AT TUWAYHAH, Iraq - There were dead dogs lying on the side of the road. Second Lt. Adam Markley peered at them from his tank. It was an odd sight.
"It was like someone had used the dogs for target practice," he said.
The sights kept getting stranger as Charlie Company's tanks led the flying column of the Marine Corps 2nd Tank Battalion into At Tuwayhah. Mounds of earth were piled neatly along the highway. On the roofs of roadside shops sat the shells of cars, trucks, a bus.
Their meaning was clear. They were a honeycomb of sniper nests, stretching the length of the town.
As the column hit the center of town, an oil-filled trench boiled into flame and black smoke. Lt. Markley's tank, named "Devil's Advocate," was the first to pass through the smoke, at about 12:20 p.m.
"The fire pits were scary as (expletive)," said Lt. Markley. "I didn't know what was on the other side."
Hell was waiting.
Half a dozen men - dressed in black, wearing black stocking masks - stood up on either side of the highway with rocket-propelled grenade launchers on their shoulders. One fired; his grenade hit Lt. Markley's open turret hatch.
The blast was deflected into the hatch of the tank's cannon loader. Cpl. Bernard Gooden, a 22-year-old from Mt. Vernon, N.Y., was killed.
That was how the April 4 ambush at At Tuwayhah - the stiffest fight the 2nd Tank Battalion has faced in the war with Iraq - began.
It ended, less than 35 minutes later, with three Marines dead. Five others were also seriously wounded, including the company's commander, Sam Houston descendant Capt. Jeffrey Houston.
The Marines' mission that Friday was to kill the al Nida division of the Republican Guards. By day's end, they were successful: Al Nida was considered, in military terms, "combat-ineffective."
But most of the men the Marines fought at At Tuwayhah were not Iraqis. Infantry who came into town after the firefight found more than 100 bodies: Syrians, Egyptians, Yemenis and Lebanese. They were volunteers with the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad.
"There were enough rifles, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), and other small arms in that town to outfit an entire Marine division - 15 buildings' worth," said Lt. Col. Mike Oehl, 2nd Tank Battalion's commanding officer. "These were Islamic Jihad guys from all over the Arab world. We have intelligence reports that they've been staying at the Sheraton in downtown Baghdad."
Going this far wasn't the plan for the 2nd Tank Battalion. They were supposed to turn away from the city in order to attack the al Nida divisions based in the north.
But that first RPG, the one that hit Lt. Markley's turret hatch, blew away his handheld GPS compass. "Devil's Advocate" lost communication with the other tanks in Charlie Company. The turret was stuck in place by a hydraulic-fluid leak. Lt. Markley, from Columbia, S.C., was knocked senseless. The column missed the turn.
The men of the 2nd Tank Battalion call themselves the Masters of the Iron Horse. Back home at Camp Lejeune, N.C., they are part of the 2nd Marine Division. In Iraq, they are fighting with the 5th Regiment of the 1st Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.
The battalion's preferred fighting strategy is to speed through enemy lines with guns blazing. When the Iron Horse hit At Tuwayhah, it was moving faster than 30 mph.
With the tanks were Marine Scouts and TOWs - Humvees equipped with machine guns and wire-guided missiles. They weaved among the tanks, firing at the Jihadists. Lance Cpl. Billy Peixotto of McKinney, driving Capt. Houston's tank "Let's Roll," saw Scouts Commander Lt. Brian McPhillips get hit, fatally.
Lt. McPhillips was 25 years old, a Massachusetts native and a graduate of Providence College in Rhode Island. He had taken command of the Scouts platoon a day earlier.
"Scouts 6 is down," someone shouted over the battalion radio.
Cpl. Derric Keller, manning the machine gun of another Humvee, saw Lt. McPhillips fall. Cpl. Keller got his driver to speed along Lt. McPhillips' Humvee and jumped on. He took over the lieutenant's machine-gun post as the Scouts accelerated to get out of town.
By now there was trouble on Capt. Houston's tank. The fire extinguisher light came on. "Keep on rolling," Tank Gunner Cpl. Alfredo Ramirez hollered. But seconds later the tank shut down.
Gunfire had pierced the fuel bladder hanging on the left side of the turret. The Marines use a JP8 fuel that doesn't explode like gasoline. But when the tank turret swiveled to fire, fuel poured from the fuel bladder into the tank engine's air intake valve.
"It's like pouring gas on top of your engine," said Staff Sgt. Bryan Hillard, Charlie Company's master gunner. "It just floods it out."
Capt. Houston, 28, comes from Winston-Salem, N.C. His favorite story about his famed ancestor involves the time that Sam Houston ordered a subordinate to pull an arrow from his leg so he could stay in command. Now, Capt. Houston acted to stay in charge, too.
"I've gotta go," he said. Capt. Houston jumped to another tank to keep the company going. Lance Cpl. Peixotto also jumped out, grabbing a 9mm semi-automatic.
Iraqis and Islamic Jihad fighters swarmed behind the mounds of dirt beside the wounded tank. Cpl. Ramirez, of Oceanside, Calif., went after them with the "co-ax" machine gun mounted beside the tank's cannon. Cpl. Michael Ackerman, the tank loader from Riverside, Calif., fired the 7.62mm machine gun mounted on the loader's turret hatch. When that gun jammed, he picked up an M-16 rifle and a 9mm semi-automatic.
Capt. Houston jumped back down from his new tank and ran to "Let's Roll." He grabbed the telephone housed in the "grunt's box" on the tank's rear and started talking. While on the phone, he was shot in the face.
Lance Cpl. Peixotto ran to Capt. Houston. Cpl. Ramirez and Cpl. Ackerman, busy trying to extinguish the engine fire, threw Lance Cpl. Peixotto a compress bandage and some extra 9mm clips.
Capt. Dave Bardorf of Middletown, R.I., was driving past "Let's Roll." He saw Lance Cpl. Peixotto work to protect his captain.
"It was incredible," Capt. Bardorf said. "He was slowing the blood flow with one hand, laying fire on the enemy with the other, and directing fire from a radio another Marine held for him."
Cpl. Peixotto said he fired "about eight or nine clips" - as many as 135 bullets - during the fight.
"There was a lot of screaming and shooting and yelling," he said. "It was one big firefight."
"It was like that game, you know, where the critter sticks his head up from one hole and you try to whack it before it sticks up from another one," said Lance Cpl. Grant Hines of Marietta, Ga., who was driving "Devil's Advocate."
Back in "Devil's Advocate," Lt. Markley regained his senses. He clamored out of his turret to retrieve his maps. Cpl. Julio Cesare Martinez of San Diego, the tank's gunner, helped restore the communications systems the RPG hit had knocked out. Without any hydraulic pressure, he had to crank the tank's turret, firing the co-ax machine gun with a manual trigger.
Without his Global Posititioning System compass, Lt. Markley had to ask another tank in his platoon to plot their location on the highway. When he realized where they were, he made an urgent radio call to Lt. Nicol.
"We have to turn around! We missed our turn," Lt. Markley yelled. "We are only four clicks (kilometers) from Baghdad!"
The company's executive officer, First Lieutenant Charles D. Nicol Jr., consulted with battalion command and ordered a halt. The battalion had to run through one of the most complicated battle maneuvers a tank column can face - doubling back on itself while under fire.
An ambulance, holding battalion surgeon Navy Lt. Bruce Webb, reached "Let's Roll," Capt. Houston's tank. Lt. Webb and the others managed to get Capt. Houston inside the ambulance. But the fight didn't pause for them: the ambulance driver, Cpl. Luke Holden, of Albany, N.Y., took a bullet through the hand he was holding on the steering wheel. Navy Hospital Corpsman Thomas Smith of Brooklyn took over the driving, while holding a bandage on the wounded man's hand and firing an M-16 out the window.
Behind Charlie Company's tanks in the column was a platoon of Combat Engineers. Sgt. Dwayne Rios, a 25-year-old from Hammond, Ind., was commanding a tracked infantry vehicle in the engineers platoon.
Sgt. Rios was firing from his turret when a bullet struck his M-16 rifle. "He was trying to clear the jam in his rifle when he was hit behind the ear by a sniper," said Combat Engineers 1st Lt. Jonathan Derosier. Sgt. Rios died quickly.
A Marine CH-46 helicopter landed at the missed intersection to evacuate the wounded. Heavy fire continued.
While waiting to be loaded up, Cpl. Holden was shot again - this time in the other hand. Corpsman Smith helped treat that wound.
"Corpsman Smith did an outstanding job, truly above and beyond," said Lt. Webb.
Back at "Let's Roll," Lance Cpl. Peixotto, Cpl. Ramirez and Cpl. Ackerman stayed with their burning tank, firing every gun they had.
Col. Joe Dumford, commander of the 5th Regiment, finally ordered the crew to abandon the tank. They ran to one of the Humvees in the colonel's regimental command train and got away.
By the next day, the tank was sitting on its belly in the street. Fire had consumed it; the wheels and tracks had melted away.
"I've been shot at before, but nothing like that," Cpl. Ackerman said.
"It was probably one of the scariest moments in my life when that tank stopped."
Said Cpl. Peixotto: "It was a near-death experience, I guess."
© 2003, The Dallas Morning News.
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