Hillah, Iraq.

[knock knock knock]

I must have slept through my alarm.

[knock knock knock]

“Sir, you have a phone call.”

I grabbed the flashlight, and found that it was 0300.

Wait a minute. I already wrote about this. How could it be happening again?Once again, I quickly dressed to go answer the phone.The phone call was the start of the usual wrapping up of last details. The squadron had some questions about the plan overall, and a few contingency questions. Nothing particularly tricky, and soon they were off for the air crew mandatory rest period, and me back to sleep.The rest of the day was pretty much the same. Phone calls, updated intelligence, new imagery, last minute tweaks to the plan. Our secure email came on line after lunch, relieving me of the trips to the communications shed, and relieving the privates in the communication shed of my company.I got an email from my colonel congratulating me on my persistence and ultimate success. He also chastised my for some of the wording in my paperwork, proving that it is poor taste to prove your boss wrong, a behavior that must be punished.

The afternoon wore on, and the Justice League Crime Fighting Machine began preparing.Tonight we were going after former B’aath Party Members, one of them a Major General in the former regime. These guys were in charge of parts of Baghdad before the war, and were allegedly supplying insurgents with insurgenty sort of things: money, explosives, weapons, and safe houses. We couldn’t just drive in to arrest him because he lives far out in the boondocks. Not only is it easy to see people coming, but the General was paying people along the road to call him in case of trouble.The overall plan was pretty straightforward, which is an admirable quality in battle plans. Tonight we were working with Green Berets, Anglicos, El Salvadoran Special Forces, and SWAT. We split into two groups: one group would be the ground assault element, the other the helicopter borne element. For a reason unknown to me, helicopter borne assault elements are called ‘Chalks’. We split the airborne forces into four chalks. Each chalk had some Green Berets, some Anglicos, some SWAT, and some El Salvadorans. Chalk 1 and 2 were riding on the first helicopter, Chalk 3 and 4 were in the second. I was in Chalk 1. We were assaulting two objective areas. Objective 1 was taken by Chalk 1 and 2, and Objective 2 was taken by 3 and 4. The helos were going to land in helicopter landing zones (HLZs), facing away from the targets, allowing the assaulters to run straight out (avoiding the tail rotor) towards the objective area. Odd numbered chalks were to go right, even left. Once the assaulters were out, the transport helos were to take off and go holds somewhere while the gunships orbited overhead. The assaulters were going to form an inverted wedge (imagine an upside down “^”), and then assault towards the house, about the time that the ground based element would arrive. While we weren’t expecting any armed resistance, if somebody wanted a gunfight, we would be happy to oblige them. Once we had arrested the bad guys, we were to call back the helos for the ride home.We went through the usual prep meetings and gear checks. I instructed the Marine Sergeant to go pick up some snacks from the chow hall for the aircrews.

“Snacks, sir?”
“Oh, yes. Pizza, hot wings, and some of those quesadilla things they had at supper.”
“OK, sir.”
The SF Team Sergeant overheard this exchange, which he considered somewhat silly.
“You are getting snacks for the aircrew?”
“Yep.”
“Why? They probably ate already.”
“They are aviators. We have certain standards. We like snacks.”

Snacks procured, we waited for the helos to arrive, which they did shortly, and to much fanfare. Large helicopters arriving at a normally quiet camp generate their own fanfare, but it was cool knowing they were there for us.The pilots showed up, insisted they weren’t hungry, then saw the chicken wings and quesadilla things, said, “Hey, snacks!”, and dug in.Everybody went out to the helos to practice exiting the aircraft, then we went to gear up. The ground element marshalled while the airborne assaulters loaded up the helo. We had HH-60 Gunships, armed with 2.75 inch rocket pods, as well as mini guns.

The assaulters loaded into the MH-53s.

Dozens of heavily armed men preparing for war can be a frightening thing.

The white lights went off, but the red tactical lights remained on. Red tactical lighting made it all seem surreal.

The helo took off, and we headed out over Hillah and into the desert.

We had to allow time for the ground assault element to get to their position for the strike, so the pilots tried to make us throw up. I guess that we never got over 200 feet as we zinged around the desert. They pulled 45 degree angle of bank turns, twisting us this way and that. We floated up to 200 feet, then sank down to fly down a river at 50 feet. Houses and palm groves whipped by as we looked out the back, waiting for the code word from the ground assaulters that would indicate they were in position.Operationally, we establish code words to indicate certain milestones or achievements: a code word for reaching a point, or capturing a target. The words are of a common theme. For example, reaching the launch point might be code word “Corona”, capturing the primary target is “Coors”, returning to Camp Charlie is “Budweiser”, and Mission Accomplished is “Amstel”. Tonight’s code words were Jenna, Chloe, Carmen, Traci, Brittany, Wicked, and Vivid. According to the Captain, tonight’s theme is baseball.I watched the desert stream past the helo. Roads, palm trees, and the occasional house. The only lights were the red tactical lights, and the exit light, also showing red.”Vivid, vivid, vivid!”The helos turned in for their assault run. Five minutes out, the pilots broadcast the codeword for the ground elements to begin moving towards the objective:”Wicked, wicked, wicked.” ]The loadmaster signaled us when we were one minute out. All of us struggled to our feet, and lined up facing the rear of the helo as we flew at treetop level towards the enemy. The other helicopter broke formation to head for the second objective are, and the pilots continued to jink right and left as we sped in. The g-forces made it easy to remain standing. With one final roll past 45 degrees, we lined up on our landing zone.

The pilot pitched the nose of the helicopter up to slow down, and I had a brief glimpse of waving palm trees before we settled into the maelstrom of dust, and there was nothing more to see but brown.We landed firmly, the exit light changed to green, and we ran out into the dust storm. I could only the see the assaulter in front of me. I ducked off to the right to avoid the tail rotor, and ran towards what I hoped was the bad guy’s house. Approximately 20 meters from the helicopter, the air cleared, and I took a knee as I blinked the dust and dirt from my eyes. My watering eyes made dirty tracks down my face, and I tasted dust and jet exhaust.We formed into a quick wedge with weapons pointed to the target, and counted assaulters. With everybody here, I radioed the helo that the assault force was “boots on the ground”, and the helo departed with a blast of noise and dust. An unnatural quiet settled in. I heard the other assault element check in, and they began moving out.My assault group began working its way towards the house, which was disappointingly dark, even through the night optical devices. I saw a light come on at a neighbor’s house 300 meters or so to the east, but the objective house stayed dark. The good guys quickly surrounded the house, and began clearing it while I watched the tree line for bad guys.The other assault team didn’t find much in their houses. One unknown but probably bad guy managed to run out into the palm groves, and the second assault team (Chalk 3 and 4) contacted the helos to help track him down. I listened to them chase the bad guy while Chalk 2 cleared the house, room by room.The house was empty. The bad guy might have run into the woods, so Chalk 1 decided to go to the house where the light had come on when we landed, and Chalk 2 went to search another house.Our chalk was headed 300 meters to the east. The palm groves were next to open fields, all cut by canals. We used our aiming lasers like flashlights. We could see quite well in the dark, yet we emitted no visible light. The captain led the patrol along the tree line. We had to hop canals, or walk over footbridges made of unlashed poles, all the while keeping an eye out for someone working with the inadvisable idea of causing us trouble. The house was the typical mud/brick affair, but surrounded by a barbed wire fence. We slipped through the fence easily enough, and by the dim light of the porch light, we saw a family of four sleeping in a king sized bed drug into the front yard. We came like ghosts.

We separated the male, but left the mother and two daughters alone. Half the chalk secured the area while the other kept watch on the family. I searched around behind bushes and in the thatched shed that passed for a barn, but there was nothing. I found a place that offered a good field of fire over the field we had just crossed, but that also allowed me to keep an eye on the family and the assaulters watching the family.

The gunship helos droned overhead, and I listened to the radio traffic as the other chalk chased the bad guy. The squirter (bad guys who escape are called squirters because they manage to squirt through our lines) had gone to ground, and because the ground was so warm, they were having a tough time finding him with thermal imaging. Every minute that he was not caught increased his chances for getting away. Off in the distance, dogs barked like mad.Chalk 1 regrouped, and began asking the male about his neighbor. The guy was acting suspicious, so we opted to take him to the informant (who had stayed with Chalk 2) to see if he was the bad guy. This time, I was at the back of the chalk providing rear security as we once again worked our way long the tree
line, crossing canals and footbridges.

We found Chalk 2 with the ground assault element, who had discovered nothing at the other house. Our guy turned out to be nobody, so we turned him loose. SWAT opted to do a quick sweep of the area on the off chance that somebody was waiting for us to leave, but the house had steadfastly remained dark and empty looking, so I didn’t hold much hope.

Chalks 3 and 4 finally gave up on finding the squirter, so we called back the helos for the ride back to Camp Charlie. The pilots made a special effort to fly low over the Polish area of camp to remind them we were out fighting the war. The helos landed, and I talked with the pilots about the mission while the helos were refueled for their trip back to their base, which they must make by sunup. They had some very positive things to say. They were particularly happy when we gave them a case of (nonalcoholic) Coronas for their troubles. They were happy to work with us, and encouraged us to run a lot more helicopter assaults. Working with guys out fighting the war was a lot of fun, and also got them out of hauling around supplies, an odious task that filled the time they weren’t fighting.

The good guys went to the team room for the mission debrief. Even the Team Sergeant admitted that debriefing at 0430 is much more enjoyable with snacks. We covered the good and the bad, and everything is fair game. None of the debrief items are personal, and it is considered good form to publicly announce your own sins so that others might benefit. Tonight, everything went smoothly. We just didn’t have much luck catching anybody.

Even though we didn’t catch any bad guys, I still consider the mission a success. We demonstrated the importance of acting on timely intelligence to the air scheduling people. I also claim a professional victory because I managed to get the good guys air support. We have also established a great working relationship with the helicopter squadron, who agreed to provide us with air related intelligence and imagery that is superior to our own.Plus, we had snacks.