My Life and Times

Posted on Mon, Nov. 29, 2004
REPORT FROM IRAQ SECOND OF SIX PARTSBattle for Fallujah intense, often `overwhelming'Sniper fire, the sights and smells of death, and earaches punctuated the house-to-house fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.BY TOM LASSETERKnight Ridder News Service
FALLUJAH, Iraq - 11.9.04, Tuesday.
Thirteen hours after the U.S. push into Fallujah began, Capt. Sean Sims, commander of Alpha Company, of the 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2-2, and his men looked gray and worn.
Dirt was beginning to cover their faces and uniforms. Their ears ached. After two hours of sleep on a concrete floor of an abandoned house, their eyes were dulled.
''At first, last night, when we came in and heard all the AK-47 fire, we freaked out,'' said Sgt. Brandon Bailey, 21, of Big Bear, Calif. ``But now, as long as it's not coming right at us, we're fine.''
Later, Bailey said it felt as if the enemy was coming from every direction.
''So we just went apeshit with the cannon, shooting everything,'' he said.
How many people did they kill? Bailey shrugged.
Sims' temporary headquarters was a mostly empty house. It stood on the north side of Fallujah's main road, which, like all east-west roads there, was given a woman's name by military planners: Fran. On the other side stood the beginnings of the city's industrial district, where more insurgents lay in wait.
Tanks were parked up and down Fran, and ordnance disposal teams were already identifying the homemade bombs -- improvised explosive devices, in military lingo -- that lined the road. They were densely packed, but with no one to detonate them, the bombs sat idle as Army trucks rolled by.
Inside the house, the family that fled left handwritten verses of the Koran on the doorways, a tradition intended to keep homes safe. Baby formula was scattered around, and a kerosene heater was stored in a utility closet. A painting of Mecca, Islam's holiest city, hung on the wall in the front room.
Bullet holes pocked the walls of the house. Its windows were shattered. Pieces of plaster and concrete were strewn about.
Staff Sgt. Jason Ward was sitting outside the house in his M-113 vehicle -- an armored box on tank tracks, used to cart casualties off the battlefield.
Ward, from Midland, Texas, had a deeper accent than Sims, a square jaw and a blank expression. He was chewing on a Slim Jim. Ward said he had ferried at least 10 injured soldiers the night before.
`VERY INTENSE'
''It's been very intense,'' he said. ``For a lot of our younger soldiers, it's overwhelming.''
He wore a bracelet with the name ''Marvin Sprayberry III'' etched on it, just above ''KIA'' and ``True Friend.''
Sprayberry was Ward's best friend. He was a good man. He was killed on May 3 when the vehicle he was in rolled over during a firefight. That was all Ward had to say on the matter.
Resting in a Humvee nearby, 1st Lt. Edward Iwan was scrolling down a flat blue computer screen, mounted to the dashboard, that showed the location of every Army and Marine unit in Fallujah. Iwan, Alpha company's executive officer, noted that his men were deeper in the city than any other unit.
''It's a fairly complex environment, like we thought it would be,'' said Iwan, 28, of Albion, Neb. ``Cities are where people die. That's where you take most of your casualties.''
Iwan looked out through the Humvee's window at a thicket of buildings in every direction.
''There are 8,000 places to hide,'' he said, shaking his head.
Across the street, a long row of shops, once home to mechanics and carpenters, lay in ruins. Tin cigarette stands leaned on their sides, pocked with bullet holes.
Sims was on the roof of the house, sitting against a wall, his legs crossed at the ankle with a map on his lap. A little past dawn, after a lull of an hour or two, the shooting started again.
A reporter offered Sims a satellite phone to call his family. No, thanks, he said. He wanted to talk with them when he got somewhere quieter. He had an infant son, Colin, whose brown hair and small ears, which poked out on the sides, looked just like his father's.
SNIPERS ACTIVE
Sims wondered aloud if the bullets flying by were aimed at him. During the next couple of minutes, several ricocheted off the roof near him.
''OK, that's a sniper right there,'' he said with a small grin as his men grabbed their guns and crouched so that only the top of their heads showed above the roofline.
Sims picked up the radio and called in an artillery strike to ''soften'' the sniper positions. His call sign was Terminator Six.
Cpl. Travis Barreto, of Brooklyn, N.Y., moved his rifle slowly, scanning the cluster of houses nearby. ''He's somewhere from my 11 o'clock to my 3 o'clock,'' he muttered.
Spc. Luis Lopez, 21, was too short to rest his M-14 sniper rifle on the roof, so he created a step from a metal box containing a child's Snoopy sneaker.
The company radio squawked with sightings of snipers, and everyone adjusted aim: a circular window to the southwest, a rooftop to the southeast, a crevice in a wall to the southwest. With every new location, the men clenched their triggers, and shell casings flew up in the air. The sniper rounds stopped. And then they began again.
''He shot right at me,'' yelled Barreto, ducking. ``He shot right at me.''
Those soldiers who were not on sniper rotation sat on the roof with their brown Meal Ready to Eat packets, finding the main meal -- bean burrito, country captain chicken, beef teriyaki -- and dunking it with water in the cooking pouch, which smelled of cardboard and chemicals.
They talked about Steve Faulkenburg, the battalion sergeant major, shot in the head the night before. What the hell was he doing out there? they asked. Directing traffic, trying to get a truckload of Iraqi national guardsmen out of the line of fire.
The tough 45-year-old was from Huntingburg, a small town in southern Indiana where there are cornfields and a population of about 5,500. There's a Victorian-style downtown district there with brick-lined sidewalks and streets named Chestnut and Washington. Thousands of miles from home, he'd fallen dead, in the dark, on a street with no name.
''Friendlies coming up, friendlies coming up,'' other soldiers yelled as they climbed the stairs to the roof.
BLASTS AND FLAMES
A building a few blocks away quaked with fresh explosions that sent ashes falling like snowflakes. Flames shot into the sky.
The radio squawked: ``OK, I've got an injury to sergeant . . . and I'm unaware if it is a gunshot wound to the groin or a shrapnel wound to the groin.''
Another report came in: A second sergeant had been shot. The soldiers on the rooftop with Sims paused, shook their heads, then turned back to the fight.
When they got bored or scared of being on the rooftop, some of the men -- young and with an awkward day's stubble on their upper lips -- went outside and around the corner to see the Fat Man.
The Fat Man lay in his own blood. He was an Iraqi insurgent who had hidden in an alley next to a garbage dump, waiting for the Army to come by. A couple of 25mm high-explosive rounds, shot from a Bradley, blew off his left leg and, from the looks of it, punched a hole through his midsection. Two or three others died with him.
A group of insurgents managed to drag the others away, but the Fat Man was too big. His arms were still splayed back from where his comrades tried to pull him through the narrow alley.
His eyes were open, peering out from his dirty face and scraggly beard, staring at the heavens. A traditional red and white Arab headdress was wrapped around his waist, and a bag with slots for RPG rounds -- all empty -- lay on the ground next to him.
The Fat Man was the first dead person many soldiers had seen. They grew solemn as they leaned over his body and peered into his eyes, but never too close, never close enough to touch his skin or take in too deep a whiff of death.
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