From: Employee@MilVeh.com
Date: Wed May 07 2003 - 10:06:13 PDT
Among the crew of American combat helicopters in Iraq
there is an understanding - if someone points a weapon
at you, take them out or they will take you out.
In those situations, racing low across the desert, a
door gunner might hear the hiss of a missile launch,
feel the heat blast in his face and smell the sulfur
exhaust. He might follow the smoke trail to the target
and see the explosion, but he's not likely to hear it
over the rushing wind.
Or he might squeeze one of the two triggers in hands -
one that fires 2,000 rounds per minute, the other
4,000 - of a GAU-17 mounted machine gun powerful
enough to torque the helicopter when the gun is fired.
At night, the three-foot plume of fire from the barrel
whites-out night-vision goggles.
That's where Marine Sgt. Brandon Kessler, a
23-year-old Chico native, spent the war - in the open
door of a Huey, with only a gunner's belt wrapped
around his chest to hold him in. Kessler's Huey
utility helicopter was part of squadron of about 10
Hueys and 20 Cobra attack helicopters, the Helicopter
Marine Light Attack 267.
Kessler left from San Diego on Jan. 17 and arrived in
Kuwait on Feb. 24.
"We got there about a month before everything kicked
off," he said.
On March 21, his squadron received orders to strike
Iraqi observation points stretched along the Kuwait
border - trailers in the desert, manned by troops with
small arms.
"We fired the first shots of the war, right on the
Kuwait/Iraqi border," Kessler said. Three hours later,
ground forces breached the sand berm forming the
border between the two countries, and rolled into
Iraq. The invasion schedule had been moved forward
because of reports that Iraqi troops were blowing up
wells in the southeastern Rumaila oil fields.
While the Army's 101st Airborne and 3rd Infantry
divisions made a left hook through the western desert
in a lightning race to Baghdad, it fell to the 1st
Marine Expeditionary Force to smash much of Saddam
Hussein's army. Kessler's group pushed straight north
toward Nasiriyah.
The first 60 miles were an empty desert of dunes.
Here, sandstorms grounded the helicopters for four
days. Sometimes the troops couldn't see five feet,
while at other times everything was bathed in an
orange haze.
"You can't open your eyes because of the sand,"
Kessler said. "It pelts your face, it gets everywhere,
in anything."
On occasion, they encountered groups of Bedouins and
some elements of the Iraqi army.
"For the most part, they didn't want to fight,"
Kessler said. "They just waved their white flags."
The squadron would go out for five days at a time to
support ground forces. At night, they would put down
in the desert, sometimes taking mortar and artillery
fire all night long.
"You would fly sunup to sundown," Kessler said. "It's
something you train your whole career for, but it's
not a training mission anymore. If it doesn't go
successfully, there's a probability of dying. There's
a big adrenaline rush there."
When ground forces in combat called in air support, he
could hear the tension and stress in their forces. One
of the best feelings came from the way those voices
would calm down when they knew the helicopters were on
the way, he said.
At the end of five days, the helicopters would return
to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Time off could be
as much as a day or as little as 15 hours.
"In your down time, you pretty much pass out," Kessler
said.
In the opening days of the war, the base went on alert
repeatedly because of incoming Iraqi missiles. No one
knew if those missiles carried chemical weapons. One
landed on a nearby airfield, and Kessler could feel
the concussion from it. Patriot interceptor missiles
were launched hourly, he said.
"That was pretty crazy. You'd start seeing the
Patriots go off and you'd go, uh-oh," Kessler said.
"For the first three days you couldn't sleep."
At the Euphrates River, the desert blooms green and is
veined with canals and irrigation ditches.
"I expected a lot of desert, a lot of sand," Kessler
said. "It was beautiful."
The land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, the
historic Fertile Crescent, mainly is farmland, he
said.
"It smelled like a petting zoo. There were farm
animals everywhere," Kessler said.
In Nasiriyah, things became tough. Saddam's soldiers
shed their military uniforms and blended in with the
civilian population. Often, Iraqi soldiers would hide
behind buildings and take pot shots.
"You don't know who's an enemy and who's a civilian
walking down the street," Kessler said. "It was
horrible there. That was the first place where they
actually encountered Iraqis waving the white flag and
turning on our troops."
Nasiriyah also was the location of "Ambush Alley,"
where Iraqi paramilitaries would let the forward
elements of American columns pass, then fire mortar
shells at the middle. Once, after breaking off to
refuel, Kessler returned to witness the aftermath of
an ambush.
"You'd see Marines dragging other Marines' bodies out
of burning hulks," he said.
Other crews told him of a nighttime technique used by
the Iraqis.
"When they heard us flying in, they'd turn off all the
lights in the city," Kessler said. The Iraqis brought
rocket-propelled grenades and small arms to the
rooftops.
"When we came in closer, they'd turn on all the lights
in the city and it would white out our goggles,"
Kessler said. And that's when the Iraqis would open
fire.
The tactic prompted helicopter crews for the most part
to stay out of the cities at night, he said. The
Iraqis also painted telephone and electrical poles to
match the desert, in the hopes of causing a collision.
As Kessler's group pressed north, they found a
multitude of small towns and encountered a few
skirmishes, but "nothing too serious." At Karbala,
they met resistance from Iraqi troops stretched along
the Euphrates riverbank. The helicopters lit into them
with missiles and machine guns.
"We came in low and fast," Kessler said.
While fleeing, the Iraqis blew up one of their own
pontoon bridges. However, Kessler's squadron
reconnoitered another bridge, allowing ground forces
to cross the river.
"We stayed the night outside of Karbala. The next day
we planned on going into Baghdad," he said.
That night, planes flew bombing missions over the
capital. Kessler could see the resulting fires and
hear American artillery. The next day, they pressed
on, finding tanks and troop carriers with increasing
frequency. Many were abandoned.
"That was the most I'd seen up to that point," Kessler
said.
>From the air, he saw stockpiles of mortar and
artillery shells. Whole towns had come out to loot
them.
"We were like, 'Is this good or bad?' " Kessler said.
"But guys on the ground said they just wanted the
brass."
Baghdad appeared 10 times larger than Nasiriyah, where
the fiercest fighting had occurred. The thought of
urban combat here was worrisome.
"It was scary as hell," Kessler said.
Fears of large-scale fighting inside Baghdad later
turned out to be a paper tiger. Kessler's group
entered the capital from the southwest, encountering
little resistance.
"We really didn't do any shooting," he said.
They spent five days in Baghdad, based at the Iraqi
central intelligence building.
"At this point the war was pretty much over," Kessler
said. "The Army and Marines started doing high-fives."
Some minor fighting still raged in the night.
"You could hear the AKs going off at night and the
M-16s responding," he said.
During his time in Baghdad, Kessler's squadron flew
reconnaissance missions over the city looking for
snipers, and carried generals and colonels around the
capital and north to survey Saddam's hometown of
Tikrit. Once, Kessler's helicopter set down in the
rose garden of one of Saddam's palaces.
Kessler returned to the United States about nine days
ago, after more than four months in the Middle East.
He had heard of the city's frequent anti-war protests.
"I just don't think those people really know anybody
(in the military), so it's not hitting home for them,
and that's why they're protesting," he said. "That's
what America is all about. They have that freedom to
do that. It hurts, but I don't take it personally."
Nevertheless, on Tuesday, the city of Chico honored
its own. Mayor Maureen Kirk and City Councilor Larry
Wahl presented a letter of appreciation. Kirk became
choked up as she read, "Your selfless act has helped
an entire oppressed nation find a freedom that many in
that land had never experienced. ... We are proud to
say that your hometown is Chico, California."
Residents who thronged the Council Chambers Tuesday
night gave him a standing ovation.
"I come back here and I get a lot of support," Kessler
said. "I got e-mails and packages over there from
people I've never met before, from people that know
somebody who knows me and want to express their
gratitude."
Kessler expects to be redeployed to Okinawa, Japan in
late June. He plans to get out of the service in
January and hopes to go back to school, possibly to
become a teacher.
He said one his outstanding memories of Iraq is "with
the sun setting in the evening and you'd see a group
of 50 kids playing soccer. They'd hear us coming and
they'd stop. We'd give them a low pass and they'd
scurry around, waving and jumping. It gave us a good
feeling, seeing the smiles on their faces. That's the
future of the country right there."
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