Into the Fire with Warrior McCoy

[thedrifter]

Into the Fire with Warrior McCoy


Simon Robinson reports with the 7th Marine Regiment in Southern Iraq

By Simon Robinson | Kut




Posted Sunday, April 6, 2003; 1:32 p.m. EST
Having carefully brushed his teeth, checked his ammunition and then looked over a map with his men, U.S. Marine Lieut. Colonel Bryan P. McCoy, 40, announces the day's activity as if he were running a fishing club. "We're going chumming," he announces. "We're going to throw some bait into the water and see if the sharks will come out." The sharks are an estimated 3,000 Iraqi soldiers in Diwaniyah, a city of 300,000 people 75 miles southeast of Baghdad, where the 1991 southern Shi'ite rebellion against Saddam Hussein first started.

The Marines are the bait. Why bring the enemy out in the open so far from Baghdad? McCoy's battalion is waiting farther back in order to clear out pockets of resistance and secure supply lines. "We want to keep the enemy on their heels," he says. So as the rest of the 7th Marine Regiment pushes north toward the capital, 3/4 Battalion plans to pick a fight at the rear of the convoy. "It's just a good opportunity to kill these guys," McCoy says. "I don't say that with a lot of bravado, but we're here to break their will. I don't want to sit on our asses all day with the enemy just over there."

As a rooster announces daylight, battalion vehicles line up along the highway, pointing in every direction so as not to give away the point of attack. Then the tanks, amphibious tractors and humvees head west toward the outskirts of Diwaniyah. The chum is now in the water, and the Iraqis rise immediately to take it, pinging the Marine armor with small-arms fire. A tank crewman answers, firing his coaxial machine gun into an enemy bunker. Over the radio comes a play-by-play: "Yeah baby," says a voice. "He just ate coax for breakfast," says another. But the sharks were already on hand, and in numbers, when the Marines arrived, and they seemed to fill up the palm-studded field in front of the Americans. McCoy calls for artillery support as his soldiers fire TOW missiles.

The Marines are now spilling out of amtracs and charging at the Iraqis. The idea is to push the infantry out quickly enough to stop the enemy from establishing bases of fire. It's a tactic McCoy deployed successfully just days ago in a battle at nearby Afak and one that defines him as a commander. "Go in there as if you own the place," he says later. That sense of supremacy now takes the form of artillery shells that are pounding Iraqi positions. Another TOW missile hits a large building, which sheds dust as if someone had beaten it with a stick.

The Marines reach the edge of town, and more Iraqis surrender. An old man strips off his jacket and waddles toward a Marine position in a dirty white singlet. "There are militia on every corner in the city," he says, unfolding a now familiar story in the Shi'ite south. "They tell us to fight or they will kill our children. They say if we are captured, the U.S. will tie us up and leave us in the desert, and when Saddam returns, he will kill us."

McCoy and his humvee team?a driver, a gunner, a radio operator and a TIME correspondent?drive across a scrub-filled field and stop on a small dirt patch between two bunkers. McCoy jumps out and shoots into the bunker on his side of the humvee. His gunner takes the other. Both turn out to be empty. But McCoy's aggressiveness is classic Marine, and the men like it. "He's the first one into battle and the last one out," says a Marine. "He's not like other battalion commanders sitting in their humvees at the back." And McCoy clearly revels in being a warrior. "I'm in my happy place," he says.

Let's quit pussyfooting and call it what it is. It's murder, it's slaughter.

? LIEUT. COLONEL BRYAN P. MCCOY

The tank company pushes through the field, flushing out the enemy and destroying two "technicals"?white pickups, one with an antiaircraft gun and one with a machine gun mounted in the back. The tanks hold the east of the city, while infantry pushes up from the south toward the tanks. The 3/4 Battalion skirts the city's edge. The Marines don't want to be drawn into street fighting, and it appears that dozens of Iraqi soldiers managed to withdraw into the city. Still, the chumming gambit is a success for the Marines. They have killed 92 Iraqis and taken 44 prisoners, and not one Marine has been injured. Says McCoy: "Let's quit pussyfooting and call it what it is. It's murder, it's slaughter, it's clubbing baby harp seals."

The next time could be different, though, and McCoy knows it: "As casual as we talk about it, taking human life is not to be taken lightly. Without getting all heavy and syrupy about it, it's a big deal. Sooner or later they're going to get one of us, or two of us, or five of us or more. It's just not our time yet. But odds are it's going to happen."

Two days later, in fact. Fresh from battle, McCoy's unit reverses course and heads east, crossing the Tigris over a bridge captured earlier. We pass under the gates of Kut and into the town. To the north of the road is open ground, dotted by a few houses. To the south, a large palm grove, thick with grass.

Suddenly, gunfire rings out. "Baynes, Baynes, three o'clock," shouts McCoy to the gunner atop his humvee. Small-arms fire pesters the convoy from the palm grove and buildings to the southeast. An RPG round hits the side of an armored vehicle. The Marines pour out of their amtracs and charge into the grove, driving forward, taking bunkers, hiding behind berms. A Marine goes down, a kid, a bullet through his stomach. Bullets fly over the hood of McCoy's humvee. For a few minutes this grove seems like the hottest place on earth. There are smoke and explosions and bullets and cries.

And then it is over. The Marines push through, destroying weapons, capturing prisoners. An injured Iraqi soldier is dragged up to the road, his right leg twisted at the knee so that his foot faces backward. Another lies down next to me. "Don't kill me," he says in English. "Please, I can't fight. My arm, don't twist it left or right. It's broken." The Marines have destroyed 10 tanks and 14 antiaircraft guns and killed 78 Iraqis. As the Marines withdraw from town, thousands of Iraqi civilians, mostly men, are waiting at the gates to go in, as if they were working in a factory, taking over for the death shift.

The Marines have suffered one dead and three wounded. By the scorecard of battle, that's a huge victory, but "all that's not worth a Marine's life," says McCoy. "These are my boys. They did it for me. I went to the injured, and they said, 'We got them, sir.' They're still thinking of approval even then. They're good kids. Only they're not kids anymore."




Sempers,

Roger