T-man
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002273302_squaddown13.html
My heart and prayers to those and their families!
In four days, a squad of Marines decimated
By Ellen Knickmeyer
The Washington Post
HABAN, Iraq — The explosion enveloped the armored vehicle in flames, sending orange balls of fire bubbling above the trees along the Euphrates River near the Syrian border.
Marines in surrounding vehicles threw open their hatches and began running across the plowed fields, toward the already-blackening metal of the destroyed vehicle. Shouting, they pulled to safety those they could, as the flames ignited mortars, grenades, bars of C-4 plastic explosives and thousands of machine-gun rounds inside, rocketing them into the sky and across pastures. The explosives would crackle and thunder over the next hour.
Among at least four Marines killed and 10 wounded when the explosive device erupted under their Amtrac on Wednesday were the last battle-ready members of a squad that four days earlier had battled foreign fighters holed up in a house in the town of Obeidi. Two squad members were killed and five wounded in that fight.
In 96 hours of fighting and ambushes in far western Iraq, the squad simply had ceased to be.
Some of the wounded in the roadside bombing suffered third-degree burns. Most of them had severe burns on their arms and faces. Others had shrapnel wounds. A three-inch piece of metal protruded from one Marine's abdomen.
Two Marines who survived the blast said they thought six comrades had died in the amphibious vehicle. Marine officials on the scene and in Baghdad would not confirm the casualty toll.
Sgt. Dennis Wollard of Biloxi, Miss., sat glassy-eyed and bare-chested under a nearby building on the edge of the field. He lamented that he couldn't save all the men inside.
"I was at the back door," Wollard said. "I couldn't get 'em all. There had to be six still in there. I don't know how they could've gotten out."
Another Marine, speaking with a senior officer, held back tears.
"I couldn't get to them all, sir, it was just too hot," he said, shaking his head.
Some Marines appeared stunned. Others were angry.
"It was my fault, it was my fault," shouted a Marine who identified himself as the driver of the vehicle. He didn't appear to have serious injuries.
Virtually every member of the squad — one of three that make up the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment — had been killed or wounded, Marines said. All told, the 1st Platoon — which Gunnery Sgt. Chuck Hurley commands — had sustained 60 percent casualties, demolishing it as a fighting force.
A Marine platoon generally has 26 members.
"They used to call it Lucky Lima," said Maj. Steve Lawson, commander of the company. "That turned around and bit us."
The U.S. military's assault in far western Iraq has sent more than 1,000 Marines down the ungoverned north bank of the Euphrates River in search of foreign fighters crossing the border from Syria. Of seven Marines who have died in the operation, six came from Lima Company, 1st Platoon.
Lima Company drew Marine reservists from across Ohio into the conflict in Iraq. Some were too young to be bothered much by shaving, or even stubble.
They rode to war on a Marine Amtrac, an armored vehicle that travels on tanklike treads. Marines in Iraq typically crowd thigh to thigh in the Amtrac, with one or two men perched on cardboard boxes of rations. Only the gunners manning the top hatches of Amtracs have a view of the passing scenery. Those inside find out what their field of combat is when the rear ramp comes down and they run out, weapons ready.
Marines typically pass travel time in the Amtrac by extracting favorite bits from ration packets, mercilessly ribbing a usual victim for eating or sleeping too much, or sleeping themselves.
On Monday, when the Marine assault on foreign fighters officially began, the young Marines of the squad from 1st Platoon already were exhausted. Their encounter at the house in Obeidi that morning and the previous night had been the unintended first clash of the operation, pitting them against insurgents who fired armor-piercing bullets up through the floor. It took 12 hours and five assaults by the squad — plus grenades, bombing by an F/A-18 attack plane, tank rounds and rockets at 20 yards — to kill the insurgents and permit recovery of the dead Marines' bodies.
Afterward, they slept in the moving Amtrac, heads back and mouths open. One stood up to stretch his legs. He fell asleep again standing up, leaning against the metal walls.
With the assault on foreign fighters under way, Marine commanders kept the 1st Platoon largely to the back, letting its men rest.
Commanders had hoped the operation would capture or kill large numbers of fighters swiftly. But the foreigners, and everyone else here, had plenty of warning that the Marines were coming — including the unplanned battle at Obeidi.
By the time the squad from Lima Company crossed north of the Euphrates, whole villages consisted of little more than abandoned houses with fresh tire tracks leading into pastures, or homes occupied only by unarmed prepubescent boys or old men. Men of fighting age had made themselves scarce.
Many Marines complained bitterly that commanders had pulled them out of the fight at Obeidi while the insurgents still were battling, to start the planned offensive. "They take us from killing the people they want us to kill and bring us to these ghost villages," one said Wednesday on the porch of a house commandeered as a temporary base.
Uneventful house searches stretched into late afternoon, the tedium broken only by small-arms fire and mortar rounds lobbed by insurgents hiding on the far side of the river.
The squad from 1st Platoon was rolling toward the Euphrates in a row of armored vehicles, headed for more house searches, when the vehicle rolled over the explosive.
Marines initially said they thought the blast was caused by two stacked mines. But reports from troops that they had seen an artillery round and two hand-held radios near the blast site raised suspicions that a remotely activated bomb had been used, Lawson said.
Late Wednesday, helicopters flew out Gunnery Sgt. Hurley and the remaining members of 1st Platoon for time off. They are to return after the platoon is remade with new members, Marines said.
Another Lima Company platoon commander ordered his men to bed early, in preparation for yesterday's operations. Mourning could wait, the commander said.
"We don't have time," he said.
Information from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.
My heart and prayers to those and their families!
