[Reader-list] 'I got my kills ... I just love my job'

[avinash kumar]

'I got my kills ... I just love my job'

Toby Harnden in Fallujah observes American soldiers of the 1st
Infantry Division taskforce avenging their fallen comrades as battle
begins

09/11/04 "The Telegraph" -- After seven months in Iraq's Sunni
triangle, for many American soldiers the opportunity to avenge dead
friends by taking a life was a moment of sheer exhilaration.

As they approached their "holding position", from where hours later
they would advance into the city, they picked off insurgents on the
rooftops and in windows.

"I got myself a real juicy target," shouted Sgt James Anyett, peering
through the thermal sight of a Long Range Acquisition System (LRAS)
mounted on one of Phantom's Humvees.

"Prepare to copy that 89089226. Direction 202 degrees. Range 950
metres. I got five motherf****** in a building with weapons."

Capt Kirk Mayfield, commander of the Phantoms, called for fire from
his task force's mortar team. But Sgt Anyett didn't want to wait.
"Dude, give me the sniper rifle. I can take them out - I'm from
Alabama."

Two minutes tick by. "They're moving deep," shouted Sgt Anyett with
disappointment. A dozen loud booms rattle the sky and smoke rose as
mortars rained down on the co-ordinates the sergeant had given.

"Yeah," he yelled. "Battle Damage Assessment - nothing. Building's
gone. I got my kills, I'm coming down. I just love my job."

Phantom Troop had rolled out of Camp Fallujah, the main US military
base, shortly before 4am. All morning they took fire from the
Al-Askari district in Fallujah's north-east, their target for the
invasion proper.

The insurgents, not understanding the capabilities of the LRAS, crept
along rooftops and poked their heads out of windows. Even when they
were more than a mile away, the soldiers of Phantom Troop had their
eyes on them.

Lt Jack Farley, a US Marines officer, sauntered over to compare notes
with the Phantoms. "You guys get to do all the fun stuff," he said.
"It's like a video game. We've taken small arms fire here all day. It
just sounds like popcorn going off."

Another marine stepped forward and began to fire an M4 rifle at the
city. "He's a reservist for the San Diego police. He wants a piece of
the action, too".

A Phantom Abrams tank moved up the road running along the high ground.
Its barrel, stencilled with the words "Ali Baba under 3 Thieves"
swivelled towards the city and then fired a 120mm round at a house
where two men with AK-47s had been pinpointed. "Ain't nobody moving
now," shouted a soldier as the dust cleared. "He rocked that guy's
world."

One of Phantom's sniper teams laid down fire into the city with a
Barrett .50 calibre rifle and a Remington 700. A suspected truck bomb
was riddled with bullets, the crack of the Barrett echoing through the
mainly deserted section of the city. The insurgents fired 60mm mortars
back, one of them wounding a soldier.

There were 25mm rounds from Phantom's Bradley fighting vehicles,
barrages from Paladin howitzers back at Camp Fallujah and bursts of
fire from .50 calibre machineguns. One by one, the howitzers used by
the insurgents were destroyed.

"Everybody's curious," grinned Sgt Anyett as he waited for a sniper
with a Russian-made Dragonov to show his face one last, fatal time. A
bullet zinged by.

Dusk fell and 7pm, "A hour", the appointed hour to move into the city,
approached. The soldiers of Phantom all reflected.

"Given the choice, I would never have wanted to fire a gun," said Cpl
Chris Merrell, 21, manning a machinegun mounted on a Humvee. "But it
didn't work out that way. I'd like a thousand boring missions rather
than one interesting one."

On his wrist was a black bracelet bearing the name of a sergeant from
Phantom Troop. "This is a buddy of mine that died," he said. "Pretty
much everyone in the unit has one."

One fear playing on the mind of the task force was that of "friendly
fire", also known as "blue on blue".

"Any urban fight is confusing," Lt Col Newell, the force's commander,
told his troops before the battle. "The biggest threat out there is
not them, but us."

His officers said that the plan to invade Fallujah involved months of
detailed planning and elaborate "feints" designed to draw the
insurgents out into the open and fool them into thinking the offensive
would come from another side of the city.

"They're probably thinking that we'll come in from the east," said
Capt Natalie Friel, an intelligence officer with task force, before
the battle. But the actual plan involves penetrating the city from the
north and sweeping south.

"I don't think they know what's coming. They have no idea of the
magnitude," she said. "But their defences are pretty circular. They're
prepared for any kind of direction. They've got strong points on all
four corners of the city."

The aim was to push the insurgents south, killing as many as possible,
before swinging west. They would then be driven into the Euphrates.


© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited