Four Years Ago

...Jules Crittenden was embedded with elements of the 3ID during the Thunder Run in Baghdad. His ongoing series detailing his experiences in those days continues with the latest entry here.

This was the big street fight we had expected the day before, when the Iraqis collapsed and let us in. Those were the Special Republican Guard, supposedly the Iraqi Army’s elite. These were included Republican Guard, as we saw from the bodies and equipment when it was over, but also included irregulars, the Saddam Fedayeen and foreign mujahideen, who advanced toward their fight and were willing to die.

Around 7:30 a.m. Wolford moved his tanks back into the intersection when the Warthogs were done. He called up our Psyops/fire-support 113 from the July 14th Square so the LT could call in artillery. At last we were allowed to roll forward.

This time, Wolford put the Red and Blue platoon tanks on the right, facing east toward the Jumhuriyah Bridge. White Platoon, which had lost its platoon sergeant, held the quieter west side facing Jaffa Street and the palace district gate behind us. We arrived to find the tanks firing into buildings where snipers were still lurking. The fire had abated considerably from what the tankers had experienced earlier, but RPGs and mortar rounds continued to explode periodically in the intersection. The Gold Bradleys rolled past us to resume their position to the north, up Haifa Street.

“Earplug time,” my notes say.

Though you might want to go back to yesterday's post, too:

LTC deCamp had said we’d hold the palaces for five hours and pull out, just to make the point. Maybe we’d stay overnight. I didn’t want to jam the crowded M113 with my gear, so the inverters, the chargers, the laptop and all my personal gear I kept in a small backpack stayed behind.

DeCamp had also said something about Col. Perkins wanting to get parking validation for 80 tanks in downtown Baghdad. I laughed at the joke, not fully getting the point. The undeniable presence of American tanks in downtown Baghdad was Perkins’ idea to undercut the Baathist regime’s propaganda in front of the international press and signal that Saddam was done. I hadn’t been watching TV, and knew nothing about Baghdad Bob.

More than at any point in this endeavor, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. I was too far down my own personal wormhole, too detached from higher command and unaware of the unorthodox plan was being precipitously brought together at higher levels to seize Baghdad. I just knew we were going in. All the way up from Kuwait, Wolford and his tankers had said we wouldn’t be going into Baghdad. The tanks would sit outside and the infantry would go in to do the street fighting. Tanks were too vulnerable in the close confines of cities. I didn’t believe this would be the case, opining that the lesson of Mogadishu was that you needed armored support and Baghdad had a lot of big, tank-friendly boulevards. I thought the tanks would go in to support the infantry, holding intersections while the infantry went block-to-block.

The tankers were right, in that armor doctrine was on their side. I was right about the big boulevards. Perkins was taking the whole thing a step farther, convinced he could do it as a predominantly armor operation, striking directly at the center of gravity. He got the higher command to agree. What would play out over the next three days has been described as the pivotal battle of the initial three-week invasion, a bold gambit that may have brought the Baathist regime down weeks and hundreds of lives ahead of schedule. It was the historic taking of a defended capital city by lightning armored assault, with infantry in the supporting role. The plan was still coming together on April 6, and was presented that night to the company commanders who would carry it out the following morning.

“The night of the 6th, I thought LTC deCamp had lost his fucking mind when he told us the plan,” Wolford told me later.

I ran into LTC deCamp. I asked what he could tell me about the next day’s assault. He confirmed what we had heard. We were going into Baghdad at dawn. Maybe just for the day, maybe overnight. We were going to take the palaces, just to make the point. Col. Perkins, the brigade commander, wanted parking validation for 80 tanks in downtown Baghdad.