Just before midnight on April 1, the platoon falls back a couple of kilometers from the ambush zone, then turns around on the road, orienting its Humvees toward the bridge. Unlike after the ambush at Al Gharraf, when the team became giddy at the cessation of fire, everyone is now subdued. Colbert is concerned about a loud scraping sound the Humvee had made while pulling back from the bridge. He and Person climb out and find cables tangled around the axles—debris from the road. The team spends several minutes cutting them away, then clambers back in. No one says anything in the darkness. They are ordered to prepare for another attempt on the bridge. Trombley falls asleep, snoring loudly in the seat next to me.
Pappy, now in a lot of pain from his wounded foot, is unloaded and sent back to the battalion's rear for medical aid. Reyes is promoted to team leader, and takes Pappy's seat in the Humvee. Q-tip Stafford, wounded in the leg, decides to stick around for the second assault.
At about twelve-thirty, we witness a monster artillery barrage. Marine batteries lob numerous HE rounds into the city on the far side of the bridge, trying to break apart the machine-gun bunkers. Helicopters fire their chain guns, rockets, then a TOW missile into the obstacle blocking the entrance to the bridge. All the missile blast does is lift the obstacle up, then drop it in the same place.
RCT-1 sends up two M1A1 tanks and eight LAVs. When we hear them rumble past, everyone's spirits lift, then soar when the LAVs maneuver up to the bridge and rip into the city with their Bushmasters. The cannons thunder, spouting red fireballs. The sky sounds like it's cracking. With their heavy weapons flashing in the darkness, the armored vehicles resemble fire-breathing dragons. "Look at them, dog," Espera says, poking his head into Colbert's vehicle. "Pouring down hate and discontent like a motherfucker."
The tanks roll forward and push the obstacle out of the way, but their commanders decide the bridge is too unstable to cross. The armor pulls back.
Bravo Company is sent back to the bridge. This time, due to the two wounded in Second Platoon, Third Platoon is ordered into the lead. I experience a sinking feeling as we approach the bridge behind them. I keep myself wrapped tightly in a poncho. I've been freezing all night. Earlier, when we pulled back from the ambush, I was shivering so badly that my feet were bouncing off the floor. Doc Bryan later tells me this was likely a physical reaction to excessive adrenaline, which cuts the flow of blood to the extremities, resulting in a sensation of extreme cold. It starts again when we pass the last tank on our way to the bridge. I can't keep my feet flat on the floor. My heels keep bouncing up like they're spring-loaded.
Next to me, I hear Trombley snoring again, slumped over his SAW, asleep. I nudge him and whisper, "We're at the bridge."
The bridge appears directly in front of us in a blinding flash. Cobras fire zuni rockets, skimming them low over the roadway a few meters in front of our hood. This close, the rockets make a shrill, ear-stabbing sound. They smash into bunkers across the water. In the light of their explosions, I see the outlines of the Humvees in Third Platoon ahead of us.
"There's a hole in the bridge," Colbert says. "Bravo Three is stuck. We're turning around."
Kocher's team makes it across the bridge with Carazales flooring the vehicle, bitching the entire way. "This is fucking bullshit, man. We've got no armor." Somehow, he manages to swerve around the meter-wide hole blown through the middle of the bridge by a Marine artillery round. Just after clearing the hole, Redman, standing at the vehicle's .50-cal,
is thrown down by a low-hanging wire from a blown-up utility pole. He slams his head on an ammo box at the rear of the Humvee and is knocked out. Redman comes to moments later and sees smashed buildings on either side of him. A Cobra, flying so low it looks like he could reach up and touch it, is dumping machine-gun fire into one of the structures. Redman smells a powerful odor of burning flesh. They have arrived in Al Muwaffaqiyah.
Two other teams make it across the bridge before a Humvee towing a trailer becomes hung up in the hole, blocking it off. The fourteen Marines who made it across are now cut off, alone in the town. Kocher's team pushes forward about seventy-five meters, then is forced to halt. Buildings on both sides of the road are collapsed into it. Rubble in some places is piled higher than the hood of their vehicle. "There's nowhere to go, dude," Redman observes.
Another Cobra strafing run sends Carazales diving down to the floor. The rounds impact so close that he thinks it's enemy fire. When he gets back up, he sees Kocher on the ground, walking alone into the demolished city. Carazales says, "Kocher's happy now because he's got his own little suicide mission."
Kocher is determined to find a route through the town. Much as he dislikes his immediate superior, Captain America, Kocher loves his job. He grew up outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and spent his youth "running around in the backwoods." He hunted deer, wrestled and listened to tales of war adventure from relatives who had served in World War II and in the Korean conflict. He knew from the time he was very little he would be a Navy SEAL or a Recon Marine. He likes being out on his own in a dark, alien town. After the Cobras fire a final Hellfire into a building in front of him, the place grows silent. All he can think of, Kocher later tells me, is a basic rule of combat reconnaissance: "The lead element's expendable. Guess I'm it."
He picks his way through the rubble and tries to clear a path for the Humvees by pulling twisted rebars from fallen buildings out of the street. Then he sees movement in an alley and fires several shots at it.
He and the other men on his team take cover, but no fire is returned. The town is about a kilometer long. Kocher soon figures that the Marine artillery leveled only about a quarter of the town. One strip of buildings close to the bridge was left standing, and near them there's a clear alley that the Humvees could pass through. He returns to the Humvee with the news.
When Carazales hears it, he tells the radio operator, "Don't pass that word up to the battalion. They'll probably want to send us through this bitch."
But the radio operator sends the news. They're ordered to remain in position.
Several vehicles from Bravo Company remain stuck on the bridge behind a Humvee trailer with one wheel hanging through the hole in the roadway. Encino Man originally took charge of the effort to free the trailer, but repeated attempts to rock it out have only succeeded in making the hole larger.
When Maj. Shoup comes up to the bridge to help out, he sees that nothing is happening. Several Marines stand around doing nothing, while Encino Man and Captain America shout excitedly into their radios. To Shoup it looks like they've lost focus of the situation and are "stuck on their radios, not commanding."
As an air officer, Shoup has no authority within Bravo Company. But in his mind, having three teams of Marines stuck in the town, with daylight rapidly approaching, is an urgent matter, and Encino Man's paralysis is threatening everyone. He takes a somewhat radical measure. He steps up to Encino Man and tells him, "Give me all your radios."
Encino Man is baffled, but he hands his radio handsets over. Shoup later says, "I think taking the handsets from him was the most useful thing I did that night."
Encino Man admits, "It turned out good. I went out to help manually pick up the trailer."
With Shoup effectively in command, Encino Man's brawn as a former college football star is put to good use. He and other Marines heave the stuck trailer wheel onto metal slats and pull it out of the hole, clearing the bridge at sunrise.
By the time Bravo pulls its teams out of Al Muwaffaqiyah and regroups on the other side of the bridge, a small mob of officers and senior enlisted men are gathered by the eucalyptus trees where we were ambushed. There are five bodies of enemy fighters scattered under them, along with piles of munitions, RPGs, AKs and hand grenades. One corpse still holds a weapon in its hand, a Russian stick grenade, with the end shot off.
Several officers mill about, talking excitedly and snapping souvenir pictures of the dead. No one has bothered to search the area or examine the corpses in any methodical manner. Captain America is yelling at the top of his lungs, picking up AKs and hurling them into the canal.
Fick walks up, sees the pandemonium and says to Encino Man, "What the fuck are these people doing taking pictures when there're guns on these guys, and none of them have been searched?"
No one pays him any heed. They're distracted when Maj. Eckloff, the battalion XO, makes a curious discovery. He leans down and picks up the hand of one of the dead fighters. Between his thumb and index finger there are words tattooed in English: i love you. Eckloff reads it aloud for the benefit of the other Marines nearby. The tattoo is in keeping with the anomalous attire of the fallen fighters. They're dressed in pleated slacks, loafers and leather jackets, and wear cheap but stylish watches. Eckloff says, "These guys look like foreign university students in New York."
Kocher arrives by the trees and notices one of the "dead" men peeling his head off the ground, looking around at the Americans.
"This guy's still alive," Kocher says. Like Fick, he can't believe that the area still hasn't been searched. The wounded fighter is lying within arm's reach of seven RPG rounds. Kocher trains his rifle on him.
Captain America runs up shouting, "Shoot him!"
Kocher ignores him as usual.
Someone else calls for a corpsman. One arrives, along with Lt. Col. Fer-rando.
"Can you help this man?" Ferrando asks.
Initially, the corpsman says no. He's worried about booby traps.
Kocher volunteers to search him. As he pats him down for hidden weapons, the man shrieks. He's shot in the right arm and has a two-inch chunk of his right leg missing, the bone blown out by a .50-cal round. He carries a Syrian passport that bears the name Ahmed Shahada. He's twenty-six years old, and his address in Iraq is listed as the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which is by local standards one of the better hotels, catering to foreign journalists and European aid workers. He's carrying 500 Syrian pounds, a packet of prescription painkillers in his shirt pocket and an entry visa to Iraq dated March 23. He arrived barely more than a week ago. Handwritten in the section of his visa that asks the purpose of his visit to Iraq is one word: "Jihad."
When the corpsman begins treating the wounded Syrian, Captain America stalks over, enraged. "The guy's a terrorist!" he shouts. He leans down, rips the wristwatch from him and stomps it under his boot. "Goddamn terrorist," he shouts. Then he notices the 500 pounds in Syrian notes sticking out of the wounded man's pocket. Earlier, Kocher had found the bills when searching him and had returned them to his pocket. Captain America grabs the money—worth about $9.55 U.S.—offers a few notes to the corpsman, who declines them, then stalks off.
When they finally get around to searching the rest of the fighters, every one of them has a Syrian passport. After news spreads of the foreign identities of the enemy combatants, the Marines are excited. "We just fought actual terrorists," Doc Bryan says. After nearly two weeks of never knowing who was shooting at them, the Marines can finally put a face to the enemy.
Later, intelligence officers in First Marine Division will estimate that as many as 50 percent of all combatants in central Iraq were foreigners. "Saddam offered these men land, money and wives to come and fight for him," one officer tells me. He adds that foreign fighters were simply dropped off at intersections by Iraqi Fedayeen, given weapons and told to attack the Americans when they came up the road. At times, the foreign jihadis were simply used to buy time for Iraqi soldiers to change out of their uniforms and flee.
Given the Syrians' poor performance at the bridge—trying to use skinny eucalyptus trees for cover, being wholly unaware that they could be observed through American night optics—Eckloff concludes, "The concept of being a guerrilla fighter was like something they'd gotten out of the movies."
Encino Man walks up, gazing at the dead Syrians. "I wonder if President Bush will ever find out about this," he says, his voice full of awe. "This is what the president's been talking about with the war on terrorists. This is why we're here."
Fick and I drive together to the platoon's position down the road from the bridge (actually the same wadi they'd encamped in before attempting to take the bridge the night before). Sunlight streaks through his filthy windshield. "It's a beautiful morning," he says, gazing at the surrounding fields, where shepherds are now walking among sheep and cows.
It's among the most beautiful mornings I've ever seen. It's exciting to see daylight after getting shot at.
Nevertheless, Fick is grim. Unlike the others who'd been cheered by capturing a foreign jihadi, Fick thinks it's an ominous development: While Fick had never been avidly pro-war, he'd always radiated quiet confidence about the Americans—at least the Marines—reaching their basic objective: regime change. The arrival of Syrians has shaken him. "Isn't this the absolute opposite of what we wanted to have happen here?" he asks. "I can see this effort"—as he refers to the war—"becoming seriously complicated."
We drive in silence. Fick sinks deeper into his state of morbid reflection, turning over the events of the previous night. "We should never be in that position again. We rolled into a three-sided ambush. That was bad tactics."
When he stops the Humvee near Bravo's position, Fick drops his head toward his chest and shuts his eyes. A moment later, he looks up, smiling with a profound realization. "I know what we did last night," he says.
To explain his epiphany, Fick brings up an incident that occurred several weeks earlier at Camp Mathilda between Pappy and some other Marines. Part of the reason Marines nicknamed Sgt. Patrick "Pappy" was his style of dressing. In Camp Mathilda, he invariably wore his physical-training shorts with combat boots and socks pulled up to his knees. His fellow Marines thought the look was "old-mannish." As he was walking past a group of them one day in his customary attire, a Marine stopped him and said, "Pappy, give us some old-man wisdom." Pappy turned, waved his finger and said, "Don't pet a burning dog." It was the sort of nonsense wisdom for which Pappy is famous. In Afghanistan, he and Kocher were sitting in a Marine camp outside Kandahar when a female Marine walked past. Gazing at her, Pappy said, "If she sees something without a purpose she could chuck a stone at it." Generally, no one knows what Pappy means when he comes up with these odd pronouncements, but this morning after the ambush on the bridge, Fick believes he's deciphered the meaning of Pappy's warning against petting a burning dog.