August 26, 2003
A Deadly Day for Charlie Company
The Marine unit was supposed to have backup as it entered battle in Iraq.
But it was alone, and chaos exploded.

By Rich Connell and Robert J. Lopez, Times Staff Writers

The convoy rumbled north, through the heart of the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.
It was the fourth day of the war, and the men of Charlie Company had orders
to capture the Saddam Canal Bridge on the city's northern edge.

The Marines were taking heavy fire. Then there was an ear-splitting blast.
A rocket-propelled grenade ripped open one of the amphibious assault
vehicles, lifting it off the ground.

A thick, dark cloud filled the vehicle's interior. Some of the Marines
donned gas masks, fearing a chemical attack. Screams pierced the smoke:

We got a man down! We got a man down!

The Marines' light armor had been pierced, and with it any illusion that
this would be easy. They would take the bridge, but at a cost. Eighteen men
from a single company were killed that day and 15 wounded, making it the
deadliest battle of the war for U.S. forces.

Public attention, briefly riveted on the fighting in Nasiriyah, has since
moved elsewhere. The struggle to rebuild Iraq and contain mounting guerrilla
violence now occupies center stage. But the Marines of Charlie Company, now
back home, are not ready to put that Sunday in March behind them.

They want to know why commanders sent them into an urban firefight without
tanks, without protective plating for their vehicles and with only half the
troops planned for the mission.

They want to know why an Air Force fighter strafed their positions as they
struggled to hold the bridge, killing at least one Marine and possibly as
many as six.

Five months later, the U.S. Central Command is still investigating the
"friendly fire" episode. The Marine Corps has conducted its own review of
the battle but said it will not release its findings until the other
investigation is finished.

The Times reconstructed the battle from interviews with 11 Marines who
fought that day. Their accounts paint a gory and chaotic picture of ground
combat that contrasts with the many images of U.S. forces using precision
bombs and long-distance weaponry against an enemy that quickly abandoned the
fight.

In Nasiriyah, Iraqis stood their ground and threw all they could muster at
the leading edge of the American forces. By day's end, the price of
controlling the road to Baghdad had become gruesomely clear to both sides.

Charlie Company had reached Nasiriyah after pushing up 85 miles from
Kuwait. Another Marine unit had seized a bridge leading into the city over
the Euphrates River.

Charlie Company's mission on March 23 was to take a second bridge three
miles north. Controlling both spans was crucial to moving a massive Marine
Expeditionary Force to Baghdad.

Had things gone as planned, the 200 Marines in their lightly armored
vehicles would have avoided the densely populated heart of Nasiriyah, a city
of 500,000. They were supposed to take a roundabout route to the north
bridge, swinging east of the city behind a dozen M1-A1 Abrams tanks and a
second Marine unit, Bravo Company.

But Bravo Company's vehicles sank several feet deep in mud flats east of
Nasiriyah. Its 200 men could not help take the bridge.

The tanks were also out of the fight, diverted on a rescue mission. The
Army's 507th Maintenance Company had taken a wrong turn that morning and
been ambushed near the city. Eleven soldiers were killed and seven captured,
including Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

The Marines' tanks rushed to retrieve survivors, burning their fuel in the
process. When they returned, they were sent to the rear to refuel just as
Charlie Company was preparing to push north.

"Where the hell are the tanks going?" Cpl. Randy Glass recalled thinking.
"Why the hell aren't the tanks in front of us?"

Despite the lack of armor and the stranding of Bravo'
s men, Charlie Company
was ordered to take the north bridge and to get there by the most direct
route — a three-mile stretch of highway lined by buildings and alleyways.
Some intelligence reports called it "Ambush Alley."

Lt. Col. Rick Grabowski, the battalion commander, said that going ahead
made sense at the time. Though concerned about Ambush Alley, commanders did
not anticipate a tough fight for the bridge, he said: "None of us really
knew what was on the northern side of the city."

And time was of the essence. If they waited for the tanks to return or for
troop reinforcements, the Marines risked fighting for the bridge in
darkness, Grabowski said.

There was another factor driving the Marines forward that day. It reflected
a state of mind as much as the state of the battlefield. "Keep moving" was
the motto of Charlie Company's battle regiment.

"Once we were in the city and we made contact," Grabowski said, "there
wasn't going to be any backing down."

__________

When he got the order to move into the city, Sgt. William Schaefer thought
he'd heard wrong.

"Say again," he called into his radio.

Schaefer was a commander at the head of Charlie Company's 11 amphibious
assault vehicles.

The men inside were from the beach towns of Southern California, the
hamlets of upstate New York and many places in between. One planned to
enroll at Rutgers University in New Jersey when he got home. Another wanted
to be a Reno cop. Some were immigrants. Others were from proud military
families.

They were part of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment and had shipped
out in January from their base at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Their tub-shaped assault vehicles, called "tracks," are a 30-year-old
design made for taking and holding beachheads. They are 26 feet long, carry
up to 20 Marines each, and are armed with .50-caliber machine guns and
grenade launchers.

Their reinforced-aluminum skin is vulnerable to artillery and
rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs — unlike the heavy armor on tanks.
Thick steel plating can be attached to the tracks, but none was available to
outfit Charlie Company's vehicles when they reached the war zone, the
Marines said.

"Eight Ball, Oscar Mike," Schaefer barked into the radio, and with that
signal the company was on the move.

The tracks crossed the Euphrates on the bridge captured earlier and moved
single file up Ambush Alley. It was a little before noon. On both sides, a
dense warren of mud-colored buildings pressed up against the road.

At first, the Iraqis seemed to welcome the Marines. A few waved white
flags. Then, in a breath, the convoy was under attack from all directions.
Iraqis were firing from rooftops, from around corners, from machine-gun
nests hidden in side streets.

"We saw women shoot at us with RPGs.... We saw children shoot at us,"
recalled the company commander, Capt. Daniel J. Wittnam. "We never saw one
person in uniform."

Returning the fire, Schaefer alternated between his machine gun and grenade
launcher, working a foot pedal that spun his turret right, then left.

Schaefer, 25, of Columbia, S.C., said the Marines tried to distinguish
between Iraqi fighters and noncombatants. "But at that point, it was hard."

The enemy, the Marines learned later, was a combination of Iraqi army
soldiers, Fedayeen Saddam militiamen and Baath Party loyalists.

One man knelt and aimed an RPG at Schaefer's track. A burst of .50-caliber
fire cut off the top half of the Iraqi's body.

"Pieces of people were all over the street," said Lance Cpl. Edward
Castleberry, 21, who was at the wheel of Schaefer's vehicle.

Near the rear of the convoy, Sgt. Michael E. Bitz, 31, of Ventura was
driving a track crowded with more than 20 Marines. Bitz and his crew had
picked up extra men when the company's 12th track broke down outside town.
Men were crammed on bench seats amid boxes of ammunition. Several were
riding atop the vehicle.

In the middle of the column, Marines on another track shouted for more
firepower to answer the t
orrent of incoming rounds. Lance Cpl. Eric Killeen,
22, a weightlifter from Florida's Gulf Coast, popped out of the hatch with
his 15-pound squad automatic weapon, a machine gun that can spray 1,000
rounds per minute.

Killeen poured fire down side streets, into doorways, at second-story
windows.

"My adrenaline was pumping so high," Killeen said. "Every emotion you can
imagine was running through your body."

Castleberry, a Seattle snowboarder who'd joined the Marines the day after
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, steered the lead vehicle with one hand and
fired his M-16 rifle with the other.

"I figured one more gun couldn't hurt," he said.

The convoy pushed north, the tracks pausing and pivoting at times to allow
gunners a better view. They were almost through the gantlet of Ambush Alley.
Their objective, the Saddam Canal Bridge, was a few hundred yards away.

Inside Bitz's overcrowded track, it was dark and noisy. The air reeked of
diesel fumes. Marines were on top of one another. Some stood on the
shoulders of their comrades, firing M-16s from a hatch near the rear.

Glass, a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania who had joined the Marines hoping to
see combat, was sharing a menthol cigarette with Sgt. Jose Torres when an
explosion lifted the 28-ton vehicle into the air. "Immediately, I went
deaf," Glass recalled.

An RPG had punctured the track's aluminum body — and with it the Marines'
faith in their technological edge. Their tubs were not meant for this kind
of fight — especially without the bolt-on armor plating.

"My eyes! My eyes!" shouted Torres, temporarily blinded.

"Glass is dead!" someone screamed in the chaos.

Glass wasn't dead, but his left leg was a bleeding mass.

Up top, the explosion had torched rucksacks tied to the track, turning them
into balls of fire.

Bitz drove the burning vehicle forward. This was no place to stop.

"Keep it tight! Keep it tight!" Schaefer shouted into the radio, not
wanting any stragglers left behind.

__________

The tracks finally crossed the Saddam Canal Bridge, a nondescript concrete
span over an irrigation channel. Though it seemed an eternity, the trip had
taken only a few minutes. On each side were swampy irrigation ditches and
brush. Beyond was open flatland. The road was raised, and Charlie Company
was an easy target.

The tracks fanned out over a quarter-mile-wide area. Marines in
charcoal-lined chemical suits and Kevlar flak vests poured out of the
vehicles and sought cover on both sides of the road.

They had taken the bridge. Holding it was another matter. Small-arms fire
exploded from the fields to the east and west and from the city to the
rear.

Marines scrambled out of Bitz's burning track. A release on the rear
loading ramp didn't work, so the men piled out through a small hatch,
climbing over the wounded.

Schaefer helped carry out Glass, whose left leg had been tied with a
tourniquet.

Bitz was carrying injured Marines to cover when a shell exploded, spraying
him with shrapnel. Blood streamed from his face and back as he continued
hauling the wounded to safety.

"He was acting like nothing was wrong," Schaefer said.

__________

A plume of black smoke rose from Bitz's track. Mortar shells landed on each
side. The Iraqis quickly adjusted their aim and slammed the vehicle.

Burning ammunition began punching out the track's sides.

Cpl. William Bachmann, 22, a New Jersey skateboarder, was wedging his lanky
frame into a nearby depression when he saw a flash of light from the
vehicle. A large-caliber round flew past him. "If I was standing up," he
said, "I would have been hit."

Cpl. Randal Rosacker of San Diego set up his machine gun, providing cover
for other Marines. His is a military family; his father is chief of boat on
a Navy submarine. Rosacker, 21, was cut down by an Iraqi artillery round or
mortar shell, said Wittnam, the company commander. He was one of the first
Marines to die that day.

The company's 15-man mortar squad set up a row of launchers on t
he east
side of the road.

The squad had no time to dig foxholes. The Marines worked three launchers
furiously, knocking out Iraqi mortar positions across the canal. They fired
so many rounds so quickly that their mortar tubes were glowing, almost
translucent. "They were pretty much melting their tubes," said Castleberry.

Outnumbered by the Iraqis' mortar positions, the squad was a prime target.
Incoming shells were landing closer and closer. Finally, the Iraqi mortars
found their mark. Nine members of the squad would die before the battle was
over.

Second Lt. Frederick Pokorney Jr., a 6-foot-7-inch former basketball
player, tried to call in artillery strikes on the Iraqis. A 31-year-old
father from Nevada, he was the company's forward artillery observer. He had
trouble getting through on his field radio and moved to higher ground for
better reception.

An RPG hit him in the chest, fatally wounding him.

As the casualties mounted, Wittnam wanted helicopters to evacuate the
wounded. But there was "no way in hell" they could land, he said. "It was
too hot."

Navy Corpsman Luis Fonseca, 22, was giving morphine to Glass and another
wounded Marine in one of the tracks. With a black marker, he scrawled "1327"
on Glass' head, indicating the time the painkiller was administered.

The medic ran up and down the road looking for wounded when he saw Wittnam.
"We're starting to win this battle," Fonseca recalled the captain saying.

Fonseca wasn't convinced. "I know there's a bullet with my name on it," he
recalled thinking. "I'm gonna do my job until I get hit."

Machine gunners needed more ammunition. Sgt. Brendon C. Reiss, 23, a squad
leader, and Cpl. Kemaphoom Chanawongse, 22, a Thai immigrant from
Connecticut, ran to get more ammo boxes from one of the vehicles.

An artillery round exploded, killing Chanawongse and fatally wounding
Reiss.

Around 1:30 p.m., Schaefer decided to evacuate the wounded, even though it
meant going back through Ambush Alley. All 11 tracks had made it across the
bridge. Schaefer lined up six of them in a column to head south.

"I was willing to take a chance because we had guys bleeding to death," he
said. "I was tired of seeing people getting killed."

Bachmann and Lance Cpl. Donald Cline, 21, a former surfer raised in La
Crescenta, were firing from behind a mound of earth. Word came that
volunteers were needed to load the wounded onto the vehicles.

"I'm going to help," Cline said, running toward the tracks spread out north
of the bridge. It was the last time Bachmann saw his friend alive.

__________

The Marines heard the plane before they saw it. The Air Force A-10
Thunderbolt, known as the Warthog, flies ground-support missions, using its
heavy gun.

Cpl. Jared Martin, 29, a former high school wrestler from Phoenix, was
outside Schaefer's track when he heard the growl of the jet fighter's twin
engines. Its 30-millimeter cannon, which can shoot 3,900 rounds per minute,
whipped up dense clouds of sand.

"He was low," Martin said. "He was coming right toward us. The next thing I
know I'm feeling a lot of heat in my back."

Blood streamed from his right knee and left hand. A piece of shrapnel
lodged below his eye. "My fingers, they were pretty much dangling," Martin
said.

Lance Cpl. David Fribley, 26, of Florida, was just steps from the cover of
Schaefer's vehicle when rounds from the A-10 tore into his chest. "I wore
what was inside of his body on my gear for a couple of days," Martin said.

To ward off the friendly fire, the Marines shot flares, which streaked the
sky with green smoke.

The Marines said the A-10 made several strafing runs before it broke away.

Schaefer hoisted a U.S. flag on his turret. He hoped the Warthog pilot
would see it and hold his fire. He also wanted the tracks behind to be able
to keep him in sight. "Watch for the flag," he radioed to the convoy of six
vehicles heading south with the wounded.

As the column started back toward Ambush Alley, one of the tracks exploded.
Inside a
nother track, Marines heard bullets bouncing off the aluminum skin.
Glass, who had already been in one track that broke down, turned to Cpl.
Mike Meade, whose leg was also injured.

"This track stalls and we're getting out," Glass said. "It's a death trap."
A minute later, the vehicle stopped. Glass and Meade struggled out.

Fonseca, the medic, heard the whistle of incoming shells and shoved a
sergeant on top of Glass and another injured Marine. Then he piled on top to
give added protection. Three RPGs flew by and exploded about 100 feet away.

"I need to save these boys," he recalled thinking. "I need to take them
back home."

Glass saw an A-10 fire on one of the tracks. It's unclear whether it was
the same jet that had flown over earlier. Two of the aircraft appeared to be
operating in the area, Marines said.

"The A-10 came down hard and lit the track up," Glass said. "There's no
mistake about it."

Torres was lying nearby when he saw the jet bearing down on him. "It was
slow motion," he said. "I turned at the last moment to avoid a direct hit."

Still, the Warthog's rounds tore through his left side. "When he pulls the
trigger," Martin said of the pilot, "it's just a wall of blood."

Grabowski, the battalion commander, said that as many as six Marines may
have been killed by A-10 fire. Wittnam believes it was one.

Schaefer's convoy, now down to five vehicles, was crossing the bridge. In
front, a track that normally carried the mortar squad had several Marines
inside. As the track came off the bridge, an Iraqi shell dropped down the
left-side cargo hatch, ripping the vehicle in half.

"A hand and arm bounced across the front of my vehicle," said Schaefer. The
remaining vehicles raced around the burning track.

The rear of one track was crushed by an Iraqi shell, killing the wounded
Bitz. The driver kept going.

__________

The four surviving tracks made it to Ambush Alley. They were met by gunfire
from all sides.

Bullets ripped through Schaefer's transmission fluid tank, and Castleberry
felt the steering wheel freeze. "Hold on!" he shouted over the intercom as
the track careened toward a light pole.

Castleberry gunned the 525-horsepower diesel engine, hoping to knock down
the pole. But the track slammed to a halt, swinging to the left toward a
two-story concrete house.

An RPG blew away the track's front hatch, six inches above Castleberry's
head. Stunned, his face and hair singed, he jumped into the street. Schaefer
radioed to the three surviving tracks: "Don't stop. Keep going."

Inside the disabled track, a dozen Marines grabbed ammunition containers
and the wounded and headed for the house.

Schaefer and two other Marines, one injured, were pinned down outside the
track. "Then all hell broke out," Schaeffer said. "They just started coming
out of nowhere, hundreds of them."

Iraqis were charging the Marines. Schaefer aimed his M-16 and quickly used
up two 29-round clips as he killed some of the attackers and forced others
to take cover.

"When you're scared," he said, "you pull your finger pretty fast."

Two of the other Marines, meanwhile, scaled an 8-foot wall and went into
the house. An Iraqi man and woman ran out the back door.

The Marines hoisted the wounded over the wall and put them inside. The
windows of the house were hidden by piles of sandbags and sacks of flour. In
one room were pictures of Saddam Hussein and a man who looked like Jesus.

Out on the street, Schaefer and the two other Marines were holding off the
advancing Iraqis.

Then the driver and a crewman from the track that had been ripped in half
at the bridge appeared in the street. One was blinded. The other was
limping.

"We're laying cover fire for them," Schaefer said, "and they hobbled
inside."

Schaefer was on his last magazine clip. This is it, he recalled thinking:
They're going to overrun me.

Then he heard the roar of a track driven by Cpl. Michael Brown. He had
disregarded Schaefer's instructions to continue and had turned around.
Sco
oping up the three Marines, Brown took off in a rain of enemy fire.

"He saved my life," Schaefer said.

About seven Marines took up positions on the roof of the house. Martin, his
wounds patched up, spotted two men peeking around a corner with an RPG. He
fired and they fell.

Martin looked at his watch. It was about 3 p.m. "We have about two hours
before the sun goes down," he thought. "Then we're gonna be real screwed."

The man who lived in the house burst through the back door yelling. He
entered the room where the wounded were being guarded, Castleberry said, and
was shot dead.

A lance corporal with the only operable radio called other units at the
south end of the city for help. But the battery was low, and he couldn't
tell whether the message was getting through.

With Iraqis now 20 yards from the building, the Marines on the roof were
going through hundreds of rounds. Castleberry had fired so many grenades
from his M-16 that the plastic hand grip on his launcher was melting.

Two Iraqis sped by on a motorcycle, the passenger firing an AK-47. On a
second pass, one Marine hit the driver, spilling the bike. As the gunman
tried to escape on the motorcycle, Castleberry unleashed another grenade. He
saw a flash and the man's body blew apart.

The ammunition was running low. Castleberry and another Marine dashed to
the disabled track, grabbing antitank missiles and crates of bullets as they
dodged enemy rounds.

On the roof, Martin and other Marines were trying to use shards of broken
glass to reflect sunlight and get the attention of U.S. Cobra helicopter
gunships overhead.

Below, Iraqi fighters were trying to reach the abandoned track, with its
load of weapons and ammunition. "We're hitting them," Martin recalled,
"watching them drop."

He remembers a strange sensation. "Your body and brain ain't working like a
normal person's would. Some people will snap. Some people will go off the
edge. Everyone reacts differently," Martin said. "I was having fun."

Marines at the south bridge had picked up the radioed pleas for help and
organized a rescue party.

The first vehicle to arrive was a Humvee carrying a grizzled gunnery
sergeant from another company. He was firing a pump-action shotgun out the
passenger window as Marines on the roof sprayed cover fire.

"What do you need?" he shouted.

Water and radio batteries, the Marines answered.

"I'll be back," the sergeant said.

An M1-A1 tank arrived soon after and took away the wounded. The gunnery
sergeant returned with Humvees to rescue the remaining Marines.

As the vehicles unleashed heavy fire in several directions, forcing the
Iraqi fighters to take cover, the sergeant stepped onto the street and lit a
cigarette.

"God, I hate this ... place," he said. "Let's get the hell out of here."

__________

Part of Charlie Company was still pinned down at the north bridge.

Lance Cpl. Killeen, the Florida weightlifter, and his platoon were in the
swamp near the span. He could hear enemy soldiers nearby.

"I thought they were going to sandwich us," Killeen said. "I figured my
life was all over."

It was nearing 4 p.m. and the sun was getting low.

The ground rumbled and Killeen climbed toward the bridge. If Iraqi tanks
were coming, then the company was almost certainly lost, he recalled
thinking.

As the tanks neared the canal, he saw they were American. These were the
tanks that had spent their fuel retrieving members of the Army maintenance
company that had been ambushed. Refueling had taken longer than expected
because the pumps malfunctioned; it had to done by hand.

When they learned that Charlie Company was taking a pounding, the tank
crews cut short the refueling and rushed back to Nasiriyah.

Now they were firing their 120-millimeter guns at Iraqi positions.

"It was the best feeling in the world," Killeen recalled.

__________

As the Marines prepare for a memorial service today at Camp Lejeune, many
are trying to recover from wounds both mental and physical.

Gla
ss, recuperating in his hometown of Bethlehem, Pa., has had 11 surgeries
to remove shrapnel, dead muscle and metal pins from his leg, wounded by an
Iraqi RPG. His fibula has been removed and he's had several skin grafts.
He'll be on crutches at least two more months.

Martin had eight chunks of shrapnel from the A-10 removed from his hands
and legs on the battlefield. Two additional pieces were removed from his arm
in June on a Navy ship returning him to North Carolina. He's awaiting
plastic surgery to remove another piece below his right eye.

Torres, who was also hit by the A-10, walks with the help of crutches as he
recovers from shrapnel wounds to his right leg and left side. He was
recently released from the Bethesda naval hospital in Maryland and is
working to regain movement in his left foot.

"I'm still here," he said. "That's all I thank God for."

Some of the Charlie Company Marines prefer not to talk about what happened
that day. Others break down as they recall how the men around them fell.
Castleberry still pictures the faces of the youngest Iraqi fighters. Some
looked to be 12 years old.

"It was kind of sad," he said. "You see these kids who don't know anything
getting shot to pieces because they're trying to shoot at you."

Others talk about waking up in the night, the battle for the bridge playing
over and over in their heads.

"We all have nightmares every night. We're in some combat scenario and it's
always the same guys getting killed," Schaefer said. "Your memory's just
like a damn camera. Especially when you're alone."