipment abandoned, with their guns still facing south as if their commanders had no idea that they had been outflanked.
On April 5, the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd I.D. launched a sudden thrust -- a "thunder run," the Army called it -- nearly into the heart of the capital. Along the way, the brigade destroyed scores of Iraqi military vehicles, killed an estimated 2,000 Special Republican Guard defenders, and prompted a mass exodus of civilians from the city. When the brigade again drove to the heart of Baghdad on April 7, ripping down a statue of Saddam and blowing a hole in the front door of his downtown palace, it met such light resistance that its commanders decided to simply stay. This is what happens when a regime collapses.
The source of the aggressiveness of the 3rd Infantry Division on that final charge into Baghdad awaits full chronicling in the military history books. Certainly the division's soldiers wanted to return to their homes and families; after all, brigade-sized elements had idled in Kuwait for more than a year, longer than virtually any other major unit.
But there was also the matter of those lost along the way.
"Yesterday was a bad day," Hicks said on the morning of April 4, referring to the previous 36 hours, even while division elements were still securing the newly renamed Baghdad International Airport. A captain was wounded in the Karbala Gap by gunfire while he was searching a destroyed enemy tank for maps and intelligence. Another Army squad suffered three reported casualties from what was believed to be a rocket-propelled-grenade attack, although the Army is investigating whether the incident could have been a case of blue-on-blue fire -- let "friendly" forever be banned as a euphemism -- from a U.S. F-15 aircraft.
One of the division's Humvees had also been hit by an Iraqi RPG, and another had turned over into a canal while evading enemy fire. Both incidents resulted in casualties. A 3rd I.D. engineer, meanwhile, suffered a gunshot wound to the head. And a division Black Hawk helicopter crashed near Karbala.
As Col. Hicks reviewed the grim statistics, the radio on the Tactical Headquarters command desk crackled angrily to life. For the second time, Division Headquarters wanted confirmation of the casualties from the Humvee that had fallen into the canal. One of its occupants was apparently a reporter, and HQ wanted to know who was killed, now!
Except the name that the night officer in charge, Lt. Col. Rick Nohmer, was scribbling on his pad had to be a mistake. Something in this reporter's expression made Nohmer stop what he was doing.
"Mike Kelly," he said. "Did you know him?"
Casualty Of War
When his two National Journal/Atlantic Media colleagues had arrived in Kuwait City in early March, Michael Kelly was already predictably ensconced at the Sheraton Kuwait and conducting early recon for the company's war coverage. Employing a veteran foreign correspondent's tactic, Michael had with charm and lavish tips enlisted the services of a man Friday, a local taxi driver named Hamouda. For more than a week, Hamouda served as an indispensable guide to the labyrinth of electronic chop shops and tailors in Kuwait City, as we outfitted ourselves for the war to come. Any friend of Michael's was a friend of Hamouda's.
Attracted to momentous stories by a voracious curiosity, Michael was a veteran of numerous wars and political campaigns. His reporting from the 1991 Persian Gulf War had produced a memorable book, Martyrs' Day. In Kuwait City, he recounted his experiences in Bosnia, where he spent so many weeks on the front lines that he caught a touch of that war's strange lunacy, belligerently arguing with security personnel screening his luggage for the flight home over his right -- no, by God, his duty -- to retain in his carry-on luggage the bayonet given to him as a parting gift by a Croatian officer.
It was part of Michael's generosity of spirit that he shared it all with his colleagues: his stories, his expertise, and his Rolodex of contacts and accumulated friendships. As the Sheraton Kuwait transformed itself into an unofficial media center in the weeks leading up to the war, Michael seemed to know everyone, from grizzled scribes and cameramen to celebrity network news anchors. Each starred in one of the vignettes of past adventures that he wove for the entertainment of all, and each in turn recognized in Michael a kindred spirit, albeit one with uncommon wit.
During the day, Michael drove us in his rental car to collect our press passes and to run other errands. Much of the time he was lost but typically undeterred in his determination to explore the nooks and crannies of Kuwait City, despite warnings that local cells of Al Qaeda still plotted against Westerners. Michael had been one of the first journalists into a liberated Kuwait in 1991, and he felt a personal claim on the city.
At night, we dined on Kuwait's finest, substituting fruit drinks for the highballs we all craved -- the expense accounts be damned. Michael never let a tab hit the table. In those waning days before journalists reported for their assignments to specific military units, Kuwait City seemed gripped by the strange elation known only to cities on the brink of war -- London before the Blitz, Paris prior to the fall. We were intoxicated by that giddy mixture of apprehension and the freedom that comes from living in the moment. In my seven-year acquaintance with him, I had never seen Michael more alive or effortlessly engaging.
During Michael Kelly's final days, the V Corps Forward Headquarters occasionally received word from other reporters about Mike's comings and goings. These accounts confirmed how well he understood his own nature. Kelly was seen at the scene of this or that fresh battle, covered head to boot in soot and scribbling into a reporter's pad as he interviewed U.S. soldiers near the front. Among other reporters -- who know Kelly's work the way that baseball players can cite the batting average of an all-star -- his return to the field and to eyewitness writing was a topic of conversation. His opinion pieces in The Washington Post often skewed to the conservative and acerbic, and those with different political views could be understandably put off. Yet Kelly's unapologetic sense of right and wrong and fierce streak of independence were integral to both his writing and his life. It was part of the complexity of the man that the bite of his opinion pieces was nowhere reflected in his gentle personality, or indeed in his other prose. About his basic decency and craftsmanship, his peers offered no argument: Michael Kelly was back where he was needed most, doing what made him feel most alive -- bearing witness to history with his own keen insights.
On the last night before leaving for the Kuwaiti desert, I stopped by Michael's room at the Sheraton to drop off some extra baggage that Hamouda was going to store for us. Michael was on the phone with his wife, but he ushered me into the room with a wave of his hand. He couldn't resist a little good-natured needling of my bachelor's ignorance, displayed that afternoon on a final shopping trip, of the apparent utility of baby wipes in the field.
"Max," he told his wife Madelyn, the mother of his two young sons, Tom and Jack, with typically infectious glee, "James didn't even know what they were made to wipe! I could tell! We should offer to show him!" We both laughed, but there was something about sharing this moment of unexpected domestic intimacy that brought on a pang of homesickness in him that I hadn't noticed before.
On my way out of his hotel room on that last night that I saw him, Michael offered a handshake. "Be safe, and have a good adventure," he said. "I'll buy you a beer in Baghdad."
Soldiers And Scribes
In the days to come, soldiers would ask me, as they must surely have asked Mike, why any reporter in his right mind would volunteer for this assignment. If nothing else, perhaps the experiment with embedding journalists en masse in U.S. military units during war will finally dispel this notion that soldiers and journalists are sworn antagonists with nothing in common. It's true that our missions can bring us into conflict and that our makeups are often very different. Yet U.S. soldiers are volunteers too. In many ways, we are mirror opposites of a common reflection, with the impulses that led us all to this place being quite similar.
There's the thirst for adventure -- let none deny it -- and a restless impatience with what is routine and mundane in everyday life. There's the desire to be part of larger events and forces that shape our world. Beneath those two impulses is a bone-deep conviction that, as professionals, we are charged with important protecting principles, sometimes at considerable risk to our lives. Michael Kelly, as a writer and war correspondent, lived by that warrior creed as faithfully as any soldier.
At the time of his death, Michael was predictably leading from the front. Following closely in the wake of lead elements of the 369th Armored Battalion as it fought its way into Saddam Hussein International Airport, Michael's convoy was on an elevated causeway straddling a canal when it was hit by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire at night just outside one of Saddam's new palaces. He was less than a mile from the main airport terminal. In evading the fire and chaos, his Humvee veered into the canal and flipped over.
"When Michael found out that the 1st Brigade was the advance guard for the whole division, he wanted to come down and be with us guys up at the front, and he was with my unit through the breach of the Karbala Gap, the battle for the bridge at Peaches, and the assault on the international airport," said Lt. Col. Marcone, who forged a bond between soldier and scribe that perhaps only those in combat can truly understand.
"I can tell you that when you fight three battles with somebody, you get pretty close," said Marcone, an Italian-American who shared many good stories with Kelly, the gregarious Irish-American from Washington.
"Mike was just a prince of a man, and very brave. I mean, he begged me to get him upfront for the assault on the airfield, and I finally agreed and put him right behind my Alpha Company. That was what Michael wanted to do. He was going to get his story. I can't describe the pain when I heard what happened to him in the middle of the battle to try and take the airport. All of us loved Mike."
A Deafening Silence
Wilbert Davis was from Florida, and he too had a wife and two sons. As the head of the 369th Armor's maintenance unit, Davis would never let a piece of equipment out of his care unless it was in top shape and ready for whatever the soldiers operating it might confront. If this mission meant that he and his troops had to work late shifts in what is largely a thankless task, so be it. His job -- and dedication -- were points of pride to Davis. Whenever one of his soldiers felt the world crashing down on his shoulders, as soldiers sometimes will, Davis would sit the soldier down to talk and not get up again until he had somehow elicited a grin and a laugh. On April 3, Staff Sgt. Davis was riding with Michael Kelly when their Humvee overturned. He and Mike died together. They must have gotten along just fine.
Edward Korn was the 3rd I.D. captain killed on April 3 in the Karbala Gap while searching an Iraqi T-72 tank for possible intelligence documents. The three artillerymen who died as the result of an attack -- possibly from rocket-propelled grenades -- were Sgt. Todd Robbins, Spc. 1st Class Randy Rehn, and Pvt. Donald Oaks. The RPG that hit a Humvee killed Tristan Aitken, a captain. Paul Smith, a sergeant first class with the 11th Engineers who was shot in the head, succumbed to his wound.
The crew members of the downed Black Hawk were Capt. James Adamouski; Sgt. Michael Pedersen; Spc. Mathew Boule; and Chief Warrant Officers Erik Halvorsen, Eric Smith, and Scott Jamar. All are dead.
Say the names aloud, each a distinctive voice in its own right, and all entrusted with the love and secret histories of their brothers in arms, of families and friends, of whole circles of family and friendship beyond. Each one is a voice now stilled. The awful silence at the center of that void is now spreading in concentric shock waves through a constellation of grief. Assurances that the United States is on the verge of achieving another "low-cost" victory with "historically" low casualty rates, and promises that the fallen have the thanks of a grateful nation -- all of those comforting words are now beyond hearing in that mute realm. They are lost in the deafening repercussions of one bad day. There would be other bad days to come in this war, for soldiers and for journalists.
Such a silence and the mournful echo of remembrance also hang over this suffering land. While no accurate tally of Iraqis killed in this war exists, the dead surely number in the thousands upon thousands. As Iraqi Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf made absurdly clear before he was silenced, the tyrant's world is premised on repeating the "Big Lie" long enough, and loudly enough, until people willfully deceive themselves. Perhaps none of Saddam Hussein's lies was crueler than his insistence that Iraqi forces had a fighting chance in this war. Time and again, U.S. commanders have shaken their heads in wonder at the tactics of Iraqi soldiers who seemed to believe that their frontal assaults were invisible under the cloak of darkness, or who positioned themselves for ambushes while their intended prey stood safely out of range, drawing a deadly bead.
As one senior U.S. officer commented, "Perhaps the most effective propaganda tool we could have used in convincing the Republican Guard to give up this fight earlier would have been to send them a demonstration tape of the M-1 Abrams battle tank."
On the night of April 3, with the armored juggernaut of the 3rd I.D. in full fury, a picture of the resultant carnage was on vivid display inside the V Corps Forward Tactical Headquarters tent, known as the TAC. Live and on real-time video, Iraqi soldiers were dying by the hundreds. In that one 24-hour period, the U.S. Air Force would kill 25 percent of all the enemy targets it hit during the entire war up until that point.
The charge of the 3rd I.D. from Karbala Gap to Baghdad's outskirts had, in the words of another senior officer, "kicked the anthill." Sensing that they had been outflanked and were in danger of being cut off, major remnants of the Medina and other Republican Guard divisions to the south were scurrying up Highways 10 and 8 and associated tributaries, trying to retreat into Baghdad with their tanks, missile launchers, and towed artillery for a final stand. But they were being followed.
Unseen overhead, an unmanned Hunter drone, its images broadcast in real time and displayed on a corner of the TAC's electronic map board display, would zero in on a military vehicle or enemy emplacement and linger. The operations chief of the TAC would relay the target coordinates and Global Positioning System grid to an Air Force liaison officer, or "ALO," and then the entire TAC would wait and watch until the sentence was carried out with a precision-guided bomb. For disquieting minutes, everyone in the TAC knew conclusively what the figures clearly visible on the ground could never guess as they went about their soldierly tasks, refueling a tank or smoking cigarettes around an artillery tube: They were condemned men.
Nor were these the sanitized videos, displayed at U.S. Central Command briefings, of bombs flying through buildings. On Hunter video, people are clearly visible at night in the reverse highlights of the drone's infrared camera, their forms blown like scarecrows by the percussion of a striking bomb. Lt. Col. Eric Wagenaar, operations officer in charge, is asked about movement in the corner of the image after one such hit on an artillery position. He waits until Hunter focuses in and answers for itself.
"That's a wounded soldier, trying to crawl away," he said, stating the all too obvious.
America chooses among its finest men and women to form a warrior class, and then it places them in kill-or-be-killed situations. Shame on anyone who would criticize them for being good at killing. But as a Hunter displays a successful strike against an Iraqi mobile rocket launcher, and prompts a cheer inside the TAC, an outsider remarks that it's a passing strange business just the same. Both Wagenaar and deputy operations chief Lt. Col. Rob Baker, two thoughtful officers if ever there were any, nod their heads in the affirmative. Neither cares to argue the point.
"It's a helluva thing, watching people die," said Col. Baker.
A Tyrant Falls
The road to Baghdad is scorched black. Burned husks of tanks and trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns litter the roadside for many miles, each dark smudge of ash and charred detritus along the way bespeaking human drama with a violent end. At random intervals along the way, the guardrail on Highway 10 is crumpled as if from blows of a massive fist. At "Objective Saints," where Highways 10 and 8 intersect, the mangled remains of an M-1 tank block one side of the highway and U.S. troops work to clear an area blasted by an Iraqi rocket that fell on 2nd Brigade's Tactical Headquarters on April 7, killing two U.S. soldiers and two journalists. This journey to find the 369th Armored Battalion is mainly a simple matter of tracing the path of destruction it left in its wake on its way to Baghdad.
There are also signs of liberation along the way. Outside the gates of government houses and Baath Party mansions, Iraqis in bare feet and dirty robes put down their overburdened wheelbarrows long enough to smile and wave at passing Americans, and then carry on with their cheerful looting. The news on April 9 is mainly of numerous towns -- from Arbil in the north to Hilla, Najaf, and Karbala in the south -- expelling their remaining oppressors and opening their arms to U.S. forces with little further bloodshed. The looting has also spread to Baghdad, but there will be time enough to establish a new order. For just a moment, it seems fitting that the Iraqis revel in the chaos of freedom.
Down a dirt road, past a bullet-pocked guard tower and through a breach blasted in a stone wall just east of Baghdad International Airport, the 369th Armored Battalion has set up camp in the midst of one of Saddam's expansive palace complexes. M-1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles are parked everywhere around the palatial residences and guest houses, every building and balcony opening onto a cool, green expanse of man-made lagoon. The soldiers milling about take no more notice of the intermittent "BAWUMPH!" of a nearby mortar exchange than they would of a car horn.
Inside the marbled expanse of one of the palaces, Lt. Col. Marcone and his troops are enjoying a little hard-earned rest, and partaking of all the comforts of the kingdom. The first thing that leaps out at someone accustomed to a rear-echelon headquarters is how improbably young the soldiers seem at the tip of America's spear, these boys with immigrant blood and down-home accents. The only sign of their rapidly vanishing innocence is a wariness in their eyes that no amount of rest and recreation will soon erase.
On April 8, the U.S. Air Force dropped a bomb on Baghdad that may or may not have killed Saddam and his beloved spawn, Uday the torturer. Today, on April 9, crowds of Iraqis swarm around a statue of the "Great Leader" in downtown Baghdad and attempt to topple it by any means at hand. Tomorrow, the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division will go for another drive downtown looking for a fight or a surrender, whatever remnants of Saddam's regime prefer.
In the meantime, the GIs of the 369th Armored have the keys to the palace, and the former occupants are nowhere to be found. Outside in a stone courtyard once reserved for courtiers and supplicants to the regime, with the waters of the lagoon as a backdrop, someone has strung a clothesline and proudly unfurled the green and black of Army-issue underwear.
Michael Kelly would have loved the view. |
