Crafted by Valor

My company SP was a newly minted CW4, a rank usually held at the battalion level. But our battalion already had someone in that role. In my opinion, this guy was far too weak to be in charge at the battalion level. I bulldozed him constantly. I’m sure he was scared, and honestly, I think he was happy to hand off all the hard stuff to me. Later, he’d tell me he was “developing” me.

One day, early in the deployment, we had a mission to fly the battalion S3 (Operations Officer) and other planners downtown for some sort of meeting. I didn’t care what the meeting was about. My only focus was the flight plan and getting them there safely.

We landed at the Crossed Sabers. I’d seen that place so many times on TV, Saddam Hussein standing there, presiding over his forces during military ceremonies. Now it was one of our Forward Operating Bases. A brigade from the 1st Armored Division had made its headquarters there.

The flight from the airport was short. We landed right in the middle of the complex, and we were told to expect several hours of ground time. It was surreal. Thrilling, even.

We wandered around like tourists. Sat in Saddam’s throne. Took pictures to prove we’d been there.

Then my SP turned to me and said we should go to the meeting. I was confused, we’re going to the meeting? He just nodded. Said it would be “interesting,” and that we should go.

He never explained what the meeting was actually about. The purpose was still totally unclear.

Then he told me to grab my Kevlar and body armor.

Thing is, we didn’t really have proper body armor. We had flak vests with a big patch of Velcro on the front to attach a ceramic plate.

Only pussies were wearing their plates.

I grabbed the gear, assuming we were walking somewhere on the FOB. But instead, we headed straight for an open-air HMMWV with no up-armor. We climbed into the back. I figured it was just a longer walk and we’d catch a quick ride.

Then the HMMWV turned out the gate and headed into downtown Baghdad.

What the fuck is this? Where the hell are we going?

I pulled out my stupid little pistol and started getting really nervous.

The ride through the streets was not fun. There was a lot to see, stuff that would’ve made great “adventure” photos but I was too busy scanning for trash piles that might be hiding IEDs to notice any of it.

Eventually, we pulled up to one of Saddam’s enormous palaces. Of course, we’d taken it over. It was now one of our FOBs.

And it was amazing.

One side of the structure had been completely demolished by missiles during the initial Shock and Awe campaign. The other side? Perfect condition. The contrast between the overwhelmingly opulent and the utterly destroyed was hard to process.

Once inside the compound, I felt safe again and went back into tourist mode. We walked through the palace, and I was in awe of the destruction.

We have some badass shit that can blow the hell out of things. We are pretty powerful.

Then we turned toward the untouched, opulent side and walked into what turned out to be a brigade TOC.

As we entered, a group of Majors greeted us with visible relief.

“Oh good, the aviators are here!”

Then they asked who was the planner for this air assault. I watched my W4, Scott point directly at me.

WHAT?!

I actually did one of those double takes; looked behind me in case he was pointing at someone who actually knew what the hell was going on. But nope. It was just me.

As I looked around the room, I noticed BG Robinson, the maneuver commander for 1AD. He was staring directly at me.

I decided right then to become present. To drop the tourist act.

I looked back at Scott and mouthed, “FUCK YOU.”

Then I turned to the room and announced:

“It’s probably pretty apparent that I have no idea there’s an air assault to be planned here today. But I guess I’m now planning one.”

I could still feel the General’s icy stare drilling into me.

The Brigade staff began quickly briefing their objective and intent. They needed to assault the town of Salman Pak along the Tigris River, just outside of Baghdad. It was a known location for an open arms market. They were selling all kinds of dangerous gear, including SA-7s and more advanced surface-to-air missiles.

Timing would be critical, they wanted to strike during the open market. There would be casualties.

They wanted a coordinated assault: a ground convoy from the north, and our aircraft coming in from the south. We had to arrive simultaneously.

I pulled off my dog tags and moved to the map board. My tags were marked with measured distances, quick math tools. I calculated how long it would take for the ground convoy to drive from their FOB to the objective. Then I backward-planned the route we would fly from the south.

I told them we’d be exposed on the east, open flank. The west side was covered by the Tigris. We’d do a false insertion in the east with a serial of three Hawks. Then four others would hit primary LZs near the objective.

I told them the ground convoy would have to maintain very disciplined speed. If they were early or late, we wouldn’t hit simultaneously and we’d lose the tactical advantage.

No one said a word.

They just stood there, staring at me.

They looked at me like I was some kind of Rain Man.

In reality, I had just learned a hell of a lot of quick rules of thumb and practical techniques during my time at the 101st. I’d had some incredible experiences and even better mentors while I was stationed there.

Suddenly, BG Robinson walked up to me. He had never stopped staring me down the whole time. Then he reared back and punched me in the right shoulder.

It wasn’t a soft punch.

He said, “Fucking A, Chief,” and walked out of the room.

Over the next 48 hours, I was large and in charge. I was the flight lead. I was the main planner. I directed everyone. I planned hard. I yelled when I wasn’t getting my way.

I prepared a full brief for a large audience. I had to travel back to the same palace compound to brief our plan to the infantry. It was our final coordination. We’d present together.

To my surprise, we had a guest in attendance.

The Secretary of the Army.

He sat in on my brief.

I buckled down even harder, locked in even more control. I wasn’t about to let someone else jump in and steal my thunder just because the big guy was there.

But of course, all of this was happening under the looming shadow of the G2 intel.

They briefed us that we should expect 50% of our aircraft to be shot down on the initial infill.

That would be me.

The first helicopter to get taken out.

At the last moment, BG Robinson decided he wanted an airborne view of the operation. It was the first combat air assault in 1^st Armored Division history, and he wanted to see it go down firsthand. He needed to be up there to direct action in case things didn’t go as planned.

As usual, the plan flew out the window the second we hit the flight line.

I had the best crew chief in the company with me, TK Goree. Everyone was scared of him because he was a nutcase.

I liked him and wanted him in my aircraft because he was a nutcase.

Our bird was loaded with our infantry boys, and right then, my Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) decided not to start. I wasn’t able to start my aircraft suddenly at a bad time.

Our bump plan was simple: if lead broke, the PC would jump into another aircraft where a standby co-pilot and crew were waiting. When an APU fails, the crew has to jump in the back and use a hand pump to manually pressurize the APU accumulator, the contraption that gets the APU spinning.

No APU? No start. No flight. No mission.

We needed to jump aircraft fast and move all our gear and grunts to the alternate bird.

But Goree wouldn’t have it.

He knew he’d be off the mission if we bumped aircraft. He got in my face, told me to sit the fuck down, and said he was going to get this pig flying.

I told him to fuck off and do what I said, we were jumping, and that was final.

Then he threw a couple grunts out of the way and started fiercely pumping the APU by hand.

It was blistering hot, miserable. Using that pump will break a sweat in Iceland. If the APU failed to start again, we’d be way behind, and the whole mission could fall apart.

I shouted at him, “You better get it going or I’m going to kill you.”

He was a beast. Pumped like a madman.

I threw the switch—and the APU started. We were on.

Goree was my hero.

Nothing went to plan from then on! We took off just a little late, but I had built that in. I planned a slower airspeed to buy us time. All I had to do was catch up by the third checkpoint, hit it on time, and then throttle back to the briefed speed.

I had prepped my map with tons of detail. I was ready.

Then the command net exploded.

My battalion commander was airborne, barking out orders. We were in contingency mode from the very beginning.

The ground convoy hadn’t followed the brief. They were way ahead of schedule. The H-Hour had been shifted left.

Holy fuck.

There was no way I could make that new time. My brain began to skip, panic creeping in as I tried to do the math on how fast we needed to go, with the distance we had left.

But my co-pilot, Dave W., didn’t wait for direction.

He grabbed a massive handful of collective, turned sharply, and started cutting off checkpoints. He dove down low, really low.

As I caught up, I realized the truth: screw the timing, we just needed to get to the right LZ.

We were hauling ass.

The formation was tight behind us. We broke into two serials at a point that hadn’t been briefed, hadn’t been planned, hadn’t been rehearsed.

It just needed to happen.

We were flying so low and fast that as we roared over the monument in Salman Pak, people who were touring the shrine dove to the ground in panic, we passed over them by inches.

We had studied the satellite imagery for hours. Now we were staring at the real terrain and it was much smaller than we thought.

We pulled a massive Whoa Boy, Dave stood the aircraft on its tail to slow us down. We dropped straight into a monster dust cloud at our now tiny LZ.

We were engulfed. One of the densest brownouts I’ve ever flown into.

We hit the ground, hell, we tackled the ground. The grunts were off the aircraft in seconds. 

We climbed back up with gusto, pushing back up through that thick brown cloud. The second we cleared it, Dave pushed the nose over and pulled every bit of power we had.

The radio chatter told the story, every serial was out of their LZs and heading to the SP. Even our false insertion had landed and moved to the primary LZ.

As we climbed out, I looked down and saw our ground convoy rolling in right on time.

The Iraqis were scattering in all directions but no matter where they turned, they ran straight into U.S. soldiers.

The plan had worked.

We had surprised them, simultaneous arrivals from every direction.

No one got off a single shot.

We had them on their asses.

Even though everything had gone wrong leading up to it, because we did the extra work, thought through every contingency, and rehearsed our asses off, it looked like we’d executed it perfectly.

And it felt great knowing I had orchestrated that mess into a success.

When the pilots flying BG Robinson got back to our hooch, they passed on a message from 

the General:

“Fucking A, Chief.”

To Be Continued………….