Inside the fight against Fallujah insurgents

This is the first of a two-part report on the days-long battle for Fallujah, Iraq, as a group of U.S. troops lived it. The troops would eventually take the city, but their success came at a cost. Tom Lasseter, 28, is a full-time correspondent in Iraq.

Monday, Nov. 8

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Capt. Sean Sims watched artillery shells fall and explode in a blast of sand and rubble, close enough to hear but too far to see what they hit. It was Sims' first daylight look at the rebel-held city of Fallujah, hours before he would lead his men deep into its heart.

As commander of Alpha Company of the Army 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2-2, Sims drew a mission that the U.S. military had sought to avoid since the start of the Iraq war: house-to-house fighting in an urban landscape that gave rebels many places to hide, significantly offsetting the superior firepower of U.S. troops while risking civilian casualties and vast property destruction. It would be the most intense urban combat for U.S. troops since the 1968 battle for Hue, in Vietnam.

Sims' men would win the battle, yet no one would feel like celebrating. Killing the enemy, they learned, was sobering. More so was the loss of friends.

Sims would not come back.

Alpha Company was heading to the city's eastern corridor, the Askari neighborhood, from where troops would turn south into industrial districts and finally hook back to the west, running for six bleary days with almost no sleep.

After Sims took in the view, soldiers of Alpha Company scrambled to a road overlooking Fallujah. Then sniper fire began, and the battle was joined. Some soldiers emptied their M16 clips, some yelling, others laughing, as return sniper fire pinged off the Bradley Fighting Vehicles and pavement around them.

"Lord, I have to say a special prayer now," the 32-year-old Sims said in the soft-spoken accent of his hometown, Eddy, Texas.

Crouched down on his right knee, Sims watched the insurgents' mortar rounds land, and a minute or two later he heard the retort of U.S. artillery.

"Everybody realizes that it's something that will affect the rest of our lives, in terms of seeing that type of combat," Sims had said a few days earlier. "When the first bullet impacts, you know the eyes of the world are going to be on you."

Near Sims, an insurgent sniper lay on his belly with a rifle scope pressed against his eye.

Sniper shots zipped by, pinging off the Humvee.

"Where is that sniper? Here it is," Capt. Kirk Mayfield of the recon team barked, turning to a gunner behind an automatic grenade launcher. "Blow him away."

The gunner shot round after round, with explosions echoing across the town, then pulled a pair of binoculars to his face and announced, "He is not there anymore."

Sims called over to his men, "Let's go," and they went scrambling back down the dirt berm.

About 7 p.m., he lined up his vehicle behind his first and third platoons as they braced for the fight.

Sitting in the back of Sims' Bradley, Cpl. Travis Barreto of Brooklyn leaned over and tried to get a glimpse through one of the small rectangle windows at the back of the truck.

"You know, we're going to destroy this town," said Barreto, 22.

"I hope so," replied the soldier sitting next to him.

Insurgent fire rang off the sides of the Bradley. Explosions sounded to the rear.

Sims followed his platoons, which moved a few blocks at a time, one in front of the other, before stopping.

The rear hatch of the Bradley lowered amid yells of "Dismount! Dismount!" The soldiers, having ridden in a tight, sweaty box through the battle -- their knees cramped and aching -- ran out, then slammed to their knees and took cover beside a wall.

Then came, "Go! Go! Go!" and the men busted through the front door of a house. Waving their rifles, they cleared rooms before storming upstairs.

Sims parked his vehicle with two others in a blocking position on the road outside before following to the rooftop, where his soldiers set up a lookout.

With bullets whizzing, Sims and his men crouched down with the third platoon and assessed the battle. Barreto, acting as a guard, crouched next to Sims with a dazed look on his face.

"It's weird how we can be looking at the rooftops and there's no one," he said, "and all of a sudden, they're shooting at us."

A plane flew overhead, shooting its cannons in a low roar.

Sims took another look around the rooftop, then scurried back downstairs and into his Bradley.

Mortar rounds began to fall, at first far away, then closer as insurgents walked mortar fire forward a few feet at a time.

Sims' Bradley was stuck between two other vehicles, but to veer off the road would risk hitting a mine or bomb. Another mortar fell; its shrapnel tattooed the side of the Bradley and rattled those inside.

"Kill those bastards," someone screamed in the darkness.

No one said another word.


Tuesday, Nov. 9

Thirteen hours after the push began, Sims and his men looked gray and worn. Dirt was beginning to cover their faces and uniforms. Their ears ached. After two hours of sleep on a concrete floor of an abandoned house, their eyes were dulled.

"At first, last night, when we came in and heard all the AK47 fire, we freaked out," said Sgt. Brandon Bailey, 21, of Big Bear, Calif. "But now, as long as it's not coming right at us, we're fine."

Later, Bailey said it felt like the enemy was coming from every direction.

How many people did they kill? Bailey shrugged his shoulders.

Sims' temporary headquarters was a mostly empty house. It stood on the north side of Fallujah's main road. On the other side stood the beginnings of the city's industrial district, where more insurgents lay in wait.

Bullet holes pocked the walls of the house. Its windows were shattered. Pieces of plaster and concrete were strewn about. A soldier defecated in a stairwell, and the stench grew with the morning sun.

Staff Sgt. Jason Ward was sitting outside the house in his armored truck -- a square box on tank tracks used to cart casualties off the battlefield.

Ward of Midland, Texas, had a deeper accent than Sims, a square jaw and a blank expression. He was chewing on a Slim Jim. Ward said he had ferried at least 10 injured soldiers the night before.

"It's been very intense," he said. "For a lot of our younger soldiers, it's overwhelming."

Resting in a Humvee nearby, 1st Lt. Edward Iwan was scrolling down a flat blue computer screen mounted to the dashboard that showed the location of every Army and Marine unit in Fallujah. Iwan, Alpha Company's executive officer, noted that his men were deeper in the city than any other unit.

"It's a fairly complex environment, like we thought it would be," said Iwan, 28, of Albion, Neb. "Cities are where people die. That's where you take most of your casualties."

Sims was on the roof of the house, sitting against a wall, his legs crossed at the ankle with a map on his lap. A little past dawn, after an hour or two lull, the shooting started again.

A reporter offered Sims a satellite phone to call his family. No thanks, he said. He wanted to talk with them when he got somewhere quieter. He had an infant son, Colin, whose brown hair and small ears, which poked out on the sides, looked just like his father's.

"OK, that's a sniper right there," he said with a small grin as his men grabbed their guns and crouched so only the tops of their heads showed above the roofline.

Sims picked up the radio and called in an artillery strike to "soften" the sniper positions.

Barreto moved his rifle slowly, scanning the cluster of houses nearby. "He's somewhere from my 11 o'clock to my 3 o'clock," he muttered.

"He shot right at me," yelled Barreto, ducking. "He shot right at me."

Those soldiers not on sniper rotation sat on the roof with their brown Meals Ready to Eat packets, finding the main meal -- bean burrito, country captain chicken, beef teriyaki -- and dunking it with water in the cooking pouch, which smelled of cardboard and chemicals.

When they got bored or scared of being on the rooftop, some of the men -- young and with an awkward day's stubble on their upper lips -- went outside and around the corner to see someone they dubbed the Fat Man.

"Hey dude, we're going to see a fat man. Want to come?" they said.

A fat man lay in his own blood. He was an Iraqi insurgent who had hidden in an alley next to a garbage dump, waiting for the Army to come by. A couple of 25mm high explosive rounds shot from a Bradley blew off his left leg, leaving a stump of bone, and, from the looks of it, punched a hole through his midsection.

He was the first dead person that many of the soldiers had seen. They grew solemn as they leaned over his body and peered into his eyes, but never too close, never close enough to touch his skin or take in too deep a whiff of death.



11.27.04 Contact TOM LASSETER at tlasseter@krwashington.com.
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