by Derek Farwell
Columnist
March 14, 2007 is a day that will always have some extra meaning for me. I don’t clearly remember all the events as I sustained a head injury amongst other things, but I remember a lot of the particulars, and the overall outcome from the day’s events. Within my Platoon, my job was a machine gunner out of one of the back hatches of our vehicle. My primary weapon was the M240-B, the weapon that replaced the M-60 in the Army. It was our very first day of conducting operations in the city of Baqubah, Iraq. As I mentioned last week, when the massive troop surge in Baghdad took place, a lot of the al-Quaida fighters left Baghdad to move into the suburbs. Before we ever arrived there these people had set up observation posts, communications outposts, fighting positions, hospitals, torture houses, training camps for new recruits, supply bases, IED’s, and booby-trapped houses. They had prepared the city and its population for what was to be their last stand.
We arrived in Baqubah during the night of March 13th, 2007. We knew that we were going into the most hostile environment we’d yet seen. The element of U.S. combat soldiers we had, and that were to be at our disposal when we got there was approximately 700. It was estimated by military intelligence that there were 3,000 enemy soldiers in the city. Our first day started by doing what are called ‘right seat rides’ which means we ride along with the unit we were replacing, who was a brigade from the 1st Cav. Division. We drove around our section of the city learning the roads and meeting some of the local people who we would work with. During this right seat ride we stopped at a few Iraqi Police stations since we would often use those as rally points during ground operations. We were not aware of the ‘coming events’ we would experience for the next many hours into the next day.
At one of these police stations we heard a call come over our radios that another Stryker vehicle in our battalion had hit a deep buried IED and was catastrophically damaged, and that they had several wounded soldiers. They were also taking small arms fire while they were trying to evacuate their wounded soldiers. We immediately left and started to make our way towards the site. As we got closer we could see a lot of activity going on around us. There were already quite a few vehicles in the area, and they were busy setting up a perimeter around blast site to provide cover for the injured soldiers and the soldiers that were on the ground assisting them.
The insurgents in Iraq were always changing their tactics to try to gain an advantage over us. They were constantly developing new techniques for their IED’s. One of the tactics we started seeing in Baqubah was the use of deep buried IED’s. This particular development proved to be very effective against our up-armored vehicles. Essentially they would dig a hole in the road, throw in their explosive materials, cover it back up and rig it up to explode when someone drove over it. This way the bomb was extremely difficult to spot, and the bomb can be detonated by someone who’s hiding out of site.
As we approached there were a lot of things that really made the event a memorable experience. I think one of the things that really stuck with me is that as we were approaching our area, I saw that the bomb that had blown up another one of the Strykers had been placed right outside of a school yard full of children. When the bomb detonated it not only blew up the vehicle, it also blew up a portion of the school. There was about 12-15 school aged children who had been killed or very badly maimed in the explosion. Before that point I had already seen a lot of death and destruction, but seeing a school blown up with a lot of dead children was definitely something I had not seen before. A sight like that is not something that’s easy to comprehend, nor does it go away quickly.
I remember very clearly all the events that led up to me being injured. Through all the activity that was going on we kept creeping along to get to our spot on the battlefield. This is where things get a little bit hazy for me. As a machine gunner, the upper half of my body was out of the vehicle so that I could keep an eye on everything and put out a lot of fire power if necessary. Then we blew up. My vehicle drove over another one of those deep buried IED’s. I didn’t see a big flash, nor did I hear the big boom. I have no memory of the time when I went from standing upright and out of my hatch, to being upside down. When the explosion happened I was instantly unconscious. The bomb was again buried under the road so it was inconspicuously placed in the middle of the road. It detonated directly underneath the engine in our vehicle, which is what saved all of our lives. Had the bomb blown up a split second earlier I would have lost the upper half of my body, and had it blown up a split second later, it would have ripped through our vehicle and potentially killed those of us inside. But, because of where it blew up, the engine absorbed a lot of the blast, however, it also sent shards of the engine on hot oil through the vehicle like a shotgun blast.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious for. When I woke up, I thought I was dead. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t hear anything and I couldn’t feel anything. The vehicle was filled with dust, dirt and smoke. My ears, nose, and mouth were packed with dirt and oil, a taste that stayed there for what seemed like a month. As I was coming to, I vomited a couple of times until I had cleaned out my airways. As I was becoming aware of what was going on something else came to me as well. I could hear one of my best friends screaming in agony. I couldn’t see him, or what was wrong, but I knew it was him. As the smoke and dust started clearing I could see what was going on. Everyone inside was covered in scalding hot oil, pieces of shrapnel had rocketed through the vehicle and caused a lot of physical damage to us inside. All told, my injuries included two fractured vertebrae, shrapnel wounds mainly to my head and left side of my body, some minor oil burns, and a severe concussion. I was hurt, but not too bad. I came out of the ordeal with all of my bits and pieces which unfortunately can’t be said for everyone.
At the end of our first twenty –four hours in the new city the total price paid by my unit was 1 soldier killed in the first vehicle explosion, 12 more wounded (including myself), 2 Stryker vehicles destroyed, about a dozen young children killed with many more wounded and a school destroyed. After I was injured I was medically evacuated with a couple of my friends. For the soldiers who weren’t injured what ensued was a 12 hour fire fight with a group of bad guys who went by the name “The 1920’s Revolutionary Brigade.” I mention their name only because later on during our stay in Baqubah The 1920’s Revolutionary Brigade became the first of the untrained civilian militia’s that we were tasked to work with to find and eliminate al-Quaida in Iraq. It was a strained and untrusting relationship to say the least, especially since we killed approximately 50 of them in that first day of fighting.
This day was a slap in the face, and an enormous wakeup call for the mess we had just wandered into. It was only our first day in this new city, and we were plopped right into the middle of a violent existence that none of us could really understand at the time. What came after that was 7 months of killing. In all 31 American Soldiers were killed with 55 more being wounded, most of which I knew, some of which I was very close with. The Iraqi Army and Police forces lost dozens while we were there, and who knows how many innocent civilians. We did however inflict more damage than we received; we killed over 500 insurgents, and detained 100 or so more.