“Outstanding, move to contact,” he said. “We just got tasking orders to take that bridge. You stay here and hold Abu Rishah while we take point.”
“Roger that,” said the Sergeant.
The distant sound of gunfire near Ramadi festered in Sergeant King. That was his fight, and now the Stryker Company had horned in and taken it from him. Yet the more he thought of it, the more the wisdom of Corporal Neal’s complaint settled in. Better to lead with something heavier in a situation like this. But the fight was just beginning, and there would be plenty of time and opportunities for 1/7th Cav to get some.
Chapter 12
Abu Rishah was a small outlying town just west of the Palestine Bridge into Ramadi, which had two main spans and a slimmer secondary bridge. It was the largest bridge in the region, and there was no way the Iraqi’s were going to rig it for demolition that night in time to stop those Strykers. But just as Sergeant King’s team moved into the hamlet, they came under small arm’s fire from unseen fighters in the heavier buildings ahead.
The Strykers moved off the road, passing on their right like grey ghosts, ignoring the encounter in the village and intent on their mission. The 50-Cal’s were heavy hitting rounds, nearly 5.5 inches long. If they hit someone, there was no way that unfortunate target could survive, and they could chew through brick, blast away wood or concrete walls, and even collapse buildings. They were the main guns on the Humvees, but the Stryker Company had heavier arms. The Stryker Dragoon Infantry carrier had many variants, one with a 30mm cannon, another with a 105mmm gun. Others were rigged to carry ATGM’s, Mortars, or an M2 Heavy Machinegun. It was perhaps the most versatile vehicle class in the army, though not as well protected as the Bradley.
The main city of Ramadi was screened by water barriers the muddy Euphrates to the north, and a wide channel and canal known as the Ramadi barrage that ran southeast to block the approaches from the west. That canal diverted water all the way south to Habbaniyah Lake, which was completely impassible. So the city presented a formidable obstacle. While it might be bypassed to the north, leaving any strong enemy force there would complicate the long line of communications and supply. Ramadi simply had to be cleared and secured.
Getting over these water obstacles with any expediency counted on the US forces capturing the few bridges intact, and the Palestine Bridge was the prize. Once across, Highway 1 would continue east north of the Euphrates, effectively bypassing the city, and Sergeant King and his men could count their lucky stars that they had not been tasked with veering off onto Highway 11.
That road approached Ramadi at the point where the canal diverted off from the Euphrates. There was a big ceramics and glass factory there on the west bank on the channel, blocking access to another bridge that would lead into the city where the toughest fighting would be.
The Strykers rolled across both spans of the Palestine Bridge, cannon spitting fire at the defenders on the far bank as they went. Behind them came the three mech infantry companies of the Thunder Horse Battalion, tasked with continuing up Highway 1 and enfilading the city to the north of the Euphrates. South of the fighting in Abu Rishah, there was an open area that was a pre-designated site for 1st BCT to set up its forward operating base—Camp Ramadi. So Sergeant King knew that the dark haired brigade commander, Colonel Deacon, would be very close, and he wanted to please.
Called “The Raven” on comms, Deacon would send out his tasking orders as the battle progressed, and at that hour he was fixated on the bridge, ignoring the firefight at Abu Rishah, as the rest of the brigade had done when they bypassed that action.
“Damn bastards are hanging tough,” said King. The MG Gunners on the Humvees had chewed up half the buildings ahead of them, with all three platoons engaged now, but the enemy fighters were irregulars, crouching in the rubble, and moving from one building to another. It was just the first nibble of what the urban fighting might be like in Ramadi, a much more densely built up area.
The Strykers bulled their way across the Palestine Bridge, losing only two vehicles to RPG attacks on the far bank. They were both support vehicles, one of the ATGM carriers and a big Stryker Mobile Gun, which pissed off the Company commander to no end. As dawn came, the light platoons had finally cleared out the last of the enemy fighters in and around Abu Rishah, losing only one Humvee in all that action. It had been night optics that had kept them safe, for they were able to see the small teams of Iraqi fighters trying to get close to use their RPG’s and gun them down before they could get off a shot.
“Hajis got their asses kicked,” said Gunner Duran with a grin.
“Hell,” said King. These guys weren’t even regulars. Not one had even as much as a helmet on. These were just locals with AK’s and RPG’s, but they kept at us all night.”
“Well bring on the Republican Guard,” said Sanchez. “I just wet my beak with this scuffle.”
“Team one, Harrier. Standby for tasking.”
“Roger Harrier, Standing by.”
There would be no breakfast break, because the tempo of operations was going to remain brisk all the next day. Sergeant King would get his orders soon enough, to move north along the west bank of the Euphrates and reconnoiter that area to make sure it was free of enemy units. Along the way they would see the rag tag remnants of the men they had been fighting in the pre-dawn darkness. As the Weasel looked through the field glasses he borrowed from Murphy, he could see that they just seemed to be civilians, which gave him a very uneasy feeling.
They weren’t going to be checking in to the Ramada Inn.
The heaviest fighting that morning was at the Ceramics Factory, where the first uniformed soldiers of the Ramadi Brigade were holed up. The heavy concrete buildings provided them fairly good positions, and that factory commanded the approached to the bridge over the canal. 1st BCT had plenty of 155mm SPG’s with them, and they started using the big guns liberally to reduce strongpoints, crushing one building complex after another and reducing the factory to smoking rubble. What remained was work for the Abrams tanks, and the Brigades of 1st Cav were equipped with the latest models, the Abrams M1-A2C.
Though largely destroyed, the factory was cleared by sunrise, and the infantry of 2/5 Lancers was securing the power station near the canal. Just south of the factory, the town of Al Tamim was also swept by the light recon platoons of 4/9th Cav, a unit structured in the same way as 1/7th Cav. Below that, the whole of 2nd BCT, 1st Cav, was rumbling along to enfilade Ramadi from the south. The Anbar University there had been taken, and it was now being used as a supply point as more trucks carrying everything from ammo and fuel to claymore mines and C5 explosives came up the long road from Jordan. 1st Cav was just the leading edge of the power that was still rolling along that road. Next in line was 1st BCT of the 3rd I.D.
Also underway that hour, was a battle for the Qassam Bridge further south on the canal. That bridge led to the Al Huz district of Ramadi, and word had come down from on high that all bridges were to be in US hands before noon that day.
Next on that list was the Al Jazeera Bridge, which was actually on a dam that controlled the flow of the Euphrates. At the narrow point where the canal and Euphrates diverged from one another, a palatial estate that belonged to the Baath Party was seized as an HQ site to oversee the operation to secure the Dam. It was taken with teams of infantry advancing behind Abrams tanks, the enemy small arms and MG fire snapping off the armor, and in on case, an RPG defeated when it failed to penetrate the frontal armor on the leading US tank.