We had spent the day making veterans. Most of the Marine Corps had gone ten years without a real fight. I hoped we were up the steep part of the learning curve already. General Mattis had told us to survive the first five days in combat, the most dangerous days. That left four more. Just a day before, Marines talked about this being a repeat of the hundred-hour war. The greatest fear was that it might end without us firing a shot. Surrounded by fires, I sat on the hood of the Humvee and watched the horizon flash as artillery shells crashed into Nasiriyah. Near dawn, we started the engines.
By the time we reached the southern bridge, we had opened gaps between vehicles for maneuvering room. Gas pedals were on the floor. I watched Corporal Garza standing at the machine gun in Espera’s Humvee. He was swaying, holding on with both hands to keep from falling into the street. According to the map, there were three and a half kilometers between Nasiriyah’s southern and northern bridges. Less than four minutes. We passed the bridgehead where we’d stopped the day before and began to climb the span across the Euphrates. I felt the anticipation of ratcheting up a roller coaster. We crested it and looked up the length of Ambush Alley. It was the pause at the top of the hill, just before the plunge. We hurtled down into town, speeding past cinderblock buildings and wrecked cars. Whole blocks were in rubble, and stray dogs yelped as we passed.
An infantry battalion manned a picket line in the city, lining Route Moe with amtracs and dismounted infantrymen. I didn’t envy their job, sitting in a hostile city with thousands of nervous, trigger-happy Marines rolling past. Small-arms fire chirped to our front and rear, but I saw nothing to shoot at. Long cross streets stretched into the distance, lined with telephone poles. I expected to see figures darting between alleys, shooting from the hip, but the streets were empty. Fighting holes pocked the ground, and I waited for a scarf-wrapped head to pop up and shoulder an RPG. None did.
What we saw was the detritus of earlier combat. An amtrac sat in the road with its roof peeled back like a sardine can. Packs and sleeping bags littered the ground, and I saw lumps covered with ponchos. Dead Marines. It must have been bad for the dead to be lying where they fell the day before. I drove past knowing that each Marine in my platoon was seeing his fallen comrades. We saw Iraqis, too. A truck full of antiaircraft guns sat in the southbound lanes, with the driver’s bullet-riddled corpse hanging from the cab by his feet. His head nearly touched the ground. Another man lay in the street, where dozens of tracked vehicles had smashed him nearly flat. His torso spread across the pavement in a red smear. The Marines referred to him afterward as “tomato crate man.”
At the northern end of Ambush Alley, we crossed another bridge and turned left at an intersection. LAVs lurched through the fields next to the road, blasting away at assailants unseen. I was grateful for their covering fire and kept our speed up. A right turn put us on Highway 7, which we would follow all the way north to Al Kut, on the Tigris River.
The two-hundred-kilometer stretch of highway between Nasiriyah and Al Kut would take us ten days to travel. While the Third Infantry Division, RCT-5, and RCT-7 swung wide to the west through open desert, RCT-1 and First Recon battled through every town on Highway 7 in the ancient “land between the two rivers.” Our mission was to engage Iraqi units and keep them from falling back to defend Baghdad. The Army and the other RCTs would pay their dues farther north when they led the charge into the capital, but for the next ten days, much of the fighting would take place along this highway.
We started north from Nasiriyah trying to figure out if we were the lead American unit on the highway. Two battalions had crossed the Euphrates bridge ahead of us, but they were garrisoned along Ambush Alley and at the intersection. That put us at the front. Our conclusion was confirmed by reports of an Iraqi BM-21 rocket launcher in the road just ahead. We stopped while a jet rolled in and blew it up.
I knelt next to the Humvee while we halted. Stopped vehicles are magnets for RPGs, and I, like every infantryman, always felt better with my boots in the dirt. Looking around, I saw an industrial slum of junk-yards, machine shops, and trash piles. Green and black flags drooped from buildings in the morning heat, and yellow-eyed dogs stared at the invaders. We scanned the alleys and windows for human movement but saw nothing. Stopping like this invited trouble. I didn’t yet appreciate the awesome firepower of a Marine platoon in a tight circle.
