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The Marine Drive On Baghdad

The three-week campaign to crush the regime of Saddam Hussein under the commander in chief of Central Command, U.S. Army general Tommy Franks, was one of rapid movement over vast distances. In the first Gulf War the press had complained vigorously about tight censorship of events on the battlefield. In Iraq in 2003, censorship hadn't disappeared, of course, but the Department of Defense made an extraordinary decision to place dozens of "embedded" reporters from print and television with units throughout the conflict. They were given training stateside to accompany Marines and soldiers in combat. The media would debate the merits of the program for years to come, but one thing was certain: because of the embedding technique and the advances in the global communication network, the public for the first time was allowed a clear window on combat as it happened. The result featured a lot of micro images, with overexcited journalists calling military operations in a style more befitting a sports announcer than a war reporter.

From the earliest planning stages, Franks's invasion plan had called for attacks into Iraq from both the north and south-with one division attacking from Turkey and a corps from the desert of northern Kuwait. Yet the Bush administration was unsuccessful in securing Turkish consent for deployment of Coalition forces, so Franks and his staff had to reconfigure their assault plan into something that bore a close resemblance to that developed in 1990 for Operation Desert Storm by General Schwarzkopf and his staff, with one critical difference. The main objective in the 2003 war was to "cut off the head" - Baghdad itself was to be seized, and Saddam hunted down. As in the first Gulf War, airpower played a pivotal role. Air strikes knocked out the Iraqi army's command and control, thus rendering Saddam's defensive network vulnerable to attack, and B-5Z bombers softened up and demoralized the frontline defensive positions. This time around, there were far more precision-guided munitions, and an extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles to gather intelligence and drop ordnance. A general consensus emerged in the Marines and among the other services that these technological marvels had a very bright future in the American military inventory.

The U.S. Army's V Corps conducted the main attack, a sweeping left hook in the west, where the defenses were expected to be lighter than they were in the east. It fell to the Marines of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, about eighty-five thousand people in all, under the command of Lieutenant General James Conway, to make the secondary attack east of the army's main effort.

The initial objectives of the 1st Marine Division's attack were the strategically vital Al Rumaylah oil fields and a key pumping station in the southern corner of Iraq. The fields contained more than 450 active wellheads. Then, the entire Marine attacking force would feint toward the city of Basrah, in an effort to convince the enemy that they planned to take the traditional invasion route up the Tigris River toward Baghdad.

Rather than driving up the roads that followed the river, however, the Marines pivoted west, and split the division's highly mechanized units between two roads that ran along a north-south axis: Highway 1, an unfinished four-lane road leading to Highway 6, which fed Baghdad from the southeast, and Highway 7, to the east of Highway 1, which also joined Highway 6 in the vicinity of Al Numaniyah.

The early feint toward Basrah worked. No less than five divisions of the Iraqi regular army were left sitting on their hands north of Basrah, as the Marines drove past them toward Baghdad. Had the division marched north along a single road, it would have stretched out more than 174 miles. Each day, according to The March Up, a account of the Marine war by two former Marines, Bing West and retired Major General Ray L. Smith, the Marine division consumed forty-five thousand to sixty-five thousand meals a day, drank thirty-five thousand gallons of water, and filled its eight thousand vehicles with two hundred thousand gallons of fuel.

It would be an astonishingly fast march, despite the awful weather, and the periodic ambushes and fixed defensive stands by Iraqi soldiers and the Fedayeen, the irregular, poorly trained troops who were fanatically loyal to Saddam Hussein. The logistical forces attached to the Marine division waged their own private battle to keep up with the fighting end of the column. The Marines conducting this attack were both well trained and well led. All echelons of two of the three regimental combat teams (RCTs) doing the lion's share of the fighting, the 5th and 7th Marines, had trained as organic units for months before hostilities began. The third RCT, built around the 1st Marine Regiment, had been cobbled together in a hurry from all over the globe. Yet the 1st RCT displayed the same level of esprit and unit integrity as its sister regimental teams once the division pulled out of Kuwait.

The commanding general of the Marine division had the distinction of having commanded every infantry echelon from platoon through division. An intense, energetic Marine officer, Major General James N. Mattis is known for clear thinking and the ability to make decisions quickly. As far as Operation Iraqi Freedom was concerned, Mattis felt that speed was vital to the success of the overarching political objective: establishing a stable Iraq with democratic elections, law, and a market economy. It was also the best way to limit casualties. In December 2002, the general had assembled his commanders for a briefing on the upcoming war. "I know one thing," he said. "The president, the National Command Authority, and the American people need speed. The sooner we get it over with the better. Our overriding principle will be speed, speed, speed."

Mattis, and everyone else, seemed to get their wish when Baghdad fell on April 9, just twenty days after the invasion began. It was the objective of the fastest-moving army in history. Yet as time went by, it became apparent that many of Saddam's fighters had melted away only to fight another day.

After Saddam's regime collapsed, the Americans and their allies found themselves in a protracted counterinsurgency conflict. Marines (and U.S. Army and foreign soldiers, most notably those of the United Kingdom) were at once providing security forces to stanch anarchy and chaos; helping to rebuild a shattered infrastructure and build support for a, fledgling Iraqi government beset with problems; and conducting continuous small-unit operations at the company and platoon level against an increasingly large and well-organized insurgency fueled by Muslim rage over the American occupation. Eventually there would be battalion-sized combat operations in the close quarters of insurgent strongholds such as Samarra and Fallujah.

The Marine drive on Baghdad commenced when the 1st Division's three regimental combat teams, the 1st, 5th, and 7th RCTs, crossed their lines of departure near the border of Iraq and Kuwait on March 20 and 21, 2003. The scheme of maneuver called for an attack along a southeast-to-northwest axis. It was a race all the way, though at a great many junctures, the vehicles at the front end of the Marines' columns would spill their most vital cargo - Marine infantrymen, ready and willing to take the fight forward, adding small-arms fire to the chorus of blasts from Abrams tanks and the LAVs' highly effective 25mm Chain Guns.

Almost without exception, the combatants faced by the Marines were not the regular forces of a deeply demoralized and outgunned Iraqi army, but rather thousands of irregulars, Ba'ath Party Fedayeen, kitted out with AK-47s, mortars, and a plethora of rocket-propelled grenade launchers of Russian and Chinese origin. Some proportion of the enemy who put up serious resistance - no one knows exactly what percentage - were not indigenous to Iraq but had been drawn to the conflict from Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states by the chance to kill American infidels.

For more than half of the drive north, the most decorated regiment in the history of the Corps, the 5th Marines, conducted the main attack effort. A close look at the operation as experienced by elements of Colonel Joe Dunford's regimental combat team (RCT) reveals much about the trajectory of the campaign, the types of friction and challenges the Marines faced, and why the objective - wresting Baghdad from the clutches of Saddam and his Ba'ath Party loyalists - was achieved with remarkably low casualties. The 5th Marines' initial mission was to seize the southern Rumaylah oil fields. That attack commenced at 2030 on March 20, some nine hours in advance of the main attack. By 0100 on March 21, the regiment had overwhelmed the defenders of this strategically invaluable piece of real estate at the cost of one Marine killed and one wounded in action.

By the evening of March 27, the 5th RCT had neutralized the defenders of the Hantush airfield. The Marines needed the airstrip so KC-130s could land and deposit fuel bladders to feed the advance, thus reducing the number of highly vulnerable giant fuel trucks Mattis needed to insert in the ground columns. Before the airstrip was operational, though, the unwelcome word had come down from General Franks: all forces were to pause and shift from the offensive drive toward Baghdad to stabilizing operations along the increasingly lengthy supply lines. As the days and nights went by with no one sure of when the next engagement would come, few Marines were able to sleep due to the cacophony of hundreds of military vehicles, the crackle of radios, and barked commands of sergeants and officers. As night approached, the Marines broke stride and prepared night fighting and sleeping positions along the roads, with each vehicle pulling into its assigned night security position. Exhausted, sand-drenched enlisted Marines stood by to get word on the sentry schedules and layout of the machine-gun and mortar positions from their sergeants. A strict blackout was enforced - several thousand Marines were encamped in the middle of Iraq each night, an, not a single flashlight was visible.

The 5th RCT on March 31 defeated an armored Iraqi battalion in retaking the Hantush airfield - they had been forced to retreat a few days earlier when Washington feared that allied forces were overextended. In so doing, it played an important role in the division's deception plan to make the enemy think the main attack would continue up Highway 1. The next day, the 5th RCT attacked in a northeasterly direction along Route 27 and seized a bridge over the Saddam Canal.

Dawn on April 1 found Joe Dunford's 5th RCT on the line of departure for an important event: the crossing of the Tigris River and cutting of Highway 6, the main road connecting southern Iraq with the capital. The 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, under Lieutenant Colonel Fred Padilla, that day found itself heavily engaged in combat against a dug-in enemy battalion on the other side of the river. It took Padilla's Marines most of the day to reduce the enemy positions, but by the end of the day, most of the regiment was across the river and pushing north against light resistance, while the 7th RCT was attacking toward Al Kut.

By April 4 the 5th RCT was on the edges of Baghdad. The assault into Baghdad proper began for the unit on the night of April 8. The column plunged into a city in chaos, replete with looters and the continuous sound of small-arms fire. Colonel Dunford had orders to link up with the 3rd Infantry Division on the bridges on the west side of the city. While Lieutenant Colonel Padilla was orchestrating a series of company-level raids on several different objectives, word came down to Colonel Dunford that Division wanted the 5th RCT to take the Presidential Palace. It was a battalion-sized operation. Dunford gave it to Padilla's 1st Battalion, 5th Marines.

Padilla was dismayed to find out that he would have little tactical intelligence about the objective. Six hundred to eight hundred enemy troops were suspected to be in the vicinity of the palace. The maps Padilla's men had were 1:100,000 scale - useless for navigating narrow city streets.

Padilla put together a mechanized task force, leaving most of his soft skinned vehicles behind. He was a disciple of Mattis: the byword to his men was "speed." Get in and get it done quickly. As they approached the heart of the city and the palace grounds, every street and alleyway came alive with small-arms and machine-gun fire, and rocket-propelled grenades. For the next nine hours, 1/5 fought what many observers believe to be the most intense and harrowing single-battalion action in the Marines' fight for Baghdad.

Events threatened early on to get out of hand. Shear chaos reigned when Alpha Company took a wrong turn and had to double back on itself. Traffic got snarled, as the alleyways and many streets were too narrow to accommodate more than one vehicle at a time. The incoming fire was inaccurate - the Fedayeen had a well-deserved reputation as lousy shots - but it was very steady and unnerving nonetheless.

In the midst of the fighting near the palace, Padilla received a message: Saddam Hussein himself had been spotted near the Abus Hanifah Mosque. A company from 1/5 was quickly dispatched. Soon, B Company pushed its way through the front gate of the palace, whose defenders had fled under intense fire. Padilla called in additional forces to consolidate the palace grounds, where he still had a fierce fight on his hands. Artillery was called in on enemy firing positions.

Company C was detached from the fight immediately around the palace to carry out yet a third battalion objective: a site where POWs had just been spotted. Captain Sean Blodgett's unit found itself under increasing fire as it approached the site. As it came up on an intersection, a Fedayeen militiaman on a rooftop let fly with a burst of AK-47 fire, the rounds impacting a mere six to eight inches from Blodgctt's head. Several Marines returned fire, killing the enemy gunman.

Meanwhile, Alpha Company, under Captain Blair Sokol, had made its way to the mosque. It, too, was in the midst of a real brawl. Padilla had three companies engaged in independent fights. No reserves were available to assist any of his units should they get into trouble. Colonel Dunford then offered Padilla the RCT's quick reaction force. Padilla gladly accepted the offer. With additional men and air force and Marine air support, Padilla's Marines were soon getting the best of the enemy in all three fights. It was around the mosque that the fighting was the most concentrated since enemy troops kept challenging the Marines' tanks and infantry. The first attempt to take the mosque failed. A new breach point was established, and soon Marines were pouring into the building in good order, clearing one room at a time. Twenty enemy fighters surrendered inside the mosque, and fourteen RPGs were seized.

Fred Padilla was very surprised to learn that only twenty-two 1/5 Marines had been evacuated for medical treatment, given the intensity of the fighting. But in fact, a total of seventy-six Marines had been wounded in the fighting over the past nine hours or so, but most had refused medical evacuation. They wanted to stay and fight it out in support of their fellow Marines. Only one Marine from 1/5 had been killed in the fight.

Among the units attached to the 5th RCT for extended periods of time during the operation was the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Stacy Clardy. Indeed, Clardy's unit was at the tip of the 5th RCT spear for about half of its drive to Baghdad. Clardy's battalion of a thousand men and 125 LAVs, unique to the Marine Corps, was attached for five days to 5th RCT in the drive on Baghdad. However, for the remainder of the monthlong campaign, the 3rd LAR Battalion functioned as an independent battalion reporting directly to Major General Jim Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division.

For about 230 of the 500 miles of the march up from Kuwait, Clardy's Marines served as the eyes and ears of Mattis's entire force, blazing a high-speed path other units would ultimately follow. It was a campaign of rapid movement over varied terrain, with elements of the battalion often spread out over twenty-five miles. Neither Clardy nor anybody else in the four companies under his command got much sleep. Elements of the battalion encountered largely ineffective harassment by RPGs, mortars, machine guns, and small arms almost every day.

Lieutenant Colonel Clardy estimates that his unit moved about 3,100 miles in one month. In that short time, the men of the 3rd LAR Battalion had also engaged in fifteen firefights with the enemy of varying levels of intensity.

The most dramatic of the 3rd LAR Battalion's operations in Iraq unfolded on April 13. The unit had just completed an operation east of Samarra, and was preparing to attack north into Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, having been given but a few hours' notice of the time of departure. As the unit was saddling up in preparation for the march north at about 0700, an Iraqi civilian approached the battalion commander, claiming he knew of some American prisoners of war in Samarra under guard by Ba'ath Party members.

Clardy was initially skeptical. "We always had people walking up to us and saying they saw Saddam Hussein down the street or other such claims."' After a Marine human-intelligence exploitation team had interrogated the man, the Americans gained the impression that he might very well be telling the truth. Clardy attempted to contact his commander, Task Force Tripoli's Brigadier General John Kelly, for guidance, but communications failed, as they often did in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Clardy had to make the decision himself, and fast, because he was supposed to be heading toward Tikrit to link up with Task Force Tripoli. "I couldn't just leave with the idea they might be there, so I said, `Okay. Let's go get them."' In making such a quick unilateral decision, Clardy was employing the Marines' war fighting philosophy that opts for making "intuitive decisions" fast, on the spot, with limited information, rather than "analytical decision making," which calls for more time and information before a decision is rendered.

Clardy knew that POW rescue was officially outside of his list of missions. In fact, such risky and sensitive tasks were typically carried out by special operation forces, like SEALs or Delta Force. But Clardy also knew his men and believed in them. Using a handwritten map - "even the house number designated as holding the prisoners was wrong" - Lieutenant Colonel Clardy's thirty-two Marines of the 3rd Platoon, Company D, 3rd LAR Battalion drove into a potential enemy stronghold, located the house where the Americans were held by identifying a POW in a window, and assaulted the house. The Ba'athist guards were overwhelmed and surrendered without a shot.

A little while later, the platoon returned with seven pajama-clad U.S. soldiers: two army Apache helicopter pilots, and five members of the 507th Maintenance Company who had been captured three weeks earlier. The prisoners emerged from the back doors of an LAV into the view of two hundred Marines. When the Marines realized who these Americans were and the POWs realized they were safe, Clardy remembered, "There wasn't a dry eye in the house. We were a pretty happy bunch of Americans."

History will show the invasion to have been a textbook operation. The performance of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, commanded by General James Conway, was even better than it had been in the first Gulf War. In the 1991 conflict, as General Boomer said, the enemy force was for the most part demoralized. On paper they constituted a formidable force, but in the event, most preferred to surrender than fight. In spring 2003, the Iraqi forces were outgunned and outfought, but they gave a better account of themselves on the ground, where close-in urban combat and the presence of thousands of civilians in the combat zones served to neutralize the considerable advantages enjoyed by the U.S. military as a result of technological sophistication and superior training. They were also fighting for their own land, not for Kuwait.

Operation Iraqi Freedom showcased the Marines' capacity to operate effectively in a land campaign in which a reinforced Marine division and air wing fought five hundred miles from the ships that ferried most of them to the fight and provided their core logistical capacity.

James A. Warren. . Free Press. 2005.

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