Red Star Clusters - Bill Groves (part 1 of 2)

This time, we talk with MAP2 Lance Corporal Bill Groves about the fast ramp from Okinawa training cycles to the first brutal weeks in Ramadi in 2004, including the moments that made everything feel real. From miserable workups and broken flights to firefights, IEDs, and the uneasy question of who could be trusted, Bill tells the details in the way only he can recount. 

• joining the platoon late in Okinawa and racing into the Ramadi buildup
• Bridgeport misery 
• MOUT Town training
• aircraft breakdowns and surprise layovers
• the convoy from Kuwait 
• first days in Ramadi and the shock of immediate mass-casualty scenes
• half doors and early IED lessons
• April contacts including friendly fire confusion across the river
• extended firefights on April 6 and 7
• decompression rituals after contact and the way habits change
• contractors and interpreters 
• Operation Treasure Island 
• the Habaniya dam sweep, the VBIED blast, and casualty evacuation
• cemetery hill landmine and a later night QRF to an LAV strike

If you like what you've heard, this is a multi part episode. Make sure you listen to the rest of the story.

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If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ RamadiPodcast@gmail.com, or via the podcast website above. 

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Transcript

Meet Bill Groves And Okinawa

SPEAKER_01 0:10

All right, man. Let's tell everybody who you are.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Uh my name is Bill Groves. Uh I was in 2004, I was a Lance Corporal, and I was with uh map two for 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines in Weapons Company, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

There you go. And you were with my platoon. You came to us in the middle of Okinawa, is that right?

SPEAKER_03 0:30

Yeah, right near the tail end of it. Uh because you guys got it extended there. You're there for like 11 months, and I definitely didn't do 11 months the first time around. So I forget how long I was there for, but it was a good time.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Did you come? Were you a part of the group that came while we were underway and on ship? Or did you come after the second time that we had been on ship?

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Um I don't think you guys were underway when I got there, because when I got there, I think everybody was in Hansen. And then shortly after I got there, I think we we went on did the Oki 500 once, I think. Because I think I I think it went to Sasebo when I was there the first time. But I could be misremembering it. I think it was it was just like the last like the last six weeks of uh of your guys' deployment, I was there.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah, okay. Yeah, we got a first boot drop that was like Harris, Jax, Johnson, like a couple of people, and then like you came and Monroe, and I can't remember who else was with you. Who else came with you?

SPEAKER_03 1:34

No, I was Monroe was the second time around. Uh Monroe came right before we went to uh I think yeah, he got there right before we went to Ramadi. I don't think he was there for Oki the first time.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

Uh I came, I think I came with Jackson and Johnson and those guys.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Oh, okay. All right. Nice. All right. Well, um, I mean, let's start there. Where what do you remember from after we got back from Okinawa and kind of the buildup going to Ramadi? Any of the training or anything that you did?

SPEAKER_03 2:04

I remember that it was just a it was kind of fast paced. I knew that they'd kind of told us there was gonna be a quick turnaround. I think it was only like we got back from Oki and I think it was like five or six months or something like that, that we turned around and and then redeployed.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Uh I remember it was over the summer that we it was

Fast Turnaround And Training Pressure

SPEAKER_00 2:24

over the summer that we got told that we were on the fast track to go back out, but we weren't told where until much later.

SPEAKER_03 2:31

Yeah, we I didn't know where we were going, but I heard it was gonna be a quick turnaround. I think that's I remember him telling us that. I remember the training was uh it seemed like the training calendar was pretty intense. It was uh always a lot of stuff going on. There wasn't a lot of like sit around and and bullshit time, but uh I remember thinking when I got there that I definitely didn't feel prepared to be where I was at. So it definitely could have been a little bit more training.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

But and did you end up did you end up going to any division schools or anything like that? Did you go to machine gunner's course or anything?

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Uh after after Ramadi, I after I ended up teaching at division schools at the end of my enlistment, but but no, I didn't I didn't go to the division schools before.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Nice cool man. So what do you remember from the spin-up?

SPEAKER_03 3:18

Honestly, I just I remember was Bridgeport after now. Bridgeport was after Ramadi, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:23

No, we went before.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

Okay, yeah, I remember Bridgeport. That was a fucking shit show. Uh I remember I remember if it was it I forget which who it was, but they told us only to bring the green the green sleeping bag and the uh the bivy cover. And so we nobody had enough sleeping bags, everybody was freezing. The zippers were like froze shut in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 3:48

Uh I remember Bridgeport being miserable.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Yeah, Bridgeport was awful.

SPEAKER_03 3:53

I remember Silton dying twice.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

Uh on that, what it was like 95-94 or 94-95, that the hike they call it.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

Uh, I remember that being rough. And then I remember like a about Bridgeport. Like, I remember the guy, the the instructor killing the rabbit and pulling his like lungs out and guys passing the lungs around and blowing them up like a balloon.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Yeah. And uh who was it? It was Rapazo, and was it you, Blake, that ate the eyeballs?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah. My favorite part about that one was uh that there was those Air Force guys that were doing it too, and they were absolutely horrified by our response to them killing the rabbit and gutting it and stuff like that, because we were all cheering and they had like like this horrified look on their face. Yeah, it was it was uh it was very uh it's it's what gets me through the night sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Yeah, yeah. It's a whole different, whole different mindset, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

My second memory of that was uh when uh like I think there was like I think at least three or four people fell down the side of the mountain on that last night movement, and like people were going ass over teacup, like down that mountain, and it was one of the most demoralizing movements I've ever had in my entire life.

SPEAKER_03 5:15

Yeah, I remember one of the one of the last movements, it they were like, hey, it's like a a five-mile hike or something like that, but it's like five miles as the crow flies, and then once you get all the up and downs, it turned into like fucking felt like 15 miles. It was brutal.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

But yep, I I fell down the mountain, and then I remember everybody stopped and paused because Gwizdak fell down the mountain and got knocked out, and then everybody was like, if Gwizdak is knocked out, like we need to stop for a minute.

SPEAKER_03 5:44

Yeah, we just catch our breath for a second.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 5:48

Yeah, yeah. As far as like any other spin-ups, like did we do 29 palms? Was that right before too, or is that later on?

SPEAKER_01 5:56

No, that was later. We did no, no, no range 400, no 29 palms. The only other big training evolution was uh two part. We did one at Mount Town, and we did one at the little mini Mounttown that Gunny Mararki kind of set up in the backyard, which I don't know if you count that.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

We did Sims there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

With the sim rounds.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Is that the one where we we didn't

Bridgeport Cold Weather Disaster

SPEAKER_03 6:18

want to wait for the truck, so we hiked back to uh Mateo?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

That was at the actual Mounttown, yes, and then we hiked all the way back, yes, yeah, yes. This is because the seven tons were gonna be eight hours or some ridiculous number, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

And they were like, hey, we're just gonna walk it. I remember thinking, ah, fuck. Because they had uh they had they had T rats and they were serving uh succotashes like corn and lima beans, yeah. And I hate lima beans, and I'm like, I'm not eating shit. So we did a like 20 or 21 mile hike with no food. I was dying.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Yeah, full full gear, no food. Most everybody had been dipping all day, and so just completely dehydrated. Yeah, and uh, and then the last training evolution we did right before we caught the birds in February was uh March Air Force Base. That was the training with the Brits.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. March. That's right. I was thinking the we did that high altitude shoot in Fallon, Nevada, but that I think that was later.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

I don't know. Actually, I no, I think you guys went and did that. So I didn't go to that that was just Oh, you didn't go to Fallon? That was just the machine gunners that went to go do that. So you guys you guys took off and took some trucks and went over to Fallon, Nevada and did that. But I don't know you, Fuentes, Harden, Jax, uh, all you machine gunner guys did, but I stayed back because you know, toe gunner and all that.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, toe gunner. So you were smarter than the rest of us. Was that just a range that you guys did? Well, I don't know this. I don't know that evolution.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

Yeah, it was just uh it was a high elevation machine gun range, so it was basically I think it was more to like prepare for like an Afghanistan deployment. Uh okay. But it was basically to show you that when you're shooting from an elevated position, shooting down, that you don't gotta aim as far because kind of gravity kind of takes it. So if it's 800 yards, you could probably set your side at 700 yards and still hit the target.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Yeah, I remember you guys coming back and using big words like enfilade fire and all this other stuff, and I was like, Oh, you guys learned some shit. That's awesome. Yeah, and like hard Harden was like explaining it to me and drawing all these pictures on paper. He looked like a crazy person, but it was uh it sounded, I mean, it sounded good.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

Yeah, well, I remember being up there and because you're shooting at a pretty steep angle, and I mean we range find it and it was like 800 yards, and so they let you set your sights at 800, and you fire a burst off, and you see how far you overshot it, and you're like, oh shit. So then you end up cranking it down like 500, and it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

But that's good. I'm I mean, I'm glad they it didn't end up being useful in Ramadi, but uh but but that's uh I'm glad you guys learned that shit. Cool man. What do you do you remember anything from March Air Force Base at all?

SPEAKER_03 9:02

No, not really. I I mean no. I remember going there and I remember coming home, but I don't remember much of the training there.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Yeah. Well, let's go with stuff that you do remember. Uh it was February-ish. We got the I got the word February 13th that we were gonna be leaving on the 16th. And so it was February 16th when we flew out. And anything strike you when we uh finally started packing gear and leaving?

SPEAKER_03 9:29

Yeah, so uh I remember it was right around February 13th. Yeah, that because that checks out because the movie 50 First Dates just got released, and we had planned on going

Mount Town Hikes And Live-Fire Lessons

SPEAKER_03 9:40

and seeing that in theaters. Uh and we got recalled early. I think they would call us back from the weekend. They called us in early so we could pack our shit and get ready to go. Uh so I never ended up seeing that in theaters, which that's okay. Seen it a hundred times since, so it's not a big deal. But yeah, I remember I remember coming back, uh packing up, and we got on what is it? We flew out of March Air Force Base and then we had airplane trouble. We landed in Maine, and apparently they couldn't Amazon the uh airplane equipment, so then they flew us to New Jersey, yeah, and we stayed at the nicest Air Force barracks, or the least the nicest barracks I've ever seen. They were condemned by the Air Force, I heard.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah, I don't know how true that was, but uh and I don't know if they could story checks out, though.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

No, it doesn't this just from what I remember. They said these are you guys can stay in here, it's condemned, so nobody's in here, and that's why they let us stay in there. At least that's the story we were told. How true that is, I don't know. But uh, I remember some guys had a mini bar in their fridge because that was one thing they said is don't touch the mini bar. And at 7:30 in the morning, somebody knocked on my door and it was a maid to come and empty my trash and make my bed. Yeah, and I was like, Air Force has got it fucking made. And I remember we were there for like it was like seven or ten days.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Yeah, been there for a minute, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Yeah, because I remember it snowed while we were there, and that was like my first real-time plane in the snow. Uh, so it's pretty stubborn. That's where the Bridgeport training came in, I guess. Um and then it was uh, I remember we went to the gym there, and it was like the biggest human being I'd ever seen, just the most muscular dude, and he was working at the gym. And I remember asking him, like, hey, are you in the military? And he's like, Oh, yeah, I'm a recreational specialist in the Air Force. And I knew right then that I fucked up. I knew my recruiter was full of shit, that there were better jobs because that dude just worked at a gym for he passed out towels and got swollen. I could have been doing that. You got better stories now, though. Yeah, way better stories.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

That guy's got shit on me now, but yeah, I remember the chow hall, and I remember this, I remember the maids both. I remember you guys being just over the fucking moon about the maids. You're like, there a maid came in and cleaned, they made my rack perfectly. And I was yeah, I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?

SPEAKER_03 12:06

I don't I don't think I let them make my my rack. I think I was still I still made my own bed, but I let them take the trash out. That was fine. But I was still just when they knocked on the door and I was like, wait, you guys got maids? That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Yeah. I appreciate I appreciate the note that uh I had forgotten that that's why we went up to that base is that the one that we went to wasn't gonna be able to get us the parts, and so we went up to the other one for the repair.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Yeah, I mean that was an actual Air Force base. That was uh Nell, now not Nellis. What was the name of that Air Force Base? Anyway, doesn't matter. The New Jersey Air Force Base.

SPEAKER_03 12:40

Yeah, and then uh oh the other thing, when we landed in Maine, that was the coldest I'd ever been in my entire life. Oh, yeah. Right there.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

There was like six-foot snow drifts, and the wind was blowing like 40 miles an hour, and we got off the plane and we had to walk into the airport or into the the terminal or whatever. And I remember guys just had like icicles coming out of their nose, like it was that was the coldest I'd ever been in my whole life. That was miserable.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yep. But yeah, and then we finally took off and got out over the Pacific. You remember flying over?

SPEAKER_03 13:13

Yeah, I remember flying over. Uh, I don't remember much about the flight. I probably slept most of the way, and then I think we landed in Germany for a little bit. And I want to say we we watched super troopers while we were there. Like I remember watching a movie with everybody, and I thought it was super troopers.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

You might have. So we it we broke down again. Uh and engines broke, we were losing oil or fuel or both. And when we landed in Germany, like there was liquid coming out of the plane all over the tarmac, and we got stuck in Germany for a couple of days while they had to find another engine. I think they found us a whole nother plane. I don't know that I don't remember for sure. But either way, that was uh yeah, we were there for a couple of days, and then we finally bounced over to Kuwait.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Yeah. We were at Camp Liberty in Kuwait. Is that what it's called?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Victory, I think.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

Victory, Victory, Victory, Liberty, it's all the same. Yeah. Camp Victory, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:11

Uh I remember being there, and I think that was the first time I met uh Quist was there. Oh, okay. We were like staged, we were getting ready to stage out, and like we were obviously we didn't have our trucks, we were all like lined up,

Recall Orders And Flights Falling Apart

SPEAKER_03 14:26

like walking, like we were the convoy, like prepping for the convoy.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

And I was wearing my my big aviator glasses, and uh Quist walked up and he's like, Oh, nice glasses, and I was like, Ah, these are my I don't want to be here glasses. And he still remembered that years later when he ended up taking over the platoon. That's too funny.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

That's funny. That's great. And then I know you drove up because you were in you were in my convoy uh when we crossed the LOD. And then what do you remember of the drive up? Who were you with anyhow? On the drive up Ciro. We're all piled in.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

No, our truck had just had three people. It was me, uh Monroe, geezer, and Swede. It was just the three of us, I think. Okay, at least whenever I asked for one of those dark adus, it was just Swede or Geezer passing them to me. But uh, I remember it was like it was a three-day trip, and we drove like 12 hours one day, 14 hours the next, and then like a six or eight-hour drive or something like that. Uh and for those that don't know, if you've never driven a Humvee, that lull, like that, just that hum, bro. I don't it's a good thing they had the rumble strips on the side of the highway there too, because I was all over the road. Swede was waking me up like every 10 minutes. He's like, hey, wake the fuck up. And I'm just like, I'm trying, man. Max speed of 54 miles an hour. It just I think was lowled you to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

It is a rough one. Driving back from some training evolution was the first time I OD'd on caffeine because I was trying to stay awake and I just kept pulling like like caffeine jolts. Yeah, that sucked.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

I remember like we stopped we stopped at like a couple bases along the way, or like little outposts or whatever, and kind of re-resupplied, and everybody just kind of stole shit along the way. I mean, we stole whatever we thought we could use, and we didn't even know what we needed, but we stole it anyway. Fucking food, sodas, yeah, whatever that wasn't bolted down, we took with us.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Uh at one point in the convoy, I remember they called that they had taken contact, yeah, and like we didn't even stop. I don't at least I don't remember stopping. We just kept going. I was like, all right, whatever. That's just the way it is now, I guess. And I don't even know how close it was. It could have been a hundred trucks in front of me for all I know, but I remember they they called it out on the radio. Uh and then we we finally rolled into Ramadi, and I think like day one, if I'm remembering it right, like day one, one of the army Humvees, like uh, like a taxi cab rolled up and threw a satchel of C4 on it and detonated it.

SPEAKER_04 16:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Uh, and it was just, I mean, they were cleaning those dudes up with sponges basically.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

So that that specifically was our first mission without our left seat right seat. Uh, so we did me, myself, staff sergeant Coleman, the lieutenant, uh, Randall, a couple other people, uh, I think Jordan and Swede all did left seat right seats with our limited army uh partnership. And all they did was just drive us up and down, basically Michigan, point out a couple of things, we came back. And then we went to the palace and did like a big map recon and tried to figure out the names of things. They handed us these terrible maps that were very zoomed out, like little tiny one in a hundred thousand scale maps. But you're right, the very first mission, day one, we went out of our AO. We weren't even in Ramadi, we were north of the river and went to that, you're right, we went to that uh army Humvee that was destroyed, and those guys were yeah, that's that's a good way to put it. They were picking them up with a shovel.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Yeah, and I remember like right then, like we we got there and I think that's what everybody's like, oh shit, this is that's when everybody's like, okay, it's we're done fucking around now. What was that right there?

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Yeah, I had forgot about that mission. That was fucking terrible. Uh those that was an army, I think if I remember correctly, that was either engineers or like military police or something. They weren't even an infantry unit, whatever they were.

SPEAKER_03 18:29

No.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yeah, military police sounds right, but I don't it's been so long now, I don't anything else strike you from those early missions?

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Not really from the drive up. I mean remember we had like a we had like a little boom box in the car and everybody's always arguing about what songs to put on. And I felt like we were listening to the same shit over and over again because we probably ran out of ran out of the song on the iPods because they didn't have I don't think we had a C D player. I think it was, yeah, I think we had an iPod or something.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Did you? Yeah, I was gonna say because we had a C D player, we just played CDs.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Oh, maybe it was maybe it was C D player then. Maybe that's what we had too.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah. Do you remember what

Kuwait Staging And The Long Convoy

SPEAKER_01 19:10

you were listening to?

SPEAKER_03 19:11

I'm so I remember Garth Brooks being stuck in my head the in the entire drive up there, and it was this uh the song uh That Summer by Garth Brooks.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Oh god.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

I mean, which is a good song, don't get me wrong, but when it's on repeat for 14 fucking hours, now I can't even listen to Garth Brooks anymore.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

So it's and then so your truck was you ended up being the driver of the high back originally. So it was you, Swede was your vehicle commander, uh Jim Harden, and uh Monroe, Jared Monroe was your gunner, and then I don't remember who was originally in the back of the high back when we first started going out.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

So we when we first went out, uh we didn't have a high back initially. We had a a regular Humvee, and I think one of the 81s Humvees broke down, and so we gave them ours and we took a high back.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Or or something like that. One of the other, maybe it was map three or something. They needed another truck, so we gave them we gave them ours and we took a high back. Uh initially, it was oh Sergeant Neil fucking knife. Knife was with us. That's who the other guy was.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Uh so it was me, Swede, uh, Neil, and Geezer. And then once we had the high back, I think we picked up maybe Matroca and Miranda.

unknown 20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

When they were in dismounts. That sounds right.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

And then when we got when we got the combat replacements, we picked up Rabbit and uh the two brothers.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Yeah, Hampton, Lopez, and Gonzalez. But you had and you had Cohen as well, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:43

No.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

No, Cohen, Cohen stayed in the lieutenant's vehicle.

SPEAKER_03 20:46

Yeah, he was yeah, he was in LTs, I think.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Okay. I know he was a dismount part of the time. I just didn't remember when.

SPEAKER_03 20:52

Yeah, he did some he did some weird shit with uh with Booker and uh didn't like Markey do the and maybe Sakaki, where they went out and dressed up as Hajis for a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

That was Sakaki. I don't think did Cohen do that? I guess I'll have to ask him.

SPEAKER_03 21:08

I think Cohen did too. Oh, maybe because he spoke a little bit Arabic and he looked like he could blend in a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Well, what I remember from Cohen was every time he spoke Arabic, they would say something like Oh, they knew he was they knew he was Jewish. The Jewish, yeah, because he had a Hebrew accent.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

Yeah, they knew he was Jewish and and they called him on it every time. Like they didn't like they didn't like Cohen at all.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

No, no, no. He yeah, so he stopped speaking Arabic. I mean he stopped speaking at all in front of any anybody because he he was he was worried about being drug off. Yeah. But all right. Well, to give you some uh some references of things that kind of happened kind of early. Uh March 6th was our convoy from Kuwait. And then it was the 13th, just a week later, was when McPherson got wounded with his the jaw, the jaw. His jaw gotten blown off. Uh the 20th was the first big IED that I remember for weapons company that was with uh Warth losing the eye over in uh 81s.

SPEAKER_04 22:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

And then the 22nd was our first casualty was uh Fox Company. Lance Corporal Dang got killed by an RPG.

SPEAKER_04 22:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

And then not long after that, Echo Company shot up some dudes with mortar gear. Uh it was four insurgents in a truck. And then right after that was when the mosques started calling out every day to kill Americans, take up arms and kill Americans. Yeah. And then uh March 31st was when the Blackwater contractors got uh killed on that bridge, the bridge to Fallujah.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

Yeah. Well then I think what is it? Your truck got hit on St. Paddy's Day.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yes, it was on that so I didn't get hit on St. Paddy's Day, I got hit on the 18th. It was 003. It was 0030. It was 30 minutes past.

SPEAKER_03 23:00

Yeah, we went out on St. Paddy's Day and got hit on the while we were out, I think, or something.

SPEAKER_04 23:06

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_03 23:06

But and I remember we had these fucking crazy hap like looking back on it now, like it was we did some wild cowboy shit. Like, I remember I think it was uh they when they they told us I'm drawn a blank. What was our fucking the botanic commander's name? Paul Kennedity. What is it? Colonel Kennedity Kennedy, Paul Kennedy, that's right. Uh I remember like his his speech that he gave like before we stepped off was hard. Like there's no, there's no, it was tough. Like that still gives me goosebumps when I hear that speech. But uh I remember thinking like because he was telling us like we had those half doors, they were like a quarter inch steel, uh, didn't cover any vital organs whatsoever when you were sitting in the Humvee. So, and he said, and he kind of and I'm sure every battalion that came after us said the same shit about us that you know the last battalion doesn't know what they're doing, we're gonna we're gonna change it. You know, they're they're buttoned up in their armored Humvees, but we're gonna be fast and lethal. And I was like, hell yeah. And the first time I saw an ID go off, I was like, hell no. So but I remember I remember cruising around with those the the half doors, and on after your your truck got hit on St. Paddy's Day, like seeing the shrapnel on the inside that was deflected by nothing, and he didn't have anybody in the back seat. You had you just had three at the time, I think.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Uh I had four. It was uh all I had Radsky driving, I had McCabe in the back, but I I don't remember what McCabe was doing, but he had leaned forward. But if he had not leaned forward, I think he leaned forward like fuck with me. And had he not leaned forward, it would have killed him.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

Oh, yeah, they had taken his head off.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Yeah, that big chunk of shrapnel went right where his head would have been.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

Yeah, because I remember it hit on the like the out the other side, like went right through. Yeah, uh, and I remember thinking, man, these half-doors fucking suck. Like, yeah, we're getting IED'd more than we're getting straight up just contact with with small arms or anything, but yeah, at least at the time.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Yeah, and out of the four of us, three of us got hit. I mean, uh, you know, I was hit in the shoulder and the face and the neck, and McCabe took a huge piece in the thigh, couldn't even heat. He thought he could stand up, and when he did, he fell over. He got up out of the Humvee and had a big hole in his thigh. And then uh Aldredi up in the gun got hit. And was he I mean, the gun was all messed up too, because everything got hit with hit with shrapnel and dirt and everything else.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Uh and so I think our next big thing after that was April 1st.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

Was that the night that uh that Jeffrey got hit, Morris?

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Not quite. It was so we went out, we was fourth. Yeah, fourth. Yeah, fourth was the day he got hit. He died on the morning of the fifth.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

Yeah. So I remember being out on, and for some reason we we split our sections. So your section was over, like at an intersection, and then Swede section was over. Are we were you with not yet?

SPEAKER_01 26:05

I was with you.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

Uh we went up,

Early Ramadi Shocks And Half Doors

SPEAKER_03 26:07

we went up LT section. We were up along the river, yep. Uh along the canal or river, whatever the fuck that is, along route, I almost said like route Nova or something. And that was when we started taking contact from across the river from the army. Because they saw us fucking digging in. And uh I don't know if they were shooting at us with Bradleys or whatever, but it was strikers, yeah. Stress, yeah, strikers. So they they started shooting at us, and then then Morris got hit, and that was that night was a clusterfuck, which really started like 10 days of at least 10 days of just fuckery.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

But yeah, tell tell whatever you can remember, man, if you can remember any details, because I'm I'm interested in your perspective of it. Well, my I mean, obviously I wasn't there next to Morris when he got hit, but no, but even the striker engagement, that's uh that didn't happen to everybody.

SPEAKER_03 27:00

Yeah, we were. I mean, I remember we were it was like a LPOP or something. We were just kind of posted up and just monitoring the river and uh or the road in the river. Honestly, I don't that's one thing, like looking back on it, like we had missions and you're like, what the fuck are we doing? And so listening to other listening to other guys, like guys that were that had more than 10 minutes in the core, you know, tell their story. I'm like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah, so this has been kind of cathartic a little bit. Uh but yeah, we were we were watching the river and just kind of, I mean, it didn't quiet all night. We were just kind of screwing around. I think we had kind of dismounted and we're we're fucking around by the trucks and it might have been what you were doing.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

I can tell you what the mission actually was if you're curious.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

Yeah, I'm curious.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

So we we when uh counter battery was firing, they had gotten three positive IDs just north of the river of that's where the mortars were coming from, and we were we were watching across the river with the tow sights trying to pick up those guys setting up mortars. We that makes sense. We did not see them, but that's what that's why we were there because we could see for miles with the toe sight across the river, so we didn't have to actually go across the river.

SPEAKER_03 28:12

Yeah, and apparently the army was doing the same thing on the exact opposite side. They were, and uh, they must have saw us before we saw them because I don't know, they a Toyota Hilux and a Humvee are must be hard to distinguish with their optics they have. So not that I'm talking shit about the army, but here it goes. Uh no. It happened. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

They happened more than once. Yeah, more than once, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:44

More than once to our truck, but yeah. Uh yeah, so they let us. I don't even, I don't even remember if we if we knew it was the army set up across the way. I don't remember if we tried. I know I didn't shoot back.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

You didn't, but Richie did.

SPEAKER_03 28:57

With the mark?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Yeah, Richie fired back the mark. That's what ended it.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Good for him. They heard the grenades go off and they realized that that's he landed.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Yep, he landed mark on one of the strikers and they popped red stars, and that's why we stopped firing.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

That's right. That's right. Yeah, I don't think I don't think Monroe fired the 50. Uh, I know I didn't shoot across. I just remember going, who the fuck is shooting at us? Because there's no way that's an AK. That's not an RBK. That's not that's not nothing that they should have.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Right.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

But uh, and then of course, obviously, while we were there, that's when we heard that that Morris got hit. They metevacked him over to combat outposts, and he fly, he flew out. And I remember like when uh Bundy and Nobby came back, they said, Yeah, he's stable. You know, all we can do now is just kind of hope and pray. And obviously the next morning we we got the word, but uh was April 1st. Is it was that one no condi got shot on the 6th, right? Condi or the first.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

No, Condi got shot through the shoulder on April 6th.

SPEAKER_03 29:58

Okay. And I don't like I was thinking about it, like I don't I don't know if I'm getting my dates mixed up, but like I remember the 7th vividly, at least for what I remember to be vivid. Uh, but I don't remember a lot about April 6th. I don't know where that, because April 7th was Route Apple, right? Apple to Nova.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

So they I mean we did both of those days, we were damn near in the same area. We were just a little south, like on the sixth, we were deeper into Sofia, and then on the seventh, we were just a little closer, like you said, to Route Apple. But uh I mean we were within a mile of the the same exact area, so it can all blend together because it all looked exactly the same.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

That's that's probably why. I mean, I remember the the firefight that I remembered like the most vividly, I think it was on the seventh. We were we were coming up and we had just made like a left turn, and I thought it was Route Apple, but the the street names don't really matter that much. And I remember there was like two guys that popped up on a roof, and that was when uh Gunny shot him left-handed through the Humvee while we're still driving. Yes, uh and then and that basically kicked off the whole ambush down that road. Uh and I remember like that initial adrenaline dump, like there's there's nothing like that in the whole world. I I've done all kinds of stuff, and there's nothing like a like a firefight. The adrenaline you get from that is out of this world. It's insane. But we were in it for so long, like the adrenaline dump wore off. And like guys, you could see guys were were thinking critically, they were they weren't tunnel vision, they were focused. Like it was actually kind of impressive to see. But I remember in that in that fuckery, like I remember not sure how, but like we herring boned, and then like my car was the the third truck, and we ended up pushing up to the front. Uh, I remember at one point Randall came up with a 203 because that's all he ever shot.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Uh okay. So Randall comes up with a 203, and while he's standing next to my truck, and we're just kind of slowly pushing down the street. And I remember like the the housing did like the houses were nice. Uh and there was one house, it looked like it had like big pillars, like a White House. It was a two-story house, and it had like these giant pillars that ran up, kind of like the like that front, the front of the White House. And I remember I saw a guy run from one pillar behind one pillar to the second pillar. And I pointed out to Randall said, Hey, because I couldn't get my gun up that way, and geezer was Monroe, was was pointing down long. And so I was telling Randall's like, hey, there's the guy on the balcony, there's a guy on the balcony. And Randall's like, I got him. And so he loads his 203 and boom fires that thing. And I watched that round fly 20 feet above the roof of the house, and I don't even know where that fucker went, but uh launched somewhere. I'm sure everybody was okay. But and then he he fired the he fired the next round and uh and and then obviously he hit right where right where he was aiming at and uh never took contact from from that spot again. So that was nice. Uh I remember at one point there was like a oh wait, man, when we first turned fucking when geezer first started lighting up the 50, there was, I don't know if you remember, but there was uh we came up, there was an RPK or a PKM or something, it was a machine gun, and it was on the if as we're driving, it's on the right hand side, and then they had like a berm kind of built up. And uh when we first turned the corner, we were taking contact from there, and like everybody was spraying. Geezer was hosing shit down that when anything ran out, he was shooting at that. And I remember as we drove by, there was a fucking mandal, one of those mansandals, like those Jerusalem cruisers, and I think it still had like part of a foot in it. Yeah, and the fucking it was just like homie just ran right out of his shoe and just left his foot with it. So, but what was weird is I remember because it was an alleyway kind of right behind that, that I'm sure he got he got hit and drugged to the alley or something. But I remember there was like I never saw that guy's body, and I remember thinking, God, where'd that fucking guy go? He's just missing his leg, missing his foot, and I don't know where he went. That that bothered me for a little bit, but just because I want to know what happened to him.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:19

Uh and there was a at one point there was a there was a tanker on the right hand side of the road that was stopped, and Monroe had hit it a couple times. I think everybody kind of hit it a couple times with some bullets. It was leaking what we thought was gas. And I remember we were trying to skip tracers off of it, like it was the movies, and we were trying to get it to light up, and we couldn't get that thing to fucking go for shit.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

But it turned out to be water.

SPEAKER_03 34:42

Oh, that's see that that's probably why it didn't fucking light up, but yeah, but but it wasn't for lack of trying. I know that. Yeah, uh and I think that was when I pulled the 240 out of the uh the back because we for some reason we carried which good reason, I guess. We carried the 240, an extra 240 in our truck with us. And that was when I I dismounted there and I pulled the 240 out and just kind of went prone and just shot anything that I could see underneath the truck because I feel like we kept taking contact from behind the tanker.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

Uh and then it maybe I misremember, but it it felt like fucking five, six hours that we were out there.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

Uh, I mean, depending on which day. So on the sixth, we were out there six, eight hours, whatever it was. On the seventh, it was all fucking day. It was 11 or 12 hours, like it was so goddamn long.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

Yeah, I remember because for something we were using uh the slap rounds, the sabbated light armor penetrator rounds, and we had a we had a whole truckload of slap rounds, uh, which up until that point I'd never even seen in the Marine Corps. Like I'd heard about them, I knew they were there, but for us to actually get slap rounds, like that was cool. At least I thought they were cool. Uh but like we burned through if we had 2,000 or 4,000 rounds in the truck, but we were about we were about running out of ammo. I remember that's why we had to we had to break it off and and leave. Not that I think anybody else was wanting any more business, but I think that's when we went back and and re-armed.

SPEAKER_04 36:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:11

But that's the one that I I think I remember the the most vividly. All the other ones just kind of blend together. I remember getting into some shit with uh I think we were supporting Fox Company on the 10th, I think. And we got into a firefight on the 10th as well, but it wasn't as long and it wasn't as bad. Like the to me, like in my mind, the seventh was the one that was like that they really I don't know, solidified our our platoon as as combat tested right there.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Yeah. My my memory of you, I'll tell a Grove story since you're here. And this is on the sixth. Yeah, this is on the sixth. Now you may not remember this, but uh Randall and Jordan and I think Metroca had the bright idea to start trying to do some of that satellite patrolling crap that we had learned, and they started pushing forward on jumping walls and all that shit on the side streets, and they were blocks ahead of us. And Monroe was firing right over the top of their heads because they were hiding behind a truck. And so I had come back to your I was going back and forth between all the trucks trying to direct fire, more or less. That was what my job ended up being half the time. And I was like, All right, you I need your truck, and and you were like, All right. I was like, I was like, Monroe, fire this way, don't fire to the left, only fire over here. Anywhere over here is fine. Don't fire to the left, you'll kill Randall. And I call over to Randall on the radio, and he he's like, Do you know where I am? And I was like, I have no fucking clue where you are, I just know you're way ahead of us. And he's like, All right, I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna throw something. And he thinks.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

Oh, he threw a fucking mag, right? Threw a mag, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

He flips the mag out in the middle of the road and they're way up there. And I looked at you, and there's it's still massive gunfight. I mean, just bullets literally everywhere, RPGs coming down the road. And I was like, Okay, we're coming to provide support because they were pinned down, they were just stuck there. And he's like, We're almost out of ammo. Okay, great. I looked at you and I was like, let's get it over with. And you just started laughing. You were laughing like the whole way. We were driving, we probably drove for three minutes or whatever, just right up the road while geezer was firing, but you were just cackling laughing because you were like, We're gonna fucking die. And we we we didn't because we're here to tell the story, but I I distinctly remember you just laughing your ass off and getting out. We were both providing like a ridiculous amount of cover fire while they came over to the back of the truck and re-retooled because they were out of ammo.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

Yeah, I do remember that. Uh I mean, what else do you do? And yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking laugh is all we could do. Yeah, we were having fun doing it, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, speaking of that, so we did come back, we re-armed. Uh, I mean, the first night we went to Chow even and kind of hung out. You remember kind of what it felt like after your first big contact?

SPEAKER_03 39:12

I think he almost felt relief. Like you you got it out of the way, it you made it out of the first one, but I think at the same time, like seeing what it's like, it it's almost like you just kind of come to terms with hey, it is what it is. I mean, if if if something happens here, we'll just we'll make the best of it while we're here for as long as we're here.

SPEAKER_04 39:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:33

So I think after that, after April 6th, I mean I think I I smoked a little bit while I was there, but I think after April 6th, I smoked a lot of bit. I think I started smoking heavy after that. Because then it was just like, whatever, dude. Just I'm just out hanging with and it was more like the smoke pit time, it was just more like hanging with the boys. It wasn't it wasn't like I needed a cigarette, it was just like this is where we come and decompress. This was our uh our our therapy after some weird shit goes down. But and then you're just grateful that everybody's still there.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Yeah, yeah, that's for sure. Well, the the sixth was when we kind of pushed through. We pushed all the way up through the Sophia district and we reinforced the echo guys that were pinned down, and then we uh evaced some of their casualties back, retooled, and then came back out. But when we came back out, there wasn't much contact. The seventh was our long engagement, which is probably why it sticks in your head. Yeah. Uh the eighth wasn't much, although we did go out that day. Uh it just may not stick in your mind too much. I think that was when we were supporting Fox Company, is what you remember. That was Operation County Fair. That was when we found uh we found a bunch of field hospital type things, just medical stuff and and dead bodies. We found a bunch of dead bodies. We didn't no insurgents, no weapons, just you know, medical stuff and dead people.

SPEAKER_03 40:53

Yeah, it was like their their casualty collection point, and they just had dropped

April Firefights And Learning Under Fire

SPEAKER_03 40:58

everybody off.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Right. And then I I don't remember what we did on the ninth. We were out every single day, but I truly don't remember what we did on the ninth. The 10th was the next one I remember was the big bug hunt, and that's when everybody was out.

SPEAKER_04 41:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:12

And we were part of the southern part of the cordon. Uh I don't I don't know if you remember that any specifically, but that was the one where they were out on the loudspeakers and yelling and calling everybody out to fight.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

I remember being out that day. I don't remember exactly where we were. Uh but I remember at one point, like we did take contact that day because I remember like seeing I thought it was line company guys, it could have just been dismounts, but they were they were kind of tucked in behind a median, and uh I remember seeing them there. But yeah. April 6th and 7th were definitely the the bigger ones in that in that time period.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Right.

SPEAKER_03 41:55

Then they kind of slowed down for a little bit, I think. I think they realized that our tactics weren't the same as the army tactics, and I think they realized they couldn't just sit there and hang and bang because we would stop and and and hang and bang with them. So I think they kind of switched up tactics a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

We also killed a lot of them. Like that that was we we killed a lot of them, and so they weren't able to re-re retool themselves very well because we hadn't decimated them.

SPEAKER_03 42:32

Yeah. Is it true that we uh and I heard I don't know if it's true or not, but we killed our the guy that cleans the porta shitters for us?

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:41

That was true, okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Yeah, yeah, we killed the DVD guy and we killed the porta shitter guy both. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:47

All right. They probably deserved it. I'm assuming if they were there, they knew what was going on, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Oh yeah. No, uh I know the DVD guy deserved it. I don't know what happened to the porta shitter guy.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

I don't know who shot him. I just remember where they they found him dead and they

Contractors Interpreters And Who To Trust

SPEAKER_01 43:01

told us what they weren't gonna be able to clean anything.

SPEAKER_03 43:03

Well, I remember the I remember whenever they the D before the DVD guy got killed, uh whenever he was on the hurricane point, the rocket fire was way more fucking accurate while he was there. So I'm not I'm not sad about that one. Yeah, but for about a week there, those porta shitters were getting like dudes were straight hovering. There was shit coming out of the out of the porta shitter trying to come back out.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

So that's correct.

SPEAKER_03 43:28

We we definitely we definitely needed you to do porta shitter guy.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

We on we also ended up killing at least one, if not two, of the early interpreters that we had too. They were playing both sides, and the one the one was a part of uh directing the ambush, actually. That oh well I was glad we got him then. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:52

Whatever uh whatever happened to Rocco, that was the name, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Yeah, yeah, it's correct. Uh there's stories. Um Some people think that he got uh killed later on because he uh he tried to cross over and then told that he was no longer needed and then was out in town and got killed, I guess. Is that what you're remembering, Nylon?

SPEAKER_01 44:13

So the most recent story I heard is somebody came across him three, four years later, uh, at a different camp, at a different deployment, and he was one of the guys selling DVDs. And the deal that for him to come to the United States had fallen through. And so if he got killed after that, I don't know. But that's that's all the and that's all the stories I've heard.

SPEAKER_03 44:36

Okay. I guess for those that are just listening, Rocco was like the at least from from my persp perspective, he was like the like the head interpreter for for weapons company.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 44:45

I don't I don't think he had like a specific platoon. He might have he might have favored one over the other, but he just seemed like he was always around. Like I thought we brought him back with us, or I thought he was at least scheduled to come back with us.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

That was that was the rumor. That was the goal, is that they were working on getting him to come back. Him and his brother. His brother um supposedly also worked for the military as an interpreter in Baghdad.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Okay. The same way with uh there's another guy, we called him Wilbur. Um, I was in contact with him up until 2008 or something like that. But I think he ended up getting killed during the Syrian Revolution.

SPEAKER_03 45:23

Okay. I just remember seeing Rocco in a firefight, and and he was up there with his AK-47, just hosing it down. He wasn't even aiming. I don't know how good of a shot he was, but he was putting in work, and I was like, hell yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, and that was the he let he let me shoot his AK when we were over by uh was it Lake Habanier or something? Yeah, we were like just shooting into the river or the into the lake, and that was the first time I shot an AK, and I was like, all right, I can get one of these, these are all right.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

No, he was a cool dude.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yeah, it was interesting. You know, seeing a lot of this stuff in the news and stuff like that where people are trying to get interpreters out and things like that, I can see why. And Rocco is one of those people that I would agree, uh, he definitely deserved he deserved a shot at least. I don't I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why we don't have a better program for figuring that out.

SPEAKER_04 46:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

But I mean it was too it was 2004. We didn't have a good program for anything.

SPEAKER_03 46:22

So because every other interpreter was directing ambushes, so they're probably hesitant to bring Rocco back.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

Right, right. This is also fair.

SPEAKER_03 46:29

It didn't matter how much we vouched for him if if everybody else is directing ambushes.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Yeah, good point. Yeah, so moving forward, um, you're right. Into May, it kind of slowed down as far as like gunfights, but there were still like IEDs and other things that happened. Uh, big one, next big one, as far as like in my mind, uh you had kind of mentioned uh Booker's bearded guys, where uh he he did the drive around low pro team. That was the last part of April, like the last week of April. Okay, and then and then May 1st was when they had Operation Treasured Island.

SPEAKER_03 47:05

That was when the the scout swimmers over, okay. So they uh yeah, I can tell the story that I how I remember it. Uh but and hopefully you can give me some clarification because I never asked about it. Um, I will from what I remember, is they they suspected there was like a big weapons cache or IED cache or something on that little island uh out in the middle of the river. And so instead of just getting a rubber fucking dinghy and driving across, because they they didn't want the enemy to know that we had rubber dinghy capabilities, I guess. They they had two scout swimmers swim across and they grossly underestimated the uh the undertow or the current or something. They got they got swept, and then get I think they got swept back upstream somehow, like a weird current. They got tangled up in debris at the bottom. Uh still don't know why they didn't just use the boat, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

Uh I I definitely couldn't speak to why they decided to swim. Uh but it was four or five guys. There was uh a couple that made it. And the one you're talking about, he didn't actually go upstream, but he went basically straight down, like from where he disappeared under the water. They found him just a few yards away, and then the other guy went actually downstream.

SPEAKER_03 48:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

You remember the days after that?

SPEAKER_03 48:26

I remember all of a sudden there was a bunch of fucking boats in the water, and then they knew that we had rubber dinghies.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

Yes, yeah. But yeah, and us searching the banks for a couple of days straight, basically. That was awful.

SPEAKER_03 48:41

Yeah, that was that was one of those that like looking back on it, you're like, why the fuck did we try to swim that?

SPEAKER_01 48:46

I mean, yeah, they they drowned on the first, they found the second guy's body uh on the fifth. So it was, I mean, it was took a while to find him. And then I guess the next big one would be um Savage got popped on May 12th.

SPEAKER_04 49:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

And that was a pretty good size IED. And then the next one that might might ring some bells for you is May 29th. We had some we had a couple of firefights there between the between when Savage got hit and the 29th, but nothing that was like like standing, right? It was all just like they'd shoot at us, we'd shoot

Drownings Dam Sweep And The VBIED

SPEAKER_01 49:27

at them, there's a little something, and then they'd run off.

SPEAKER_03 49:28

Yeah, like just little skirmishes more than than full firefights.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

Yep. Onesies, twosies.

SPEAKER_03 49:33

Yeah, they'd they'd pop an IED and and tease some rounds off, and we'd clear the kill zone and return fire, and then everybody was gone.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 49:41

But usually you knew when that was gonna happen because the normally busy market was empty, and you're like, ah shit. Anytime you you rolled through the downtown market and there was nobody there, or there was very few people there, you already knew what was what time it was.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Yeah, and and that was uh that was different, actually. You're right. That kind of started in May. Uh before that, when we were getting pop shots and stuff, there would still be people around, or when an IED would go off, there'd be people in the streets, and then an IED would go off and civilians would get hit and everything else. Which uh that did change. Uh May 29th was when we went and cleared the dam, the Habanya dam with the engineers.

SPEAKER_03 50:22

That's with the yeah. Yeah. Oh fuck, that was that was brutal. Uh they thought there was IEDs on the dam, which turns out there was, uh, or on at least the road that that runs it. And I remember we were providing security for them. And I don't think I I don't think my truck was up on the dam. We were because it was I remember like looking over, and there was like that raise, like the dam, and they were going across it. Yeah, because we were down, I think, a cross route Michigan or something.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Yeah, so you were you're part of my section. Our section was on Michigan, and it was it was Randall's section that was up on up on the dam.

SPEAKER_03 51:00

But I remember like we were sitting in our truck and we're like, oh, they're definitely gonna hit an IED. If if it's up there, they're definitely gonna hit it. And almost like right on cue, like the earth erupts and it's just giant dust cloud. And I remember seeing one of the dudes like in the air, and I was like, oh fuck. And it was again, it was one of those ones like really, we we don't want to let them know we we got metal detectors, like we're we're out here on foot doing IED sweeps, but again, I don't know the whole the whole details behind it.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

Uh from the way again, from the way it was told to us by higher by the X the XO who confirmed it, is that it was pushed from higher headquarters that that dam had to be swept and that it had to be protected. Uh, that it was basically like it was one of those things like we were still doing security and stability operations, so the hospital shouldn't get hit, the cops shouldn't get hit, the dam needs to stay open, the bridges need to stay open. And so anytime there's a threat to those key infrastructure pieces, it was us who had to go out there and do it. And and this was way the way they elected to do it was handheld with handheld metal detectors.

SPEAKER_03 52:07

Yeah, I'm sure in hindsight there probably would have been a better way, but I think I can think of a million, yeah. Yeah, that was that was rough to watch because it I mean it felt bad because you're when you're sitting in the truck and you're watching them clear it, like there's nothing you can do. I mean, it nope. So I think like one dude he you could tell he was wearing the uh he was I remember he was wearing Wiley X, the the Wiley X glasses they gave us or Wiley X goggles. Yeah, uh like one guy wasn't, one guy was, like one guy lost his eyes, one guy's blind. Yeah, and I think but it basically peeled the skin right off. Like they must it must have been buried in, and they like basically came right up on it, and it just the blast went straight up. Yeah, that's at least that's how I imagined it. But yeah, I felt bad for those guys.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

And so one casualty got thrown into my truck, one went into yours, and we we drove them to combat outpost. You remember anything after that?

SPEAKER_03 53:01

No, I don't remember, I don't remember what we did after that one.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Okay, well, I'll I'll remind you some pieces and see what you remember. So fill me in. I don't remember why the XO was out, but he was not with us specifically. I think he was with Sledgehammer, but I'm not 100% sure. Either way, he came and met us at Combat Outpost. And on as we were driving, there was two guys next to a station wagon. And I remember us calling in the station wagon, like, I don't know what those guys are doing, but whatever they're doing, they're up to no good. We get to combat outpost, we drop those guys off to the battalion surgeon, they're calling in a bird for EvaC uh for those engineers. We pick up the XO and we're sitting there, and there's a little bit of chaos as to what's gonna happen next. And they're like, Well, you gotta watch the road. If you don't watch the road, then we have to redo, I don't know, something. I don't know. I don't know what the whole idea was. We had to go watch the road. So our choice position was to go back up on that cemetery hill. So we my truck, my truck.

SPEAKER_03 54:08

Is this when we uh or when when we hit the landline?

SPEAKER_01 54:12

No, no, that was that was different. All right, but that's a good story, too.

SPEAKER_03 54:17

Yeah, that was a great story.

SPEAKER_01 54:18

Uh no, and then we drove up to the cemetery hill and took that same position overwatch with the XO, and that's when the Echo Company Highback drove past that car that we had called in, and they drove past super slow, and it it would detonate as a V-bid.

SPEAKER_03 54:33

Yeah, I remember that. Uh yeah, so we were sitting up on the cemetery hill, and it wasn't a regular IED. I mean, this thing was fucking huge, like it mushroom cloud IED'd. I remember it being big. Like, I remember when we got there, there was just there was people everywhere, just hurt, you know, some dead, mostly dead, a couple hurt guys, but like just there was just marine bodies everywhere. And I remember seeing the engine or or the engine or something was so far away from it, like a hundred yards or some shit. Like it was, I was like, holy shit, this was big. And I remember we just started loading guys up in the back. We had a high back then. We just started loading, throwing guys in the back of the high back and trying to get them to combat outposts. But that one was rough. It was like I think because I think what they have, 10 or 11 guys in there.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

I don't know. I know there were four dead right there. Uh, I think we backed three, and there was a couple that were like semi-walking wounded, like good enough to be treated by the other corpsmen that were there. Uh, but yeah, that would that was rough. It was a it was a loaded high back. I don't know how many were in the back at the time, eight or nine, probably, but it it sucked.

SPEAKER_03 55:43

I thought it was, yeah, that was ten or eleven. So that makes nine in the back and then the two in the front.

SPEAKER_01 55:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:49

Because I remember thinking, man, why'd they have that many people in the fucking high back? But yeah, it was that was brutal. That was a big one. Uh what you got?

SPEAKER_01 56:03

Well, you you started to talk about the landmine story. I uh I believe the date was uh it was in the beginning of June. But so that's coming up, that was coming up next anyway. Uh what do you remember from that?

SPEAKER_03 56:17

Well, I remember being back on that that the hill on the cemetery and just kind of overlooking Michigan or mobile or whatever route that we were kind of watching. And we'd been there for a while, it seemed like guys had gotten out of the truck, they stopped the pit, you know.

Landmine Close Call And Night QRF

SPEAKER_03 56:31

They they we'd been there for a minute. And as soon as we decided, like, hey, we're we're heading back, we're we're leaving this position. Uh I think it was like your truck backed up like what 10 feet maybe and hit it.

SPEAKER_04 56:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

And I remember I still have a picture of it, but the the whole rim was like taco. The tire came off, the the rotor was tacoed. The uh, and luckily nobody was in the back seat on that side because like it threw the threw the seat out, the mirror was the driver's side mirror was gone. Like uh, and I to this day, like we had been out around and walking around the trucks, like talking to each other. I don't know how nobody stepped on it. I I assume it must have been like it obviously wasn't an anti-tank mine because then the whole truck would have been fucking gone. But right, I assume it was an anti-personnel mine that they buried too deep and we just couldn't set it off, or we just got really lucky and just didn't step on it. But yeah, I remember that we were it seemed like we were up there for a couple hours in the in the OP before we had left and hit that that landmine.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

Yep. Yeah, and then we we were out there for a while and left we uh downloaded the truck, left the truck uh unloaded, but we waited just around it until the engineers got there, and they cleared it like old school World War II style, like with bayonets, yeah, and like stabbing into the ground. And I was like, Really? There's no other way, there's no other way to clear this.

SPEAKER_03 58:03

Well, they're like, Do you see what we did with the metal detectors? Let's use the bayonets.

unknown 58:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

It was so crazy that they're out there just digging around and like literally stabbing knives into the ground. Like, you're gonna that's the best way to detect another mine. Yeah. The next big couple of things that I can remember are from June. And uh one of them was the LAV attack that happened on Racetrack Road. We got called out as QRF in the middle of the night.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

Yeah, yeah. That was yeah, that was interesting. That one had that one had blowback years later, too.

SPEAKER_01 58:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 58:39

Uh yeah. So his weird uh the rec the rec my recruiter, I guess not my my recruiter was uh his name was Staff Sergeant Elias, but his his counterpart in the the Lancaster Palmdale office was in that in that LA. He was killed in that LAV.

SPEAKER_01 58:59

Oh, really? Yeah. Weird, weird small Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_03 59:02

I know. So uh I I knew the guy, I knew one of the guys that was that got killed in that one, but yeah, we were working, we were night QRF, and we had it was like were they like with regimen or they were they weren't they weren't too far, obviously. They were they were just cruising through our AO for something, at least that's how I remember it. And they got hit and it was like a I don't know if it was like a 155 with a bunch of ball bearings, but it Swiss cheesed that LAV.

SPEAKER_04 59:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:32

Uh and then we roll out there and I think all the I think all the shooting was done by that point. But there was I don't remember getting into a firefight that night, but I remember I remember getting pictures of that LAV, and that thing was just decimated. And I think that was like by that point in the deployment, everybody was just kind of if it's your time, it's your time. It because if if the LAVs are getting Swiss cheese, then I don't even know if we had full armor by then. Like the whole like the Frankenstein turrets and all that, like the god turrets that we had. I don't even know if if we had all that yet.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:11

We didn't have the I I mean, I don't remember specifically, I'd probably have to look back through some pictures, but I I don't think so. I don't think we had any turret armor. I think we just had all the shit we welded on or ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:22

Yeah. If you like what you've heard, this is a multi part episode. Make sure you listen to the rest of the story.