This isn’t SASO. We were told there would be SASO.

Doing pre-deployment training back on Camp Pendleton and later at March Air force Base, we were told that we would be conducting a SASO mission. SASO stands for Stability And Support Operations. It is a fancy way of saying that we were going to be using a soft touch to win hearts and minds and help the Iraqi’s rebuild their damaged country. We did know that we were going to Fallujah, and we knew that Fallujah had been a hotbed of activity leading up to our deployment there.

Our briefings on what the 82nd Airborne unit had been doing there included a fair amount of contact they had been having, but pretty limited casualties and a single KIA. When we actually arrived in country and started doing a few ride alongs with them my subconscious was screaming at me that something was wrong. Looking back I think what my brain was trying to tell me was that their unit culture was one that was extremely averse to contact (fighting). Not that I think they were individually scared, it just seemed that the command climate had instilled in them the idea that if a firefight started up they needed to extract as soon as possible, perhaps to keep collateral damage down, I don’t know. The SFC (Sergeant First Class) that I was doing my relief in place with told me that on night counter mortar patrols they tended to have some sort of contact about half the time. The night I went out with them, we didn’t have any contact.

In late March, 2004 I led night counter mortar patrol around our Forward Operating Base (FOB) Camp Baharia. I had 5 Marines in my gun truck, 3 Marines in Sgt Shawn P’s TOW missile truck, and two or three guys from the 81’s platoon who wanted to get outside the wire on a patrol. Cpl Thomas H had his two gun trucks with a total of 8 more Marines on the same mission, but I had sent them to patrol an area to the North and East of my objective. Here is where the patrol areas were:

I was taking my patrol to the red circle, a Canal Bridge used to access the Zaidan Peninsula, and a pump house servicing the canal.

We hit a dirt road (Red) directly off of MSR Mobile (pink). We passed by the pumping station and parked in the long driveway of a nearby farm house just to the north of the bridge and pump station.

I want to stop and emphasize here, it was pitch black that night. And this all happened at about 0100 hours. Fighting in pitch black sucks.

It started off according to plan, we conducted a swift vehicle movement passed the pump house and bridge, and staged the vehicles in the driveway of the farmhouse to the north (Blue). Mistake one was that I left the vehicles facing towards the farm house on a very narrow road flanked by drainage ditches. Shawn P, an 81 dismount, and I did a foot patrol (Lavender) towards the canal on a raised flat berm (second mistake, the city lights of Fallujah had us back lit horribly). About half way across the berm we were fired upon by a single RPG shot that went high, and then by a moderate volume of AK-47 and medium machine gun fire from some prepared fighting positions to our south (Red). The bullets coming by seemed to be passing at about ankle level. We returned fire, sprinting back towards the vehicles as we did so. After a brief stop at the vehicles to get the drivers and gunners instructions to turn the vehicles around and help us advance on the enemy positions, and a quick SITREP (Situation Report) into the Battalion TOC (Tactical Operations Center), I sent the 81mm Mortar dismounts on a flanking attack to the east. Meanwhile, Shaun and I moved up along the berm (Black) to close with the enemy firing positions. While all this was going on the RPG gunner managed to fire 4-5 more RPGs in our general direction, and the medium MGs kept up a fairly steady stream of inaccurate fire.

As Shaun and I advanced I was able to pick out muzzle flashes coming from a raised berm with a fighting hole dug in it. What I didn’t realize was how close the muzzle flashes were. I fired at them, they stopped, and then as I started to move up the 5 foot tall berm the AK-47 fired again, I could actually feel the muzzle blast of the rifle. I was only about 4-5 feet away from the edge of the fighting hole. The AK-47 and I exchanged close range fire for what was probably 8-10 seconds, I wasn’t able to get high enough up to get a good shot down into the hole. The insurgent wasn’t able to get high enough out of his hole to get a shot on me. I had two realizations in those brief seconds, first that this was supposed to be SASO, so I didn’t have any frag grenades. Secondly I realized that at this range if I ran dry on my magazine that I may not get a chance to reload. So I pulled back away from the fighting hole. I then realized that Shawn was still about 20 meters behind me, he had stopped because his TOW vehicle had successfully turned around and joined the fight. He was trying to direct fire, and pulling our lone AT-4 shoulder fired missile from his truck.

My gun truck had gotten stuck turning around, but at least the .50 cal was in a position to provide some limited fire support against the pump house where the two medium MGs were firing on us from. John F was manning the TOW that night, and switching between the night optic on it (no TOW missiles… this was supposed to be SASO after all) to acquire targets, and then back to his mounted M240 to engage those targets, and then back again.

Shawn fired the AT-4, and hit part of the pump house. The firing from the pump house didn’t stop but it did seem to slack off. About this time Thomas H and his two vehicles came screaming in, not fully knowing the situation, they stopped RIGHT NEXT TO THE PUMP HOUSE. I sprinted over to his gun truck and yelled for the gunner on the MK-19 automatic grenade launcher to spray the pump house down at point blank range. He did that with great gusto.

Thomas and I quickly gathered up what dismounts we could and breached the gate to the pump house. Meanwhile the Shawn’s TOW vehicle scanned the two fighting holes and found them to be abandoned. As we cleared the pump house we found spent shells all over, but no people. At the back of the small compound was a small building that looked like a residence. Thomas kicked the door in, and I entered right behind him. Inside laying in the dirt corner of the room was an old man with a young woman and a little girl. They were all laying on the dirt floor, the man shielding the woman and the child from us. The man frantically pointed at a small back door covered by a blanket and gestured like he was holding a rifle, we took it to mean ‘the bad guys went that way’. The back door actually opened up outside the compound, and there was a small shed in sight. In the shed we found an old Browning WWII vintage .30 caliber machine gun and some freshly bloody rags.

We never did recover any bodies from the fight that night. While I am almost certain I hit the guy in the fighting hole, there was never a way to prove it. We secured the scene until about 0400, and realizing that we had shot through the majority of our ammunition, we made the decision to return to Baharia to refit with our captured .30 caliber MG in tow.

Fox Company offered to send an element out with us to re-occupy the bridge and pumping station. We headed back out as soon as we could get everyone together. When we arrived back at the pumping station nearly all of the evidence of our fight there had been cleaned up. The bullet holes and the blast marks from the AT-4 and MK19 were still there. But shell casings, bits of clothing, the bloody rags – all of it had been removed. Here is a video of our return to the pumping station.

Night Ambush and the morning after

As far as I can recall this was the first serious contact the battalion had on this deployment, of course there had been the debacle with the 82nd and our leadership at a town council meeting, but that had been the 82nd’s show. This was all us. Our first contact with the enemy, and we had shown then that we weren’t going to back down from a fight.

The Marines had landed. And this wasn’t going to be SASO.

Ryan.