Look, it's not that hard, okay? I mean, I don't suggest it for nonprofessionals but I'd been doing the job a long time. It wasn't rocket science whatever the episode made it out to be.
(Wife edit: Now you see what I mean? He drives me nuts sometimes. Watch the episode. Yeah, it's that hard to figure out in your head how to maneuver four different units over several kilometers of terrain while taking artillery fire. And he did it in, what? A half a second? Faster than most people can figure out what coffee to order? Will he ever admit it? Hell, no. Drives me nuts.)
So that's the story of how The Last Centurions came about and how things went from bad to good to very very bad. Because we weren't going to be getting many episodes out unless we made it to the filling station. And there was, in fact, a division in our way.
Chapter Fourteen
There Has Been A Good Killing
The Sunni Triangle is a bit of a misnomer. But I'll work with it. The "triangle" is elongated north and comprised of Baghdad and Al Ramadi, which are more or less on the same line in the south, and Tikrit, which is a few hundred miles north of that line.
The whole area is fairly built up. Which meant more potential threats and given the population it was unlikely we were going to be greeted with open arms. Yeah, the population had crashed compared to the last time I was in Iraq, but it was still populated.
We were to the east of the Tigris. Looking at the map of village after village we were going to have to pass through, I was less than thrilled. Any of them could have a Javelin team in it. If I'd been the local Sunni commander, whoever he was, I'd have sent out a couple of Jav teams to every one of those villages. Or, at least, scout teams to figure out our route of advance and Jav teams to respond.
I was not interested in dodging Javelins all the way to Mosul then fighting an armored force.
I looked at our fuel consumption, looked at our available, did some calculations on the back of a napkin then dodged.
Right through the Sunni Triangle.
I didn't want an emperor's throne but I did want to see Blue Earth some day, even if it was going to be freaking cold. And it was going to be quite a few marches until we'd be free to run like the wind.
The thing is, to the east of the Tigris it was little fucking villages almost the whole way to Tikrit. To the west they drop off fast until you hit the Syrian Desert.
I wasn't afraid of desert. I'd have loved a nice open, nobody around, desert. What I didn't like was little fucking villages and farms and water courses and all the rest of that shit. It stopped us continuously making us sitting ducks.
I needed to be west of the Tigris.
Only one problem. There were, like, no fucking bridges across the Tigris. They were only at major cities. Notably, the first one north of Baghdad was at Zaydan where the villages had already fallen off. We were past the ones south of Baghdad. And all of those were in cities that were considered "hostile."
Presumably, Baghdad was where the core of the enemy would be hanging out.
Keep poking slowly north as the enemy closed in? We'd get surrounded and then ground to hamburger. We had to speed up. Speed was life. The quick and the dead.
We hadn't gotten that far north when I ordered an abrupt change in direction.
"Fillup, tell the Scouts to get on the Baghdad road and hammer west."
"West? Are you nuts?"
We were going downtown.
Commander's intent was what is called a "thunder run."
The commanders in Iraq in the "insertion phase" thought they'd invented it. They hadn't. Neither had the Black Horse in Vietnam which used it in Cambodia during our brief "intervention." Probably the first was performed by a Wehrmacht Panzer unit in Russia. Hell, the very first was probably by the Sarmatians.
Simply put, you put your pedal to the metal, you go balls to the wall and you fire at everything that even vaguely looks like a target. You don't stop for anything you don't absolutely have to.
It required some rearranging. And I did not want anyone running out of gas or ammo on the drive. We did a log on the way in. Then the Scouts went back out and we thundered.
A thunder run is significantly improved with tanks. Tanks have a psychological effect it's hard to describe. Especially at short range, and urban fighting tends to be very short range, they just look unstoppable. We didn't have tanks. We were going to have to hope that the gun Strykers were good enough.
We were saved by serendipity. (Which is a term meaning "I fucked up but things came out better than if I hadn't.") Okay, and active stupidness on the part of the local commander.
The local commander had gotten the word that we were out there and it was obvious we were heading for a link-up with the Kurds. He, therefore, did much what I thought he might. He sent out small units to "attrit" us while he gathered his main force to hunt us down.
All smart. Problem being that I "got inside his decision making cycle." What that means is, I wasn't doing what he thought was the obvious thing to do, keep pressing north, and I was reacting faster than he and his forces could react.
We were almost due east of Baghdad, a bit south of the line near Ajrab, when I made the decision.
The first "reaction" force had been sent out pell-mell to attack the drop area. That's the one that got the scout Stryker with the Jav. He was being smart, though, and putting most of his "light" force that he could scramble quick, fedayeen militia some of them organized into Javelin teams, up in the curve of villages I really didn't want to work my way through.
So about half his local supply of Javelins went to the wrong area.
Then he did what any good Middle Eastern commander does. He gathered his regular forces for a harangue. Had them line up with their tanks and trucks and AFVs and told them that they outnumbered the small American unit and that it would be easy to stop. That he knew right where it was going and by the time they caught the "thieves and butchers" that most of us would be smoking wrecks from the Javelins of the fedayeen militia. That there was nothing to worry about.
Scout Team Two-Five had a very specific mission. Barrel down the north side of the Baghdad highway to screen our advance. Don't stop for anything.
Why in the hell they went onto a fucking Iraqi military base I have no fucking clue. They said they got turned around and thought it was a parallel road to the Baghdad Highway.
Two-Five consisted of a regular Scout Stryker and the one commanded by the Scout Platoon leader. I happen to know that Boner could read a map better than that. Otherwise, he wouldn't be the Scout Platoon leader. They had fucking GPS and a clear route. How in the hell did they take a wrong turn?
What I got at the time went like this.