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The hunt for an enemy in Fallujah

BY MATTHEW MCALLESTER | STAFF CORRESPONDENT

November 10, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq - A crescent moon appeared between the gray clouds that hung over Fallujah early yesterday and from across the fields came the sound of music.

It was the "Ride of the Valkyries," by Richard Wagner, booming from the loudspeakers of a Humvee. The music used in a famous scene in the 1979 movie "Apocalypse Now" echoed over the rooftops of the northern edge of this now war-torn city.

Apache helicopters circled, firing Hellfire missiles through the fresh light of morning. A black flag fluttered in the breeze, the flag of the militant group now calling itself al-Qaida in Iraq. Its leader is the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the American military is hoping he's holed up inside the Jolan neighborhood in northwest Fallujah, the area of the city now under concentrated attack.

Troop-laden vehicles from the 3rd Battalion 1st Marines streamed across the desert into the city along a route made safe only hours earlier by the Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles of the Army's 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, which a Newsday reporter is accompanying.

Battle 'going well'

Lt. Col. Jim Rainey, commander of the 2nd Battalion, had been lying down in the back of his Bradley, living by one of his maxims: "Sleep is a weapon." He described the progress of the battle.

"It's going well. Initially it was light. Kind of like I expected. They stay down at night. They know we can see them well," he said.

The insurgents are moving around the city in groups of two or three, he said, using rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Kalashnikov automatic rifles. His vehicles had been hit during the nighttime advance by several roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, but none suffered any meaningful damage. One soldier was injured with a slight shrapnel wound to the left leg. Ten U.S. soldiers have been killed in two days of combat in Fallujah.

"I don't think his strategy is doctrinal defense, urban defense," Rainey said, smiling at the thought of his enemy. "I think they're committed fighters who want to die fighting. ... There's a lot of fighting to do still."

Ahead of schedule

So far, his battle group had made good progress toward the heart of the city. "We're ahead of our day schedule," he said. At about 10 a.m., Rainey and his operations officer, Maj. Tim Karcher, set off in their Bradleys through the newly secured north-south thoroughfare that the American military here has named Henry. They moved past apparently deserted houses, some damaged by explosions and gunfire, and windswept eucalyptus trees.

Turning on the spot, the Bradleys took a right onto another main road dubbed Pennsylvania, which leads into the heart of Jolan. Rainey's infantrymen of his first and second platoons have set up a base there at a pink, bombed-out building that until recently was a school, its inner walls newly painted pale green. Most of its windows are shattered and school desks are piled up in the courtyard.

First Lt. Daniel Kilgore, 24, of Dallas, had parked his Bradleys in an open square almost underneath an enormous, dust-colored water tower. There were sounds of fighting all around, but few of the soldiers seemed concerned, confident that most of the area was under the control of the 2nd Battalion and the Marines who were flooding the adjoining area.

As Kilgore was speaking about the fight he and his men had just gone through, an incoming mortar or rocket-propelled grenade exploded about 20 yards away. James Hider, a reporter for the Times of London who was also accompanying the 2nd Battalion, cried out in pain. A fragment of metal from the explosion had torn into a part of his upper left arm, causing profuse bleeding.

A medic quickly applied a makeshift bandage to Hider's arm as he sat down on the back ramp of a Bradley. The medic said the injury was probably not serious. Rainey ordered Hider evacuated in Karcher's Bradley.

After Hider had gone, the soldiers settled down and lay on the floors of the schoolhouse and other nearby buildings, their mission accomplished for now.

Some didn't seem happy that their job seemed done.

"Hey, what other follow-up mission we got after this?" Sgt. Sean Nicholson, 33, asked a fellow soldier. Like many in the 2nd Battalion, Nicholson is a veteran of the battle in August against Shia insurgents in Najaf. He didn't like the idea that the Marines would be the ones to pursue the enemy through the warren-like streets of Jolan.

"This is it," said Sgt. Douglas Queen, 26, of Chicago.

"We came all the way from Taji for this?" Nicholson asked rhetorically, referring to the 2nd Battalion's base.

All around, all the time, explosions -- large and small -- broke the silence. There was the insistent pounding of the Bradley 25-mm cannons, the whizz of the insurgent rocket-propelled grenades, the crack of incoming sniper fire and the wall-shaking boom of the Abrams tank cannons.

Kilgore walked to an industrial building just south of the school where the second platoon earlier had discovered mortars piled up by the dozen. A few meters away was a BMW that soldiers had discovered to be packed full of explosives. They were waiting for a bomb disposal unit to come and defuse it.

The men of the second platoon lay prone on the floor of the cinderblock building, sleeping for the few moments they could grab, oblivious to the explosions outside. Alongside one wall lay an Iraqi man, a piece of cloth draped over his face, shot dead by the platoon as they approached the building early in the morning, soldiers said.

Strewn on the ground were leaflets advertising the $25-million price on Zarqawi's head, air-dropped over the past months in Fallujah.

In a nearby building, four sniper teams of two men sat in positions on the second floor overlooking an amusement park and abandoned marketplace, searching for their insurgent counterparts, whose bullets intermittently cracked through the afternoon sky.

At about 3:30 p.m., an enormous explosion shook the building and sent clouds of dust through the unfinished windows. Everyone threw themselves to the ground.

"What the hell was it, over," asked Kilgore on his radio.

As night fell, a squad of soldiers went to reconnoiter another taller building in the hope that it could be used as a better sniping position.

The explosions continued.