- 'I got my kills ... I just love my job'
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- Observations of American soldiers of the 1st Infantry
Division taskforce avenging their fallen comrades as battle begins
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- After seven months in Iraq's Sunni triangle, for many
American soldiers the opportunity to avenge dead friends by taking a life
was a moment of sheer exhilaration.
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- As they approached their "holding position",
from where hours later they would advance into the city, they picked off
insurgents on the rooftops and in windows.
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- "I got myself a real juicy target," shouted
Sgt James Anyett, peering through the thermal sight of a Long Range Acquisition
System (LRAS) mounted on one of Phantom's Humvees.
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- "Prepare to copy that 89089226. Direction 202 degrees.
Range 950 metres. I got five motherf****** in a building with weapons."
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- Capt Kirk Mayfield, commander of the Phantoms, called
for fire from his task force's mortar team.
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- But Sgt Anyett didn't want to wait.
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- "Dude, give me the sniper rifle.
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- I can take them out -
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- I'm from Alabama."
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- Two minutes tick by. "They're moving deep,"
shouted Sgt Anyett with disappointment.
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- A dozen loud booms rattle the sky and smoke rose as mortars
rained down on the co-ordinates the sergeant had given.
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- "Yeah," he yelled. "Battle Damage Assessment
- nothing. Building's gone. I got my kills,
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- I'm coming down.
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- I just love my job."
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- Phantom Troop had rolled out of Camp Fallujah, the main
US military base, shortly before 4am.
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- All morning they took fire from the Al-Askari district
in Fallujah's north-east, their target for the invasion proper.
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- The insurgents, not understanding the capabilities of
the LRAS, crept along rooftops and poked their heads out of windows.
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- Even when they were more than a mile away, the soldiers
of Phantom Troop had their eyes on them.
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- Lt Jack Farley, a US Marines officer, sauntered over
to compare notes with the Phantoms.
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- "You guys get to do all the fun stuff," he
said.
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- "It's like a video game.
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- We've taken small arms fire here all day.
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- It just sounds like popcorn going off."
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- Another marine stepped forward and began to fire an M4
rifle at the city. "He's a reservist for the San Diego police.
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- He wants a piece of the action, too".
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- A Phantom Abrams tank moved up the road running along
the high ground.
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- Its barrel, stencilled with the words "Ali Baba
under 3 Thieves" swivelled towards the city and then fired a 120mm
round at a house where two men with AK-47s had been pinpointed.
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- "Ain't nobody moving now," shouted a soldier
as the dust cleared.
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- "He rocked that guy's world."
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- One of Phantom's sniper teams laid down fire into the
city with a Barrett .50 calibre rifle and a Remington 700.
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- A suspected truck bomb was riddled with bullets, the
crack of the Barrett echoing through the mainly deserted section of the
city.
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- The insurgents fired 60mm mortars back, one of them wounding
a soldier.
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- There were 25mm rounds from Phantom's Bradley fighting
vehicles, barrages from Paladin howitzers back at Camp Fallujah and bursts
of fire from .50 calibre machineguns.
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- One by one, the howitzers used by the insurgents were
destroyed.
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- "Everybody's curious," grinned Sgt Anyett as
he waited for a sniper with a Russian-made Dragonov to show his face one
last, fatal time. A bullet zinged by.
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- Dusk fell and 7pm, "A hour", the appointed
hour to move into the city, approached.
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- The soldiers of Phantom all reflected.
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- "Given the choice, I would never have wanted to
fire a gun," said Cpl Chris Merrell, 21, manning a machine gun mounted
on a Humvee.
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- "But it didn't work out that way. I'd like a thousand
boring missions rather than one interesting one."
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- On his wrist was a black bracelet bearing the name of
a sergeant from Phantom Troop. "This is a buddy of mine that died,"
he said. "Pretty much everyone in the unit has one."
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- One fear playing on the mind of the task force was that
of "friendly fire", also kn own as "blue on blue".
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- "Any urban fight is confusing," Lt Col Newell,
the force's commander, told his troops before the battle. "The biggest
threat out there is not them, but us."
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- His officers said that the plan to invade Fallujah involved
months of detailed planning and elaborate "feints" designed to
draw the insurgents out into the open
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- and fool them into thinking the offensive would come
from another side of the city.
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- "They're probably thinking that we'll come in from
the east," said Capt Natalie Friel, an intelligence officer with task
force, before the battle. But the actual plan involves penetrating the
city from the north and sweeping south.
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- "I don't think they know what's coming. They have
no idea of the magnitude," she said.
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- "But their defences are pretty circular. They're
prepared for any kind of direction. They've got strong points on all four
corners of the city."
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- The aim was to push the insurgents south, killing as
many as possible, before swinging west. They would then be driven into
the Euphrates.
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- ï Tony Blair's problems over Iraq deepened still
further last night when one of his most respected former advisers suggested
the entire conflict had been illegal.
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- Sir Stephen Wall, who was head of the European Secretariat
in the Cabinet Office, said:
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- "We allowed our judgment of the dire consequences
of inaction to allow us to depart from the rule of law."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited
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