Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, made a last stand with a .50-caliber machinegun against dozens of attacking Iraqi soldiers during fighting in April at the international airport outside Baghdad. He is being considered posthumously for the Medal of Honor, the military's highest decoration.
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BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Iraq -- The Republican Guard complex adjacent to the airport seemed the ideal place for a prison: high stone walls surrounding a grassy courtyard. There was a guard tower, high enough so the American soldiers could monitor their Iraqi prisoners of war.
Building the prison was assigned to Bravo company of the 11th Engineer Battalion, attached to the 2-7 Infantry.
It was Friday morning, the first day of the 2nd Battalion 7th Infantry Regiment's occupation of Saddam Hussein's airport. They needed the space quickly. A tank company had already captured prisoners of war, while securing the perimeter on the eastern side of the airport.
Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith readied his engineer squad to begin knocking down walls. He was a meticulous soldier who always wanted things done the right way.
With an armored bulldozer, the engineers punched a hole near the guard tower. They planned to surround a corner of the courtyard with concertina wire. They used a lightly armored track vehicle known as a 113 to knock down a gate at the far end of the yard.
And that's when all hell broke loose.
"It was like we had opened a hole in a hornet's nest," said Capt. Matt Paul, 26, the mortar commander.
The Republican Guard complex had not been secured. Bullets rained from the guard tower. Iraqi soldiers perched in trees fired rocket propelled grenades. There were snipers on the roof. And through the gate came a wave of Iraqi soldiers charging toward the engineers and a handful of soldiers manning the mortars. An estimated 100 or more Iraqis rushed through the gate.
The Army engineers, medics and mortar operators numbered between 14 and 20.
"We were pinned down," said 1st Sgt. Tim Campbell, 35. "They had this planned. They found the lightest defended area and attacked."
The engineers took casualties almost immediately. A mortar round exploded, spraying shrapnel everywhere. The blast broke a sergeant's arm and lodged shrapnel in a platoon leader's neck. A private lost his sight and had no idea where he was.
Smith jumped out of his 113 armored track parked near the gate, and tended to the wounded. He identified the most serious casualties and called for help.
At one point, Smith ran to a Humvee manned by a team of scouts, grabbed a grenade and threw it over a wall, where the Iraqi soldiers were staging the attack. Then he returned to help the wounded.
Campbell ran into the courtyard to help carry out the wounded private. The other two injured soldiers ran with him for cover.
Smith stayed behind at the 113. The vehicle had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The explosion ripped through a soldier's rucksack, strapped to the side of the vehicle, spilling underwear and socks onto the ground.
But it still worked. The lanky, 6-foot Smith climbed out of the hatch and ordered the driver, a private, to put the track in reverse and head to the opposite wall from the gate.
From here, Smith could cover both the guard tower and the gate, without hurting the medics and the injured with ricocheting bullets.
Smith sprayed his .50-caliber gun, mounted on top of the track, back and forth.
The Iraqis kept running through the rusted metal gate. Smith burned through 100 rounds in minutes and reloaded.
The gunmen in the guard tower were unfazed. They were protected behind a thick concrete pill box, with a small slit from where they aimed their guns. Smith couldn't reach them in there.
By now, Campbell had made it to the other side of the courtyard and crouched along the outside of the wall. The incessant fire coming from Smith's machine gun gave Campbell time to figure out how to take out the guard tower.
Campbell knew there was an opening on the far side of the tower. If he could get a clean shot from that angle, he could kill the gunman and protect Smith, warding off the Iraqi advance from inside the courtyard.
Like Smith, Campbell had been in the Army for about 15 years. Both men had served in the Persian Gulf War. Their wives socialized and went shopping together back home. Smith's daughter, Jessica, baby-sits for one of Campbell's children. Smith grew up in Florida; Campbell comes from Bethel, Ohio.
Campbell could tell that Smith had stopped firing his machine gun. Then, he heard Smith yelling on the company radio for more ammunition. Smith had gone through another box of .50-caliber rounds.
Campbell grabbed Pfc. Kevin Garad, 18, and another soldier and advanced on the tower.
Among them, they had three weapons: a light machine gun, an M16 rifle, and a handgun with one magazine of ammunition.
The three soldiers crept toward the tower. Garad, a native of London, England, said tall grass outside the compound had caught fire from exploding ammunition, providing cover.
When they reached the tower, the three soldiers emptied their weapons into the opening. "There was blood everywhere," Campbell remembers. The shooting from the tower stopped. The Iraqi soldiers stopped running through the gate.
Campbell figures that the soldiers in the tower were commanders controlling the battle. Once they were killed, the fighting stopped.
Shortly before hitting the tower, Campbell noticed that the sound of Smith's .50-caliber had also stopped. Campbell figured Smith must be reloading again.
CAMPBELL FOUND
Smith lying inside the track. He had been shot once in the head. The medics worked for 30 minutes, but could not revive him.
Smith went through four boxes of ammunition -- totaling 400 rounds -- and fought for more than an hour and a half.
His fellow soldiers credit Smith with thwarting the advance of well-trained, well-equipped soldiers from the Special Republican Guard, which was headed straight for the 2-7 Task Force's Tactical Operations Center, less than a half-mile away.
The battle captains, commanders and journalists huddled at the operations center were trying to protect themselves against tank fire and snipers in the nearby woods They had no idea about the possible onslaught of Republican Guard from the nearby complex.
"If Sgt. Smith had not done what he had done, if he had not killed those people, they would have enveloped the entire task force," Campbell said. "It's hard to say how many casualties there would have been."
Capt. Michael Bliss, 29, said Smith killed between 30 and 50 enemy soldiers, though it was difficult to determine because the Iraqis were removing the dead and injured as soon as Smith hit them.
Lt. Col. Scott Rutter, the 2-7's commander, said that the Special Republican Guard were caught off guard by the speed of the American invasion. He believes this unit was trying to fight its way out of the airport when it pinned down the engineers.
Campbell said these Iraqi soldiers were well-trained members of the Special Republican Guard. They appeared healthy and were wearing green uniforms with red triangles. They were much different from the rag-tag militias that the 2-7 had encountered on its march to Baghdad. Campbell believes they were bent on destroying the the 2-7's command center.
"If they had killed the TOC, they would have killed the command post for the whole Task Force," Campbell said.
Rutter praised Smith's bravery and said he will nominate him for a Medal of Honor once the war is over.
Bliss wrote Smith's widow a letter explaining what her husband accomplished that morning.
The engineer company plans to hold a field memorial service for Smith this morning. At dawn, he was to be honored with a 21 gun-salute. |
