Continuing from Part 1…
All phases of this mission were planned and approved. The Insert, Infiltration, Actions on, Exfiltration and the Extraction. It was supposed to be a standard mission but in an extremely dangerous area. Our mission was to overwatch an Iraqi Police Station so that they could recruit police officers for that area. Easy days…we get in, watch for a bit, and get out. We had to insert via boats from the Euphrates River. The boat unit we used on the insert were Marines. I cannot remember the name of their actual unit, but I do remember DSU as their acronym. We named them, Don’t Show Up, DSU… you will see why in a minute.
It was a cold night, a clear night sky with zero greenhouse effect. The cold was piercing. I remember very distinctly that the boats had a metal deck. That metal deck or floor literally would suck all the heat out of your feet. It would make them sting in a way that was near-torture. I was on the first boat out of three. My Officer-in-Charge, Paul Craig, was with us on this mission, on the second boat, and Brad was on the third boat. Paul would always seem to catch the worst missions when he would visit us from Headquarters (HQ). I felt so bad for him, but I would not have wanted to spend those shitty missions with anyone else than my boys; the fact that he was always there when it was bad was a blessing.
Everything was quiet. You could hear whispers in your earpiece from the SEAL Officer in Charge (OIC) giving updates randomly. I would get that feeling of being in an ancient land again. I loved that feeling. As we worked up the river, I thought to myself of how many other warriors fought and died here over the centuries. Then I would look around my boat through my night vision, seeing all these great men, great warriors that I felt honored to be next to. In fact, I would get a feeling of unworthiness from time to time. It was a calming yet extremely motivating feeling, a feeling of duty, honor, and respect.
As my boat started to work its way to the riverbank insert point, I remember my feet stinging so bad! I could not wait to get off it and step on some warmer ground. The bow door swung down, and we all started to insert.
“Fuck! Pull up man, it’s knee-deep water!” one of the point men whispered on comms.
We obviously could not pull up at that moment because we were all committed to disembarking the boat. Dammit, I thought, well, so much for the warm ground. Once I was on shore and working toward my security position, all the pain I felt left my body. This was common. I was numb, ready to get to work; it’s “game on,” time to lock it up and focus…. It was a quiet perturbed feeling, a kind of calm before the storm feeling, when suddenly, all hell breaks loose! I sprinted to a dirt mound in front of me; I can still feel the thuds resonating through the dirt mound I was leaning against, thuds from rounds impacting. Big rounds!
THUD! THUD! THUD!... THUD! THUD! THUD!...
I was thinking that any time, those rounds are going to chew through this dirt mound. I could see the gunners on all three boats unleashing hell back towards the incoming fire. I also saw a few sparks from the rounds that impacted the boats. I felt even worse now because Paul and Brad were in boats two and three still. Well, here we go, I thought. It is on again. It was the same ol’ feeling that I embraced many times already as an EOD Technician, the fact that I could die. I remember not feeling fear of death; rather, I feared the way I would die. The men I was with elevated me. They made me think of them over myself. I wanted to die in a blaze of glory for my brothers. That is how your brothers made you feel. I wanted to die for them, not with them. What a great lesson to teach an EOD Technician! I mean that wholeheartedly and I’m thankful every day for that lesson I learned from them.
Suddenly, as quickly as it started, it stopped. Come to find out: it was an Army Bradley unit firing at us from an outpost northeast of us.
“My bad,” someone from the Army unit said on comms.
Oh well. Go figure. At least no one died or got wounded. Charlie Mike (“Continue Mission”). After everyone cleaned their pants (or maybe just me cleaning mine), we pushed out towards our objective. Another day at the office. We had to patrol through a patch of farmland before we got to the road. The road was bad, potholes everywhere from IED attacks. Me, Brad, and the Lt. (Paul Craig) had to check all the potholes in our path. The insurgents would reuse those potholes and place other IEDs in them. They were clear, thank God. As we started to patrol towards residential houses, I felt a little better that we were not going to suddenly detonate.
Once we took our objectives, it was business as usual. The snipers set up; the Command element set up. The Iraqi police station started their recruiting process. At this point it was a waiting and watch game. The snipers I was with were the most professional shooters I’ve ever supported. They would analyze the area of operation; they would study the behavior of the locals to distinguish what was the “norm” and what wasn’t. They would look through their scopes for hours at a time. I was extremely impressed by them and learned a lot that I applied to my own skills as an EOD Technician.
My job on objectives was always ongoing. I would check for IEDs or IED components on each objective. I also would interview the family to gather as much intelligence as I could relating to the explosive or IED threat. I would search courtyards, roofs, structures, vehicles, and anything I thought needed to be searched. On rare occasions I would help the snipers spot potential IEDs or any explosive weapon such as hand and rifle grenades, projectiles, RPGs or sometimes IEDs and IED components. They are exceptionally good observers and extremely detail orientated. Rarely did they ask me to identify a potential explosive threat.
On that mission, one of the snipers was observing a guy sliding a box along the outer perimeter wall of the building we occupied. He was using dead space which can be an indicator of hostility. Dead space is any space someone can hide, that from your angle of view, you cannot see. The sniper was observing him for approximately four hours maybe longer. He would not take the shot until he could positively identify a weapon. He could see through cracks and holes in the wall but was not sure what was in the wooden boxes. It was impressive to see their discipline on the battlefield. He could have easily shot that guy, and no one would have said anything. They are true professionals.
He asked me to look and see if I could identify anything in the box he was sliding along the wall. I got my binoculars out and started to study the wall and area he was at. Through the cracks and holes in the wall I was able to observe a good spot. Once the box slid past the spot my binoculars were focused on, I noticed small tubular items in the box. They were lime green with white plastic fins at the base of the ones I saw.
“Rifle grenades dude, Yugoslavian,” I said. “I see HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) and fragmentation rifle grenades,” I told the sniper.
I knew that is what they were because I have seen them before and disposed of thousands of them in 2003 on my first Iraq deployment. Our battle rhythm went on, and that guy did not see dinner that night. It always sucks taking another human beings’ life or even seeing one being taken. There is nothing glorious about it. We all did what needed to be done in the most professional and humane way possible, but without risking the lives of each other first and foremost. A .50 caliber sniper rifle, when shot in an enclosed space, and you’re not expecting it, sounds like a mortar or rifle grenade impacting the room you’re in, just to let you know. There is nothing like the instant jolt of adrenaline, especially when it’s not utilized.
Other than that incident, and the box of rifle grenades we disposed of (blew up) on the way out, and my OIC Paul Craig getting smoked out of the second story room he was in (the Iraqi soldiers decided to build a campfire indoors on the first floor of his building), the mission went well. At nightfall we moved out to our extraction via our exfiltration route. Our plan was: one of us was going to blow up the box of rifle grenades on the way out. Easy days. Our Lead Petty Officer Shane Snow took the job. The plan went flawlessly, and we patrolled out. Another day at the office.
As we arrived at our extraction point on the edge of the river, I could not help feeling uneasy and suspicious. Something was not right. Where are the boats?? The DSU did not show up, hence the nickname we gave them (DSU, Don’t Show Up…). In their defense, it was not because they did not want to come or just didn’t care; they literally couldn’t come. Due to combat operations that were being conducted upriver (specifically the Haditha Dam Lake area), the dam was closed, which affected the water levels in the area we were operating in.
The DSU could not make it up certain parts of the river because it was too shallow. We found out later they did try. Our nickname for them was just our way to vent our frustration at the current shitty situation we were in. At this point we were stuck. There were no air assets that will fly in this area, no boats able to reach us; it was time to initiate our tertiary option, patrolling to the closest Forward Operating Base (FOB) to hitch a ride back to Camp Ramadi. I remember one of the OICs of my platoon whispering in my ear, “This is some frogman shit, brother!!” Totally motivated me!
The area we were in was rural, farm patches, livestock, Biblical looking landscape.
“Eight kilometers to the next FOB,” says a calm voice on comms.
My heart dropped. I realized we were going into an area that I did not study. I had no idea what the activity was, how active it was, nothing except for what I could see visually. I knew there were IEDs, obviously, but we were going in blind to an area that I did not analyze. Not a good feeling, not good at all.
Determining what type of IEDs you encounter will determine how you move around it and how your procedure is performed. I’m not going to talk about the specific procedures we do. I will talk about how we maneuvered safely around them and how the types of IEDs can determine specific courses of action. I can do this without going into great procedural detail. For example, there are three basic types of IEDs. The first type is called a timed IED. The IED will detonate either at a specific time or have a timer counting down. Either way, for a timed IED your procedures must be swift, and your tactical tasks must be quick as well.
The second type of IED is what’s called a command detonated IED. This can be accomplished either by a hard wire or what we call a “command wire” or a remote-controlled device (“R/C”). The command wire is basically a wire that leads to the IED from a firing point. Sometimes these wires can be as far away as a few kilometers. For remote controlled or R/C, the insurgents used devices like a long-range cordless telephone, personal mobile radios, cell phones, and the base stations of the long-range cordless telephones. With command initiated IEDs there is one thing we kept in mind: they are watching. Waiting for you to get into their kill zone. Waiting for you so they can blow you into little pieces, or just blow your legs off. With command initiated IEDs it was important that we dominated our battle space. Clear the field as far away from the IED as tactically possible. That way, if it is R/C, the signal is weaker the further back we can get the triggerman. If it’s a command wire, eventually we will run into the triggerman or push him back away from his firing position.
The third type of IED is called victim-operated. This means the IED is initiated by the victim using pressure plates, tilt switches, anti-open switches such as micro switches or read switches, pretty much any type of component that can fire an IED that, if you disturb the IED, will detonate it. The obvious way we dealt with these types was to not disturb the IED: use the same path into the target for the path out of the target. Safe in, safe out.
These IED trigger types can also be used in combination. They would use a timer for safe separation, then use command to fire the IED. Or they would use command to arm the IED and the device would fire at a specific time. There were almost endless combinations that any bomber could put together. Therefore, it was extremely important to analyze the areas we operated in. Depending on the type of IED, how the IED was concealed and placed, what type of main charge they used, directly affected tactical and EOD procedural actions.
A major learning point for me after this mission was to expand my IED search and analysis to neighboring areas. We spent most of the night patrolling through the rural Biblical landscape. I remember asking the guy in front of me how far we had gone. By the second time I asked I could feel that he did not want to answer that one again. You feel like you have gone five miles but really, it was only a quarter mile. We tried our best to stay off roads and areas where IED attacks were more likely.
I am loving it man. This is like Tom Clancy stuff...so much fun to read!
Terrific Article, you’re a true hero grateful we have young Alpha Makes like you to keep us safe sir.