March 29, 2003
We must have sensed the lounging around out in the desert was about to come to an end, because over our MREs and canteen cups of instant coffee that morning, we got religious. I recited the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me down the path of righteousness for His name’s sake … Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”
I like the way, once you get into the Valley, it shifts from “He” to “Thou.” The relationship gets more intense.
Baxter chimed in with his own favorite: “They will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon them …” The passage that “Jules” intones prior to blowing away some punks in “Pulp Fiction.” Baxter had Revelation 1:8 painted on his CVC helmet: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” above the big, bold words, “GET YOU SOME.”
The LT read from Psalm 27, “When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear. Though war break out against me, even then I will be confident.” He had painted an Iron Cross on the front of his CVC helmet in honor of his great-grandfather, a German infantryman in World War I, and on the back some red flames and the words, “And Hell Followed After.”
I mulled it for a while, and used a black felt-tip marker to write, “Thou Preparest a Table Before Me in the Presence of Mine Enemy” across the front of my CVC. I didn’t need anything too righteous. I wasn’t planning on smiting anyone. Like a lot of the soldiers, I had the names of my wife and children on the leather band inside my Kevlar, to have them close if I should be killed.
Early that evening, when it was dark enough that we had to use a shielded red light, Wolford called his lieutenants and platoon sergeants together around a map spread across the hood of his Humvee, to brief them on the plan to attack the Euphrates bridgehead town of al-Hindiyah at dawn on the 31st. Our company would punch through town to the bridge. While the rest of the battalion held the town on the west side of the river behind us, the 14 Assassin tanks and our fire-support Bradley would cross to the east side. The strength of defenses around the town and the bridge was not known. A couple of Iraqi bases were located within 10 miles or so, at al-Hillah to the east and Karbala to the northwest. Strength of Iraqi forces there was also not known. Our job was to lure them out. We were the bait.
“The point is we’re trying to draw the Republican Guard into a fight. We’re trying to draw some of their forces out of Karbala and get them into the open where we can kill them,” Wolford said.
Once on the other side of the bridge, Wolford said, we should be prepared to stay buttoned down in our vehicles and under direct fire for 24 hours. That meant having enough food and water inside, all the ammo we’d need, and plenty of piss bottles.
At one point in his briefing, Wolford actually compared the scenario to the recently released movie “We Were Soldiers,” the story of a historic reconnaissance in force that went badly wrong in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965. This was not reassuring.
Someone asked what the plan was if the Iraqis blew the bridge behind us.
“The nearest friendlies on the east side of the river are 30 miles south, and we’ll have to make a run for them,” Wolford said.
I am pretty sure everyone else quietly gulped at that point, just like I did. Wolford didn’t seem to like it much, either. We knew by now that there had been heavy fighting, and peoplle had been killed or captured. As the meeting broke up, I told Wolford I thought this might be a good time to get a rundown on the particulars of the M4 rifle. Wolford said he thought that was a good idea, have the sergeant in my vehicle see to it. He wondered out loud whether there might be an extra 9 mil around that I could have. There wasn’t, but that was OK. There were four rifles in the Bradley, and if it turned out I needed one, that would mean someone else didn’t need his anymore.
The LT and I walked back to the Bradley. He told the Bradley’s crew what the deal was. It was not well received.
“We’re walking into a fucking trap, that’s what I think,” Baxter said. “I think we screwed the pooch when we stopped here for three days. The Tarot cards are not in our favor. Call Mother Cleo on that sat phone and see what she says. She’ll say put your white ass in that track and head south. Get the fuck out.”
Topics: Iraq
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:34 am on Thursday, March 29, 2007
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March 29th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Bill’s Nibbles // Open Post — 2007.03.29
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March 29th, 2007 at 2:11 am
March 29, 2003
March 29, 2003Critter Crittenden We must have sensed the lounging around out in the desert was about to come to an end, because over our MREs and canteen cups of instant coffee that morning, we got religious. I recited the