Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [32]
The sights and sounds of impending battle are incredible. Fire flashed from the bombs and rockets, radios buzzed, the sky grew thick with helicopters and planes, and machines clanked around in the darkness. Everything seemed to be happening at once. Engineers operating huge plows tore holes in the sand berms, and thousands of Marines, armed to the teeth, began to move.
If wars were always this much fun, we could sell tickets, like to football games, and I would be the richest man in the world.
8
First Kills
There’s nothing like a good war to get your adrenaline pumping, and giant butterflies were bumping around in my stomach. Like tens of thousands of other men approaching battle that day, I was scared, but having been in combat before, I knew this was only normal. Stepping into the unknown makes everyone nervous. The butterflies were nothing but pregame jitters and could be controlled. I was very aware, however, that just because someone has done this kind of thing a thousand times before does not mean you are going to get it right this time. The past does not matter in this situation, only the present.
Before dawn on March 20, 2003, American ground forces finally went charging into Iraq. To the west of us, the Army’s massive 3rd Infantry Division swept forward in long snakelike convoys plunging into the desert in what would become a huge left hook toward Baghdad. The Marines would take the eastern route through Basra and fight through the cities located along the two major highways that led north to the capital. The highly mobile 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the 173rd Airborne Regiment were pouring forward in their helicopters, and the British armor was on the move. Air power was plastering targets throughout the country, and Special Forces teams were already at work on specific targets. From a standing start, we all gladly joined the attack, although we had hundreds of miles to go, against unknown opposition and the ever-present threat of an attack by chemical or biological weapons. There was no hesitation.
Our own big Abrams tanks thundered through the breach into Iraq at 5:45 A.M. What had all the makings of a cavalry charge turned quickly into a massive traffic jam.
The original plan for our entry had been for just the 1st Tank Battalion to go through this particular breach while our unit went through a different one. But the reports of the bulked-up Medina Division being in the area forced the planners to redraw their maps overnight, and they chose to send us both through the same hole in the sand walls. Instead of spreading over a front of three miles, we would hit with a clenched fist of immense firepower that would match any opposing Iraqi armored force.
In the revised plan, 1st Tanks still led the way, but then the heavy combat power of armor and infantry belonging to our battalion would follow right after them. The support train of 1st Tanks would be next in line, and our own support train would then enter Iraq. It was a complex battlefield attack choreography in which hundreds of vehicles and thousands of men would weave into one continuous braid.
It took only a few minutes for things to get snarled. Before we could fight this war, we first had to get on the other side of the border, and as the sun rose, its bright redness dimmed to orange by a hanging, shifting curtain of dust kicked up by our advancing vehicles, the single breach grew busier than a bridal-gown sale day in Filene’s Basement back in Boston.
The front echelon of heavy armor made it through without any problem, but then their support trucks ignored the plan, broke into the line one by one, and became tangled within our advancing armor and infantry. Soon everyone was madly dashing simultaneously for the breach. But there was only so much room, and the various hard-charging elements slowed