Albert Fanous
BRANCH OF SERVICE: United States Army
RANK: Specialist
YEARS SERVED: 6
TIME SERVED IN IRAQ: 1 year, 11 months. (2 tours)
UNIT: 101st Airborne Division
HOMETOWN: Strongsville, Ohio
HIGH SCHOOL: Strongsville High '00
In the early stages of the Iraq War, news broke fast and furious. From an American soldier killing his own by tossing grenades into a command tent, to the Iraqis pounding their shoes on the felled giant statue of Saddam Hussein; the stories provided the lasting images of the war.
For most of us, the images we saw on television seemed worlds away. Strongsville, Ohio native and Army veteran Albert Fanous was there for most of it. Prior to deploying for the initial stages of the Iraq War however, Fanous nearly had his deployment derailed due to a freak training accident.
Three months before receiving orders, Fanous and his fellow soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were going through training which they believed was to prepare them for an imminent war. While practicing helicopter drops, Fanous suffered a misstep. Searing pain shot through his foot and lower leg.
“We had a three-mile march after the drop and my foot was swelling and the pain was excruciating,” he said.
The result was a broken foot. Having been born and raised in Egypt until he was 14 years old, Fanous’ ability to speak Arabic fluently made him an invaluable asset to his unit. Although he had the option to stay behind as his unit was preparing to deploy. Fanous took his cast off a week early to stay with his military brothers.
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“Oh my god we are under attack!”
As the deployment to Kuwait neared, veterans from the first Gulf War began dispensing invaluable advice. From them Fanous learned of which items he needed to pack extra; such as baby wipes and how to wash clothes and keep clean when facilities are not available. Also, senior non-commissioned officers passed on various tricks such as keeping water bottles in wool socks overnight to keep them cool. The Gulf War vets provided insight that could only be obtained from experience.
The 101st arrived in Kuwait in March, 2003 and began performing training exercises. The repetition quickly became tedious and the chemical warfare equipment was extremely hot and uncomfortable.Many troops were hoping for something to break up the monotony. Unfortunately, what they received was a tragic event that would scar the Army and shock Americans back home.
After a particularly heavy night of scud missile drills, Albert was part of the first of many incidents that would make national headlines in the States. It was the wee hours of March 23, 2003 and Fanous had just drifted off to sleep. Suddenly a loud explosion, quickly followed by another, rocked the camp.
After months of preparing to go to war, frantic soldiers assumed the war had come to them. Chaos ensued with soldiers throwing uniforms on and gathering their weapons.
“Oh my god we are under attack!” Fanous thought.
Rumors quickly circulated throughout the camp. Orders were given to proceed to a bunker and wait.
“Finally news came out that one of the guys had gone crazy and dropped grenades into the command post,” Fanous recalled.
The soldier who would obtain notorious fame for murdering two troops and injuring 14 others was Sergeant Hasan Akbar, an American-born Muslim convert who was upset the U.S. was on the brink of war with a predominately Muslim nation. The two men murdered that night were Air Force Major Gregory Stone and Army Captain Christopher Seifert. Fanous and the 101st had not yet set foot in Iraq and were already mourning the loss of two of their own.
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Part of the infantry, Fanous worked with a team of three guys on a heavily-armed Humvee designed primarily to destroy enemy tanks. Humvees like the one Albert manned are equipped with two .50 caliber machine guns, a MK 19 40mm grenade-launcher machine gun and a tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided or TOW missile system.
“Our job was to provide security for all the ground troops making the march from Kuwait to Baghdad. Our orders were to destroy any enemy tanks and make contact with any Iraqi military personnel. “
“Heading into Iraq, I was worried, excited and experiencing pretty much every other emotion,” Fanous recalled. “I was optimistic I might not see much action, but I was prepared for anything because I knew once the Islamic aspects of Jihad kicked in there might be more fighting; I hoped for the best but expected the worst. “
Once they got into Iraq, Fanous’ unit saw nothing in terms of resistance.
“Every time we thought we saw something, it was either abandoned or destroyed,” he said.
The biggest enemy in those early days was the infamous sandstorm. So intense were some of the storms they nearly eliminated visibility completely and grind the 101st’s progress to a halt.
“It made it impossible for us to even see,” Fanous said. “It’s hard to describe, you go outside and everything was completely red and we were just covered in sand.”
For Albert’s team aboard the humvee, the sand also created headaches with equipment maintenance.
“The .50 caliber was fine, it is a very old weapon system and it can take about anything,” Fanous explained. “The Mark 19 was a more delicate weapon system that needed to be cleaned constantly; you really had to baby it.”
The storms also prevented the ground troops from essential air support, which further slowed things down.
Karbala
When Albert and his team arrived near Karbala they waited briefly at the outskirts of town for the infantry guys to catch up.
“It was apparent somebody had been there before us because there were dead bodies all over,” he said. “We weren’t sure who had killed them, but we knew the Baath Party was driving through towns and killing people who were not going to resist (against the U.S.). The 3rd Infantry Division came in with their Bradleys and fired a warning shot at a couple of vehicles and everything broke loose from there.”
Americans came under heavy fire from small arms and RPGs.
“To be honest, if it wasn’t for the Bradleys, it could have been very messy,” Fanous said.
His squad leader placed him in position with his scoped machine gun. He was clear to take out any suspicious people coming through. Fanous was instructed to be selective with his targets – only fire if the person had a weapon and never on women or children. While lying prone on the pavement next to his humvee, Fanous saw a vehicle coming. In between him and the vehicle was a Bradley. As the vehicle tried to pass, the Bradley pulled out in front of it. As Fanous watched through his scope, enemy combatants jumped out of the vehicle with RPGs.
“Apparently the guys in the Bradley had already noticed the weapons because they really lit them up,” he recalled. “I wanted to fire but I didn’t have a clear target and the Bradley was taking care of business; I did not end up firing a round in that battle.”
It was the battle in Karbala that made it clear what life in Iraq would be like for Albert and his Army brothers. “We were fighting an enemy that was not wearing a uniform and did not use the same tactics as us. Our training did not prepare us for some of those things,” he explained. “We knew they were willing to die for anything, so every time something happened we just tried to react to it as best we could.”
There were times when Fanous experienced a very positive response from Iraqis. Some towns received U.S. troops positively, throwing flowers and candy at convoys. Often, children would wave and interact with the Americans. Fanous felt most Iraqi citizens considered the troops as liberators.
His Arabic tongue was not always a blessing, however, especially when fellow soldiers would attempt to get Albert to translate jokes to Iraqi citizens. Most were received only with strange looks and bewilderment.
“It was getting annoying,” He recalled. “I told them, (the Iraqis) aren’t going to get our sense of humor, something that is funny to us in the States is confusing to them.”
“I also spoke to some Iraqi soldiers when we were there and found out they were paid very poorly, if at all,” Fanous added. “Often they only had raw onions and bread to eat.”
April 9, 2003: A Historic Day
“I remember one specific day and every time I see it on TV I think ‘wow, I can’t believe I was there’,” Fanous recalls. “All because we were tired of eating MREs (Meals, Ready to Eat),”
Albert pleaded with Sergeant Cooper, his platoon sergeant, to go to the city in search of better food.
“I said, ‘hey Coop, I’m tired of MREs, I speak the language and you have the authority, let’s go to the city and get some food.”
At first, Sergeant Cooper expressed doubt, but a persuasive Fanous wore him down and before long they were gathering money and preparing a food-procurement mission. The group of troops headed to Baghdad and were passing through Firdos Square, the site of the famous giant statue of Saddam Hussein. There was a large gathering of people making a lot of noise. At first, Fanous admits, the size of the crowd made the troops nervous as they initially had no idea what was taking place. The attention was on an Iraqi attempting to pull down the statue with a tractor.
“The only thing he was succeeding in doing was popping a wheelie with the tractor,” Fanous recalls laughing. “It was the funniest scene.”
Finally, a U.S. Marine armored recovery vehicle wrapped chains around the neck of the giant statue and began to pull it down. As viewers from around the world watched live, the statue bent forward and then collapsed to the ground in what would become the most symbolic image of the war. As Fanous watched, the Saddam statue was toppled and dragged down the street with hundreds of Iraqis hitting it with the bottoms of their shoes.
“I told everybody, ‘this is part of history, we are going to tell this story to our grandkids when we are older’,” Fanous said. “Knowing the significance of hitting someone with the bottom of your shoe in Iraq, it made me realize, ‘wow, they really do hate Saddam.’”
Mahmoudiya
Fanous remembers most the people in Baghdad treating U.S. troops well.
“Some started bringing us food and water and even offered their homes for us to take showers,” he said. “I was surprised how we were treated.”
Although patrols in Baghdad rarely resulted in combat, they would often bring the discovery of explosives or a weapons cache, one of which was stashed in an amusement park. While in the amusement park, troops came upon an abandoned, broken-down motorcycle.
“One of our guys was a motorcycle mechanic back home and he got the thing running,” Fanous recalled. “Next thing you know we are taking turns riding it around the park; my first time riding on a motorcycle happened in Iraq.”
Not long after Fanous’ unit received orders to advance to Mosul in the northern part of Iraq. They were told they would spend the remainder of their six months there. “Six months then became eight months, then 10 months,” Fanous said. “After that it was like ‘we are going to be here forever, we are never going home.’”
On the way to Mosul from Baghdad, orders came down to clear a city called Mahmoudiya. While clearing the houses, Fanous and his team stopped at an abandoned police station. “I was notified there was a document they needed me to decipher,” he said. “It was a hand-made map of the area; it had firing limits, reference points and was clearly designed for military use.”
Superiors asked Fanous if he thought the map was an indication of enemy troops in the area. “Without a doubt,” he responded. Barely having finished his statement, the door of the building exploded from an RPG round.
“Everything just erupted from there; they were just firing at us from every direction. Guys were on the rooftops and everywhere else. We started returning fire and called a medevac for the guys injured in the RPG blast.”
An ambulance was dispatched from Baghdad, but came under heavy fire as it arrived.
“I’m not sure if the driver was hit or not, but the ambulance veered off the road and slammed into a ditch,” Fanous said. “We then called for an air medevac but when the helicopter arrived he wasn’t able to land on the LZ (landing zone) due to power lines so he radioed to the ground that the power lines were in the way.”
In desperation, U.S. troops felled the power lines by ramming them repeatedly with Humvees. Despite their efforts, the medevac pilot determined the area too hot to land. There was too much enemy fire.
With several troops injured from the initial RPG blast, Fanous was part of a team that would have to find an alternate LZ for the medevac, further from the heavy firefight taking place. Then began the process of racing humvees back and forth trying to get all the wounded to the medevac site. “This left us very shorthanded for the battle that was taking place,” Fanous said. “There were only two trucks with mounted heavy guns, and now one of those would be used to transport the wounded.”
“After fighting shorthanded, we finally received backup from battalion and were able to take control of the fight. I think we had about 80 kills that day and took 14 wounded of our own but fortunately no KIA.”
The Americans stayed in Mahmoudiya that night. With the power knocked out, it was eerily dark. Fanous had the unenviable job of guard duty that night. Relying heavily on his night-vision goggles, he saw what appeared to be a cargo humvee approaching.
“I asked if we had anyone scheduled to come in at this hour,” he said. “My lieutenant told me to let them approach until we could identify who it was.”
As the vehicle approached, Fanous realized it wasn’t a hummer, but a pickup truck. He fired a warning shot in an attempt to stop the truck. The warning shot alerted the guys on the rooftops who began to fire on the vehicle. Two men jumped out of the truck and began running towards Fanous’ position.
“Everybody on the rooftops was focused on the truck and hammered it pretty good,” he said. “I saw both guys coming towards me. I gave the order to stop in Arabic and received no response.”
Fanous fixated his laser sight on one of the men and fired. Immediately he dropped to the ground. It was the first time Albert had shot someone.
“The second guy stopped next to a tree. I asked the lieutenant if I should cease fire and check it out,” he said. “The two guys turned out to be looters. The guy I shot was injured, but he lived. “
Uday and Qusay Hussein
Fanous and the 101st started working with Special Forces from Task Force 20 looking for high-value targets around Mosul. Several unsuccessful missions brought about a feeling of mental exhaustion from the fruitless searches. Then one day, everything changed.
“We were called into a briefing and given Intel on the whereabouts of Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay Hussein from a Special Forces soldier,” he recalled. “About noon we were locked and loaded and ready to go to the area of a house in which the brothers were allegedly staying. Each platoon had a different assignment near the area of the house. We were told we would also have air support and the goal was to capture the brothers without bloodshed.”
After several false alarms, Fanous was skeptical. He knew something was different however, when U.S. troops were greeted with a wild scene near the house.
“At first we were more occupied with the crowd in the streets than with the house,” Fanous said. “It was on the verge of a riot; they were shouting and throwing rocks at us. We could tell by the actions of the crowd that Uday and Qusay were really there.We fired several warning shots which began to disperse the crowd.”
Per orders, Fanous positioned his vehicle to block the road on the east side of the house. A fierce battle between Saddam’s sons and Special Forces troops raged on. Qusay Hussein’s teenage son was there fighting with the brothers, along with a bodyguard.
As gunfire and rocket rounds soared through the air, Albert heard somebody yell, “With our blood and soul redeem you Uday and Qusay!” Fanous was stunned to realize the sons of Iraq’s long-time dictator were camped in a house U.S. troops had travelled past several times.
Finally, a barrage of TOW missiles and an airstrike penetrated the reinforced concrete walls of the house. The crackling of gunfire ceased as Special Forces troops quickly entered what remained of the house. Before long they emerged with the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein.
News about the operation quickly spread around the globe. The U.S. decided to put pictures of their dead bodies on television to prove to the Iraqi people the brothers’ fate. Fanous recalls being placed on lockdown as Iraqi citizens celebrated all over with gunfire.
Mosul and home
The rest of his time in Iraq was spent in the northern part of the country performing various missions around the city of Mosul. One day Fanous recalls his unit passing through a small city that could not be found on maps.
“We started talking with the people and found out it was a Chaldean Christian town,” he said. “We became friendly with a priest we called ‘Father Tom’ at the town monastery and before long we were getting invited to weddings and baptisms, it was nice. They appreciated us being there because Christians are in such a minority in Iraq and our presence made the townspeople feel protected from Muslim extremists.”
American troops would later assist Father Tom in establishing an orphanage in the area. The endeavor included building a new playground and forged a friendly relationship between the troops and the Iraqi kids.
“We showed them some of our equipment and even let a few of them drive the hummers,” Albert said. “They played a lot of soccer with us, but most of them were young teenagers and they really kicked our asses. Later, they thanked us by having a festival in our honor. “
“After I returned home from Iraq I saw a news report of Christians in the Mosul area getting killed by militant groups. It made me sad because I recognized some of the churches that were shown on TV.”
As the months dragged on, day-to-day life became increasingly difficult. Fanous recalls sleeping on sidewalks, going weeks without adequate showers and having to wash clothes by hand – which dried quickly in the overpowering heat. Food was irregular and dysentery was common. Nearly every soldier lost a significant amount of body weight.
Communication to loved ones back home was sparse at best. There are some letters Fanous wrote in Iraq that have yet to reach home. Back home in Strongsville Albert’s parents were flipping between the Middle East-based Al Jazeera network on their satellite television and local American news networks searching for news on the war.
“When I got home my dad told me he would watch Al Jazeera and hear that we were having a rough time, and then he would switch to American news networks and hear we were doing great – no resistance,” he said laughing.
One day while on patrol in downtown Mosul, Albert stumbled upon an international call center. Using his Arabic tongue, he negotiated with a local contractor to set up a call center just for the Army. It was a move that instantly made Fanous the most popular guy in the 101st.
“At first the Army was concerned about OPSEC (Operations Security), but they eventually allowed it,” he said. “Before you know it every camp in the area was asking about the contractor, the guy was making a ton of money. Every once in a while he would give me free calls. Life got much better from that point.”
Around the same time, troops also started receiving packages and were able to request things from back home. On a different patrol, Fanous had another opportunity to use his language skills to improve morale.
“I was on patrol and I found what looked like a pizza box,” he explained. “At first I didn’t say anything about it. Later I told everybody I was going to get some fresh pizza. We get to this place and it looks cool. They are throwing the dough into the air and made it really thin. They put some type of meat on it and then cracked on egg on top and put it in the oven. So I was like, ‘that’s not pizza, where’s the cheese?’”
While the pizza tasted alright, the Americans politely asked if the chef could leave off the egg in the future. Later, Fanous would find another pizza place.
“I went in and asked the owner if they had pizza ‘like the Americans eat it?’ It turns out the owner used to run a Domino’s Pizza in the States. We eventually convinced him to build a mini pizza shop in our battalion area. That became one of our main staples the rest of our time there. We ended up handing stuff like that on to the guys that came to Iraq after us,” he said.
Today, Fanous feels confident his ability to communicate with locals made life just a little better for the countless troops that would come after him. He would make another trip to Iraq before completing his commitment to the Army and returning home to Ohio where he is finishing a college degree.
