Tuesday, November 23, 2004
By Greg
Palkot
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STORIES |
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BACKGROUND |
| The
dangers of the assault on Fallujah didn't really become clear
to me until Thursday afternoon, Nov. 11. The U.S. military
(with journalists embedded with India Company of the 3rd
Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment) had already been in the city
nearly three days.
We'd seen our share of "Shock and Awe" (the air, artillery
and tank barrage as the Marines entered Fallujah (search) was nothing short of a modern-day
Dante's "Inferno"). We'd gone along and watched as Marines
blasted in doors, scaled walls and turned up weapons and
weapon-toters — the blood-thirsty terrorists that this mission
was all about.
But again, it took until that Thursday for the difficulty
of this campaign to sink in. That's when we watched as Lance
Cpl. Clayton South was carried out on a stretcher from a house
in the northwestern section of the city.
We'd gotten to know the good-looking 28-year-old
Indianapolis native over the prior 10 days as we were
specifically embedded with his Third Platoon.
FOX viewers might remember South, too. He was the one who,
when I asked what he thought the invasion would be like,
replied, "It'll be a walk in the park ... just a little more
boom-boom."
He was right on the latter part, anyway. He was leading a
"fire team" into the second floor of the house when he opened
up one door and found himself face to face with a heavy-set,
gun-toting insurgent who opened up on him.
Also caught in the hail of bullets: Lance Cpl. Ray Lopez
from Odessa, Texas. His injury touched me as well.
It was this 20-year-old with whom I entrusted my life on
the first night of the invasion. In order to make our exit
from the assault vehicle (search) as seamless as possible, we attached
ourselves to a "fire team" within Third Platoon, and it was
Lopez whom we hustled behind into a blinding night of
explosions, gunfire and confusion.
Others in that platoon were lightly injured in the Thursday
incident before the gunman was very definitively gunned down.
But there would be one more casualty that day, and that, too,
hit home.
It was the commander of the platoon, 2nd Lt. J.P.
Blecksmith. The 24-year-old had graduated from Annapolis last
year. He was a likeable guy and had asked my opinion, the
night before the invasion was launched, about which DVD he
should watch.
The last time I saw Blecksmith he was standing outside the
house where the firefight had taken place — where all his
young men were a bit scattered and disheveled by the bloodshed
and fighting they had just been through.
One of the older officers took Blecksmith aside and told
him, "Get a hold of your men ... and get back into the
battle."
He nodded quietly and launched a move back into a row of
houses where it was thought other insurgents were hiding
out.
A half-hour later, as we were with another unit a block
away, we got the news: J.P. had been killed, a sniper's bullet
finding its way around the upper front corner of his flak
jacket, downing the burly fellow, snuffing out an incredibly
promising life.
In fact, India Company (which numbers, without added
personnel, just over 150) would see three of their Marines
killed in action and another 22 injured, 13 of them seriously.
But just about none of them gave up the fight — despite some
of the most harrowing conditions you could ever dream of.
Imagine entering a strange city, and going house to house,
door to door, and behind any door, a guy with a gun might be
lurking to try and blow you away.
Oh, and you're not going in the front entrances of these
places. Because of the risk of explosives, these guys did
their "house-hunting" climbing walls, jumping roofs, squeezing
down alleys.
At the end of the mission, depleted by stress and
exhaustion, I asked 20-year-old Chicago native Lance Cpl.
David Jelinek how many houses he thought he'd gone into.
"A thousand," he told me, "easily a thousand."
These guys easily aged 10 years in a week. They saw it all.
Not just their own being killed, but gunning down others,
coming across families huddling in the ruined landscape,
hauling in detainees — and tons of weapons and explosives in
this one-time terror playground.
"It was bad ... it was really bad," Lance Cpl. David
Enright told me. He asked me not to give his age (he's got to
keep up appearances with some lady friends back home), but
this "twenty-something" came into this assault a battle
veteran.
He was in on the invasion last year and spent one harrowing
afternoon pinned down in a trench in an open field while
Saddam's men fired away. He said this was worse. And you could
tell by the grizzled look of Enright's face that he'd take an
open field over a dark, narrow, smoky house.
A lot has been made in the last few days about the conduct
of the Marines in this battle, following a videotaped shooting
by a Marine of an allegedly injured and unarmed Iraqi.
I wasn't there and so can't comment firsthand about that
act, but I can tell you what I saw with India Company: A bunch
of guys doing a back-breaking, nerve-wracking job, in the best
way they knew how, with the best conduct you could expect.
Were the Marines I was with on their best behavior because
a FOX camera was along? Maybe. But I'd like to think it had
more to do with a dedication to achieve the mission — and a
dedication to their fellow Marines.
India Company's assault on Fallujah lasted exactly one
week. A few houses away from their most southern limit of
operation last Monday (they had pushed down two miles from the
northwestern part of the city), they came across the biggest
grouping of insurgents they would find in the assault.
The commander of India Company, Capt. Brian Chontosh, told
me he thinks some 100 rebels were hiding out in that
neighborhood. A nine-hour battle would leave at least 22
insurgents dead, another 10 injured and 33 detained.
There were Marine casualties, too, including Cpl. Shane
Kielion. He was a real nice kid, always polite and helpful to
the FOX team. As a radio operator for the company's officers,
he was always in the thick of battle.
On that day, Nov. 15, he was standing on a roof when an
insurgent fusillade hit him in the head. I learned later he
died from the wounds. I also learned that the 23-year-old had
a wife who gave birth to their child on the same day that
Kielion died.
India Company is not leaving Fallujah any time soon. Their
orders are to stay in the city and see to it that the
civilians come back safely and the city gets rebuilt and up on
its feet — without the insurgents keeping them under their
boots.
It's not going to be an easy job. Most Marines I talked to
said it could be rougher than the invasion.
I can only figure, though, that these guys will work a
little harder on that future mission because of their
colleagues who have fallen fighting the mission just wrapped
up. |