Featured Embed Report: On Patrol with the Gators

Bill Ardolino from INDC Journal is currently embedded as a reporter with U.S. forces in Fallujah. Public Multimedia, Inc., my non-profit media corporation, assisted Bill with the embed process by providing advice, guidance and equipment lists. We are pleased to reproduce Bill’s latest update from Fallujah, On Patrol with the Gators, and thank him for the opportunity. I embedded with the Gators early in December of 2006, and Bill’s update provides continuing coverage from Fallujah. If you wish to support Bill’s embed and independent journalism, please visit INDC Journal.

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Last Wednesday I rode along on a mounted patrol with members of Bravo Company, Second Assault Amphibious Battalion, aka “Team Gator.” As my recent predecessor Bill Roggio described their mission:

The traditional mission of an Assault Amphibious Battalion is to land Marines on the beach, using their huge Amphibious Assault Vehicles (or AAVs), which hold up to 20 Marines and a crew of three.

Here in Iraq, the mission has changed. The Gators have been assigned to patrol Route Mobile, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Route Mobile, which, along with Route Michigan, are the two largest roads running east-west through Anbar province.

Route Mobile is an essential supply line for the Iraqi Army, US Military and al-Anbar as a whole, as well as a main conduit for civilians and insurgents traveling between Syria, Ramadi, Fallujah and Baghdad, among other stops. It’s undoubtedly also one of the most explosive stretches of highway on the planet.

Bravo Company is commanded by Captain Eric “Disco” Dominijanni, 34, a charismatic officer originally from Queens, NY. I scratched my head when Dominijani greeted me as a “fellow paisan,” until he explained his Chinese, black and Italian heritage. A talented chef who was offered his own show on the Food Network (turned down because of deployment to Iraq), he fed me with a gourmet stash of provolone, prosciutto and salami while conducting a briefing on the Gators’ mission.

“Our job is to patrol up and down MSR Mobile, provide route security and convoy security. Basically anything that happens on Mobile is my responsibility,” he explained. “We clear it of IED’s and provide security for ourselves, anyone who is transiting: military convoys, contractors, IP’s (Iraqi Police), the IA’s (Iraqi Army), everyone who runs down mobile.”

He outlined the nature of the threats to security: Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) placed along the road, Vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs) driven at their targets, small-arms fire (SAF), rocket-propelled grenades (RPG’s) and snipers who sit along the highway in palm groves and buildings. Two of his Marines were killed and several injured in the month of December. Morale improved when the Gators caught most of the insurgent sniper team responsible for the attacks.

I asked him who the enemy was.

“A lot of (those who plant IED’s) are poor farmers who have no money. Some just drop them off on their way to work. A local insurgent leader or ringleader will say ‘hey, here’s $5 to drop an IED against the Americans,'” sometimes more if they video them dropping it. It’s also almost like a rite to manhood out here. We’re getting kids, like 18 and 19 years-old that are trying to look like men, get that symbol of manhood and establish themselves as local leaders in the community. And what’s the best way to do that? It’s to fight the infidels.”

I suggested they join football teams instead.

“Well actually we’re doing that, we’re handing out soccer balls, and you can actually see the impact in some areas with the younger kids. All kids want candy, but when you see them and they are waving when you drive by, that’s a key indicator – but only when no adults are nearby, because some of them will slap their hands down. Some areas are friendly and some are not; you’ll feel it, like back in NY. When everyone scatters, something is about to go down.”

After a full meal and briefing, I headed out to the vehicle to meet the section commander and his crew.

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The Gators patrol in an Assault Amphibian Vehicle Personnel 7 (AAVP7A1), also known as an amtrak, trak, Hog or Gator. The Iraqis call them “Green Dragons.” AAV’s are big and boxy enough to wonder just how their 27 tons float, much less maneuver on water

In the rear is a loading and unloading ramp for the 20 Marine infantry that the craft is designed to hold, but the crew typically mounts the vehicle by climbing up the sides.

My trak and the section of three vehicles as a whole was commanded by Staff Sergeant Niceforo “Joker” Mendoza, a laid-back Marine from Plano, Texas. Mendoza sits in the turret …

… which swivels 360 degrees and houses the rig’s main weapons, a .50 caliber machine gun and a Mark 19 grenade launcher. His responsibility, in addition to commanding the vehicle and section, is to monitor the sides of the road for threats.

The driver, Corporal Randal “Wopper” Galan, sits on the left-front of the vehicle.

In addition to operating the AAV, he’s the vehicle’s crew chief. During missions Galan monitors route Mobile’s three lanes.

“Between the two of us, not much gets by,” says Mendoza.

Corporal Tommy Colvin is the third crewman, as well as the section’s mechanic.

I sat behind the driver in the “troop commander’s seat,” traditionally the station that lets a Marine infantry commander gauge “just what his troops in the back are rolling into,” explained Mendoza.

With the crews mounted and ready, the Gators rolled out of Camp Fallujah …

… and on to the arid stretch of highway dubbed “MSR Mobile.”

The highway’s median is littered with broken guardrails. Earlier in the conflict, insurgents and their hires were placing IED’s on the inside of the rails, making them impossible to spot without having parallel patrols cover each other from both sides of the road. Engineers took care of the problem by destroying the tempting hiding places.

Lowered into the hatch, the crew leaves snipers little-to-no target, though Mendoza jokes that he faces exposure in the turret because he’s “so damn tall.” 360 degrees of armored glass panes give crew members a view in front of and around the vehicle.

The search for threats is constant. Cars stopped by the side of the road are potential VBIED’s. Mendoza watches their wheels for an outward turn signaling an attempted charge at the traks. When a suicide bomber makes a run at one of his vehicles, the turret gunner on that trak and/or another vehicle covering the trak open fire to destroy them before they close and detonate.

IED’s can be hidden in or behind innumerable objects. While on patrol, we slowed for tires, rocks, more tires, more rocks, trash and …

… holes made from previous IED explosions.

“One of the insurgents’ favorite things to use is a hole from a previous blast. If it’s in the concrete, Seabees or engineers will go out with Quikrete to seal up the hole … so when we see a hole it makes us nervous. They’ll also stuff it inside tires. Firestone must give them their tires over here, because there is rubber everywhere. We started burning dead animals because they started stuffing them with IEDS.”

“Any time you can’t see on the other side of something, you have to assume it’s an IED. We approach slowly. If it really doesn’t feel right, we stop, form the vehicles in a defensive perimeter.”

Mendoza then looks through various optics to assess the threat. If one is found, an Explosive Ordinance Disposal team is called out to take care of it.

A couple of hours into the patrol, Mendoza ordered this vehicle stopped and searched along with its occupants.

“I saw two trucks and one white car. The area we were in has been prone to everything from kidnapping, to car jackings, to basic burglary. Part of our job out there is to keep the Iraqis safe as well as Coalition forces. It appeared that the occupants of the white car might have been trying to burglarize or carjack the two white trucks, and I might have pulled up to disrupt it. When we pulled up and I got closer, I saw there were four male occupants in the vehicle, which made it even more suspicious, so we just conducted what’s called a “SNAP” vehicle check on them, where we block off the road and conduct a search. We pulled in tight, real tight, the way we did to combat any snipers or anybody who was watching us, to keep my guys who were on the deck (conducting the search) as safe as I could.”

No weapons were found and the men were let go.

“Last month on the same road, I was actually down by the Abu Ghraib prison, and I was stopped by an Aegis convoy, which is a British civilian-run contractor. They’d just taken some small arms fire up near the Iraqi checkpoint, so we pushed up to see what was going on, we got there right after the engagement. I went to talk to the Iraqi soldiers to … check the area out. While I was doing that, another bus had pulled up, stopped, talked to the Iraqi Captain, who was able to turn around and tell me in English that some buses had gotten hijacked up the road. So we took off with the Iraqi Army captain, following his humvees to try and find these buses.”

“As we got closer to the area, I saw the buses about two kilometers to the south down that road, and as I pulled up, there were five or six sedans that took off along with the buses. I was able to get the buses stopped so I could chase down some of the cars – not gonna happen in an Amtrak, they were too fast. So we went ahead and searched all the buses to make sure there were no hijackers in them. We got the buses cleared (with the Iraq Army). (The bus drivers) were nervous about getting attacked again so we escorted them with a humvee gun truck all the way out of our area. ”

“Had I not shown up, they would definitely have had some hostages, they would have robbed every single person on that bus clean. The people on that bus were from Baghdad, they were trying to make their way out of the country to Syria, so they pretty much had all of their possessions they could carry on them, including their money.”

I asked him who the perpetrators were:

“The vehicles that we came on matched the vehicle descriptions of the ones that fired on the IA’s (Iraqi Army), so there is no doubt they were part of an insurgent cell looking for means to get money to purchase weapons, either by straight burglary or by kidnapping individuals and holding them for ransom.”

Blue sky, open hatch.

Other than the SNAP, a brief stop for a maintenance issue and various IED checks, our patrol wound down in the early evening hours peacefully, the gators heading back towards base to meet their relief. Unfortunately a sister humvee patrol was hit by two IED’s at the close of the shift, but the section escaped with rattled nerves, two concussions and superficial damage to their vehicles.

What struck me about the seven-hour patrol was how tough it was; not only from keyed up nerves that come along with looking for explosives, trying to draw small arms fire and worrying about snipers, but its discomfort (the seats are not La-Z-Boys and the trak is loud), length, tedium and temperature – the January evening in the Iraqi desert quickly became frigid. I can only imagine how uncomfortable these patrols are in the summer, especially when you consider that they lasted 12 hours on Mendoza’s last deployment.

These guys work hard.

After queuing up with other vehicles for refueling …

… the Hog was parked and the Gators headed for Camp Fallujah’s chow hall.

I then sat down with SSgt Mendoza and asked what defines a successful mission:

“Successful missions for me … bottom line is bringing everyone back into the wire, alive, with all of their fingers and toes attached, and everything working the same way it was when we left. If I can do that, it’s a succesful mission for me. If I can find things, that’s like bonus. And that’s really what keeps us going. It’s like the ultimate Easter Egg Hunt, except you’re not getting candy or money out of it, just the satisfaction of a good day’s work.

I have to go find these IED’s, but I don’t want to do it recklessly. Leading these guys out here looking for these IED’s, and to make it succesful, you really have to do two things – that’s … to trust your gut instinct and your brain, you really need to know what’s going on out there. I can teach you 300 different ways to look for IED’s out of textbooks, but if it does feel right, then thats the best indicator of all.”

I asked what he liked about being a Marine:

“My favorite part about being a Marine is just being with my fellow Marines. Being with those young kids … I call them kids, but they’re men, but… they’re (a little over) half my age so a lot of them were in grade school when I started out. Almost all of them were in high school when Septemer 11th happened. 90% of my Marines in my section watched the invasion of Iraq on TV, and I look back and think about Desert Storm, how I watched Desert Storm on TV – these kids are out here for a reason.”

“They knew what they were getting into and I don’t want to let them down.”

“(I like) just being around them, being with them. Going out there every day with them. There have been a couple of times where they left the wire without me because of injury and it killed me, ate me up inside. I couldn’t stand it. But both times I sat there right in that radio room, listening to that mission. I have a wife and two kids back home, that’s back home. Out here I have nine young Marines who depend on me to not take them out there and get them killed.”

I asked him how Fallujah is doing and how he regards the progress of his mission:

“I like to think I’m making a difference. We have to be doing something right, with how the IEDs are going down. Now, with the bad guys shooting at us? We almost invite them too, because it gives us a chance to do some killing ourselves.”

“I keep hearing Fallujah is a safe haven, it’s an oasis compared to what it was last year. It’s such a huge change between last year and now. We must be doing something right. We’re working on the security issue, but the Iraqis have to stand up and do that for themselves, as we’re not gonna b here forever.”

“But we’ll stay as long as necessary to get the job done.”

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Tags: Iraq