Posted on: Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Kane'ohe Marines on front lines in Fallujah
By Scott Peterson
The Christian Science Monitor
FALLUJAH, Iraq — Block by block, street by street, U.S. forces yesterday began seizing control of Fallujah, making unexpected gains against limited resistance, despite some chaotic delays entering the city.
Despite the steady rumble of fighting, from frequent artillery and rocket explosions to bursts of small arms fire across the city, American forces entered a veritable ghost town.
The 1st Battalion 3rd Marines from Kane'ohe pushed all the way to the main east-west road that bisects Fallujah — a line that commanders thought might take four days to reach.
"So we made it," said Lance Cpl. Carlos Cabezasrojas, of Secaucus, N.J., as Bravo Company launched its final attack of the day. "I got my confirmed kill, too."
That kill came as Bravo Company pushed south. Cabezasrojas spotted two men who fired rocket propelled grenades and then tried to bury a bomb.
"I got the first one," said Cabezasrojas, kneeling with his M-16 at the edge of the farthest point of advance. "The whole squad got the second."
The relative ease of advance yesterday contrasted sharply with the barrages that met U.S. forces when they breached the city limits overnight Monday.
The northeast sector penetrated by the 1/3 Marines yielded more stray dogs than armed insurgents. But bold incidents throughout the day underscored that the 3,000 insurgents here are not a spent force.
Expecting and finding countless explosive devices and booby traps, American units took few chances as they moved methodically through the city. Every vehicle was treated as a potential car bomb; every person a possible enemy.
Approval even came over the radio net to shoot dogs, with shotguns, to prevent them from being rigged with explosives.
Bravo Company's final attack of the day — mounted jointly with vehicles of a light armored reconnaissance company, or LAR, attached to the 1/3 — showed how Fallujah is being claimed on the ground by overwhelming firepower.
Capt. Gil Juarez, the LAR company commander, began the assault by blasting his 25mm turret gun down a street toward a target house. Teams also fired small mortars.
"You want me to fire one more volley?" Juarez asked a Bravo Company commander.
"Please, sir, if you would."
As scores of infantry troops began walking down the street, the armored vehicles moved ahead, aiming their guns down each side street and blasting any car in sight.
Doors along the way were blown open. At least one car fired upon burst into flames. Troops detonated numerous improvised explosive devices.
But the real threat remained insurgents who kept a low profile, but almost certainly have not disappeared. On foot with the LAR's Raider platoon, this correspondent saw the corpses of only three insurgents, one of whom had a long beard and a harness full of magazine clips, indicating that he was an Islamic fighter, possibly foreign.
He and another had died just hours before, in a U.S. mortar attack that landed at what appeared to be the gate of their house.
The Raider Scouts yesterday claimed at least one kill. Sgt. Kevin Boyd, of Pittsburgh, led the firing on an armed man who popped up on a balcony.
Everywhere there was danger.
In one example, 1st Lt. Paul Webber, an LAR platoon commander, was sitting in his vehicle turret yesterday, when a cleanshaven man wearing a white T-shirt and black sweatpants stepped out of the bushes 25 yards away and hunkered down to fire an RPG at the vehicle.
Even as Webber fired, wounding the man in the leg, the attacker launched the rocket. "I felt the heat," Webber said. "He missed by just a few meters."
While the 1/3 Marines infantry moved quickly, they endured a rain-soaked, dangerous 13-hour ordeal getting into Fallujah.
"No plan survives the line of departure," said Capt. Cameron Albin, the LAR deputy commander from Austin, Texas.
Indeed, the breach plan did not. The 1/3 Marines were supposed to blow a path across train tracks, but they were well-built and didn't break the first time. Then an armored bulldozer got stuck in the breach, even as Marines began to target nearby houses, lighting up the night sky with artillery blasts and air strikes.
With no radio and ill-functioning night-vision goggles, the backup bulldozer's driver couldn't find the breach. The Raider Scouts were tasked to find the bulldozer and guide it to the breach. Twice they had to dismount, under heavy fire, and climb on to the bulldozer.
"He finally stopped when I flashed him in the eyes 20 times," says Lance Cpl. Jason Canellis, from Vandera, Texas, who raced to the bulldozer under a pounding attack. "He had no idea where to go."
The delay meant that several vehicles came together near the breach point. Insurgents took advantage, launching three mortar rounds, wounding four as they struck two tanks and an armored troop carrier just 40 yards from the Raider Scouts.
The scouts dropped below the rim of their vehicles, and one whooped with excitement and joined the firefight.
"That machine gun was quick; those bullets were coming in fast," said Cpl. Christopher DeBlanc, of Spotsylvania, Va.
"They were a lot more accurate than they were the last time we were here," said Lance Cpl. Matt McClellan, of Clayton, N.J., about the unit's first tour in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.
