Shock Factor by Jack Coughlin

Author:Jack Coughlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250038371
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The 440

HUSAYBAH, IRAQ

SYRIAN BORDER

SPRING 2004

For all its intensity and the toll it took on Jason, the drive to Baghdad was cake compared to his second deployment, this time with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines.

After a very brief stay at home following the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom I, Jesse Davenport, Jason, and a few others from the 3/4 Scouts were sent to join 3/7 as it worked up for operations in Anbar Province. The battalion arrived on the Iraqi-Syrian border in February 2004, just as the war entered a new and deadly phase.

For the first and only time during the Iraq War, the diverse and fractious insurgent groups attempted to spark a national uprising. Cooperation between the Shia militias and the Al Anbar Sunni rebels took place at a high level, including a secret planning conference later discovered to have been held in London mosques.

The killing of four American Blackwater contractors at a bridge on the outskirts of Fallujah on March 31, 2004, sparked the uprising. Within days, almost every province in Iraq seethed with violence and rebellion. The Coalition was caught completely by surprise, especially in the south where the Shia were considered to be pro-occupation.

All across southern Iraq, Shia militias and insurgent groups struck at the Americans and nascent Iraqi security forces. Entire towns and cities fell into their hands. The militias, including the notorious Mahdi Militia, used their success to terrorize the local populations as they enforced their radical brand of Islam. Shop owners selling Western DVDs were told to shutter their doors. Those who didn’t were dragged into the streets of Basra and Najaf to be beaten or murdered. Women who did not cover themselves completely when they went outdoors were shot or beaten—or worse. Couples who dared display affection to each other in public were set upon by the militias, pummeled and left bleeding in the streets as examples.

The British and American forces in the south were spread very thin. Nobody had expected this sudden onslaught, and the majority of the Coalition’s fighting power had been deployed in Baghdad or Al Anbar Province. This sudden development threatened the supply lines to Kuwait, and in many places the highways the logistical convoys used were overrun and fortified by the Shia insurgents.

The U.S. had to switch gears. The offensive began just as the first wave of troops were rotating home in what was one of the military’s largest relief in place operations ever. Tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines who had been trying to establish order for the past year suddenly found themselves forced to call their families and tell them they would not be home after all. The 1st Armored Division was among the first units to have their deployment extended. Instead of going back to Kuwait, then home, the tankers and mech infantry were thrown into a counteroffensive in the south, supported by the freshly arrived 1st Infantry Division.

As the battle raged from Baghdad to the Kuwait border, the Marines in Al Anbar Province bore the brunt of the Sunni half of the national uprising.

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