By Chris Boggiano: 8 November (D-Day)
My side is here in case you guys want a refresher.
CHRIS BOGGIANO: The Fighting Begins
Two days after the rehearsal at Camp Fallujah, my platoon was instructed to drive up on the highway that separated the 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, which was everyone else in TF2-2 besides us. 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 Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System(LRAS) sight. The higher echelons of command had realized, with some prodding from my troop commander, that the LRAS was the most badass sight in town and that we could do a lot of damage to the insurgents before the battle even started by using it. To explain it to the officers who didn’t know much about this new piece of equipment, I liked to say that it could see a freckle on someone’s ass from 5 kilometers away. Fortunately for my platoon, our LRAS was the only one working in the task force, so by default 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 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 instead of 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 back there. 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 one of my trucks. Fortunately, by then my commander had gone back to the staging area to relocate the entire task force to another position to get out of range of the mortar attacks so at least I was alone again with my soldiers. 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 he was about to shoot.
BOOM!!!
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, and it’s usually just as easy to kill bad guys with the coax machine gun. 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.
BOOM!!!
The second round went down range.
“Outlaw1, Red6, how about that one?”
“Errrr, better make it two houses 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. He never did. I didn’t 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.
BOOM!!!
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.
"I got myself a real juicy target," SSG Amyett said like he was out duck hunting, only he wasn’t.
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 only minutes earlier and already spotted our first target of the day.
"Prepare to copy that 89089226. Direction 202 degrees. Range 950 metres. I got five motherfuckers in a building with weapons." He said. All of us were excited now. It was showtime.
I quickly called over to the forward observer that had been attached to my platoon and made sure he had the information. 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 put it in the right format. 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 to make sure no friendly forces are in the area and no sensitive targets such as mosques are nearby. Next, the information is relayed to the actual cannons that shoot the rounds from somewhere far away, in this case back in Camp Fallujah. Finally, they shoot one single round which almost never hits its target the first time, but that’s okay. After watching that 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.
SSG Amyett could barely wait. "Dude, give me the sniper rifle. I can take them out - I'm from Arkansas." He was only half kidding.
As luck would have it, our protocol was abbreviated that day. We knew there were no friendly forces in the city at the time, 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.
"They're moving deep," he yelled down to us somewhat disappointed.
I’m sure it scared them plenty and gave them bad headaches, but I doubt any insurgents 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.
"Yeah," he yelled. "Battle Damage Assessment - nothing. Building's gone. I got my kills, I'm coming down. I just 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 sniper fire. I guess the bad guys had figured out that we were more than just two additional Marine trucks that were surrounding the city. The LRAS didn’t help any. It looked like a big box sitting on top of a humvees, and any humvees that looked different than the rest was an obvious target for insurgents.
Our battle had finally kicked off, and it was still more than eight hours until the main body’s assault.
CHRIS BOGGIANO: The Fighting Begins
Two days after the rehearsal at Camp Fallujah, my platoon was instructed to drive up on the highway that separated the 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, which was everyone else in TF2-2 besides us. 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 Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System(LRAS) sight. The higher echelons of command had realized, with some prodding from my troop commander, that the LRAS was the most badass sight in town and that we could do a lot of damage to the insurgents before the battle even started by using it. To explain it to the officers who didn’t know much about this new piece of equipment, I liked to say that it could see a freckle on someone’s ass from 5 kilometers away. Fortunately for my platoon, our LRAS was the only one working in the task force, so by default 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 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 instead of 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 back there. 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 one of my trucks. Fortunately, by then my commander had gone back to the staging area to relocate the entire task force to another position to get out of range of the mortar attacks so at least I was alone again with my soldiers. 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 he was about to shoot.
BOOM!!!
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, and it’s usually just as easy to kill bad guys with the coax machine gun. 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.
BOOM!!!
The second round went down range.
“Outlaw1, Red6, how about that one?”
“Errrr, better make it two houses 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. He never did. I didn’t 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.
BOOM!!!
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.
"I got myself a real juicy target," SSG Amyett said like he was out duck hunting, only he wasn’t.
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 only minutes earlier and already spotted our first target of the day.
"Prepare to copy that 89089226. Direction 202 degrees. Range 950 metres. I got five motherfuckers in a building with weapons." He said. All of us were excited now. It was showtime.
I quickly called over to the forward observer that had been attached to my platoon and made sure he had the information. 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 put it in the right format. 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 to make sure no friendly forces are in the area and no sensitive targets such as mosques are nearby. Next, the information is relayed to the actual cannons that shoot the rounds from somewhere far away, in this case back in Camp Fallujah. Finally, they shoot one single round which almost never hits its target the first time, but that’s okay. After watching that 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.
SSG Amyett could barely wait. "Dude, give me the sniper rifle. I can take them out - I'm from Arkansas." He was only half kidding.
As luck would have it, our protocol was abbreviated that day. We knew there were no friendly forces in the city at the time, 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.
"They're moving deep," he yelled down to us somewhat disappointed.
I’m sure it scared them plenty and gave them bad headaches, but I doubt any insurgents 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.
"Yeah," he yelled. "Battle Damage Assessment - nothing. Building's gone. I got my kills, I'm coming down. I just 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 sniper fire. I guess the bad guys had figured out that we were more than just two additional Marine trucks that were surrounding the city. The LRAS didn’t help any. It looked like a big box sitting on top of a humvees, and any humvees that looked different than the rest was an obvious target for insurgents.
Our battle had finally kicked off, and it was still more than eight hours until the main body’s assault.
posted by REDSIX at 3:52 PM
7 Comments:
Hi, I am a grandmother who wants to learn more about what it is like in Iraq, really like. I read what you have here, do you have any other blogs you could email me about Iraq. Thanks alot, Bearspirit, I had a bear in my yard 5 years ago, I put my email address below. I don't have a website or Blog site but I might get one.
I enjoyed reading the accounts of the battle closer to when they happened, but I like getting a more complete account even more. That's why I've kept this blog in my Bookmarks folder to visit every week or so...
Two adjustments is just fine by me!!....Sniff...Brings a tear to an old Artilleryman's eye!...Glad I found this Blog...My favorite..Thanks to you ALL!
Hi Neil & Chris,
thanks for all the stories.
It took me 3 days to read trough the archives, and i really enjoyed it.
Regards
Kris
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOLLOWS:
Remember "Gulf War syndrome" from the first Gulf War? I found out what it is: depleted uranium poisoning. See, the Dept. of Defense claims it's harmless and uses it now more than ever, in Abrams tank armor, in tank gun rounds, in 30mm cannon ammunition for A-10 'Warthogs' and a myriad of other uses I'm not privy to. So far over four times the amount of depleted uranium used in Gulf War One have been used in this war, so imagine how much worse "Gulf War syndrome" will be this time!! The worst is depleted uranium dust, which is blowing around in the wind all over Iraq. A single particle lodged in your respiratory system is cancer-causing. So far over 200,000 vets from Gulf War One have had to file for disability because they're crippled from it and in various stages of dying. Several thousand have already died. It also afflicts their spouses and even causes their babies to be born with grotesque birth defects!!
So how about that? The Department of Defense "supports the troops" by first poisoning you all, then denying it knows waht's causing the "mystery illness". Despicable. Please pass this information on to everyone you can.
So if it's true, we're looking at a vast cancer epidemic among the Iraqi population a few years' down the line... Ah, liberty...
So, finally I had reached the last entry. I´d been reading all the stories since last week, I had to say is great to have this first hand stories. For me the common soldier perception is the only one I respect and seek for. Im from Argentina and despite all political considerations, for me soldiers are soldiers, and I nothing but respect for all of them. Take care of you guys out there, stay safe and keep us updated.
Best regards.
Federico.
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