The 'New' Band of Brothers

[Annie]

The New Band of Brothers
With the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division in Ramadi
By Michael Fumento

The Weekly Standard, June 19, 2006
Copyright The Weekly Standard

http://www.fumento.com/military/ramadi.html

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Ramadi, Iraq
Terrorist-infested Ramadi in the wild west of Iraq is for U.S. troops the meanest place in the country, "the graveyard of the Americans" as graffiti around town boast. There is no better place to observe American troops and the fledgling Iraqi army in combat. That's why I came. When military public affairs asked where I wanted to be embedded, I told them, "the redder, the better" (red means hostile). So they packed me off to Camp Corregidor in eastern Ramadi with the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). The 506th's official motto is "Currahee," Cherokee for "stands alone." But they're better known as the "Band of Brothers" – so dubbed by author Stephen Ambrose and HBO (although the term originally applied to just one company in the regiment).

During the Battle of Fallujah in November 2004, many of the enemy who had vowed to fight to the death, including foreign terrorists, slipped the U.S. cordon. Ramadi, a city of 400,000, was a logical destination. The southwest point of the Sunni Triangle, it lies about 30 miles west of Fallujah and that much closer to Syria – a reliable source of both supplies and foreign jihadists. It's also the capital of Al Anbar province and a favorite stomping ground of al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi until two 500 lb. bombs blew apart his hideout last Wednesday.

To most of the media, Baghdad is where Iraq begins and ends. So naturally, they think Baghdad is the most dangerous part of the country. Wrong. "The sheer scale of violence in Ramadi is astounding," wrote AP's Todd Pitman after spending time with several units there. Pitman arrived the same night I did. "One recent coalition tally of 'significant acts' – roadside bombs, attacks, exchanges of fire – indicated that out of 43 reported in Iraq on a single day, 27 occurred in Ramadi and its environs," he wrote in a dispatch. Track the weekly butcher's bill for all of Iraq and you'll often find that a third to a half of U.S. combat deaths are in this one city about a third the size of Baghdad.

ramadi.html

There is no more dangerous city for American soldiers than Ramadi.

Units that go "outside the wire" during the daytime are usually zapped. I went on two day patrols; both times we got hit. Capt. Joseph "Crazy Joe" Claburn, commander of C Company, told me by email after I left: "I have been involved in two firefights in the last two days. We fired over 1,500 rounds of .50 cal [.50 caliber ammunition from an M2 Browning heavy machine gun] and 500 of 7.62mm, 40 rounds of 40mm [40 millimeter grenades] and brought everybody out okay. However, yesterday we had a close friend and Marine hit in the knee. We found out today that he would lose his leg. Does anyone else in Iraq see this on a daily basis?"

There are four minarets within sniping distance of Corregidor, and the gentlemen in these places of worship regularly shoot at the raised observation posts around the camp and sometimes into the camp itself. Mortars as large as 122mm smash into Corregidor on average every other day. I saw a steel container (the kind carried on flatbed trucks and train cars) hit by a mortar; it looked like an aluminum can blown up with a cherry bomb. Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) pop up like mushrooms, and vehicle-borne IEDs delivered by young men determined to get at those 72 perpetually renewing virgins are also a constant threat.

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ramadi.html

An IED from a 130mm howitzer and the hole from which it was dug up. Photo taken last year near Fallujah.

But here in this hellhole, I found men who would have made their famous World War II forerunners proud. They are no longer paratroopers but are brave, bold, and elite in every sense of the word. The actions of these men in fighting an enemy less skilled than the Germans yet far more vicious and fanatical tell a story that has remained largely ignored. In fairness, Ramadi itself has been mostly ignored.

When it finally made headlines across the country in late May, it was because of bad reporting when the Washington Post's Ellen Knickmeyer "broke the news" that 3,500 men from the 1st Armored Division in Kuwait were being deployed there as emergency reinforcements for a city essentially lost to the terrorists. Actually, it was 1,500, of whom "some" are "likely to be sent to" Ramadi as the New York Times correctly reported. And the place is bad enough without such exaggerations as the claim by one of Knickmeyer's sources that al Qaeda runs it.

Welcome to Corregidor!

The Iraq war is covered mostly by reporters who hole up in Baghdad hotels and send out Iraqi stringers to collect what the reporters deem news, as an article in the April 6, 2006, New York Review of Books described in great detail. The reporters convert these accounts into prose and put them on the wire. Except for that all-powerful "Baghdad" dateline, they might just as well be writing from Podunk. But you can't just blame reporters for the non-coverage. I asked military public affairs for 15 days in Ramadi, was told the request had been granted, flew to Baghdad, and only then was informed that I would instead be sent to Fallujah, with a few days in Ramadi to come later. Last year I was also told I would be embedded in Ramadi, only to have it denied entirely once I arrived in Iraq.

Part of the public affairs officers' reasoning probably is that it's bad karma to lose a reporter, and Ramadi is a likely place to do so as photographer Toby Morris discovered a few months earlier. While on patrol with the 1st Battalion's D Company, he tried to photograph some soldiers while standing in the middle of the road. Big mistake. A sniper nailed him in the thigh, shattering his femur. Sgt. Patrick Meyer leaped to drag him to safety, only to be shot himself in the leg while the sniper pumped a third round into Morris, snapping his ankle. Morris now has a rod in his femur and a plate in his ankle. Meyer is still recovering. Soldiers repeatedly told me this story, which initially I thought was meant to get a rise out of me. Later I realized it was intended as a warning; even small mistakes in Ramadi can lead to pain and death. I promised myself I wouldn’t unnecessarily expose myself for any photograph; nor would any soldier risk his life for me. I would soon break both promises...