William Weber - Warlords

It was March, 2003, and they were nearing the outskirts of Nasiriyah and the banks of the Euphrates River. Two main bridges crossed from the south: one over the Saddam Canal, which John and Bravo Company were fast approaching, and the other over the Euphrates. Made up of mostly Shiite Muslims, Nasiriyah was the gateway to Baghdad. Two hundred and twenty-five more miles and they’d be in the capital, a destination which represented more than an end to Saddam’s regime. For John it meant a ticket back home to his wife and young children.

“Charlie Company, come in, over.”

The radio operator and joint terminal air controller (JTAC) in John’s Bradley was Senior Airman Christopher Lewis, a kid who couldn’t be a day over nineteen. Skinny as a bean pole, he had a long face covered in painful-looking acne and an Adam’s apple that gave the distinct impression he’d swallowed a potato.

“Charlie Company, come in, over,” Lewis said again with no luck. “Sir, I can’t reach them.”

“Keep trying,” John ordered the young airman. Lewis was a liaison from the Air Force whose job it was to help call in air strikes and ensure the safety of troops on the ground.

With the recent advent of what the Pentagon was calling ‘Transformation’ and network-centric warfare, each of the Bradleys had been hastily outfitted with Blue Force Tracking, a GPS system which helped identify friend versus foe. A digital map of the area was populated with blue and red icons representing US and coalition forces in blue and enemy combatants in red. Overhead, Predator drones flown remotely by pilots in air-conditioned trailers in the New Mexican desert searched for Iraqi army units, relaying the information via satellites to the military internet. It was all complicated stuff and for many of the young soldiers, it helped to have more than a passing familiarity with video games.

The intention was to coordinate all arms of the military and maximize their effectiveness while minimizing friendly fire incidents.

Dependence on a computer and satellites had made John uncomfortable from the get-go, but as a lowly lieutenant in the army, it was hardly his job to question policy. He couldn’t help feel, however, that the satellites which tied the entire system together were a major vulnerability. Without GPS, guided munitions wouldn’t work and his troops would be almost completely blind. There was a name for that kind of thing. It was called the fog of war. As John’s company spotted the bridge over the Saddam Canal, he was beginning to realize that haze of war was thicker than he thought.

Bravo Company’s objective was to race across the Euphrates and hold the bridge for the rest of the regiment coming up behind them. The problem was most of the men under him were seeing combat for the first time. If that weren’t bad enough, their radio had stopped working and Charlie Company—moving along their right flank—wasn’t showing up on John’s Blue Force Tracking display.

“What should we do, sir?” his driver, Specialist Sutton, asked, a swell of panic in his voice.

“We’re gonna complete our objective and trust that Charlie’s doing the same,” came John’s reply.

They were halfway across the bridge when the first RPG went sailing over them.

“Contact, eleven o’clock,” John called out as small arms opened up from buildings across the canal. Rounds dinged off the hull, making Lewis wince.

Another RPG struck the lead Bradley. Black smoke billowed out from a hole in the vehicle’s side. Slowly, almost drunkenly, it veered right and over the bridge into the water below. Another hail of RPGs flew past them.

“We’ve got guys with rockets and small arms shooting from the upper story of those buildings,” John called out. The gunner maneuvered his 25mm chain gun and opened fire. Huge puffs of dust kicked out as the rounds battered the side of the building and finally found their targets.

The row of Bradleys fought their way across, all firing in different directions at the buildings on the other side of the canal. Soon another Bradley was hit, but the explosive charge didn’t penetrate the armor and it kept on moving. It was starting to feel as though every time they fired on an enemy position, the bad guys would simply run to another. The battle was quickly turning into a game of Whac-A-Mole.

“Call in a Warthog to level that front row of buildings,” John ordered his JTAC.

Lewis hesitated.

“Do it quickly before we’re cut to shreds.”

Fumbling with his radio, Lewis called in the strike. “Easy Rhino seven three three, this is Bravo six nine requesting immediate air strike. Target location is grid golf one one. Target is troops in buildings two, five and eight. Danger close. Over.”

The good news was that the Warthogs were already in the area and should be over the target in a matter of seconds. In the meantime, John ordered the vehicles struggling to cross the bridge behind him to pour as much fire as they could through those windows. The idea was to keep the Iraqis pinned down until the air strike could take them out.

A moment later came the distinct rumbling of an A-10 Thunderbolt streaming overhead. A slow and ugly plane, it had been designed to hunt and kill Soviet tanks during the Cold War. Rapidly headed for the trash heap, the Warthog had been narrowly saved by Operation Desert Storm, the Gulf War, where its missiles and bombs made it the perfect platform for supporting advancing infantry.

But the aircraft’s real strength lay in its 30mm Avenger Gatling cannon around which the entire frame of the plane had been built. A two-second burst of armor-piercing rounds would be more than enough to shred any enemy before them.

John’s Bradley was still firing when he heard the all-too-familiar giant zipper sound as the A-10’s gun strafed the buildings on the other side of the canal. A cloud of brown smoke was kicked into the air from the impact as the first structure and everyone in it was destroyed. Four runs later and all fire from the opposing side of the bridge had stopped. The men were cheering as the last of the enemy was neutralized.

“Glad they’re on our side,” Lewis said.

John agreed wholeheartedly.

Once they secured the bridge, they would set up a defensive perimeter and get to that Bradley that had gone into the canal. Even though the chances were slim that anyone had survived, John was still hopeful. He glanced down at his hands and saw that they were shaking.

In spite of the adrenaline coursing through his veins, John couldn’t help but wonder how Charlie Company was doing west of his position along the Euphrates. Popping the hatch, he immediately heard serious gunfire in the distance. It sounded like they were in a firefight of their own. If John’s own crossing was anything to go by, he might even say it sounded like the men of Charlie Company were in serious trouble.

John’s eyes snapped open, a face hovering over him.

“Honey, you okay?”

He recognized Diane’s voice a second before her features came into focus in the early morning light. Cool air tickled his nose, but the rest of his body was sopping wet.

Diane felt his forehead. “You don’t have a fever. Was it another bad dream?”

It would take him another few minutes to phase back into the real world, making the prospect of answering his wife challenging.

“Iraq?”

He nodded. “Nasiriyah.”

That was all he needed to say. She became solemn.

“That wasn’t your fault, you know.”

One of the many reasons he loved Diane was her never-ending battle to ease his guilty conscience. From bus drivers to airline pilots and military commanders, it was a weight that anyone responsible for the lives of others felt. It was usually in situations where that conscience was lacking or even dulled by some distant objective that human beings became numbers and commodities.