Hillah, Iraq.

We really weren’t that excited about this mission. The El Salvadorans, supported by Green Berets (supported, in turn, by your Marines) were evaluating the Iraqi Battalion’s progress to date. The Iraqi Army (IA) battalion was ordered to secure a town known to be sympathetic to the insurgents’ cause, and was home to a high ranking (sheik) terrorist. Our intel suggested that there was a low probability that the bad guy was home, which was actually okay as this was just an evaluation exercise.

The El Salvadoran colonel briefed the IA, the Special Forces, the Marines at 1000. The colonel covered everything that the IA would be evaluated on, the success criteria, and communication details. He only covered the basics because the IA was supposed to do this one on their own. I had actually arranged the air cover last night. Last time I scheduled preplanned air cover, I stirred up a storm by routing my requests ‘wrong’, even though I had done it according to the published doctrine. Out of that fiasco, I had finally nailed down where exactly my air requests were to go. I generated an email stating the results of my findings, and everybody agreed that for all my possible scenarios, each of the routing solutions was proper.

So imagine my surprise when I had half a dozen nasty emails waiting for me when I checked my mail. Most of the message traffic was from the main scheduling guy who had previously agreed to my email stating that I had the correct email addresses for everybody. This scheduling guy was now telling me that I had to route this request over there, and I needed to include the ID-Ten-Tango form, and I needed to also cc my request to someemailaddress@I.Never.Heard.Of.Mil.Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Over.

I found his agreement email, and replied to him, asking him what about all this stuff that he agreed to? Then I did what any good naval aviator turned commando would do: I blew off the chain of command. I contacted the helo squadron that I wanted directly, and they were more than happy to help, as they tend to sit around a lot. We worked up a plan, and that was that. I happily logged off my email account, knowing that a storm was brewing, and I didn’t care. My general impression is that there are units that need air support, and aviators that really want to get out there to do stuff. But there is a massive command structure that seems to serve no other purpose than denying either party what they want.

The mission was to step off at 0300 (I suppose that technically this story should be in a 30 June 05 email, but I love you guys. Really. And I want you to get the story as soon as possible), so we spent the rest of the day working a bit on the pool, and trying to sleep because we were getting up early. As it turns out, the Iraqis left the 1000 meeting and went home to play XBox (or whatever Iraqi officers do), instead of planning their operation. When the El Sals and Green Berets went to the scheduled IA operational briefing at 1500 (five hours is more than enough time to plan such an operation), they hadn’t even started. In fact, most of the staff officers hadn’t even come in to work yet. And then the excuses started. Everything from “we need more intel” to “my camel ate my homework.”

The deputy battalion commander even went so far as to state that he wanted the Green Berets and Marines to go into this town first because all the terrorists would then run away, making it safe for the Iraqi Army. The El Sals really put their foot down, and made them start working. The operational briefing was rescheduled for 2100. By 2100 I was finishing up all my admin stuff, and went to bed.

Three in the morning comes pretty early some days. None of the Marines were really excited about the mission because our role, outside of controlling helicopters for a couple of hours, was to hang out until noon in case trouble came to town. There was not a whole lot to look forward to. We geared up, marshalled, and rolled to a rendezvous with the Iraqi Army. Then the whole lot of us went to a staging area about three miles from the town we were securing. From this staging area, the IA with the El Salvadoran evaluators secured the town, while the Green Berets and Marines stood by. The Apache helicopters showed up right on time at 0600.

I have not scaled the pictures down so much. They may take longer to load, but they are of higher quality. The word on the street is that the booger eaters HATE helicopters. Jets are the heat because they look cool. But helicopters can really get up close and personal in a gunfight. A good rule of thumb is to make sure you bring enough gun to the gunfight, and these guys had 2.75″ rockets, a bunch of Hellfire missiles, and a LOT of bullets for their rotary cannons. I brought a lot of gun if there was going to be a gunfight. The Apaches took up an orbit overhead, ranging out to watch for bad guys, and generally lending a lot of credibility to the operation.

It is hard not to take Apache gunships seriously. Finally, the IA had secured the objective, and were going around looking for bad guys. The Green Berets decided to go into town to facilitate the evaluation process. As we moved into the objective area, the Apaches took up an over watch position, ranging out in front of the convoy, but still able to provide immediate support if required.

This is what it looks like to roll into an Iraqi town. My gunner shot this video, and it is somewhat large (7 megs), but gives you a good idea of what it is like to enter a town.

Keep in mind that this town is reputedly not pro-Coalition. Nothing exciting happens in the video, but imagine riding into town knowing the locals don’t like you. I think you will agree that there are a lot of hiding places. Once we got into town, things were dull for the Marines. The IA staff officers were going through their evaluation with the El Sals and the Green Berets.

SSGT Mac looked at me to ask, “We should give these helos something to do instead of just hanging out.”
I radioed the helos: “You guys want to do some training?”
“Sure. Want to run some simulated attacks?”
“Sure!”

We cleared it with the Captain (it wouldn’t do to disrupt the training and evaluation of the Iraqi Army with notional but still impressive air attacks), and then ran down to the river to have some fun. There were plenty of buildings and groups of people to attack, so we went to work.

First we did a simulated attack on a building across the river:

We then set up a roll in gun attack on a group of IA guys smoking up river about 200 meters from us:

We had the Apaches deliver a pitch up/roll in rocket attack ‘danger close’, meaning the weapons would be impacting very close to friendly forces. This is good training in case you are being overrun by the bad guys.

We then simulated a strafing run down the river bank.

Um…then we basically just started doing glamour shot flybys because they look cool.

The helos finally ran low on gas, so we thanked them for the training and sent them on their way. We then started talking to the locals, who, as it turns out, really liked Americans.

I have made over sixty “Hearts and Minds” sacks filled with cool stuff for kids, but we were told there really wouldn’t be time to hand stuff out. I am bummed that we didn’t have anything to hand out other than water, Red Bulls, and Frappacinos.

If you look closely in the following picture, you can see that the house has a really nice garden. This is pretty typical. The outside of the houses isn’t much, but inside they generally build a courtyard/garden that is well tended.

We traded some drinks for local bread, which is very tasty.

Overall, the IA did pretty well. Their junior officers and below were pretty squared away. The middle and senior officers really aren’t into working a whole lot, so that is where the El Sals and Special Forces guys are going to concentrate their training.

We rolled back to camp much earlier than expected, but just missed breakfast. Which is just as well as I want to get some sleep before we finish filling the pool tomorrow. Ultimately, this was one of the most fun missions we have done in a while. I am sure that it was fun mostly because we had a couple of Apache gunships to play with, which is pretty cool. But the locals were friendly, and it was nice to see smiling faces where you were expecting anger. 18 combat controls total (10 for SSGT Mac, and 8 for me).