Read Online Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War by Tim Pritchard - Free Book Online Page A

out a machine-gun position with a TOW.”
    He then heard Lieutenant Colonel Grabowksi reprimand him.
    “Hey, I didn’t authorize you to shoot that TOW.”
    Reid couldn’t compute what he was hearing.
Hey, wait a minute. Schielein’s up there on the scene and he knows what’s going on. The battalion
commander can’t control every detail of the battle.
It worried him that the battalion commander seemed to want to influence every course of action. He kept this thought to himself.
    It was followed by more radio transmissions with information that there were some soldiers still stuck in the city and that they’d been ambushed by Iraqis faking surrender. Then Major Tuggle, the battalion XO, had come back on the net and said that the Iraqis had not been faking surrender. Reid tried to work out what it all meant from the bits and pieces he could hear.
Why did we get one report and then have it squashed?
Maybe Tuggle was worried that the marines would get trigger-happy and shoot up Iraqis who were surrendering for real.
    With his head out of the TC’s hatch, Reid saw helos and F-18s flying over the city. As the helos passed by, they were carrying rockets and missiles. They flew back carrying nothing.
Well, they’re shooting at something.
He heard the boom of the artillery shooting some counterbattery. There was more talking on the net. The radio communications were starting to build and becoming more intense. From the messages, he could tell that Alpha Company was now dismounted and the marines were clearing some buildings on the eastern side of the MSR.
    Ben Reid had never wanted to be anything other than a marine infantry officer. His father had been one, and as a family they’d moved around every few years, on new Marine Corps assignments, between Virginia, Hawaii, Kansas, North Carolina, and Texas. All his friends had fathers who were marines, and he’d grown up admiring everything about the Marine Corps.
    Reid was conscious that he’d come out of school just over two years ago and yet was in charge of marines who’d been in the Corps for many years. He was grateful that on the ship to Kuwait he’d shared quarters with Second Lieutenant Michael Seely. Seely was one of the few guys who had been in Desert Storm, so they talked about what to expect. He let the older and more experienced Seely do the talking because he didn’t want to look like a jackass and ask stupid questions. He’d learned from him and from books passed out on ship that the Iraqis used British military doctrine but had failed to adapt it adequately to work with Soviet equipment. He didn’t know whether the information would be useful, but it gave him something to look out for. He worked hard to develop teamwork with Second Lieutenant Fred Pokorney, his artillery forward observer. Fred was a big, lanky guy whose uniform never seemed to fit properly. He’d had several years in the Marine Corps and was due for promotion to first lieutenant. They would talk late into the night about FiST tactics, as well as tell each other personal stuff about wives and family.
    Once, on ship, he’d sat down to eat at the same table as Lieutenant Colonel Grabowski, the battalion commander. Even though his nametag was clearly showing, Grabowski still got his name wrong.
    “How’s it going, Martin?”
    “I’m Lieutenant Reid, sir.”
    That’s how the conversation began and that’s how it ended. Reid understood that Grabowski was probably not very good with names and had other things to worry about, but it did concern him.
The Marine Corps is a
people business. If you know the names of your marines, their girlfriends’
names, the brand of beer they like to drink, the chances are that you will
also know about fire support, about weapons systems, about tactics.
Maybe he was being unfair, but he just feared that Grabowski sometimes gave the impression that he cared about other things more than his marines. That’s when there is a danger that you will lose