CB: 8 November
Couple Things
Alright, I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ve got Neil talking to some book people about writing a book after this whole Iraq thing is over. The bad news is that Neil hasn’t had the time to write another entry for his blog and I (Chris Boggiano) took up his offer to tell another story from our first few days in Fallujah. Also, I’m a) too incompetent and b) too lazy to start up my own blog so I’ll just write some random entries for his to give you a different perspective on things.
I know Neil has been going chronologically through the battle from his perspective, but unfortunately the vast majority of cool stuff happened in the time period that he’s already covered. So, bear with me as we go back in time to the first day of the battle.
As Neil already mentioned, my platoon was instructed to drive up on the highway that separated the actual city of Fallujah and the rest of our task force at around 0900 on the first day of the battle - about 10 hours ahead of the main body. Once up there, we were supposed to look for enemy fighting positions and call for artillery on them. For reasons still unknown to me, I was only allowed to take two of my humvees up on the road and had to leave my other two trucks parked back in the staging area.
I chose to take my bravo section because one of its two trucks had an LRAS sight. Basically, an LRAS is a sight with approximately a 50x magnification that has both daytime and thermal optics. For people who have no idea what any of that really means, I like to say that it can see a freckle on someone’s ass from 5 kilometers away if they’re wearing a pair of jeans. Also, when it sees something it can do some fancy computer stuff and figure out an exact position to a target within one meter of accuracy. Fortunately for my platoon, our LRAS was the only one working in the task force so that’s how we got picked to get into the fight a little ahead of schedule.
The first hour or two on the highway was pretty uneventful. The marines had surrounded the city days before and actually had humvees parked every few hundred meters along the road so I’m sure we didn’t really stand out very much to the insurgents in the city when we pulled up there. SSG Danielsen and I actually had to walk up to the road and meet up with the two trucks since we were both part of alpha section that was stuck back in the staging area and neither of us wanted to miss out on any of the action. SGT Bowman, who was manning the LRAS at the time, scanned the rooftops in the city and didn’t see much of anything.
Eventually we all saw a puff of smoke out of the northeast corner of the city and watched a mortar round impact in the task force’s staging area a few seconds later. Up until then, my troop commander had been up on the road with me at our position. I wasn’t a big fan of the situation because only half my platoon was capable of fighting and I had my boss there more or less running the show for me. I asked him two or three times if I could bring the rest of my platoon up on the road so I would at least have my own truck to sit in but I think they didn’t want to tip the enemy off that we were going to attack that evening. So, naturally in their efforts at being subtle they decided to bring Neil’s platoon of two tanks and Bradleys up – because they are way less obvious than humvees. I wasn’t complaining though. It’s always nice to have a tank nearby.
As soon as Neil drove up the steep embankment I waved his tank over to near my two humvees. Little did I know that it would be the first of many times in the following two weeks that I would make an ass out of myself. I ran to the back of Neil’s tank so I could tell him where we had seen the puff of smoke. Climbing up on the back of a tank isn’t the hardest thing in the world to do under normal circumstances. You basically put your first foot in the rear sprocket and grab onto the cap to the rear fuel cell because it’s the only thing that sticks out on the back of the tank. Well, it’s a lot more difficult to do with body armor on and even harder still when the back of the tank is slippery like a greased pig from the rain that morning. So, Neil got to spend his first couple of minutes in the battle watching his buddy make an ass out of himself trying over and over again to climb up on the back of his tank – a memorable experience I’m sure.
Anyway, I eventually got up on the back of the tank and told him that the puff of smoke came from the house on the very northeast corner of the city. Neil acknowledged and I hopped down and ran back to my truck. By then my commander had gone back down to the staging area to relocate the entire task force to another position to get out of range of the mortar attacks. I watched Neil drive down the road a couple hundred meters and point his gun tube toward the house in question. I yelled for my scouts to cover their ears because they were about to hear a big boom.
BOOOOOM!!!
Even though we all knew it was coming, the sound of a tank main gun going off still managed to catch everyone by surprise with its concussion and made us jump just a bit.
“Outlaw1, Red6, was that the house?”
“Try one more building down and you’ll be there.”
Firing main gun rounds was a big deal. I had been a tank platoon leader in Iraq for four months before I took over my scout platoon and hadn’t ever fired a single one because of the amount of damage they do. They also cost a lot of money. I had just watched Neil fire at the wrong house and I felt like an idiot for not describing better where to shoot.
BOOOOOM!!!
The second round went down range.
“Outlaw1, Red6, how about that one?”
“Errrr, try one more house down, I mean it this time”
By then I was cursing myself. I was waiting for my commander to come across the net and yell at me for wasting so much ammunition and to tell him exactly where the house was. Little did I know at the time that the battle of Fallujah would be the biggest free for all shootout that I would ever experience and that Neil would shoot 45 main gun rounds from his tank alone by the end of the first day.
BOOOOOM!!!
Just then Neil hit the right house. Somewhere in the ball of fire and smoke, my medic said that he spotted an insurgent limp away into an alley holding his leg, but no one else saw anything. How someone survived three tank rounds getting fired directly into their position is beyond me, but at least no more mortars were fired from that location, and hopefully the guy limping away died sometime later that day.
Shortly after Neil’s tank shot, the insurgents started coming out of hiding. We started to take some sporadic sniper fire and my LRAS gunner spotted five insurgents with AK-47’s and RPG’s standing on a rooftop. SSG Amyett, my bravo section sergeant, had hopped up on the LRAS and only minutes earlier and already spotted our first target of the day. I quickly got the 10 digit grid to the building’s location and called over to the forward observer that had been attached to my platoon. Normally, there is a protocol about how to correctly call for fire, but I was never too good at that sort of thing. Instead, I called over to him and yelled all of the different information that he needed and let him do the protocol part. After all, I figured that was his job.
Calling for artillery normally takes a long time because of the number of people involved in the process. First, whoever sees a target relays it to the forward observer who calls up a fire mission. Then, all sorts of people have to give permission for the rounds to be dropped. Next, the information is relayed to the actual canons that shoot the rounds from somewhere far far away. Finally, they shoot one single round and it almost never hits its target the first time, but that’s okay. After watching the first round impact most of the hard work is done. From there all you have to do is guess how far to the left or right it was and whether it needs to go up or down and relay those distances to the guns which then shoot another round. This process continues until one round comes within 50 meters of its target and then they do what is called a fire for effect. Knowing that the guns have zeroed in on their target, they fire a volley of rounds and try to destroy it.
As luck would have it, our protocol was abbreviated that day. We knew there were no friendly forces in the city, so I didn’t have to get anyone’s permission to fire the rounds. Also, I’m guessing the artillery guys were antsy to kill some stuff because they didn’t bother wait for the adjusting phase to completely finish. So, only a few minutes after I initially requested the mission based on the information SSG Amyett was giving me, I watched the first round impact a couple hundred meters to the right and too far in of our target. Right from there our forward observer called in the adjustment and fired for effect. Unfortunately, we then watched all six artillery rounds impact about 50 meters to the right of the building we were trying to hit. I’m sure it scared them plenty and gave them all bad headaches, but I doubt any of them were killed… until we made one last adjustment and fired six more rounds.
We all stood and listened to the artillery rounds scream overhead and watched them slam into the building where the insurgents were. Amazingly, all they had done after the first volley missed their position was go inside the room on the top floor and look out the windows. In a matter of seconds the entire building was obscured by smoke.
The final step in the process of calling for artillery is giving an estimate of the damage done and ending the mission so the guns can go on to killing something else someone is looking at.
“Outlaw1, Bulldog17, can you give me a battle damage assessment from those rounds.”
I yelled up to SSG Amyett to tell me what he could see through the thermal sight on the LRAS that cut right through the smoke.
“The whole fucking building is gone. I love my job!!!”
The rounds had impacted directly on top of the building and collapsed its weak mud brick structure. We all jumped up and down and gave each other high fives like we had just scored a goal.
Good guys five, bad guys zero.
If there were five guys on the roof I can only hope that there were more on the lower floors. All I knew is that the rest of our task force was going to have to attack through that position later that day and that was at least five less insurgents they would have to face.
Our celebrating didn’t last long. As soon as we finished calling for artillery, we started taking heavy sniper fire. I guess the bad guys had figured out that we were just two more marine trucks that were surrounding the city.
Our battle had finally kicked off, and it was still more than eight hours until the main body’s assault.
Alright, I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ve got Neil talking to some book people about writing a book after this whole Iraq thing is over. The bad news is that Neil hasn’t had the time to write another entry for his blog and I (Chris Boggiano) took up his offer to tell another story from our first few days in Fallujah. Also, I’m a) too incompetent and b) too lazy to start up my own blog so I’ll just write some random entries for his to give you a different perspective on things.
I know Neil has been going chronologically through the battle from his perspective, but unfortunately the vast majority of cool stuff happened in the time period that he’s already covered. So, bear with me as we go back in time to the first day of the battle.
As Neil already mentioned, my platoon was instructed to drive up on the highway that separated the actual city of Fallujah and the rest of our task force at around 0900 on the first day of the battle - about 10 hours ahead of the main body. Once up there, we were supposed to look for enemy fighting positions and call for artillery on them. For reasons still unknown to me, I was only allowed to take two of my humvees up on the road and had to leave my other two trucks parked back in the staging area.
I chose to take my bravo section because one of its two trucks had an LRAS sight. Basically, an LRAS is a sight with approximately a 50x magnification that has both daytime and thermal optics. For people who have no idea what any of that really means, I like to say that it can see a freckle on someone’s ass from 5 kilometers away if they’re wearing a pair of jeans. Also, when it sees something it can do some fancy computer stuff and figure out an exact position to a target within one meter of accuracy. Fortunately for my platoon, our LRAS was the only one working in the task force so that’s how we got picked to get into the fight a little ahead of schedule.
The first hour or two on the highway was pretty uneventful. The marines had surrounded the city days before and actually had humvees parked every few hundred meters along the road so I’m sure we didn’t really stand out very much to the insurgents in the city when we pulled up there. SSG Danielsen and I actually had to walk up to the road and meet up with the two trucks since we were both part of alpha section that was stuck back in the staging area and neither of us wanted to miss out on any of the action. SGT Bowman, who was manning the LRAS at the time, scanned the rooftops in the city and didn’t see much of anything.
Eventually we all saw a puff of smoke out of the northeast corner of the city and watched a mortar round impact in the task force’s staging area a few seconds later. Up until then, my troop commander had been up on the road with me at our position. I wasn’t a big fan of the situation because only half my platoon was capable of fighting and I had my boss there more or less running the show for me. I asked him two or three times if I could bring the rest of my platoon up on the road so I would at least have my own truck to sit in but I think they didn’t want to tip the enemy off that we were going to attack that evening. So, naturally in their efforts at being subtle they decided to bring Neil’s platoon of two tanks and Bradleys up – because they are way less obvious than humvees. I wasn’t complaining though. It’s always nice to have a tank nearby.
As soon as Neil drove up the steep embankment I waved his tank over to near my two humvees. Little did I know that it would be the first of many times in the following two weeks that I would make an ass out of myself. I ran to the back of Neil’s tank so I could tell him where we had seen the puff of smoke. Climbing up on the back of a tank isn’t the hardest thing in the world to do under normal circumstances. You basically put your first foot in the rear sprocket and grab onto the cap to the rear fuel cell because it’s the only thing that sticks out on the back of the tank. Well, it’s a lot more difficult to do with body armor on and even harder still when the back of the tank is slippery like a greased pig from the rain that morning. So, Neil got to spend his first couple of minutes in the battle watching his buddy make an ass out of himself trying over and over again to climb up on the back of his tank – a memorable experience I’m sure.
Anyway, I eventually got up on the back of the tank and told him that the puff of smoke came from the house on the very northeast corner of the city. Neil acknowledged and I hopped down and ran back to my truck. By then my commander had gone back down to the staging area to relocate the entire task force to another position to get out of range of the mortar attacks. I watched Neil drive down the road a couple hundred meters and point his gun tube toward the house in question. I yelled for my scouts to cover their ears because they were about to hear a big boom.
BOOOOOM!!!
Even though we all knew it was coming, the sound of a tank main gun going off still managed to catch everyone by surprise with its concussion and made us jump just a bit.
“Outlaw1, Red6, was that the house?”
“Try one more building down and you’ll be there.”
Firing main gun rounds was a big deal. I had been a tank platoon leader in Iraq for four months before I took over my scout platoon and hadn’t ever fired a single one because of the amount of damage they do. They also cost a lot of money. I had just watched Neil fire at the wrong house and I felt like an idiot for not describing better where to shoot.
BOOOOOM!!!
The second round went down range.
“Outlaw1, Red6, how about that one?”
“Errrr, try one more house down, I mean it this time”
By then I was cursing myself. I was waiting for my commander to come across the net and yell at me for wasting so much ammunition and to tell him exactly where the house was. Little did I know at the time that the battle of Fallujah would be the biggest free for all shootout that I would ever experience and that Neil would shoot 45 main gun rounds from his tank alone by the end of the first day.
BOOOOOM!!!
Just then Neil hit the right house. Somewhere in the ball of fire and smoke, my medic said that he spotted an insurgent limp away into an alley holding his leg, but no one else saw anything. How someone survived three tank rounds getting fired directly into their position is beyond me, but at least no more mortars were fired from that location, and hopefully the guy limping away died sometime later that day.
Shortly after Neil’s tank shot, the insurgents started coming out of hiding. We started to take some sporadic sniper fire and my LRAS gunner spotted five insurgents with AK-47’s and RPG’s standing on a rooftop. SSG Amyett, my bravo section sergeant, had hopped up on the LRAS and only minutes earlier and already spotted our first target of the day. I quickly got the 10 digit grid to the building’s location and called over to the forward observer that had been attached to my platoon. Normally, there is a protocol about how to correctly call for fire, but I was never too good at that sort of thing. Instead, I called over to him and yelled all of the different information that he needed and let him do the protocol part. After all, I figured that was his job.
Calling for artillery normally takes a long time because of the number of people involved in the process. First, whoever sees a target relays it to the forward observer who calls up a fire mission. Then, all sorts of people have to give permission for the rounds to be dropped. Next, the information is relayed to the actual canons that shoot the rounds from somewhere far far away. Finally, they shoot one single round and it almost never hits its target the first time, but that’s okay. After watching the first round impact most of the hard work is done. From there all you have to do is guess how far to the left or right it was and whether it needs to go up or down and relay those distances to the guns which then shoot another round. This process continues until one round comes within 50 meters of its target and then they do what is called a fire for effect. Knowing that the guns have zeroed in on their target, they fire a volley of rounds and try to destroy it.
As luck would have it, our protocol was abbreviated that day. We knew there were no friendly forces in the city, so I didn’t have to get anyone’s permission to fire the rounds. Also, I’m guessing the artillery guys were antsy to kill some stuff because they didn’t bother wait for the adjusting phase to completely finish. So, only a few minutes after I initially requested the mission based on the information SSG Amyett was giving me, I watched the first round impact a couple hundred meters to the right and too far in of our target. Right from there our forward observer called in the adjustment and fired for effect. Unfortunately, we then watched all six artillery rounds impact about 50 meters to the right of the building we were trying to hit. I’m sure it scared them plenty and gave them all bad headaches, but I doubt any of them were killed… until we made one last adjustment and fired six more rounds.
We all stood and listened to the artillery rounds scream overhead and watched them slam into the building where the insurgents were. Amazingly, all they had done after the first volley missed their position was go inside the room on the top floor and look out the windows. In a matter of seconds the entire building was obscured by smoke.
The final step in the process of calling for artillery is giving an estimate of the damage done and ending the mission so the guns can go on to killing something else someone is looking at.
“Outlaw1, Bulldog17, can you give me a battle damage assessment from those rounds.”
I yelled up to SSG Amyett to tell me what he could see through the thermal sight on the LRAS that cut right through the smoke.
“The whole fucking building is gone. I love my job!!!”
The rounds had impacted directly on top of the building and collapsed its weak mud brick structure. We all jumped up and down and gave each other high fives like we had just scored a goal.
Good guys five, bad guys zero.
If there were five guys on the roof I can only hope that there were more on the lower floors. All I knew is that the rest of our task force was going to have to attack through that position later that day and that was at least five less insurgents they would have to face.
Our celebrating didn’t last long. As soon as we finished calling for artillery, we started taking heavy sniper fire. I guess the bad guys had figured out that we were just two more marine trucks that were surrounding the city.
Our battle had finally kicked off, and it was still more than eight hours until the main body’s assault.
posted by REDSIX at 11:26 AM
12 Comments:
Enjoyed it Chris...looking forward to some more.
Well, I thought I could insert posts where I wanted but I guess don't have those powers...yet. So here are more anachronistic accounts. Deal with it. I mean, Enjoy!
Also, I don't feel bad about the blown up houses. There were no civilians on the battlefield and the terrorists brought this upon themselves. If you don't know, LTG Mattis got in a little trouble for admitting that he likes to brawl with bad guys. I love when people take things out of context to make it sound evil.
LTG Mattis sounds like a modern day Patton. Does anyone remember the crazy ass shit HE used to say?
I think it scares and upsets some people that we enjoy what we do. That's a shame. Don't be frightened.
Welcome back Chris. Cool story, I really enjoyed it.
There are already sites that have 2,3 people "co-blogging" so just relax :-) and keep posting.
As to Neil's book - I think it is an excellent idea!
Another blogger got the deal -
"G.P. Putnam's Sons to Publish U.S. Army Soldier and Blogger Colby Buzzell's War Experiences on the Ground in Iraq"
http://cbftw.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_cbftw_archive.html
Stay safe ....
Agnieszka, Denver, CO
I was just telling a co-worker that I am glad the troops enjoy killing...or ...er extinguishing bad guys. Just the kind of guys we need for the job. Remember what these people stand for. Go get'em guys.
Thanks for the story Chris. We all enjoy the different perspectives. Kepp it up.
Silk
Lt. Boggiano,
Sierra Hotel! Great story, great job. Thank you and your soldiers for what you do.
Retired MSgt
Great story, Chris! And well told - thanks for sharing and keep on blogging!
Neil, good luck on the book deal. Get that puppy up on amazon.com so we can get it on pre-order!
Hey Sir,
You are a great writer, so have faith in yourself! We all love Neil's work, as well as yours. So, please, keep writing. :D
LT Boggiano, thanks for the great post!
LT Prakash, when I heard Mattis' comments, I thought of you and the satisfaction/enjoyment you seem to find in your job. :)
Good to hear from you again Chris! We don't mind "going out of order" at all- you each have unique stories to tell, regardless of the timeline. I have this picture in my mind now of Neil laughing his ass off watching you trying to climb up on his tank- too funny! It's good to know you guys have a healthy sense of humor about things that go on in Iraq.
Neil-
A LOT has been about Gen. Mattis over the past few days, but I have to agree with much of it. If you love what you do, and you do it damn well- be proud of it! I don't want some pansy-ass Marine out there who is afraid of killing someone. That doesn't mean he has to be blood-thirsty- it just means he has to be willing and able to get the killing done when necessary. It may not have been the best thing to say, but it was honest- a virtue I hold above all others.
Go get 'em guys!
Stateside, talk Radio (the RIGHT kind) has been 100 percent behind Gen. Mattis. Yes, he does remind one of Patton, but remember Patton's relationship wioth the press was bad, and that was way back when the press was mostly on our side. :-), but I think attis will get a pass on this, and yeah I thought of RedSix too, hearing the quote. It's also faded off within a week or two, Unlike Eason Jordan of CNN who had to resign after folks at Davos heard him talk about how the U.S. Military is deliberately Killing reporters. Nice one Genius, and now he has had to resign (as of yesterday).
Lt. Boggiano, no need to make excuses or apologize you are doing fine, and your writing does not suck. and it's good to hear the different viewpoints of the same action, as it gives a clearer picture, and introduces us to other weird characters in your unit :-) Kep it up,and don't worry about rapid updates either, Quality beats quantity in this case. Goodjob.
--The Game Guy
Thanks for everything. Thanks for what you are doing there in Iraq and for sharing those stories here with us.
I changed out a lot of worn out tracks in my days in the army and I can't imagine trying to do it in the middle of a mine field.
Keep blowing up bad guys and keep yourselves in one piece. Out thoughts and prayers are with you ;^)
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