Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [104]
The hotels were pronounced clear, and the fedayeen had not sprung an anticipated ambush, so things slowly came under control from a military point of view, and we relaxed a bit. Maybe I wouldn’t have to kill anybody else today after all. The crowd in the square surged over to that big statue of Saddam Hussein, a monument to a man who no longer mattered. It had been erected only a year earlier to mark the sixty-fifth birthday of the tyrant, and Iraqi families had been prudent to pose for photographs before the statue. It was now the target of their revenge. They didn’t have the man, but they had his likeness, bigger than life, arrogant even in cast bronze, and were no longer going to let it stand there to dominate their capital. Shoes were thrown at it, and then the clang of rocks hitting metal reverberated off the weathered bronze as the crowd moved closer, yelling and gesturing.
Reporters and cameramen followed the crowd, and live televised pictures of the action in the square were beamed up to satellites and down to viewers around the world—from the White House, where President Bush watched with Secretary of State Colin Powell, to the tea shops of the Arab world, where viewers sipped afternoon tea in small shops and tuned in the Al Jazeera network. The Washington Post would later observe that what happened next was “either splendid luck or brilliant planning on the part of the military.”
Iraqi men shook the statue, beat on it with their fists, and even attacked the base with sledgehammers, but it would not budge. Saddam’s right arm remained defiantly raised over the enraged crowd. Some pieces of metal were gouged out, but the thing remained firmly attached to the high pedestal. The Bravo tankers contributed a rope, and young men climbed up and looped it around the neck of the statue, and the cheering escalated. This was a bit unsettling, but we decided to let it ride and see what happened.
Suddenly a shot cracked out, and Casey and I dove through the crowd, forcing a path through the uncomprehending civilians, yelling for them to move aside. We were thinking, Ambush! and the idea of a firefight in the park with so many civilians caught between the warring sides was horrific. But the discharged round had been fired accidentally by a Marine, not a fedayeen. We took deep, relieved breaths and made our way back to our trucks, which were parked with the tactical command post.
While we were gone, an older British gentleman had come up to Jerry Marsh and the Panda, who were guarding our vehicles, and identified himself as a former member of the Special Air Services, an elite arm of the British military. He was in Baghdad working as a news reporter and explained that a few Iraqis had gotten a bit too aggressive with him earlier in the day. This fellow handed Marsh a small Walther pistol and sheepishly mentioned that he had shot the unruly buggers. The day kept getting crazier.
The damned statue was still there, missing a few chips and pieces but irritatingly insulting everyone by defying all efforts to pull it down. It was time for the Marines to get involved.
Captain Bryan Lewis, the CO of Bravo Tanks, came over to me, and we pounded each other on the back, spreading the giddiness of the moment. Three weeks ago, I had expressed some doubts about Lewis, but his combat actions and steady leadership had changed my mind so much that now I thought he could probably walk on water. He told me the statue was about to come down, not by muscle power but through the brawn of a massive M88 tank recovery vehicle called a “Hercules.” The irony was enough to make us giggle: A strong machine named Hercules, for the son of Zeus, was going to rip down the statue of the deposed ruler in Baghdad, the home of another ancient civilization. History could be made of worse stuff