Dexter Filkins, The New York Times
Posted 3/29/2005 12:00:00 AM
The Conflict inIraq
The Streets: UrbanWarfare Deals Harsh Challenge to Troops
The Insurgents:Hard Lesson: 150 Marines Face 1 Sniper
The Marines: BlackFlags are Deadly Signals aas Cornered Rebels Fight Back
The Conflict inIraq
The Streets
Urban Warfare Deals Harsh Challenge to Troops
Nov. 9, 2004
By Dexter Filkins
The New York Times
FALLUJA, Iraq -- The two marines were pinned down on a roof on Monday,pressing themselves against a low, crumbling wall as insurgents fired rocket-propelledgrenades at them froma building near the middle of town.
Hours before, they had clambered over a railroad embankment -- a berm, tothe engineering-minded -- and started their advance into this rebel-held city.
Commanders called in artillery fire on the building where the grenades wereemerging, their tails spitting and glowing like sparklers across the sky. Butthe artillery only flattened the building next door to the one occupied bythe insurgents.
''This is crazy,'' one of the marines said. ''Yeah,'' his buddy said, ''andwe've only taken one house.''
This is urban warfare, where the technological advantages of the Americanmilitary can be nullified, at least for a few terrifying hours, by a few determinedfighters in a warehouse or an abandoned home.
During the night, the insurgents fired off brilliant red and blue flares,blinding the Americans' sensitive night-vision equipment, and slipped quicklyfrom house to house in hopes of confusing the artillery spotters.
For hours, they succeeded,pinning down perhaps 150 marines led by Capt. Read Omohundro, a strappinggraduateof Texas A&M who has a habit of walkingaround upright during bursts of mortar and grenade fire while everyone elseis hugging an outcropping of concrete.
Even the captain concedes that this is nothing like a fight in the open desert,where the Americans are always fated to win, quickly. ''The challenge is thatthe battlefield is three-dimensional,'' he said. ''Not only do you have tolook in front of you and behind you, but also above you and below you, evensubterranean.''
This night would become a textbook illustration of those complexities. CaptainOmohundro's unit started rolling toward the berm in armored personnel carriersfrom an encampment about a mile north about 7 p.m. He was supposed to meetup there with another outfit, but it had gotten lost.
Finally he found it, and his men started their part of the invasion by firinga 200-yard cord containing 1,800 pounds of explosive southward from the berm,toward downtown Falluja. The marines worried that their way into the city hadbeen mined. But when the charge exploded, it also set off any mines in a narrowpath around it.
That tactic worked, but when the marines climbed the berm in pitch blacknessand went over, they discovered rocky ground with rusty junk littering the way-- a typical railroad district on the edge of town. They worked their way towardtheir first objectives, a small traffic circle, and beyond that, the firstbuildings of the city.
But the marines were getting shelled even before they went over the berm.The area exploded with sporadic gunfire, rocket-propelled grenade rounds andmortars. The advance bogged down as spotters tried to locate pockets of insurgentsand wipe them out with the big guns.
For a time, this frightening urban battlefield became a pulsing cacophonyof strange and deadly sounds. The mosques in the city broadcast calls to jihadthrough their speakers. F-18's fired 3,000 rounds a minute in bursts that soundedoddly like burps. AC-130 gunships droned overhead, their big cannons goingthunk, thunk as they found targets.
Perhaps strangest of all, the American troops brought in their own ''psyops''trucks -- for psychological operations -- and blared sounds that created anightmarish duet with the mosques: old AC/DC songs, something that soundedlike a sonar ping, the cavalry charge.
Captain Omohundro did not like sitting still in this theater of doom, andfor 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 grenadesand flattened that one, too. An AC-130 passed overhead but decided that thethreat had been annihilated along with the building.
Then the shooting started again, from some other window among the crackedstreets and twisted alleyways of Falluja.
The Insurgents
Hard Lesson: 150 Marines Face 1 Sniper
Nov. 11, 2004
By Dexter Filkins
The New York Times
FALLUJA, Iraq -- American marines called in two airstrikes on the pairof dingy three-story buildings squatting along Highway 10 on Wednesday, dropping500-poundbombs each time. They fired 35 or so 155-millimeter artillery shells, 10shotsfrom the muzzles of Abrams tanks and perhaps 30,000 rounds from theirautomatic rifles. The building was a smoking ruin.
But the sniper kept shooting.
He -- or they, because no one can count the flitting shadows in thisplace -- kept 150 marines pinned down for the better part of a day. Itwas alesson on the nature of the enemy in this hellish warren of rubble-strewnstreets.Not all of the insurgents are holy warriors looking for martyrdom. Atleast a few are highly trained killers who do their job with cold precisionandknow how to survive.
''The idea is, he just sits up there and eats a sandwich,'' said Lt.Andy Eckert, ''and we go crazy trying to find him.''
The contest is a deadly one, and two marines in Company B, First Battalion,Eighth Regiment of the First Marine Expeditionary Force have been killedby snipers in the past two days as the unit advanced just half a milesouthward to Highway 10 from a mosque they had taken on Tuesday.
Despite the world-shaking blasts of weaponry as the Americans try toroot out the snipers, this is also a contest of wills in which the tensionrisestoa level that seems unbearable, and then rises again. Marine snipers sit,as motionless as blue herons, for 30 minutes and stare with crazed intensityintothe oversized scopes on their guns. If so much as a penumbra brushesacross a windowsill, they open up.
With the troops' senses tuned to a high pitch, mundane events becomeextraordinary. During one bombing, a blue-and-yellow parakeet flew upto a roof of a capturedbuilding and fluttered about in tight circles before perching on a slumpingpower line, to the amazement of the marines assembled there.
On another occasion, the snipers tensed when they heard movement in thedirection of a smoldering building. A cat sauntered out, unconcernedwith anythingbut making its rounds in the neighborhood.
''Can I shoot it, sir?'' a sniper asked an officer.
''Absolutely not,'' came the reply.
This day started at about 8 a.m., when the marines left the buildingwhere they had been sleeping and headed south toward Highway 10, whichruns fromeast to west and roughly bisects the town. At the corner of Highway 10and Thurthar, the street they were moving along, was a headquarters buildingfor the Iraqi National Guard that had been taken over by insurgents.
Almost immediately, they came under fire from a sniper in the minaretof a mosque just south of them. Someone in a three-story residentialbuildingfartherdown the street also opened up. The marines made 50-yard dashes and divedfor cover, but one of them was cut down, killed on the spot. It was unclearwhatdirection the fatal bullet had come from.
''I don't know who it was,'' Lt. Steven Berch, leader of the fallen marine'splatoon, said of the attacker, ''but he was very well trained.''
After two hours of bombardment, the sniper at that mosque ceased firing.But just around the corner at the famous blue-domed Khulafah Al Rashidmosque, another sniper was pinning down marines, and airstrikes werecalled in onit,too. The issue of striking at mosques is so sensitive in the Arab worldthat the American military later issued a statement saying that the strikeonthe Khulafah mosque was unavoidable and that precision munitions merelyknocked down a minaret.
By noon, the marines had worked their way down to the national guardbuilding, still taking fire from the sniper, or snipers, on the otherside of MainStreet. Inside was a sign in Arabic that said: ''Long live the mujahedeen.''Soon themarines had spray-painted another sign over it: ''Long live the muj killers.''
But for the next five hours, they could not kill whoever was runningfrom window to window and firing at them from the other side of MainStreet,despite theexpenditure of enormous amounts of ammunition.
''We're not able to see the muzzle flashes,'' said Capt. Read Omohundro,the company commander. ''As a result,'' he said, ''we end up expendinga lot ofammunition trying to get the snipers.''
At one point, they thought that they had a bead on someone running backand forth between the two buildings. Then Capt. Christopher Spears exclaimed:''He's on a bike!''
And somehow, through a volley of gunfire, whoever it was got away.
At 5 p.m., the marines finally crossed Highway 10 and searched the smokingremains of the two buildings. At 5:30 p.m., a sniper opened up on them.
The Marines
Black Flags are Deadly Signals aas Cornered Rebels Fight Back
Nov. 12, 2004
By Dexter Filkins
The New York Times
FALLUJA, Iraq -- The stars began to glimmer through a wan yellow-graysunset over Falluja on Thursday evening. The floury dust in the air and a skylineof broken minaretsand smashed buildings combined for the only genuine postcard image this countryhas to offer for now.
Sitting on a third-story roof, Staff Sgt. Eric Brown, his lip bleeding, peeredthrough the scope of his rifle into the haze. Moments before, a lone bullethad whizzed past his face and smashed a window behind him. ''God, I hate thisplace, the way the sun sets,'' Sergeant Brown said.
Sgt. Sam Williams said, ''I wish I could see down the street.''
But these marines did see a black flag pop up all at once above a water towerabout 100 yards away, then a second flag somewhere in the gloaming above arooftop. And the shots began, in a wave this time, as men bobbed and weavedthrough alleyways and sprinted across the street. ''He's in the road, he'sin the road, shoot him!'' Sergeant Brown shouted. ''Black shirt!'' someoneelse yelled. ''Due south!''
The flags are the insurgents' answer to two-way radios, their way of massingthe troops and -- in a tactic that goes back at least as far as Napoleon --concentrating fire on an enemy. Set against radio waves, the flags have onedistinct advantage: they are terrifying.
The insurgents are coordinating their attacks at a time when they have nowhereleft to run. American forces have pushed south of Highway 10, the boulevardthat runs east to west and approximately bisects Falluja. American intelligenceofficers believe that many of the insurgents have retreated as far as the Shuhada,a relatively modern residential area that is the southernmost neighborhoodin Falluja.
But beyond Shuhada is only the open desert, patrolled by the United StatesArmy. So the insurgents are turning and fighting. And at night, they are settingup deadly ambushes in the moonless pitch blackness of Falluja's labyrinthinestreets.
Going straight up the gut in the center of the American advance on Thursdaywas Bravo Company, First Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine ExpeditionaryForce. Those marines, including Sergeants Brown and Williams, started theirday by getting mortared in a building they had captured at Highway 10 and ThurtharStreet.
The building's windows were blown out. Parts of the ceiling had collapsed.The mortars drew closer and closer and then stopped, as if the insurgents weretemporarily short of ammo. ''I thought, 'This is it,''' said Senior CorpsmanKevin Markley.
At about 2 p.m., the company walked 100 yards east along the highway, thenturned south into the Sinai neighborhood, with its car garages and fix-it shopsas well as concealed weapons caches and bomb-making factories.
Immediately, shooting broke out, pinning down the marines for an hour. Finallythey moved south to a mosque with the stub of a blasted minaret. An armoredvehicle drove up from the rear and dropped its hatch. Out walked a group ofblinking, disoriented Iraqi national guardsmen. They had been brought in onlyto search mosques.
Meantime, the marines went to the rooftop, saw the flags and got into a firefight.It was silenced when they called in a 500-pound bomb from above onto a housewhere some of the insurgents had concentrated. The strike was so close thatthe marines had to leave the roof or risk being killed by shrapnel.
The Iraqi guardsmen left the mosque and trooped back into the vehicle, whichdrove off. Soon the marines were headed south again, through a narrow alleybetween deserted houses.
''Enemy personnel approaching your position in white vehicle with RPG's,''someone said over a radio, referring to rocket-propelled grenades. A few secondslater, the same voice said: ''More enemy personnel approaching your positionfrom the south.''
The alley exploded with gunfire and RPG rounds. Somehow the company commander,Capt. Read Omohundro, got two tanks in place to fire down the alley. They letloose with a volley and a building crumbled.
Captain Omohundro turned to a lieutenant and said, ''Are they dead?''
''They must be, sir,'' came the reply.
But the insurgents had gotten off an RPG round and disabled one tank; theother tank mysteriously stopped working as well.
The company had moved 500 yards south. They regrouped in the pitch blacknessand pushed on at about 11:30 p.m. without the tanks, trying to keep up withthe rest of the front, but after moving 25 feet they were attacked again inwhat appeared to be a well-organized ambush.
Two more tanks came in, but one had a problem with its global-positioningsystem unit. There was an hour's delay. The 50 or so men of the First Platoon,which had taken casualties, started bickering. Then they moved forward, behindthe tanks.
At 1:30 a.m., now roughly 700 yards south of Highway 10, they stopped andentered a house, intending to find a place to sleep. There was a huge boominside. ''Oh no! Oh no!'' someone shouted. ''My leg!'' someone else screamed.''My leg!''
They looked further around the house and found tunnels underneath. They retreatedand a tank fired rounds into the house, which caught fire.
They looked for another place to sleep.
Stories copyright 2004 The New York Times. Reprinted with permission.