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Violence subsides for Marines in Fallujah
Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round
after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the
city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or
what damage the resulting explosions caused.
By DARRIN MORTENSON
Staff Writer
04/11/04 "North
County Times" -- -- FALLUJAH, Iraq ---- The siege is
still on but the violence subsided some in Fallujah on Saturday as
American military and political leaders gave members of the new
Iraqi government a day to persuade insurgents to stop resisting U.S.
troops in the city.
Wire services reported U.S. forces and Iraqi insurgents had agreed
to begin a cease-fire at 10 this morning, but U.S. military
authorities did not confirm the agreement. One condition of the
cease-fire reportedly was that U.S. forces begin a withdrawal from
the city within 12 hours. A member of the American-appointed Iraqi
Governing Council, Mahmoud Othman, told Associated Press, "I don't
know how likely that is."
Insurgents and Marines occasionally skirmished along the city's
fringes, but for the most part, each still hunted the other from
afar.
For the third straight day, American jets hurled 500-pound bombs at
buildings. Insurgents fired rockets and lobbed mortars at the Marine
positions, which are no secret now, six days after troops first
encircled this embattled city northwest of Baghdad.
What appears to be a standoff, however, is just the calm before the
storm, Marines said.
"I don't want to have to level the city," said Maj. Brandon McGowan,
as some of his men set up in an emptied apartment building to watch
activity in the city beyond.
McGowan is the executive officer of the Camp Pendleton-based 2nd
Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment ---- the battalion that has lost two
Marines since Monday while fighting for a foothold in Fallujah's
tough northwest corner.
"I don't think the Marines really want to level the city, but,"
McGowan shrugged and trailed off, like many Marines have in the last
two days as a full-scale assault on the city becomes the obvious
next step.
More Marines arrive
About 1,000 infantrymen from a third Southern California Marine
battalion arrived Saturday to reinforce the cordon established by
two other battalions, and to join in whatever offensive operation
follows this bloody and costly Holy Week.
According to The Associated Press, the U.S. military's death toll
from the week of fighting across the country stood at 47. The
fighting has killed more than 500 Iraqis ---- including more than
280 in Fallujah, a hospital official said. At least 648 U.S.
soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
Officials said about 60,000 residents fled the city Friday in
vehicles and on foot from checkpoints in the south.
In the north, however, no men are allowed to leave the part of town
where insurgents concentrated last week and have led coordinated
attacks in neighborhoods they fortified with bunkers, barricades and
weapons caches.
Military officials no longer speak of winning hearts and minds in
Fallujah.
"At this point, this is conventional war," said McGowan, who added
that what could go down in Fallujah is really the kind of head-on
operation the Marines are trained for. "At the small unit level, the
squad level, it may already seem like it has started. But really, at
the battalion level and higher, this thing has not even really
begun."
Marines wait for offensive
The street fighting that characterized the week since Tuesday hushed
some in the north Saturday as troops held the first few blocks,
awaiting orders to advance.
Other Marines who were dug in along the cordon dug deeper to survive
increasingly accurate mortar and rocket attacks.
Rockets exploded about 9 p.m. Friday, kicking up rocks and dirt and
knocking out power to a neighborhood Marines had taken over as a
defensive base.
"I was walking right over where the second or third one hit when I
just yelled 'Hey! Hit the deck!' Lance Cpl. Adam Scott, 24, of
Mustang, Okla., said Saturday morning, recounting the attack the
night before. "We got lucky that time."
After that attack, like the countless other attacks, Marines counted
heads, checked for damage to vehicles and weapons, and got on with
nightly watch shifts.
Others tried to snatch a few hours of sleep between the outbursts of
wild dogs and before the AC-130 Specter gunship started its nightly
thundering, enforcing the nightly curfew from the sky.
Day six dawns
The sun up and the Specter gone, Marines awoke Saturday to faint
sirens from ambulances collecting the night's casualties from a
sector of the city that has been reduced to a smoldering ghost town.
The calm on Saturday gave troops only enough time to come to grips
with their environment and start thinking about the toll the
fighting has taken.
At the city's littered and dusty northern edge, stinking swamps have
formed where tanks and tracked vehicles have broken farmers' water
lines and carved out farmland to the water table, which is shallow
from the Euphrates River some half-mile away.
Soggy trash and human waste from makeshift latrines stew under the
unforgiving sun, attracting hordes of fat black flies.
The tenacious flies ---- that troops liken to the insurgents because
"they just keep on coming" ---- land on food and cover hands and
faces that never really get clean in the dust and sweat of the
Marines' wartime workday.
Fighting from a distance
After pounding parts of the city for days, many Marines say the
recent combat escalated into more than they had planned for, but not
more than they could handle.
"It's a war," said Cpl. Nicholas Bogert, 22, of Morris, N.Y.
Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round
after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the
city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or
what damage the resulting explosions caused.
"We had all this SASO (security and stabilization operations)
training back home," he said. "And then this turns into a real
goddamned war."
Just as his team started to eat a breakfast of packaged rations
Saturday, Bogert got a fire mission over the radio.
"Stand by!" he yelled, sending Lance Cpls. Jonathan Alexander and
Jonathan Millikin scrambling to their feet.
Shake 'n' bake
Joking and rousting each other like boys just seconds before, the
men were instantly all business. With fellow Marines between them
and their targets, a lot was at stake.
Bogert received coordinates of the target, plotted them on a map and
called out the settings for the gun they call "Sarah Lee."
Millikin, 21, from Reno, Nev., and Alexander, 23, from Wetumpka,
Ala., quickly made the adjustments. They are good at what they do.
"Gun up!" Millikin yelled when they finished a few seconds later,
grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding
it over the tube.
"Fire!" Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it.
The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill
again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and
high explosives they call "shake 'n' bake" into a cluster of
buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week.
They say they have never seen what they've hit, nor did they talk
about it as they dusted off their breakfast and continued their
hilarious routine of personal insults and name-calling.
Say 'cheese'
Every day since they started firing rounds into the city, other
Marines have stopped by the mortar pit to take a turn dropping
mortars into the tube and firing at some unseen target.
Like tourists at some macabre carnival, some bring cameras and have
other troops snap photos of their combat shot. Even the battalion
surgeon fired a few Saturday, just for sport.
Everyone wants to "get some," the troops explain, some joking that
Fallujah is like a live-fire range.
Some have started to think of what happens after all the guns go
silent.
"I just don't want to come home and have someone calling me a baby
killer," Alexander said after firing dozens of high explosive mortar
rounds into the city. "That would piss me off."
Alexander said no one has told him what the charges have hit.
Anxious to move again
While they've hunkered down in their sandbagged positions, some of
the Marines have come out of their shell.
As the sun set Saturday, Lance Cpl. Jose Robles, 20, of Tustin and
Cpl. Juan Perez, 24, of the Bronx, N.Y., took a moment to feed their
neighbors: four wild fuzzy puppies that live in holes and tunnels
they've burrowed in the huge berm along Fallujah's train tracks.
The puppies wagged filthy tails and let out little squeals as the
Marines fed them from the packaged rations. The puppies didn't care
for the food any more than the Marines, but lapped up copious
amounts of water before the two troops went back to work.
Earlier Saturday, Lance Cpl. Joseph McCarthy ate a big black dung
beetle to win a $40 bet, and to kill the time.
"That one tasted kinda funky," he said, washing it down with a
swallow of water. "The big long one I ate last year tasted better."
Just killing time
Sitting atop a train trestle watching bombs drop on the city beyond,
Lance Cpl. Scott said such antics didn't shock him. The Marines were
just trying to deal with time and discomfort while they wait for the
battle for Fallujah to really kick off.
"I'm glad to see we're not going to be (messing) around anymore,"
Scott said. "We're going to finally go in and get it done. I just
don't want to have to come back here a year from now to have to
finish something."
What the "it" is that needs to get done is something most Marines
don't explain, but they say "it" is what they do best.
"They were never really that comfortable with the 'no better friend
part,' " said Navy chaplain Lt. Scott Redatski, referring to "No
better friend ---- No worse enemy" ---- the motto the Marines used
when there was still talk of trying to win hearts and minds in
Fallujah.
"But they seem pretty ready to be 'no worse enemy,' " Redatski said.
"This is what they're trained for. This is what they do."
Staff writer Darrin Mortenson and staff photographer Hayne Palmour
are reporting from Iraq, where they are with Camp Pendleton Marines.
Their coverage is collected at www.nctimes.com/military/iraq.
© 1997-2005 North County Times
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