From: m35products (m35prod@optonline.net)
Date: Tue Nov 23 2004 - 13:10:54 PST
Three questions:
Who wrote the story?
Is it, and other stories like it, available on a website?
Are you aware that even though some of us here support our troops (and fear
our government,) that this forum is essentially an internet-based old car
club?
Thank you for your input. Very interesting.
apb
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack" <milveh@sbcglobal.net>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 4:03 PM
Subject: [MV] Bradley's fighting in Fallujah
> You guys might be interested in this story from the
> front. Bet you won't find this stuff in your local
> paper:
>
> 2-7 Cav. started staging their Bradley Armored
> Fighting Vehicles, Abrams tanks and armored personnel
> carriers ready to take the fight to the streets.
>
> The Ghost Battalion began their assault on Fallujah
> just after 7 p.m.
>
> Under the cover of darkness, three companies from 2-7
> Cav. breached insurgent defenses by plowing through a
> railway station on the outskirts of Fallujah's Joulwan
> district.
>
> After nearly 18 hours in the claustrophobic urban
> canyons that constitute the front lines of the battle
> for Fallujah, the crew of the lead Bradley Fighting
> Vehicle was cramped, weary and low on ammunition.
>
> Then they came under heavy enemy fire for the first
> time all week.
>
> Within 15 minutes, as shooting erupted around them,
> their radio crackled with the news that their company
> commander's vehicle, blocks behind them, had been hit
> by a rocket-propelled grenade. The blast killed an
> interpreter and severed a soldier's arm. A Bradley
> that sped to the rescue was hit by another RPG that
> slipped under its high-tech armor, wounding the
> driver.
>
> A block away, they heard the boom as a third rocket
> from insurgents took out the transmission on a huge
> Abrams tank. The tank's turret wouldn't move. Nor
> could the tank drive in reverse or pivot.
>
> In a quiet voice that cut through the garbled shouts
> on his radio, Sgt. Jack Ames, 29, the Bradley's
> gunner, noted to the six other soldiers: "Wow. We're
> the only ones left here."
>
> Inside the troop compartment of another Bradley, Alpha
> 2-1--a space hardly larger than two refrigerators--a
> hulking 17-year-old from Florida crouched across from
> a skinny 24-year-old team leader, weighed down by 65
> pounds of gear. Along with two other soldiers crammed
> in, buried in equipment and juggling two machine guns,
> a grenade launcher and an anti-tank missile launcher
> the size of a fence post. The weapons were useless
> inside the vehicle. But in this neighborhood, getting
> out and fighting on foot would be too dangerous.
>
> Ames and the Bradley's commander, Lt. Michael Duran,
> 24, rode in the turret above the troop compartment.
> Spec. Clint Hardin, 23, rode up front, steering the
> 30-ton vehicle using a monitor and periscopes.
>
> The men in back slept uneasily for much of the night,
> leaning helmets against metal or one another as the
> Bradley's 25 mm gun tore apart houses and buildings
> where insurgents were thought to be hiding.
>
> But at dawn, rifle rounds began pinging off the
> Bradley's armor and the RPGs began exploding, rocking
> the vehicle, raining dust on the men inside and
> sucking the air from the compartment again and again.
>
> Search and destroy
>
> Bradley Alpha 2-1's 19-hour mission into Fallujah
> began at sunset Thursday, hours after a briefing for
> battalion officers.
>
> The goal was to move ahead of U.S. Marines and find
> the insurgents, remnants of a rebel force that in
> previous months had turned Fallujah into one of the
> most dangerous cities in Iraq (news - web sites).
> Failing that, the soldiers were to destroy the
> insurgents' hiding places, preventing them from being
> used to ambush the Marines.
>
> In the normally bustling battalion command tent, two
> dozen senior soldiers in stifling body armor listened
> silently.
>
> "Destroy everything you can destroy. Make sure you
> keep together," Lt. Col. Jim Rainey told his officers,
> reminding them of the rules of engagement established
> to protect civilians. "Given those constraints, kill
> everything that you can kill."
>
> At dusk, Alpha 2-1's commander Duran led 36 soldiers
> into his and three other Bradleys for the assault. He
> would take the platoon into battle.
>
> As Hardin cranked Alpha 2-1's diesel engine, he
> recounted the vehicle's war.
>
> Since arriving in March, the men had run over eight
> bombs. Since fighting began in Najaf in August, the
> Bradley had been hit by 16 RPGs. One of them smacked
> the front armor outside Hardin's seat.
>
> "Felt it, heard it, instant migraine," he said in a
> San Antonio twang. "I didn't see it coming, and it
> blew up right in front of my face."
>
> Duran crawled into 2-1's turret next to Ames, a tiny
> man who sucked down cigarettes and travel mugs of
> Iraqi instant coffee, which he brewed throughout the
> night. He, Ames and Hardin would stay awake the entire
> night.
>
> Up the back ramp clambered Pvt. Thomas Dennis, 17;
> Spec. David Garcia, 24; and Spec. Jimmy Baca, 26.
> Their job would be to jump out and fight if needed.
>
> Last in was Sgt. Charles Thornton, 23, who sat and
> shouted "Close it!" over the engine noise. The heavy
> ramp clanged shut. The desert disappeared, and inside
> Alpha 2-1 all became noise and dark.
>
> It was 6 p.m.
>
> Until 1 p.m. the next afternoon, the crew's only view
> of the outside world would be on a green 8-by-10-inch
> monitor that switched between the gunner's thermal
> sights and an aerial-photo map of Fallujah that showed
> positions of friendly forces. It fizzed out
> periodically.
>
> Fallujah became a shooting gallery on the screen, with
> everything that looked as though it could hide a bomb
> or an enemy sniper drawing fire from Ames' gun.
>
> Working where tanks can't
>
> DOOM-DOOM-DOOM. A cistern exploded in a cascade of
> water, sending a cat screeching into the darkness.
>
> A suspected spotter for insurgent snipers appeared in
> an upper-floor window. Ames shot. DOOM-DOOM-DOOM. The
> man never reappeared.
>
> Working in twos and with Alpha 2-1 in the lead, the
> four Bradleys of Duran's platoon rolled through
> streets so narrow tanks wouldn't enter; they couldn't
> have swung their cannons. The platoon essentially was
> on its own.
>
> Obstacle by obstacle, the Bradleys sent high-explosive
> shells into the streetscape. Some found roadside
> bombs, many didn't. Mostly the night was quiet.
>
> Inside the troop compartment, the soldiers dozed and
> watched the monitor, seeing the eerie infrared shapes
> of palm trees waving in a nighttime breeze they could
> not feel, as Bradleys slipped down broken streets
> crisscrossed with electrical extension cords above.
>
> They tensed as Alpha 2-1 passed a blown-up bus where
> they thought explosives could have been planted. They
> listened on the radio as another platoon spotted a
> mortar team on a nearby block, raining shells down on
> them.
>
> At midnight, six hours into the patrol, another
> company of Bradleys behind them stumbled on a huge
> ambush waiting to happen: A pile of concrete and metal
> bars, which snarl the tracks of Bradleys and tanks, a
> tipped-over fuel tanker packed with explosives, a
> gigantic dirt pile behind that, and a three-story
> building full of suspected insurgents.
>
> Tanks, an Air Force AC-130 Spectre gunship and a Navy
> F-18 fighter dropping a bomb came in and destroyed the
> building.
>
> The first bad news came at 2 a.m.: An Abrams lightly
> damaged in battle had tipped over in a ditch north of
> town. The tank's driver died instantly, prompting a
> sharp expletive from Garcia, who sat closest to the
> radio and relayed each scrap of bad news.
>
> More came at 3:55. Alpha 2-1's mission was supposed to
> end at dawn. Instead, Duran relayed another message:
> "Continue to press the enemy." The soldiers groaned.
>
> But the enemy did not appear until 6:45, when a man's
> thermal image appeared running between the arched
> windows on the ground floor of a mansion. Another
> silhouette appeared on a nearby roof.
>
> On the monitor, the men watched Ames aiming the
> Bradley's gun, but the silhouettes didn't reappear and
> Ames didn't shoot. Twenty minutes later, an RPG found
> the Bradley. A sudden, high-pitched bang rocked the
> vehicle from side to side and the men crouched a
> little lower, ducking their helmeted heads like
> turtles disappearing into shells.
>
> Searching for an open shot, the Bradley almost backed
> into a tank behind it. And then the tank fired its
> main gun, wrecking the opulent house across the way.
>
> As dust and quiet settled, Ames griped, "How come they
> get to shoot the mansion?"
>
> Low on ammo
>
> Two hours later, RPGs erupted from the direction of a
> mosque. The platoon's four Bradleys opened up, firing
> for more than an hour as shapes of people flitted
> across the monitor in the troop compartment.
>
> "We're getting low on ammo," Ames warned, reading off
> a list of what he had fired--hundreds of
> high-explosive shells that blew holes the size of
> dinner plates in cinder-block walls, and hundreds of
> other shells designed to take out enemy fighters.
>
> When rocket fire picked up again, frustrated Bradley
> gunners trained their sights on buildings but held
> their fire. The Marines, who had arrived on foot, were
> too close--and right in the line of fire.
>
> Alpha 2-1 was trying to find a way south to clearer
> shots when the insurgents' attack began in earnest.
>
> "I'm hit!" Alpha Company's commander, Capt. Ed
> Twaddell, shouted over the radio at 11:43. The
> armor-penetrating RPG punched a half-dollar-size hole
> in his Bradley's back gate, then filled the troop
> compartment with light, noise, gore and flying metal
> before lodging in the turret where he was standing.
>
> "I saw light and a flash down by my knee, and then the
> turret filled with smoke," Twaddell said later, his
> face still covered in soot and dust.
>
> His interpreter, sitting behind him, had been killed
> instantly, a baseball-size gash in his side.
>
> Two blocks north of Alpha 2-1, a Bradley maneuvered to
> help, disgorging a medic and soldiers under a hail of
> gunfire. Within minutes a penetrating RPG exploded
> under the second Bradley's driver compartment,
> wounding a man from West Virginia who had survived RPG
> shrapnel to the neck when his Bradley was hit in
> Najaf.
>
> For an indeterminate time, Alpha 2-1 was all alone.
> Somehow the crew had been separated from the platoon's
> other three Bradleys, spread out somewhere in the
> tangle of buildings.
>
> The crew heard another explosion at 11:59--the RPG
> shot that disabled the Abrams. Duran found his other
> Bradleys on the radio and ordered them to stand guard
> around the tank as more tankers hooked a tow bar to
> it. It took a half-hour.
>
> As the armor limped north through town, a lone Marine
> hiding behind a tree flagged Alpha 2-1 and gestured
> toward a house across the street, indicating that an
> insurgent was inside.
>
> Ames pumped his last few rounds into the top floor.
> Emerging from behind the tree, the Marine waved
> happily.
>
> "No problem, buddy," Ames said wearily as Hardin drove
> slowly back to camp.
>
> They arrived at 1 p.m., 19 hours after they had left.
>
> But within an hour, Alpha 2-1 and its crew had
> refueled, reloaded and returned to Fallujah.
>
> END
>
> My thoughts... The Battle of Fallujah ranks right up
> there among the toughest and best one fights the USMC
> has been in since Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Bloody Ridge.
> They killed and wounded 2000 insurgents and lost 56.
> They took out over 35% of the estimate forces causing
> havoc and beheading civilians in Iraq. The Bradley
> was a kick-ass vehicle, one that "60 Minutes" called
> uncessary and too expensive.
>
> Not much of their stories about this victory are
> making it to the mainstream media...imagine that?
>
>
>
>
>
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