“Gentlemen, I made reservations for all of us there, and check in starts at 15:00. First come, first served. Do you realize that the column behind us now stretches all of 200 miles? 2nd BCT will be out on our right soon. They took that secondary road we passed a while back. That puts two fists of the Iron Horse Division right up front, and brothers, we ain’t stopping till I get to my master suite in the Ramada.”
The Black Lions would not be the ones to fire the first shots of the ground war, for technically, the 101st Airborne troops landing to seize Al Asad AFB had already done that. As the main column approached Al Muhammadi AFB, the Weasel’s unit, 1/7th Cav, veered off the road into the open desert. They were bypassing the airfield, the light Humvees in the vanguard, with the rest of the battalion fanning out in a chevron formation. The Bradley AFV’s were on the left, and the Strykers on the right, but the Weasel was right in the middle of things, taking photos of the armored charge, with streams of sand and dust in the wake of each vehicle.
They did not get far before the tip of the spearhead halted to get optics on a shimmering mirage up ahead, knotted with dark blobs. It was the 175 Recon Squadron of the Iraqi Air Assault Division, which was watching the road about 15 kilometers west of Ramadi. 1/7th Cav was going to say hello.
“Kingmaker, this is Pale Horse. We have eyes on a light armored formation, about two klicks out and blocking the main road. Confirmed hostile. Over.”
“Roger Pale Horse, cleared hot on hostiles. Engage and clear that road. Over.”
Sergeant King heard that transmission on the coms and smiled. “Time to get this war started,” he said.
At that moment, with the sandy vehicles stretched out in that wide chevron to either side, no one could see the end of the road they had taken to come to this place. Mack Morgan had sent information on one possible outcome in his secret Geronimo transmission file to the President of the United States, and if that were to repeat here, the end would be a long decade or more away. Would the chronology move from invasion, to combat, occupation and insurgency, as it had in the history Morgan knew?
The official US Iraq War Logs listed just over 109,000 deaths in the war, of which 3,771 were US or Coalition friendly forces.[2] Yet numerous surveys taken by various institutions all tallied different numbers, one exceeding 650,000 deaths. No matter how the bodies would be counted, the killing would start here for 1/7th Cav. The Weasel heard someone on a trumpet sounding a traditional cavalry charge, and the chevron started moving. It was time to “get some,” an old war cry made popular by the Marines of 1st USMC Division. But here the war cry was Garryowen, the song of the 7th Cav…
Streams of tracer rounds lanced east as the wave of dust and sand closed on the enemy formation. The Weasel leaned out of the Humvee, snapping photos with his small hand held camera, which was tied securely to his wrist with the strap to keep it from being jarred loose when they hit a rough spot. The men hooted, and they heard the sound of that 50-Cal MG chugging away above them. As the battalion charged, the Iraqi vehicles were turning east down the road. They sped away, leaving their own dust trail behind them, which clouded the whole scene in a dull brown haze. Soon they reached the first of six burning vehicles, old Soviet built equipment that the Iraqis had bought years ago. About three kilometers on, the charge ended. Up ahead the road split, and the enemy had taken the left fork that led to the main bridge over the Euphrates northwest of Ramadi. From that fork, they were now 15 kilometers from the heart of the city.
The real ground war would start there, in the mud brown buildings of Ramadi, a city that would see at least 100 separate battles between the years 2003 and 2026 in Mack Morgan’s history. This would be the first in this retelling of these events, in a war that was embracing actions fought in the first two Gulf Wars as Morgan knew them. Even as it began, there was already a Desert Storm like operation underway in the distant south.
Dubbed Operation Clipper, a force composed of the 1st USMC Division, 3rd BCT of 1st Cav were swinging into the southern desert to enfilade the Iraqi and Iranian forces in Saudi Arabia. At the same time, the Saudi and Gulf State Forces threw themselves into a counterattack against the enemy line to pin it in place. Waiting in the wings was the concentrated 82nd Airborne Division, ready to move by helicopters to positions behind the enemy lines, blocking roads and avenues of retreat. That withdrawal order had already been issued, and the Iraqi forces were streaming north, trying to avoid engagement and take up a new line in northern Kuwait, defending the Sabiryah and Rumailah Oil Fields.
Here, as the Weasel snapped a photo of a wrecked Iraqi APC, the Ramada Inn ahead was now being made into Iraq’s first desert shield for the approach to Baghdad. Four Special Forces battalions, and four more of the Ramadi Territorial Brigade were digging into the bones of the city, where nearly a quarter of a million people huddled in fear as the war came to their homeland in this most unexpected way.
They were mostly Sunni Arabs, the tough, irascible Dulaim Bedouin tribe, the strongest in the “Sunni Triangle” of western Iraq. Fiercely independent, up to 20% of the ranks of the Republican Guard divisions were filled by men from this tribe, and it had formed the heart of the resistance movement in Al Anbar province against US occupation in Mack Morgan’s history. That resistance here would begin with this battle.
1/7th Cav got orders to pursue the retreating Iraqis up that north fork to the bridge, and when they got there, they found that the enemy had crossed to the far bank.
“Kingmaker, this is Pale Horse. Sitrep. Be advised. We have reached the river as ordered and have optics on the far bank. The enemy appears to be bringing up demolitions teams.. Over.”
“Roger Pale Horse. Imperative you cross that bridge and prevent demolition. Over.”
Sergeant King was squinting at his map. The airfield at Al Muhammadi had been overrun without much difficulty by the three heavy battalions that had followed them. Now he looked at the snaking course of the Euphrates, noting that there were few other places to cross north of his position. If he wanted to check in to the Ramada Inn, he needed to cross here, and fast, or he would find himself sitting there, staring at a broken bridge.
The sun was already low, setting red on the horizon, and they could hear the sound of artillery firing near Ramadi to the southwest.
“Hey Sarge, what gives?” Duran stuck his head down to complain. “I thought we were going to Ramadi.”
“This is the way to Ramadi,” said the Sergeant. “That’s the goddamn main bridge right there, and we just got orders to cross it.
“Well, we ain’t getting over that,” said Neal. “Not without tanks and engineers. What if they knock out some of our vehicles. It will be one hell of a clusterfuck on that bridge.”
“We got tanks, Neal.”
“Yeah, but they’re at the back of the column. Better if we wait here until they come up.”
“Stow that, Neal. We got orders to cross, and that’s that we do. Move it!”
As the engines growled to life again, they saw vehicles on the road behind them, friendlies. It was the Stryker Company, the first of the heavier units in the battalion. The lead vehicle stopped, and the company commander walked up, Lt. John Ranes, a tall Texan, all muscle.
2
That was just over 1000 more than the 2997 that died in the 9/11 attack that catalyzed the Iraq war in our history. Sadly, we have lost over 40,000 Americans as I write this to the COVID-19 virus, and that will surely go higher.