RACINGMIX WORD

Marines launch high-risk assault 
to break the back of insurgency

As his armoured unit moved up into position northwest of Fallujah yesterday, American aircraft and artillery pounded the city all day and night. Great columns of grey smoke rose over the deserted streets, with thousands of US Marines and soldiers massed on its perimeter waiting for the order to go in.

For the men about to attack the city, nearly all of them veterans of the heavy fighting in Najaf in August, the usual thoughts of mortality and mission occupied their minds.

“I think about dying all the time,” admitted Santillana, a young father from Texas. “All I say is, don’t be afraid of dying but don’t go looking for it. When it’s your time, it’s your time.”

The push to the outskirts of Fallujah could not have been more prophetic. Not only was the focus of the world upon them, there was the distinct feeling that the heavens too were watching.

The armoured columns moved before dawn in the middle of a lightning storm that occasionally lit up a dusty landscape for a second with images of the rumbling armour heading towards Fallujah.

The destination was the Jolan district, the rebel bastion within a bastion, where guerrillas bloodied all the Marines who tried to enter last April.

As the ring of steel closed on the town, the rebels opened up with sporadic small-arms fire or mortars launched from rooftops, only to meet with a hail of high-explosives from the massed cavalry and Marine battalions spread out in the rugged desert less than a mile away.

“They’re small, four to six man groups, the typical numbers we see in insurgent operations,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Will Buhl, as his Marines took over a block of apartments just outside the town to set up a forward base from which to breach the rebel defences.

As Iraqi soldiers mustered behind the lines to join an attack on the train station, allowing a large force of tanks to push into the city, the commander of the operation’s ground forces, Major-General Rich Natonski, put his men’s capability in typically blunt Marine terms. “This is a hell of team. The Iraqi forces are fired up. We’re gonna kick some butt,” he said, before a big push into the rebel stronghold.

The American forces aimed to punch a hole through the heaviest of the rebel defences between the railway tracks and the city, where anti-tank mines and booby traps have been laid in the six months that the guerrillas have held the city.

Using bulldozers and explosives to clear a swath through the minefields, they were intent on pushing into the hornets’ nest.

“It’s a high-risk, high-payoff strategy,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Rainey, the commander of the Second Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment.

The risk was that his men were heading into the most dangerous area of all Iraq — the pay-off could be that he breaks the back of the insurgency at one stroke with his tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

At the same time last night, another large force swept into the city from the northwest, catching the guerrillas off-balance. The huge two-pronged attack aimed to sweep the rebel forces to the River Euphrates, whose western bank was seized by Marines on Sunday night.

There was little sign of the rebels early this morning as I rode with US troops in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the Jolan area of Fallujah.

A few mortar teams were caught on the spy cameras of drones circling over the city, but otherwise the images on the screens in dusty field headquarters showed a ghost town.

A convoy of about 15 vehicles moved slowly through the streets, shooting at piles of earth on the roadside that could conceal bombs and anything else that looked suspicious.

The aim was to draw out the insurgents and clear the way for the Marines, who had gathered in a cemetery on the city’s northwestern edge, to move in.

It was not clear whether the lack of resistance indicated that the gunmen had been decimated by the aerial attacks on Fallujah in the past two days, or if they were keeping their powder dry.

In a reconnaissance mission to the edge of the city, one rebel gunman dared to loose off a few rounds at the iron beasts scoping out the town. He was quickly shot dead, just like a fly swatted aside as the observers returned to their mission. Near by warplanes dropped 2,000 lb bombs to smash the railway lines and allow Marines to swarm in behind the armoured column.

A Muslim cleric inside Fallujah rallied the insurgent forces defending the city, making a call to arms through the loudspeaker on his mosque minaret.

“God is greatest, God is greatest, God is greatest, oh martyrs,” echoed his booming voice. “Rise up, Mujahidin.”

Essay by: James Hilder, Times Online, November 9th, 2004
Published online by: Racingmix, November 9th, 2004

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