The Dogs of War

[theavonlady 2]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Assault (CAN) @ April 01 2003,07:30)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The Abrams series of tanks aren't as indestructable as some people think, yes they are among the best tanks in the world but like every piece of Armour, there are always weak spots. At the rear of the Abrams is the engine grill, this is where the armour is thinnest, so a couple of shots from an RPG might be able to do the trick of taking out the engine, turning the tank into a 70 ton pill-box. Shots at the engine grill, tracks, and optics on top of the turret can be made to disable the tank or reduce it's effectiveness.<span id='postcolor'>

The Iraqis must have OFP!

[Assault (CAN) 1]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The Iraqis must have OFP! :o <span id='postcolor'>

LOL, Saddam might be using it to create his strategy.

Anyways, that's what we were told in MBT/AFV recognition class in basic.

[theavonlady 2]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Assault (CAN) @ April 01 2003,07:44)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Anyways, that's what we were told in MBT/AFV recognition class in basic.<span id='postcolor'>

I learned the tactic from players here on the forum.

I sneak up behind the enemy armor and let him have it right in the rear engine grill.

Then the turret turns in my direction and there's a flash..........

Then there's music and a Woody Alan quote. Must be hell!

[FSPilot 0]

To be perfectly honest I didn't know you could target tanks like that. I always figured it was 7 shots = a kill for an abrahms. Unless I was driving, then it's a small gust of wind to flip the tank over, then the enemy comes along and finishes me off with grenades.

[brgnorway 0]

Hmmm....I don't know how tough the armour is on the M1a1 but when I was in the military you were taught to always aim at the tracks if possible. Even though that doctrine was with soviet tanks in mind - I guess immobilising a tank is more important than stubbornly trying to take it out.

Edit: Id say that a tactic like that is even more important when fighting M1a1's because their armour is obviously more effective than any russian counterparts.

[FSPilot 0]

To be honest I'd either aim for wherever the ammo is stored, or whatever drives the turret, so it either can't shoot or can't aim.

[brgnorway 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (FSPilot @ April 01 2003,08:01)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">To be honest I'd either aim for wherever the ammo is stored, or whatever drives the turret, so it either can't shoot or can't aim.<span id='postcolor'>

Expect to find such areas to be heavily armoured. The areas you are talking about are also much harder to target due to fairly small size compared to the tracks. Nothing is more helpless than an imobilised tank.

[theavonlady 2]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (brgnorway @ April 01 2003,09:08)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Nothing is more helpless than an imobilised tank.<span id='postcolor'>

How about an AT soldier who just shot his third RPG?

[brgnorway 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (theavonlady @ April 01 2003,08:11)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">8--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (brgnorway @ April 01 2003,098)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Nothing is more helpless than an imobilised tank.<span id='postcolor'>

How about an AT soldier who just shot his third RPG? <span id='postcolor'>

Hehe I should have seen it coming!

[theavonlady 2]

Todays Iraq TV broadcast schedule (subject to changes).

/maxres to riz

[theavonlady 2]

Attempted car boming of UK Teheran embassy fails. AP (Jpost subscribers only).

[theavonlady 2]

Patriot knocks out incoming missile at Kuwait City. (AP)

[theavonlady 2]

Check out the Red Zone Combat video at Reuters Raw Video. Gives me the chills!

And don't tell Aron Miller's mom!

[Necromancer- 0]

http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m1a1-980213-M-0922H-001.jpg

Yeah and paint it red so the Iraqi know where to shoot at.

[Assault (CAN) 1]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I learned the tactic from players here on the forum.

<span id='postcolor'>

Only more evidence that OFP is such a realistic game. Those tactics are being used in real life.

[Guest]

One of the nasty features that tanks have isn't modeled in OFP. The turret on a tank automatically turns in the direction of where it has been hit. So you have your shot but expect to have a very pissed tank aiming at your position within seconds.

[Oligo 1]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ April 01 2003,10:18)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">One of the nasty features that tanks have isn't modeled in OFP. The turret on a tank automatically turns in the direction of where it has been hit. So you have your shot but expect to have a very pissed tank aiming at your position within seconds.<span id='postcolor'>

Interesting, the finnish officers always blared about this, but I didn't believe it back then. Do you have a reference describing this feature, or is this just a pan-scandinavian armed forces rumour? How is the feature instrumented? How does the tank sense the direction from where it has been hit?

I know that some modern russian tanks have small radars, which detect incoming AT missiles and fire Claymore-like charges at the direction of the incoming to disable the missile. I also know that this feature makes russian tanks quite dangerous for their own infantry.

[Guest]

I am very sure that it's not a rumor. We were trained in evasion maneuvers in respect to this threat. This is an old technology since second generations of T-55s have it.

I don't know how it works, but I assume that there are simply pressure sensors on the hull detecting the point of impact. The turret would then be turned in that direction.

[theavonlady 2]

From the Gadget of The Month Club:

[Oligo 1]

We trained evading that threat as well. It's just that I have read this huge pile of military reference material (western material like Jane's but also russian, since Blaegis has a nice pile of russian literature on the subject) and nowhere have I seen a mention of this turret-turning feature. It's a real mystery.

[Oligo 1]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (theavonlady @ April 01 2003,11:01)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">From the Gadget of The Month Club:<span id='postcolor'>

I wonder whether it can translate phrases as "camel jockey" or "towelhead".

[PFC Mongoose 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (interstat @ April 01 2003,00:29)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Check this article out, sort of gives a good feeling for the warfare going on over in Iraq:

warfare

<span id='postcolor'>

I get solid Gateway Timeouts every time I try to view it.

[Guest]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Oligo @ April 01 2003,11:03)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">We trained evading that threat as well. It's just that I have read this huge pile of military reference material (western material like Jane's but also russian, since Blaegis has a nice pile of russian literature on the subject) and nowhere have I seen a mention of this turret-turning feature. It's a real mystery.  <span id='postcolor'>

Well, I know we can eliminate it as a scandinavian myth. I remember talking to a Croatian ex-tank commander about his country's armoured power. He told me that they still had a few 'original' T-55 without the turret turning feature and with a manual loader. Incidently he had commanded one of those tanks lacking the turret-turn feature, so it's a indirect reference as well.

[Guest]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (PFC Mongoose @ April 01 2003,11:07)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (interstat @ April 01 2003,00:29)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Check this article out, sort of gives a good feeling for the warfare going on over in Iraq:

warfare

<span id='postcolor'>

I get solid Gateway Timeouts every time I try to view it.<span id='postcolor'>

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">

US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge of death

Mark Franchetti, Nasiriya

The Times

March 30, 2003

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-628258,00.html

THE light was a strange yellowy grey and the wind was coming up, the

beginnings of a sandstorm. The silence felt almost eerie after a night of

shooting so intense it hurt the eardrums and shattered the nerves. My

footsteps felt heavy on the hot, dusty asphalt as I walked slowly towards

the bridge at Nasiriya. A horrific scene lay ahead.

Some 15 vehicles, including a minivan and a couple of trucks, blocked the

road. They were riddled with bullet holes. Some had caught fire and

turned into piles of black twisted metal. Others were still burning.

Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in the road or in

nearby ditches. All had been trying to leave this southern town

overnight, probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks and

heavy artillery.

Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the

coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young

American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved.

One man's body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tucked

away in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes.

His savings, perhaps.

Down the road, a little girl, no older than five and dressed in a pretty

orange and gold dress, lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who

may have been her father. Half his head was missing.

Nearby, in a battered old Volga, peppered with ammunition holes, an Iraqi

woman - perhaps the girl's mother - was dead, slumped in the back seat. A

US Abrams tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past the bodies.

This was not the only family who had taken what they thought was a last

chance for safety. A father, baby girl and boy lay in a shallow grave. On

the bridge itself a dead Iraqi civilian lay next to the carcass of a

donkey.

As I walked away, Lieutenant Matt Martin, whose third child, Isabella,

was born while he was on board ship en route to the Gulf, appeared beside

me.

"Did you see all that?" he asked, his eyes filled with tears. "Did you

see that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best I

could but I had no time. It really gets to me to see children being

killed like this, but we had no choice."

Martin's distress was in contrast to the bitter satisfaction of some of

his fellow marines as they surveyed the scene. "The Iraqis are sick

people and we are the chemotherapy," said Corporal Ryan Dupre. "I am

starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi.

No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him."

Only a few days earlier these had still been the bright-eyed small-town

boys with whom I crossed the border at the start of the operation. They

had rolled towards Nasiriya, a strategic city beside the Euphrates, on a

mission to secure a safe supply route for troops on the way to Baghdad.

They had expected a welcome, or at least a swift surrender. Instead they

had found themselves lured into a bloody battle, culminating in the worst

coalition losses of the war - 16 dead, 12 wounded and two missing marines

as well as five dead and 12 missing servicemen from an army convoy - and

the humiliation of having prisoners paraded on Iraqi television.

There are three key bridges at Nasiriya. The feat of Martin, Dupre and

their fellow marines in securing them under heavy fire was compared by

armchair strategists last week to the seizure of the Remagen bridge over

the Rhine, which significantly advanced victory over Germany in the

second world war.

But it was also the turning point when the jovial band of brothers from

America lost all their assumptions about the war and became jittery

aggressors who talked of wanting to "nuke" the place.

None of this was foreseen at Camp Shoup, one of the marines' tent

encampments in northern Kuwait, where officers from the 1st and 2nd

battalions of Task Force Tarawa, the 7,000-strong US Marines brigade,

spent long evenings poring over maps and satellite imagery before the

invasion.

The plan seemed straightforward. The marines would speed unhindered over

the 130 miles of desert up from the Kuwaiti border and approach Nasiriya

from the southeast to secure a bridge over the Euphrates. They would then

drive north through the outskirts of Nasiriya to a second bridge, over

the Inahr al-Furbati canal. Finally, they would turn west and secure the

third bridge, also over the canal. The marines would not enter the city

proper, let alone attempt to take it.

The coalition could then start moving thousands of troops and logistical

support units up highway 7, leading to Baghdad, 225 miles to the north.

There was only one concern: "ambush alley", the road connecting the first

two bridges. But intelligence suggested there would be little or no

fighting as this eastern side of the city was mostly "pro-American".

I was with Alpha company. We reached the outskirts of Nasiriya at about

breakfast time last Sunday. Some marines were disappointed to be carrying

out a mission that seemed a sideshow to the main effort. But in an

ominous sign of things to come, our battalion stopped in its tracks,

three miles outside the city.

Bad news filtered back. Earlier that morning a US Army convoy had been

greeted by a group of Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes, apparently

wanting to surrender. When the American soldiers stopped, the Iraqis

pulled out AK-47s and sprayed the US trucks with gunfire.

Five wounded soldiers were rescued by our convoy, including one who had

been shot four times. The attackers were believed to be members of the

Fedayeen Saddam, a group of 15,000 fighters under the command of Saddam's

psychopathic son Uday.

Blown-up tyres, a pool of blood, spent ammunition and shards of glass

from the bulletridden windscreen marked the spot where the ambush had

taken place. Swiftly, our AAVs (23-ton amphibious assault vehicles) took

up defensive positions. About 100 marines jumped out of their vehicles

and took cover in ditches, pointing their sights at a mud-caked house.

Was it harbouring gunmen? Small groups of marines approached, cautiously,

to search for the enemy. A dozen terrified civilians, mainly women and

children, emerged with their hands raised.

"It's just a bunch of Hajis," said one gunner from his turret, using

their nickname for Arabs. "Friggin' women and children, that's all."

Cobras and Huey attack helicopters began firing missiles at targets on

the edge of the city. Plumes of smoke rose as heavy artillery shook the

ground under our feet.

Heavy machinegun fire echoed across the huge rubbish dump that marks the

entrance to Nasiriya. Suddenly there was return fire from three large oil

tanks at a refinery. The Cobras were called back, and within seconds they

roared above our heads, firing off missiles in clouds of purple tracer

fire.

There were several loud explosions. Flames burst high into the sky from

one of the oil tanks. The marines believed that what opposition there was

had now been crushed. "We are going in, we are going in," shouted one of

the officers.

More than 20 AAVs, several tanks and about 10 Hummers equipped with

roof-mounted, anti-tank missile launchers prepared to move in. Crammed

inside them were some 400 marines. Tension rose as they loaded their guns

and stuck their heads over the side of the AAVs through the open roof,

their M-16 pointed in all directions.

As we set off towards the eastern city gate there was no sense of the

mayhem awaiting us down the road. A few locals dressed in rags watched

the awesome spectacle of America's war machine on the move. Nobody waved.

Slowly we approached the first bridge. Fires were raging on either side

of the road; Cobras had destroyed an Iraqi military truck and a T55 tank

positioned inside a dugout. Powerful explosions came from inside the

bowels of the tank as its ammunition and heavy shells were set off by the

fire. With each explosion a thick and perfect ring of black smoke ring

puffed out of the turret.

An Iraqi defence post lay abandoned. Cobras flew over an oasis of palm

trees and deserted brick and mud-caked houses. We charged onto the

bridge, and as we crossed the Euphrates, a large mural of Saddam came

into view. Some marines reached for their disposable cameras.

Suddenly, as we approached ambush alley on the far side of the bridge,

the crackle of AK-47s broke out. Our AAVs began to zigzag to avoid being

hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).

The road widened out to a square, with a mosque and the portrait of

Saddam on the left-hand side. The vehicles wheeled round, took up a

defensive position, back to back, and began taking fire.

Pinned down, the marines fired back with 40mm automatic grenade

launchers, a weapon so powerful it can go through thick brick walls and

kill anyone within a 5-yard range of where the shell lands.

I was in AAV number A304, affectionately nicknamed the Desert Caddy. It

shook as Keith Bernize, the gunner, fired off round after deafening round

at sandbag positions shielding suspected Fedayeen fighters. His steel

ammunition box clanged with the sound of smoking empty shells and

cartridges.

Bernize, who always carries a scan picture of his unborn baby daughter

with him, shot at the targets from behind a turret, peering through

narrow slits of reinforced glass. He shouted at his men to feed him more

ammunition. Four marines, standing at the AAV's four corners,

precariously perched on ammunition boxes, fired off their M-16s.

Their faces covered in sweat, officers shouted commands into field

radios, giving co-ordinates of enemy positions. Some 200 marines, fully

exposed to enemy fire and slowed down by their heavy weapons, bulky

ammunition packs and NBC suits, ran across the road, taking shelter

behind a long brick wall and mounds of earth. A team of snipers appeared,

yards from our vehicle.

The exchange of fire was relentless. We were pinned down for more than

three hours as Iraqis hiding inside houses and a hospital and behind

street corners fired a barrage of ammunition.

Despite the marines' overwhelming firepower, hitting the Iraqis was not

easy. The gunmen were not wearing uniforms and had planned their ambush

well - stockpiling weapons in dozens of houses, between which they moved

freely pretending to be civilians.

"It's a bad situation," said First Sergeant James Thompson, who was

running around with a 9mm pistol in his hand. "We don't know who is

shooting at us. They are even using women as scouts. The women come out

waving at us, or with their hands raised. We freeze, but the next minute

we can see how she is looking at our positions and giving them away to

the fighters hiding behind a street corner. It's very difficult to

distinguish between the fighters and civilians."

Across the square, genuine civilians were running for their lives. Many,

including some children, were gunned down in the crossfire. In a surreal

scene, a father and mother stood out on a balcony with their children in

their arms to give them a better view of the battle raging below. A few

minutes later several US mortar shells landed in front of their house. In

all probability, the family is dead.

The fighting intensified. An Iraqi fighter emerged from behind a wall of

sandbags 500 yards away from our vehicle. Several times he managed to

fire off an RPG at our positions. Bernize and other gunners fired dozens

of rounds at his dugout, punching large holes into a house and lifting

thick clouds of dust.

Captain Mike Brooks, commander of Alpha company, pinned down in front of

the mosque, called in tank support. Armed with only a 9mm pistol, he

jumped out of the back of his AAV with a young marine carrying a field

radio on his back.

Brooks, 34, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had been in command of 200

men for just over a year. He joined the marines when he was 19 because he

felt that he was wasting his life. He needed direction, was a bit of a

rebel and was impressed by the sense of pride in the corps.

He is a soft-spoken man, fair but very firm. Brave too: I watched him

sprint in front of enemy positions to brief some of his junior officers

behind a wall. Behind us, two 68-ton Abrams tanks rolled up, crushing the

barrier separating the lanes on the highway.

The earth shook violently as one tank, Desert Knight, stopped in front of

our row of AAVS and fired several 120mm shells into buildings.

A few hundred yards down ambush alley there was carnage. An AAV from

Charlie company was racing back towards the bridge to evacuate some

wounded marines when it was hit by two RPGs. The heavy vehicle shook but

withstood the explosions.

Then the Iraqis fired again. This time the rocket plunged into the

vehicle through the open rooftop. The explosion was deadly, made 10 times

more powerful by the ammunition stored in the back.

The wreckage smouldered in the middle of the road. I jumped out from the

rear hatch of our vehicle, briefly taking cover behind a wall. When I

reached the stricken AAV, the scene was mayhem.

The heavy, thick rear ramp had been blown open. There were pools of blood

and bits of flesh everywhere. A severed leg, still wearing a desert boot,

lay on what was left of the ramp among playing cards, a magazine, cans of

Coke and a small bloodstained teddy bear.

"They are f****** dead, they are dead. Oh my God. Get in there. Get in

there now and pull them out," shouted a gunner in a state verging on

hysterical.

There was panic and confusion as a group of young marines, shouting and

cursing orders at one another, pulled out a maimed body.

Two men struggled to lift the body on a stretcher and into the back of a

Hummer, but it would not fit inside, so the stretcher remained almost

upright, the dead man's leg, partly blown away, dangling in the air.

"We shouldn't be here," said Lieutenant Campbell Kane, 25, who was born

in Northern Ireland. "We can't hold this. They are trying to suck us into

the city and we haven't got enough ass up here to sustain this. We need

more tanks, more helicopters."

Closer to the destroyed AAV, another young marine was transfixed with

fear and kept repeating: "Oh my God, I can't believe this. Did you see

his leg? It was blown off. It was blown off."

Two CH-46 helicopters, nicknamed Frogs, landed a few hundred yards away

in the middle of a firefight to take away the dead and wounded.

If at first the marines felt constrained by orders to protect civilians,

by now the battle had become so intense that there was little time for

niceties. Cobra helicopters were ordered to fire at a row of houses

closest to our positions. There were massive explosions but the return

fire barely died down.

Behind us, as many as four AAVs that had driven down along the banks of

the Euphrates were stuck in deep mud and coming under fire.

About 1pm, after three hours of intense fighting, the order was given to

regroup and try to head out of the city in convoy. Several marines who

had lost their vehicles piled into the back of ours.

We raced along ambush alley at full speed, close to a line of houses. "My

driver got hit," said one of the marines who joined us, his face and

uniform caked in mud. "I went to try to help him when he got hit by

another RPG or a mortar. I don't even know how many friends I have lost.

I don't care if they nuke that bloody city now. From one house they were

waving while shooting at us with AKs from the next. It was insane."

There was relief when we finally crossed the second bridge to the

northeast of the city in mid-afternoon. But there was more horror to

come. Beside the smouldering wreckage of another AAV were the bodies of

another four marines, laid out in the mud and covered with camouflage

ponchos. There were body parts everywhere.

One of the dead was Second Lieutenant Fred Pokorney, 31, a marine

artillery officer from Washington state. He was a big guy, whose

ill-fitting uniform was the butt of many jokes. It was supposed to have

been a special day for Pokorney. After 13 years of service, he was to be

promoted to first lieutenant. The men of Charlie company had agreed they

would all shake hands with him to celebrate as soon as they crossed the

second bridge, their mission accomplished.

It didn't happen. Pokorney made it over the second bridge and a few

hundred yards down a highway through dusty flatlands before his vehicle

was ambushed. Pokorney and his men had no chance. Fully loaded with

ammunition, their truck exploded in the middle of the road, its remains

burning for hours. Pokorney was hit in the chest by an RPG.

Another man who died was Fitzgerald Jordan, a staff sergeant from Texas.

I felt numb when I heard this. I had met Jordan 10 days before we moved

into Nasiriya. He was a character, always chewing tobacco and coming up

to pat you on the back. He got me to fetch newspapers for him from Kuwait

City. Later, we shared a bumpy ride across the desert in the back of a

Humvee.

A decorated Gulf war veteran, he used to complain about having to come

back to Iraq. "We should have gone all the way to Baghdad 12 years ago

when we were here and had a real chance of removing Saddam."

Now Pokorney, Jordan and their comrades lay among unspeakable carnage. An

older marine walked by carrying a huge chunk of flesh, so maimed it was

impossible to tell which body part it was. With tears in his eyes and

blood splattered over his flak jacket, he held the remains of his friend

in his arms until someone gave him a poncho to wrap them with.

Frantic medics did what they could to relieve horrific injuries, until

four helicopters landed in the middle of the highway to take the injured

to a military hospital. Each wounded marine had a tag describing his

injury. One had gunshot wounds to the face, another to the chest. Another

simply lay on his side in the sand with a tag reading: "Urgent - surgery,

buttock."

One young marine was assigned the job of keeping the flies at bay. Some

of his comrades, exhausted, covered in blood, dirt and sweat walked

around dazed. There were loud cheers as the sound of the heaviest

artillery yet to pound Nasiriya shook the ground.

Before last week the overwhelming majority of these young men had never

been in combat. Few had even seen a dead body. Now, their faces had

changed. Anger and fear were fuelled by rumours that the bodies of

American soldiers had been dragged through Nasiriya's streets. Some

marines cried in the arms of friends, others sought comfort in the Bible.

Next morning, the men of Alpha company talked about the fighting over

MREs (meals ready to eat). They were jittery now and reacted nervously to

any movement around their dugouts. They suspected that civilian cars,

including taxis, had helped resupply the enemy inside the city. When cars

were spotted speeding along two roads, frantic calls were made over the

radio to get permission to "kill the vehicles". Twenty-four hours earlier

it would almost certainly have been denied: now it was granted.

Immediately, the level of force levelled at civilian vehicles was

overwhelming. Tanks were placed on the road and AAVs lined along one

side. Several taxis were destroyed by helicopter gunships as they drove

down the road.

A lorry filled with sacks of wheat made the fatal mistake of driving

through US lines. The order was given to fire. Several AAVs pounded it

with a barrage of machinegun fire, riddling the windscreen with at least

20 holes. The driver was killed instantly. The lorry swerved off the road

and into a ditch. Rumour spread that the driver had been armed and had

fired at the marines. I walked up to the lorry, but could find no trace

of a weapon.

This was the start of day that claimed many civilian casualties. After

the lorry a truck came down the road. Again the marines fired. Inside,

four men were killed. They had been travelling with some 10 other

civilians, mainly women and children who were evacuated, crying, their

clothes splattered in blood. Hours later a dog belonging to the dead

driver was still by his side.

The marines moved west to take a military barracks and secure their third

objective, the third bridge, which carried a road out of the city.

At the barracks, the marines hung a US flag from a statue of Saddam, but

Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Grabowski, the battalion commander, ordered it

down. He toured barracks. There were stacks of Russian-made ammunition

and hundreds of Iraqi army uniforms, some new, others left behind by

fleeing Iraqi soldiers.

One room had a map of Nasiriya, showing its defences and two large

cardboard arrows indicating the US plan of attack to take the two main

bridges. Above the map were several murals praising Saddam. One, which

sickened the Americans, showed two large civilian planes crashing into

tall buildings.

As night fell again there was great tension, the marines fearing an

ambush. Two tanks and three AAVs were placed at the north end of the

third bridge, their guns pointing down towards Nasiriya, and given orders

to shoot at any vehicle that drove towards American positions.

Though civilians on foot passed by safely, the policy was to shoot

anything that moved on wheels. Inevitably, terrified civilians drove at

speed to escape: marines took that speed to be a threat and hit out.

During the night, our teeth on edge, we listened a dozen times as the

AVVs' machineguns opened fire, cutting through cars and trucks like

paper.

Next morning I saw the result of this order - the dead civilians, the

little girl in the orange and gold dress.

Suddenly, some of the young men who had crossed into Iraq with me

reminded me now of their fathers' generation, the trigger-happy grunts of

Vietnam. Covered in the mud from the violent storms, they were drained

and dangerously aggressive.

In the days afterwards, the marines consolidated their position and put a

barrier of trucks across the bridge to stop anyone from driving across,

so there were no more civilian deaths.

They also ruminated on what they had done. Some rationalised it.

"I was shooting down a street when suddenly a woman came out and casually

began to cross the street with a child no older than 10," said Gunnery

Sergeant John Merriman, another Gulf war veteran. "At first I froze on

seeing the civilian woman. She then crossed back again with the child and

went behind a wall. Within less than a minute a guy with an RPG came out

and fired at us from behind the same wall. This happened a second time so

I thought, 'Okay, I get it. Let her come out again'.

She did and this time I took her out with my M-16." Others were less

sanguine.

Mike Brooks was one of the commanders who had given the order to shoot at

civilian vehicles. It weighed on his mind, even though he felt he had no

choice but to do everything to protect his marines from another ambush.

On Friday, making coffee in the dust, he told me he had been writing a

diary, partly for his wife Kelly, a nurse at home in Jacksonville, North

Carolina, with their sons Colin, 6, and four-year-old twins Brian and

Evan.

When he came to jotting down the incident about the two babies getting

killed by his men he couldn't do it. But he said he would tell her when

he got home. I offered to let him call his wife on my satellite phone to

tell her he was okay. He turned down the offer and had me write and send

her an e-mail instead.

He was too emotional. If she heard his voice, he said, she would know

that something was wrong.

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[theavonlady 2]

7--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (PFC Mongoose @ April 01 2003,127)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (interstat @ April 01 2003,00:29)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Check this article out, sort of gives a good feeling for the warfare going on over in Iraq:

warfare

<span id='postcolor'>

I get solid Gateway Timeouts every time I try to view it.<span id='postcolor'>

I have no problem viewing it. Article about the goriness of war. In particular, about a dozen civilians killed, most likely by US troops in the Nassiriyah area.

If you like to read about burning flesh and heads blown off, this is for you.

edit: Um....... like what Denior pasted in above.