Skeptic
11th November 2004, 21:56
Dear Comrades, this article made my day. --Skeptic
It's slow going for marines on an urban battlefield
By Dexter Filkins The New York Times Wednesday, November 10, 2004
FALLUJA, Iraq The two marines were pinned down on a roof, pressing themselves against a low, crumbling wall as insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at them from a building near the middle of town.
.
Hours before, they had clambered over a railroad embankment - a berm, to the engineering-minded soldier - and started their advance into this rebel-held city.
.
Commanders called in artillery fire on the building from which the grenades were emerging, their tails spitting and glowing like sparklers across the black sky. But the artillery only flattened the building next door to the one occupied by the insurgents.
.
"This is crazy," one of the marines said.
.
"Yeah," his buddy said, "and we've only taken one house."
.
This is urban warfare, where the technological advantages of the U.S. military can be nullified, at least for a few terrifying hours, by a few determined fighters in a warehouse or an abandoned home.
.
On this night, the insurgents fired off brilliant red and blue flares, blinding the Americans' sensitive night-vision equipment, and slipped quickly from house to house in hopes of confusing the artillery spotters.
.
For hours, they succeeded, pinning down perhaps 150 marines led by Captain Read Omohundro, a strapping graduate of Texas A&M who has a habit of walking around upright during bursts of mortar and grenade fire while everyone else is hugging an outcropping of concrete.
.
Even Omohundro concedes that this is nothing like a fight in the open desert, where the Americans always win - and quickly.
.
"The challenge is that the battlefield is three-dimensional," Omohundro said. "Not only do you have to look in front of you and behind you, but also above you and below you - even subterranean," he said.
.
This night would become a textbook illustration of those complexities. Omohundro's unit started rolling toward the berm in armored personnel carriers about 7 p.m. from an encampment about two kilometers, or one mile, north. He was supposed to meet another outfit there, but it had gotten lost.
.
Finally he found it, and his men started their bit of the invasion by firing a 200-meter-long cord containing nearly a ton of explosives southward from the berm, toward central Falluja.
.
The members of the two units worried that their way into the city had been mined. But when the elongated charge exploded, it also set off any mines in a narrow path around it.
.
That tactic worked, but when the marines climbed the berm in pitch blackness and went over, they discovered uneven, rocky ground with rusty junk littering the way - a typical railroad district on the edge of town. They worked their way toward their first objectives - a small traffic circle and, beyond that, the first buildings of the city.
.
But the marines were being shelled even before they went over the berm. Sporadically, the area now exploded with gunfire, rocket-propelled grenade rounds and mortar shells. The advance bogged down as spotters tried to locate pockets of insurgents and wipe them out with the big guns.
.
For a time, this frightening urban battlefield became a pulsing cacophony of strange and deadly sounds. The mosques in the city broadcast calls to jihad through their speakers. F-18s fired 3,000 rounds a minute in bursts that sounded oddly like burps. AC-130 gunships droned overhead, their big cannons going thunk, thunk as they found targets.
.
Perhaps strangest of all, the American troops brought in their own "psy-ops" trucks - for psychological operations - and blared sounds that created a nightmarish duet with the mosques: old AC-DC songs, something that sounded like a sonar ping, the cavalry charge.
.
Omohundro did not like sitting still in this theater of doom, and for good reason. "My biggest fear is staying in the same place for too long," he said. "Then they'll pinpoint us and start firing."
.
Eventually the artillery found the house that had been spitting the grenades and flattened that one, too. An AC-130 passed overhead but decided that the threat had been annihilated, along with the building.
.
Then the shooting started again, from some other window among the cracked streets and twisted alleyways of Falluja.
It's slow going for marines on an urban battlefield
By Dexter Filkins The New York Times Wednesday, November 10, 2004
FALLUJA, Iraq The two marines were pinned down on a roof, pressing themselves against a low, crumbling wall as insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at them from a building near the middle of town.
.
Hours before, they had clambered over a railroad embankment - a berm, to the engineering-minded soldier - and started their advance into this rebel-held city.
.
Commanders called in artillery fire on the building from which the grenades were emerging, their tails spitting and glowing like sparklers across the black sky. But the artillery only flattened the building next door to the one occupied by the insurgents.
.
"This is crazy," one of the marines said.
.
"Yeah," his buddy said, "and we've only taken one house."
.
This is urban warfare, where the technological advantages of the U.S. military can be nullified, at least for a few terrifying hours, by a few determined fighters in a warehouse or an abandoned home.
.
On this night, the insurgents fired off brilliant red and blue flares, blinding the Americans' sensitive night-vision equipment, and slipped quickly from house to house in hopes of confusing the artillery spotters.
.
For hours, they succeeded, pinning down perhaps 150 marines led by Captain Read Omohundro, a strapping graduate of Texas A&M who has a habit of walking around upright during bursts of mortar and grenade fire while everyone else is hugging an outcropping of concrete.
.
Even Omohundro concedes that this is nothing like a fight in the open desert, where the Americans always win - and quickly.
.
"The challenge is that the battlefield is three-dimensional," Omohundro said. "Not only do you have to look in front of you and behind you, but also above you and below you - even subterranean," he said.
.
This night would become a textbook illustration of those complexities. Omohundro's unit started rolling toward the berm in armored personnel carriers about 7 p.m. from an encampment about two kilometers, or one mile, north. He was supposed to meet another outfit there, but it had gotten lost.
.
Finally he found it, and his men started their bit of the invasion by firing a 200-meter-long cord containing nearly a ton of explosives southward from the berm, toward central Falluja.
.
The members of the two units worried that their way into the city had been mined. But when the elongated charge exploded, it also set off any mines in a narrow path around it.
.
That tactic worked, but when the marines climbed the berm in pitch blackness and went over, they discovered uneven, rocky ground with rusty junk littering the way - a typical railroad district on the edge of town. They worked their way toward their first objectives - a small traffic circle and, beyond that, the first buildings of the city.
.
But the marines were being shelled even before they went over the berm. Sporadically, the area now exploded with gunfire, rocket-propelled grenade rounds and mortar shells. The advance bogged down as spotters tried to locate pockets of insurgents and wipe them out with the big guns.
.
For a time, this frightening urban battlefield became a pulsing cacophony of strange and deadly sounds. The mosques in the city broadcast calls to jihad through their speakers. F-18s fired 3,000 rounds a minute in bursts that sounded oddly like burps. AC-130 gunships droned overhead, their big cannons going thunk, thunk as they found targets.
.
Perhaps strangest of all, the American troops brought in their own "psy-ops" trucks - for psychological operations - and blared sounds that created a nightmarish duet with the mosques: old AC-DC songs, something that sounded like a sonar ping, the cavalry charge.
.
Omohundro did not like sitting still in this theater of doom, and for good reason. "My biggest fear is staying in the same place for too long," he said. "Then they'll pinpoint us and start firing."
.
Eventually the artillery found the house that had been spitting the grenades and flattened that one, too. An AC-130 passed overhead but decided that the threat had been annihilated, along with the building.
.
Then the shooting started again, from some other window among the cracked streets and twisted alleyways of Falluja.