Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [77]
The Force Recon boys can do wonders, but they can’t build bridges alone in the dark. They investigated every small road and muddy cow path leading down to the river and kept reporting back that no suitable crossings were available, except for the one place that was right in front of us.
Headquarters types are nocturnal creatures who are not allowed to sleep at night, because they stay up reading tea leaves, preparing orders, and drafting plans for the following day. While the rest of us either loafed within the bermed complex of buildings or stretched out on the field, the planners filtered through the alternatives until, by default, and to the utter delight of Lieutenant Colonel Bryan P. McCoy, the primary assault on the Diyala fell to his Marines. The Bull got the job.
Straight ahead on the road that we currently straddled was the bridge, two parallel spans across the river, about 150 yards wide. There was a slim two-lane span for pedestrian traffic, and the main bridge was a four-lane highway. Far below swirled the strong currents of the Diyala.
Worse, the bridge was located in the middle of an urban area. That meant a house-to-house fight would be needed just to reach it on our side of the river; then even more urban fighting awaited us on the far side. But if we could take it, we would be only nine miles from downtown Baghdad.
The captured Iraqi colonel had warned us that Saddam’s troops had been ordered to make a stand at this bridge. Nutty fedayeen and militiamen defended the town on this side of the river, and regular troops were well dug into positions on the far side, all with orders to fight to the death. The enemy commanders could read maps, too; well aware of the vital importance of the river crossing, they laced it with explosives. They planned to blow it up the moment they saw the first American approaching.
Of course, all of this is very plain in hindsight, but at the time, I was blind as a bat and innocent as a lamb with regard to what tomorrow might bring. Nine times out often, the Tac, or tactical headquarters, would have been located with the Main, and I would have known what was going on. But with the discovery of the sensitive site, the Tac had stayed within the berms, and I was back at the Main, totally out of touch as the planners toiled through the vampire hours. At least four plans were debated about how to go get that bridge, and although I was oblivious to them all, I was confident that I would be in the thick of it. But when I asked Officer Bob about it, he told me there would be no attack at all tomorrow.
So we slid into relax mode and caught some shut-eye, lulled by the distant bumping of our long-range artillery guns lobbing shells at the defenders of the Diyala Bridge. Nothing going on but a war.
The next day, Sunday, April 6, began in an unhurried manner back where we were, with no sense of pending combat, although a lot of Marines and machines were moving about as the battalion lined up on the road, with the Abrams tanks up front. It is natural to have your stomach in a scramble of nerves before a fight, but this was a normal, piece-of-cake, let’s-get-our-shit-together kind of morning. Our combat power was strung out in a line long enough to cover the length of about eight football fields, and from our place at the rear, we couldn’t even see the front. I called Officer Bob again and was once again firmly told that the senior officers were getting together but there would be no attack. Specifically, I was to stay with the Main.
The sun jumped into the morning sky and was already burning bright with a soaring temperature that had us sweating in our protective suits; MOPP meant HOT. I found a chunk of shade on a sidewalk and sat with my back against my Humvee. Wait. Sweat.