Federalist
02-19-2005, 11:58 AM
On April 12, Tim’s platoon headed north of Baghdad toward the village of Al Tarmiyah, on a recon mission to see if the bridge there could support the vehicles that would follow as the 2/5 went north to Samarra. They rode in three amtracks. Coming to the bridge, two amtracks crossed and took up positions on the far side of the bridge near Al Tarmiyah while Tim’s stopped on the other side. Lt. Mauer, commanding the platoon, was in one of the lead amtracks. (“He was awesome,” Tim said. “We were blessed to have him.”) The Marines got out of their amtracks. Some were on security, some stretching their legs, some eating chow. However, a mixture of fedayeen, Republican Guard, and retreating troops had combined in the village to set up an ambush. It began when they fired two RPGs at the Marines. One RPG scored a direct hit on the left amtrack, killing the .50 caliber machine gunner on top and wounding the driver. Enemy gunners in a line of buildings 200 yards away opened up on the Marines. The enemy firing line flanked the Marines on both sides: “They set it up really nice . . . they had a nice cone of fire,” Tim relates, and the Marines were at the tip of the cone. 1st Platoon began to return fire. Tim’s squad was back with the rear amtrack: “I’m like, aw ****, we need to get across there and help these guys out.”
Tim’s amtrack “buttoned-up” and rolled across the bridge with its exposed machine gunner blazing away at the buildings in Al Tarmiyah with machine gun and grenade launcher. Tim could hear rounds impacting on the armor from the right side. As the amtrack took position on the right flank, it was nearly hit by an RPG that blew down a power line. Tim’s squad got out of the amtrack, formed a firing line, and began shooting into the buildings. They had no cover. His squad was “kissing the ground.”
A built-up road with thick tall grass on either side ran between the village and the Marines. Tim attempted to contact Lt. Mauer for instructions, but was unable to get through to him on the radio, probably because Mauer was attempting to call in a fire mission. “It was real chaotic.” So Tim settled on a course of action himself. He could see muzzle flashes on his right where the Marines were receiving fire from the roofs of two houses. The Marine philosophy of dealing with ambushes is to “assault through them.” “Assaulting through” involves a leap-frog maneuver in which half the Marines in a squad lay down fire while the other half advances. Tim led his squad in an attack on the buildings to his right. He and Corporal Marco Martinez advanced through the grass and Tim crossed the road with his M-16 on semi-automatic, looking for a position to set up the squad’s SMAW (shoulder-fired multi-purpose assault weapon—the Marine version of an RPG launcher).
“There were about five hadjis in the grass. I saw them right away and was able to get, like, three of ‘em. Another guy was hunkered down in the grass. Martinez was able to see him, but it was already too late, he had lobbed a grenade.” The grenade hit Tim in the leg, bounced off, rolled down the berm and exploded, knocking Tim to the ground. Marco Martinez shot the grenade thrower and another man as they fled through the grass. Tim was wounded in the right leg by the shrapnel. (“It felt like a hot iron.”) Marines in his squad applied a pressure bandage, and then he got up and continued to lead his squad, which engaged in house to house fighting.
They used the SMAW on four houses, blowing a hole in the wall of each and then entering through that hole to flush out the fedayeen inside. “There were about sixteen in each house. They were pretty organized. We’d go in and they’d rush out the back. I sent a fire team behind the back of the houses to shoot them as they came out. That worked pretty well. We got a lot of kills that way.”
The battle reached a crisis for Tim’s squad in the fourth house. The fedayeen fled out of the back of the house as usual, but this time they went into a bunker, 20 yards from the house, and the back door fire team was only able to hit a few of them. Tim’s group rushed the bunker. One of the Marines was shot, his spine severed, and he hit the ground between the house and the bunker. The fire team with Tim fell back to the house and laid enough fire on the bunker to keep the fedayeen from “spraying” the downed man, who was clearly bleeding to death.
At this point Marco Martinez earned the Navy Cross. He saw that the fedayeen had dropped an RPG launcher and two rounds. There it lay, between the house and the bunker. While the Marines poured fire onto the bunker, he ran out of the house to get the launcher and took cover behind a palm tree. The trouble at first was that he couldn’t figure out how to fire it—he hadn’t been trained to shoot an Iraqi RPG launcher. He took off all the safeties and inserted a RPG, but it just slid out the tube. (You have to imagine him doing this, out in no man’s land, with machine gun fire going off around him, trying to “get skinny” behind a palm tree.) This situation lasted about fifteen minutes. Finally, he realized, he had to twist the RPG in the launch tube to get it to catch. He fired on the bunker from fifteen yards and demolished it, getting partly caught in the blast himself.
Tim called up the amtrack and the Marines loaded in their wounded brother. Using the amtrack’s radio, he was finally able to contact his lieutenant, who told him to fall back, since he’d called in a “jackhammer” mission: fixed-winged aircraft were coming in to blast the area. Tim led his squad in a fighting withdrawal (“bound and back”) and then collapsed from his wounds. “I thought I was going to make it, but I got all dizzy and everything.” A blood transfusion in a helicopter saved his life. For his actions, Tim later received a Silver Star.
You might think this would have ended Tim’s tour of duty in Iraq, but it didn’t.
http://victorhanson.com/articles/bernthal021605.html
Tim’s next stops were a field hospital in southern Iraq “where they patched me up as best they could,” and the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where after two weeks of medical attention and convalescence, he was somehow able to convince his doctor to let him go back to Iraq. “I was able to talk to the doctor, and you know, made a deal with him that if I was able to walk around the hospital for a day without crutches or any of that stuff that I could sign a waiver, that would say I would go back or whatever.”
Here are Tim’s directions for getting back to the front on your own, without orders:
First, borrow camies. He didn’t have any camouflage gear because, as he said, “they were all tore up.” So he borrowed some from a medic at Landstuhl.
Then, go to the nearest military airfield: “Then, it’s pretty—you go down to the airfield and talk to the air boss; ‘when’s the next time,’ you know, ‘you’ve got a flight going back down to Kuwait?’ I was lucky—I waited there for like two, three days for the flight—and was able to get back to Kuwait.”
So, you’ve gotten back to Camp Commando, the Marine staging area in Kuwait. But how do you enter Iraq and find your unit? “That was gonna be the big problem, actually getting back up and into Iraq, because you’re actually not able to get back in unless you’re in a unit. But I was lucky enough that we had some new Marines coming to 2/5 [2nd Battalion, Regimental Combat Team 5]. So I had a convoy. I would have never gotten back if it wasn’t for that.”
But how did you manage to find those new Marines going to your unit? “Just lucky. I just started asking around. I kept checking in with the camp adjutant . . . it took awhile. So I got a ride up.”
I wondered, “Were the other guys in the squad surprised to see you?”
“Oh yeah, big time. When I got there General Mattis was actually at our place, interviewing Martinez about the fire fight. And, you know, I was able to see him through the window talking to Mattis and I was waiving. . .”
“What if you’d have just stayed there in Germany. Could you have done that?”
“Yeah, I would have gotten home.”
“And you called Alisha and said you were going to try to get back to Iraq?”
“Yeah. I didn’t tell her too much. I didn’t want her to worry.”
If the first part of this history is about having no worse enemy than a Marine, the second is about having no better friend. As Samawah is south of Baghdad, close to An Nasiriyah, and this is where the 2/5 patrolled from April through September, 2003. The people of As Samawah loved the Marines. They were Shiites who indeed felt liberated, and the Marines did their best to demonstrate friendship. They helped the civilians dig ditches, push carts, and rebuild their neglected city. They got “care packages” from home, often loaded with candy, which they distributed to the local kids. One day Tim helped bail hay, and the scene he describes goes back millennia: children cutting hay with scythes while he tossed it onto a wagon with a fork. The Iraqis invited the Marines for dinner—all-male “block party” affairs with grilled chicken, rice, and the Iraqi version of tortillas. One of his friends still keeps in touch by email with the town’s chief of police.
The day after I talked to Tim the elections in Iraq were held, and like most Americans, I was deeply moved by the courage of the Iraqi people and the numbers who had turned out to vote. I was hoping that the thirst for liberty wasn’t just a political slogan or an unsubstantiated ideal. I think that now we have proof that Iraqis do want freedom, liberty, democracy, and that they will beat the insurgency.
After my talk with Tim Tardif, it was especially painful to see how grudgingly many commentators—Molly Ivins for instance—acknowledged the success of the elections with one opening paragraph of faint praise while devoting the rest of their columns to the misery ahead. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show made a smarmy joke about how, after all the destruction we’d caused, the Iraqis could very well be saluting us with their middle fingers instead of ink stained index fingers. One young woman of Iraqi ancestry on NPR’s All Things Considered explained in a gush—sentimental, cynical, and self-congratulatory—how she could have voted in the Iraqi election but did not because she considered herself an American, and that the Iraqis already had too many Americans telling them what to do.
We haven’t spent over 1,500 lives and much blood to tell the Iraqis what to do, and failure to celebrate the Iraqi election, whatever lies ahead, is a failure to honor those who helped bring it about. We have given the Iraqis the chance to decide for themselves what they will do, and all indications are, they will embrace that chance. In his letter to the 1st Marine Division before the invasion of Iraq—a letter Lance Corporal Tim Tardif carried in his flak jacket as long as he was in Iraq—Major General J. N. Mattis told his men: “Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a U. S. Marine.” The Marines of the 2/5 demonstrated to fedayeen and Baathist thugs from the Al Ramaylah oil fields to Samarra that there was no worse enemy. In many instances, and especially to the people of As Samawah, they demonstrated there was no better friend. Among the many things we should see in this election are the courage and kindness of the Marines, kindness whose sincerity has been guaranteed by sacrifice.
http://victorhanson.com/articles/bernthal021705.html
Tim’s amtrack “buttoned-up” and rolled across the bridge with its exposed machine gunner blazing away at the buildings in Al Tarmiyah with machine gun and grenade launcher. Tim could hear rounds impacting on the armor from the right side. As the amtrack took position on the right flank, it was nearly hit by an RPG that blew down a power line. Tim’s squad got out of the amtrack, formed a firing line, and began shooting into the buildings. They had no cover. His squad was “kissing the ground.”
A built-up road with thick tall grass on either side ran between the village and the Marines. Tim attempted to contact Lt. Mauer for instructions, but was unable to get through to him on the radio, probably because Mauer was attempting to call in a fire mission. “It was real chaotic.” So Tim settled on a course of action himself. He could see muzzle flashes on his right where the Marines were receiving fire from the roofs of two houses. The Marine philosophy of dealing with ambushes is to “assault through them.” “Assaulting through” involves a leap-frog maneuver in which half the Marines in a squad lay down fire while the other half advances. Tim led his squad in an attack on the buildings to his right. He and Corporal Marco Martinez advanced through the grass and Tim crossed the road with his M-16 on semi-automatic, looking for a position to set up the squad’s SMAW (shoulder-fired multi-purpose assault weapon—the Marine version of an RPG launcher).
“There were about five hadjis in the grass. I saw them right away and was able to get, like, three of ‘em. Another guy was hunkered down in the grass. Martinez was able to see him, but it was already too late, he had lobbed a grenade.” The grenade hit Tim in the leg, bounced off, rolled down the berm and exploded, knocking Tim to the ground. Marco Martinez shot the grenade thrower and another man as they fled through the grass. Tim was wounded in the right leg by the shrapnel. (“It felt like a hot iron.”) Marines in his squad applied a pressure bandage, and then he got up and continued to lead his squad, which engaged in house to house fighting.
They used the SMAW on four houses, blowing a hole in the wall of each and then entering through that hole to flush out the fedayeen inside. “There were about sixteen in each house. They were pretty organized. We’d go in and they’d rush out the back. I sent a fire team behind the back of the houses to shoot them as they came out. That worked pretty well. We got a lot of kills that way.”
The battle reached a crisis for Tim’s squad in the fourth house. The fedayeen fled out of the back of the house as usual, but this time they went into a bunker, 20 yards from the house, and the back door fire team was only able to hit a few of them. Tim’s group rushed the bunker. One of the Marines was shot, his spine severed, and he hit the ground between the house and the bunker. The fire team with Tim fell back to the house and laid enough fire on the bunker to keep the fedayeen from “spraying” the downed man, who was clearly bleeding to death.
At this point Marco Martinez earned the Navy Cross. He saw that the fedayeen had dropped an RPG launcher and two rounds. There it lay, between the house and the bunker. While the Marines poured fire onto the bunker, he ran out of the house to get the launcher and took cover behind a palm tree. The trouble at first was that he couldn’t figure out how to fire it—he hadn’t been trained to shoot an Iraqi RPG launcher. He took off all the safeties and inserted a RPG, but it just slid out the tube. (You have to imagine him doing this, out in no man’s land, with machine gun fire going off around him, trying to “get skinny” behind a palm tree.) This situation lasted about fifteen minutes. Finally, he realized, he had to twist the RPG in the launch tube to get it to catch. He fired on the bunker from fifteen yards and demolished it, getting partly caught in the blast himself.
Tim called up the amtrack and the Marines loaded in their wounded brother. Using the amtrack’s radio, he was finally able to contact his lieutenant, who told him to fall back, since he’d called in a “jackhammer” mission: fixed-winged aircraft were coming in to blast the area. Tim led his squad in a fighting withdrawal (“bound and back”) and then collapsed from his wounds. “I thought I was going to make it, but I got all dizzy and everything.” A blood transfusion in a helicopter saved his life. For his actions, Tim later received a Silver Star.
You might think this would have ended Tim’s tour of duty in Iraq, but it didn’t.
http://victorhanson.com/articles/bernthal021605.html
Tim’s next stops were a field hospital in southern Iraq “where they patched me up as best they could,” and the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where after two weeks of medical attention and convalescence, he was somehow able to convince his doctor to let him go back to Iraq. “I was able to talk to the doctor, and you know, made a deal with him that if I was able to walk around the hospital for a day without crutches or any of that stuff that I could sign a waiver, that would say I would go back or whatever.”
Here are Tim’s directions for getting back to the front on your own, without orders:
First, borrow camies. He didn’t have any camouflage gear because, as he said, “they were all tore up.” So he borrowed some from a medic at Landstuhl.
Then, go to the nearest military airfield: “Then, it’s pretty—you go down to the airfield and talk to the air boss; ‘when’s the next time,’ you know, ‘you’ve got a flight going back down to Kuwait?’ I was lucky—I waited there for like two, three days for the flight—and was able to get back to Kuwait.”
So, you’ve gotten back to Camp Commando, the Marine staging area in Kuwait. But how do you enter Iraq and find your unit? “That was gonna be the big problem, actually getting back up and into Iraq, because you’re actually not able to get back in unless you’re in a unit. But I was lucky enough that we had some new Marines coming to 2/5 [2nd Battalion, Regimental Combat Team 5]. So I had a convoy. I would have never gotten back if it wasn’t for that.”
But how did you manage to find those new Marines going to your unit? “Just lucky. I just started asking around. I kept checking in with the camp adjutant . . . it took awhile. So I got a ride up.”
I wondered, “Were the other guys in the squad surprised to see you?”
“Oh yeah, big time. When I got there General Mattis was actually at our place, interviewing Martinez about the fire fight. And, you know, I was able to see him through the window talking to Mattis and I was waiving. . .”
“What if you’d have just stayed there in Germany. Could you have done that?”
“Yeah, I would have gotten home.”
“And you called Alisha and said you were going to try to get back to Iraq?”
“Yeah. I didn’t tell her too much. I didn’t want her to worry.”
If the first part of this history is about having no worse enemy than a Marine, the second is about having no better friend. As Samawah is south of Baghdad, close to An Nasiriyah, and this is where the 2/5 patrolled from April through September, 2003. The people of As Samawah loved the Marines. They were Shiites who indeed felt liberated, and the Marines did their best to demonstrate friendship. They helped the civilians dig ditches, push carts, and rebuild their neglected city. They got “care packages” from home, often loaded with candy, which they distributed to the local kids. One day Tim helped bail hay, and the scene he describes goes back millennia: children cutting hay with scythes while he tossed it onto a wagon with a fork. The Iraqis invited the Marines for dinner—all-male “block party” affairs with grilled chicken, rice, and the Iraqi version of tortillas. One of his friends still keeps in touch by email with the town’s chief of police.
The day after I talked to Tim the elections in Iraq were held, and like most Americans, I was deeply moved by the courage of the Iraqi people and the numbers who had turned out to vote. I was hoping that the thirst for liberty wasn’t just a political slogan or an unsubstantiated ideal. I think that now we have proof that Iraqis do want freedom, liberty, democracy, and that they will beat the insurgency.
After my talk with Tim Tardif, it was especially painful to see how grudgingly many commentators—Molly Ivins for instance—acknowledged the success of the elections with one opening paragraph of faint praise while devoting the rest of their columns to the misery ahead. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show made a smarmy joke about how, after all the destruction we’d caused, the Iraqis could very well be saluting us with their middle fingers instead of ink stained index fingers. One young woman of Iraqi ancestry on NPR’s All Things Considered explained in a gush—sentimental, cynical, and self-congratulatory—how she could have voted in the Iraqi election but did not because she considered herself an American, and that the Iraqis already had too many Americans telling them what to do.
We haven’t spent over 1,500 lives and much blood to tell the Iraqis what to do, and failure to celebrate the Iraqi election, whatever lies ahead, is a failure to honor those who helped bring it about. We have given the Iraqis the chance to decide for themselves what they will do, and all indications are, they will embrace that chance. In his letter to the 1st Marine Division before the invasion of Iraq—a letter Lance Corporal Tim Tardif carried in his flak jacket as long as he was in Iraq—Major General J. N. Mattis told his men: “Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a U. S. Marine.” The Marines of the 2/5 demonstrated to fedayeen and Baathist thugs from the Al Ramaylah oil fields to Samarra that there was no worse enemy. In many instances, and especially to the people of As Samawah, they demonstrated there was no better friend. Among the many things we should see in this election are the courage and kindness of the Marines, kindness whose sincerity has been guaranteed by sacrifice.
http://victorhanson.com/articles/bernthal021705.html