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Bravo Battery’s ordeal in Iraq: Night patrol erupts in carnage
By DAVID GOLDSTEINThe Star’s Washington Correspondent
Was it a goat carcass? A dead dog in the road? The headlights caught only a dim shape.
Whatever it was, Spc. Travis Waltner swerved his Humvee to the left. Just as he did, two things happened.
The radio spoke: “Let’s go blackout,” he heard his squad leader, Staff Sgt. David Berry, say from the Humvee behind him. Then …
BOOM!
The blast lifted Waltner’s Humvee half off the ground.
“IED! IED!” he radioed.
•••
The squad of Humvees was called Assassin 2-2, part of Bravo Battery, which belongs to the Kansas National Guard’s 161st Field Artillery.
The battery left its 155mm howitzers behind when it was sent in April 2006 to Iraq.
Its job: Patrol about 80 square miles around Convoy Support Center Scania in south-central Iraq; look for “bad guys.”
Sixty miles south of Baghdad, Scania was a rest and refueling station for the convoys that rolled up and down Highway 1, also known as Main Supply Route Tampa. It was the link between the embattled Iraqi capital and Kuwait.
They were in Babil Province, the breadbasket of Iraq, with fields of wheat, alfalfa and other crops and a network of canals. It was like a Union 76 truck stop along I-70 back home — except for the high blast walls.
Units that had served there told Bravo that their tour would be “a cakewalk,” and that was fine with them.
“You go there with the mentality that it will be all right,” said 23-year-old Spc. Tyler Wing of Kingman.
But Bravo Battery didn’t always play it safe.
Eleven months into a 15-month deployment, the unit had a reputation.
“We always wanted to go in and get after it a little bit more,” said 33-year-old Sgt. Richard Kenmore of Wichita.
They never turned down a mission. They also prided themselves on finding IEDs, the deadly roadside bombs responsible for maiming scores of American troops.
Bravo squads would often leave their Humvees — something soldiers are warned against — to search for the bombs hidden along the cluttered roads.
But you would never find them all.
Intelligence had been warning about a nastier type of IED called explosively formed penetrators — EFPs.
EFPs contain a copper disc, which, when hurled by the blast, shapes itself into a molten missile that can pierce inches of tank armor.
Even Humvees with upgraded armor offer little defense.
“I’d take my chances with an IED any day over an EFP,” said Sgt. Nathan Reed. “Your chances of living are not very good. You’re either going to be killed by the blast or shredded by shrapnel.”
Although part of 2-2, the Mountainburg, Ark., man was not Guard, but Individual Ready Reserve — experienced soldiers who still owe time to the military and are sent to fill vacancies.
“We didn’t fear death,” he said. “I just don’t want it to hurt. I don’t want to go home in parts.”
•••
The night was pleasant enough, a 60-degree gift, given the 60 pounds of body armor beneath their fatigues. But clouds covered the moon. The darkness was deep.
“There were a lot of bad vibes,” said Spc. John Duncan of Newton, a gunner with a second squad, Assassin 2-3, which also pulled out of the gate after midnight.
The squads were cautious. Their presence on the six-hour security patrol, Reed recalled, was to let the bad guys know “we’re still out and about. … Don’t do anything stupid.”
The squads had split up. But when 2-3 found an Iraqi police checkpoint outside Ash-Shumali manned by a lone officer, they radioed 2-2 to rendezvous. The policeman had frantically flagged down the Humvees to warn of “Ali Baba,” insurgents, hiding behind the trees.
But just as Berry’s squad arrived, mortar rounds and rockets exploded back near Scania. Command was on the horn: Find the mortars.
Staff Sgt. Jerrod Hays had doubts. Mortars rarely hit anything. Wasn’t it more important to check out the policeman’s warning? Why couldn’t Scania just send out another patrol?
“Why are we chasing these ghosts?” he said.
Hays pushed Berry to urge their “highers” into letting 2-2 and 2-3 remain at the checkpoint. But Operations Sgt. David Mugg at the command post wouldn’t hear it. Follow your orders, he curtly told the squad leader.
So the half-dozen Humvees headed west toward coordinates for the mortars. After a few miles, Assassin 2-3 pulled over to set up an observation point in case 2-2 flushed out any insurgents. Berry’s squad turned down a curving, mostly paved two-lane road bordered by fields — a road known as “Wild West.”
Hays tried to lighten the mood at Berry’s expense.
“Oh man!” Hays laughed at how Mugg handled the suggestion. “He really spanked you!”
•••
BOOM!
The EFP exploding near Waltner’s Humvee hurled Reed, in the passenger seat, headlong into the global positioning system.
The impact knocked Spc. Sean Wing hard against the turret. The bomb’s deadly projectile missed his head by inches. “I was shaking for the next month.”
Behind them, Spc. Johnny Jones slammed on his brakes. Berry called the command post to report the bomb.
“What do you want me to do?” Jones said quickly. “Go forward? Go back?”
Gunfire erupted from the vegetation next to the road. Spc. Peter Richert swiveled his M-240 machine gun and sent bursts toward the muzzle flashes.
“Let’s back up!” Hays yelled.
BOOM!
The second blast rocked the passenger side of Berry’s Humvee. Inside was all exploding metal, flesh and blood. Richert’s right leg was shredded from ankle to knee.
“I knew right then my leg was gone,” he said. “I could feel it dangling.”
Part of him was on fire, but he stifled his scream: “I didn’t want (the insurgents) to have the pleasure of me yelling.”
Shattered bone from his leg and scalding metal flew at Hays, slicing his hand, arm and face. The blast also damaged his eyes, and he could barely see or hear. What felt like rocks rolling around in his mangled mouth were his broken teeth.
And AK-47 rounds were still coming from the trees. “We need to return fire!” Berry yelled.
Dazed and hit by shrapnel in one hand, Richert couldn’t fire his weapon. Berry radioed for an evac chopper as Hays tried to tell his buddy that he was hurt. But all that came out was a painful moan.
“I had just looked at Dave,” Hays said…
BOOM! Another flash, a split second of blinding whiteness.
“…and it popped, like being in front of a cannon.”
The third blast rained chunks of tire from Berry’s Humvee down on Reed and Waltner’s windshield.
“Turn around! Turn around!” Reed screamed.
The first Humvee in their line had already swung around, cautiously heading back toward them. If there were three IEDs, there could be four.
“Everyone’s yelling and screaming to get back there, but we had to take it slowly,” said Staff Sgt. Mike Seefeld, who was in the first Humvee. “It was just dumb luck that it didn’t blow up on us.”
Back at the observation point, Assassin 2-3 saw flashes above the palm trees, felt the ground tremble.
“Go! Go! Go! Get moving!” truck commander Tyler Wing told his driver, Spc. Jake Linn of Newton.
Tyler’s younger brother, Sean, was up there and he feared the worst.
As the 2-3 squad hurtled down Wild West, they tried to piece together events from the radio traffic. The silence from Berry’s crew was telling.
“All we could think about was Johnny and Berry and Hays and Pete,” said Duncan. “We have to get there. My buddies are down.”
The three minutes it took to get to their comrades “seemed like an eternity,” he e-mailed his father the next day.
As Duncan fought to keep his focus, he caught sight of medic Moses Parker in the rear seat. A former Army Ranger from New Mexico who had served in Afghanistan, Parker seemed an island of calm as he methodically checked his medical kit.
“He’d been to this rodeo before,” Duncan thought.
Then the radio suddenly spit out: “We’ve got two KIAs! Two KIAs!”
This story was constructed from dozens of interviews with the soldiers of Bravo Battery and family members who were involved with the events of Feb. 22, 2007. The Star’s Washington correspondent, David Goldstein, talked to the wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, and visited several of their hometowns for interviews. The quotes are those recalled later by the participants after they returned home from Iraq.