| When combat finally came for three American soldiers wounded in southern Iraq, it erupted with bewildering swiftness and it wore a civilian's guise.
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The soldiers, a Marine corporal and two army sergeants, told harrowing stories of their experiences Thursday at a military hospital here, where they are being treated for bullet and shrapnel wounds. They are among 24 soldiers who have been flown here from field hospitals in and near Iraq.
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These men were injured during two ambushes last weekend by armed Iraqis who were dressed in traditional robes. In the first attack, Sergeant Jamie Villafane said he captured four Iraqis, who took off their robes as they surrendered to reveal Iraqi army uniforms underneath.
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In the second, a Marine unit patrolling a bridge in the southern town of An Nasiriyah came under fire from people in civilian clothes carrying AK-47 assault rifles. It was not clear who they were. Lance Corporal Joshua Menard, who was shot in the hand during that attack, said he was surprised, not just by the fact that his assailants wore civilian clothes, but by the ferocity of their resistance.
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"We were told when we were going through Nasiriyah that we should look to see little or no resistance," Menard said. "Then when we got in there, it was a whole different ballgame."
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Just how different became clear in an account by Villafane and his gunnery sergeant, Charles Horgan. They, too, clashed with Iraqis while on a bridge, a few miles south of An Nasiriyah. Their unit, a part of the army's Headquarters Company, had been asked to detour there last Saturday at 1 p.m. to check on a group of civilians, who were described as acting in an unruly manner. As the convoy of five vehicles crept across the bridge, Villafane peered through his windshield at several men standing in a trench off to the side. He worried that some were hiding guns under their robes. The last thing he recalls was a frantic cry from Horgan, "RPG!" as the sergeant spotted what he believed to be a rocket-propelled grenade bearing down on their Humvee.
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The impact blew Villafane out of the truck, leaving him on the ground, dazed and bloodied. Horgan was catapulted out of his gun turret onto the roof of the Humvee, his foot nearly blown off. The truck had been hit by a wire-guided missile fired by a man on the far side of the bridge. Villafane said he regained consciousness in time to see another missile streaking toward him. He threw himself out of its path, hearing it whistle, as it plowed into a second Humvee. By then, the air was thick with smoke from the burning trucks, and gunfire from across and beneath the bridge. As he collected himself, Villafane's first thought was that his men were surrounded. "We weren't nonchalant going in there," said Villafane, 31, a native of Brentwood, New York, who spoke in a matter-of-fact tone with flashes of wit. "But I did not expect it to escalate the way it did." While Villafane scrambled for his M4 machine gun, Horgan hopped down from the Humvee, collapsing when he landed on the ground. His foot, torn open by shrapnel, could not support him. "I tried to get up a couple of times, but I kept falling," Horgan said. "I looked down again at my foot, and it looked like it was gone, by the way the boot was hanging. It was blown open." As Horgan crawled back toward the rear of the convoy, Villafane returned fire from several people shooting from the far side of the bridge. He believes he hit one person. Then he spotted four men lurking underneath the bridge. They seemed intent on reaching two mud huts next to the pilings. From where he crouched, Villafane said he could see that the huts held a cache of weapons. He clambered down the embankment, shouting after the men to give themselves up. The first man he encountered threw down his gun, an AK-47 assault rifle, and threw up his hands, speaking in Arabic. "He looked absolutely terrified," Villafane said. Three other Iraqis emerged from behind a bridge piling, and seeing their comrade held at gunpoint, laid down their weapons and raised their hands. They shed their robes to reveal Iraqi uniforms underneath. The first man gestured that Villafane had hurt his hand and reached out to help but got a stiff rebuke from the sergeant, who was wrapping a bandage on his hand while keeping his gun trained on the prisoners. "I was so aggravated by the whole situation," he said. After rounding up the prisoners, Villafane herded them back up to the bridge, throwing a smoke grenade to obscure the view of the people still huddled at the far side. He moved them to the rear of the convoy, where there was a Bradley infantry vehicle and an Abrams tank. After turning the prisoners over to the tank commander, Villafane went back to get his men. He threw another smoke grenade and laid a wall of covering gunfire, as the soldiers fell back in stages. Along with another man, he helped Horgan hobble back to the safety of the Bradley. As the ramp drew shut, they said they could still hear the roar of machine guns, as the tank fired on the Iraqis. Once inside, Horgan noticed that Villafane was bleeding from his arm. Horgan cut open his sleeve to reveal a gaping wound on his forearm just below the elbow. Villafane sustained nerve damage, as well as a shattered ring finger, from the shrapnel. Villafane then looked at his friend's wounded foot, concluding that it too was more serious than first thought. A piece of his right heel had been blown off. Doctors here said Horgan would not lose his foot but would require physical therapy to regain its use. Villafane still seethes when he thinks about fighting soldiers disguised as civilians. "I thought it was disgusting," he said. But he added that he understood why, in their desperation against better-equipped, better-trained American troops, the Iraqis might have resorted to such methods.
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"They have to do whatever they can do," he said. The soldiers said that the fury of the gun battle, which lasted about 10 minutes, actually focused their minds, rather than confusing them. The soldiers said they drew on their training to avoid panic. "I was being oddly rational about what was happening," said Horgan, an articulate 21-year-old from Helena, Montana. "I thought, 'O.K., my foot might be gone; I better crawl.'" As they reviewed the horrific events of last Saturday afternoon, the two soldiers of Headquarters Company drew a simple conclusion about the lessons of war, according to Villafane.
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"We talked about how getting shot at wasn't really that bad," he said. "It was just the getting shot part that sucked."
Source: Int. Herald Tribune | |
