From: Employee@MilVeh.com
Date: Sat Aug 02 2003 - 19:40:48 PDT
I was just reading a little more on this 507th
ambush... here is the story:
"At about 5:30 or six, we started driving through the
city of Nasiriyah. It seemed like a peaceful town.
Most of the town was still asleep. We crossed over the
Euphrates River and drove all the way through town. We
then pulled over to the side of the road and turned
around. We later figured out the group we were looking
for wasn't where they said they were. At about this
time, we started seeing more traffic. The information
we had been given was that the Iraqi soldiers would be
giving up. We were also told that the Iraqi soldiers
would be keeping their weapons. So we were nervous."
At 7:10 p.m., according to an account by New York
Times reporter Michael Wilson, embedded with a nearby
Marine unit, the radios of an artillery battery just a
couple of miles south of the city crackled. The
battery commander a colonel shouted to his
officers, "Timberwolf is taking fire!" A Marine patrol
was being shot at by Fedayeen irregulars hidden along
the route. A fierce firefight began that waxed and
waned throughout that day.
Twenty minutes after the first radio report, about
7:30 p.m., the misguided convoy of the 507th lumbered
up the road, crossed a bridge over the Euphrates and
was greeted by a sign in English that said "Welcome."
The convoy rolled through a dense neighborhood for
about two miles into the heart of the eastern part of
Nasiriyah. A Datsun 510 with a white top and orange
fenders sped past the convoy, turned off the road and
drove slowly back alongside, going in the opposite
direction. One soldier recalls the uneasy feeling he
got that the car was a "scout," carefully checking out
their capabilities. A Nissan pickup with a
"crew-served" machine gun also sped by and disappeared
around a corner.
The trucks passed occasional armed Iraqi soldiers,
even a couple of dug-in, old Soviet-made T-55 tanks
with their turrets aimed away from the road. At a
briefing before entering Iraq, the soldiers had been
told that they were certain to come upon Iraqi
soldiers who had surrendered but were allowed to keep
their sidearms, mostly to keep their subordinate
soldiers in line. Still, the sight of armed enemy
soldiers and potentially lethal tanks was
unnerving for the convoy soldiers.
Finally, as the trucks and Humvees crossed the Saddam
Canal on the northern edge of Nasiriyah, another sign
said simply, "Goodbye."
Sensing they were not where they were supposed to be,
Capt. King led the convoy into a 180-degree turn and
headed back into Nasiriyah, searching for an
east-to-west route that would link him with Highway 1,
west of the city. After a couple of false turns and
dead ends, the convoy made another winding turn and
backtracked along Highway 7 heading south. Sporadic
gunfire erupted from buildings all around. The
vehicles that could, increased their speed.
The Bullets Were Flying
Atop one 5-ton truck, 24-year-old Cpl. Damien Luten
was manning a .50-caliber machine gun. In the truck
behind him was Sgt. Campbell. And in the Humvee behind
him was the section leader, Staff Sgt. Tarik Jackson,
a 28-year-old veteran of 11 years in the Army.
"As we started driving back through the town we
started taking fire," said the letter one of the
soldiers wrote to family members. "I could just hear
shots behind me. Then we had to turn around again
because we had missed our turn out of town. We found
our turn and raced toward the bridge over the river
and out of the city. Just then we started coming under
heavy fire from both sides of the road."
>From the side of the road, tires were being tossed
onto the pavement. More than one soldier saw a bus
maneuvering to block the narrow road.
Cpl. Luten, the .50-caliber gunner, described the
scene as though he was in a movie: "I was up there,
and I think of it now, kind of thinking of the movie
The Matrix. And you see the bullets, flying. And it,
it seems like it's slow motion.
The bullets were
flying. I can actually see them, as they pass me, uh,
over my head, back in front of the vehicle. It seemed
like they were going that slow."
In the letter from the soldier, there is a description
of the volley of gunfire as, "several rounds hit my
truck. Something bigger hit the engine which started
blowing smoke everywhere. One of my tires was blown
out. I was just driving and praying."
Luten remembered, "And, we started returning fire, as
we were pushing our way through the town. And as we
were going along, uh, and receiving fire, at one point
my equipment had locked up on me, basically
malfunctioned. So, I went down, inside the cab, to
grab my M-16, to continue fire. And a round came
through the door, and got me in my knee." Several
soldiers told ABCNEWS that the unlucky Luten never
managed to fire either weapon before he was wounded.
As the convoy approached the bridgehead, "the vehicles
ahead of me started getting farther and farther ahead
real quick," recalled one soldier. "I didn't realize
it, but they were trying to get out of there because
they were taking fire."
An Army field manual covering convoy operations
specifically orders that vehicles which are "part of
the convoy that is in the kill zone and receiving fire
must exit the kill zone as quickly as possible if the
road to the front is open."
The Humvee carrying one of the soldiers who was now
wounded, Staff Sgt. Jackson, had finally sputtered to
a stop after re-crossing the Euphrates, just south of
the bridge. It was riddled with bullets and
overheated. Four more vehicles managed to limp up,
including the truck driven by company supply sergeant
Matthew Rose, which ground to a halt with its engines
blown. As the trucks grouped in a safe area, soldiers
could see Capt. King's Humvee and a couple of 5-ton
trucks as silhouettes on the horizon. Left behind in
the ambush area were half of the convoy's vehicles
eight in all.
Is Anyone Alive?
The six soldiers aboard the three lead vehicles of the
convoy were able to escape without injury.
According to eyewitnesses, Sgt. Matthew Rose and Cpl.
Francis Carista (who himself had been hit by a piece
of shrapnel that lacerated his heel) jumped out of one
5-ton truck south of the bridgehead of the Euphrates.
From another truck came Pfc. Adam Elliott.
Fortunately, during a prior enlistment, Rose had
served as an Army medic, while Elliott had taken a
"combat lifesaver" course.
They were joined by Spc. Jun Zhang and the three
soldiers began administering first aid to their
wounded comrades, survivors said. Half limping, half
dragging, the four seriously wounded soldiers
Jackson, Luten, Spc. James Grubb and Sgt. Curtis
Campbell took cover in a roadside ditch, helped to
safety by Rose, Elliott, Zhang, CW3 Nash and Pfc. Marc
Dubois, the driver of Cpl. Luten's now-disabled truck.
Separated from other members of the convoy, these 10
soldiers who escaped the ambush four of them
seriously wounded hunkered down and waited.
Hiding behind a sand berm, the soldiers heard the
unmistakable "clanking" sound of tanks. At first they
feared the sound was from the Iraqi T-55s they had
seen earlier. But as the machines slowly drove into
view, one soldier said, "it was a great, great relief
to see they were Marines. M1 Abrams. The M1s came up
and just blew up a couple of those first buildings
nearby."
Two Marine Cobra attack helicopters flew by over-head
and one pilot hovered for a moment and gave the
wounded soldiers a thumbs-up sign. A few minutes
later, more Marine vehicles drove up, loaded the
injured soldiers and took them to a landing zone up
the road.
There, a Navy corpsman dressed the soldiers' wounds
and injected them with painkillers. Two Marine cargo
helicopters arrived and by 8:15 p.m. 45 minutes
after the attack began the soldiers were at a Navy
field hospital in Jalaba, on the operating table, and
attended by a team of emergency medicine specialists.
Shortly thereafter they were airlifted aboard one of
two Black Hawk helicopters to another Navy field
hospital in Kuwait.
None of those who escaped the ambush were able to say
what happened at the rear of the convoy. Yet several
soldiers said that even Sgt. Jackson's Humvee, a more
nimble vehicle than the 18-wheelers and wreckers at
the rear of the convoy, was taxed to its limit that
day. All of the soldiers riding aboard the slow-moving
wreckers ended up either dead or captured.
One of those captured, Sgt. James Riley, later
confided to another soldier that he had watched in
horror as the Humvee driven by Pfc. Lori Piestewa
weaved frantically along the road, desperately trying
to escape the hail of gunfire. That Humvee carrying
the company first sergeant, Master Sgt. Robert Dowdy,
in the front passenger seat and Pfc. Jessica Lynch in
a rear seat plowed under the trailer of a 5-ton
truck and came to a stop crushed into the "bobtail"
hitch of the giant semi-tractor.
According to sources, Riley and Pfc. Patrick Miller
jumped from their wrecker and ran to the crash scene,
screaming into the vehicle: "Is anyone alive?" Gunfire
was pinging into the metal all around them. According
to at least one report, Miller single-handedly
attacked several Iraqi soldiers he spotted setting up
a mortar position and killed them, firing his M-16
until he exhausted all his ammunition. At one point,
witnesses said, Miller's rifle jammed and he began
"slamming rounds into the chamber one at a time" and
firing them. He and Riley were eventually captured.
The battle for the bridgeheads at Nasiriyah wore on
through the afternoon of March 23. By the time it was
over, 16 Marines were dead, including the forward
artillery observer from the unit south of town, killed
in a Humvee with at least three other Marines. At
least two of the Marines presumably lost their lives
coming to the rescue of the 507th. Among the 10 bodies
retrieved by U.S. special forces troops who rescued
Pfc. Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital on April 2nd
were eight soldiers from the 507th and two U.S.
Marines.
All told, the 507th lost nine soldiers on March 23.
Two other soldiers from Fort Stewart were also killed.
The Army death toll was 11. At least two Marines
possibly more were killed during the rescue of the
ill-fated Maintenance Company and 14 others were
killed in action in Nasiriyah.
At 27 confirmed dead, that bloody Sunday was the
deadliest day of the war for the United States.
The Aftermath
How did it happen? Since the incident, the U.S.
Central Command has been mum. But on the day of the
ambush, March 23, the briefing officer at command
headquarters in Doha, Qatar, said this:
"As far as the incident concerning the convoy, I
believe that it is probable, like many other tragic
incidents in war, that a young officer, leading his
convoy, made a wrong turn and went somewhere where he
wasn't supposed to. There weren't combat forces around
where it happened. Combat forces arrived at the scene
and helped extricate some of the survivors. It's an
unfortunate incident."
According to those who have seen the Army's
preliminary report, none of the soldiers of the 507th
will be disciplined for the events of March 23rd and
at least two survivors Sgt. Matthew Rose and Pfc.
Patrick Miller will be decorated with the Silver
Star, one of the Army's highest honors, for gallantry
in war. The bloodiest day of this latest battle in
Iraq will be blamed, in the end, on the inevitable fog
of war and a wrong turn.
ABCNEWS' Claire Weinraub contributed to this report.
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