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The LA Times has a story today that makes our military look good. It’s buried on page A9.
It reports on special units of Marines, the elite Force Reconnaissance units, that covertly infiltrated Fallouja two days before the battle, to provide intel on the enemy, and to “shape” the battle:
Almost two days before the battle for Fallouja, the Marines’ elite Force Reconnaissance units had infiltrated the northern periphery of town. They had dug into “hide sites” and “shaped” the future battlefield, calling in guerrilla positions for the spectacular bombardment that preceded the invasion.
”’Shaping’ the battle is making the enemy do what you want him to do,” said Marine Gunnery Sgt. Ed McDermott, 35, of Force Recon. “You drop bombs on him. You make him pull back. You subject him to direct and indirect fire. You cut off his supply lines.”
...”Force Recon provided us with some tremendous capabilities,” said Col. Craig Tucker, who headed one of the two major battle groups that descended on this city last month. “I just can’t say enough about the job they did.”
The reporter was with them during the battle:
The specially trained Marines are similar to Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets and Rangers. Their precise role is often shrouded in secrecy, but a group attached to the 1st Battalion of the 8th Marine Regiment during the battle of Fallouja agreed to talk as the fighting raged.
“We enjoy what we do,” said Capt. Jason Schauble, 29, a Force Recon commander whose platoon suffered casualty rates of more than 50% during the fight, though most returned to action. “There’s a lot of risks, but we’re all volunteers. We understand the risks.”
They spoke late at night in this blacked-out and devastated city from their perch in a darkened fourth-floor apartment that once housed guerrilla gunmen.
In one of the rooms, Staff Sgt. Mark Detrick lay on his stomach in classic sniper position, his rifle balanced on a tripod, its muzzle protruding through a punched-out hole in the wall. “They don’t have a clue what’s coming,” Detrick said, scanning the ruins of the city to the south, where unseen combatants were still dug into the rubble and moving about.
The enemy liked to take a lunch break:
The firing leveled off about midday, as it often did during the fighting in Fallouja. The insurgents were inclined to take a break, grab a bite, maybe take a nap, before resuming their labors in the afternoon, Marines said.
Descriptions of fighting:
“As we were crossing to go, some machine gun and something else [coming] from an alley just lit my team up,” Detrick, 29, recalled. “Right off the bat, my assistant team leader, he got hit and he was down, KIA [killed in action] automatically.”
Detrick and others took cover at a garbage Dumpster, cut off from the rest of their unit. “As I was crawling up, they shot an armor-piercing round through that Dumpster,” Detrick said. “It hit the ground in front of me and bounced off my left forearm. Hit the wall behind me and came back at me.”
The staff sergeant got a good look at the round. The memory lingers: “It was basically a steel bullet about a foot and a half long, an inch in diameter.”
Fortunately, the lethal projectile, meant to pierce tanks, didn’t explode.
...But by 4 p.m. that first day, the streets again resounded with gunfire, the crackling rounds of Kalashnikovs and the steady thuds of M-16s.
To the east of a Force Recon position, a group of insurgents was suddenly flushed from an alley. They jetted down an open street, apparently trying to join colleagues retreating to the city’s southern reaches. Within minutes, four were slumped over, cut down by intense Marine fire. One of them had lugged a heavy machine gun and had several belts of large-caliber ammunition slung on his shoulders. The Force Recon troops say the four were probably responsible for the death of their comrade.
“There’s a very good chance we got all or part of those guys who killed our guy,” said the officer called Frisky. “I think it’s important to mention that.”
...On Nov. 12, three Force Recon Marines survived a pair of rocket-propelled grenades that blasted the apartment where they were holed up. Cpl. Frank Delgado was knocked unconscious by a separate RPG barrage and pulled from the rubble; he was later shot as Marines exchanged fire with attackers positioned in another mosque. Delgado was evacuated and survived.
In all, 13 of Schauble’s platoon of 24 would be eligible for Purple Hearts for injuries sustained in the battle for Fallouja. Several, among them Detrick and Delgado, are in line for multiple Purple Hearts.
The rebels who had held sway for so many months in Fallouja were soon on the run, pushed south in an increasingly desperate struggle.
When great reporting like this, that shows the bravery of our military, is hidden on an inside page, what does that say to reporters who are trying to get their work on the front page of the paper? Well, let’s see what Iraq headlines the LA Times put on their front page today:
But the report that shows the bravery of our guys, was put on page A9.
There’s nothing subtle about that.
