Generation Kill - Evan Wright [65]
AS THE ARTILLERY called in by Alpha booms ahead of us, Colbert and his team remain halted in the canal area. It’s about three in the afternoon. We’ve been stopped for an hour. No more fire has come from the hamlet on the left. Colbert has become obsessed with the little building that looks like a Spanish church 150 meters or so across the dry canal. Colbert spotted someone’s head popping up behind the parapet on the roof. Now he’s watching through the scope of his M-4 rifle, getting ready to shoot. Person and Trombley crouch by his side with their weapons out, passing binoculars back and forth. Everyone thinks the guy up there is a sniper, and the team is going to take him out next time he shows his face.
“There,” Person says.
“Don’t shoot!” Colbert shouts. He throws the tip of his barrel up and lets out a sharp breath. “Jesus fucking Christ! It’s a kid.”
We get back into the Humvee. Trombley roots around in the ratfuck bag for a spaghetti. He sucks it out straight from the foil pouch. “I almost shot him,” he says.
“Not yet,” Colbert says. “Put your weapon on safety.”
“Goddamn kid playing peekaboo.” Colbert shakes his head. It’s the first time I’ve seen him rattled.
“What are we doing?” Trombley asks, as more Marine artillery booms by the road ahead.
“The battalion is trying to find a way around that town up ahead, so we can link up with RCT-1 on the other side.”
“Why don’t we go through it?” Trombley asks.
“It’s full of bad guys,” Colbert says. “We’d get smoked.” He gets out and pisses.
THIRTEEN
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AL GHARRAF, the town lying just ahead of First Recon, is about two kilometers from end to end, a dense mass of two- and three-story houses and apartment blocks, like Nasiriyah, though with a much smaller population: around 20,000 inhabitants. By three-thirty in the afternoon, with First Recon’s leading elements in Alpha perched on the eastern side of Al Gharraf, RCT-1 has reached the western side of the town. Col. Dowdy, the commander of RCT-1, halts his forces outside of Al Gharraf when one of his companies is ambushed on the outskirts. His Marines sustain several casualties and kill between twenty and thirty attackers. Originally, Dowdy had contemplated entering Al Gharraf with tanks and other armored vehicles. But as he did at Nasiriyah, Dowdy pulls his forces back—this time into an open desert at the northern fringes of the town—and hesitates. Because of the shamal now peaking with its impenetrable dust cloud, helicopters are unable to fly over the town to see what’s inside. Just three days earlier, Task Force Tarawa had suffered approximately 100 casualties, with eighteen dead, when its commanders had sent a small force of Marines into Nasiriyah. Dowdy apparently doesn’t want to make the same mistake.
First Recon’s commander, Lt. Col. Ferrando, has no such compunctions. Initially, when his units came under intense fire on the eastern outskirts of the town, Ferrando contemplated circumventing it and finding another route to link up with RCT-1 on the other side. But by four in the afternoon, he decides to send the whole battalion straight through the town. While Ferrando might seem to his men like a martinet, obsessed with mustaches and the Grooming Standard, as a commander, he possesses a bold streak verging on recklessness. When I later ask him why he sent his lightly armed battalion through a hostile town—one that a better-equipped force dared not enter—he says, “I thought we’d cause some problems for those motherfuckers in that town.”
When the Marines in Alpha are told to jump in their vehicles and get ready to drive through the town, they are incredulous. Capt. Patterson, who’s found what looks to be a viable route around the town on his maps, attempts to debate the issue with Ferrando over the radio. Ferrando cuts him off: “Patterson, you have your orders. Do you understand?”
Burris, who several minutes ago had nearly been hit by friendly shrapnel, learns of the mission when Patterson approaches his vehicle commander with