Masters of Chaos by Linda Robinson

Author:Linda Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2011-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

WESTERN IRAQ

The Battle of the War Pigs

What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.

—SUN TZU

ON MARCH 19, as soon as darkness fell, soldiers from 5th Group’s 1st Battalion, Bravo Company, and the Florida National Guard began digging down the berm on the Iraqi border with shovels. It was the quietest way for the Special Forces to enter western Iraq before the war’s official start. Bravo Company commander Maj. Jim Gavrilis watched the progress anxiously. When the wall of sand was low enough, his men piled into their Humvees and trucks and started their engines. The Guardsmen planted the American flag and the Florida state flag atop the broken berm and waved the Special Forces through. A few hours later, farther south, Charlie Company had determined through surveillance that there was no need to be discreet. The breach team, ODA 531, dynamited several concrete pillars to open a passageway through the twelve-foot-high berm, and each team followed behind, radioing its password once it was inside Iraq.

First Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Chris Haas breathed a sigh of relief when all fifteen teams cleared the two breach points. The border crossing was the single most vulnerable moment of their entire operation because the forces were bunched up and could have been decimated with a couple of missiles. As soon as they passed through the berm, the men dispersed across the wide-open, bowling-alley flat desert, hoping that all the ground surveillance radars had been knocked out as planned.

First Battalion’s two companies of ODAs had left their secret bases in neighboring countries to launch the first operations of Iraqi Freedom. Speed became all the more vital to the success of their mission in the western desert of Iraq when hostilities began ahead of schedule with the attempted “decapitation strike” by F–117 stealth bombers and sealaunched missiles that targeted Dora Farm, where Saddam Hussein and his sons were thought to be, in the pre-dawn hours of March 20. Fortunately, the teams were already inside Iraq.

First Battalion’s assignment was to slip into Iraq early to stop the launch of any missiles into neighboring countries, especially Israel. A missile launch would instantly complicate the conflict, and quite possibly would trigger a wider regional war. During the first Gulf War the coalition had failed to prevent the launching of missiles from the western desert. Israel had refrained from retaliating then, but this time it vowed to strike back if hit. One missile could unleash this course of events, so Lt. Col. Haas told his men that this was a “zero defect” mission.

It was no simple matter to stop the launch of any Scud or other medium-range ballistic missiles from Iraq’s western desert. This territory, about the size of New Jersey, was known as the “Scud box” because missiles fired from it could reach Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Dedicated Iraqi launch teams lived, slept, and worked together and were on call around the clock to drive the mobile Scud missiles into the desert from the city of Ar Ramadi, military bases, or other hiding spots.

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