Lutayfiyah
During our predeployment training we often heard of the other places in our AO besides Al Mahmudiyah. Names like Latifiyah, Yusufiyah, the Elm ASP, Jafr Sukr Bridge, and especially Lutayfiyah. Supposedly all the bad elements in our AO came from Lutayfiyah pass through Latifiyah, below the Elm ASP (that still has not been cleared of all the ammo stored in it), and then over the Euphrates River to the fight in Fallujah. The hotbed of former Saddamists, Sunnis, insurgents, and criminals were all supposed to be in Lutayfiyah. Prior to our company establishing a presence there Fox Company, along with most of the support the Bn could drum up and an under strength Army Stryker company had to take Yusufiyah and control the Jafr Sukr bridge. In addition to all the support listed above Fox went in with a fourth rifle platoon, our 2nd Platoon. Yusufiyah was a fight; it took over a week to settle down for such a small town and Fox ended up with 15 casualties including one KIA. This was a company plus operation in a town that is barely a kilometer square on the map. We were being sent into Lutayfiyah with one platoon and the city is four times the size.
Our mission statement had us occupying three buildings to set up a police station, ING station, and a small FOB for ourselves. The idea was we would conduct joint patrols with the ING/IP and put an Iraqi face on our occupation. We made our initial entry at 0500 on October 25th as stated in the mission from higher and quickly cleared out the squatters living in two of the buildings. Our building was the local telephone exchange, a much larger and more robust structure. It had a nice cinderblock wall surrounding the compound, a flat, tiled roof that had proven almost impervious to mortars in Yusufiyah, and enough space to put in a full platoon plus the HQ and Weapons Platoon attachments. The only thing wrong with the building, and we hadn’t seen this during our leader’s recon, was the 100-foot tower in the back. In all honesty we had seen it, but didn’t really think about it, what a mistake, it was a great aiming point. We immediately set up blocking positions, and started digging in the mortars we had in the back of the compound. The area picked was right off ASR Jackson (Iraqi Highway 8), the main north-south road through Lutayfiyah with a small frontage road between Jackson and the buildings. At about 1030 the ING and IP finally showed up with our Bn Cmdr and the officers of the Bn Staff. The ING/IP detachment brought about 12 vehicles, mainly Nissan four-door pickups (ING) and Toyota SUV’s (IP). Once the vehicles were pulled on to the frontage road the Iraqis got out and started milling around waiting to be told what to do. Within minutes we were under mortar attack, one round landed among a group of ING gravely wounding one soldier; the round removed his left leg. As one of our corpsman put it “If you hired a Hollywood B-Movie special effects guy with no knowledge of anatomy and told him what he wanted, this is what it would look like.” Seven other ING were wounded also. Minutes later we had called in air medevac and had triaged the wounded for the helos. The soldier with the leg missing did not live to see the helicopter take away some of his friends.
FOB Lutayfiyah wasn’t too bad, once you got past the daily shelling from 1000 to 1700. We had plenty of food and water, electricity, some rooms were air conditioned, and log runs came in once every three days. We set up a plan to rotate the platoons through for 10-day cycles and get the HQ and Weapons Platoon Marines here permanently back to FOB St. Michael about once a week. The biggest drawback was getting shot at, really shelled, daily. Most often the shelling came around noon or 1300, and was limited to three or four rounds fired in quick succession, seldom did they hit within 100m of the FOB. The enemy was using old 82mm mortar ammo and he had a few duds, one of which landed in the middle of our parking area. By October 27th we were getting kind of unhappy about being shot at. The rules of engagement don’t allow us to just shoot back; we must identify the point of origin (POO) before we can fire. Three of us; myself, the 81’s FO, and the Arty FO would stand on the roof of the building and try to see smoke or some other indicator of a mortar firing. We got lucky that day; we saw the smoke puff and immediately started the process to return fire. We got the 60’s up, the 81’s up, and requested 155 fires. Battalion cleared our 81 and 155 fires, we could clear our own 60’s, and we let everything fly. One of the MST (Mobile Security Teams, a new form of Combined Anti-Armor Team (CAAT) with the same equipment) happened to also see the target and said they saw a vehicle flee, but it was out of range.
Shooting back at that mortar simply made them move the position for the next day, behind a tree line so we couldn’t see them. We muddled through a day of intermittent attacks, nothing came very close and the engineers and 2nd Platoon continued to improve the positions. On the 29th we got hit again, but this time the gunner kept dropping rounds at us, nine or ten total. Luck was with us again and counter battery radar was covering our little area. The CBR saw the rounds, we called in the point of impact (POI) and Bn immediately called and cleared 155 fires, the first round landing before we heard the shot of the last enemy round. Given a nice grid by the CBR our 60’s and 81’s joined right in with a fire for effect each. We don’t know if we got the guy, a mixed helo section of one Cobra and a Huey flew over that night and reported good effect on the target grid, but aside from a family looking at the car in the driveway near the middle of target area there were no indicators of bad guys. Still we felt good about shooting back and enemy fires from the east shut down for a few days.
We had mitigated one threat and now faced another, the enemy began ranging us with 107mm rockets. Mortars aren’t very accurate, since the rounds fly slow and high there is a lot that can happen to them, but the tend to go where you point them. If one hits and the rounds keep impacting you know the gunner is probably just dropping rounds and not trying to adjust on to you. We would call this Harassing and Interdiction Fires (H&I); personally I think they were just registering us in a very slow way by shooting a group and then making contact with a local to discuss where the rounds landed. Rockets on the other hand are even less accurate, and carry a much bigger punch, so even if the enemy is still trying to register you there is a much greater chance you will be hit. I watched the explosion of one 107 and saw a chunk come flying off, push upwards to about 100 feet, and fall within 30m of me, spinning all the time like a boomerang. That piece was about a foot long and fully four inches wide. All I can remember thinking is; “that’s gonna hurt if it hits me.”
October 31st was especially interesting. I had finally received my two damaged Dragon Eyes back and the 2nd Platoon Commander, Captain Wagner, wanted me to fly the bird over the terrain an ambush patrol would be using that night. We had another mortar attack in the morning, the bad guys were starting to go to work before 1000, one round landed within 25m of our southern post along Jackson. I was up on the roof and because of the light rain and ground haze I had no idea where the fire was coming from. We stood down after five minutes and I got the Dragon Eye ready to fly. 1stSgt Eastwood had helped me fly my Dragon Eye before so I asked for his help again, he was happy to oblige. We went out to the parking lot with the Police Sergeant, Sgt Paquin, for security and set the bird up, we even got it launched with few problems. But about 30 minutes into the mission we heard the bang of RPG’s and then their impacts, on the other side of the building.
“Rocket!” I yelled.
Unknown to me at the time my two FO’s were sitting on the roof discussing the differences between RPG shots, mortar shots, and rocket shots when the rounds streaked mere feet from them and across Jackson to the east. Then small arms fire erupted, the 1stSgt and I hunkered down behind a stack of plywood and looked for the bad guys, no luck as usual. We yelled for Sgt Paquin to see how he was doing in all this and landed the plane without problems. Of course we packed up the gear as fast as possible and headed back into the FOB. Things were still happening, the mortars were waiting for a mission, the machinegunners on a nearby building had seen the enemy but been unable to fire and were calling in the fire, and 2nd Platoon was putting together a cordon and search team. I went up to the lower roof and my two FO’s were laughing like mad.
“Holy [bleep] Gunny, you should have seen it,” the 81’s FO, Cpl Barker, said, “I was sitting there talking and I saw this round fly less than 10 feet from us.”
“Yeah, we were definitely the targets.” The arty FO, Sgt Harris, added.
We got a fix on the building and waited while the cordon and search team got set up. In all the confusion nobody told the mortars what the deal was and they stood down after about 10 minutes. We watched and covered the cordon team as they did their thing, but the enemy was long gone by the time they arrived. During all of this I saw one of our Asian Marines, Chui Lee, who is most likely below 5 feet tall, pull a sandbag from the bunker on the east side of the roof to the western roof wall. He positioned it just so and then knelt down on it to get behind his rifle properly, I started laughing out loud. He looked at me and said; “That’s [bleep] up, Gunny.”
“Sorry, I’m not laughing at you, I just find the situation funny.” I said.
As the cordon and search squads decided to clear the entire block and were about half way through when more mortar rounds started landing. We still could not hear the outgoing rounds; they hunkered down and waited it out. We had been thinking for a few days that the enemy was firing from at least two and a half klicks and that the traffic on Jackson was muffling the sound, but the speed that the enemy could adjust got us thinking that perhaps after getting hit hard on the 29th they had closed the distance. A US M224 60mm mortar has five different charge settings from 0 to 4, indicating the number of increments you leave on the shell. Charge 4 gives a maximum range of 3500m, charge 0 a max range of 400m, but the sound at charge 0 is rather quiet, not much louder than an M203 and at 400m with traffic, other noise, and buildings in the way that sound could easily be lost. Our thought now, somewhat justified by a detainee the search squad brought in, was that the enemy was using the village to block our view and was much closer.
As I was checking my positions a while later the machinegun post that had called in the building the RPG’s had come from told me that the rifle fire was directed at the three of us working the Dragon Eye. They had seen tracers flying from an alley to the south, in front of their position and over our heads. Later that day Capt Wagner tasked me with another Dragon Eye mission. I took just the Sgt Paquin as the 1stSgt had to return to FOB St. Michael. Again we took an incoming RPG or two, but they were not well aimed and we continued with the mission. True to my Dragon Eye experiences I had an interesting flight; my first attempt at landing during the early mission had the bird coming in too far west, so I adjusted the LZ east. I used the same LZ for the evening flight, but the winds had died and now the LZ was too far west, I had the bird come around again while I adjusted the LZ back to the east. All looked well, but the bird was too far east this time, I could adjust it again. I hit the key to abort the landing and the bird powered up, too late, it didn’t gain the altitude it needed, flew about 8 feet over the lower roof of our building and smacked right into one of our OE-254 antennas. I thought I had lost another bird. The Marines on the roof had been taken by surprise to hear a little battery powered plane fly past them and then crash, We did a little looking and found all the parts, a little duct tape and a new propeller blade and I was back in business.
As a last note on October 31st our Company Commander was relieved and moved up to the S-4 shop. Probably a good move in the long run, his original MOS was supply and there were some issues. My take on him was that he was a great peacetime officer, but he was too afraid to risk the lives of his Marines to accomplish the mission. Our XO, Major Holton, took over and Captain Wagner took over as the XO. Our new CO took the time to write an excellent brief that was given to the NCOs of each platoon as they rotated through Lutayfiyah that really drove home the mission. The mission statement read. “Maintain a joint ING/IP/Marine presence in Lutayfiyah and fortify a compound to be handed over to the established Lutayfiyah police force in order to establish the conditions for a return of Iraqi Civil Administration.” During the brief Maj Holton, who loves his Power Point slides, outlined various thoughts on what constituted our mission, steps involved in accomplishing it; like USMC Presence Patrols, Survivability/Counter Mortar, and so on, and showed where we could do those things we controlled and not accomplish the mission. Mission accomplishment hinged very much on gaining and maintaining a working relationship with the Iraqis and getting them out to patrol, both with us and on their own, and creating enough of a relationship with the populace to begin to effect the insurgents in the area.
