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By Root 1051 0

the road to let some of our armor rumble by, had found an Iraqi T-55 tank dug into the sand, with only the turret, its big cannon, and a machine gun showing above ground. The colonel decided to attack it. With his radio operator, he checked out the surrounding trenches, then climbed aboard the tank and yanked on the turret hatches, which were locked from the inside. Frustrated, they ran back to their armored Humvee and opened up with their rifles and machine gun. The bullets just bounced off the steel hide of the monster, so McCoy ran back to the tank again and flung a fragmentation grenade at it, then ran back to cover again. Finally, he got out of the way, and one of our Abrams tanks popped a high-explosive round into the Iraqi tank with a volcanic detonation.

It was a stupid thing for a commanding officer to do, but now I know that he had another purpose in mind rather than killing a piece of Iraqi armor that may or may not have had a crew inside. With that little adventure, McCoy solidified his credentials within the battalion as Darkside Six, the tank-eating commander, our own Darth Vader, and as word spread, his Marines puffed up with pride at the Old Man’s audacity.

I was pissed. This guy was the heart of the baddest Marine battalion on the planet, and he had placed himself at great risk. For what? I was steaming, and I sat there on his Humvee and bitched at him that he was paid to lead and to think, not to go throwing grenades. What if he had been smoke-checked by some hajji soldier?

He just laughed, unapologetic. I stormed away from him, trailed by his booming laugh. In the middle of a freakin’ war, was I supposed to be having some kind of weird competition with Darkside Six?

God, we were tired, but we plunged into hours of getting the battalion refueled and rearmed, and what normally was a totally routine job became complicated and dangerous at almost every step. Men who had been up for at least forty-eight hours were moving like zombies as they handled enough gasoline, ammunition, and explosives to destroy us all. We could do it because our totally realistic training had drummed the pure routine of these very jobs deep into our minds and muscles.

Then we were told to push ahead. Rest would come as soon as we reached our next dispersal area. Casey and I again were to lead the way with the advance quartering party, so we herded our vehicles together in a tight group, and instead of sleeping, we hit the road at 2:30 on Sunday morning, March 23. As we pulled away from Basra, bright flares of artificial light danced in the darkness over the city, and streaks of tracer fire arced into the smoky sky.

The roadside was littered with discarded Iraqi uniforms and weapons thrown away as the enemy soldiers vanished back into the city to become instant civilians. We passed the burned-out hulks of armored vehicles, but there was no gruesome carpet of maimed and shredded bodies. As our British friends noted, it was not an untidy battlefield. The fight had been a good sparring session to get our feet wet, but this was not the battle royal we were expecting.

That fight would fall to the British, and it would be another two weeks before they could enter the city, where many of the same Iraqi soldiers who had vanished at our approach had reappeared to fight alongside Saddam loyalists and fanatical fedayeen guerrillas. Vice President Dick Cheney had pledged, “We will be welcomed as liberators,” but Basra remained an untamed hornets’ nest, with the million-plus residents of the city hiding in their homes, waiting to see how it all turned out. Twelve years earlier, after Operation Desert Storm in 1991, they had responded to a call for revolt by President George H. W. Bush, only to have Saddam crush their rebellion with his usual cruel tactics and put Chemical Ali in charge. This time, the citizens were understandably wary.

10

Midnight Ride

Everyone was familiar with the visions of Iraqi soldiers surrendering en masse during Operation Desert Storm, but that was not happening this time. We had a real shooting war on