Battle of Husaybah Prologue. Douglas Halepaska and Janar Wasito

Transcription

1 Battle of Husaybah Prologue Douglas Halepaska and Janar Wasito 8 April Husaybah, Iraq. Lance Corporal Christopher Wasser, USMC, died with a bag of soccer balls on his back. Two of his fellow Marines, [ ]Rumley and [ ] Vega, would be so badly wounded in the same IED blast that they would be permanently disabled. Wasser was Lima 3/7 s first KIA during Operation Iraqi Freedom 2, though other Marines attached to Lima had died earlier. He was walking across a large graveyard that would become a notorious danger area. His squad of 13 Marines was walking East as part of a presence patrol that was being conducted by the entire platoon of 42 Marines. Another squad, also moving East along Market Street had already hit a IED probably triggered by an anonymous insurgent who watched the Marines walk past him in a crowd of Iraqis. The platoon commander, 2 nd Lt Bradley Watson and [rank] Rigole had been hit in that blast only 15 minutes earlier. Wasser and his fellow Marines had been handing out the soccer balls as goodwill gestures to the Iraqi kids, but after the platoon took contact, they slung the balls over their backs and continued their movement. An insurgent watched Christopher Wasser walk into the open area where a 155 mm artillery shell had been rigged with a remote detonation device probably triggered by a cell phone and initiated the blast. Wasser suffered a sucking chest wound and an injury to his carotid artery. The Marines around him wanted revenge wanted to start shooting the Iraqis who were watching the scene. The Iraqis had to have known about the many IEDs which lay in the path of the Marines who were advancing down the streets to the north and south of Market Street. The Marines wanted blood. But the junior leaders the Sergeants and Corporals who held the units together exercised discipline and restraint in following the rules of engagement. The enemy intent was clear enough separate American hard power (raw military force, GDP) from soft power (economic development, the attractiveness of American history and culture). The soccer balls were probably donated by American not for profit organizations like Spirit of America in an effort to build goodwill with the local Iraqi citizens. In the Small War going on in Al Anbar Province since the successful invasion of Iraq in 2003, these gestures of American generosity were to be targeted and destroyed. Any Iraqis who accepted such items from the Americans were to be targeted for reprisal. The Commanding General of the 1 st Marine Division would personally request sewing machines from Spirit of America. When the sewing machines were put into a Women s Center in Ramadi, the facility was blown up only days later by the insurgents. Christopher Wasser, carrying a rifle and a bag of soccer balls, was the walking embodiment of American hard power and soft power and thus he became a man marked for death by the insurgents. We did not come here to fight, said Major General James Mattis, USMC, the Commanding General of the 1 st Marine Division, in an interview given during the first, abortive operation in Fallujah in April [source: John Kifner, The Marines Enter Falluja, With Peace Their Aim NYT May 11, 2004, p. A12] The

2 training of the First Marine Division for Operation Iraqi Freedom 2 reflected this expectation. The Division expected a more permissive environment, an environment in which the Marines would be able to conduct humanitarian operations designed to win the hearts and minds of the population. The goal was to work ourselves out of a job [Col, Chief of Staff] by training the Iraqi police to effectively control their own population, particularly ahead of the return of Iraqi sovereignty scheduled for the Summer of An article in the San Diego Union Tribune suggested that the Marines going back to Iraq would wear their green digital camouflage uniforms to clearly identify themselves as Marines because they had established a relatively peaceful working rapport with the population in the Shiite south in the months following The March Up to Baghdad in March and April Mattis gave interviews to The News Hour, among others, detailing the success of his Marines in using wave tactics waving at the population removing their intimidating Oakely sunglasses, and offering cold water to the population. The Marines training at the so-called Stability and Support Operations (SASO) training, and even their load of weapons and such necessary items as hand grenades reflected the expectation that they were going into a benign environment. The insurgents read the Marines own press clippings, and, to paraphrase Sun Tzu, attacked the Marines strategy from the outset with a deliberate Information Operations campaign. Of course, the insurgents didn t call it an Information Operations or IO campaign. But in retrospect, the enemy actions added up to a coordinated campaign plan comparable to the IO Plan that the 1 st Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) was executing. The grisly images of the 4 American contractors strung up from bridges in Fallujah were part of this response, designed to provoke American overreaction, and the attendant separation of the Iraqi population from the Americans that this would cause. In the days and weeks that followed April 8, 2005, the spill over from the flashpoint in Fallujah would affect the entire Al Anbar Province including Husaybah, where Lima 3/7 (Reinforced) was expected to conduct stability operations in a town of 120,000 with about 450 Marines. Under the command of a widely respected Commanding Officer, Captain Rick Gannon, Lima Company adjusted the plan under the most unforgiving circumstances. On April 14, a coordinated set of IED attacks accompanied by small arms fire for the first time signaled an enemy that was building towards a culminating attack on Camp Husaybah. A few days followed what Dominique Neal would call the calm before the storm. Then, on April 17, Broadsword the Force Recon unit attached to Lima 3/7 killed 4 insurgents equipped with mortars crossing Market Street with accurate sniper fire. This kicked off a day long battle in which two of Lima Company s four organic platoons, as well as several of their attached units such as CAAT (Combined Anti Armor Team) were committed to relieve Broadsword. Captain Gannon lead from the front and was killed probably when he went into a house that the insurgents had fortified as a strong point. Capt Gannon was moving from one of his lead units to the house because one of Lima s platoon commanders was actually on the top floor of the house, having moved into the position from rooftop to rooftop. Four other Lima Marines died that day along with their company commander all from the same platoon. By the end of the day, the

3 entire Battalion, under the coordination of the Battalion Operations Officer, Major Schleffler [sp?] conducted a sweep from the East End of Husaybah to the West End of the town. The enemy intent was to take Camp Gannon. The enemy had massed in Husaybah, and probably on the other side of the border. The house where Captain Gannon and 3 other Lima Marines had died was a heavily fortified structure that probably was meant as a fall back position. By proactively triggering the enemy actions ahead of their timetable, Broadsword had tipped the initiative back towards the Marines. By deploying Lima 4 (Weapons Platoon) and Lima 3 into the city along with CAAT Platoon, Lima Company had regained the initiative at the cost of 5 Marines, including the Company Commander. In Camp Husaybah, Major Schreffler paused a moment when he heard confirmation that Rick Gannon was dead Schreffler had commanded Lima Company before Gannon, and was Godfather to Gannon s children and then he continued to fight the battle. Likewise, Dominique Neal, the second in command of the company, shocked at the death of his friend, first confirmed that Gannon was a routine KIA casualty, said over the command net, Lima 5 is now Lima 6. The two Lima Platoons, and another rifle platoon from Kilo Company still in the Camp Husaybah were anxious to get into the fight. 1 st Lt Neal organized a two platoon attack against a known insurgent strong point in the South West corner of the city, while he ordered another platoon to secure the base. The Lima Marines had come to Iraq for OIF 2 heavy on soccer balls, and short on hand grenades, with none of the company sized assault training that a Marine Rifle Company usually conducts during a Combined Arms Exercise (CAX). Captain Gannon was anxious about the situation as it unfolded throughout March and April. By April, it was clear to the 1 st Marine Division that their expectations for OIF2 were not going to be met. Where the Marines expected to conduct humanitarian operations, they were now conducting a coordinated, Battalion sized sweep through a city of 120,000. On April 17, with intelligence, as well as plain sight confirming that the enemy was acting in a coordinated fashion, the rules of engagement were changed. Military age men were to be shot as the Marines swept through the city. Insurgents who were spinning the Marines rules of engagement against them by running from one weapons cache to other hidden inside houses now were fair game. A cordon set around the city killed dozens of insurgents who fled from the sweep from East to West. On the next day, the Battalion swept from West to East back through Husaybah. The Iraqis are like an abused child, observed one Lima Platoon commander who had been a CNN producer before joining the Corps after They will pledge their allegiance to whichever side is stronger, whichever side they think will stick around the longest. Following the sweeps through Husaybah on April 17 and 18, the population became more cooperative to the Marines, IED attacks, as well as all types of attacks, went down. In contrast to the assumption that humanitarian operations would win the hearts and minds of the population, the Marines found that taking a hard line resulted in greater cooperation from the population. In Fallujah, a city of 280,000 under media scrutiny, the Marines were first ordered to assault the city, then ordered to hold in place for political reasons, then ordered to withdraw to allow the Fallujah Brigade to take over the city with

4 disasterous results, which were only overturned by the Marines final assault in November, By contrast, in Husaybah, a city of 120,000 on the Syrian-Iraqi border far away from most media coverage, the Marines mainly the 450 Marines of Lima 3/7 (reinforced) shifted from their original gameplan of humanitarian operations to a 4 day, all out, East-West, then West-East sweep through the town. In Fallujah, the half measure of the Fallujah Brigade resulted in a multi month period in which Zarqawi operated freely within Fallujah in order to export terrorist operations throughout the Al Anbar Province. In Husaybah, perhaps because of its more remote location, the 4 day Battle of Husaybah centered around 17 April 2004, set the stage for greater Marine control over the town, albeit with continuous threats from IEDs and ambushes. In Part I, this book outlines a few illustrative engagements that Lima Company (Rein) went through April 8, April 14, April 17, and a Covert OP in June. Mainly, the narrative follows one platoon 3d Platoon or Lima 3, commanded by 2 nd Lt Bradley Watson, as well as several of his key NCOs or Non Commissioned Officers. Well spoken, intelligent, and incisive Bradley Watson left CNN to join the Corps because of Some of the Lima Staff Non Commissioned Officers the veteran enlisted men who are the backbone of the Corps did not think highly of Watson as a platoon commander. His Commanding Officer, Captain Neal, rated him near the bottom relative to his peers. Nonetheless, Brad Watson earned two Purple Hearts, returned to lead his Marines despite being MEDEVACED, took the initiative in pushing his Marines out into the middle of the fight on April 17, and lead a successful covert OP which surprised an insurgent mortar position near the end of the deployment in June. The success of this last platoon level operation points the way forward for further Covert OP operations which were conducted by Baker 1/7 Marines, which relieved Lima 3/7 in September, In September, 2005, Brad Watson would return to Iraq as the second in command of the company. Peter Milinkovic or simply Link to most of Lima Marines lead one of Watson s three squads. He grew up as a NCO under the harsh but effective tutelage of Sergeant, and later Staff Sergeant Wilder, who trained Link as part of the Super Squad competition during earlier deployments. During Operation Iraqi Freedom 2, Link adapted to the situation by using innovative tactics which minimized casualties for his Marines. For instance, his Marines used non issue Garmin Rino hand held GPS devices which allowed Marines to send their exact coordinates to each other with a push of a button. Just give me a roger up and a grid that s all I need, Link would say of the two man elements that he broke his 13 Marine squad into. This was the essence of the technique of so-called satellite patrolling, in which a squad of 13 Marines broke down into 2 man elements and moved in less predictable patterns. In so doing, Link s Marines avoided some of the IEDs that would ravage other squads. By the time that Lima 3 conducted the Covert OP at the Mansion in June, Link was having fun again moving covertly at night as part of an entire platoon that would call in a warning of incoming mortars to Camp Gannon even before the projectiles were picked up by the Counter Battery Radar. In Sept 2005, Link, now a Sergeant, would head back to Iraq with Lima Company, now as a Platoon Sergeant, having served as a Squad Leader in OIF2, and as a SAW Gunner/ Fire Team leader in OIF1.

5 Kurt Bellmont was the fire team leader in charge of 4 Marines walking next to Brad Watson when that first IED blew up on Market Street on April 8. One of Bellmont s Marines, [Rank] Rigole, was injured in that blast. On April 14, Bellmont was operating independently because Watson trusted him to make good independent decisions. For his heroism that day, Bellmont was decorated with a Navy Achievement Medal with a V device. On April 17, Bellmont, sick, had stayed in Camp Husaybah while Lima 3 headed into the town to relieve Broadsword. But when 1 st Lt Neal, having assumed command of the Company, headed into town he needed a Radio Operator and Bellmont gladly volunteered. As Neal drifted to the front of the formation as officers usually do in tactical movements, Bellmont and Neal found themselves under fire, reacting by conducting fire and movement to protect themselves, while Neal sought to maintain control over the two platoon attack. Bellmont, too, was out there at the Mansion when the platoon sized Covert OP surprised the enemy mortar team. In Sept 2005, Bellmont would head back to Iraq with Lima, now as a part of a small intel cell of 3 experienced NCOs that worked directly for the Company Commander a role that promised some level of autonomy, and the ability to take advantage of his own common sense and experience. Gunny Vegh was one of the most experienced Staff NCOs in the Company during the OIF2 deployment. When the Company Commander ran into the town with two of his four platoons on April 17, Gunny Vegh went with Captain Gannon. After Lima took a few casualties, Gannon tasked Vegh with setting up a Landing Zone (LZ) for a medevac. It was the last time that Vegh would see Gannon alive. Later that day, Vegh came up on Link s squad, pinned down by a sniper near the Baath Party Headquarters. Rallying the Marines with the statement, Are you afraid to meet Jesus today, Gunny Vegh lead the 13 Marines across 150 meters to the house where the sniper had been firing on the Marines. Just one of those things that Gunnys do, and I ll let the Marines talk about that, were Sandor Vegh s responses when we asked about that incident. There s nothing in my FitRep (Fitness Reports) about my being a logistician, notes Gunny Vegh when recalling his tour with Lima during OIF2. I have a Police Sergeant for that. (A Company Gunnery Sergeant is responsible for the logistics in a 180 Marine Rifle Company.) A school trained scout sniper, Vegh was one of the key leaders that exerted an influence on the Marines far beyond the normal description of the billet that he held. Cumulatively, the experience of Lima Company was reduced to a series of AARs or After Action Reports, which Neal a veteran of the Battalion S-3 before coming over to Lima 3/7 as an XO then CO reduced to a Company level AAR. Like two football teams from neighboring counties in Ireland, Lima 3/7 and Baker 1/7 quarreled as perpetual rivals. Lima Marines thought Baker Marines inexperienced and green as they conducted their relief in place (RIP) in September Baker Marines thought Lima Marines undisciplined and woefully self absorbed by their considerable human losses that was the only explanation for Lima Marines running around Camp Gannon in their PT gear while Baker SNCOs marched their Marines from post to post with Drill Field discipline. Yet, the company staff s of Lima and Baker conducted an effective hand over, to include the AARs, and Baker incorporated many of these hard won

6 lessons learned into their operations. Where Lima Company had some success with Covert OPs, Satellite Patrolling, combined mounted/ dismounted patrolling and other TTPs, Baker Company fully employed these techniques in their tour in Husaybah which lasted from September 2004 to March Whereas Lima 3/7 only conducted platoon level live fire training before deploying to Iraq in February 2004, Baker 1/7 conducted a 32 mile march followed by platoon then company level live fire attacks, followed by a full company level live fire assault at the infamous Range 400 as part of the Combined Arms Exercise (CAX). By the time we got to CAX, the Marines were relieved that all we had to do was a company level attack and no 32 mile hump, observed Baker s company gunnery sergeant. Whereas Lima 3/7 came to Iraq heavy on soccer balls and light on grenades and with expectations that the enemy could exploit, Baker 1/7 came to Iraq with the benefit of having watched the brutal insurgency flare and ebb during the Spring and Summer of Under the command of Captain Andy Nelson, Baker 1/7 aggressively used close air support within the boundaries of the city, and fully developed the TTPs of Covert Ops, Satellite Patrolling, and other techniques. Like Captain Gannon and Captain Neal before him, Captain Nelson ran through the city, rifle in hand, with very little regard for his own safety to coordinate the medevac of one of the Baker Marines who had been shot. I observed Baker 1/7 run through Range 400 on March 31, The images of the 4 mutilated contractors flashed around the world at Internet speed. Col Tucker, the Commanding Officer of 7 th Marines, was also out there at Range 400 in 29 Palms because his Regimental Combat Team had not yet deployed to Iraq. After personally checking the fields of fire of the machine gun positions that would support the company level attack, Col Tucker mentioned the Fallujah incident to LtCol Chris Woodbridge, the Commanding Officer of 1 st Battalion, 7 th Marines with some concern. Meanwhile, Captain Nelson, the CO of Baker 1/7, was making the most of the superb training opportunity that Range 400 represented on that day. The exercise controllers commented that it was one of the best runnings of Range 400 that they had seen. Meanwhile, like the rest of the 1 st Marine Division spread out between Camp Pendleton and 29 Palms in California and various bases and camps throughout Kuwait and Al Anbar Province, Iraq, were working to process the meaning of the actions in Fallujah. The Commanding General of the 1 st Marine Expeditionary Force recognized the enemy intent and sought to avoid the appearance that we were reacting [source, comments after stepping down from 1 MEF]. But political forces would push the Marines into the reaction that the insurgents sought. [Source: No True Glory] Out in Husaybah a backwater, far from Baghdad, and largely ignored by the press Lima Company was going through its own observation-orientationdecision-action (OODA) cycle. Meanwhile, at their base in 29 Palms, the Marines of Baker 1/7 watched intently and prepared for the environment that they would go into. As the Marines prepared for Operation Iraqi Freedom 2, the Corps billed itself as the duty expert in Small Wars because of its institutional history in counterinsurgency warfare. Out at March Air Force Base, Major Dan Schmitt (who had served as the CO of Weapons Company 3/7 during OIF1) and a cadre of instructors from 1 st Marine Division Schools and foreign officers from Australia

7 and England, put together a Stability and Support Operations (SASO) package. This training was built on lane training or discrete tactical scenarios developed in part by 3/7 and 1/7. The Corps was drawing on the heritage of the Small Wars Manual, originally developed between 1915 and 1940 as a compendium of lessons learned in expeditionary operations in Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Many of these techniques were used in Vietnam, notably in the Combined Action Platoon (CAP) program. The SASO Package as it became known would grow and adapt throughout 2004 and 2005, and eventually be relocated to 29 Palms, where it was renamed Mojave Viper and fell under the umbrella of the Tactical Training and Exercise Control Group (TEECG). Retired Gunner Tim Gelinas, who had served in the Corps with distinction from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom, would become the project officer for building a massive non live fire, and live fire MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) training facility at 29 Palms. Out in Quantico, Virginia, the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL), the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, and the Small Wars Center for Excellence would set about revising the Small Wars Manual (1940) to account for changes in technology, culture, and other factors which had occurred in the intervening 65 years. Frank Hoffman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel with a Ph.D. who was perpetually over tasked with doctrinal writing assignments at MCWL would lead the effort in revising the Small Wars Manual for the Corps. Out in the Stumps, and out in Husaybah, though, the young Marine NCOs and junior officers were living this revision in doctrine in real time. In the earlier era of Small Wars from 1915 to 1940, the best junior leaders who emerged from Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic would emerge as the Corps most distinguished leaders in the headline catching, big wars in World War II and Korea that followed (Chesty Puller comes to mind). So too, perhaps, we have entered a new era of Small Wars because of a variety of factors that Frank Hoffman and his colleagues at Quantico, as well as authors like William Lind and Col Thomas Hammes have described. If we are at the outset of a new era of Small Wars, the Marine junior leaders who excel in this most demanding of environments (Lima 3/7 lost 0 KIA in OIF1, and 7 KIA in OIF2) will be the Marines who provide the essential link to the future. In the wake of OIF1, large numbers of Staff NCOs are leaving the Corps, requiring NCOs like Peter Milinkovic to step up and occupy billets above his rank (A Sergeant at the time of this writing, Peter Milinkovic is in the billet of Platoon Sergeant, normally a Staff Sergeant billet). The ability of Marines like Link to innovate and use non standard items like the Garmin Rino is the key to adapting efficiently in an environment like Husaybah, So too, the ability of junior Marine Officers like Bradley Watson who commanded a platoon, supervised the border checkpoint, and supervised the Iraqi Shawani soldiers during OIF2 to adapt to a complex and demanding situation is one of the most critical skills necessary for the defense of the country. This book is divided into 3 parts. Part I covers the deployment of Lima 3/7 in OIF2. Douglas Halepaska and I both served in Lima Company from 1992 to Doing this work was a sort of homecoming. The names had changed, but the personalities and their impacts on the company were recognizable. As in the early 1990s, the Company was driven by several strong personalities at all levels.

8 We do our best to tell the story of that deployment from the point of view of the small unit leaders. We cover a series of key dates and battles, including notably April 17, 2004, which tell the story of a Marine Platoon and Company progressing in the adaptation to a Small Wars environment. Part II covers the deployment of Baker 1/7 during OIF2. Doug and I had also served together in the S-3 (Operations) section of the Battalion and then the Regimental Staff of 3/7 and 7 th Marines in 1994 and Perhaps because of this perspective, perhaps because of the way that Baker 1/7 recorded its own battle history, we organized Part II according to key topics in the lessons that Lima learned and that Baker successfully applied. Our coverage of Baker 1/7 is less subjective and more objective, less personal and more professional. Part III covers the topic of Small Wars doctrine from a broader perspective and seeks to set the revival of interest in Small Wars doctrine in the larger context. Doug and I regularly talked about military history when we served together in Lima Company, and then on the Battalion and Regimental Staff. Now, 10 years later, Doug has his undergraduate degree, and I ve picked up a law degree, and we ve started professional careers, Doug in federal law enforcement, and I in the investment advisory industry. We ve headed back out to the field with 3/7 and 1/7 in order to put their current Small Wars operations into a broader historical context. If history is a guide, we may be at the early stages of a new era of Small Wars comparable to the period of 1915 to 1940 in our Nation s history. Perhaps we will also have Large Wars mixed in wars in which our main global rivals (China comes to mind) seek to support or incite Small Wars which drain the United States of resources in a supporting operation to achieve a larger goal. If this is so, then the national security of the United States depends on our ability to successfully fight Small Wars while simultaneously preserving the ability to mass these distributed small units to fight a big war. 7th Marine Regiment, for example, fought as a Regimental Combat Team (RCT) in the 2003 March Up, but broke down into reinforced companies, like Lima 3/7, to fight the Small War in Al Anbar Province in OIF2 in As in the earlier period of 1915 to 1940, the units and individual Marines who excel in Small Wars will also become the critical players when and if full scale wars emerge, often with little warning. (4585)