On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom - Chapter 6

[Special Circumstances]

On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom - Chapter 6

Regime Collapse

In this Chapter:

* Summary of Events
* Thunder Run of 5 April
* Thunder Run of 7 April
* The Final Fighting in Baghdad--3rd BCT In TITANS
* Footnotes

"There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"

Iraqi Information Minister
Mohammed Saeed al Sahhaf,
"Baghdad Bob"

"I got on Fox News and said, "I know where he is, tell him to stay there
for 15 minutes and I will come get him" because we were right outside

the Ministry of Information."

Lieutenant Colonel Eric Schwartz,
commander, TF 1-64, 2nd BCT,
presidential palace, Baghdad
Summary of Events

As CFLCC prepared for the assault on Baghdad, the air component focused on
close air support in and around Baghdad, Mosul, and Tikrit and

supporting SOF units operating in the west. CFACC continued to attack
strategic targets as well. CFACC also struck a number of time-sensitive

targets of opportunity developed from a number of intelligence sources.
Close air support in heavily defended urban environments continued

whenever and wherever coalition ground forces were in contact with the
enemy. Coalition airmen delivered responsive and highly accurate close

air support turning the tide of battle in ground tactical engagements on
more than one occasion in the final assault on Baghdad.1

Maritime operations continued to facilitate the safe arrival of ships
carrying large volumes of humanitarian supplies from the United Kingdom,

Australia, the United States, and Spain. The coalition completed clearing
mines from the southern waterways leading to Umm Qasr, allowing UK

and Australian Navy clearance teams to start clearing northern waterways
leading to Basra. By mid-April these efforts were well under way. The

scale of the problem included not only clearing mines, but coalition
maritime units also had to clear 36 derelict vessels between Um Qasr and

Az Zuabyr.2

Elements of the I MEF and V Corps completed closing the cordon around
Baghdad, cutting the major routes in and out of the city. In the south,

the 1st (UK) Armoured Division secured all of the southern oil fields and
soon moved north to link up with elements of the 1st Marine Division

in the vicinity of Al-Amara. By 10 April, coalition forces had defeated
organized resistance in Baghdad. As the fighting in Baghdad tapered

off, Marine and Army units headed north toward Tikrit and Mosul.
JSOFT-North troops entered Kirkuk and other towns in northern Iraq.

On 4 April, both Lieutenant General Wallace and Lieutenant General Conway,
commanding I MEF, could view their situation with satisfaction. V

Corps and I MEF had successfully kept at bay the paramilitary that had
attacked their supply convoys and threatened the LOCs. Moreover, they

had nearly encircled Baghdad. The marines in I MEF crossed the Euphrates at
An Nasiriyah and fought their way up the valley between the

Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, then approached the city from the southeast. V
Corps' five simultaneous attacks had taken the corps through the

Karbala Gap and Al Hillah to Objectives SAINTS and LIONS--isolating Baghdad
from the south and west.
Click here for higher resolution image (110KB)
Figure 184. Regime collapse sequence of events

With V Corps holding an arc around Baghdad from the south around to the
west and northwest and the marines approaching from the southeast,

only the northern half of the circle remained open. Although JSOTF-West,
composed of SOF and rangers, did not close in on Baghdad, they denied

any Iraqi maneuver in the desert to the west. In the north, 4th ID's
absence precluded closing the circle. 3rd ID's 3rd BCT, attacking into

Objective TITANS, denied Highway 1. Simply put, only Highway 2 coming south
from Kirkuk remained open. Farther to the north, JSOTF-North and

its 173rd Airborne Brigade fixed the bulk of Iraqi divisions on the Green
Line and raised the ante by supporting Peshmerga attacks to the

south. The Americans and Peshmerga threatened the two major northern
cities, Irbil and Kirkuk, and the Iraqi conventional forces began to melt

away under the pressure.

Equally important, from V Corps' vantage point, the "five simultaneous
attacks" had flushed the Republican Guard from their hiding sites. On

the move, elements of the Adnan, Hammurabi, and Nebuchadnezzar divisions,
mixed with some regular units, proved to be juicy targets for

coalition airmen and artillerymen. Moreover, the Iraqis appear to have
misread the five simultaneous attacks--they were apparently unsure of

the coalition's true direction of attack and when the main assault would
actually start. As a result, they assumed a more southerly defensive

posture. Thus, the Iraqi reaction, while vigorous, ultimately came too late
to stiffen the Medina Division when V Corps struck. Additionally,

expecting the main effort from between the two rivers, they oriented in the
wrong direction. Over the next few days, V Corps and 3rd ID tested

the Iraqis, conducting a series of attacks to tighten the isolation of
Baghdad, link up with the marines, and enter the heart of the

governmental district with its lavish palaces and other sites that marked
Saddam's seat of power.
Click here for higher resolution image (292KB)
Figure 185. Attack to Baghdad
The Plan for Baghdad

The CFLCC plan for reducing Baghdad was necessarily vague. As late as
D-day, Lieutenant General McKiernan could not predict what the

battlefield would look like when V Corps and I MEF reached the city.
Planners, from CENTCOM down to the maneuver divisions, struggled to paint

a picture of the city after an unknown period of fighting during the
approach from Kuwait. Because of this uncertainty, V Corps planners, led

by Major E.J. Degen, built flexibility into their plan. Establishing a
cordon postured the soldiers and marines to react in any one of a

number of ways, depending on how events unfolded. Never intended as a
hermetic seal, the ring of forward operating bases would isolate the

city from relieving forces and contain the defenders inside. From these
operating bases, the soldiers and marines could attack into Baghdad to

seize critical targets, destroy Iraqi forces, and eventually clear the
city, if required.

Cordoning the city would reduce the regime's options and allow the
coalition to develop the situation. Moreover, it would allow the corps and

MEF to build combat power by closing their units up to the cordon, moving
logistics forward, refitting after the expected fight with the

Republican Guard divisions, and finish clearing the LOCs and rear area.All
of these actions would set the stage for the final phase of the

campaign--seizing Baghdad and removing the regime.

Of course, none of the senior commanders--Lieutenant Generals McKiernan,
Wallace, or Conway--wanted to slacken the pressure on Saddam Hussein,

the Ba'athist regime, or the defending forces. While the corps and MEF
consolidated around the city, both planned to execute a steady stream

of limited-objective raids, air strikes, psychological and information
operations, and ground attacks on key targets in the city. These

targets were chosen with great care to degrade the regime's actual--and
perceived--control over the capital city and the country of Iraq,

based on Major Rago's analysis and planning. By the time V Corps entered to
the heart of Baghdad on 5 April, all major systems within the city

had been dissected, studied, and targeted. Every building and section of
the city were mapped and numbered. Everyone working in and around the

city, on the ground or in the air, used the common graphics and systems
data for targeting, thus maximizing lethality while minimizing

collateral damage and fratricide. What started as an internal V
Corps'planning concept for urban warfare permeated across joint, coalition,

and interagency realms to make the total force more efficient and lethal.
Click here for higher resolution image (655KB)
Figure 186. Map: Key locations and objectives in downtown Baghdad
Actions Elsewhere

As the corps' and the world's eyes focused on Baghdad, the campaign
continued elsewhere in Iraq. The 82nd Airborne Division concluded its

fight in As Samawah and looked north to Ad Diwaniyah. The 101st Airborne
Division cleared An Najaf and Al Kifl, destroying the Fedayeen

defenders while protecting the sensitive Shiite religious and cultural
sites in the town. Additionally, the 101st prepared for what would be a

"hornets' nest" in Al Hillah. Farther south, the British continued their
efforts to subdue Basra, and in Kuwait, the 4th ID arrived and began

to receive its well-traveled equipment. The first squadron of the 2nd ACR
(L) was fully integrated into the theater and under the command and

control of the 82nd Airborne Division to assist in securing the LOCs. With
forces in contact from Baghdad to Basra, across both river valleys,

and from the borders of Iran and Turkey to the Green Line and beyond, CFLCC
waged the nonlinear fight presaged in the Army's FM 3-0 and

replicated in the contemporary operating environment.
Seeing the Elephant--The Human Dimension of Combat

"Seeing the Elephant" was a Civil War expression for the trauma of a
soldier's first combat experience. As the soldiers and marines approached

Baghdad, they too had "seen the elephant."

The fight moving north had been radically different from the force-on-force
armored battle the soldiers had expected. The march north was to

have been relatively easy, with some fighting against the
bound-to-capitulate regular army units, but mostly cheering Shiite Iraqis
in welcome

parties.

But close combat with Iraqi and foreign fighters closing in from all sides
in fanatical--and suicidal-- waves had given the soldiers pause.

Any veteran understands that combat is living on the edge and, in some
ways, living to the utmost. Pumped full of adrenaline, soldiers

experience time distortion and live in an almost surreal condition of
alertness, with senses heightened to the point nearly of exaggeration.

Accordingly, any joy is felt with hypersensitivity, as is any sad event.
Wild jubilation morphs to incredible despair from one moment to the

next.

In the fall of Baghdad, soldiers and marines would experience both
extremes. The fight to the city left the soldiers and leaders at every

level wondering about the carnage they could expect in the Iraqi capital.
Not only could they expect the same ferocious paramilitary attacks

in Baghdad; those forces would be stiffened by the highly trained SRG
fighting on its own turf and for its very survival. With almost 15,000

of these elite soldiers, chosen for their loyalty to Saddam and favored
with personal privilege, the best equipment, and the best training,

Baghdad could be a truly ugly and painful fight.

Logistics and Communications Status

As combat troops fought their way into Baghdad, combat service support
soldiers were busier than ever. At this point, the LOC supporting V

Corps extended across a greater distance than the historic Red Ball
Express, and fuel demands exceeded the highest requirement the Red Ball

Express had to meet. Ammunition, food, and water also had to be brought all
the way from the heart of Kuwait. The logisticians managed to keep

up with the demand for critical supplies of war, but just barely. While no
unit ever ran completely out of these supplies, several came close.

Yet even with this monumental success in fuel, ammunition, water, and food,
the system failed to provide repair parts. Parts often made their

way from the United States across a massive air and sea bridge to the
supply depots in Kuwait--where they sat due to ground transportation

shortages and the lack of an effective distribution system. Warehouses
filled up with requisitioned repair parts, only to stay on shelves and

in bins, while exhausted truckers hauled higher-priority supplies forward.

Despite the dearth of parts, the combat units sustained the drive north on
the skill, experience, planning, preparation, sweat, and energy of

their maintenance soldiers. Literally every brigade and battalion commander
in the corps proudly bragged that he had "the best mechanics in

the Army." They beamed with tales of soldiers performing miracles in
repairing broken equipment, recovering abandoned and damaged vehicles,

and in some cases fabricating parts out of almost nothing.3 Yet however
creative and successful the soldiers were, literally every maneuver

battalion commander in 3rd ID asserted that he could not have continued
offensive operations for another two weeks without some spare parts.

For example, as late as 14 May, almost 45 days after combat started, one
unit had only received 19 spare parts through the formal supply

system. Others still had not received any.4 The 1-10 FA kept its Paladin
howitzers on the move by cannibalizing a Kuwaiti M109 howitzer the

Iraqis had captured years prior and that 3rd ID subsequently took back.5 No
one had anything good to say about parts delivery, from the

privates at the front to the generals at CFLCC.

While the repair parts system struggled to catch up, the signal community
fared marginally better. During the march up-country, the units

almost immediately outpaced the signalers' ability to provide widespread
coverage. Even within brigades and battalions, the operating

distances thwarted the ground-based line-of-sight radios. The Mobile
Subscriber Equipment (MSE) that is the Army's primary means of providing

high-bandwidth support to tactical units never had a chance of keeping up
with the fast-paced advance. For the most part, the corps executed

the advance on to Baghdad with a few tactical satellite radios and the
widely distributed satellite-based BFT system. Indeed, Colonel Terry

Wolff, the commander of 2nd ACR (L), was nonchalant about spreading one
squadron across 200 kilometers of roads without any direct radio

communications because the BFT provided him excellent situation awareness.
If worse came to worse, Wolff knew he could always launch a

helicopter to serve as a radio relay if he needed to talk to his troops
directly.6

The pause at RAMS and the slower pace of advance from there north enabled
the communicators to catch up. Once on site, they quickly built the

networks and coverage the forces needed to conduct operations in and around
the city. Although the communication systems were not mature in

any sense, few commanders complained of communications problems in and
around Baghdad in those final days of the fight.

Rolling Transition and Sensitive Site Exploitation

The coalition was doing far more than just slashing through the
countryside. In areas already under control, a combination of special

operations and regular forces rapidly transitioned to stability operations
and support operations. In the myriad of towns and villages along

the Euphrates River Valley, the local population experienced its first
taste of relative freedom in almost 30 years. Rebuilding a functioning,

representative local government and providing basic life support
services--water, food, and power--was a hard task, made more difficult by

instability in the north and the remnants of the fanatical Saddam Fedayeen
spread throughout the region. Earning the wary Iraqis' trust and

cooperation remains a slow, painstaking effort.

While some soldiers worked to help get the Iraqis back on their feet,
others searched for weapons of mass destruction at sites identified

throughout the region. The 75th Exploitation Task Force (XTF), built on the
75th Artillery Regiment, eventually searched more than 600 sites.

Each site had an assigned priority based on the possible threat it posed to
coalition forces and the surrounding civilians. The list was long

and the work was slow and demanding. Although there were several reports of
possible banned weapons, by the end of major combat operations,

the 75th had not discovered any weapons of mass destruction.
Actions at Baghdad

Intelligence officers at all echelons continued to have great difficulty
accurately describing the threat in the city. In the months leading

up to the war, V Corps, CFLCC, and CENTCOM intelligence leaders and
analysts spent the bulk of their energy trying to characterize what the

Baghdad fight might look like. In October 2002, intelligence officers from
the national level, CENTCOM, CFLCC, I MEF, and V Corps met and

developed a common estimate of the enemy situation that they had separately
continued to update.

Prior to D-day, intelligence officers estimated that no more that 9-12
company equivalents of the Republican Guard would successfully retreat

into the city. They expected these units to be disorganized. According to
the estimates, these remnants would report to the SRG, who were

expected to stand and fight in the city. There was some reason to believe
the Iraqis had developed a sophisticated and potentially effective

city-defense strategy that would leverage all of the advantages of a
prepared defense in an urban environment. Captured documents revealed a

detailed plan to divide Baghdad into sectors and defend it in a manner
reminiscent of the First Battle of Grozny. The international airport

and the palace complex area in the heart of the city would be the most
heavily defended sites in Baghdad. All intelligence reporting supported

these assessments, indicating that the defense would crystallize around
these two critical facilities. Prewar intelligence estimates noted the

presence of paramilitary forces in large numbers but were vague on how
these forces might operate. The march up-country effectively answered

that question, painting the picture of the potentially dangerous and
difficult fight to come.7

As the battle progressed, the coalition defeated but did not destroy the
Republican Guard. The slew of vehicles and equipment left abandoned

sparked a variety of theories about the Republican Guard's actual
condition. These ranged from the view that the Iraqis would conduct a

stalwart infantry-based defense of the city with the missing Republican
Guard soldiers as the bedrock to the notion of a defense by

disorganized remnants. Imagery and other reports inexplicably showed almost
no preparations within the city. There were numerous small

fighting positions but none of the deliberate defenses that common sense
and Iraqi doctrine indicated. Intelligence and field reports painted

a picture of mixed units thrown haphazardly into the fray with little
command and control. Intelligence officers could no longer speak with

assurance about which unit was where, let alone in what strength. Some
units fought, some died in place under the rain of coalition fires, and

some abandoned their equipment and just walked away. But were they going
home or going to ground to add to the unconventional defense of the

city? It was unclear whether Baghdad was a trap, a clever ruse, or a hollow
shell. When 3rd ID seized and cleared the airport, one of the two

sites everyone agreed would be heavily defended, the troops answered part
of the question. Baghdad looked difficult, but it did not look like

Grozny. Taking the airport made the armored raids--the "Thunder
Runs"--feasible in the mind of the senior commanders and their staffs.8

Although Major General Blount and the 3rd ID settled into Objectives SAINTS
and LIONS, they had not entirely reduced Objective TITANS. In

accordance with the original plan, the division continued to set its part
of the cordon. Although the rest of V Corps and I MEF continued to

advance rapidly, they would not be players in the immediate actions at
Baghdad. But neither Wallace nor Blount believed they needed to wait on

securing TITANS or for the rest of the corps to get started. The 3rd ID
would conduct raids and attacks to maintain the heat on the regime and

to retain the initiative against the defending Iraqis and foreign fighters.

Thunder Runs

Given the ambiguity surrounding Baghdad, the division's first order of
business was to probe, or raid, the city, just to see what would

happen. Literally sticking his hand into what everyone expected to be a
"hornets' nest," Blount ordered Colonel Perkins' 2nd BCT to conduct a

thunder run into the city. While the thunder run on 5 April turned into a
stiff fight for the Rogues of TF 1-64 AR, their success suggested

that Baghdad would be defended energetically, but that the enemy no longer
could mount effective resistance. Interestingly, the Hunter UAV

showed the Iraqis setting obstacles behind the Rogues, apparently trying to
set up kill zones if the Americans departed along the same route.

The obstacles proved irrelevant since the Rogues continued on to the
airport rather than retrace their route.9

Taking less than a day to assess the reaction, Wallace and Blount struck
again. This time, rather than a simple one-battalion raid, the

division ordered a full brigade into the heart of Baghdad. On 7 April,
Colonel Perkins' 2nd Brigade Spartans launched a second thunder run,

ending up in downtown Baghdad--the absolute heart of Saddam's regime--to
demonstrate to the Iraqis and the world the Americans' freedom to

move about the city. On that day Perkins made the single decision that
arguably shortened the siege by weeks, if not months--he chose to stay

downtown. Equally important, McKiernan, Wallace, and Blount trusted his
judgment and underwrote the risks that he took. While the fighting

continued in earnest for another few days and insurgents fight on today,
the second thunder run broke the regime's back, and any remaining

political or military leaders of rank disappeared in a flash of
self-preservation.
Toppling the Statue--Army PSYOP Supports I MEF

We woke up that morning [of 9 April] in the Iraqi Special Forces training
compound on the outskirts of southern Baghdad. Attached to 3rd

Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment (of I MEF), who were conducting a clearing
operation on the southern approach to Baghdad, [we were] moving with

their TAC at the time. We were kept in a centralized location while moving
so that we could be flexed to where we might be needed. We were not

sure what we were going to hit, but we were expecting a lot of resistance.
The infantry unit was to be clearing door to door, while we would

be broadcasting civilian noninterference messages and occasional surrender
appeals when pockets of enemy forces were located. The infantry

unit started its operation but was encountering no resistance at all. After
a few hours of going door to door, kicking doors and entering,

looking for enemy concentrations and weapons caches but finding none, they
modified their plan and formed up into a column and started a

general movement toward Al-Firdos (paradise) Square in [eastern] Baghdad,
where the Palestine Hotel and statue [of Saddam Hussein] were

located. The entire movement went a lot faster than anyone had
anticipated....

Crowds of Iraqi citizens started coming out and cheering the American
convoy. We started to do some PSYOP broadcasts about bringing about a

free Iraq, but knowing that we were to continue some clearing operations;
we were telling them to stay away from our military vehicles for

their own safety. We eventually dismounted from our vehicle and continued
to inform the civilians to stay back from the military vehicles. The

Iraqi civilians were very receptive to us, and [we] continued to engage
them with our interpreter.

As we approached the street leading into the Al-Firdos Square, we could
tell that there was a very large crowd of civilians starting to form

up. It looked like the infantry unit up there could use some support, so we
moved our [tactical PSYOP team] TPT vehicle forward and started to

run around seeing what they needed us to do to facilitate their mission....
There was a large media circus at this location (I guess the

Palestine Hotel was a media center at the time), almost as many reporters
as there were Iraqis, as the hotel was right adjacent to the

Al-Firdos Square.

The Marine Corps colonel in the area saw the Saddam statue as a target of
opportunity and decided that the statue must come down. Since we

were right there, we chimed in with some loudspeaker support to let the
Iraqis know what it was we were attempting to do. The reporters were

completely surrounding the vehicle, and we started having to ask the
reporters to move out of the way, but they would not move. We were

getting frustrated, but we were also laughing about it. We dismounted the
vehicle again and just started pushing the people out of the way.

They were starting to really inhibit our ability to conduct our mission.
The tanks . . . formed up into a perimeter around the square, with

the statue in the middle.

An M88 recovery vehicle approached the statue and continued to drive up the
steps right next to the statue in an attempt to bring it down. The

people had already tied a noose around the neck of the statue with some
rope. They were trying to just tug on it and bring it down and were

hitting it with sledgehammers; it was clearly getting crazy in the square.
We were no longer in crowd control, as there was just no

controlling this crowd at this time. We decided to just ride along with the
crowd, and we started just kind of celebrating with the Iraqi

people. We actually had to have our interpreter record an ad-hoc broadcast
message, informing the Iraqi people that if they did not stand back

from the statue, American forces would not bring the statue down. We were
afraid that some civilians would get hurt if they were too close or

in the wrong spot.

All of this activity was going on within just a few blocks of where other
marines were battling with snipers in a building across from the

Palestine Hotel. The local Iraqi people just did not care for their well
being at this point; they just wanted to see the statue come

down...We looked over and now there was an American flag draped over the
face of the statue. God bless them, but we were thinking from PSYOP

school that this was just bad news. We didn't want to look like an
occupation force, and some of the Iraqis were saying, `No, we want an Iraqi

flag!' So I said `No problem, somebody get me an Iraqi flag.' I am not sure
where it came from, but one of the Iraqis brought us the old Iraqi

flag without the writing on it (added by Saddam). We got that as fast as we
could and started running that up to the statue. At this time, the

marines had put a chain from the boom of the recovery vehicle around the
neck of the statue, and they just ran the [Iraqi] flag up the statue.

It was real quick thinking on Staff Sergeant

Plesich's part to get that Iraqi flag up there quick. But by the time the
Iraqi flag got put on the statue, there had already been a lot of

photos taken with the marine covering the statue with the American flag.
Figure 187. Photos of toppling the Saddam statue

Somehow along the way, somebody had gotten the idea to put a bunch of Iraqi
kids onto the wrecker that was to pull the statue down. While the

wrecker was pulling the statue down, there were Iraqi children crawling all
over it. Finally they brought the statue down, but we expected

this big statue to come crashing down, to shatter or whatever, but it just
slowly bent over and slid off the mounting pipes. Once the statue

was on the ground, it was attacked by Iraqis with the sledgehammers and
broken apart. The head of the statue was dragged through the streets,

with people hitting the face with their shoes and spitting on it. After the
statue was down, we started to receive a lot of intelligence on

where Ba'ath Party personnel were staying and just generally got a lot of
real good intelligence for use in later direct-action missions. All

this information was developed with and through the human exploitation
teams, which had assigned interpreters.10
Caring for the Fallen

Support soldiers seldom receive accolades for what they do. They made OIF
possible and they deserve better. Of all the difficult and thankless

jobs the Army asks support troops to do, none is more difficult or less
visible than the task of the 54th QM Company. The only active- duty

mortuary affairs company in the Army, the 54th deployed 176 soldiers to
Kuwait to care for the remains of America's fallen.
Figure 188. 54th Quartermaster Company caring for a fallen soldier's
remains

These soldiers collect and process the remains of their colleagues for
return to the United States. The 54th's troops approach their task with

the knowledge that they are the last people who will ever see the person
whose remains they are preparing for return to their families. The

mission is difficult. According to their commander, "You can't see what we
have [seen] and not hurt." But the 54th's view is exemplified in a

painting done by one of their soldiers. The painting portrays a fallen
soldier lying adjacent to his M-16, with an angel gazing down on him.

The artist inscribed the painting, "Think not only upon their passing;
remember the glory of their spirit."11
Transition to Peace Operations (10 April-1 May 2003)

"The game is over...I hope for a peaceful life for all Iraqis."

Mohammed al-Douri,
Iraq's Ambassador to the United Nations

"When it really comes down to it, [information operations] is really about
changing a person's mind set."

Colonel Patrick Simon,
CFLCC C3,
chief of Information Operations

The collapse of the regime made it necessary for V Corps to shift from
combat operations to stability operations and support operations.

Accordingly, the information operations (IO) effort shifted from supporting
combat operations and undermining the regime to restoring order

and helping to reestablish civil control. It now became important to ensure
stability in Baghdad by restoring public order and assisting in

the "return to normalcy." With organized, conventional resistance
effectively crushed, V Corps transitioned to patrolling the streets to

provide presence; assisting other government agencies and special forces in
their missions; and assessing, securing, and repairing the public

utilities and infrastructure.12 V Corps moved rapidly to restore internal
security. Looters, opportunists, and regime die-hards all threatened

to gain control of the cities in the power vacuum left in the aftermath of
the Ba'ath regime's collapse. To counter this, V Corps seized the

radio station at Abu Ghurayb to provide a means to disseminate messages to
the people of Baghdad. Unfortunately, the station was too damaged

to broadcast, so PSYOP teams resorted to mobile transmitting equipment
instead.13

V Corps' information operations planners, under the direction of Lieutenant
Colonel Chuck Eassa, moved an advance party to the corps TAC in

Baghdad on 22 April to establish a forward presence in the city. The rest
of the IO cell closed on Baghdad on 28 April. In conjunction with

national and international agencies, V Corps and the entire CFLCC began the
hard work of transitioning from combat operations to nation

building, reconstruction, and restoration of a functioning, independent
Iraqi civil government. This shift marked the start of the long

process of rebuilding Iraq and restoring civil government to the country
and continues as of this writing.14
Conclusion
Figure 189. Bomb-damaged bridge, Baghdad

The sound of the proverbial door slamming as the Iraqi regime fled Baghdad
or went into hiding was also the sound of victory: the soldiers of

V Corps, in conjunction with the sister services and allies, achieved the
first half of the coalition's strategic objective--regime removal.

The second half, building a stable, democratic, prosperous, nonthreatening
Iraq, is part of ongoing operations as On Point went to

publication, and is properly the subject of a different study.

Back to Top
Thunder Run of 5 April

The generals called them raids or armed reconnaissance. The media described
them either as attacks or raids. The troops called them "thunder

runs," from Army Vietnam-era jargon used to describe the daily combat
missions designed to assure the security of supply routes. Mounted

combined arms units from company to brigade size executed thunder runs. The
name proved to be entirely appropriate as the troops breached

minefields and obstacles and fought through ambushes almost every foot of
the way. More important, 3rd ID's thunder runs ultimately proved

decisive in bringing down the regime.

As the situation developed during the last week of March, Major General
Blount confirmed his belief in "piling on" to keep the pressure on the

Iraqis. Arguably, Blount inspired Lieutenant General Wallace to mount the
five simultaneous attacks that set the conditions for the corps to

reach Baghdad's suburbs. Now set in Objectives LIONS and SAINTS, Blount,
always aggressive, wanted to learn the nature of the defenses in

Baghdad and to develop the situation in accordance with his corps
commander's intent. Just as important, he had troops available.

Accordingly, with Wallace's approval, he ordered an armed reconnaissance
into Baghdad. Blount assigned the mission to Colonel David Perkins of

the 2nd BCT, who subsequently ordered Lieutenant Colonel "Rick" Schwartz
and the troops of TF 1-64 AR to conduct what the task force's history

described as "a show of force"--driving up Highway 8 into central Baghdad
and then looping back southwest to Baghdad International Airport.
Click here for higher resolution image (848KB)
Figure 190. The 5 April thunder run route

Lieutenant Colonel Schwartz assumed command of 1-64 AR, Rogue, at Fort
Stewart, Georgia, on 17 July 2002. Schwartz, who commanded a company in

1-64 AR during DESERT STORM, was no stranger to the battalion or to the
desert. Immediately upon assuming command, he and his unit

task-organized in preparation for a deployment to Kuwait as part of
Operation DESERT SPRING. Schwartz gave up his B Company, receiving in

return C/3- 15 IN, D/10th Engineers, an Air Force tactical control party, a
counterintelligence team, and a liaison party from a marine air

and naval gunfire liaison company. He and his task force deployed in
September, with his lead party arriving on 11 September 2002. The

soldiers of Rogue immediately began hard training. The tempo increased
throughout the period leading to Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.15
Figure 191. Colonel David Perkins, commander, 2nd BCT, 3rd ID

When Colonel Perkins ordered Schwartz and his outfit into Baghdad, they had
been at war for two weeks and in the field for more than six

months. The task force soldiers knew each other and could organize rapidly.
The task force comprised nearly 100 tracked vehicles and as many

wheeled vehicles, was practiced, and had developed drills for nearly every
contingency.
Scheme of Maneuver--Armor, Only Armor

In doing his mission analysis, Lieutenant Colonel Schwartz elected to leave
all his wheeled support vehicles behind because of their lack of

armament. The mission required a raid, by definition a short-duration
operation done for explicit purposes. In this case, Perkins aimed to

demonstrate the Americans' freedom of action and to gauge enemy reaction.
Accordingly Schwartz concluded that the mission did not require his

vulnerable combat trains. Specifically, the mission required TF 1-64 AR to
"conduct a movement to contact north along Highway 8 to determine

the enemy's disposition, strength, and will to fight."16 The raid required
Rogue to conduct a mounted attack north into Baghdad and then

continue on Highway 8 as it looped to the southwest toward the airport.
Then they would link up with 1st Brigade at the airport.17 The axis of

the attack was just about 20 kilometers long and required going under
several overpasses and through the city. The task force's main combat

power consisted of several hundred soldiers aboard 29 tanks, 14 Bradleys,
and other combat vehicles, including M113s.18

TF 1-64 AR was not new to thunder runs; it had already conducted two
smaller runs on its advance on Baghdad. However, both of those had

essentially been short-duration attacks to destroy mostly unoccupied combat
vehicles that had been bypassed. Rogue conducted what they called

thunder runs I and II after crossing the Euphrates River at Objective PEACH
to clear up resistance and enemy equipment on Highways 1 and 8,

well south of Baghdad. During each of those missions, they encountered
limited enemy resistance from dismounted infantry and paramilitary

forces, some of whom used civilians to shield themselves.

Despite the relative ease of their earlier thunder runs, no one expected a
thunder run into Baghdad to be easy. Captain Dave Hibner,

commanding D/10th Engineers, recalled that he was called to receive a
fragmentary order at 2200 on 4 April. According, Hibner and the other

officers of the task force were surprised, and some were shocked, to hear
that they were going to Baghdad that soon and all alone. Lieutenant

Colonel Schwartz reassured them, noting that "somebody at headquarters has
done the analysis, they are not going to send us in to fail, and

tomorrow we are going to attack into Baghdad."19 Reassured or not, Schwartz
and his officers had their orders and they prepared accordingly.

Colonel Perkins elected to accompany the task force to assure support and
to provide on-scene command and control. This would enable Schwartz

to concentrate on his tasks of running the direct firefight and leading his
task force.
Mission Execution--Penetrating the City

With some uncertainty about how things might go, the task force staged at
0600 on 5 April for the first American incursion into Baghdad. The

soldier who wrote the unit history for A Company (Wild Bunch) put it this
way, "Truthfully, everyone's nerves were on edge for this

mission."20 Since Schwartz ordered the Wild Bunch to lead, they could be
forgiven for having a case of nerves that morning. Team C/1-64 AR

(Rock) followed Wild Bunch, and Team C/3- 15 IN (Cobra) assumed the trail
position. Captain Hibner left his mine-clearing line charge (MCLIC)

and one engineer platoon behind but moved with his 1st Platoon tucked in
with the Wild Bunch. Reflecting on Hibner's choice of his platoon,

First Lieutenant Eric Canaday, 1st Platoon, D Company, 10th Engineers,
recalled, "I think the reason [Hibner] did that was because I was a

three-track platoon [1st Platoon lost a track to maintenance]....I had to
pack my whole platoon into three vehicles. This gave me four or five

shooters in the back of each track in addition to the .50-caliber machine
gun and Mk-19 [40 mm automatic grenade launcher].... We had gotten

extra SAWs [Squad Automatic Weapons] and 240s [7.62mm machine guns] from
the other platoon and actually were able to put down a surprising

amount of firepower."21 Although he apparently had not shared his reasons
with Canaday, Hibner intended exactly that. At Najaf Hibner

discovered that all those 240 machine guns and .50-caliber machine guns on
the tracks gave the platoon a lot of firepower and the ability to

fire on the second and third stories, something that the tanks and Bradleys
could not do. According to Hibner, each track could engage six

targets at once--better than the tanks and Bradleys could do.22

Festooned with weapons, the engineers provided the task force with welcome
additional firepower. Everyone had learned at An Najaf that the

engineer squads provided an impressive addition to the task force's
firepower, particularly when focused on the second and third floors of

buildings that the tanks and Bradleys had trouble reaching from close in.
Scouts and mortars remained in the task force blocking positions to

maintain secure positions to which the task force could return.23

The task force crossed the line of departure at 0630, moving in a staggered
column along Highway 8. What followed proved to be riveting

television, as much of America and the world accompanied Rogue, TF 1-64 AR,
as they fought their way downtown. As seen over Colonel Perkins'

shoulder or from behind his track commander, Captain John Ives, the brigade
assistant S2, the fight was prolonged and often very intense.

Perkins' young captain alternately fired his M2 .50-caliber machine gun and
his M-16. At one point, in the midst of reloading his .50-caliber

machine gun, the young captain turned in his hatch and saw an Iraqi
defender a few meters away, raising his AK-47 to fire. Acting without

thinking, Ives threw the empty ammunition can he had in his hands at the
Iraqi, knocking him down. Perkins then grabbed his 9mm pistol and

killed the man. These types of engagements punctuated the narrative from
Greg Kelly of FOX News, aboard the brigade commander's M113 APC.24

Only minutes into the operation, Rogue began taking sporadic small-arms and
RPG fire. Soon they encountered both paramilitary forces and

beret-wearing uniformed SRG soldiers. As the task force proceeded into
town, the intensity of the fight ratcheted up. Moreover, junctions with

ramps on and off of Highway 8 complicated matters, as did civilians who
continued to use the highway, sharing it with the Rogue and

occasionally with the enemy. Determining which traffic was hostile and
which was not required patience and courage throughout the run.

Generally, if traffic was joining the highway, the troops fired warning
shots, causing drivers to turn around abruptly. But traffic passing on

the opposite side of the highway had to be assessed and trail units
advised. Avoiding harm to civilians who had no idea that the Americans had

arrived in Baghdad proved impossible. Captain Hibner recalls that one
family suffered due to secondary explosions caused when the task force

destroyed a technical vehicle. The explosions injured several children and
their father. At one point, a Bradley blocked a ramp and an Iraqi

vehicle promptly struck it. This forced a trailing car to a halt. In this
second car, the soldiers found the Iraqi colonel who served as the

chief of logistics for the Baghdad district.25 The troops brought him along
for the rest of the ride.26

Only 20 minutes into the thunder run, Rogue fought hard against Iraqi
regulars and paramilitary forces firing from every "niche and cranny."27

To add to their difficulties, Staff Sergeant Diaz's tank, C12, took either
an RPG or recoilless rifle hit in the right rear. Diaz, his crew,

and others fought the resulting fire, hoping to save the tank.
Close Contact on Thunder Run I

[TF 1-64 AR] had moved 6 kilometers when a recoilless rifle disabled one of
the tanks.... It hit into the tank's engine compartment and it

started it on fire....The dismounted enemy converged on the disabled
tank...Two members of the tank crew got on board the First Sergeant's

M113 and were shot while boarding. One was shot through his eye and the
other soldier was shot in the shoulder.... At one point, Wild Bunch

reported over 250 dismounts attacking them.

Captain David Hibner,
commander, D/10th EN

According to Lieutenant Colonel Eric "Rick" Schwartz,"Cobra got hit hard
and in an area that made the whole task force vulnerable at a key

overpass, where we had taken a lot of fire. I had to decide if we should go
to ground and provide security and give Cobra the opportunity to

recover that tank or do we abandon the tank and keep going."28 Schwartz
halted the task force. During the halt, paramilitary and military

forces began to arrive in trucks and buses, in no particular order and in
no formation. The task force chewed them up with "a steady stream of

coax, main gun, and 25 `mike-mike'(Bradley cannon)."29

Those fighting the fire and attempting to recover C12 became prime targets
for the now- aroused opposition. At one point, the team commander

reported that he was in contact with 250 Iraqi dismounts. Paramilitary
forces descended on the burning tank. Schwartz recalled that this enemy

"knew every dirty trick in the book and used it."30 Despite the intensity
of the Iraqi attack, soldiers fought the fire with some success. It

appeared several times that they had the fire under control. The crew even
managed to hook a tow bar to C12 to recover it, but the fire flared

up again. Finally, after 20 minutes of fighting the fire and the enemy,
Diaz and his soldiers had to abandon the tank. But even this choice

caused difficulty as the crew scrambled to recover sensitive items from the
doomed tank under enemy fire. The Iraqis wounded two of Diaz's

crewmen as they departed the scene as passengers in the company first
sergeant's M113.31
Figure 192. TF 1-64 AR conducting casualty air MEDEVAC, 5 April 2003

One hour into the 2 hour and 20-minute operation, the thunder run became an
exercise in running a gauntlet. Moving slowly and fighting in

several directions, the task force suffered another blow when the Iraqis
fatally wounded Staff Sergeant Stevon Booker. Booker, a tank

commander, was up high in his cupola firing on Iraqi dismounted infantry
and Fedayeen with his M-4 carbine when he was hit. Nearly

simultaneously, the Iraqis hit a Bradley attached to Wild Bunch with an
RPG, disabling it and blowing the driver out of his hatch. Wild Bunch

halted to deal with the disabled Bradley and to evacuate Booker and the
injured Bradley driver. A tank platoon maneuvered to protect the

evacuation of the wounded and of the disabled Bradley. Within minutes, the
Wild Bunch had loaded the wounded and moved on.32
Mission Completion--Linking Up at LIONS

As Rogue closed on the airport, the Iraqis tried once more to trap the task
force on the road. They emplaced several slabs of concrete that

produced a barrier across the highway some 3 feet tall and 2 feet thick.
Covered by suppressive fire, the lead platoon leader rammed the

barrier with his 70-ton M1 tank, went airborne, and broke it up enough for
the rest of the task force to drive through. Surmounting this last

hurdle, Rogue made contact with friendly troops at Baghdad International
Airport. Even this happy moment was not without incident. As it

approached the airport, the lead platoon reported tanks to its front. When
the company commander asked the tank commander to amplify the

report by passing range data, he reported 2,000 meters. The commander
looked at his BFT and noted a blue icon at 2,000 meters. Scanning, the

lead platoon confirmed that it had friendly forces in sight. The task force
made radio contact and began passing through friendly lines.33

At the airport, MEDEVAC awaited those who required it. The task force
passed through the perimeter and took some time to rest and refit. Refit

included repairing damage, sweeping away hundreds of brass cartridges and
links, and putting out fires on one Bradley and one tank. One

soldier recalled that the brass casings in his track from expended rounds
were ankle high. The task force evacuated the wounded and Staff

Sergeant Booker's body. Lieutenant Colonel Schwartz described the scene at
the airport, "[TF 2-7 IN] did a fantastic job receiving us. . . .

There was a very different tone in the air. There was a tremendous feeling
of loss; there was a feeling of mission success, which was a great

feeling. There was everyone looking at their vehicles and wondering how we
were able to survive. Bradleys had gotten hit with multiple RPGs

and kept rolling...I don't think any of us had a dry eye."34
Are You Okay?

We linked up with 1st Brigade on the airfield [following Thunder Run I]. We
went for a 4-hour break.... You would have thought there would

have been a lot of high-fives, but there were a lot of soldiers in shock.
There were a lot of soldiers crying; they were just emotionally

spent.

"I was emotionally spent. One of my tank commanders had been killed. I had
a soldier shot in the eye, shot in the forehead, shot in the

shoulder, shot in the back, shot in the face.... I just needed time for
myself, and one of the other battalion commanders from 1st Brigade

came over and didn't say a single word. He asked me, "Are you okay?" And I
said, "I don't know." He looked at me and then turned around and

walked away, and that was the best thing he could have done.

"We regrouped after about 4 hours and left the airfield and went back to
business. I was okay; everyone was okay. Let me take that back--we

were better, but we weren't okay. We were never okay. I talked to the
company commanders; I talked with the [doctors]...I had to be with

everyone I could be with for my own personal well being and for theirs, to
let them know what they did was right and it was justifiable and

everything I asked them to do.... We regrouped and refocused and attacked
two days later into Baghdad.

Lieutenant Colonel Eric "Rick" Schwartz
commander, 1-64 AR
interview, 18 May 2003.

Emotionally spent, TF 1-64 AR moved to the south of the city, reoccupying
the blocking position it left that morning. The following morning, A

Company held a memorial service for Staff Sergeant Booker, noting in its
unit summary that he died "helping his crew, his platoon, helping his

company team. He saw the need to be up there, exposed to fire, engaging the
enemy to protect his crew. He didn't need to be asked, he just did

it."35

Back to Top
Thunder Run of 7 April

Task: Attack to Seize Objective DIANE (Baghdad City Center)

Purpose: To demonstrate American resolve and facilitate the fall of the
Iraqi regime.

Fragmentary Order to A/1-64 AR
6 April, 2003.

"They fled. The American louts fled. Indeed, concerning the fighting waged
by the heroes of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party yesterday, one

amazing thing really is the cowardice of the American soldiers. We had not
anticipated this."

Iraqi Information Minister
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf,
"Baghdad Bob"

Colonel David Perkins, commander of the 2nd BCT, 3rd ID returned
dissatisfied with the overall results of his 5 April thunder run through

downtown Baghdad. The attack proved that it could be done--that Baghdad's
defenses could be penetrated at will. The soldiers fought

magnificently and were a credit to their training and leadership. Although
Perkins was satisfied with the tactical performance of his troops,

he was not sure the message they were sending was the right one. He was
disturbed with the information and perception implications of the

raid. Perkins was also provoked by the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed
Saeed al-Sahhaf, "Baghdad Bob's" barefaced lies to the world,

declaring that not only were there no American forces in Baghdad, but that
the Iraqis had repulsed the attack and inflicted massive

casualties. Aside from the insult to the fighting spirit and abilities of
his soldiers, Perkins appreciated the power of the information

battle. Baghdad Bob's lies had an effect on the Iraqis' defensive
effort--their morale and fighting zeal. More than just pandering to the

Iraqi civilian population, the Iraqi military leadership actually believed
that the Americans were dying in droves far south of Baghdad. Even

the captured Iraqi colonel, arguably someone who should have known the true
military situation, expressed shock at finding Abrams tanks and

Bradley Fighting Vehicles in his capital. Not understanding how far and how
fast the coalition had moved only emboldened the defenders in the

city. Allowing these lies to stand would only worsen the eventual fight for
Baghdad.36

Perkins' chain of command, Major General Blount, Lieutenant General
Wallace, and Lieutenant General McKiernan, on the other hand, were pleased

with the first thunder run's success. While it was a significant and
ferocious engagement, the Iraqi response to the 2nd BCT Spartans was not

the sophisticated, integrated urban defense that they feared. Moreover, the
attack had clearly taken the Iraqis by surprise, confirming that

the coalition firmly held the initiative.
Going Downtown: A Study in Battle Command

On the night of 5 April, wanting to maintain the pressure, Wallace and
Blount decided to conduct a second attack. "Blount and I talked that

night and decided we would do another thunder run. `Buff' and I agreed they
would go two intersections [major highway interchanges--this one

eventually designated as Objective MOE] into town and turn and come back
out. So I went to bed thinking that is what they would do."37 With

the success and experience from their first thunder run, there was no
question that Colonel Perkins' Spartans would conduct the attack.

On 6 April, Blount directed Perkins to conduct a limited-objective attack
back into Baghdad on 7 April.38 Both officers fully understood

Wallace `s intent--his purpose, in ordering the raid. The core of any Army
order is the purpose and commander's intent. Since no plan ever

goes as written, if the subordinate commander understands why he is
conducting a mission, he can adapt to the inevitable fog and friction of

battle or take advantage of opportunity. In this case, Wallace's, as well
as McKiernan's, ultimate purpose was to render the regime

"irrelevant," causing it to collapse and thus free Iraq from the
dictatorship.39 In understanding this, the 3rd ID and 2nd BCT commanders
knew

they had the freedom and authority to adjust the mission as the situation
developed.
Click here for higher resolution image (920KB)
Figure 193. The 7 April thunder run route

Colonel Perkins had in mind the possibility of going even farther into
Baghdad than his orders specified. He wanted a plan that gave his

commanders options should the conditions warrant.40 If conditions were just
right, Perkins wanted to go downtown, possibly remain overnight,

or even permanently. Although provoked by the Iraqi propaganda, Perkins did
not become reckless. Also with the first thunder run still fresh

in his memory, he did not want to have to keep repeating these missions. In
his mind, it would be easier to stay downtown than to conduct

these thunder runs over and over again.41
Going Downtown

I first knew they were going all the way in when I watched the blue icons
turn and head downtown. [Major General] Blount and I talked and he

told me that [Colonel] Perkins was going downtown. Later I was watching
Dave Perkins walking around in the palace on CNN. He called Blount to

ask what kind of calling card we should leave downtown. We decided on a
HEAT [tank] round through the front door.

Lieutenant General William Wallace,
commander, V Corps,
interview, 7 August 2003

Perkins had another clear rationale for going--and possibly even
staying--downtown. It would hasten the regime's collapse and meet Wallace's

intent by demonstrating unequivocally that the Americans were there to
stay, revealing the regime's utter inability to defend its capital, and

unmasking "Baghdad Bob's" blatant propaganda. Moreover, such a bold strike
at the regime would boost the American morale. He had seen the

Iraqis' tactics and felt that 2nd BCT could handle them. Finally, after
thinking through the coming fight, Perkins worked out four conditions

that he believed would make it possible to go downtown and stay:

* The 2nd BCT successfully fighting its way into Baghdad
* Seizing defensible, important, and symbolic terrain in Baghdad
* Opening and maintaining a LOC into Baghdad
* Resupplying sufficiently to remain overnight42

Intelligence reports indicated that after 2nd BCT's initial attack into the
city, enemy forces had begun to establish roadblocks at major

intersections, reseed minefields, and build other obstacles to block
movement into the city. In fact, the division watched with the Hunter UAV

as the Iraqi defenders laid a hasty minefield across Highway 8 behind the
task force, attempting to seal them in during the first thunder

run.43

This sparked a discussion in the Spartans' command post because of the
minefield's potential impact on the mission. The discussion served to

give Perkins a sense of the magnitude of risk he would assume if and when
he sensed the opportunity to go into Baghdad--getting out might be

harder than getting in.44

As events unfolded, Perkins assessed the fight and decided to turn east
into the center of the city. While the reporting is not fully clear on

the sequence of events for this decision, Lieutenant General Wallace noted
that the first time he was aware of the change in plan was when he

watched the blue icons on his BFT turn right off Highway 8. Major General
Blount called Wallace and reported that Perkins had assessed the

level of resistance and thought he could make it to the center of the city.
Rather than question the deviation, Wallace had no thought other

than to underwrite the decision. Having already weighted the 3rd ID with
every asset the corps had available, to include the corps' only UAV,

he was confident the Spartans could accomplish his mission and intent.45
Figure 194. Surface-laid hasty minefield in Baghdad

Once the Spartans made it downtown, Wallace and Blount spoke on the radio
again. Blount told him that Perkins believed he had defensible

terrain and he could hold his positions and stay downtown. Wallace asked
Blount a series of questions focusing on if and how the division

could keep the LOC open. Casualty evacuation and resupply were key issues.
In a classic example of commanders at each echelon understanding

intent and purpose, his questions paralleled Perkins' original criteria for
staying. The three commanders all intuitively understood the

opportunities--and risks--and reached similar conclusions. The exchanges
between Colonel Perkins, Major General Blount, and Lieutenant General

Wallace illustrate the delicate balance between executing orders as given
versus following intent and exercising initiative.46
Scheme of Maneuver

"Our armed forces, according to their tactics, are leaving the way open
[to]...the capital, especially the commandos, are getting ready to

wipe them out."

Iraqi Information Minister
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf,
"Baghdad Bob"

The scheme of maneuver called for Task Force 1-64 AR to lead the brigade
from Objective SAINTS. Once downtown Perkins planned for TF 1-64 AR,

Rogue, to seize the Tomb of the Unknowns and the adjoining park and zoo,
designated Objective DIANE. TF 4-64 AR, Tuskers, would follow to

seize two of Saddam Hussein's palaces along the Tigris River, designated
Objectives WOODY WEST and WOODY EAST. Task force 3-15 IN, China,

would take trail with the dual tasks of securing Objective SAINTS and the
LOC, Highway 8. TF 3-15 IN designated the three major cloverleaf

intersections along the highway from south to north as Objectives CURLEY,
LARRY, and MOE.47

Maintaining momentum was critical. Colonel Perkins and the soldiers of the
brigade had already learned that the Iraqis would swarm and mass

fires on any stationary force. Given this, he intended to keep the brigade
moving. The lead units would identify and engage targets as they

came upon them, passing them off to trailing units as the column moved
past. TF 3-15 IN would drop companies at objectives CURLY, LARRY, and

MOE to secure them as the brigade moved on. Perkins' troops also planned to
prepare obstacles to reduce their vulnerability to attacks from

side streets and ramps.48
Going Downtown

"They are sick in their minds. They say they brought 65 tanks into [the]
center of [the] city. I say to you this talk is not true. This is

part of their sick mind."

Iraqi Information Minister
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf,
"Baghdad Bob"

We were told we needed to download all of our bags, all fuel, all ammo [off
the bustle racks and outside of the vehicles]--everything--because

we were going into Baghdad. TF 1-64 AR had learned that you need to take
all that stuff off in a MOUT fight. They would shoot RPGs and catch

the bustle racks on fire.

Comment by unspecified company commander
Interview, 31 May 2003.
TF 4-64 AR,

Once again Alpha Company, 1-64 AR, Wild Bunch, led the attack as the
brigade started north on Highway 8 at 0538.49 Wild Bunch covered the task

force's attached engineer company, Delta Company, 10th EN, along with the
task force scouts, as they breached the hastily laid minefield about

a kilometer north of the brigade's starting position at Objective SAINTS.
In approximately 15 minutes, the engineers created a breach lane.

The brigade started to roll through at 0600.50
Figure 195. Soldiers clearing hasty minefield

Wild Bunch made contact 11 minutes later as the Iraqis opened fire with the
familiar combination of small arms, RPGs, and mortars. A two-RPG

volley struck one tank, C12, disabling it. Not wanting to stop the column
and unable to restart the tank due to an additional hydraulic leak,

Wild Bunch passed the tank off to TF 4-64 AR and the crew to TF 3-15 IN for
recovery back to Objective SAINTS. The tank was evacuated back to

CURLEY, where the brigade disabled the tank to prevent is use or
exploitation by the enemy.51

At 0641, the brigade reported bypassing several hasty obstacles constructed
out of overturned 18-wheel trucks and construction equipment,

covered by defenders in bunkers and spider holes. The Iraqis conducted
uncoordinated local fights that did not take advantage of the urban

terrain. Their failure to build complex obstacles despite months of
preparation time, lack of integrated combined arms tactics, and absence of

integrated artillery--all indicated that the Spartans, despite contrary
evidence in the form of the minefield, had surprised the defenders.

Another possible explanation is that the regime hoped to wage an entirely
unconventional defense. In any case, their efforts proved

unsuccessful in defending Baghdad. That day the brigade did not concern
itself with theory on why the Iraqis did what they did-- it fought on.

As it moved forward, the brigade came across and killed a number of Iraqis
trying to recover the M1 tank disabled during the 5 April attack.52

The fight up Highway 8 was intense, with the column of tanks and Bradleys
firing a continuous stream of machine gun, 25mm chain gun, and 120mm

main tank rounds at the defenders who swarmed from the surrounding
buildings and ubiquitous spider holes and bunkers along the road. The

fighting developed into a 1- meter to 100-meter fight as gunners engaged
technicals and bunkers at a hundred meters or so, while other crewmen

fired down over the sides of their vehicles as the enemy rushed up close.
Never stopping, the brigade fought through the enemy defenses that

included BMPs hiding in alleyways attempting to get keyhole shots on the
passing column.53
Figure 196. "Thunder Run," 7 April 2003

Click here for higher resolution image (586KB)
Figure 197. TF 1-64 AR movement into downtown Baghdad, 7 April 2003

Small-arms and RPG fire slowly decreased in intensity and finally stopped,
for the moment at least, as TF 1-64 AR made the turn east at

Objective MOE and headed toward the heart of Baghdad. Troops attacking
toward Objective DIANE marveled as they passed under the notorious

crossed swords they had seen on television so many times.54

The mission was to bypass and not get into a pitched battle.

Lieutenant Colonel Phillip DeCamp
commander, TF 4-64 AR,
commenting on Thunder Run II

Wild Bunch crossed to the eastern side of the park and monument complex
that constituted DIANE. They established a blocking position at a key

intersection adjacent to the Al Rasheed Hotel and across from the Tomb of
the Unknowns, sealing the center from the north and northeast.

C/1-64 AR moved into a blocking position at the western edge of the parade
complex and VIP stand, sealing the center from the west and

northwest. The remainder of Rogue followed, setting up mortars, command
posts, aid stations, and a resupply point in the fields and open areas

of the park.55
Figure 198. The 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID at VIP parade field, Baghdad, 7 April
2003

The lull did not last. Once in position, Rogue fought a continuous defense
against poorly coordinated but persistent Iraqi counterattacks by

groups of 10-20 soldiers and paramilitaries. Iraqis on foot attacked from
within the zoo perimeter to the immediate north, using ammunition

and weapons cached all through the area. Other fighters pressed Rogue from
the surrounding buildings and side streets, leading to numerous

close-quarter fights in and around the buildings surrounding the park. The
soldiers employed their superior armor, artillery, and mortar teams

to defeat the attackers, frequently calling the indirect fires in
"danger-close."56
Tanks at the Mall

Within 4 hours, Colonel Perkins' 2nd BCT penetrated the Baghdad defenses a
second time and planted its flag in downtown Baghdad.

To give a sense of perspective, the 21-kilometer attack into Baghdad was
equivalent to an attack on Washington, DC from the intersection of

I-495 and I-95 in Springfield, Virginia, to the Mall in downtown
Washington, DC; seizing the area from the Capitol to the White House to the

Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson Memorial. The 2nd Brigade parked tanks on
the Iraqi equivalent of the Lincoln Memorial, aiming down the

Memorial Bridge toward Arlington Cemetery.

The Americans were in downtown Baghdad, and they planned to stay.

Following directly behind Rogue, the Tuskers of TF 4-64 AR made first
contact on Highway 8 at 0636. Facing a similar, if slightly less

intense, fight as Rogue, the Tuskers made the turn at Objective MOE at
0700. Despite slackened resistance, the task force reported killing 20

Iraqi dismounted troops, a BRDM reconnaissance vehicle, and a BMP. A/4-64
AR, Assassin, reached Objective WOODY WEST at 0720, clearing the

palace complex by 0756. While Assassin cleared its objective, C/4-64 AR,
Cyclone, established a blocking position at the July 14th Monument, a

key intersection overlooking the July 14th Bridge across the Tigris River.
The bridge connected to the university district, where there was an

expected nest of Iraqi defenders. Although the Tuskers described opposition
as sporadic and less than expected, they captured 25 prisoners and

killed 47 dismounted troops. They also destroyed 2 BMPs, 1 BRDM, 12
artillery pieces, 19 antitank weapons, 29 technical vehicles, and 19 air

defense weapons.57
Click here for higher resolution image (564KB)
Figure 199. The 2nd BCT disposition in downtown Baghdad, 7 April 2003
TOC Strike

During the thunder run the Iraqis struck back hard at perhaps the best
target they could have selected. At 0700 on 7 April, as the task forces

penetrated the center of Baghdad, the Iraqis scored a direct hit with
either a rocket or missile on the 2nd Brigade's tactical operations

center (TOC). The devastating strike killed three soldiers and two embedded
reporters, wounded 17 others, and destroyed or damaged 22

vehicles. The TOC had been coordinating and integrating the field artillery
and CAS support for Colonel Perkins, enabling him to focus these

efforts. The attack knocked the TOC off the air.58

The TOC was located in an abandoned Iraqi military compound surrounded by
10-foot- high walls. All of the support vehicles were on line

approximately 15-20 feet from the tent that housed the operations center.
Just before 0700 witnesses heard the whine of what sounded like a

low-flying jet aircraft. What they heard was actually an incoming
projectile, not an aircraft.59
Figure 200. The 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID TOC burning after Iraqi strike, with
empty red rice bags strewn around the impact area

The rocket or missile struck within a few feet of the tent and even closer
to the lined-up vehicles, producing a crater 10 feet deep and 8

feet in diameter. The explosion rocked the area, knocked all the power out,
and sent a fireball through the TOC. The explosion knocked several

soldiers off their feet, including Sergeant First Class Stanley Griffin,
who was inside the TOC monitoring the radio nets. The blast also set

vehicles and tents ablaze.
Figure 201. The 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID TOC on fire from strike

After the initial shock, the officers and soldiers immediately began
recovery operations-- both to rescue injured soldiers and to get back

into operation. Accountability of soldiers proved difficult as the troops
aided the wounded or looked for friends, fought fires, or wandered

about dazed. The explosion and fires produced strange and disconcerting
effects among the survivors. According to First Sergeant Rodric

Dalton, the brigade's Headquarters and Headquarters Company first sergeant,
"It seemed as if we were in slow-motion."60 Despite moving slowly,

the company soldiers accounted for everyone within 17 minutes. Sergeant
First Class Griffin recounted his own search for one of his troops, "I

couldn't find [name omitted]. I walked the entire perimeter at least three
times. The heat was unbearable, and there were a lot of secondary

explosions coming from the burning vehicles. Then we found his remains in
the front seat of his vehicle."61 Griffin went on to say, "The

soldiers were the bravest I had ever seen. They would just run in and out
of the fire looking for buddies and equipment. We didn't have time

to grieve; we had to get the radios back up and running, get the casualties
MEDEVACed out of the area, and set up a secure perimeter. Sergeant

Scott set up the casualty collection point. I thought that was very
professional of him to do so."62
Figure 202. Destroyed HMMWV and brigade plans truck, 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID
TOC

As the soldiers triaged the wounded, Captain William Glaser, the
Headquarters and Headquarters Company commander, identified
still-serviceable

equipment. Meanwhile, the brigade executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel
Eric Wesley, reestablished the command post approximately 300 meters

to the south. In a battle drill never practiced before, soldiers
cannibalized the remaining equipment in and around the destroyed
headquarters

and carried it to Wesley, who got it back into the fight.63 Despite the
carnage, the survivors managed to get into operation within 1 hour,

albeit at a reduced capacity.64
The Decision to Stay

The strike couldn't have happened at a worse time. By the time the TOC
resumed operations, it was approaching time for Colonel Perkins to

decide whether his forces would stay
2nd BCT Recovering from the Strike

Captain William Glaser, commander of HHC/2 BCT, 3rd ID, was working in the
brigade TOC outside Baghdad on 7 April when all hell broke loose.

An Iraqi rocket or missile landed dead center on the TOC. It couldn't have
happened at a worse time. The BCT had launched the Battle for

Baghdad that morning, and it was approaching time for Colonel Perkins, the
BCT commander, to decide whether his forces would stay in Baghdad

or withdraw.

A few seconds earlier, Glaser had been working on the TOC battle board when
he heard what sounded like a low-flying jet airplane. Then there

was a huge explosion, and the next thing he knew he was crawling out from
under the collapsed tent. Getting on his feet, Glaser saw that his

soldiers had already established a casualty collection point and were
performing buddy aid on casualties. He then set out to see where his

first sergeant was setting up the ambulance exchange point.

As he moved to the front of the building that housed the TOC, Glaser saw
Lieutenant Colonel Wesley, the brigade executive officer. Wesley's

calm demeanor had an enormously calming effect on Glaser. "I don't even
know what he said. It probably doesn't matter. All I remember is that

he was calm and clearly in control of himself and the situation, and that
infected me and bled down to everyone...He was the senior guy there,

and he was creating control out of chaos. . . I knew then that we'd get
through this."

As he continued around the building, Captain Glaser saw one of his
soldiers, generator mechanic Private First Class Camp, a poster-quality

example of a soldier--large, strong, and very tough, who volunteered for
the Army immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center

on 9/11-- walking toward the back of the building, wearing only one boot
and his uniform pants, with shrapnel in his back and covered in

blood. A female soldier was trying to get him to go to the ambulance
exchange point. Camp refused her pleas, repeating, "I have to go pull

security" as he trudged to the perimeter. He didn't have a weapon. Like his
boot and uniform top, it had been blown away by the blast. Glaser

then told Camp to go to the casualty collection point, but Camp repeated,
in a daze, "Sir, I have to pull security." So Glaser asked, "Private

First Class Camp, do you know who I am?"

"Of course," said Camp, "you're the CO," responding as if that were a
ridiculous question. "Good," said Glaser. "As your commander, I order

you to listen to this lady and do what she says." At that, Camp moved out
to the ambulance point. He was evacuated to the hospital and

returned to duty three days later.

Continuing around to the front of the building, Glaser saw his first
sergeant, steady as a rock, directing soldiers. "The [ambulance point] is

right over there," said Dalton, and Glaser saw that a sergeant was already
guiding in medic personnel carriers that had responded as soon as

they'd heard the impact. Glaser then noticed that fires were everywhere.
The warehouse they'd occupied had held hundreds of thousands of small

red rice bags, and the explosion had blasted and ignited thousands of them.
They were on vehicles everywhere.

Since casualty evacuation was taken care of, Glaser took charge of the
firefighting effort. He saw two vehicles with burning bags all over

them. Specialist Hamlin, the driver for the operations sergeant major's
vehicle, struggled unsuccessfully to put out the blaze on his HMMWV.

Since they were only 20 meters from the main blaze, Glaser told Hamlin to
drive the vehicle out to a safer location to put the fires out.

Seeing no other soldiers around, Glaser jumped into the other vehicle.
"I'll never forget," he says, "sitting in a burning vehicle, with

burning plastic dripping on my arms, and staring at the yellow glow-plug
light that read `Wait.'"

Captain Glaser moved the vehicle, put out the fires on it, and then
returned to the building to retrieve the stretcher that was on his HMMWV.

He ran the stretcher to the casualty collection point, where Specialist
Gates took it and ran into the burning building to look for any

additional casualties. Once he saw that the combat lifesavers had done
everything that could be done, and the only activity was the legal

officer getting cots to use as additional stretchers, Glaser stood up on a
stack of pallets and issued instructions for casualty evacuation.

He told everyone where the ambulance exchange point was located and how to
get there, and within minutes the soldiers evacuated the casualties

and the burning building was clear of personnel. As soldiers were leaving,
the fires set off secondary explosions from ammunition stored on

burning vehicles. Then three soldiers from the TF 4-64 AR's unit
maintenance collection point arrived on an M88, asking how they could help.

Captain Glaser told them that he had the personnel issues under control,
but he needed help to save the undamaged vehicles trapped inside the

flames. A couple of minutes later, Glaser saw an M88 crash though the
building's wall, creating an exit. The 2nd BCT soldiers then rushed in

and saved their remaining vehicles. Soon after, Lieutenant Colonel Wesley
came up on the net, reported what had happened, and reestablished

TOC operations to support the battle.

Compiled from an interview with Captain William Glaser,
18 May 2003

or withdraw. He had three alternatives: pull out of Baghdad; run a resupply
convoy into the city while TF 3-15 IN continued the fight to clear

the LOC; or withdraw the leading task forces. Perkins believed that TF 3-15
IN only needed a couple of more hours to succeed in its mission.

So, ignoring those three choices, he decided on a fourth option: he pushed
the decision point back--bought time--by ordering the task forces

in Baghdad to turn their tank engines off for the next 2 hours, only
starting them to charge their batteries. This bought the TF 3-15 IN more

time to clear up the LOC.65

Figure 203. Impact point, 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID TOC

Figure 204. The 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID reestablishing the TOC

Securing the LOC

Despite the strike on the TOC, Perkins had achieved two of his three
criteria for staying. However, reaching criterion 3--opening Highway 8

into Baghdad--would be not be easy. When the TOC returned to the air
sometime around 0900, TF 3-15 had not yet opened the LOC. Moreover, the

tanks downtown burned fuel--whether moving or standing still--at a rate of
56 gallons per hour. They had been burning fuel for more than 3

hours. Perkins reckoned that he had 4 hours from crossing the line of
departure before he would be "bingo" on fuel, the point where he had to

turn around or risk not being able to make it all the way back if he was
not refueled. Even with shutting down the tank engines, the clock was

still ticking. With downtown reasonably well in hand, Perkins focused on
supporting TF 3-15's fight on the critical LOC.66

Field-expedient Surgery

When Sergeant Scott returned from the forward surgical team, I asked "Is
Corporal Brown [Colonel Perkins' driver injured in the strike on the

2nd BCT TOC] going to make it?"

He responded, "Sir, I don't know but they are still working on him. When we
got there, nobody could give him an IV because of his burns. I

tried, the medics tried, and even the doctors could not find a vein. Then
this special forces medic laying on a stretcher with an AK-47 round

though his leg and waiting for a MEDEVAC, started screaming at us to bring
Brown over to him. We carried Brown to the wounded medic, who

pulled out a knife, cut down into Brown's leg, pulled out a vein, stuck the
catheter into his vein, and then tied it off."

As soon as he was done with the vein, the field surgeons carried Brown into
the operating room and the special forces medic was MEDEVACed to

the rear. Corporal Brown was eventually evacuated to the USS Mercy hospital
ship, where he died 36 hours later.

Captain William Glaser,
commander, HHC, 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID

Task Organization

On the evening before the attack, the 2nd BCT ordered TF 3-15 IN to detach
all but one platoon of B/3-15 IN. The brigade assigned Captain

Ronny Johnson's resulting understrength company the mission to secure
Objective SAINTS while the rest of the BCT attacked into Baghdad.

Protecting the brigade's operating base at SAINTS was critical to its
ability to continue the fight downtown. Moreover, a secure SAINTS would

serve as a safe haven to which it could return if things went badly.

Losing B/3-15 IN left Lieutenant Colonel Twitty short of combat power. He
retained only four mechanized infantry rifle platoons and three tank

platoons from his cross-attached tank company. But with three objectives to
secure, he needed three company-size forces. Using available

resources, Twitty created three company teams. He built Team Gator, one
tank and two infantry platoons, around A/3-15 IN, commanded by Captain

Joshua Wright. Team Rage, built around the headquarters of Twitty's
attached tank company, B/4-64 AR, consisted of one infantry and two tank

platoons commanded by Captain Dan Hubbard.67

Twitty conjured up a third team-- Team Zan specifically for this mission.
The battalion had three battle captains in the S3 Operations

section. Captain Harry "Zan" Hornbuckle, the senior captain, assumed
command of the ad hoc team. Hornbuckle, a graduate of the Infantry

School's Captains' Career Course, also served as an instructor in the
Ranger Training Brigade (RTB) for two years. Lieutenant Colonel Twitty

had confidence in Hornbuckle.68 Twitty formed Team Zan with the remaining
infantry platoon (four Bradleys) from B/3-15 IN, the battalion's

heavy mortar platoon led by First Lieutenant Josh Woodruff, with its four
mortar tracks and an M557 fire direction center track, and a

reinforced engineer platoon with four M113 APCs and two M9 ACEs. Twitty
also assigned the battalion fire support officer, Captain William

Brodany, to the team. This not only gave Hornbuckle a fire support
coordinator, it added another Bradley, with its deadly 25mm cannon, to the

team's firepower. Hornbuckle also brought with him the "extra" Bradley that
Twitty had drawn back in Kuwait.69

In addition to these units, Captain Hornbuckle had the medics of the
battalion's main aid station and the command sergeant major with him,

along with several members of the maintenance section, including Staff
Sergeant Joe Todd, who would man a heavy machine gun to great effect

during the battle. Command Sergeant Major Robert Gallagher routinely
traveled in one of the battalion's M88 recovery vehicles and positioned

himself at what he perceived would be the most critical point during any
operation. Gallagher believed that Zan would be at this fight's

critical point.70 Along with Gallagher, two M577 command and control
vehicles from the task force TOC joined the team.71 The battalion's

embedded journalists, one fewer after reporter David Bloom's untimely
death, rounded out the team.72 Dennis Steele, a photographer from ARMY

Magazine, along with an ABC cameraman, took dramatic photographs and video
of the fighting at CURLEY. These images would bring home to America

the fierceness of this battle. Hornbuckle and the other company commanders
had only 6 short hours, in the dark, to organize their teams, issue

orders, refuel and rearm for the attack. Only their experience with the
battalion and the hard realistic training they had gone through

together made this possible. Lieutenant Colonel Twitty retained one squad
of the scout platoon, the engineer company headquarters, an air

liaison team from the Air Force with an enlisted tactical air controller, a
PSYOP team, and a human intelligence team under his control. The

rest of the scout platoon stayed back with Bravo Company at SAINTS.73
Click here for higher resolution image (590KB)
Figure 205. TF 3-15 IN disposition along the LOC, 7 April 2003

Receiving the Order

Portions of TF 3-15 IN arrived at SAINTS late on the afternoon of 6 April,
after being relieved from the mission to secure the east side of

the Euphrates River crossing at PEACH. That afternoon the rest of the task
force attacked south on the east bank of the Euphrates to destroy

remaining enemy forces south of the crossing. Lieutenant Colonel Twitty had
not yet reached SAINTS when Colonel Perkins called a huddle to

issue the operations order for the next morning's attack into Baghdad.
Twitty sent his operations officer, Major Roger Shuck, in his place.

Once he reached SAINTS and met with Shuck, Lieutenant Colonel Twitty
developed his concept for the operation including organizing Zan. Twitty

then used an empty, bombed- out building without a roof to plan and issue
the attack order. Soldiers pulled a tarp over the top of a room in

the building and used ponchos to prevent light from leaking out of the
smashed windows. At midnight, Twitty issued the order for an attack at

0600. He then had his commanders talk through a simple rehearsal, moving
yellow "sticky" notes around on a rough sketch of the objectives to

show they understood his scheme of maneuver and intent. Lieutenant Colonel
Twitty described issuing the order as a very dramatic and tense

moment for all those present. They were exhausted and they expected a hard
fight. Twitty commented, "I looked into the eyes of everyone in

that bombed-out building, and for the first time, I saw real fear. After
the battles in the city on 5 April by our sister task force, we knew

this would be bad."74

Twitty developed a concept of operation similar to Perkins' scheme. He
planned to secure his objectives from south to north in order. Gator,

his mechanized infantry company team, led the task force, followed by Rage,
his tank company team, and Zan. Zan would secure Objective CURLEY

as the remainder of the task force continued on. Rage would secure
Objective LARRY, and Gator would secure the northernmost objective, MOE.

Twitty intended to position himself on Objective LARRY to ensure he
remained in radio range with all of his units. At 0620 on 7 April,

Twitty's task force crossed the line of departure following the Tuskers.75

Execution

As 2nd BCT moved north, the enemy called up reinforcements. Enemy
resistance seemed to slacken for a bit as the Tuskers moved north but

intensified as TF 3-15 IN approached, apparently as word spread that the
Americans had returned. Lieutenant Colonel Twitty sensed conditions

had changed from those the task force had encountered earlier in the
campaign. Twitty felt that up to this point in the campaign the enemy had

shown a "certain softness" or unwillingness to fight to the death. On 7
April he sensed a grim determination in the opposition.76

Although the enemy's attitude may have changed, the pattern of resistance
remained similar to the way the enemy fought at As Samawah and

north. As they had done previously, the enemy used small fighting positions
along the highway. They also used ramps and overpasses to their

advantage, both for cover and to attain the advantage of high ground. Side
streets and ramps afforded them access to the flanks of advancing

US units as well. Finally, the enemy reinforced the fighting without
apparent close coordination, but in greater and growing numbers. After

the first thunder run, the brigade knew very well that the enemy would use
the overpasses; accordingly, the artillery fire plan included

firing airbursts over the overpasses. Twitty found that the fighting
against opposition literally on the edge of the road made using artillery

and CAS difficult. Nearly all of the missions called were
danger-close--that is, so close to the friendly troops that they were
likely to

produce both friendly and enemy casualties. That did not stop the 3rd ID
troops from calling danger close missions. They called plenty of

them.77

One of the principles of military operations in urban terrain is that an
attacking force requires significant engineer support, both to assure

mobility by clearing obstacles and also to develop obstacles to protect the
flanks of the advancing forces. TF 3-15 IN applied the principle

with success during the fighting at all three objectives. Twitty's troops
used armored combat earthmovers (ACEs) to knock down light poles and

move wrecks to generate obstacles across streets and roads coming into the
three intersections at LARRY, MOE, and CURLEY. The task force's

engineering efforts paid off as the enemy continued to use a combination of
dismounted and mounted attacks by both combat vehicles and

"technical" trucks and attacks by suicide bombers attempting to detonate
vehicles inside the Americans' perimeters.78 The obstacles stymied

the Iraqis and their foreign fighters and proved critical during the
decisive fight at Objective CURLEY.

Objective CURLEY

As soon as Team Zan arrived at Objective CURLEY, Captain Hornbuckle
organized a hasty defense around the complex road intersection and

overpass. Oriented north on Highway 8, he placed the Mortar platoon with
two tracks facing north and two facing south back down the highway.

Hornbuckle assigned the engineer platoon responsibility for the east side
of the cloverleaf intersection and the mechanized infantry platoon

responsibility for the west side. The infantry platoon first had to attack
to clear enemy troops from trenches and fighting positions they had

built in the area Hornbuckle assigned them to defend. From the outset,
Hornbuckle and Gallagher had to use everyone who had accompanied Team

Zan to clear the perimeter and defend it. Staff troops and communicators
assigned to the task force headquarters company ably pitched in.79

After the fact, Lieutenant Colonel Twitty described Team Zan's opponents at
CURLEY as "Syrian Jihadists" who came to Iraq to fight against

Americans. According to Twitty, they showed no evidence of thorough or
professional training, but they fought with determination. Many of the

Syrian fighters occupied a large building on the northwest corner of the
interchange. According to Twitty, the troops at CURLEY claimed the

intensity of fire from the building made the whole structure look as if it
were "twinkling and blinking."81
Shimmering in the Sun

Two days after the fighting, Private First Class David Turner, a mechanic
in Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3-15 IN, passed CURLEY. He

described the streets and ground as "shimmering in the sun like gold from
all the expended brass lying on the ground."

TF 3-15 IN Unit History

Although Zan troopers cleared the Iraqi and Syrian defenders out several
times, the enemy reoccupied the shallow trenches around the periphery

of the cloverleaf because Zan had two few troops to defend the entire
perimeter against the onslaught of dismounted attacks. Team Zan

literally fought a 360-degree fight. Growing bolder, small groups of
attackers edged closer and closer to the position from all directions,

and although the direct-lay missions against the large building helped,
heavy fire continued to come from there.82 The Syrians and Iraqis

fought with a fierce, even fanatical, determination, pressing home their
attacks. One of the mechanized infantry troops killed a woman who

attacked his part of the perimeter.83
Figure 206. Mortar platoon vehicles of TF 3-15 IN on Objective CURLEY, 7
April 2003

The Pros from Dover--
Special Forces on CURLEY

As Zan prepared to depart Objective SAINTS, a small SF detachment arrived
and approached the sergeant major about joining the unit as it moved

north. Two SF vehicles, modified pickup trucks mounting machine guns on
pedestals, merged into the convoy. The SF troops asked that they be

allowed to make first contact with the local Iraqis on Objective CURLEY.
They argued that if they could talk to the older men in the area,

"the men with beards," perhaps Zan could avoid a confrontation.

Captain Hornbuckle and Command Sergeant Major Gallagher could hardly
believe what they were hearing. The SF soldiers obviously had a different

idea of what the situation on CURLEY would be when Zan got there than
everyone in TF 3-15 IN had. All along, this had been planned as a high-

intensity combat operation. By the time Zan arrived at the crossroads, TF
1-64 AR, TF 4-64 AR, and two company teams of TF 3-15 IN had all

passed through, and each of them had traded heavy fire with the Iraqi and
Syrian defenders. There definitely would not be an opportunity for

peaceful negotiations this day, regardless of what the SF sergeant thought.

As expected, Zan met heavy enemy fire as it occupied CURLEY. The SF
soldiers saw right away that there was not going to be an opportunity for

discussions. The SF troopers, who were prepared to speak with the Iraqis
showing only a minimum of arms and ammunition, quickly donned their

full battle gear and prepared for the fight. Gallagher said that he watched
them as they calmly put on their equipment and gathered their

ammunition and weapons. He described them as being "Like the pros from
Dover, come to settle this thing and get in a round of golf later."

The SF troopers gathered up a couple of infantrymen and charged into a
building near the intersection. Command Sergeant Major Gallagher heard

a flurry of shots and later saw the infantry soldiers dragging two of the
Special Forces guys out of the building with wounds to their legs.

The remainder of the SF team fought with Zan throughout the day.

Command Sergeant Major Robert Gallagher,
command sergeant major, TF 3-15 IN,
19 May 200380

As the battle entered its fourth hour, Lieutenant Colonel Twitty radioed
Hornbuckle to ask, "Zan, just tell me. Do you need extra help?"84

Hornbuckle said no, but after months of working together, Twitty could hear
the stress in his voice. Twitty sensed that Hornbuckle needed help

so he sought a second opinion from Command Sergeant Major Gallagher.
Gallagher, tagged as "Black Hawk Bob" by the embedded media team because

he had fought and been seriously wounded in the fighting in Mogadishu in
1993, got wounded again at CURLEY. When the task force commander

contacted him, Gallagher was standing next to his M88 recovery vehicle with
his leg bandaged, firing his M-4 carbine at Iraqi and Syrian

attackers. Gallagher answered without hesitation "We need help, and we need
it now."85

Lieutenant Colonel Twitty accepted Gallagher's view and asked Colonel
Perkins for the release of one mechanized infantry platoon from his

Bravo Company, still occupying the blocking position near Objective SAINTS.
Captain Johnson, commanding B/3-15 IN, joined the discussion with

a counterproposal. He recommended that he come forward with his entire
company.86 Within moments, Perkins considered and accepted that plan.

Apparently, Perkins sought help from the division, and Major General Blount
assigned 3-7 CAV to secure Objective SAINTS, freeing Johnson to

concentrate on repelling the counterattacks on the LOC.87
Figure 207. Command Sergeant Major Robert Gallagher, 3rd Battalion, 15th
Infantry, engaging Iraqis while being treated for a leg wound.

Although a captain, Johnson was a more experienced soldier than most
captains. He served nine years as an enlisted soldier and NCO, reaching

staff sergeant before going to Officer Candidate School. Johnson understood
the situation since he had been listening to the radio and to the

torrent of fire to his north. Doing his own contingency planning, Johnson
had moved one of his two platoons from the southern part of SAINTS

up to a position closer to him on the northern perimeter. After settling it
with Perkins, Twitty told Johnson to "Get to CURLEY ASAP."88

Johnson wasted no time. He issued a quick order and moved out in 15
minutes. B/3-15 IN roared into CURLEY with every weapon firing, arriving

just in time. As one man put it, "There was not a soldier on CURLEY that
did not think he was going to die that day."89 According to one of

the embedded reporters present at the fight, by the time Johnson's company
arrived, the medics had armed themselves to defend their patients;

those wounded still able to fire a weapon had picked up arms; the chaplain
considered picking up a weapon to help defend the wounded. "It was

the most amazing thing. Captain Johnson got to Objective CURLEY within 15
minutes. The first squad leader out of his track was shot."90

Although Johnson initially arrived with two rifle platoons, brigade ordered
him to send one back south to help sort out the mess at the

brigade TOC.91

About the same time as Johnson moved north, Lieutenant Colonel Twitty
ordered Captain Aaron Polsgrove to come forward with the rearm-refuel

convoy. Although originally lined up near 2nd Brigade's TOC, Polsgrove
moved away after the strike and joined the combat trains command post

and three "gun trucks" from the scout platoon at the northern edge of
SAINTS. Polsgrove asked for an escort, but the task force had none to

give so Polsgrove moved out with the three armed scout vehicles and a
.50-caliber on the battalion maintenance sergeant's M113. Along the way,

the defenders ambushed the supply column, killing the scout platoon
sergeant and blowing his body completely from his vehicle. The column

returned fire and moved on, losing one more soldier, the battalion motor
sergeant, to the enemy.92 Reaching CURLEY did not end their agony.

Polsgrove "coiled" the supply trucks up in a tight circle like a wagon
train in a western movie and immediately began issuing ammunition to

the troops at CURLEY. The mortar platoon literally ran back and forth
between the trucks and mortars with three rounds per load and fired them

as soon as they got back to their guns. In the middle of this, one of the
Iraqis or Syrians hit an ammunition truck with an RPG. The resulting

fire spread rapidly, engulfing four more trucks.93

Blount reinforced the fight, reassigning TF 2-7 IN from 1st BCT to 2nd BCT
at 1016 to help keep Highway 8 open.94 TF 2-7 IN, the

Cottonbailers, led by Lieutenant Colonel Scott Rutter, moved quickly but
did not arrive with their main body until 1600. Rutter sent his

operations officer, Major Rod Coffey, ahead of the main force to coordinate
the relief in place at Objective CURLEY. Coffey moved out with

just his Bradley and a communications HMMWV. Coffey and his party arrived
at CURLEY and were immediately welcomed by enemy small- arms and RPG

fire from all directions. Coffey rapidly coordinated the relief with the TF
3-15 IN executive officer, Major Denton Knapp, and returned to his

Bradley so he could add it to the fight. En route to his Bradley, Coffey
was severely injured when an RPG struck his communications HMMWV.

Coffey refused medical care and manned his Bradley, getting the crew and
dismounts into the fight on CURLEY. Coffey's crew supported Team Zan

by laying heavy suppressive fire on enemy positions to the north of CURLEY.
During the ensuing fight, a member of Coffey's crew, Specialist

Nicholas Cochrane, killed three enemy fighters with four well-aimed shots
from his M-16 while they were attempting to close on the position by

way of an overpass. Rutter, having received numerous reports from Coffey
and his gunner, Sergeant Kenneth Stephens, knew what the situation

was like on CURLEY and moved his task force up as quickly as he could.
Their arrival at CURLEY tipped the scales.95

Rutter's troops relieved Team Zan and, with the advantage of greater
numbers, carried the fight to the Iraqis. Eventually assuming

responsibility for the road, Rutter sent units attacking south and east,
with tremendous success over the next two days.96 He expanded the

perimeter to gain more defensible terrain and improved the fields of fire
by knocking down walls. Rutter did this to prevent enemy from

gaining any positional advantage on his forces. While expanding the
perimeter and clearing enemy fortifications, TF 2-7 IN tragically lost

Staff Sergeant Lincoln Hollinsaid of Bravo Company, 11th Engineer
Battalion, to RPG fire. Just three days earlier Hollinsaid replaced
Sergeant

First Class Paul R. Smith as the platoon sergeant when Smith was killed at
Baghdad International Airport. With the perimeter expanded and

secured, the LOC into downtown Baghdad would remain tenable. On 9 April,
after the battle, some locals asked permission to give the Iraqi dead

a proper burial. The Iraqis took away the bodies of the few dead fighters
who were wearing army uniforms, but refused to have anything to do

with the masses of dead Syrians, expressing their disgust and hatred of
them to anyone who would listen.97
Command Sergeant Major Robert Gallagher

In 1993, Command Sergeant Major Gallagher was part of Task Force Ranger
(75th Ranger Regiment), which attempted to capture Somali warlords in

Mogadishu. During the fierce fighting on 3-4 October, he was severely
wounded. Ten years later, in Iraq, the reporters traveling with his

unit, TF 3-15 IN, jokingly nicknamed him "Black Hawk Bob." The name stuck.
The sergeant major cultivated a hearty, gruff, and profane persona

with his troops, and they affectionately called him by his nickname,
although never to his face.

Gallagher stated that his philosophy and method of operation was to "go as
far forward as I can and not undermine the command authority of the

unit. If there's something I can do to help the companies, I'll do it." He
decided that he was not happy with the traditional role of a

command sergeant major--staying in the rear to assist coordinating
logistics and support--the traditional "beans and bullets" approach. He

felt that the officers and sergeants assigned that mission could make it
work; he could be of more help elsewhere.

If he was going to circulate around the battlefield, he needed more
protection than the HMMWV authorized by the unit's table of organization.

He adopted an M88 heavy recovery vehicle, soon his signature vehicle. He
also kept the main aid station (MAST) close to him whenever he moved.

This ensured that the MAST was near the fighting but had security. The MAST
guided on the M88, which, in turn, protected the medics with its

heavy machine gun.

Gallagher's years of experience with 75th Ranger Regiment served TF 3-15 IN
well. He brought that elite force's training and combat techniques

to his new unit. He instituted focused training when the soldiers reached
Kuwait. In this, he and Lieutenant Colonel Twitty saw things eye-to-

eye. In Kuwait, the unit had the resources and opportunity for this type of
training. The soldiers completed an exhausting but

confidence-building regimen. The support soldiers trained alongside the
infantrymen, learning to clear trenches, destroy bunkers, and engage

targets from any position. Drivers and assistant drivers went through
ambush training using live ammunition. Even the fuel handlers attached

to the task force completed a live-fire exercise. This paid huge dividends
later. Gallagher extended his focus to the junior officers and

mid-grade sergeants, training them out of the junior soldiers' sight to
preserve their authority. "It was my assessment that the sergeants and

officers in mechanized infantry units tend to want to centralize training.
I wanted to de-centralize it, to push it down lower in the chain,

make the junior leaders more responsible, and get them to buy into the
training." The team came together; Gallagher's efforts paid off on

CURLEY on 7 April.

Derived from interview with Command Sergeant Major Robert Gallagher,
19 May 2003.

Objective LARRY

As Captain Johnson and Bravo Company arrived to reinforce Team Zan at
Objective CURLEY, the fighting reached high intensity at Objective

LARRY, where Twitty positioned himself. Captain Dan Hubbard, commanding
Team Rage, composed of two tank platoons and a mechanized infantry

platoon, led the fight at LARRY. Hubbard had 19 armored vehicles, including
his own tank and Lieutenant Colonel Twitty's Bradley.98 At LARRY,

one tank platoon covered the northeast quadrant while another took the
southeast quadrant. Hubbard's mechanized infantry platoon covered the

entire west side of the objective. Enemy attacks began immediately, mainly
from the south, but also from buildings to the northwest, from the

crossover road to the west, and from a jumble of buildings to the
southwest.99

Rage faced dismounted Republican Guard troops as well as some SRG, but
suicide bombers and fighters in pickup trucks mounting heavy machine

guns posed the main threat. The paramilitary troops attacked just as they
did at As Samawah, Objectives JENKINS, FLOYD, and MURRAY. They

attacked in waves using the ubiquitous Iraqi white and orange taxis, city
buses, dump trucks, and in one case even a lumbering recreational

vehicle. Lieutenant Colonel Twitty reported that it appeared that the
defenders had loaded many of their vehicles with explosives. Often when

a Bradley's 25mm cannon or a tank round struck them, they ignited with a
tremendous secondary explosion.100 The Iraqi main effort, at least

for the first several hours, came from the south. Generally the attacks
took the form of vehicles filled with armed men that raced toward the

intersection. The vehicles' occupants fired their weapons out the windows
or from the beds of pickup trucks. The enemy literally raced to

their deaths against the heavy weapons of Hubbard's tanks and Bradleys,
apparently with no thought other than overwhelming the Americans with

numbers.101

At one point, Lieutenant Colonel Twitty realized that, although he was able
to block the main highway with fires, the small frontage road

running along the west of the elevated portion of Highway 8 would allow an
attacking vehicle to approach without being engaged until the last

moment. He ordered the engineers to push up a berm of earth to block the
frontage road. One ACE driver quickly accomplished this task.102

I owe my life to that ACE driver!

Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Twitty,
commander, 3-15 IN

Just 15 minutes later, an Iraqi car, full of explosives and driving at
exceptionally high speed, approached the intersection from the south.

Instead of continuing straight ahead to its destruction as most of the
others had done, this vehicle suddenly veered off the main road,

crossed through a gap in the guardrail, and jumped the on-ramp to the
frontage road, landing within 100 meters of the battalion TOC.

Unfortunately for the driver, he ran directly into the newly created berm,
striking it at high speed about 75 meters from Twitty's command

post. The force of the impact ejected the driver through the windshield,
with his body landing approximately 50 meters from the command post.

When a Bradley fired at the wrecked car with its 25mm cannon, it blew up
with a huge explosion that rocked the heavily armored vehicles at the

overpass.103

Lieutenant Colonel Twitty, positioned on top of the overpass in the center
of the intersection, fought alongside his troops. Within 2 hours of

his arrival at LARRY, he had to reload the 25mm ammunition he carried in
his Bradley fighting vehicle. After burning through the 300 rounds in

the ready-rack, the reload procedure for the gun can take up to 3 minutes,
requiring both the gunner and track commander to drop into the

turret, and typically results in skinned hands, torn nails, and more than a
bit of blood in a peacetime environment. Although Twitty and his

gunner probably tried to set a speed record for the task, it must have felt
like hours. Reloaded, the gunner continued to engage targets on

his own, while Twitty maintained contact with his company teams, cleared
supporting fires, and kept Colonel Perkins updated. Twitty estimated

that Hubbard's troops killed 50 to 80 enemy troops.104

Objective MOE

The enemy at Objective MOE proved different from those at CURLEY and LARRY.
At Objective MOE, closer to downtown Baghdad, the opposition

included a combination of mounted and dismounted regular army and
Republican Guard forces. These troops attacked using T-72 tanks, BMP-1

armored personnel carriers, and large-caliber antiaircraft weapons employed
in the direct-fire mode. Several hundred enemy troops lurked along

the road in a trench and bunker complex built among the palms and brush.
Others occupied prepared positions in adjacent buildings dominating

the interchange.105

A/3-15 IN, Gator, commanded by Captain Josh Wright, led the task force's
attack up Highway 8. Following the Tuskers of TF 4-64 AR through

CURLEY and LARRY, the company killed an estimated 30 Iraqis firing from
trenches and buildings on the way to Objective MOE. The objective

proved a veritable hornets' nest of resistance, constantly reinforced by
the enemy streaming in from the east and west. As soon as Gator

arrived, Iraqis driving armed civilian vehicles and suicidal attackers
driving trucks packed with explosives also attacked toward the

cloverleaf. Iraqi infantry swarmed into the area and occupied positions
behind some low walls near the objective and in the buildings

dominating the cloverleaf. Gator came under intense 360-degree direct and
indirect fire.106

Captain Wright concluded he needed to clear the objective before he tried
to defend it. First the company swept the enemy from the immediate

objective area. Then Wright sent First Lieutenant Daniel Van Kirk's tank
platoon deeper into the city, north of MOE, where it destroyed

several Iraqi strong points established in buildings, some air defense guns
firing in the direct-fire mode, and multiple Iraqi armored

vehicles.107

After Van Kirk returned, the company consolidated on Objective MOE. The
engineer platoon, led by First Lieutenant Adam Hess and his platoon

sergeant, Sergeant First Class Jerod Palmer, blocked approaches to MOE by
cutting down light poles to form a modern version of the ancient

abatis. They also used an ACE to push debris and burning cars into
defensive berms. These efforts proved worthwhile when the obstacles helped

break up a savage last-light attack that climaxed with the destruction of a
car bomb just 60 meters from the perimeter.108

In 8 hours of sustained combat using direct fire and six "danger-close"
mortar missions and 20 "danger-close" artillery missions, the Gators

destroyed more than 60 Iraqi vehicles and killed as many as 200 enemy
infantrymen. Like the rest of the task force and brigade, the company

team was desperately short of ammunition. During the day's fight, Gators
fired twice its basic load of ammunition and nearly ran out of

fuel.109
Resupplying the Brigade

As TF 2-7 IN arrived at CURLEY, Captain Johnson raced north with the supply
column. Lieutenant Colonel Twitty radioed Johnson not to stop at

LARRY but to keep going to MOE so the northernmost task forces could be
resupplied. Accordingly, Johnson and the precious trucks raced right

through LARRY. From his vantage point on the overpass, Twitty saw them go
through. "Drivers were hunched down low in the cabs, driving with

their left hand and firing their M-16s out the window with their right."110
According to Twitty they were making good time. "I watched Ronny

Johnson and the convoy roar past us on the way to Objective MOE. It was an
incredible sight! Drivers and [track commanders] were firing as

fast as they could, and they were flying! They must have been going 50
miles an hour when they passed me. I just cheered them on."111
Firing on all Cylinders--
Engineers at Objective MOE

On 7 April, as Spartan Brigade's Task Forces 1-64 AR and 4-64 AR sliced
into Baghdad, TF 3-15 IN had the mission to secure their LOC. To do

so, it developed three objectives--LARRY, CURLEY, and MOE--interchanges
along Highway 8. By holding these objectives, TF 3-15 could keep the

LOC open, which was critical because the Spartan Brigade attacked into the
city without their logistics trains.

TF 3-15 IN's Gator would secure Objective MOE. To do so, Captain Josh
Wright had two M2 platoons, an M1 platoon, and an engineer platoon led

by First Lieutenant Adam Hess. Wright knew that his unit would be fighting
a 360-degree battle against numerically superior forces. He gave

his engineers a simple yet critical mission: delay enemy mounted and
dismounted access to the objective to enable direct-fire systems to

engage them, while leaving open one north-south lane for the LOC. Hess
considered the situation. He knew that speed would be critical. As soon

as the enemy forces realized where Gator was establishing its position,
they would mass forces and attack. They would come fast and furious:

tanks and BMPs, RPGs, suicide cars, buses, and trucks--all attacking in
droves.

Hess had 2nd Platoon, B/11th Engineers' ACE, dismounted sappers, and an
M113 with a mounted .50-caliber machine gun. He couldn't carry barrier

material, so he would have to use existing terrain.

After surviving "RPG Alley" along Highway 8, Gator arrived at MOE. The
engineers went straight into action. Hess sent the ACE to the most

dangerous avenue of approach to dig ditches and berms in roads, push down
palm trees to create obstacles and clear fields of fire, and move

destroyed vehicles to make more obstacles.

Meanwhile, the sappers, under Sergeant First Class Jerod Palmer, used
cutting charges to fell light posts and create an aluminum abatis.

Sergeant First Class Ford, a tank commander on the scene, recalling the
sappers' actions, noted, "I saw these dismounts running out in front

of us, into the firefight, and I said `Whoa, let's pull up and cover
them.'" Blowing anything that would impede mobility--light posts, road

signs--the sappers made demolition calculations on the fly. They set
charges, dove behind tanks or their APC, waited for the blast, and then

moved to their next target.

"Everyone was clicking on the same cylinder," said Hess. "They knew that
they were fighting a flesh-to-steel battle when they were out there,

so they were jumping. The .50-caliber machine gunner knew he had to lay
great fire, and he did. The driver put the track in a place to protect

the guys on the ground. The sappers had one guy doing calculations, another
measuring the charge, another placing it, another doing the MDI

[detonator]. Everyone did what needed to be done."

To the north, Sergeant Jason Millett drove his ACE out into the fray,
pushing palm trees as he went. Soon, the Bradleys and tanks had

destroyed enough attacking cars and trucks for Millett to use the wrecks to
create obstacles. On two occasions, surviving attackers emerged

from destroyed vehicles. Sergeant Millett engaged them with his 9mm,
shooting out from his ACE's clamshell. At one point in the battle, Gator

soldiers destroyed a bus packed with explosives when it was only 60 meters
away from their perimeter. "Without the obstacles, it would have

gotten us," said one Gator sergeant.

After 17 hours of continuous fighting, the enemy had seen enough. Gator had
prevailed. But the fight was intense; at one point they were

"black" on .50-caliber, 7.62mm coax, and small-arms ammunition. The tank
platoon fired 12,000 rounds of 7.62mm in the first 10 hours of the

fight. Gator suffered 11 wounded soldiers, but fortunately no soldiers
died. After the fighting ended, Sergeant Millet used his ACE to dig a

trench and bury the enemy dead that filled the fields around MOE.

Extracted from 2nd Platoon, A Company, 10th EN Unit History

The convoy reached Objective MOE, resupplied Gator, and continued on to the
parade field at Objective DIANE to resupply the rest of the

brigade. TF 1-64 AR and TF 4-64 AR rotated vehicles to the resupply point
to refuel and rearm. The logistics crisis had passed. Perkins'

troops met the criteria for staying downtown. Although two more days of
sometimes heavy fighting in Baghdad remained, Perkins' second thunder

run broke the back of conventional resistance and arguably of the
regime.112
The Counterattack

I do believe this city is freakin' ours!

Captain Chris Carter,
commander, A/3-7 IN
Al Sijood Palace, Baghdad.

Sunrise on 8 April brought renewed counterattacks from east of the Tigris
River. After intermittent probing throughout the night, the Iraqis

moved small groups of soldiers and paramilitary fighters across the two
Tigris River bridges to the northeast of the Spartans' position. TF

4-64 AR Tuskers took the brunt of the counterattack. The troops confronted
their tormentors freshly supplied.

At approximately 0415, the enemy launched a dismounted counterattack on
Objective WOODY EAST. Crossing via two bridges, they moved south along

the river road near the palace that Captain Phillip Wolford's Assassins of
A/4-64 AR occupied. At 0527 the task force fired mortars against a

combination of troops and armed men in civilian clothes moving south. The
Assassins then swept north to complete the destruction of the

dismounts. Wolford, fighting in his stocking feet, having transitioned from
dead asleep to attacking in short order, ordered his troops to

"give both sides of the road an equal amount of love."113 The company
reached the western side of the southernmost bridge at 0619 and engaged

several RPG teams. Shortly thereafter, Assassin observed the Iraqis using
buses and trucks to reinforce their position on the eastern shore of

the bridge. Wolford's troops fought as many as a hundred paramilitaries.
The fighting grew intense and close. The enemy attack built in

intensity rather than diminished, and the Assassins took two casualties.
After calling in artillery and mortar missions within 200 meters of

his tank, Wolford recalled, "I had to move out of here cause I was getting
my ass kicked."114 Pulling back a short distance from the bridge,

Wolford brought in CAS that used JDAMS to destroy two buildings from which
snipers had engaged the company. A-10s swept the riverbank of enemy

infantry.115

While Assassin carried the fight at the southern bridge, the Cyclones of
C/4-64 AR attacked north to seize the second, northern bridge.

Killing numerous Iraqis, the soldiers seized control of the bridge with
relative ease. Cyclone used plow tanks to position destroyed and

wrecked technical vehicles astride the northern bridge and its approaches.
With both bridges under control, the Spartans effectively sealed

the downtown and blocked any further counterattacks from across the Tigris
River.116

Later the troops discovered the attack had been made by a combination of
uniformed Iraqis and a large group of men clad in jeans and polo

shirts and wearing sunglasses, which seemed odd since the night had been
dark, or as one of them put it, "dark as shit."117 The uniformed

Iraqis wore green fatigues sporting Republican Guard red triangles. Some of
the Republican Guard troops attacked in BMPs. The troops even sank

boats in the Tigris that night that fired on them.118

Click here for higher resolution image (606KB)
Figure 208. The Iraqi counterattack into downtown Baghdad, 8 April 2003
The 8 April Counterattack

On the morning of the 8th...we are just fighting guys on the banks of the
river. There were shit-loads of guys firing from bunkers. As a

matter of fact, some of these guys were waking up and stretching and
yawning and were just getting hosed as they came out of their bunkers by

Mk-19s [grenade launchers]. . . . The bridges had to be controlled.

Lieutenant Colonel Phillip DeCamp,
commander, TF 4-64 AR,
interview 31 May 2003

So, we backed up to the last spot where we had the small contact and we had
enemy firing at us from atop the arches. My infantry fired at them

with TOWs. The A-10s came in and I focused all their fires at this park
[across the Tigris River]. When we moved back in, the enemy had

reinforced with more guys. Two weeks after the fight, we pulled 24 dead
bodies out of the bunkers. The bombs and the 30mm just caved in the

bunkers.

Captain Phillip Wolford
commander, A/4-64 AR,
interview 31 May 2003

After a relatively quiet night, TF 3-15 IN fought hard the next day to
defend its two remaining objectives along Highway 8. Although the

Iraqis attacked with nearly the same ferocity as the day before, the task
force had improved its defensive positions so the enemy achieved

nothing. After the battle on the 8th, TF 3-15 IN repositioned around a
large Ba'ath Party complex near as the Objective MOE, known locally as

the "Aflak Building." TF 2-7 IN assumed the mission of protecting the LOC
and continued to defend against sporadic attacks for the next two

days.119

The Power of Tanks

The decision to leave an armored brigade in the center of Baghdad overnight
seemed unthinkable one day and obvious the next. We must never

underestimate the psychological impact of an American armored force holding
the ground it takes...

V Corps after-action review briefing,
15 July 2003

With the LOC secured and the Spartans entrenched downtown, it remained for
3rd ID to link up the three brigades and complete the seizure of

west Baghdad. On 9 April, 3rd BCT attacked south on Highway 1 and linked up
with 2nd BCT downtown. The next day, 1st BCT completed clearing

Highway 8 east from the airport to downtown and linked up with 2nd BCT. The
3rd ID divided the city into zones for its subordinates to occupy

and continued to destroy symbols of the regime's power.120 On the eastern
side of the Tigris River, the marines of the 1st Marine Division

entered the city on 9 April and toppled the now famous statue of Saddam
Hussein. With the marines now entering the city in force, the enemy

threat to the V Corps' flank along the Tigris River was effectively
eliminated. Along with 3rd BCT's attack south from TITANS, these were the

last major combat actions to secure Baghdad.

Rather than the Grozny-like carnage and destruction predicted--and
feared--Baghdad fell and the regime evaporated after only three days of

hard fighting. Colonel Perkins' bold decision to stay downtown clearly
drove the final nail into the regime's coffin. With soldiers and

marines able to move at will throughout the city, the regime evaporated.

Back to Top
The Final Fighting in Baghdad--3rd BCT In TITANS

While the media focused on Colonel Perkins' Spartan Brigade as it conducted
its thunder runs, Colonel Allyn's Hammer Brigade fought perhaps

the most intense urban battle in the entire campaign. Although the 3rd
BCT's area of operations on the northern outskirts of the city seemed

calm in the early evening of 7 April, the Iraqis mounted a major
counterattack just after dark. Colonel Allyn later thought the Iraqis were

attempting to break out of Baghdad--or at least to open Highway 1 as an
escape route for other forces still within the city.121

When the Iraqis began shelling soldiers on Objectives ROMMEL and MONTY,
1-10 FA lashed back with counterfires. The competing explosions

reverberated back and forth across the river. The objectives were close
enough to each other that soldiers on one objective could see and hear

the rounds landing on the other.122 The Iraqis followed up their barrage
with a combined-arms attack at Objective MONTY, using tanks, BMPs,

and dismounted Infantry.

Unfortunately for the Iraqis, C/1-15 IN, Hard Rock, at ROMMEL observed them
as they moved southeastward along the opposite riverbank. Hard

Rock's fire support team engaged with indirect fires and sent reports that
alerted the men of A/2-69 AR on the bridge at Objective MONTY to

the impending attack. Lieutenant Colonel Sanderson used both artillery and
CAS effectively, due he believed, in large measure to the Army's

fielding of the Bradley Fire Support Vehicle. The fire support team used an
integrated laser to target the enemy precisely. Sanderson believed

that greatly increased the artillery's lethality.123
Click here for higher resolution image (537KB)
Figure 209. The Iraqi counterattack against 3rd BCT, 7-8 April 2003

Nonetheless, the Iraqis made a concerted effort to seize the bridge at
MONTY, attacking throughout the night and into the early morning of 7

April. Several times during the night, airmen struck armored vehicles
firing on the friendly positions from across the Tigris. As the pressure

against the bridge mounted, 3rd BCT brought concentrated fires from CAS,
field artillery, and TF 2-69 AR's heavy mortars to bear. Tankers and

mechanized infantry added their efforts as well. But despite the damage
they took, the Iraqis persisted in drawing closer and closer to the

bridge. At one point the Iraqis moved a heavy construction crane into
position, apparently to remove some of the destroyed vehicles blocking

the bridge approaches. Hard Rock spotted the crane as it crawled past
Objective ROMMEL on the far side of the river. Again, the fire support

team called in artillery and destroyed it.124 At approximately 0600 on 7
April, the Iraqi attack reached its peak. According to observers, the

enemy had "tons of stuff on the other side of the river."125 The soldiers
identified an entire engineer bridge company with all its vehicles

and equipment, in addition to the large Iraqi infantry force armed with
RPGs, heavy machine guns, and mortars.

As a company-size enemy force closed in on his position at MONTY, Captain
James sent a radio message that had not been heard in this war until

then. He called for the supporting artillery to fire his final protective
fires (FPF).126 Commanders in a defense designate a line just

outside of their positions along which, if the defense gets desperate, all
guns and other weapon systems available fire, theoretically

creating an impenetrable wall of fire. Calling for an FPF is, in Army
parlance, "a significant emotional event."

Captain James' fire support team had prepared for this eventuality. They
had not only plotted their FPF but also adjusted live rounds until

they were hitting precisely where James wanted the rounds placed. The 1-10
FA entered the firing data for James' FPF and other planned

missions into the computers of their Paladin howitzers and waited for the
call. When the order came to fire the final protective fires, 1-10

FA unleashed 30 minutes of continuous rapid fire, pounding the attacking
Iraqis and placing a protective wall in front of the hard-pressed

Assassins. In addition to the artillery FPF, the 3rd BCT also called in
more CAS, smashing the final Iraqi assault just short of the

bridge.127 Lieutenant Colonel Sanderson recalled that "the enemy was in a
caldron there. The A-10s were at treetop level doing strafing runs

against enemy columns."128 Artillery, air-delivered strikes and direct
fires in combination stopped the enemy cold.

But the infantrymen and tankers were not the only soldiers in close combat.
While repositioning to better support the brigade, A/1-10 FA did

something few artillerymen ever do--they engaged and destroyed two T-72
tanks using direct fire from their howitzers. While moving, the

artillerymen detected the tanks hidden under the trees across a canal. The
artillerymen fired what they call a direct lay fire mission over

"open sights." The huge 155mm projectiles smashed the tanks, and the
battery moved on.129

Undeterred, despite the slaughter at MONTY, the Iraqis continued their
efforts to recapture the bridges over the Tigris. Concerned that they

might succeed, Colonel Allyn requested permission to blow the bridges to
deny them to the Iraqis. This would free his forces from static

defensive positions and allow them to continue to clear Objective TITANS on
the west side of the river. Initially the division denied his

request, but a strange situation developed. At the same time that Allyn
requested permission to destroy the bridge, Iraqis strove to reach the

bridge to do the same thing. In fact Iraqi sappers managed to place
explosives on the eastern abutment and actually dropped part of it, but

the bridge remained useable. Later, Allyn received permission to destroy
the bridge. Airmen dropped the span neatly on the second try with a

pair of precision-guided bombs.
Figure 210. Iraqi woman signaling to US soldiers

Silver Star Recommendation
Specialist Dwayne Turner
HHC/3-502nd, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)

On 13 April 2003, during limited visibility hours, Specialist Dwayne Turner
distinguished himself above the call of duty through gallantry in

action during combat. Elements of Alpha Company and Specialist Turner's
medical platoon moved south from Baghdad, Iraq, to clear the town of

Al Mahmudiyah. During this operation, over 200 citizens gathered around US
forces, cheering the fall of the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi paramilitary forces used the celebration to hastily prepare an ambush
against Specialist Turner and his fellow soldiers. The Iraqi enemy

forces opened fire on members of Alpha Company, 3-502nd Infantry Regiment,
101st Airborne Division in a compound with fragmentary grenades and

a volley of a half-dozen AK-47 rifles. The initial grenade burst in the air
caused multiple casualties and signaled the Iraqi enemy forces to

fire with their AK-47 automatic rifles from various buildings.

After being shot multiple times from AK-47 direct fire to his arms and
legs, Specialist Turner exposed himself to intense automatic fire to

treat twenty-three wounded soldiers. Despite being critically wounded with
a heavy loss of blood, Specialist Turner continued to provide

lifesaving medical care under direct fire to two critically injured
soldiers. Even with an increasing loss of his own blood, Specialist Turner

remained vigilant and spirited in caring for one soldier who received
multiple bullet wounds in the chest and legs. Undoubtedly, his spirited

and conspicuous action and physical courage under heavy automatic fire
saved the lives of at least three soldiers.

Without regard for his own welfare, Specialist Turner continued to
stabilize many others for medical evacuation until he collapsed from loss

of blood. His selflessness and willingness to place other soldiers' lives
above his is in the greatest keeping of past and present soldiers of

the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the United States Army.

Fighting raged around the perimeter of Objective TITANS for the next two
days. Colonel Allyn expected to link up with marines from the 1st

Marine Division within 12 to 15 hours, but the marines had to do an assault
crossing of a river to enter Baghdad and thus did not arrive until

9 April. This allowed the Iraqis east of the Tigris River to concentrate
their attacks against the Hammer Brigade in Objective TITANS.130

On 8 April, the third day of the fight in TITANS, the 3rd BCT sent TF 1-15
IN attacking south toward Objective LIONS, still held by 1st BCT.

During this attack, Iraqi air defense artillery severely damaged an A-10
Warthog. The pilot managed to guide his craft toward friendly forces

and ejected near Objective PEACH, where US troops recovered him.131 V Corps
spent the day consolidating positions and repelling minor

counterattacks by disorganized Iraqi forces.

Early in the morning of 10 April, 3rd BCT made its last major attack. TF
2-69 AR attacked down the west side of the Tigris River along Highway

1 all the way to downtown Baghdad, linking up with Colonel Perkins'
Spartans. Sanderson's attack, supported by an elaborate set of preparatory

fires, rolled over weak and disorganized resistance.132 TF 1-30 IN followed
in support of TF 2-69 AR and cleared out the last pockets of Iraqi

resistance. With this attack V Corps completed its part of the attack to
seize and control Baghdad.

The 3rd BCT forces occupied the area around what is known as the "mother of
all mosques," a massive structure deep in the center of Baghdad.

They discovered that the apartment complex across the street from the
mosque was, in reality, an elaborate deception. Instead of real

buildings, it was a false front that hid a large Iraqi ammunition dump.
Apparently the Iraqis hoped to shield the ammunition by hiding it and

further hoped that if the coalition found it, they would hesitate to attack
the dump to avoid damaging the Mosque.133 It was not the only time

the Americans discovered such a ruse, but it was one of the most elaborate.
The corps spent much of the next two weeks policing up the large

quantity of abandoned tanks, BMPs, and artillery pieces found on the
outskirts of the city and looking for ammunition dumps.134

Disheartened Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard soldiers and
officers returned to their homes, defeated. The paramilitaries and

international mercenaries melted into the city, waiting to assess how the
Americans would proceed. Even more astounding than the rapid

collapse of resistance, Baghdad remained standing. Most of the
infrastructure--utilities, water, power, and sewage--remained in the
condition

left by the failed Ba'athist regime.
"Soldiers are our Credentials"

Taking Care of Soldiers: Sergeant First Class Susan A. Pasarcik

Sergeant First Class Susan Pasarcik, finance NCO and dispersing agent of
Alpha Company, 101st Soldier Support Battalion, leads 12 soldiers who

are responsible for seeing to it that troops are paid in the field. As a
rule soldiers' pay is done electronically, but in the field soldiers

may be paid "casual pay" that gives them pocket money to buy things at
field "Post Exchange" facilities. Also, the Army needs money to pay its

field contractors.

Pasarcik, a mother of a toddler and married to another soldier, operated
throughout OIF taking care of her troops. She and her team arrived in

Baghdad with money on 14 April and began paying troops practically upon
arrival. Accountable for up to $5 million, she took her team wherever

it was needed. Her efforts extended beyond paying troops and solving vendor
problems. On a trip to Baghdad, a young Iraqi boy was wounded in a

firefight. His father brought the boy to the Americans for help. A doctor
on the scene asked Pasarcik if she could comfort the boy. She

removed her helmet and flak vest because she believed they might be
frightening to an injured 3-year-old. She held his hand tightly and gave

him cookies from her ration packet and water.

Taking care of soldiers extends to every soldier. According to Pasarcik,
"If there is a way to help you, we are going to help you--soldier,

airman, marine, reservist, guardsman, we help them all."
Figure 211. Sergeant First Class Susan Pasarcik (front left) with finance
team members, leading a study session for an upcoming

promotion board.

Back to Top

NOTES

1. Anthony H. Cordesman, The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military
Lessons (Washington DC: The Center for Strategic and International

Studies, 2003), 101-139.
2. Cordesman, 133.
3. Multiple interviews with 3rd ID brigade and battalion commanders,
8-25 May 2003. This note refers to impressions reached by the authors

during the course of interviews and upon reviewing interviews of
intelligence officers and maneuver commanders.
4. Ibid.
5. Lieutenant Colonel John Harding, commander, 1-10 FA, interview by
Lieutenant Colonel William Pitts, 12 May 2003.
6. Colonel Terry Wolff, commander, 2nd ACR (Light), interview by Major
David Tohn, 14 May 2003.
7. Colonel Steven Rotkoff, US Army, Retired, deputy C2, CFLCC (during
OIF), email to Major David Tohn, 6 August 2003.
8. Ibid.
9. Lieutenant General William Wallace, commander, V Corps (during OIF,
interview by Colonel Gregory Fontenot, US Army, Retired, Lieutenant

Colonel EJ Degen, and Major David Tohn, 7 August 2003.
10. Staff Sergeant Brian Plesich, team leader, Tactical Psychological
Operations Team 1153, 305th Psychological Operations Company,

interview by Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Cahill, 31 May 2003.
11. Captain Brooks Brenkus, commander, 54th QM Co (Mortuary Affairs),
interview by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Estell Watson, 2 June 2003.
12. Major Robert Foley, OIF-SG, "OIF Study Group Operational Summary:
Information Operations," 15 July 2003.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Lieutenant Colonel Eric "Rick" Schwartz, commander, TF 1-64 AR,
interview by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Manning, 18 May 2003.
16. "Task Force 1-64 AR, Summary of Unit Actions from 20 March-11 April
2003, Operation IRAQI FREEDOM," 42.
17. Thunder run is not an operational term. A raid is the proper term for
the mission assigned to TF 1-64 AR, although to the troops in the

task force the distinctions between a raid, a reconnaissance in force (also
an acceptable term to describe the planned operation), and the

term used in the unit order, "movement to contact," amount to splitting
hairs. What is important is they were going downtown to test the Iraqi

reaction. See FM 101-5-1/MCRP 5-2A, Operational Terms and Graphics.
18. TF 1-64 AR.
19. Captain Dave Hibner, commander, D Company, 10th Engineers, interview
by Lieutenant Colonel James Knowlton, 14 May 2003; TF 1-64

officers, interview by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Manning, 18 May 2003.
20. TF 1-64 AR.
21. TF 1-64 AR officers interview.
22. Hibner. Captain Dave Hibner and his twin brother, Captain Dan Hibner,
both fought with 3rd ID in OIF as engineer company commanders.
23. TF 1-64 AR officers interview, Hibner.
24. Captain John Ives, assistant S2, 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID, interview by
Major Daniel Corey, 18 May 2003.
25. Hibner.
26. Ibid. See also TF 1-64 AR, 43.
27. TF 1-64 AR, 44.
28. TF 1-64 AR officers interview.
29. TF1-64 AR, 43.
30. TF 1-64 AR officers interview.
31. TF1-64 AR, 45; Hibner.
32. Ibid.
33. TF 1-64 AR officers interview.
34. Ibid.
35. TF1-64 AR, 45; Hibner.
36. Colonel David Perkins, 2nd BCT, 3rd ID, "Command Briefing," 18 May
2003; and Colonel David Perkins, interview by Lieutenant Colonel

Edric Kirkman, 18 May 2003. Colonel David Perkins, commander, 2nd BCT, 3rd
ID; Colonel David Teeples, commander, 3rd ACR; and Colonel Arnie

Bray, commander, 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, interviews by General
Frederick Franks, US Army, Retired, and Colonel Gregory Fontenot,

US Army, Retired, 20 May 2003.
37. Wallace.
38. Perkins by Kirkman. See also Connor and Durante notes from the same
briefing.
39. Wallace. McKiernan believed that Baghdad constituted the center of
gravity largely because this was the place from which the regime

exercised control.
40. Perkins, Teeples, and Bray.
41. Ibid.
42. Perkins.
43. The landmines were surface-laid on the paved road, easily
identifiable and breached with the engineer equipment
44. Perkins.
45. Wallace.
46. Ibid.
47. 2nd BCT, 3rd ID Command Briefing. There are a number of interviews
that illuminate these events including Perkins, those of the TF

commanders and several group interviews of officers and soldiers. The
second thunder run is one of the few events the OIF-SG knew enough about

on arrival in theater to focus questions. More important, Perkins' troops
wanted very much to tell this story. See also 3-15 IN Operations 20

March-9 April 2003.
48. Perkins. See also Perkins, Teeples, and Bray.
49. Hibner.
50. The unit histories and chronologies do not provide an exact timeline
for the breach, but an analysis of multiple unit reports suggests

the breach took approximately 15 minutes.
51. TF 1-64 AR.
52. 3rd ID Consolidated History.
53. Ibid.
54. TF 1-64 AR.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. "Tusker History: Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (19 March 03-12 April 03)."
58. Lieutenant Colonel Eric Wesley, executive officer, 2nd BCT, 3rd
Infantry Division, interview by Lieutenant Colonel William Connor, US

Army, Retired, 18 May 2003. See also Captain William Glaser, commander,
HHC/2nd BDE, 3rd ID, interview by Lieutenant Colonel David Tohn, 10

September 2003.
59. Sergeant First Class Stanley Griffin, action operations sergeant
major, 2nd BCT, 3rd ID, interview by Master Sergeant Matthew West, 19

May 2003. Captain Aaron S. Polsgrove, support platoon leader, "Support
Platoon, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, TF 3-15 IN, Unit

History," 16 April 2003.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Wesley.
64. Captain William Glaser, commander, HHC, 2nd BCT, 3rd ID, interview by
Major Peter Kilner, 18 May 2003.
65. Perkins.
66. Ibid.
67. Twitty.
68. Twitty. See also "Task Force 3-15 Infantry `Task Force China' Task
Force History, Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, 20 March-1 May 2003," 5 May

2003.
69. Twitty.
70. Command Sergeant Major Robert Gallagher, command sergeant major, TF
3-15 IN, interview by Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Durante, US Army,

Retired, 18 May 2003.
71. Twitty.
72. Embedded reporters were Craig White (NBC), Bob Lapp (NBC), Jake
Kooser (NBC), Bernie Plunkett (NBC), Dennis Steele (ARMY Magazine), Adam

Lusher (London Sunday Telegraph), and Bill Branigin (Washington Post). This
information comes from TF 3-15 IN unit history, which lists the

reporters on a chart showing units, key leaders, and staff. TF 3-15 IN
accounted for everyone.
73. Ibid. See also TF 3-15 IN.
74. Twitty.
75. Twitty. See also TF 3-15 IN, 15-21.
76. Twitty.
77. Twitty. For example, B/4-64 AR, attached to TF 3-15, fired five
danger-close missions, including two 155 missions within 350 meters of

his positions on LARRY. See TF 3-15 History, 17-18. See also Gallagher, re:
direct lay fire missions by the battalion mortar platoon.
78. TF 3-15 IN. See also Twitty.
79. Ibid.,18. See also Twitty.
80. Gallagher.
81. Twitty.
82. TF 3-15 IN.
83. TF 3-15 IN. See also Captain Ronny Johnson, commander, B/3-15 IN,
interview by Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Durante, US Army, Retired, 18

May 2003.
84. TF 3-15 IN. Twitty. See also officers of 3-15 IN, interviews by Major
Pete Kilner, 18 May 2003. The group interview contributes to

understanding the conditions of the fight.
85. Ibid.
86. Twitty. See also Johnson.
87. TF 3-15 IN. See also Johnson. According to Johnson, Twitty asked for
a single rifle platoon, but Johnson recommended that Perkins

release the whole company--that is to say, Johnson and his remaining two
platoons. Perkins concurred.
88. Twitty.
89. Corporal Warren Hall, force protection detail, Medical Platoon, HHC,
3-15 IN, interview by Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Durante, US Army,

Retired, 24 May 2003. See also Johnson.
90. Twitty.
91. Johnson.
92. TF3-15 IN Support Platoon History.
93. TF 3-15 IN. TF 3-15 Support Platoon History.
94. 3rd ID Consolidated History.
95. TF 2-7 IN, "Unit History of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM."
96. Lieutenant Colonel Scott Rutter, commander, 2-7 IN, interview by
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Durante, US Army, Retired, 16 May 2003.
97. Twitty.
98. Ibid.
99. Ibid.
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid.
102. TF 3-15 IN.
103. Twitty.
104. Ibid.
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid. TF 3-15 IN, 16. See also Captain Josh Wright, A/3-15 IN,
interview by Major Peter Kilner, undated. Wright reported efforts of his

engineer platoon leader, First Lieutenant Adam Hess, to create
countermobility barriers to prevent suicide attackers from reaching his

positions.
107. TF 3-15, 16.
108. Ibid.
109. Twitty. See also Wright. Captain Wright's company went "black" on
ammo--Army jargon for almost out. Wright's tank platoon, for example,

fired 12,000 7.62mm rounds in the 17 hours of the fight.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid.
112. Perkins.
113. Tusker History.
114. Ibid. See also 4-64 AR commanders, interview by Colonel Tim Cherry,
31 May 2003.
115. Tusker History.
116. Tusker History. See also 4-64 AR commanders interview.
117. 4-64 AR commanders interview.
118. Rutter.
119. From the "3rd ID Consolidated Division History and After Action
Review."
120. From the 3rd BCT, 3rd ID, Unit History, Power Point presentation,
undated.
121. Lieutenant Colonel John Harding, commander, 1-10 FA, interview by
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Durante, US Army, Retired, 4 August 2003.
122. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffery R. Sanderson, commander, 2-69 AR, email to
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Durante, US Army, Retired, 18 August

2003. Durante also spoke by telephone with Sanderson.
123. Harding.
124. Sanderson.
125. Harding.
126. Ibid.
127. Sanderson.
128. "Unit History, 3rd BCT, 3rd Infantry Division," Power Point
presentation, undated.
129. Sanderson.
130. Harding.
131. Ibid.
132. Ibid.
133. "Unit history, 11th Engineer Battalion," undated, 24-28; See also
Lieutenant Colonel James Knowlton, OIF-SG, "OIFSG Operational Summary:

Engineer," 15 July 2003.

Back to Top

[ Contents ] [ Foreword ] [ Preface ] [ Acknowledgments ] [ Introduction ]
[ Ch 1 ] [ Ch 2 ] [ Ch 3 ] [ Photos ] [ Ch 4 ] [ Ch 5 ] [ Ch 6 ] [ Ch 7 ] [
Ch 8 ]
[ OIF-SG Team ] [ Order of Battle ] [ Glossary ] [ Bibliography ]

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