Roughneck Nine-One by Frank Antenori

Author:Frank Antenori
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2011-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

THE TWO-WAY RIFLE RANGE

Tom had done a great job planning the attack. His preplanned strikes came in on time and target; as we looked up the hill, we could all see it was empty of enemy forces. The bombing may not have killed anybody, but it certainly cleared them off the objective. Although everybody was anxious to do some shooting, there was nothing to shoot. As we moved slowly and deliberately up the slope, Marty called me on the radio.

“Frank, the Kurds don’t want us to go any farther cross-country; they found a big minefield on both sides of the road.”

We were making good time and were about halfway to the objective.

“Their commander wants us to come over to the road. The Kurds are going to clear the mines from the pavement, and then we’ll use the roadway to get past the mines.”

I called Eric on my IMBTR radio. “What do you want to do?”

“Let’s all collapse in on the road just to get through the minefield,” Eric responded. A “Roger that” came from each of our other three vehicles.

We drove over to the road and continued uphill. Ahead, three Kurds were busy picking up the antitank mines. They apparently knew how to disarm them because each mine was simply tossed onto the dirt at the edge of the pavement. These were big weapons, each weighing about 10 pounds, with more than half of that being explosive. They were designed to blow the tracks and road wheels off of armor, and would easily shred our Humvees if we happened to drive over one of them. But the mines were simply laid at the edge of the pavement along a stretch of the road only about 50 meters long. Once the mines were removed, we could safely proceed.

But the Iraqi engineers had added something besides the mines. The road was an obvious route for any enemy force, and the enemy had done what they could to slow us down. This kind of situation is common. We call it a “countermobility mission,” and both the mines and the huge pile of dirt, at least 12 feet high, that had been pushed onto the road were designed to hamper movement, not prevent it. You can’t keep a mobile force from attacking, but you can push them into your kill zones, and you can delay them while you beat them up with your artillery, tanks, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades.

Right now we were in the kill zone. The Iraqis had definitely delayed us. Luckily they were not covering this obstacle, thanks to the air strikes, but we were momentarily stuck on the wrong side of the dirt berm. Kenney, one of our engineers, hopped out of his GMV, studied the huge roadblock for a minute, then said, “I can blow this thing.”

While he went back for his stash of explosives, the Kurds decided to push on. They climbed over the berm on foot. Immediately they began taking fire from enemy infantry who hadn’t abandoned their positions.

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