Darkside Toward Baghdad

[thedrifter]

DARKSIDE TOWARD BAGHDAD

DARKSIDE
They called me Paperboy. Even as a newspaper reporter, I'd seen little death. And I'd never seen anyone die. But I wanted to see a war. So when I had the chance for a seat on the 50-yard line in Iraq, I took it. I was what they called an "embedded reporter." I rode along with the Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment, as it loaded up in Kuwait and crossed into Iraq.

The Marines fought, killed, and some died; and they were the ones who pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein. The unit was led by Lt. Col. Bryan P.

McCoy. Radio call sign: Darkside.

It's a joking reference to the movie "Star Wars." As in Darth Vader's "Come over to the dark side." But deep down, "Darkside" is a state of mind. That part of the brain that goes back to the caveman, to life and death and protecting what's yours.

It's the boy who picks up a stick and pretends it's a machine gun. It's playing war or cowboys and Indians. It's the love of movies with guns and bombs and car chases. It's the tingle at the start of a football game, or a fight.

Darkside understands it. As a Marine battalion commander, he has studied it,

trained for it and applied it to a thousand men in his command. And then he put it to use in Iraq.

In addition to moving his thousand Marines across the battlefield and keeping them fed and healthy, Darkside had to control the violence of his men. He had to unleash it for battle, and then carefully put it away in a safe place when the shooting stopped. Some of this was his to control. Most was the result of training and careful selection of men who would serve in a fighting unit. Marines talk incessantly about "rules of engagement," whom to shoot and when to shoot them. It's not uncommon to see them killing enemy soldiers one minute, feeding candy to kids the next. Darkside is 40 years old. From Oklahoma. About 6 feet tall, 200 pounds. Hazel eyes and light brown hair in a Marine Corps high-and-tight cut.

He's an Army brat; his dad was an officer, two tours in Vietnam. But Army life didn't appeal to the younger McCoy. He liked the spirit and energy of the Marines. He lives the life of a modern-day Spartan. He trains hard, runs marathons, hikes long trails. "Being a Marine is not something I do," he once told me. "It's what I am."

McCoy has studied the great generals. He can tell you whom he admires and why. William Tecumseh Sherman for his straightforward, no-muss, no-fuss approach to war. Rommel for his tactical mind. Patton for aggressiveness. Napoleon for the ability to spot a weakness and act on it. The Spartans for their warrior ethic.

His favorite quote is from Sherman. "War is cruelty. There is no use in refining it. The crueler it is, the sooner it is over."

Second favorite is Rommel. "When in doubt, attack."

A couple of days after the fall of Baghdad, McCoy and I chat in the coffee shop of the Palestine Hotel and our thoughts go to the Marines who died during the war. McCoy will have to send letters to their families.

I ask him how he deals with it, the knowledge that they died under his command.

"I don't know," he says. "I don't think I have dealt with it."

Darkside is a Methodist. He believes that his profession and his religion are not at odds. As a Marine, he kills and orders others to kill. He sees it as a necessary evil. "In the world, there are sheep and there are wolves," he says. "I like to think of Marines as the sheepdogs.

"Someone has to know how to fight. If it weren't for the sheepdogs, where would the sheep be?"



THE MARINES
Marines believe. They believe they're the best fighters and the best lovers.

They believe they are the toughest and the bravest.

A couple hundred years ago, there were no Marines, only sailors

and soldiers. Aboard the tall-masted fighting ships, a group of sailors emerged: the meanest, toughest warriors who fought the enemy hand-to-hand in ship-to-ship battles, and who went on shore parties. These became a separate unit later and they were called Marines.

I don't know if that's why Marines are so cocky and full of themselves. But the corps has always attracted a certain type of person. People with something to prove. Who want to live on the edge. Many Marines went to boot camp one step ahead of county jail. Others were high school jocks who liked the attention, or kids proving their manhood.

It's June 1976 and I'm sitting at attention in a wooden barracks. This is Parris Island, South Carolina. I'm 17 years old.

We're waiting to get haircuts. We all have hair down to our shoulders, or longer. And Marine barbers don't really cut as much as shear.

They're taking guys four at a time into another room for their three-minute shearings. I'm staring out a screened window at people passing by. Marine wives and friends, laughing and strolling. They're free. I'm not.

I hear a commotion. Some brave young man has approached a drill instructor. The recruit is short and muscular. Handsome, with beautiful, dark curly hair. There's been a terrible mistake, he says. He's not supposed to be here.

I expect the drill instructor to explode and scream. But he doesn't. He smiles. He's going to pick the wings off a fly. What's the matter, young man, he asks gently.

The boy, emboldened, smiles back. He says he lied on his enlistment papers. He has a bad back, a wrestling injury. His recruiter told him to lie about the injury so he could enlist. But now his back hurts and he realizes it was a mistake. Can he go home?

The DI smiles and calls to another couple of drill instructors. Listen to this sad story. And the boy says again, he has a bad back.

One DI says, I think we should process him right out of here.

I agree, says another.

But first, the original DI says, you're getting a haircut.

The three DIs grab the boy and pull him toward the barber room. He screams. No! It was a mistake! I don't want my hair cut!

He had gorgeous hair. Then it was gone. His scalp was mottled. When he crawled out of the barber's room, they took him from the barracks and we never saw him again.

Welcome to the Marine Corps.

Everything about Parris Island was brutal. The heat, the sand fleas, the running. The constant punishment: push-ups, jumping jacks, bend-and-thrusts.

The first night in our barracks we had to sleep at attention. The next day, someone did something stupid and the whole platoon had to do bend-and-thrusts. My hands hit hot pavement and blistered. That night, in the dark, I bit into those blisters with my teeth to drain the fluid.

Some kid couldn't take it. He cried and wet himself. So the drill instructors made him sleep at the front of the barracks, in full view of everyone, while they processed him out. Late at night, I could hear him crying,

and all I could think was, I'm glad that's not me.

I was fully brainwashed as a Marine by the time I graduated boot camp. I came to my senses about three weeks later. I couldn't stand the thought of humping a pack and rifle everywhere. I sure as hell didn't want to kill anyone,

or get killed.

I went to electronics school and learned how to fix radios. This was peacetime. I did my four years, drank a ton of beer, tried to make out with bar girls in Okinawa and Naples and took my leave with an honorable discharge.

I was most definitely not a warrior.

THE STUMPS
In the Mojave Desert, a hundred miles from nowhere, is the world's largest Marine base. Nine hundred square miles of sand and rock and a handful of barracks. This is Twentynine Palms, home of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Training Center.

I went to Twentynine Palms looking for a unit I could tag along with if the United States went to war in Iraq.

The Defense Department had been talking about a new program for journalists.

The plan was to "embed" reporters and photographers in military units, to live, eat and sleep with them if they went to war. Like Ernie Pyle in World War II. But if you've spent time in the military, you know there are units that fight and many more that support the ones fighting. I wanted to find a unit that would be in the fight. I wanted to meet them, get to know them. And I wanted to be comfortable with them. I wanted to find a unit that knew what it was doing. So we would all make it out alive.

I went to Twentynine Palms because I figured anyone who trained there would be skilled at desert warfare.

The bulk of the 1st Marine Division is based at Camp Pendleton, situated halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. But one infantry battalion lives at Twentynine Palms year-round. That unit is the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment.

Commanded by a lieutenant colonel nicknamed Darkside.

I discovered Three-Four by accident. I stayed with it on purpose.

No one was real excited about taking reporters to war. But Marines take orders. On my side, I had my Marine experience. And the fact that I was spending the time to get to know them.

McCoy was out for most of the day. I met him late. I was impressed by his personality. He seemed motivated and intelligent. He was hard core, but not overbearing.

More than anything, I liked that he understood my job.

"I don't expect you to write only good things about us," he told me. "If we screw something up, I expect you to write about that, too. That's your job. Just be fair. That's all I ask." We would have reason to test that philosophy later.

Darkside likes being a battalion commander. He is king. He rules over his men, interacts with them, sleeps with them in the field. Battalion commander is the last job an officer has in which he can actually fight a battle. After the next promotion, you stick pins in maps and work out the logistics of getting bullets to the fighting men.

A battalion is like a small private company, in that it has a budget and a hierarchy and can function independently, at least within the confines of its orders.

McCoy knew war was coming, and so he amped up the training program. He spent an entire year's ammunition budget in about a month. He wanted his Marines to feel comfortable with the sound and smell and feel of real bullets firing. Of course, if the war hadn't come, he would have been up a creek for spending wildly.



THE SERGEANT MAJOR
There are a thousand men, more or less, in a Marine infantry battalion. The most feared, respected, loved and hated man is the sergeant major.

He is the senior enlisted man in the battalion. There are nine enlisted ranks in the military and 10 officer ranks. Enlisted starts with private, then private first class and lance corporal. Those are the young guys, the ones who do most of the fighting and dying in war.

Then come the noncommissioned officers, the corporals and sergeants. The higher-ranking sergeants add "rockers," semicircular stripes, beneath their sergeant stripes when they get promoted. A staff sergeant has three stripes up and one rocker underneath. A gunnery sergeant has two. The sergeant major has four rockers. A sergeant major typically has served 20 or so years and been in units around the globe.

A Marine sergeant major provides order and discipline among the enlisted ranks, and he teaches lieutenants about life in the corps.

The sergeant major of Three-Four is a cantankerous St. Louis native named Dave Howell. He has a bullet-shaped head and a thick chest. He seems taller than he is because he yells so much.

Howell was the perfect complement to the colonel. Howell never went to college, but he spent 24 years in the Marines. He can chew up and spit out a misbehaving private one minute and tell a dirty joke the next. None of his stories are printable, but the funniest ends with the line: "Peg leg? What peg leg?"

Howell was nice and polite to me in the way career military men are to civilians. He called me "sir." Normally, as a reporter, I ask the questions. But as my time with him progressed, I noticed that he was asking me things. And it occurred to me: I'm being interviewed.

Howell is a blunt man. And talking to him started me thinking, for the first time, about the harsh reality of war.

"If you go with us, you're going to see us out there killing people," he said matter-of-factly. "How do you think the American people will feel about that?"

I told him I had no idea how the American people would react. It would depend on how the U.S. troops conducted themselves.

Inside, I was wondering how I would react. I imagined Marines charging Iraqi lines, shooting and killing. Would I get close enough to witness it? Would I risk my life or would I sit in the rear and wait for the battle to be over?



THE 'WAIT
Welcome to Kuwait.

The Marines call it "The 'Wait." Marines, soldiers and sailors sit in Kuwait for weeks, some for months, waiting for the start of a war that everyone knows is coming.

Many had been here before, in 1991, the time the U.S. military slaughtered the Iraqis. That kind of victory leads to confidence: that another war to the north will be a cakewalk.

McCoy has been here before. He commanded a rifle company in the first Gulf War.

"I knew 12 years ago that we would have to come back and finish the job," McCoy says. "I just didn't know when."

In Kuwait, the Marines train day and night. They shoot their M-16s and squad automatic weapons (SAWs). They fire the big nasty .50-caliber machine gun, mounted on the hoods of Humvees and turrets of tanks, and the MK-19, the fully automatic grenade launcher. They fire pistols and M-60 machine guns and mortars and the 120mm tank cannons.

Three-Four has been reconfigured for combat. Normally, an infantry battalion has three rifle companies, along with headquarters and weapons companies. But Three-Four has detached Lima Company and given it to the division's 1st Tank Battalion to provide ground support. In exchange, Three- Four has control over a company of M1A1 Abrams tanks, called Bravo Company.

The battalion is living in a patch of dust known as Camp Coyote, about 30 miles south of the Iraqi border.

Kuwait is flat as a table top and almost featureless. It's sand and more sand, with dust atop it. You can see far into the distance. You glance to the north often. It looks foreboding and dangerous. Way out on the horizon is a small white tent, an outpost. The only thing between two armies and a showdown.

The Kuwaitis build their American guests several tent cities in the north. Relatively nice white canvas tents with plywood flooring. Nobody has a cot.

But the accommodations aren't bad by grunt standards. Nobody has to live in a hole in the dirt. There are portable toilets and several modular shower buildings. The men shower about once a week. Chow tents serve hot meals twice a day.

When sandstorms hit and the generators go down, breakfast is a banana and warm Kool-Aid. Even on good days, the meals are numbingly similar. Breakfast is runny scrambled eggs and a long white sausage the guys call "camel dick."

While the tents and Porta Pottis make life livable, the training regimen does not. The troops know the president is considering war. And they know the presence of a hundred thousand troops on Kuwaiti soil means it's more than likely.

So training is around the clock. You wake up at 2 a.m. to the sounds of armored vehicles lumbering past and sergeants shouting orders. Throughout the day, squads or platoons run about, their gear swaying and clanging.

Reporters and photographers are everywhere. The Defense Department wants coverage of the buildup and has been bringing reporters in and out of the camps for months.

I get to Kuwait in mid-February. About three weeks later, they embed us. I'm with three other journalists, Simon Robinson and Bob Nickelsberg, reporter and photographer from Time magazine, and Gary Scurka, a producer for National Geographic television.

Soon after we're embedded, I have a talk with the sergeant major about how and where we journalists will go to war. Kilo Company is the hot ticket. It's better trained and considered harder-charging than India Company. If you want to see action, go with Kilo.

But I'm not sure I want to get that close. I ask about riding with Howell. He says he plans to be wherever the worst of the fighting is. That sounds even worse. No matter. He says no reporter rides with him.

Later Howell gathers us and says Simon and Bob will ride with Kilo, Gary will ride with India. I'm to ride with the Main. The Main is the central support and headquarters company. It's safe there, Howell says, but close enough that I'll get good stories.

I feel deflated. I should have gone with Kilo. On the other hand, Kilo is going to mix it up. And God knows what will happen.



THE RUN
It's 4 a.m. Kilo Company is getting up. Their tents are near the reporters' tent, called a "hootch," so when the company gunny starts rousting people, you know it.

Kilo is going on a 5-mile march this morning. First Sgt. Jim Kirkland has invited the reporters to go along. I'm thinking, 5 miles, we can march that far.

Except the company commander, Capt. Kevin Norton, likes surprises. War is full of them, he reasons. So, then, must be training.

In the predawn dark, we start off on a fast walk, everyone wearing flak jackets, helmets, weapons and ammunition. Norton is at the front of the column.

After a half mile, he breaks into a run. The grunts shake their heads, give a loud "Oooh-rah!" and they're off.

The infantry types dig this stuff. Less so the tank crews and the guys who drive the armored personnel carriers. They don't spend that much time on the ground.

The column moves like an accordion as people slow down and then speed up.

Someone starts singing the AC/DC song "Highway to Hell," and there are laughs. Except from the guys sucking wind.

Kirkland runs up and down the line, shouting encouragement to some and threatening others if they should dare to drop out.

Machine gunners and mortar men have it worst. They have to carry heavy tripods and gun tubes. Some have to pass off their weapons to a buddy, but that comes at a price. They are hooted and shunned until they take back their loads.

Norton slows the pace to a walk, and some sigh with relief. It doesn't last long. After another half mile, Norton breaks into a trot. It's lighter now, and we can see the camp to one side and nothing but open sand to the other. Across that wide expanse, everyone knows, is Iraq.

We run and then we walk. Run and then walk. Run. Walk. Norton growls at the people behind him to keep up. He's carrying all his gear, but it's not enough. As we pass by an abandoned sentry post, he runs over and picks up a sandbag and tosses it over his shoulder. He needed some extra weight, he tells me later.

The company works its way around the entire camp over a period of about an hour and then makes a right onto the main road into camp just after sunup. As other Marines come out of their hootches and prepare for chow, Kilo Company is running past, drenched in sweat, singing cadence.

"The guys love that stuff," Norton says with a grin. "They want everyone to know who's the toughest."

Back at the Three-Four tents, Kilo has a morning formation. Then Norton calls his men around him and gives a pep talk. He talks about motivation, training, preparedness and war.

"All it takes is one guy over there in a foxhole with a machine gun who decides to make a stand," he says. "One motivated individual can hurt you if you're not prepared, if you're not thinking, all the time."

Later, at an Iraqi city known as Al Kut, that lesson will be learned the hard way.

THE SPEECH
On March 15, we go to sleep knowing that the president will address the nation the next morning about 4 a.m. Kuwait time. At 5 a.m., I awake to the sound of a camp coming apart.

The president has given Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave town. War is imminent.

Duffel bags are filled and packs readjusted. Canteens topped off. Humvees gassed. The tent city looks like a beehive hit by a broomstick.

In midafternoon, McCoy calls a battalion formation. The sergeant major orders the companies to attention, turns and salutes McCoy. The C.O. jumps onto the rear ramp of an armored assault vehicle. He puts the men at ease, calls them over to circle around him.

McCoy looks at his men. There's a good chance some won't come back. Maybe a lot won't. He has practiced this speech for weeks.

It is, perhaps, the most important thing he will ever say.

"You're ready," he says, nodding. "You've trained hard."

He tells the men to expect fear. "That's normal," he says. "Accept it. Just know you're not out there alone. These will be some of the most memorable days in your lives. Friends you make here will be friends for life. He will be your brother forever."

McCoy talks about the battalion's first mission. They're going to Basra to engage an entire mechanized division, the Iraqi 51st. Which means they're going against tanks and infantry. Intelligence indicates thousands of soldiers in the division, though no one knows if it's at full strength. Still, the reports suggest that the battalion might be outnumbered 6 to 1. Maybe 8 to 1.

"We're going to slaughter the 51st Mechanized Division," McCoy says. "We're going to kill them and make an example out of them. If other Iraqi units see what happens to them, they might just go ahead and surrender."

It will not be a fair fight, he says.

"My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby harp seals. We will hit them with everything we have."

McCoy reads a message from the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, Jim Mattis, who talks about the reasons for war, about Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction. The general reminds the Marines that the Iraqi people are not the enemy, that the Marines are not to think of themselves as invaders.

The general urges the men to remain sharp, and be smart. "Engage your brain before you engage your weapon," he writes.

"Be the hunter, not the hunted."

In this war, maybe more so than others, the military worries about atrocities. The Marine Corps has its own hymn and there's a line in it: "Keep our honor clean." Do that, McCoy says.

And then it's over. Darkside jumps off the armored vehicle. The battalion goes back to work. Gear is stowed. Weapons oiled. In the midday heat, someone cranks up a boom box, loud, to the AC/DC heavy-metal song "Hells Bells."



THE BATTALION
Late in the afternoon, the battalion moves north, closer to Iraq. And then north again. As Washington threatens and cajoles, the 1st Marine Division is on the march. Three-Four stops a couple of miles south of Iraq, next to Highway 80, which leads to the Kuwait border town of Abdaly.

At night, we see cars driving down the road.

"You think those people would mess themselves if they knew what was out here?" asks Warrant Officer Gene Coughlin, better known as Gunner.

A Marine infantry battalion has enough firepower to level a small city.

Bravo Company has 15 M1A1 Abrams battle tanks. The battalion also has a platoon of armored assault vehicles (called AAVs) to carry infantry Marines. The AAVs are about 8 feet tall and 20 feet long and can carry 20 Marines. They are tracked vehicles, sometimes called Amtracs (for amphibious tractors) and can roll along at 40 mph on a hard surface. They're larger than the Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicles, carry more men, but have less armor and firepower. The AAV has a turret with two guns, a .50-caliber machine gun and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher.

The battalion has combat engineers, mortars, scout vehicles with .50- caliber machine guns in turrets and anti-tank missiles.

They have forward air observers and artillery officers who can call in fire from jets, helicopter gunships or the big 155 howitzers that are usually just on the other side of the horizon. They have supply trains and communications squads.

There are handshakes all around and nods of "good luck" and "stay safe" as the Marines part to make final equipment and weapons checks before going to the fight.

Some Marines write a last letter home. Others burn letters and personal effects. Word is, in the last war Iraqis found the correspondence of U.S. troops and mailed horrible letters to their loved ones.

In the dusk that night, McCoy gathers his officers for a briefing. He reminds them to be leaders. That their conduct in battle would be important to their men. "When things are at their worst, you need to be seen the most," he says.

He points to the sun, setting behind the veil of a fine dust mist. "Look at that sunset," he says. "Remember it. That might be the last sunset some people see."

Then he grins, and quotes a line from a Bill Murray comedy about Army life called "Stripes."

"Lighten up, Francis."


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...&type=printable


Sempers,

Roger

There is a few more chapters that I will be putting in later.....

[thedrifter]

McCoy's Marines
DARKSIDE TOWARD BAGHDAD
John Koopman, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
?2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/11/11/DDC2PJ0412.DTL

THE BORDER
We wait in the desert for the war to start. A sandstorm kicks up. Visibility is 20 feet. Sand and dust and dirt get into every crevice, every weapon, food and water.

I'm still thinking of riding with Kilo, but I see that Simon and Bob are stuck in the back of an Amtrac, where it's hot, loud and cramped. And 'Tracs are big targets for an Iraqi with a rocket or mortar.

Then it occurs to me: ride with McCoy. Darkside has his own humvee. He rides close to the action. But he's smart enough to stay safe.

I approach him with my suggestion and he says yes. I'm thinking I'm pretty smart until I overhear him say, "I'll never get shot. People get killed all around me, but I never get hit."

This does not fill me with confidence.

But I take my gear to his vehicle. McCoy is in the front passenger seat next to a couple of vehicle-mounted radios. Cpl. Omar Monge is the driver, Lance Cpl. Garfield Shealy is McCoy's radio operator and Lance Cpl. Samuel Baynes rides in the turret hatch, manning an M-60 machine gun. I ride in the back.

We wait in the blowing sand.


GAS
Every couple of hours, we hear the alarm: "Gas, gas, gas." We scramble for the gas masks strapped to our hips and drag them over our heads. You can't breathe well in a gas mask. Air comes in through a filter on the side. Sweat drips down your cheeks and under your neck.

Everyone in the military trains for chemical, biological and nuclear attack. This has been going on for decades, since I was a young Marine. But it's taken on new urgency with this war.

People talk about how and when Saddam will use chemical or biological weapons. Most figure he'll wait until the noose is tight on Baghdad and he's about to go down in flames. Because it's a given that his army won't beat the U.S. military.

Even so, every time someone thinks he hears an artillery shell going off in Iraq, the gas alert sounds. If an Iraqi coughs on the other side of the border, a gas alert goes up. We stay masked for 10 minutes, 15, sometimes as much as an hour, before the all-clear sounds. Some guys fall asleep wearing their masks.

"I'd like to beat the hell out of whoever came up with the idea of chemical weapons to begin with," says Sgt. Kevin Smith, of Natchez, Miss.

Smith is a long-faced Southern boy who likes chewing tobacco and dirty jokes. He's one of my best friends in the battalion.

Late in the afternoon, I find Smith sitting on a dirt mound, opening an MRE.

"Please, join me, Mr. Koopman," he says. "I'm Kevin and I'll be your waiter this evening."

I sit down, and Smith opens one of the tan plastic bags. "Our special this evening is beefsteak with savory gravy," he says. "For dessert, we have some nice, um, Skittles."

"Where's my napkin?" I ask.

Smith hands me a rolled-up MRE toilet-paper ration and asks if I'd like to see the wine list.

We share the tepid water from his canteen.

Later, word comes down for everyone to put on MOPP suits. MOPP stands for Mission Oriented Protective Posture. Basically, it's a jacket and pants designed to protect the wearer from chemical and biological agents. It has an activated charcoal lining and can breathe, but not well.

We're told we'll stay in the suits until after we've crossed the border, maybe through the end of the war. We wear the suits over T-shirts and shorts; it's too hot for regular clothes.


THE NIGHT BEFORE WAR
We hear the sound of American artillery fire pounding Iraq. Helicopters buzz back and forth across the border. Inside the battalion tactical center, radios buzz. Engineers on the border are coming under Iraqi mortar attacks. A Marine tank has been hit by a Hellfire missile, fired from a Cobra gunship, in the first friendly-fire incident of the war.

No one knows what's going on to the north. No one knows whether the Iraqi army will hit hard or fade away.

An intelligence report says the Medina Division of Iraq's Republican Guard has secretly moved from Baghdad to the border.

The Medina Division is about the only Iraqi unit that the Marines respect.

And now, allegedly, here it are, ready to get down to business.

The news scares the hell out of me. Have the Iraqis developed a plan to ambush the Marines? It doesn't seem possible that the Iraqi military would win this, or any fight. Still, they could inflict damage and kill people. I have thoughts of a bloodbath. I picture hundreds of Iraq tanks dug into ambush positions. I picture the battalion caught in the middle, explosions all around, people dying and me trying to crawl into a hole.

The battalion staff stays up all night rewriting the battle plan. They have one night to redo what the division has worked on for months. No one gets much sleep.

If anyone is worried, they don't show it.

"Looks like the Republican Guard is going to come out and play," McCoy says in the morning. "Well, good on 'em. We'll slaughter them, too."


HOGAN'S ALLEY
The war starts in the morning.

The order to move comes from Ripper 6, the regimental commander, Col. Steve Hummer. McCoy's boss.

Pretty much the entire 1st Marine Division starts forward toward Iraq. The land is flat and sandy. You can see thick smoke on the horizon to the west and north.

The military movement is slow. The border between Iraq and Kuwait is strung with long lines of concertina wire and a deep trench. Engineers were there the night before to blow holes in the wire and make sure roads crossed the trenches. The result, however, is that Marine tanks and trucks bottleneck trying to get over the border quickly.

McCoy taps his radio handset impatiently against his helmet. "Go! Go! We've got to get past this!" he says to no one in particular.

Finally, the battalion moves through the gap. Into Iraq.

Now it's for real.

But there are no Iraqis. The battalion's tanks and AAVs pick up speed, cruising over bumps and berms north toward Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.

About a half hour after crossing the border, I see Iraqis. They live in low mud huts encircled by low mud walls. The terrain is greener here than in Kuwait. There are plowed fields and scrub brush.

People have hung white flags on their rooftops. They gather in courtyards to watch the tanks and trucks rumble past. Some wave. Most do not.

The Marines are on constant alert. At every stop, they dismount and set up defensive positions in the dirt. No one knows when or from where an attack might come.

There is none. The reports that the Iraqi Medina Division was readying for a border fight were false.

And then, we're at Basra.

Three-Four is ordered to attack and secure bridges on the outskirts of town, to attack and defeat the 51st Mechanized Infantry Division, which has its garrison on the southeast side of the city, and to secure Basra International Airport.

There is almost no fighting. Only scattered skirmishes, when some unlucky, or hardheaded, Iraqi soldier decides to dig in and make a fight of it. "We had guys out there killing the enemy," McCoy says. "A lot of Iraqis simply surrendered, but there were a few out there who decided to make a stand. You've got to respect them for that."

McCoy drives around the battlefield, looking for any place Iraqis might put up a fight. He goes to the garrison where the Iraqi division had been. Marine tanks prowl the roadway. They fire at Iraqi armored vehicles in the distance. You can see the rounds hit. Sparks shower the horizon to the sound of a distant "boom."

Most Iraqi armor appears to be abandoned and, in many cases, nonfunctional. But the tankers blow holes through them, just in case.

Adjacent to the Iraqi garrison barracks is a road that becomes known among the Marines as "Hogan's Alley." It's a reference to a training area at Quantico, Va., run by the FBI, where cops and Marines and soldiers practice "fire/don't-fire" exercises.

In this case, the Marines have Iraqi civilians in the distance and surrendering Iraqi soldiers alongside the various tanks and armored vehicles, as well as the occasional soldier who wants to fight.

The tanks move on the left side of the road. Their cannon blasts raise huge dust clouds. The concussion is tremendous. If you're within two city blocks of tank cannon, the blast hits you in the chest like a 2-by-4.

Across the ditch to the left is a family of sheepherders. Two young men, a boy, three women and a donkey. They're terrified.

The tank guns fire over them, slightly to the left and right.

Marine tank commanders get out of their top hatches and motion for the family to stay put and stay down.

"I was real worried for that family," Capt. Bryan Lewis, commander of the tank company, says later. "I was really quite proud that we got through there and did our job and they didn't have a scratch on them when we left."

It's at Hogan's Alley that the legend of Darkside grows.

As the tanks fire to the left, McCoy's humvee crawls along behind them to the right. McCoy gets out his binoculars and tries to make out hits in the distance. The humvee stops and McCoy looks to his right.

There, about 50 yards away, is an Iraqi T-55 tank. It's been dug into the dirt. Its turret is aboveground and its machine gun visible. If someone is inside that tank, he has only to traverse the turret and shoot us at point- blank range.

McCoy jumps out of the humvee with his M-16, followed by Shealy, the radio operator. The two men run over to the tank, pointing their rifles into the ditches and trenches dug next to it.

McCoy jumps onto the tank and tries the hatch. It's "battle-hatched," or locked from the inside. Which means there's probably a crew inside.

The two Marines run back to the humvee. McCoy yells, "Light it up." The colonel and Shealy fire their M-16s at the tank. The turret gunner, Baynes, opens up with his M-60. The bullets bounce harmlessly off the armor, knocking around the machine gun. Darkside is trying to rattle whoever's inside. Considering how close we are to the tank, this does not seem to be the best idea.

McCoy grabs a fragmentation grenade -- known as a "frag" -- from his vest and runs toward the tank. He throws the grenade into the trench next to the turret and hits the deck. The frag goes off; dust and dirt bounce 3 feet into the air.

Still nothing. We drive off. McCoy calls the Marine tank commander and tells him to hit the Iraqi tank. And I'm thinking, there's someone in there. Maybe a couple of guys. They're dead moments later when a high-explosive round blasts the turret.

Word gets around. Not only among the men of Three-Four but the regiment: Darkside is a hard charger. He gets up to where the fighting is. And he frags tanks.

"I can't let the lance corporals have all the fun," McCoy says.

He wasn't being entirely impetuous. Darkside also wanted to motivate his men. And he did.

As the Marines mop up around the garrison, it becomes clear that the Iraqis have no fight in them. The barracks are empty because the Iraqis have run. And now Iraqi soldiers start surrendering in groups. As the Marines drive down dirt roads, they find uniforms scattered everywhere. Helmets and AK-47s are in the ditches. There are so many guns lying around, the Marines don't bother to take them all. Sometimes they just run over them, trying to break them into pieces.


THE AIRPORT
The battalion now turns its attention to the airport.

McCoy gets on the radio to put his infantry and tanks together for a fast strike. Night has fallen, but that means nothing. Everyone has night-vision goggles. They wear them on their helmets and look like alien creatures.

But swampy land and the fog of war slow things down. In the middle of the night, the Marines swing around to the edge of the airport, but not everyone is in place, so the attack waits until dawn.

We sit in total darkness all night. I sleep about two hours, total. There's no room in the backseat of a humvee. Only about 3 inches of leg room. I sleep sitting upright, my body armor pushed up around my neck to keep my head from lolling to the side.

As the sun comes up, the Marines move in from the south. McCoy lets everyone know they are to leave the civilian portion of the airport alone. The U.S. military doesn't want to have to rebuild the area after the war. They focus on a military complex to the east.

A couple of low buildings and an earthen berm encircle an empty stretch of ground the size of a football field. Tanks and AAVs set up about 300 yards from the complex and pour machine-gun fire into it. Sparks fly from the buildings as the big .50 cals walk up and down the compound. From the distance,

you see figures of men running. And falling under the hail of half-inch-thick bullets.

Then it's quiet. No targets present themselves. The buildings are shot to hell. The Marine turrets move left and right, looking for something, anything, to shoot.

This is the first combat I witness. It is anti-climactic. But the war has just begun.

A man appears in the distance. He's alone. Holding a white flag. He's wearing the green shirt and trousers of a regular army soldier, but no hat, and carrying no weapon.

"Keep the 60 on him," McCoy tells Baynes, in the turret. The man walks slowly toward the colonel's humvee. The driver, Cpl. Monge, gets out and motions for the man to lie face down in the dirt.

Monge kneels on the man's back and frisks him, twisting his torso to one side and then the other to search his pockets. He finds nothing but cash. A big wad of bills, all Iraqi dinars. Which means the whole stack might buy one good lunch in Baghdad.

"He said everyone is deserting," Monge reports. "He said he went to sleep last night dug in with his unit over by the bridge, and when he woke up everyone had gone but three of them. His buddy was too afraid to come out. He told this guy to go over and surrender, and if he lived through it, the other guy would come, too."

The radio crackles. Tan-colored vehicles are crossing a bridge to the north, heading toward the airport. Iraqi reinforcements. Inside his AAV, the Kilo Company commander, Capt. Kevin Norton, sees the Iraqis. He calls in artillery. The bridge and adjacent woods are engulfed in smoke as big shells scream in and lay waste to everything.

An old Sheraton Hotel separates the military compound from the civilian side of the airport. Marines move into the lobby. Gunshots ring out and explosions spark through the windows as grenades go off inside.

It's here that the only Marine injuries occur. A couple of guys throw grenades into rooms, to clear them, and they bounce back, fragging the throwers. But no one is hurt badly.

And so the Basra airport falls. At the terminal building, a dozen Iraqi civilians come out to greet the Marines. They're fearful, first of the Marines,

and then, when it becomes obvious they won't be shot, for their families. They've seen Marine artillery shells landing in the city, in the direction of their homes. Artillery makes a godawful blast. It scares everyone.

The battalion moves down the road. People are exhausted. Norton, the Kilo Company commander, has a glazed look in his eyes. He can't focus. He has been without sleep for three days. He has killed Iraqis, coordinated his troops. Finally, incoherent, he puts his executive officer in charge and takes a nap.

"Norton's in the zone," McCoy says after a briefing. "It's the feeling you get when you run a marathon. Late in the game, you're past exhausted. Your brain stops functioning and you run on pure adrenaline. It's a scary place."

McCoy turns control of the airport over to British troops. The British will stay in Basra and fight a guerrilla war. Probably with the same troops who dropped their uniforms and guns along the side of the road.

People will look at Basra as a place where the Iraqis fought hard, harder than many imagined.

But not against the Marines.

On the way out, McCoy stops to cut down an Iraqi flag. It's on a flagpole at the entrance to the airport. The flagpole is adjacent to a huge poster of Saddam's face. McCoy uses his bayonet to cut off Saddam's mustache. Two guard shacks flank the entrance. Parked next to one shack are two vehicles, riddled with holes. One is a pickup and it's black from fire. It has an anti-aircraft gun attached to a trailer hitch.

As we drive past the pickup, I see the body of a man, maybe the driver. He's lying on his side in the charred vehicle. He's burned beyond recognition. The skin on his face is burned off to expose teeth locked in an eternal grimace.

"Man, that dude's f -- up," Shealy says.

I see a Marine approach the pickup, holding a camera. I'm thinking, 'Don't take that picture.' He puts the camera to his face and snaps a photograph. McCoy is on the radio, talking to Ripper 6. The Marines are on their way to Baghdad. Orders have them driving to the east side of the city. There they are to engage another mechanized division.

The plan has the 3rd Battalion taking a bridge, crossing it and fighting and harassing the Iraqi tanks until Marine tanks can get across and blast the hell out of them. In McCoy's words, Three-Four will "grab the tiger by the tail" until the tanks get across.

"Gents, you're about to make history," McCoy tells the Marines in his humvee.

This plan sounds suspiciously dangerous. But the Marines, once again, are nothing but optimistic. They're still looking for a good fight.

But first, there's about 300 miles of desert.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Bryan P. McCoy. Lieutenant colonel. Commanding officer, Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio callsign: Darkside.

Dave Howell. Sergeant Major. Top enlisted man for Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio callsign: Eyes 2.

Simon Robinson. Writer for Time Magazine. Embedded reporter.

Bob Nickelsberg. Photographer for Time Magazine. Embedded journalist.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...&type=printable

Sempers,

Roger

[sfc_darrel]

His favorite quote is from Sherman. "War is cruelty. There is no use in refining it. The crueler it is, the sooner it is over."

So sad. So true

[thedrifter]

McCoy's Marines/ Darkside Toward Baghdad

John Koopman, Chronicle Staff Writer

Chapter 3: Light them up, and they don't mean smokes . . . 'The Girl From Ipanema' is a bad sign . . . Cigars and Skittles . . . Sandstorms turn day to night and everything to dust . . . Living with the sergeant major . . . The Fedayeen with Violent Supremacy . . . The Afak drill . . . Keeping warm . . . Back to the war



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The briefing
We've been on the road for a week. No one's had a shower for a couple of weeks. Fingernails are cracked and caked with dirt. The only relief is the occasional baby-wipe bath.

We still don't know how tough the Republican Guard will be. The Marines suspect that the Iraqis are sandbagging, holding their armor and hard-chargers in reserve, waiting to hit hard when least expected. This could be a bloodbath.

News of the war is not good. In Nasiriyah, an Army maintenance unit took a wrong turn and ran into an ambush. The Iraqis killed a group of them and took five prisoners.

Worse yet, for the Marines, was the report that Iraqis had used a fake surrender ploy. Everyone had seen the Iraqis giving up in Basra, and so the idea that some of them might fake it was on everyone's mind. The way the story went: A Marine unit spotted a group of Iraqis holding a white flag and went to disarm them and take them prisoner. When the Marines got close, the Iraqis pulled out AK-47s and RPGs and lit them up. We heard nine dead, maybe 30. It doesn't matter. That sets the tone for future operations.

Late the next night, the operations officer, Maj. Martin Wetterauer, gathers the battalion staff around for a briefing. At the end, he tells them what he knows about the fake surrender. He reminds the officers that the proper procedure is to keep rifles and machine guns trained on potential prisoners and to have them come to the Marines.

But some prisoners of war approach with their rifles held high. He said the Marines should order them to drop their weapons. If for any reason they don't, fire a couple of rounds in the dirt at their feet.

"What do you do if he still doesn't drop the weapon?" the major asks.

From the rear of the group comes a voice: "You light him up."

The cigar

In the back of McCoy's humvee is an old green ammo box with a Three-Four decal. Inside are McCoy's personal gear and items for survival: coffeepot and cigars.

Every morning, after briefings and orders or when he has moments to spare, McCoy gets the box and takes out the dirty, battered percolator. He sets up a small camp stove. Puts water and grounds in the pot and sets it atop the flame. He drinks a cup and pours the rest into an equally battered, dirty thermos.

And then he lights a cigar. It's a morning ritual, especially on the morning of a day in battle. He's partial to Cubans, but anything will do. Simon, the Time magazine reporter, brought him Cohibas from Kuwait City. I have Montecristos.

He snips the end off and lights up with a Zippo. He keeps the cigar going for more than an hour. Just don't tell his wife. She hates cigars. Darkside can fight a war, but he fears his wife. Well, more like he doesn't want to disappoint her.

For some reason, just before battle, he always gets the same song stuck in his head: "The Girl From Ipanema." He has no idea why.

Skittles

Now I've seen war. I've seen dead soldiers and I've seen at least one man die.

I'm still afraid. The future looks bleak. We're in the middle of Iraq. The Republican Guard is between the Marines and Baghdad. I miss my boy. I've been gone too long. He's 8 years old, and he misses his daddy. I think about him when I bed down at night. I think about how I would tuck him in at night, or cuddle with him. The thought tears me up.

Worse are the days when I get Skittles in my MRE.

MRE stands for meal, ready to eat. Combat rations, the constant butt of jokes. Someone says MREs are none of the above. Some say the letters stand for meals rejected by Ethiopians.

But they're not so bad, considering that we're in the middle of nowhere. You get about 1,200 calories per meal. The food comes in plastic pouches. You warm them with another pouch that contains a dry chemical that heats up when you add water.

Inside the MREs are snacks. You can get M&Ms, peanut butter, hard candies. And Skittles.

My son loves Skittles. After school, I take him to the corner store for a treat sometimes, and he asks for Skittles.

So now, I get my Skittles in the meal and I think about my boy and it hurts.

The storm

A sandstorm sweeps in from the north. It's godawful. We're in the Euphrates River Valley, and much of this area was drained years ago. The soil is a fine, soft dust, like talcum powder. You sink in it to your ankles. A 50-mph wind whips this stuff up and darkens the sun. The air is orange. Breathing is hard.

The 1st Marine Division is moving along this stretch; a thousand vehicles churn the dust, which whips in the wind and sometimes blackens the sky. McCoy moves up and down the convoy, making sure all the vehicles are set up and in place. There are other battalions here, and the convoys are trying to move at the same time. We stop near regimental headquarters, and I get out of McCoy's humvee. There are a half-dozen civilian vehicles here, with tape on the sides to indicate they're friendly.

I see reporters and photographers milling about. They are unilaterals, Pentagon-speak for non-embedded reporters. These are some crazy dudes. They crossed the border with U.S. forces, but not as part of a unit. Their plan was to move freely about the war zone, unencumbered by military restrictions but without security.

That was the idea, anyway. But these guys crossed the border and soon found themselves in a tough spot. Fighting had increased in the south. At least one reporter had been killed trying to cover the war. But they couldn't go forward because that's where the Republican Guard was.

And now they're stuck in a fierce sandstorm. With little food and gas.

I suggest they talk to McCoy. He meets with them and agrees to let them tag along the rear of the column. As long as they don't get in the way, he'll protect them and provide whatever food and gas he can spare.

By this time, the wind has gotten worse. The entire battalion pulls off to the side of the road to wait it out. It's hot inside the vehicles and dangerous outside. You don't dare walk far off; you might not find your way back. I sit in the backseat of McCoy's humvee for five or six hours, sweating and trying to breathe through a scarf over my face. My back and legs are cramped.

Darkside spends most of his time on the radio, figuring out where the battalion is and whether they have security out. Plus, there's refueling to consider. In the middle of all this, we hear a call from Kilo Company that a Marine has fallen from an Amtrac and hurt his back. He can't move his legs.

No one can move in this storm, so there is no med-evac. His buddies have to keep him still and wait for morning.

Time creeps by. Finally, I get out of the humvee and stand in the wind. I stretch and moan. I lie on my back in the dirt. The wind roars past me. The sand blasts bare skin raw. But it's worth it.

A couple of miles away, an officer and enlisted man with the 5th Marines bed down in sleeping bags. In the middle of the night, a bulldozer runs over them. A major is killed and an NCO severely injured.

Everyone is on edge. The sergeant major wonders if Iraqis will use the sandstorm as cover for an ambush. Marines have their rifles ready, but they're not much use. Visibility is an inch past the end of your nose. The only consolation is that the Iraqis have it just as bad.

About 3 a.m. the wind dies down. And the rain comes. The raindrops collect dust as they fly through the air and make a muddy "splat" when they land. The rain turns the desert to mud. The mud is the consistency of wet concrete. I can't even kick it off my boots.

McCoy is on the radio, setting up a refueling point. The trucks and humvees churn in the mud, but at least people can see again.

And we're back on the move.

The wait

The Marines are moving slowly north.

There's talk about killing and dying.

Basra was a good little fight because the battalion got bloodied. Marines shot and killed the enemy. You can train for it, and practice it and think about it. But pulling the trigger and watching another human being die is not a natural act. No one knows if he can do it until the time comes.

Some people are repulsed and horrified. But the dirty little secret is that others are thrilled.

After Basra, some who killed, or were shot at, wear that like a badge of honor. Others are jealous.

Howell, the sergeant major, doesn't like the talk. As far as he's concerned, killing is the unfortunate result of military action.

"There is no joy in the taking of human life," he says. "This is not a game."

Much of this is a generation gap. The privates and lance corporals, the riflemen and machine gunners, are kids. They're 18, maybe 20 years old. Full of machismo and hard-charging. Death and dying are abstract concepts to the young. Even killing doesn't mean much because they haven't really thought about how they will live with it later if they have to take a human life now.

I'm feeling more comfortable in the field. You fear most what you don't know, or can't see. Now that I've seen fighting, I figure I can stay out of harm's way.

And then I get news that I won't be riding with Darkside anymore. Simon has had enough of the armored vehicles, and he has asked to ride with the colonel.

I'm going to ride with the sergeant major.

This is fine with me. I like Howell. We get along. But I know he's likely to go into hot spots. I'm willing. But the fear returns.

Howell rides in a humvee that's set up like a pickup. It's open in the back, with bench seats along the sides.

He has a sniper team with him. Staff Sgt. Dino Moreno of El Paso, Texas, is the sniper. And a young corporal from Burlington, Vt., named Mark Evnin is the spotter. Evnin doubles as the sergeant major's driver.

Moreno is a quiet, laid-back guy with dark hair and a soft voice. Evnin is a kid who sports wrap-around shades and a smirk. He looks as if he's on his way to a fraternity party.

I go to Howell's humvee and load my gear. The back is full of confiscated AK-47s, anti-tank missiles, sniper rifles, ammunition, water and food. You can't climb in from the rear. You go to the front of the vehicle, grab the brush guard and fling yourself onto the hood, then climb over the roof and drop down into the back.

I'm determined to make myself small back there, and unobtrusive. But it's not easy.

Howell's radio call sign is "Eyes 2." Meaning he's another pair of Darkside's eyes in the field.

"Hey, I want a cool radio call-sign," I tell him. "It ought to be something like Reporter 1, don't you think?"

"Oh, we already have a call-sign for you," he said. "You're 'Paperboy.' "

"Paperboy? That's not cool," I say. "How about 'Writer One?' Or 'The General?' "

"No, you're Paperboy."

We sit in the desert and joke. What we really want is news that the war is moving along. We know the Army's headed toward Baghdad from the west side. We keep waiting to hear they've engaged the Republican Guard. Then comes news that the Army is slowing it down. They say the Army supply lines are too thin. And they also worry that the Iraqis will ambush supply columns.

So the Marines slow down. And fume.

McCoy meets with Ripper 6 and comes back with a mission. There are two Marine columns advancing on Baghdad, on parallel routes. A road links the two routes and there are Iraqis -- militia types or the Fedayeen -- in those towns. Three-Four is to drive through those towns and flush them out.

There are two civilians with us now, Ray Smith, a former Marine two-star general, and Bing West, a writer and former Marine officer who later served as assistant secretary of defense. They're observing, and working on a book about the war. Both are hardened combat vets. Bing has talked with intelligence guys about this area, and says the towns will be bad news. They're filled with dedicated irregulars who like to mix it up with the Americans. He compares them to villages in Vietnam. You never knew where the VC were, or when they would show up in force.

"I think you're crazy for going in there," he says. "Better to go around."

But the Marines want a fight.

The attack

We get up before dawn to prepare for the raid. Word has come down that there will be no soft-cover vehicles. We have to move into an Amtrac.

The battalion tactical center moves around the battlefield in a special Amtrac. The bench seats were removed and captain chairs installed, along with banks of radios and crypto gear. It's lightly armed, and so a second vehicle, a personnel carrier with a turret-mounted .50-cal, goes with it.

We all pile into the Tac P-7. It's crammed with backpacks, ammunition cans, food, clothes, extra fuel. There's no place to sit, and time's running short. Smith and West are piling in, and I'm scrunched in the middle. Howell kicks an empty can and roars, "Who's in charge of this piece of s -- ?"

A sergeant steps forward.

"Why is this thing full of crap? Get this s -- out of here. Clean up in the rear and make some room. We have to get five more people on this thing."

Marines scramble, shuffling packs and boxes and cans.

"We have to open up the top hatches so we can get 360-degree security," Howell says, looking at the tents and camouflage netting tied to the top of the 'Trac. "Get that s -- off the top so we can open it up."

"That's impossible," a young lance corporal says.

Ray Smith, the former general nicknamed E-tool, turns three shades of purple and roars: "Nothing's impossible! Get your ass up there and take down that netting."

Howell is getting madder by the second. His rage feeds on itself. He orders everyone off the Amtrac, including officers. When the sergeant major gets wound up, rank means nothing.

"You people are walking around here like you're back in Twentynine Palms," he shouts. "You're in Iraq. There are people out there who want to kill you. So you all better get your asses in gear and start acting like you're in combat. If you don't, you're going to end up like those other poor bastards who got killed in Nasiriyah. I want everything off this vehicle and repacked. You have five minutes."

And then, an afterthought: "Just pack what you need and leave the rest. I don't care what you have to leave behind. For this mission, if it doesn't have to do with killing Iraqis, it doesn't go."

The Marines toss a half ton of supplies and we all reboard the vehicle. A few minutes later, we're on the road.

It's a scary trip. The Marines call it Indian country. There's no cover, just flat fields and drainage canals all the way to the horizon. There's no backup, no other Marine units that could come quickly to the rescue. You can always call in artillery or aerial bombardment; still, you like to know the cavalry is available if you need it.

The roads are in good shape and clear of traffic. I see farmers in their fields. They're looking at us.

The Marines drive into the village of Hajil. The rules of engagement go like this: Shoot any Iraqi who is armed. They don't have to be threatening you.

There's shooting at Hajil, but mostly the Marines search for weapons and information. The sergeant major jumps out of the humvee and searches shacks and buildings along the side of the road. I don't go with him. I'm worried about booby traps and land mines. Howell doesn't care. He kicks in doors, uses the barrel of his gun to push debris around. In a roadside schoolhouse, he finds AK-47s, journals and half-eaten food. It looks as if the school was used as a lookout point, possibly an ambush site.

Next is the city of Afak. There are about 100,000 people here, and most of them are on the side of the road. They smile and wave. Some just stand and stare. I wonder what's on their minds. I can't tell if they're smiling because they're glad to see Marines or because they're happy about not getting shot.

I understand why they would resent the Marines' presence. I think about my hometown, a little village in Nebraska, and how I would feel if foreign troops drove through it. The Marines go in heavy. Tanks roll through intersections, followed by AAVs. The ramps drop and the Marines run out. They drop to their knees, rifles at the ready. Some charge into nearby houses, busting down doors, running up to rooftops.

This becomes known as an "Afak Drill."

McCoy calls the strategy "violent supremacy."

"You go in like you own the place," he says. "You make it clear to people that any violence aimed at American forces will be returned a hundredfold."

Some of the Marines toss food and money to Iraqis, especially to kids if they're smiling or giving a thumbs-up. The kids tear after the MREs and yellow humanitarian ration bags.

There's light resistance in Afak. A Cobra gunship chases down a pickup with a machine gun mounted on the hood and blows it up. Marines return fire on a few Iraqis brave enough to take shots at them.

We stop just outside the town, and an Iraqi man with a cell phone comes toward the Amtrak. Howell aims at him. "Get back!" he shouts. "Go home!"

The man keeps walking, talking into the phone. Howell fires a 5.56-mm bullet directly between his feet. The man stops, turns and walks away.

"You should have seen the look he gave me," he says. "Like he didn't even care."

Howell figures the Iraqi is Fedayeen and that he was on the phone describing the Marines and their weapons to his colleagues. "He was scoping us out."

The Marines move down the road to Al Budyr. The Baath Party has headquarters there. Iraqis open fire on the Marines from rooftops and palm groves. Machine guns rattle here and there. Sometimes the gunners have targets. Other times they engage in "reconnaissance by fire," shooting into a building or tree line to see if someone shoots back. Or dies.

It is near Al Budyr that the Marines encounter a phenomenon that would be repeated throughout the war. An Iraqi man drives his pickup straight at a Marine tank. The tank commander shoots up the vehicle, thinking the driver is trying to attack. In this case, the pickup is destroyed, the man wounded.

Inside a funky old jail, Howell finds a cache of RPG rounds. He calls for some C-4 explosive. They blow the ammo in place, and the blast hits the Amtrac like a brick. My ears ring for an hour.

Staff Sgt. Moreno goes to the top of a small jail to scope out the area through his sniper rifle. He spots a man who looks like militia. He looks as if he's carrying something under his jacket.

Moreno puts pressure on the trigger. One round could fly straight and true and take the man's head off. But is he a legitimate target?

Moreno backs off and sighs.

"I'm sure it's a gun," he says. "I probably should have shot him, but I couldn't know for sure. I was thinking, 'What if he's carrying home a present for his kid or something?' "

The cold

We stay outside Al Budyr that night.

I left my sleeping gear behind, in the sergeant major's humvee. All I have are the clothes on my back and my body armor to keep me warm.

But the days are getting warmer, so I'm thinking I might be all right. I find a soft spot and lie down. Two hours later, I'm awake and freezing. I get up. Exercise will keep me warm. I do jumping jacks and then lie back down. But the ground is cold. My teeth chatter and I rub my shoulders. It's no help.

I'm not sure what to do. You can't go to a Marine and ask to use his sleeping bag.

An armored vehicle starts up. The driver is recharging the battery. I notice that the exhaust output is mounted on the side of the vehicle. About head height. I go over and stand under that hot exhaust.

It's beautiful. Hot diesel exhaust floods my head and neck. It slowly warms me, like a hot shower. I stay there for five minutes, until the driver shuts down the engine, then return to my spot on the ground. I fall asleep and awake an hour later, shaking with chills. A few minutes later, the armored vehicle fires up again and I run over to the exhaust. It's over too soon. I take an exhaust bath three more times that night.

The news

The next day we sit, bored, outside Al Budyr. I tune in the BBC to get some sense of whether the war is on or not. The colonel goes to regimental headquarters and comes back with the news: Central Command has ordered a 21-day operational pause to allow supply lines to catch up and God only knows what else.

McCoy and his officers start drawing up plans for working with the local Iraqis. McCoy says he'll be the de facto mayor of Al Budyr, getting people services in exchange for their help in hunting down leaders of the Baath Party.

"It's good to be king," he jokes.

Fortunately, military orders often have a shelf life of minutes. Howell and I are sitting in the dirt. I'm eating an MRE cracker and he's airing his disgusting, blistered feet when the colonel's driver comes running past us.

"We gotta get back to the main road," he shouts. "We're moving out in a half hour."

The war is on.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cast of characters:
Bryan P. McCoy. Lieutenant colonel. Commanding officer, Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio callsign: Darkside.

Dave Howell. Sergeant major. Top enlisted man for Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio callsign: Eyes 2.

Simon Robinson. Writer for Time magazine. Embedded reporter.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic.../12/KOOPMAN.TMP


Sempers,

Roger

[thedrifter]

MCCOY'S MARINES: DARKSIDE TOWARD BAGHDAD

John Koopman, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, November 13, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Chapter 4: The fighting picks up at Diwaniyah... Taking prisoners and killing people... The Iraqi colonel... Supremacy in Kut... Ambush!... Evnin gets hit... An Iraqi dies... Bad news hits home.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE CLOVERLEAF
The Marines start to advance again along the main highway toward Baghdad. But the going is slow. Sometimes we inch along at 5 miles per hour.

Meanwhile, the threat of attacks from Iraqi militia is real. When we bed down at night, we dig deep fighting holes to protect against shrapnel in case of mortar attacks. The sound of machine guns in the distance, or outgoing mortar fire, lulls us to sleep.

Iraq is beautiful at night. There is no ambient light. The sky is black and the stars shine bright.

Sometimes American artillery pounds a distant target. I lie in my sleeping bag and listen to the roar of outgoing rounds. Sometimes they fire RAP. That's rocket-assisted projectiles. Overhead, you see a bright red streak when the rocket of the howitzer round kicks in. It's like a laser light show.

Ahead of us, the 5th Marine Regiment comes under nightly mortar and rocket fire outside Diwaniyah. A corpsman is killed when a rocket-propelled grenade slams into his humvee. Word is, the rocket hit him in the chest and knocked him clear out of the vehicle. There wasn't much left of him.

The division orders the 5th Marine Regiment to keep moving, but Three- Four (3rd Battalion, 4th Marines) -- with its smash-'em, bash-'em reputation -- is told to sweep Diwaniyah and suppress the militia. This is more of the violent supremacy tactics that the battalion commander, Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy, endorses.

Wednesday, April 2, the battalion lines up next to the crossroads linking the main highway with the road to Diwaniyah. Once again, tanks lead the way, armored personnel carriers close behind.

This part of Iraq is flat and featureless, with green fields and occasional groves of trees, mostly palms. The soil is wet beneath a dry crust. Most buildings are dun-colored, both the mud huts and the apartment buildings in the city.

It's chilly and windy, but the sand isn't blowing.

The Marines lining the road into the city start moving. First contact comes about 10 minutes later. Iraqi irregulars and soldiers, dug into pits along the road, start firing. A .50-caliber machine gun atop a tank rakes the Iraqis, killing several and sending more fleeing into the countryside.

"It's like turning a light on and watching the cockroaches scurrying," McCoy says.

The column continues past mud huts and small farms. Every so often, the sound of a heavy machine gun rips the air, interspersed with short bursts from the fully automatic grenade launchers. It sounds like "whack, whack, whack, whack," followed seconds later by impact - "thump, thump, thump, thump" -- in the far woods.

Tanks spot an armored vehicle and blast it. The 120mm turret gun goes off, and the concussion rocks everyone within 200 yards. It's difficult to spot enemy soldiers or enemy dead. They are shot or blown up far away. But you know every time you see that cannon round explode in the distance, someone probably dies.

Just inside the city limits, a portly man of maybe 50 is trying to surrender. He's waving a white flag. He looks terrified. He's stuck in no- man's land between a tank and its target.

A squad of U.S. Army soldiers and an interpreter motion for the man to take off his clothes and get on the ground. He does. Wearing just boxer shorts, he crab-walks out of the line of fire.

The soldiers search him and tie his hands. The interpreter speaks with him. The man says the local militia forced civilians to fight the Americans. He says they were told their families would be killed if they didn't. And they were told that once the Americans left, the Baath Party and militia would return for revenge.

It's hard to know the truth. The military has its version of how things work between the local militia and Baath Party officials. And the prisoners may be saying what they believe their interrogators want to hear.

In any case, this prisoner and most of the others taken today are terrified and humiliated by the circumstances. The Iraqis are poorly equipped and poorly trained. They come at the Americans with AK-47s and RPGs, maybe an occasional mortar. The Marines respond with tank fire and 155mm artillery rounds. They blow the hell out of everything.

The tanks keep firing. Other Marine units call for artillery support. The rounds sound like thunder when they land in the distance. Some hit buildings, lighting them up with a flash followed by black smoke. Others are airbursts, going off 20 feet, 50 feet overhead. They fire a brilliant yellow spark, which you see several seconds before the sound reaches your ears.

I look at the groves and the buildings where the artillery hits and I imagine the people there.

Much of the shooting descends on a palm grove across the street from the city landfill. When the shooting is over, the Marines move in and take 17 prisoners. The Iraqis are lying face down in the dirt, in rows. Marines keep M- 16s trained on them as others kneel on their backs and go through their pockets. I see a Marine pull a wad of cash from one Iraqi's pocket, shuffle through it and then try to put it in the man's hand. The man doesn't take it. He can't see it. I'm not sure if he doesn't know what's being put there or he can't believe the American wouldn't take his money or what. Eventually, the Iraqi takes the money and holds it in the heat while the Marines and their interpreter start interviewing his pals.

One of the men appears to be a Republican Guard major. They say you can tell a Republican Guard officer by the green uniform and red-tinted boots. He says nothing, but they keep him separated from the other prisoners.

The Iraqis are taken away and the Marines start to patrol the area, looking for Fedayeen. Sgt. Maj. Dave Howell parks his humvee on a road, several hundred yards from a set of buildings. It's the outer edge of Diwaniyah.

Staff Sgt. Dino Moreno lies on the roof of the vehicle with his sniper rifle. Cpt. Mark Evnin is next to him with a spotter scope. They watch people in the distance, so far away I see nothing. They talk about potential targets. Evnin thinks he sees a man with an AK-47. That would be a target. The man goes into a building, comes out with no weapon. So Moreno holds his fire.

Howell watches with binoculars. But no one sees anyone to shoot.

A humvee pulls up, carrying another sniper team. The sniper, a staff sergeant, says he got two and a half kills today. The half is a guy he wounded in the shoulder, who then ran. The sniper explains how the man turned just as the sniper rifle went off, so a bullet that should have gone through the chest hit a shoulder in a spurt of bright red blood.

The Marines talk matter-of-factly about these things. That's their trade. It's difficult for a civilian to listen.

McCoy's humvee pulls up. He confers with the sergeant major. A tank arrives moments later.

The tank commander radios that he's spotted a large group of people assembling nearby. McCoy tells him to shoot if they look hostile. The tank commander says he sees no weapons. So he waits. He calls back to say the group includes women and children. So he will not shoot.

The Marines are about ready to wrap up and leave when Iraqi militiamen crawl up close to the armored column and fire off a half dozen RPG rounds. The rockets whoosh overhead, exploding about 20 yards behind a humvee.

That sets the Marines off. A tank fires into a building and at a yellow bus. Moments later, the bus is ablaze, thick black smoke curling into the sky. Atop Darkside's humvee, Samuel Baynes opens up with his M-60. He's the best machine gunner in the battalion, but he doesn't get many chances to let loose. Now he goes crazy. He sprays 7.62-mm bullets across the front of a warehouse, into parked cars, electrical transformers. Anything. I can't see any people, but it's a fair distance away. This is recon by fire, trying to shake someone loose.

Finally, the shooting stops. The sun is getting low in the sky. The Marines head back to the cloverleaf and settle in for the night. Guards are doubled around the perimeter. Everyone thinks the Iraqis will retaliate at night, fire rockets or mortars into our position.

I'm dog tired. A thick pall hangs in the air, blacking out every shred of light. I try to dig a sleeping trench but can't seem to make my sleeping bag line up. I feel around in the dirt, in the dark. Finally I give up and sit there, trying to eat an MRE. But I can't even see what I'm putting into my mouth.

I lie down and look up. A guard patrol almost steps on my head.

"Boom!" The sound of a mortar round, from somewhere inside camp. We're under attack, I think. But I'm too tired. I'll wait to see if the Marines get up. But all is quiet. I'm a newbie. The sound I heard was a Marine mortar, outgoing, registering fire.

I drift off. No attack comes that night.

THE DEAD COLONEL
I think about the dead colonel.

Bob Nickelsberg, the Time photographer, tells me I can find the body in the grove. The Marines have swept through and secured the area. It's supposed to be safe. So I venture in. I see the body 30 feet away, then 20. I'm filled with dread and revulsion. I hate dead bodies. I'm afraid I'll throw up, or God knows what. I almost turn away, but then I think, I've got to do this. It's obscene to be here, to cover a war and write about it, and not look it in the face.

So I go to the body. He's a colonel. He's wearing the uniform of the Republican Guard. He looks to be about 40. He's got a slightly receding hairline and a Saddam mustache. There are no visible wounds on him. He might have died from the concussion of an artillery shell. The ground is littered with chunks of artillery shrapnel. I pick one up. It's about 3 inches long and has ragged edges, razor sharp. Artillery rounds sometimes burst in midair, spraying the chunks of metal into the ground below the blast. I think about what it must be like to have that raining down on me, cutting and slashing.

The man's shirt is open and pants pulled down. The sergeant major says Marines found him in the dirt and tried to revive him. No use.

Near him is a pot of stew with red sauce and cabbage. Next to that is a moldy sack of flat bread. The attack came as the Iraqis were preparing breakfast.

I imagine guys sitting in that grove for days, maybe weeks, waiting for the Americans to come. Wondering if they would. Hoping they would not. Sleeping in bunkers and trenches. Tuning in a radio to the news. And then, making breakfast, and the sky opening up and swallowing them.

Near the colonel a charred car sits next to a brand-new Honda motorcycle, still upright on its kickstand, riddled with bullet holes.

The midday air is hot. Flies from a nearby landfill swarm around the dead.

The landfill smells slightly sweet, slightly sour. It's a sickening smell.


MR. SUNSHINE
The Marines are dug in at the cloverleaf waiting for orders. The war has been going on for nearly two weeks now. Everyone is hot and tired and dirty. The enlisted men pull guard duty at night, cutting into the little sleep they would otherwise have.

Officers stay up all night working on battle plans. Sometimes they catch catnaps.

McCoy goes off to meet with regimental command. He comes back and informs the staff that the battalion is heading to the city of Kut. The officers start making arrangements. McCoy drops to the dirt and lies on his back. His helmet is still on, and his armored vest. He holds his M-16 to his chest and closes his eyes. He is asleep. Ten minutes later, someone wakes him.

Diwaniyah is good for the Marines. Fighting is always good for a combat unit. It hones skills. And it helps if none of your buddies gets killed.

But Howell isn't impressed. He wonders how the Marines will react if they really get in "the s -- ." The s -- is when you're involved in a bad firefight, when you're shooting and killing and the enemy is, too. How do you react when your buddy dies next to you, but you have to carry on the fight?

Howell is a pessimist of the highest order, but that's what he's paid for.

He tends to imagine the worst in a given situation, and if things go well, a crooked smile might break out.

Right now, he's worried about Baghdad. The Iraqi regular army and Republican Guard have not come out to fight. The sergeant major believes they're dug in at Baghdad and there will be bloody house-to-house fighting once we get there.

Thank you, Mr. Sunshine.

THE KUT
The Marines are driving through the outskirts of Kut. It's about 100 miles from Baghdad. Everyone is anxious to get there. Take Baghdad, end the war. Kut is the closest large city, and there's been fighting in and around it.

McCoy's battalion is to provide more violent supremacy and militia suppression.

At dawn, 155-mm howitzers shake the earth. They're launching high- explosive rounds into the outskirts of Kut. Three-Four moves toward the city, following a path taken by another regiment. Death and destruction are everywhere.

Bodies lie on the side of the road, jackets covering faces. Iraqi military vehicles are smoking ruins. A herd of sheep lies silent, adding to the putrid smell of death.

For a long time, I see no live Iraqis. Armored vehicles, tanks and artillery pieces are on the road and in nearby fields. Marine tanks blew holes in everything. Just in case.

We come upon a T-55 tank, still burning. Something inside the tank explodes. The crew hatch on the top of the turret blows off and hurtles 30 feet into the air. Following it, through the circle of steel, is a perfect smoke ring that wafts 20 feet straight up before dispersing.

It's beautiful.

For all I know, three or four Iraqis were roasted inside that tank.

We keep moving toward the center of Kut. This is an industrial area. Warehouses and repair shops. Tanks blast and machine guns rattle now and then.

War is loud.

Howell's humvee is right behind a tank, and I watch its turret move back and forth. I try to anticipate when the big gun will fire so I can plug my ears. The tank stops and the turret turns to the right. Howell listens to the radio traffic, says the tanker saw movement in a building.

I plug my ears and, at the last second, see a dog in the dirt halfway between the tank and the building.

"Boom!" The explosion rocks the building and a terrible shock wave hits the dog. The dog howls and screeches, runs around in the dirt trying to catch its own tail and then runs yelping into the brush. A half mile down the road, I spot the dog running with a slight limp.

THE AMBUSH
As we move farther along, the sergeant major stops the Humvee and tells me to get in the front, in the passenger seat, so he can get in the back with his rifle. I do as I'm told, but it makes me nervous. The humvee door is made of canvas. If we take fire from the right, I have no protection.

We come to a stretch of road with a wide-open, sandy patch to the left and a palm grove to the right. The roadway is elevated, and there's a 10- to 15-foot embankment facing the grove.

It's an ambush.

The Iraqis are dug in. They let most of the tanks pass. Then open up with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

I see bullets hit the last tank in the column and the Amtracs. We're directly behind the last Amtrac in the column.

Someone fires an RPG at the Amtrac close to me. The shot comes from close range. It hits the armor, then bounces off and explodes in midair. Apparently, it hit the vehicle before the warhead was armed. Otherwise, it would have opened up that Amtrac like a soup can.

The Amtrac pulls to the side of the road and parks at a 45-degree angle. The turret gunner starts pouring .50-caliber fire into the woods.

Evnin pulls the humvee behind the Amtrac. I get out and get behind the humvee.

The Amtrac driver drops the rear ramp of the AAV and 3rd Platoon of Kilo Company pours out. They hit the pavement and go down that embankment, into the teeth of the Iraqi machine guns. And start to return fire.

The grove is filled with gun smoke. You can hardly see. The last two tanks in the column are still close enough to fire. They shoot their high- explosive rounds directly into the groves. The blasts cut palm trees in half. All I can think is: God help anyone underneath those blasts.

I squint and peer into the grove, trying to spot Iraqi soldiers. There, behind a stump, I see movement. A head pops up. I see a teal blue shirt.

A tank gunner sees it, too. He opens up with his .50-caliber machine gun. The tree stump, a tree next to it, the dirt all around -- they come alive with a flurry of bullets.

The Iraqi bounces up, then slumps over the stump. Dead. Half his face is gone.

Behind me, the sergeant major is telling Evnin to get his M203. The 203 is a hybrid weapon, an M-16 with a 40-mm single-shot grenade launcher attached to the underside.

Moreno is on the roof of the humvee with his sniper rifle, looking for targets in the smoky grove. The action is so close, he doesn't need a spotter.

Evnin gets his weapon and the sergeant major leads him to the rear of the Amtrac in front of us.

"There's an RPK firing out of that bunker back there -- try to take it out," Howell tells Evnin. But Evnin can't spot the bunker in all the smoke. Howell takes Evnin's 203 and loads one grenade round into it. He fires at a mound at the far end of the grove.

"Right there, right about where that hit," Howell yells over the din of gunshots. "You see it?"

Evnin nods and takes back the weapon. I'm standing by his side, to the right of the Amtrac, looking at the raging firefight, as he reloads. He fires a grenade into the trees and steps back behind the Amtrac to reload.

I step away and move to the other end of the AAV, to take a look at the battle from that side. I still can't see much. Too much smoke. I go back to see what Evnin is doing.

But he's not shooting anymore. He's on the ground.

Evnin had stepped out to fire his grenade launcher when an Iraqi in the grove cut loose with a burst of machine-gun fire. Evnin is hit in the upper thigh and abdomen. About an inch below his protective vest.

Howell drags him over the pavement about 20 yards to an area behind a small mound of earth. Trying to get cover.

He loosens Evnin's trousers and calls for a corpsman.

Time moves slowly and sights are blurred. I walk over - with no protective cover -- to where Evnin lies. I watch the sergeant major and the medic working on him. How can this be? It's Evnin. He can't be shot.

Evnin's pants are down. I see two bullet wounds, one on the right and one on the left side of his gut. Just inside his hip bones.

It doesn't look bad. Not a lot of blood. I look away.

Evnin is awake and alert.

The corpsman prepares Evnin for evacuation. A humvee roars to a halt on the road next to them.

Howell looks down at the young corporal and smiles. "Hey, Evnin. Look at the bright side. You won't have to ride with me anymore."

Evnin looks up and says, "Sergeant major, you're an a -- ."

Four Marines pick up the wounded man and push him into the back of a humvee. The vehicle speeds off to the rear, toward the battalion aid station. And, presumably, to a helicopter out of here.

Meanwhile, in the grove, two other Marines have been hit. Corpsmen take them into an abandoned trench and bandage them.

"God, it hurts," says a young Marine, gritting his teeth, his arm in a bloody sling. "Kill some of those motherf -- for me, sergeant major."

In the grove, the battle rages on.

Lance Cpl. Dusty Ladendorf is an 18-year old kid from Oroville. Later, in Baghdad, we talk about that battle. It was his first big fight. "There were two seconds of shock and after that I just started going through the motions," he says. "Just do it. Don't think about it. Get out of the track, start shooting. Cover your buddy, find the enemy, maneuver, close in on him. And kill him."

Ladendorf and the others start working their way into the palm grove. The squad comes upon a bunker. They see a hand come out holding an AK-47, spraying the area with bullets.

A Marine throws a hand grenade into the bunker. The Iraqi picks it up and throws it back. It lands 7 meters from Ladendorf. The grenade has a "kill zone" of 5 meters. It goes off. No one is hurt.

They throw another hand grenade. The Iraqi throws it back.

Finally, someone takes a grenade, pulls the pin and waits a couple of seconds. Then throws it.

The grenade goes off in the bunker. No one comes out.

Over the next half hour or 45 minutes, the platoon works its way through the grove. Bob Nickelsberg runs past me, trying to get in front of the Marines to get their pictures. Crazy bastard. I look around. Howell is busy, there's no place for me to be. So I walk into the grove alone, about 30 meters behind the nearest Marines.

It's hot. Smoke fills the air and I'm scared. I don't know who's dead and who's alive. There are bunkers everywhere, and I expect an Iraqi to come out of one shooting.

I pass by a large fighting hole and look inside. Two dead Iraqis are lying there, both curled into fetal positions. They're facing each other, heads almost touching. They look like friends, or brothers, sleeping together. It's intimate. Horrible.

The sun beats down on the grove, and we all sweat under the heavy gear. The Marines find weapons and ammo and throw them into a pile. They set fire to it, which adds to the heat. Bullets crackle and pop as they cook off in the fire. The platoon reaches the far end of the grove. Officers are screaming at sergeants. Sergeants are shouting at privates. Adrenaline pumps and bullets go off. Everyone yells.

Any Iraqis still alive run out the back of the grove and disappear. Some try to swim across a stream and are cut down by machine-gun fire from Marine armor.

The fight is over. I go back to the road, still wary of the bunkers, but more confident now. Surviving that kind of hell gives you confidence.

Up on the road, two Marines bring out a prisoner, his hands bound tightly behind him. He wears green pants and a black sweater. Not the uniform of a regular soldier, or Republican Guard. He speaks English, but he doesn't have much to say. Just that his arm hurts. It looks broken.

Moments later, four Marines bring out another Iraqi. He's in bad shape. His left leg is twisted and turned 180 degrees. He's bleeding. He's either unconscious or dead.

The Marines drop the Iraqi on the ground next to the other prisoner. The first one raises his head and looks around. A Marine sergeant shouts at him to put his face in the dirt. He does, for a minute, then raises it up again. The sergeant grabs the prisoner's head and shoves it to the side, facing the dying man.

"Keep your f -- head down, or I'll put a sack over it!" he says.

The man nods. I can see him looking at the other man. Their faces are about a foot apart. The second one has his eyes closed. His body convulses. I think he's dead. But then he brings his arm up from his side, to his head. And lies still.

He, too, is taken to the aid station.

With the fight over, Howell drives back to check on Evnin. As we approach the aid station, we see a transport helicopter in a field to the right. Running toward the helo are four Marines carrying a stretcher. On it is a body bag.

God, don't let it be Evnin.

It's the Iraqi.

He's dead.

The doc at the aid station doesn't say much about Evnin. Just that he was stable when he was put on the helicopter.

But we feel OK about him. When a wounded person is alive and alert when he gets medical attention, he usually makes it.

In the humvee, Howell sees that Moreno is wearing Evnin's pistol belt.

"It's OK," Moreno says. "Mark and I always said, if one of us gets hit, the other gets to ratf -- his gear. I told him I was going to take the holster."

"Evnin's got it made," Howell says. "He's out of this hellhole."

"He'll be getting a sponge bath from a pretty nurse tonight," I add.

We drive back to the front of the column. The tanks are sitting by the side of the road.

I find McCoy in his humvee. He says we missed a suicide run. Six or seven Iraqis had got up from their fighting holes in the sand and run across open ground toward the Marine tanks. They carried only AK-47s. The tank gunners mowed them down like wheat.

The 7.62-mm AK bullets bounced harmlessly off the heavy tank armor, barely scratching paint.

In one of the fights, the tank company commander caught a round in his hand. He was in the turret hatch when a machine gun raked his tank. The bullet entered just behind his index knuckle and came out near his wrist. It cut through tissue but didn't hit any bone or tendon.

"It hurts like a mother, but I got real lucky," says Capt. Brian Lewis.

The fight is over. Three-Four moves out of the city, to a staging area, to spend the night.

We get to the area and set up camp. I dig into an MRE and have some warm water. Howell asks to speak with me in private.

We go behind the humvee. The sun has set. It's dark.

"Evnin didn't make it," he says.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cast of characters
Bryan P. McCoy. Lieutenant colonel. Commanding officer, Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio callsign: Darkside.

Dave Howell. Sergeant Major. Top enlisted man for Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio callsign: Eyes 2.

Dino Moreno. Staff sergeant and sniper with Three-Four. Part of a sniper team riding with the sergeant major.

Mark Evnin. Corporal. Driver and sniper/spotter with Three-Four. Part of a sniper team riding with the sergeant major.

Samuel Baynes. Lance corporal. Mans the machine gun in the turret atop McCoy's humvee.


Sempers,

Roger

[the humper]

Seems by the description, "darkside" was one helluva CO. And when it was time to go head to head, It was a fire team or squad leader, who was then in charge to do all the initial assaults!!! Been there, done that, and haven't seen it any other way!!
SF
NC

[thedrifter]

McCOY'S MARINES
Darkside toward Baghdad

JOHN KOOPMAN, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, November 14, 2003

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Chapter 5: Looking for weapons of mass destruction... Having it out with the sergeant major... Moving toward the bridge, the last obstacle before Baghdad... RPGs go off like bottle rockets... The Dyala Canal... Iraqis fight back... Incoming artillery kills two Marines... Bloodlust... Dead bodies and discarded AKs... Civilians die... A newly made orphan.



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THE COMPOUND
Faces are grim the next morning. We leave Al Kut and head northwest again, toward Baghdad. Hundreds of men stream down the road in the opposite direction.

They wear the long shirt and sweats favored by Iraqis. Most are young. There are no women.

The Marines think they're Iraqi soldiers, maybe Republican Guard, who are running away from the fighting. They're headed toward Kut. Some wave and smile.

Some are sullen. Some limp. They swarm abandoned and shot-up vehicles to strip them of any valuables. One man rolls a tire in front of him.

The guys are too tired and too mad to care. Losing Evnin was tough.

The sergeant major says little about Evnin. It's hard to read him. He's not exactly a touchy-feely, it's-OK-to-cry kind of guy. But he'd been tough with Evnin. He rode him about his appearance, about his driving, about keeping the humvee clean. But it was just sergeant major stuff. Not much different than he was with any of the Marines. I got the sense Howell wondered if he'd been too rough on the kid, and now couldn't take it back.

Three-Four drives to the outskirts of Baghdad. No resistance. McCoy gets orders to raid a military compound. This is a sprawling, forested area with new buildings and a high fence atop an earthen berm.

The Marines fire a line charge over the fence. A hundred pounds of C4 explosive set off a teeth-rattling blast. Now there's a huge hole in the fence.

They go in and find nothing. Not a single person. Just a couple of old, empty armored vehicles and ancient anti-aircraft guns. The Marines pop them with grenades and look around. The search takes most of the day. It's another hot one. The Marines are about to head out when McCoy gets a call from an officer. They've found a suspicious building.

Darkside drives over, followed by the sergeant major. There in the middle of the woods, in broken-down, dirty Iraq, is a nice, clean complex of buildings. The offices are modern and nice. They have air conditioners, but the power isn't on. Some of the interior offices are still cool from the air conditioning. There are pressed-wood cabinets, the kind you find at Home Depot.

Every single work space has a painting or photograph of Saddam.

Outside, in the sand, are high-tech metal-working machines. They're covered with plastic tarps and surrounded by sandbags. Someone was trying to keep the machines safe from falling American bombs.

No one wants to go inside. Through the windows, the Marines see plastic tarps and bags filled with something. Maybe a lethal chemical. So the place is secured and the Division is notified.

The battalion intelligence officer, Capt. Brian Mangan, goes in with his interpreter. Simon and I follow. The Marines kick down doors and rifle through desks and file cabinets. There's little there. It is too clean. Not a single document. And few personal effects. But suspicious enough to be declared a "sensitive site."

We find bottled water in a secretary's refrigerator and discuss whether it's safe to drink. Mangan wonders whether the Iraqis poisoned the bottles on the way out. Paranoia is good thinking, but I'm hot and thirsty. I figure the Iraqis couldn't have been nefarious enough to booby-trap a water bottle. So I take a sip. I'm still standing a few minutes later, so the other guys divide up the water and start drinking. It's cold enough to be good.

We'd been inside for more than an hour. When we get out, the Marines are freaked. And mad. There are stories about underground tunnels and Iraqi agents.

They thought we'd disappeared, or been captured.

Howell and I have a major fight. "You don't do that again," he shouts, as if I were an errant schoolboy.

I point out that I was with a Marine officer and that I had a responsibility to investigate. If there were chemical weapons or evidence of such, better that a journalist be on hand to avoid later allegations that the goods were planted by American troops.

"Besides," I said. "It's my neck. I know the risks."

"I don't care," Howell yells. "You put Marines at risk with that kind of s-.

You know we'd have to come looking for you."

We argue for some time, neither giving ground. And both of us right, in our way. But I also know that Howell is right. We should have come out sooner. I say so and offer an apology. I also tell Howell that I'll leave his humvee if he wants.

The sergeant major isn't used to dealing with civilians. He accepts my apology and then tells me he's sorry for yelling. And he doesn't want me to leave his vehicle. Now that we've patched things up, he wants to know more about what we found in the offices. I give him a sip of water, and explain afterward where I got it. He spits it out.

That night we sleep among perfectly groomed rosebushes in the courtyard of the complex.

ROCKETS' RED GLARE
The next day, Three-Four sets out for the bridge over the Dyala Canal. The bridge has major military implications. The entire 1st Marine Division is about to attack Baghdad from the east. There are only two bridges that allow eastern access. Both have been damaged by the Iraqis. McCoy's bridge has a hole in the middle; nothing can drive across. But the Marines have to take this one so engineers can build a pontoon bridge across the canal. Basically, the entire division is waiting to cross. Right here, right now. The war depends on it.

The battalion drives out the front gate of the military compound midmorning.

It's already hot. The main gate opens onto Route 6, which leads to the bridge a couple of miles away. And then on into Baghdad.

To the left of the road is a tall berm. On the other side, more trees. Kilo Company spreads through there and moves west toward the bridge.

To the right of the road are buildings, houses and shops. It's a crappy, cramped urban area. And it's swarming with Iraqi Fedayeen.

The Marines have moved about 100 yards down the road when fire comes in from the buildings. Iraqi snipers firing from rooftops. Rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) rain down like the Fourth of July.

An RPG is an ugly, nasty little thing that has killed U.S. troops in every war since Vietnam. It's like a large bottle rocket, fired from a shoulder-held tube. It has no aiming mechanism. So it just goes straight off and either explodes on impact or detonates in midair above a target.

You hear "pfffffsssssssstttttt" and then "boom."

The sergeant major has a new driver, Lance Cpl. Kevin Norcross from Orange County. He drives the humvee behind an Amtrac, moving slowly down the road. I sit in the back, in the open, with Moreno.

"Pffffffffsssssssssstttt! Boom!" An RPG round explodes 20 feet over our heads. There's a puff of black smoke. We hear bits of shrapnel hitting the pavement around us.

I get down from the back of the humvee and take cover on the side opposite the shooting.

Pfffffffsssssssssss! Boom! Another RPG goes off overhead.

Boom! And another. Boom! A fourth RPG.

"I think someone might be aiming at us," Moreno says.

"You think so?" I ask.

I hear that PFFFFFFFSSSSSSTTTTTTT again and dive straight for the dirt. Boom! Another one directly overhead.

For the first time in the war, I think I might die.

Norcross' hands are shaking as he drives the humvee to the left side of an Amtrac, almost scraping the paint off, to get some steel between us and the RPGs. We sit there and hide.

I look up and see two Marines sitting atop the Amtrac. They're calmly firing their M-16 rifles into the buildings. They seem neither afraid nor desirous of cover.

"Did you see that guy in the window?" one asks.

"I saw something move. I was just shooting into the window and all around it. I was hoping."

"Yeah, he never popped back up. I think you got him."

"Could be."

They keep firing. Bullets are plinking off the armor and off the pavement. The Marines have a serene, internal calm. The violence, the threat of death all around them, seems to mean nothing. They just sit up there and shoot.

Someone told me once that the trick to keeping your wits in battle is to imagine that you're already dead. Or that you certainly will die. If you survive, all the better.

I try that now. It doesn't work.

From behind us, I hear someone shouting. Iraqis are near the front gate of the military compound, trying to flank the Marines. A .50-caliber machine gun in an Amtrac opens up and pours a stream of fire down the street. I can't tell if they hit anyone. But the shooting continues for a long time.

The column keeps moving and eventually Norcross pulls into a courtyard behind a building, on the other side of the shooting. I sit in the sand and heat, wondering why I'm here.

McCoy comes and goes in his fast humvee. He sees the fight from a higher vantage point. He's getting reports from commanders all around. And it's good. No Marines dead or wounded. McCoy says the Iraqis are employing "Chechen- style" guerrilla tactics. Much like the resistance fighters opposing the Russian Army, they gather in seven- to 10-man "hunter-killer" teams. Armed with RPGs and machine guns, they try to set up ambushes. They aim to strike quickly, with deadly force, then disappear.

But the Marines have studied this and have trained to work against it. They're chasing down groups of Iraqi men and challenging them, and getting into firefights.

"We really put the wood to them," McCoy says.

The Marines are getting more and more tense. They see unarmed men walking around. Sometimes these men duck into a building and come out firing. The troops figure the Iraqis have weapons hidden here and there. They know, or hope, the Marines won't fire on unarmed men. The Iraqis go from cache to cache,

firing, dropping weapons, firing again.

It's a rugged couple of hours. The Marines creep slowly down the roadway. Machine guns rattle and tanks blast holes in buildings. We're all sweating like pigs in the chemical suits.

At times, the air is a solid wall of sound. M-16 rifles, M-60 machine guns and .50-caliber heavy machine guns pour fire into alleys and windows. The smell of cordite, or gunpowder, fills the air.

The Marines say they killed 15 to 30 Iraqis. I hear about one sniper who recorded eight kills from across the canal.

I can't see any dead. They're scattered in and among the houses and shops.


THE BRIDGE
Finally, we reach the bridge. This is a dirty, ugly part of the Baghdad metropolis. There's garbage on the street. Abandoned restaurants are caked with grease and dirt and smell like barnyards. Food left in shops is rotting and smells like hell. A corner store has been torn open, and a couple of Marines step inside to look around. There are cartons of cigarettes, bottles of juice and candy. The sergeant major yells at everyone to get out. "You're Marines, not looters!" he says. Two minutes later a journalist runs up to the humvee and gives me a bag full of cigarettes and candy he's taken from the store. The sergeant major shoots me a look, but I turn away and start giving the stuff out to passing Marines.

I hear shooting coming from the bridge.

The Marines come under heavy fire from Iraqi army and militia on the other side. All evening, Marine artillery and mortar fire rain down on the Iraqi side. The Marines shoot rifles and machine guns across the canal into buildings and cars.

When I finally make it to the bridge, I see the body of an Iraqi on the span, close to the U.S. side. He's in civilian clothes. He's been shot in the head and chest. On the far side, a small Japanese-made car burns brightly. Thick, black smoke rolls from it.On this side of the bridge is a cluster of buildings around a courtyard. In front are three shacks, sitting at the top of the embankment leading down to the water.

A couple of tanks are parked to the left of the shacks. I'm standing inside the little building, peering out a window, the tank cannon about 10 feet away. I hear the shout, "Tank's firing." I try to duck, but the big gun goes off. The force of the blast lifts me 6 inches off the ground. My ears ring for an hour.

The 120mm cannons tear holes through houses on the other side.


INCOMING
Digging my fingers into my ears, I walk into the courtyard. In that space, about 200 square feet in an L-shape, Kilo Company is getting ready for an assault on the bridge.

Marine artillery pounds the far shore. Simon and I stand in the courtyard and watch the thunderous bursts land in a palm grove. Shell after shell. You see a bright flash and a burst of smoke, and a second later the sound hits you with a shock wave. On the radio, I hear someone say the bridge assault will start in 15 minutes.

We watch an artillery shell land short. It hits the water and sends up a huge spray. A couple seconds later, a shell lands on the U.S. side, down the canal bank to the right.

And then, time stands still.

I hear - or feel - an enormous blast directly behind me. I know it's an artillery shell. I'm thinking it's an American shell that landed short.

A hot, hard wind blows past me. The air turns dark. I duck my head and hold onto my helmet. God, don't let any shrapnel come my way.

Hot, burning engine oil sprays my back. I turn to see the impact. The shell has struck an Amtrac parked next to the courtyard wall, about 3 yards from me. Simon and I duck into the nearest building. I'm nervous. I don't know if another shell is on the way. Maybe someone is targeting this building. We have no idea whether we should stay or run. So we wait a half minute. No more shells.

I look out the window and, to the left, I see the charred, smoking wreckage of the Amtrac. Men are shouting. I'm afraid for what I'll find outside.

THE SCREAMING AND THE DEAD
The blast made a smoking, twisted crater on top of the Amtrac. It shot fire and bodies out the back end. I walk around to the back side. Blood and oil mix with the dirt. Two crumpled, still bodies lie in the dirt.

"F-! F-!" some of the Marines are screaming. "F-!"

Other Marines lie moaning on the ground. Corpsmen and buddies huddle around them.Gunnery Sgt. Jean-Paul Courville and 1st Sgt. James Kirkland organize medical help. Then tend to the dead.

The bodies of Lance Cpl. Andrew Aviles and Cpl. Jesus Medellin are tucked into their sleeping bags. "I was standing just 10 feet away," says one Marine, shaking. Blood streams from his lip.

What follows is a half hour of shock and confusion. Corpsmen work on wounded men in the dirt. One Marine is deaf from the sound of the blast. Another is screaming and writhing in pain. In the middle of all this, I see McCoy. His jaw is set and he looks grim.

He says the artillery shell came from the Iraqis, not the Americans. I don't believe him.

Marines sit huddled in the courtyard. They look haggard and drawn. Reports come in that Iraqis are targeting artillery fire on this position. Everyone scrambles for cover.

I find a hole and make myself small, waiting for more artillery to come down. None comes. After a while, I go back to the courtyard. Kilo Company is gathering for another run at the bridge.

Bloodlust. I now understand bloodlust.

Bloodlust starts with anger. Anger at the situation, anger at the heat, anger at the Iraqis, anger at whoever started the war. Then there's pain. Pain from the blisters on your feet, pain from the armored vest that rubs your collarbone raw, pain in your back from sleeping on the ground every night. Then confusion, over what's going on and why and when. And then there's blood. Blood that's been spilled. Your friend's blood. That combination of anger, pain, confusion and blood leads you to do things you wouldn't otherwise contemplate.

For Marines, it might be fighting harder, shooting sooner. For a noncombatant, it might simply be taking chances, not caring what happens to you.

Bloodlust will make you do strange things, like look inside a burning car to see charred bodies and watch the flies eat dried blood on the face of a dead man.

McCoy knows he has to get a handle on his Marines and prepare them for battle. It isn't easy. Order and discipline and training have to kick in when all seems lost. Guys have seen their buddies blown to bits.

He talks to some men individually. His officers talk to others. Here's where leadership kicks in. There is a sense of urgency. Despite the deaths, the fight has to go on.

A half hour after the shell hit the Amtrac, Kilo Company masses at the bridge. And prepares to cross.

A team of combat engineers goes first, carrying metal scaffolding to place across the blown gap in the span.

McCoy and Shealy stand by the front shack. The colonel is about to run across the bridge when the sergeant major stops him.

"We can't afford to lose you," he tells McCoy.

McCoy stands back and contemplates the situation. He takes the radio handset from Shealy and starts calling his officers, checking their progress.

Kilo, meanwhile, starts running onto the bridge. They bunch up at the far end and pour fire into everything. The sound is deafening.

But the Iraqi defenders are either dead or gone. There is little, if any, return fire.

Heavily armed infantry Marines run into nearby houses, kicking in doors, looking for a fight.

I see two Marines crouch near an alley. One peers around the corner, then goes back into a crouch and readies his weapon. "Ready, crazy?" he asks his buddy. The other man nods and they leap into the alley. A possible ambush. It reminds me of the final scene in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." The two Marines sprint into the roadway, rifles at the ready. No enemy fire comes. Along the shore near the bridge you can see fighting holes and bunkers. Large piles of clothing and personal effects - notebooks, pictures, blankets - are strewn about. As are dozens, maybe hundreds, of AK-47s and RPGs. This is where the fire had come from the day before.

THE LOOK OF DEATH
McCoy says 50 or 60 Iraqis were killed in the two days of fighting.

Many of the bodies are on the road on the Baghdad side of the bridge. Inside a smoking wreck of a car are a clump of charred bones. Farther up, an older man, maybe 55 or 60, is slumped over the steering wheel of a delivery truck.

Across the road, a soldier in the uniform of the Republican Guard lies face down in the dirt, a circle of dried blood next to his head.

In the palm grove are craters made by American artillery shells. Holes in the dirt are chest deep and 8 feet wide.

In the aftermath of the deadly fight for the bridge, the ugliness of war gets worse.I follow a group of Marines north down the road that leads to the heart of Baghdad. They stop about a mile away from the bridge. The burned-up wreck of a car is on the road. A body lies next to it, also burned. The man is in a push- up position and stiff with rigor mortis.

Down the road, a car drives toward the Marine checkpoint. Someone fires a shot, then another. The car screeches to a halt. I see from a distance two men getting out of the vehicle, their hands held high.

"Look at those people," one Marine officer says, "driving around like there wasn't a war going on."


THE SNIPERS AND THE CIVILIANS
This is how the Marines deal with oncoming vehicles. A sniper is stationed near the checkpoint, atop a roof or on a vehicle. He fires warning shots in front of vehicles. If a car doesn't stop, the sniper fires a shot into the grill or engine area.And if that doesn't work, the Marines light the whole thing up. The driver and passengers are often killed.

The Marines are unapologetic. They believe the Iraqis are coming to attack. Better they die than a Marine.

But the situation now seems static. Marines are stopping cars, no fighting is going on. I'm standing with journalists, some embedded and some unilaterals who tagged along with the battalion. We're in a doorway to a courtyard next to the palm grove. A dead Iraqi soldier is lying right next to us. I keep trying not to look at the blood next to his head.

I decide to return to the bridge. I want information on the artillery shell that hit the Amtrac.

I don't buy McCoy's explanation that it was an Iraqi shell. The timing was too close to the American bombardment. Everyone figures it came from a Marine artillery battery. I want to talk to people, get firsthand accounts of what happened.

So I don't see what occurs on the road after I leave. Some of the other journalists stay.

They tell me later that Iraqi cars keep driving toward the checkpoint only to get shot up by nervous, trigger-happy Marines. They say men fire on cars before the snipers fire warning shots. They say officers and snipers keep shouting at the Marines to hold their fire, but some do not. And civilians die because of it.

But the Marines tell a different story. Crazy, suicidal Iraqis drive cars and trucks straight at the checkpoints, or at Marines, or tanks. They ignore orders to stop and they ignore warning shots. The only thing to do, the Marines say, is to kill them.

The Marines have been warned constantly about suicide attacks. On the way to Baghdad, the 5th Marines lost a tank to a suicide truck bomb. The men of Three-Four saw the M1 Abrams vehicle burning fiercely as they drove past it to the city.

The day of the bridge assault, word comes over the radio that Iraqis are using ambulances with explosives to make suicide runs.

The order comes down: You see an ambulance driving fast toward you, shoot it.

Whatever the reason or rationale, a lot of people die on Route 6 that day.

Marines and journalists tell other wild tales of that day. A van is shot up and a family inside is killed. The van sits silent all night. In the morning, a man and woman crawl slowly, carefully, out of the wreckage. They had sat in that shot-up van all night, among their dead relatives, afraid to come out for fear of getting shot.

The woman had been shot in the toe. A Navy corpsman bandages her, and she and the man leave.

A black Mercedes Benz drives straight at a checkpoint. The Marines shoot it up. They look inside to find a man and woman dead in the front seats. In the backseat is a young girl, maybe 5 years old. She's alive and clutching a stuffed bear.

That wrenches hearts. Even tough Marines sympathize with a child, now an orphan. And no one can say why the parents died. Was it a horrible mistake, or was it suicide?

"Imagine that, making a suicide run when you've got your kid in the backseat," says one Marine who witnessed it.

Battalion communications officer and 1st Lt. Paul Keener chokes up when he sees the girl. He's got a baby daughter at home.

He puts down his gun and picks up the girl. He holds her close, as close as he can with his body armor and ammo pouches. But close enough to give her some human contact on the worst day of her life. He personally takes her to the battalion aid station. Later, she's gone. Into the system, wherever that is, where war orphans go.

A day later, I'm riding with the sergeant major and we drive to the front of the Marine advance. Tanks and infantry are fanned out near a military compound. Machine guns are firing. But it doesn't seem like a major firefight.

I find Simon standing next to McCoy's humvee. Robinson says he just witnessed a suicide attack. A small white car drove straight at an American tank. He says the Marines fired warning shots but the car didn't stop. So they lit it up.

"I watched them shoot up this car, and they killed the driver and passenger, " Robinson says, somewhat shaken. "It was an attack, I can tell you that for a fact. But when we looked into the car there were no guns and no bombs. Just two dead bodies. How do you figure?"


THE INQUIRY
When Simon and I return to the rear, to look into the blast that almost killed us, we find Marines who heard explosions from other artillery rounds that landed on the American side. When we say that the official word was that they were Iraqi rounds, the guys just shake their heads and say "no way."

It's not uncommon for howitzers to go off course, or rounds to land short.

A couple of days later, McCoy finds Simon and me and tells us that an official Marine inquiry found that the artillery was Iraqi.

Military intelligence had been monitoring Iraqi radio traffic, he says, and reported hearing Iraqi officers calling for artillery fire on Marine positions near the bridge. And hearing that the request was approved.

The Marines have something they call counter-battery radar. It sees enemy artillery shells in midflight and can track their trajectory. The inquiry found that counter-battery radar detected Iraqi artillery shells before they hit the Three-Four positions.

Officials also conducted a "crater analysis" of the wrecked AAV. The angles of twisted metal confirm, McCoy says, that the round entered from a forward direction, meaning Iraqi positions.

The official line is that the Marines were hit with a 155mm shell from an Iraqi GHN-45 artillery piece.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cast of characters
Bryan P. McCoy. Lieutenant colonel. Commanding officer, Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio call sign: Darkside.

Dave Howell. Sergeant Major. Top enlisted man for Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio call sign: Eyes 2.

Dino Moreno. Staff sergeant and sniper with Three-Four. Part of a sniper team riding with the sergeant major.

Mark Evnin. Corporal and sniper with Three-Four. Evnin was killed in an ambush outside the city of Kut.

Simon Robinson. Writer for Time Magazine. Embedded reporter


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...&type=universal


Sempers,

Roger

[thedrifter]

MCCOY'S MARINES: DARKSIDE TOWARD BAGHDAD
Chapter 6 of 6

John Koopman Wednesday, November 15, 2003

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Baghdad -- Chapter 6: All quiet in Baghdad .. .. . Meeting the press corps . .. . . The statue of Saddam comes down, people hit it with their shoes .. .. . Baghdad is Dodge City . .. .. Two more Marines die . .. .. Darkside's Thug Patrol . .. .. Getting out of Dodge . .. .. Ice at the Hilton . .. .. Marines return to their desert . .. .. Everyone's happy, except the ones who are not . .. .. Debauchery at the Rattler . .. .. Where war stays forever. .



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BAGHDAD
After the battle for the bridge, we're in Baghdad. It's different than I imagined. Relatively nice, relatively new. The buildings are two- and three- story houses. The architecture European. Stonework and squared-off shapes. Most homes have balconies in the rear, along with clotheslines and TV antennas. It was an affluent area before the war. There is no one here.

It's spooky. We're in Saddam's backyard now. Who knows what will happen? We're still waiting for the Republican Guard to show up. An ambush could be right around the corner.

The Marines find scattered groups of militia fighters. There are sporadic firefights. Nothing of consequence. No Marines are shot. They say they've shot several Iraqis. I don't doubt it, but I don't see many bodies.

The battalion moves down the main road for blocks at a time, running the Afak drill. They move in and deploy. Grunts knock down doors, snipers get on the rooftops and shoot at anyone with a gun.

The sergeant major is especially good at this.

Howell goes into the buildings while Moreno, Norcross and I wait in the humvee. There's a stack of soda bottle crates in the back and I desperately want a soda. But I can't bring myself to steal.

The sergeant major calls for Moreno to come to the roof. I'm bored and hot. I figure I'll go up, too, take a look around. Moreno and I climb a fence and scale a wall to get to a backyard balcony and then take stairs to the rooftop.

I see Marines looking into abandoned backyards down an alley. Closer in, I see a stack of AK-47s found in a house and then piled in the street.

Howell points to a building about 600 yards away. He says he saw someone moving in and out of a window. He thinks the guy had a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (RPG). Moreno looks through the scope, but sees nothing.

"Well, keep any eye on it. I'm going to take a look around. John's coming with me."

I don't argue; I figure I can use the exercise. Howell jumps over a wall and onto the next building and I follow. We move up one building and down the next. This is like something out of "Lethal Weapon." We're going in and out of balconies and rooftops, under clotheslines and around smokestacks.

The sergeant major climbs onto the top of a wall and jumps 5 feet onto a rooftop. I climb onto the same wall and look down. There is a gap between buildings, and we're five stories up. It's a long way to the pavement and a short jump to the other roof. I should just turn around and go back.

But I jump. For 10 minutes we work our way through buildings, some that had been under construction before the fighting. Howell leads the way, poking his M-16 into everything, ready to shoot. I've got my notebook in my pocket, ready to run.

No one is here. Not a thing. We get to the ground and Howell climbs up another wall and keeps going.

And that's how it goes for another day. The temperature is rising and it's getting more and more uncomfortable. The only excitement comes when the Marines go into the Baghdad Institute of Technology and find some industrial- type chemistry sets, lathes for making artillery warheads and some empty howitzer shells.

Putting two and two together, it looks as if the Iraqis were using the place to make chemical artillery weapons. But there is no evidence, and the military higher command doesn't have enough people to send experts. So we bed down for the night in the main courtyard.

The next morning orders come for more of the same. By this time, I'm worn out. Tired of the war, Iraq, the Marines, everything, I just want to go home.

But we move out, down the road past bombed and burned buildings. At an intersection, we find the remains of a firefight. Shot-up and burned cars and charred Iraqi bodies. Under a highway overpass are Iraqi fighting holes with blankets, canteens, helmets and weapons. We go up the road and wait while the snipers climb yet another building. And wait some more.

A car approaches an intersection guarded by a tank and a humvee with a . 50-caliber machine gun. The driver hits the brakes and stops.

"If he drives past that light pole, you can shoot," Warrant Officer Gene Coughlin says to a sergeant next to him. "If he keeps coming in the face of all of this, he knows what he's getting into."

The car backs out of the intersection and turns around.

"He doesn't know how lucky he is," Coughlin says.


THE PRESS CORPS
The Marines move out again.

Only now, something changes. The Marines were finding a couple of militia or Fedayeen guys to fight here and there, but now there is nothing. Nobody.

We drive down the road faster and go farther. Marines stop and dismount and take the high ground.

And now, something new. People. Civilians on balconies just a few feet above our heads. They're laughing and smiling and waving and clapping.

Our humvee pulls up beneath a low balcony, and the sergeant major gets out to scout the place. Women and girls are smiling shyly at him and waving. A big grin splits his craggy face, and he offers a tentative wave back.

Someone hands down a water bottle. He doesn't want to take it, but it would be an insult to decline. He takes a swig. Now he's smiling even more. It's the women.

"Remember this place," he tells Norcross. "We might have to come back."

We mount up and move down to a large traffic circle. Still no shooting. I get down to stretch my legs. On the other side of the circle I see people in blue armored vests with the letters "TV" in white tape. It strikes me: We've found the international press corps.

I go over and introduce myself to some British reporters who have been in Baghdad during the war. They were under the control, and protection of, the Iraqi government until the previous day. But the government collapsed and the Iraqis left. Which means the journalists have no protection from looting and angry mobs. They heard a Marine unit was moving up the road and they came to meet it.

I find a reporter from the Los Angeles Times and ask about The Chronicle's man in Baghdad, Rob Collier. The guy says sure, he's around here somewhere. We find Rob talking to another reporter. "Collier!" I shout. He and I hug. It's a strong, I'm-glad-you're-alive hug.

Meanwhile, McCoy is on the radio with Ripper 6. Regiment tells McCoy to move down to the Palestine Hotel, where the journalists are staying, and provide security.

Weird. Baghdad promised to be a bloodbath of urban fighting. But it seems safe. The Marines stay tense and on alert, but the threat appears greatly diminished after the battles already fought.

THE STATUE
The battalion moves to the Palestine, which is adjacent to a large traffic circle enclosing a small park. The area is dominated by a statue of Saddam Hussein atop a marble pedestal.

The Marines encircle the square and the Palestine Hotel. Tanks and armored vehicles block side streets. The grunts dismount to set up security on the sidewalks.

Iraqis are everywhere, maybe 300 or 400.

"Saddam NO! Bush YES!" shouts one gleeful-looking Iraqi boy.

The Marines don't know whether to shoot them or hug them. Mustachioed men who look like the enemy are dancing and laughing and shaking their hands. Kids ask for money, which most of us don't have, and when they don't get it, they ask for water. There is precious little of that.

The kids put flowers in the pockets of the Marines' armored vests and shake their hands. The war is over.

We don't know this yet. But you feel it in the air. There's too much happiness, too much celebration. What the liberation of Paris must have felt like.

"There's still a lot of fighting to be done," McCoy says. "But this is a momentous day."

A couple of Iraqis climb onto the pedestal of Saddam's statue to the cheers of the crowd. They tug on the statue, but it must weigh tons. Someone tosses up a rope and they tie it around Saddam's neck. The crowd pulls the rope, but there aren't nearly enough people to do the job.

The men get down, and a huge Iraqi man walks up carrying a sledgehammer. The guy has a big gut and massive shoulders. He looks like an Olympic weightlifter. He starts swinging the hammer against the marble pedestal, but after 10 minutes he has chipped maybe an inch off.

I go to McCoy's humvee. He's on the radio with Ripper 6.

"Ripper 6, this is Darkside 6. I got a whole crowd of Iraqis over here who want help bringing the statue down. Request permission to give them a hand, over."

McCoy talks more with the regiment and then signs off. He calls the tank commander and says simply: "Do it."

Tanks break down and they need maintenance to keep going. They go everywhere with a monstrous tracked vehicle called the M-88 tank retriever. It has a 1,300 horsepower engine, a crane and tools. Everything you need to topple a statue.

The tank crews drive the M-88 over the curb and up the concrete steps, crushing them. They drive up next to the statue. The crew works for half an hour or more, trying to affix various cables to the statue.

At one point, one of the Marines passes an American flag to another man above him and he wraps it around Saddam's head. I'm on the other side of the plaza, so I can't see exactly what's happening. Some people say that some of the Iraqis are mad at the appearance of the U.S. flag. Others say they cheered, but then quickly asked to replace the American flag with a pre-Saddam Iraqi flag.

Whichever the case, the damage is done. The image of the U.S. flag in Iraq is beamed around the world. The American military is angry because they'd made great efforts not to make the war look like an American invasion. Members of Congress are angry, anti-war protesters are angry. McCoy gets calls from high up the chain of command.

Meanwhile, Iraqis are jumping on and off the tank retriever. Marines are trying to keep back the crowd so the statue won't fall and hit them.

Finally, the enormous vehicle belches black smoke. The engine rumbles like a steam locomotive. It moves back and the cable goes taut. The statue rocks an inch. With more power, the retriever rolls back a couple of feet and the top of the statue starts to sway. It moves in a slow downward arc.

And then, Saddam is parallel to the ground, about 15 feet off the deck. The retriever gives one more jerk, and the whole metal mess comes crashing down.

The crowd is on it in an instant. Dozens of people kick and punch the fallen statue. One man takes off his shoe and smacks the metal Saddam in the head. I'm told this is a great Iraqi insult.

I go to my backpack and get out my last two Cuban cigars. I find the sergeant major and give one to him. We light up and touch cigar stems in a toast.

"It ain't over yet, you know," he says.

Artillery rumbles in the distance. A moment later, shots ring out on the edge of the plaza. A Marine has spotted an Iraqi with a gun and fires off a couple of rounds. The crowd ducks and scatters, then comes back.

Not everyone is pleased by the spectacle. A handful of peace activists, human shields, argue against the war to anyone who will listen. One woman walks up to a group of Marines and calls them murderers.

Most guys ignore her. Or laugh. But it gets to some.

"I didn't bury two of my fellow Marines just so someone like that could call us murderers," says one Marine corporal who helped remove the bodies of those killed in the Amtrac. "They died for this country."

The celebration continues until after dark. McCoy works to set up security, coordinate with regiment and talk to the never-ending press corps. Later, as the light is just about gone, he takes a seat on a concrete step in the middle of the square. He sighs.

Young kids and their parents stop by to shake his hand and say something in Arabic. One man kisses his cheek and hugs him, saying "U.S. Army, good."

McCoy smiles and corrects the man: "Marines."


THE PALESTINE
I find Collier in his room at the Palestine. He and I write our stories late into the evening. He has beer in a small fridge. It's lukewarm, but I don't care. It's the first drink I've had in two months. He also has running water. Not hot, but I haven't bathed in weeks. So I take a cold-water bird bath in his tub.

Then I sack out on his spare bed. And sleep like a dead man. I wake early in the morning. I have no idea where I am. Or how I got there.

The elevators don't work, so I walk down 11 flights. I meet McCoy in the stairway. He hasn't had any sleep. He has been doing TV interviews all night, CNN, Larry King, all the big names. McCoy's a household name.

The lobby of the Palestine is a madhouse. Hundreds of reporters, photographers and producers come and go, chatting up Marines, trying to set up interviews. Iraqis come to look for work. Marines set up security outside.

News comes in gulps. The army is roaming western Baghdad. Saddam is nowhere to be found. The Iraqi government has withered. The U.N. ambassador says, "The game is over."

That's good enough for me.

The Marines are still on edge, worried about ambushes and suicide bombers. Not far away, a suicide bomber sets off an explosion that wounds three Marines. The Iraqi's body is cut in half.

About the same time, a squad searching a building finds suicide bomber central. It looks like a factory. There are vests and explosives and detonators. And some empty hangars that, apparently, once held bomb vests. A Marine shows me a note he found inside, with Arabic writing, offering instructions on how to blow yourself up.


THE RIGHT THING
It's dangerous in Baghdad. The streets are jammed with people, especially around the Palestine Hotel, and the hotel across the street, the former Sheraton. Gunshots can be heard every couple of minutes. Some shots are close; others far away. Shooting is so common no one bothers to check it out. You can sit in your hotel room with the window open and hear automatic gunfire. Sometimes it's just a couple of shots; sometimes an exchange of fire.

I'm in a room at the Sheraton with a reporter from U.S. News and World Report, Kit Roane. We hear shots coming from outside, near the banks of the Tigris River. We ignore them. More shots. We look out the window. Marines are running, but are they running fast? With urgency? Not really, so we go back to our conversation. More shots. Now there is sustained automatic gunfire and mortars going off. We can see the splashes landing on the other side of the river.

"You suppose we ought to go down there?" I ask

Kit rolls his eyes. "I suppose we ought to check it out."

By the time we get downstairs, the shooting is over. It's nothing. Someone set up a machine gun in a building on the other side of the river and took shots at the Marines on this side. They responded with about a thousand rounds, until there were no more shots from the other side. As usual, we have no idea whether anyone died. Maybe the Marines have killed whoever was shooting. Maybe the shooter just ran away to shoot again another day.

Sometimes people get shot for no good reason. One day, a man tries to enter the battalion compound. The Marines at the gate tell the man to get back, but he keeps trying to climb over the fence. The Marines shout and yell and try to push him back repeatedly. But he keeps coming.

Finally, a Marine shoots the man dead. There is no weapon on him.

No one knows whether the man was prompted by desperation or fear or hatred.

"It's a tragedy, really, but the Marine did the right thing," the sergeant major says.


FIGHTING AND DYING
Three-Four sets up security outside the Palestine for a couple of days and then moves down the road about 3 miles to a former municipal complex. They dig in their tanks and armored vehicles in the courtyard and send others to guard a local hospital.

That's when the fifth Marine is killed.

Cpl. Jesus Gonzalez was a tank crewman. He had climbed to the top of the tank when an Iraqi came out from hiding with an AK-47 in his hands. The Iraqi shot the corporal in the back. The corpsman says the bullet entered the Marine under his armored vest in the rear, went upward through his heart and came out the front, lodging in the Kevlar material.

THE THUG PATROL
Marines are given the task of conducting civil affairs in nearby communities. This is a huge departure for them. They're more comfortable smashing and bashing and destroying things. There's no way to sugarcoat it. They fight, they kill. Now they're told to make nice and help the civilians.

Second Lt. Milan Langella leads patrols of eight to 10 men through the city streets. The Marines don't want to do this. The Army, he says, is better suited for it.

"Marines should either be fighting or on liberty," he says.

Langella says the locals call him "Tom," but he doesn't know why. He likes that they recognize him, though. Sometimes he takes the guys out on a specific assignment, to look for a sniper who fired on a patrol the night before. Sometimes they just go looking for trouble. The big problem is the lack of electricity and running water. People stop and beg the Marines for these two essentials. But there's nothing the Marines can do. That's an issue for higher-ups.

Life is harsh in Baghdad. Garbage is left in the streets and people try to cope with it by setting it on fire. Black rivulets of raw sewage course down alleyways.

"We have no electric, no water," says one older man with a beard but no mustache. "We have no petrol, no gas for the cooking. Please tell the people we must have water, we must have electric."

Mostly, the Marines look for thieves, looters and snipers.

I go on a couple of patrols with Langella. His men use C-4 plastic explosive to blast locks off doors, then thunder inside, looking for snipers. It's rough, dirty work. Sometimes the Marines and Iraqis get along; often the Marines are rough with people and they leave hurt feelings, as well as bruises.

McCoy sees himself as a protector of the weak. He's especially fond of his "thug patrols." Two burly, beefy tank crewmen go out looking for the meanest, toughest Iraqis and mete out street justice.

The first time is at a gambling den. Locals point out the place and say the men who go there have been robbing and threatening people. So the Thug Patrol pays them a visit. No one will say later exactly what happened, but the Marines apparently beat the hell out of some Iraqis to send a message: Leave these people alone.

"We're out-thugging the thugs," McCoy says. "We want them to know there's a new game in town. We're introducing them to the Marine Corps."

The patrols go day and night, and it's here that the sixth and final death occurs in this battalion.

On April 14, Langella's patrol goes out at night. I don't go with them this time because it's hot and it's a night patrol and much more dangerous. They're trying to find the Iraqis who reportedly were using an abandoned mosque as a base for thieving and robbing.

A couple of Marines go up on a roof. Cpl. Jason Mileo takes off his helmet. No one knows why. You're not supposed to. For one thing, it protects your gourd. For another, it identifies you as a Marine. The men all wear, more or less, the same outfit, right down to goggles strapped to helmets. But it's hot in Baghdad.

A Marine sniper on a rooftop sees a man with no helmet carrying a weapon and looking down into the street where the Marines are supposed to be. Apparently, he figures it's a bad guy, about to shoot Marines. The sniper pulls the trigger. And Mileo falls dead.


THE ICE
It's hot. I'm tired. My feet are killing me.

It's time to leave Baghdad.

The war is over. There's more work to do in Iraq, and more stories. But I've had enough; I've been gone for more than two months. I want to go home.

I go to the battalion one more time, to say goodbye. It's hard. I've been living with these guys for more than a month. I want to get out, but it bothers me that they have to stay. The only consolation is that they have orders to leave Baghdad and head for a staging area in the south. They might still be in danger, but probably not.

I shake hands and exchange e-mail addresses with the guys I know best. Kevin Smith gives me a big hug and then presses something into my palm. It's a rosary. "I carried that with me the whole time over here, for luck," he says. "Now you keep it."

I want to protest. He's in a lot more danger than me. But it's a heartfelt gesture, so I keep the rosary.

Howell and I share a "meal, ready to eat'' (MRE), and I tell him I feel like a slacker for leaving while the Marines are still there.

"Don't be an idiot," the sergeant major says. "If you have a chance to get out of here, take it. I would."

That's a lie, but I appreciate the thought.

The next day I get on the truck and then a helicopter. Baghdad is beautiful from the air. The buildings are all caramel and cream color, and the architecture stands out. So do a dozen fires filling the sky with smoke.

I'm flying with a dozen other journalists on their way out. A couple of crews from the BBC and Fox News are with us. They've each got about 50 pieces of luggage and gear, and we all have to help them load and unload it. Another reason to despise television news.

We pile into a C-130 cargo plane bound for Kuwait City. The plane is so loud, the crew hands out ear protection. I nod off in the jump seat, my helmet gently knocking against the steel beam on the bulkhead.

The entire trip from Baghdad to Kuwait City takes 12 hours. You can drive it in eight.

I get to the Kuwait City Hilton late that night. It's air-conditioned, with beautiful stone floors and marble bathrooms.

I order room service: a cheeseburger and Diet Coke with ice. The guy forgets the ice. I give the room-service attendant an extra $6 and ask him to go back for the ice. I need that ice more than air itself.

THE RETURN
The 3rdBattalion, 4th Marine Regiment, spends the next month in the desert, near Diwaniyah. The Marines hold a memorial for the six dead. The entire battalion comes together in formation. Six rifles are stuck into the ground with bayonets. Helmets rest on top.

Every man in the battalion passes by. They touch each helmet, and say goodbye.

Then they sit in the searing sun and wait to go home. Hundreds get sick with a stomach ailment. It might be poor hygiene. It might be the water, which they get from the river and boil. In any case, they're blowing out of both ends for several days.

Maj. Matt Baker, the executive officer, calls it "The Epicenter of Ass."

The battalion returns to Twentynine Palms on May 23 and 24. Mothers, fathers, wives, girlfriends, sisters and brothers go to a parking lot outside the base gym for a sweet, emotional reunion.

Flags fly. The Marine band plays the national anthem and "The Marines Hymn.'' It's hot in the desert sun.

I see McCoy and Howell, Matt Baker and Kevin Smith. There was a swirl of camouflage uniforms as the Marines get off the buses and are swamped by family members.

The married guys, and guys with girlfriends, get off the bus and find their women right away. They go into a 10-minute lip-lock, break free and sprint to their cars, with barely a nod to their buddies on the way out.

Mothers cry and hug their sons. The mother-son bond is strongest of all.

At Twentynine Palms I meet wives, mothers and sweethearts of the Marines I've been writing about. I've known them only by e-mail, and now we place faces to names.

Karen Gentrup of San Jose was the first mother to contact me. Her son, 1st Lt. Eric Gentrup, had told her a Chronicle reporter was supposed to go with the battalion, and she looked online to find a story I'd written from before the war. We've been corresponding ever since.

"There are no words to express how I feel right now," she says, as Eric's bus comes into view. The family moves off, toward their cars. Karen holds back, turns and looks at me and mouths the words "Thank you."


THE RATTLER BAR
Some guys get off the buses and no one is there for them. They go to the barracks and drop off their gear, then head to town. They want to get roaring drunk for the first time in 2003, and maybe get lucky with the local women.

One man came back early with the advance party. He met his wife at the parking lot. They went home and she handed him divorce papers.

So he and I now make for the bars, with a group of other Three-Four Marines. We end up at the Rattler, a dive with a live band and several pool tables. Marines who weren't in combat buy drinks for those who were, and apologize for not having been there. That's how things work in the Corps. Combat veterans outrank those who haven't been to war.

Women, too, seem to gravitate toward the combat vets. Women dance with the Marines and flirt shamelessly. I'm thinking this is a genetic throwback to the time of the caveman.

We close down the Rattler, and one of the women invites us to her house.

She lives at the edge of town. Her bungalow has a lawn of sand. Her adult daughter is inside watching TV.

The woman calls a couple of friends. I volunteer to drive over with the woman and my friend to pick them up. We can't find the apartment right away. It's dark and late. We stop and my friend gets out with the woman to scout around. He's still in protective mode.

"If you hear me shout, you drive to the end of the street and run an Afak drill," he says. Roger that. But there is no trouble. We find the friends and go back to the woman's house.

At one point, one of the Marines disappears into the bathroom with the woman. She's nearly twice his age. Her daughter laughs and says, "That's Twentynine Palms. The week before you all got back, the bars were full of women looking for a good time."

I stay until close to 6 a.m. I don't want to leave my soon-to-be-divorced friend alone. There are other Marines at the party, buddies of his. But they're all drunk and I can see trouble. I leave the next day. Driving down Highway 62, I connect with Interstate 10 and turn west. It's a canyon at that juncture, and looking in the distance I see a dark cloud. It's a sandstorm headed my way.

EPILOGUE
I talk to Sgt. Maj. Dave Howell sometimes. Evnin's death still weighs on him. He wonders if he did the right thing. He's bothered by the fact that the last thing Evnin said to him was to call him an a-.

"But you know, it wasn't really traumatic," he says. "It was profound. But it wasn't traumatic. What do you think that means?"

"It means you're an asshole," I tell him.

I see Darkside, too. Life has returned to normal for him. He's still running the battalion, and preparing to take it on a seven-month deployment to Okinawa. Training is a different now, though. Most of the men are combat veterans. So they know about life under fire. But some are too salty, and McCoy and Howell have to work harder to keep them in line.

"I tell these guys that being in combat isn't all that special," he says. "My backpack has been through combat, so that doesn't mean much."

And life goes on for Three-Four.

Mark Evnin's mother, Mindy, has become my friend. We've met and talked and e-mailed each other. She wanted to read everything about Mark's death. "I keep wanting to stop the clock and keep him alive," she says. "I just think as time passes, and the shock wears off, I feel the pain more. I hate it, but there are no other good choices. So I'll read the article, cry, save it, and be OK."

Shortly after I returned from Iraq, someone told me I'd gotten the war I wanted. I was stunned. I'd never wanted a war. I just wanted to be a witness if one occurred. But I will admit this: I'm glad I went. I wanted to see the worst in humanity. I wanted to know if I could live through combat.

Darkside understands the pride, almost elation, that comes with survival.

"The greatest euphoria," he says, "comes when you've been shot at and missed."

I think about the war all the time.

But here's the strange thing: I don't feel anything about it.

I don't have nightmares. I don't wake up with cold sweats. I don't see the faces of the dead. I don't jump when I hear loud noises.

Maybe I should. But I don't. I tell people it's because I've been a reporter for a long time. You go to murder scenes, you take information from cops over the phone. It's all sterile. You put what you see or hear in a part of your brain that files it away with the story. How many times was the victim shot? Where, in the head? How old was the child who got raped? Is that a body part in the bushes over there?

So I tell myself: That's what men do with war.



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Cast of characters:
Bryan P. McCoy. Lieutenant colonel. Commanding officer, Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio callsign: Darkside.

Dave Howell. Sergeant major. Top enlisted man for Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. Radio callsign: Eyes 2.

Simon Robinson. Writer for Time magazine. Embedded reporter.



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E-mail John Koopman at jkoopman@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...&type=universal


Sempers,

Roger