Marines Meet Potent Enemy in Deadly Fight
By MICHAEL WILSON
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/24/international/worldspecial/24BATT.html
NASIRIYA, Iraq, March 23 — What looked to be an easy
ride into this city turned into a messy firefight
today when Iraqi tanks, regular soldiers and
guerrillas darted through the streets and turned their
mortars, artillery cannons, rockets and rifles on
advancing United States marines.
The battle began shortly after dawn. The infantry
unit, code-named Timber Wolf, approached the southern
edge of Nasiriya, which straddles the Euphrates River
in the south. The city's bridges, which were
eventually captured, are essential to the allied
troops behind Marine Task Force Tarawa, who are
looking to head north, toward Baghdad.
The marines were trying to secure the bridges and
retrieve four wounded Army soliders. The soldiers were
among those left stranded after about a dozen members
of their unit were killed or captured after making a
wrong turn while trying to skirt the city before dawn.
Still, there was little clue what was in store for the
marines — the deadliest battle of the war so far.
Minutes before 7 a.m., Col. Glenn Starnes, commanding
officer of the artillery battalion, listening on a
radio several miles south, shouted, "Timber Wolf is
taking fire!"
Tanks, part of a light armor reconnaissance unit,
crept forward 100 yards at a time against pockets of
Iraqi infantry and bands of Iraqi guerrillas known as
Martyrs of Saddam.
The battle continued throughout the afternoon, with as
many as 10 marines killed and dozens wounded. The
Marine artillery unit, trying to provide cover fire
for the tanks, spent frustrating hours unable to shoot
into the city for fear of hitting fellow marines.
Iraqi mortar fire sounded in the distance, and Colonel
Starnes winced and cursed as American cannon
batteries, caught off guard, scrambled to get into
position. Twenty-three minutes later, the first
battery reported itself "fully in the fight," or ready
to fire.
Radar detected the location of the Iraqi mortars, and
the Marine cannons returned fire, but it was
impossible to tell what was hit. Mortars are easy to
move and hide, especially in a city, where the shooter
can drag the weapon around a corner or into a home and
shut the door in seconds.
"You've got to remember," Maj. Phillip Boggs said,
"you can hide a mortar in nothing."
The American command center was code-named Nightmare.
On its maps, it appeared that besides mortar, up to
four Iraqi tanks were shooting from behind a building.
"Waste it," an officer said under his breath, wanting
to demolish the site. But firing would have been too
dangerous with so little information about the target.
With every "denied" spoken over the artillery radios,
curses followed and the unit was forced to hold its
fire.
"Let's not get gun-happy here," Major Boggs cautioned
the officers under the tarp that was the command
center, quickly heating under the midmorning sun.
"We are running amok," he said. "We're suppressing
him, probably, but we're not killing him."
Reports came in of a platoon-sized group of 30 or 40
Iraqis, and smaller squads of soldiers apparently from
Iraq's 11th Mechanized Infantry Division. The
leadership of the division reportedly surrendered to
Army units the day before. But marines approaching the
city found machine gun nests in outlying dwellings,
Colonel Starnes said.
They also found four Army soldiers, injured in a
ditch, and called in an evacuation team. The soldiers
were part of a group of about 20 that made a wrong
turn in the dark, intending to skirt the city, only to
be ambushed, Colonel Starnes said.
There was a puzzle. The Iraqi mortar and artillery
fire missed by such large distances that the marines
wondered about another motivation behind the rounds.
"I'm afraid he's trying to unmask me," Colonel Starnes
said. "I'm afraid he's trying to find out where we're
at." Returning fire, he feared, could give away his
position.
A leutenant, Michael Slawsky, said, "It would be
really nice to have some forward observer out there to
tell us `left' or `right' or whatever, and what we
hit."
After being pinned down most of the morning, the
infantry unit and the forward observer for the
artillery advanced shortly before noon, meeting
machine-gun fire.
The fight did not let up. Cobra helicopters flew low,
barely above the oversized balloons regularly launched
by an artillery unit to test the wind. More than a
dozen marines shouted orders and scribbled down
coordinates, hunched over lunchbox-sized portable
telephones, often struggling to be heard above the
din.
The phone boxes frequently went silent for no apparent
reason. Officers wiggled the cables or clicked the
button on the handset, or picked up the box and
slammed it down on the table until it worked again.
With the heat came the flies. The voices on the other
end of the radio sounded frantic, shouting above
machine-gun fire in the background. Tensions rose
quickly in Nightmare. The men under the tarp snapped
and swore at one another.
One marine berated a communications officer, asking
him how he would feel if he were being shot at in the
streets and could not reach the artillery batteries.
The afternoon brought news that was both good and
terrible. Timber Wolf, the infantry unit, had captured
the bridges and advanced north of the city. The
artillery batteries, finally granted permission to
fire, lobbed rounds of powerful explosives at the
black circles that had been on their laminated maps
for hours.
Later, the artillery battalion received notice that it
would accept the wounded and perhaps dead marines from
the Nasiriya fight. Medical trucks and doctors hurried
to the square of desert, past the ring of perimeter
guards.
"The bridge is considered secured," Major Boggs said
when the second of the two was captured.
"It is," Colonel Starnes replied, "but I wouldn't want
to drive on it."
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq:
Your enemy is not surrounding your country — your enemy is ruling your
country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be
the day of your liberation." -George W. Bush 1/29/03
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