Wednesday, September 14, 2011

It was like Black Hawk Down, except with Amtracs instead of helicopters




Jim Martin

BRANCH OF SERVICE United States Marine Corps

RANK Corporal

YEARS SERVED 4

TIME SERVED IN IRAQ 4 months

UNIT IN IRAQ 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion

HOMETOWN North Olmsted, Ohio

HIGH SCHOOL North Olmsted High School ‘00


“I was watching the movie ‘Blackhawk Down’ with my mom before I left for Iraq and I told her, ‘Don’t worry, it isn’t going to be anything like that, we are just going to be going in to make sure the enemy is dead after the Air Force and Navy bomb the country.”

“When I got home I told her, ‘I’m sorry; it was exactly like the movie except instead of helicopters, it was Amtracs.”
– Jim Martin USMC, 2001-2005

In the weeks and months following the terrorist attacks on United States soil Sept. 11, 2001, many young men and women were inspired to enlist in the Armed Forces. Having already committed to the United States Marine Corps several months earlier, North Olmsted’s Jim Martin was not one of them.

Already a month into boot camp at Parris Island, SC., Martin and fellow Marine recruits were gathered unconventionally by a senior drill instructor. The young recruits were oblivious to the horrible events taking place in New York City and Washington D.C.

Events that would ultimately have a profound impact on the next few years of their lives.

Before speaking to the attentive recruits, the drill instructor removed his field hat, or campaign cover.

“I’ll never forget him removing his campaign cover because drill sergeants don’t do that,” Martin said. “He told us to take our training seriously because in the next four years we would be going to war.”

There is a component of Marine Corps basic training in which drill instructors lead recruits to believe a major war has started. The object is to gauge how well the trainees respond to an intense level of adversity.

“Obviously they didn’t have to do that with us because it did start,” he said.
A year-and-a-half later, Martin, now stationed in North Carolina at Camp Lejeune, was attached to the 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion. As U.S. –Iraqi tensions mounted, the unit soon received orders to deploy to Kuwait.

“They only wanted our air wing but they brought us as tag-alongs,” he said.
“We were like the bastard children of the operation,” he recalled. “Everyone else flew [to Kuwait] and we took boats over.”

Though sometimes scenic, especially while passing through Suez Canal, the boat trip took the Marines a month to arrive in Kuwait.

“It’s a long ride on a boat doing the same thing everyday,” Martin recalled.
After the seemingly interminable boat trip, Martin hoped the unit would stop at Kuwaiti Naval base, which was “an actual Navy base with things to do.” Unfortunately they arrived at Camp Shoop; a far more primitive base offering the Marines an opportunity for good old-fashioned manual labor.

“We had to set up everything, including tents and vehicle staging,” he said. “Initially, there was nothing in the middle of the desert and then a week later it was a makeshift Marine Corps base in the middle of Kuwait; it was kinda cool.”

With the base erected, Marines settled into a tedious daily routine. As the days turned into weeks, troops became bored and restless.

“We were sitting there wondering if it was ever going to happen,” he said. “We were really bored and sick of doing gas mask drills and the same stuff we did at Camp Lejeune.”

In downtime they played intramural softball games using a softball made of duct tape and an axe handle for the bat. The bases were sandbags of course. Waiting for letters to arrive from home proved futile. “At that time they hadn’t set up the mail system very well,” Martin explained. “We ended up getting a lot of our letters sent before we went into Iraq, after we got out of Iraq; so mail was kind of a tricky situation.

“Its funny because you get into a routine then all of the sudden the president gave his 48 hours to get out or we’re coming in speech and the next day we were mobilized,” Martin said. “The camp was packed up and disappeared and we were headed to the Iraq border.”

Most the Marines were eager to move into Iraq. A month of killing time and playing softball in Kuwait was only extending the amount of time the troops would be stuck in the hot dusty desert halfway around the world.

“Morale was real high, we were ready to go,” he said. “Some guys had been in the Marine Corps eight or 10 years and had never seen combat.” It was like finally getting to play in the football game you have been practicing for.

During his month in Kuwait, Martin was able to make just one phone call home. Years later he would learn through friends that communication would improve immensely in the months and years following the initial Iraq invasion.

Following the initial U.S. air strikes, described at the time as ‘Shock and Awe,’ Iraq retaliated by firing scud missiles toward Kuwait City.

“We were on our way to the border at that time and had to quickly put on our chemical warfare suits and gas masks because we weren’t sure where those scuds were going to land.”

The missiles were flying right over their heads.

“It was our first real scare,” he said. “No more gas mask drills, this was for real.”
In the back of the vehicle, 18 Marines scurried to put on gas masks and chem suits with hearts pounding and a sense of urgency.

***

A word Jim became very familiar with was “push.” If a vehicle broke down, somebody would stay back and everybody else would continue to push. “Our mission was to get to Baghdad as quickly as possible; so fast there would be no way the enemy could stop us,” Martin explained. “It was just constant movement, through day, night and sandstorms; we didn’t sleep much at all.”

“I remember being so tired at night with my night-vision goggles on and just doing everything I could to stay awake,” he said. “People were taking the ground coffee out of MREs and chewing on it.”



Initially, Martin, along with other Marines was fired up to cross the Iraqi border, assuming action would soon follow. “Then we got across the border and there was NOTHING and it seemed to last forever,” he said. “We didn’t even see any camels so it was like, ‘This is war?’”

The task force was making its way towards Nasiriyah, Iraq’s fourth most populous city.

“Everything we heard about Nasiriyah from the Army was [the enemy] was surrendering on the bridges,” he recalled. “At that point we thought we weren’t even going to see any action and to be honest, we were a little upset about it.”

“It’s like a quote I remembered from the movie Memphis Belle when one of the pilots says, ‘I can’t go home and tell my girl I didn’t even kill one Nazi’,” he added.
When Jim and fellow Marines arrived in Nasiriyah, they quickly determined the reports they had received from the Army to be vastly inaccurate.

“The first thing we saw was the remains of what was Jessica Lynch’s column completely destroyed and everybody thought ‘Uh oh, they aren’t surrendering on the bridges,’” he said.

Before gaining fame as a prisoner of war, Private Lynch was riding in a convoy of the Army’s 507th Maintenance Company. The convoy made a wrong turn and was ambushed. Several soldiers were killed and vehicles destroyed in the ferocious battle.

“We were just supposed to open the city up by securing the south and north bridges for the Army to come up behind us and through to Baghdad as quickly as possible,” Martin said. “Unfortunately our intelligence was bad; the Iraqis had set up shop to make a last stand in Nasiriyah.”

The plan was to take a hard right upon entering the city in order to avoid the route through Nasiriyah ominously dubbed “Ambush Alley.”

“Ambush Alley was set up perfectly for mortar pits and snipers,” Martin explained. “We decided to squeeze through a back alley in the city hope the enemy would not even know we were there.”

Martin’s column was the first on top of the bridge and found themselves staring directly at enemy tanks on the other side.

“The last place you want to be when encountering enemy tanks is in a tight column on a bridge way above ground,” he said. “So we began to engage the tanks, utilizing a team of Humvees equipped with TOW missiles, and knocked the tanks out.”
After successfully negotiating the bridge, the column took the hard right heading into urban terrain.

“We get into the back alley and discover [the Iraqis] had cut the sewer lines and flooded the streets with sewage and if you know anything about tracked vehicles, we got stuck in the sewage in the back alley.”

Martin admits the tactic was smart and effective.

“You almost have to give them credit,” he said. “They knew that is where we wanted to go, bogged us down and because the quarters were so tight the column behind us had to go straight down Ambush Alley and ended up taking losses because they had set the place up with mortars, sniper fire and RPGs.”

As it became evident to the enemy Martin’s column was stuck, they also began to take fire.

“That is when I started to get a little nervous,” he said. “I knew all the fire power was on our side, what I had in my vehicle alone was probably more than what was shooting at us, but you can’t help but think of that one lucky round, plus they had mortars, which they basically just put [the round] down the tube and pray; and what if one of those lands on me.”

What ensued was a grueling 10-hour battle that took the lives of several Marines and injured many more.

Martin does not remember ever being truly scared throughout the battle in Nasiriyah. Instead his instincts stemming from his training automatically kicked in.
“You just have to do it [instinctively],” he explained. “There is no time for thinking when lives are on the line.”

Rather than remain sitting ducks, the unit opted to proceed, uncharacteristically leaving two vehicles, a tank and an amphibious vehicle, behind.

“It was unheard of,” Martin explained. “But it was getting to the point the vehicles attempting to pull the stranded vehicles were also getting stuck.”

With Martin’s column pulling themselves out of one bad situation, the column of Charlie Company, which was forced to go down Ambush Alley was taking an intense barrage of mortar rounds, RPGs and tank fire. In what would become one of Operation Iraqi Freedom’s bloodiest campaigns, the Marine Corps would suffer 18 casualties along with several more wounded in action.

In addition to the fierce fighting, one of war’s true tragedies occurred in the northern part of the city.

Despite the onslaught, the column from Charlie Company began to make its way through ambush alley heading north through Nasiriyah.

“The rest of the task force didn’t know there was a platoon north of the city,” Martin recalled. “So our air officer called in for air strikes because we were getting hammered.”

“He asked over the radio if there was anyone north of this parallel,” he continued.
Unfortunately the unexpected intensity of the fight resulted in a confusing jumble of radio communications. When there was no response to the call over the radio, the air support was officially ordered.

The tragic result was an Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt firing on U.S. Marines in Nasiriyah. Although it was unclear to U.S. Central Command investigators how many Marines died as a result of the friendly fire incident, as many as 10 servicemen were killed in vehicles while receiving both hostile and friendly fire.

“It is tough losing somebody at all,” Martin said of the incident. “But when it comes from the same team, it is really difficult to accept; but it happens.”
In all, Martin spent 10 grueling hours in the city of Nasiriyah.

“The 10 hours we spent inside the city were pretty brutal,” he said. “There were some heroic things going on in the city; guys volunteering to go back in to rescue Marines that were trapped in the city and guys trapped in the city camped out in buildings [continued to fight] and killed a lot of the enemy.”

It was during his time in Nasiriyah, Martin had one of the few memories that will always haunt him.

“We were just outside the city and had set up a roadblock,” he recalled.
A car approached at a high rate of speed and ignored several requests from U.S. servicemen to stop.

“In previous situations like this there were bad guys in the car, so we did what we had to do and lit it up,” he said.

Sadly, the car was occupied by an Iraqi civilian and his young daughter.

“I don’t know why he didn’t stop; I’ll never know why he didn’t stop,” Martin said. “We fired warning shots and gave him ample opportunity to stop.”
The father was not hit, his daughter was fatally wounded.

“We tried to medevac her but she died on the way to the chopper.” Martin said.
After Nasiriyah, Martin’s unit bounced around the country performing various small missions. He believes it was leadership’s way a giving them a little break after the intense fighting in Nasiriyah.

As it turned out, the rest of the deployment would be mostly uneventful before word in early June the Marines in the task force would be returning home.

“They told us we were heading back to Kuwait and we assumed it was for more supplies,” Martin said. “They said we were getting on the boats and heading home, we all thought ‘You gotta be kidding me!”

Arriving in Kuwait would be to be an awesome experience for the weary Marines.
“Kuwaiti Naval Base had a swimming pool, showers, a Pizza Hut, a Baskin Robbins and even though we still had a lot to do as far a washing vehicles and equipment, we were so happy to be there.”

“The weekend we got back a buddy and I went to Myrtle Beach and we just partied.” Martin remembers. “They told us to not try and live the rest of our lives in that first weekend – and nobody listened.”

Now separated from the Marine Corps and working as a police officer, Martin sometimes reflects on his time in Iraq.

“I don’t get people saying they are ‘anti-war, pro-peace;’ I’m anti-war and pro-peace too but sometimes you have to fight for some things.”

“Nobody is pro-war; I am pro-defending America,” He said.

“I come from a family of Army veterans so I was raised to have the utmost respect for veterans, especially the guys who fought in Vietnam, because they got the shaft,” He added. “Still, once I returned my perspective changed because now I feel part of a brotherhood [of war veterans], now I get what they are so proud of.”

Going to war in Iraq made Martin thankful for the exhaustive Marine Corps training he once loathed.

“You finally get why they train you the way they do,” he said. “You complain about it the whole time you are at Camp Lejeune, but everyone seemed to perform so well because so much was ingrained in them, it just kinda clicked and they knew what to do when the bullets started flying.”

“In the movies, you always see one guy breaking down and losing it [during battle], Martin added. “But I can’t think of one instance of that; everyone just did what they had to do.”

Jim Martin is honorably discharged from the Marine Corps and serves as a patrolman for the city of Independence (Ohio) Police Department.

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