Run to the Sound of the Guns by Nicholas Moore

Author:Nicholas Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472827074
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

TIPTOE THROUGH THE DEADLY TULIPS

Mosul Part Three, Iraq, 2008

At the end of 2007 a few of us, including me and Jason, submitted our promotion packets for sergeant first class (E-7). All were accepted – Jason moved to Alpha Company later and I to battalion staff. This would be my last deployment to Mosul as a staff sergeant (E-6), age 27, squad leader of 3rd Squad, 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company.

Our platoon had been in Mosul more than any of the others and we joked that we should buy a summer home there. We did not even need a map to drive through the city since we had it memorized by now. Frankly, this was awesome on our part because in the event that the navigation system failed we were still operable and we could give route directions over the radios. This deployment pushed us to our limit mentally as well as physically. Between our two platoons we conducted over 160 combat missions within our 90-day deployment cycle.

During our first few weeks my squad was tasked out to support Army Special Forces. They had a small troop deployed and we drove their vehicles and navigated the city on the way to their targets. Our squad had dropped from an all-time high of 13 to about nine or ten. I broke off four senior Rangers to accompany me on this tasking, and we were sad to leave our platoon behind since they were going to have a lot of fun. After all, who wants to chauffeur other units and never get off the truck? We did get to do a few helicopter operations with them, which was fun, but blocking positions on most of the missions were always boring. But Army Special Forces was small and needed some additional muscle.

About a month later we rotated with another set of Rangers from 2nd Platoon. Within the first week of that rotation, they got into a gunfight and suffered one Ranger KIA. Specialist Thomas F. Duncan III, age 21, died of gunshot wounds suffered during combat operations in Sinjar, Iraq, on June 9, 2008. They had taken a helicopter flight out west of the city to a typical small village. They were sucked in and baited into a gunfight from barricaded shooters along a half-crumbled wall. The fight ended with a tragic blue-on-blue KIA. What had happened, it seemed, was that once the gunfight began, the Ranger blocking position shifted its location to put accurate fire onto the target location but somehow this was not properly understood or communicated. Through either miscommunication or misinterpretation during the fight an aircraft ended up strafing blue elements along with the enemy force. Such is the fog of war. It really sucked and put the guys into a funk early into their deployment. This happened alongside Army Special Forces and questions were asked about their operation. During the investigation a few things came to light but all one can say is human beings make mistakes and will always make mistakes.

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