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After action report: Operation Matador
An e-mail from Marine Colonel Bob Chase, published at LGF. EFL'd; go read it all.. . . Matador is now officially over, supposedly, they were going to fight our way back and "destroy" us - guess they missed the turn at the dairy queen. We are back and the final tally was Good Guys - 125+ enemy dead, many more wounded, and 39 detainees of some significant value. The bad guys, who talk a real good game - 9 Killed (6 in the one Amtrak) and 30 wounded (most will return to duty). Not a bad weeks' work. As we have said, our intent was to make ourselves big by leveraging our firepower and mobility. This area was a real sh*thole for AMZ criminals. We knew it, 1st Division knew it, but working it on a regular basis was tough. We kept some recon there and got the timing pretty well, brought up a bridging unit from the Army in Baghdad, then went across in the middle of the night (that was probably the only part that didn't go on sked (the bank gradient was poorly assessed) but we had near and far-side security already in and a blocking position near the Syrian Border. The enemy figured out after about 4 hours that we were there in force. They came down with about 100 fighters (no, scratch that - they were TARGETS) and made the poor decision to take on a battalion in open ground. They withdrew - we went after them into a place called Ubaydi. Many mounted boats and tried to escape N, we pushed Air, and the Cobras sunk a bunch of trash barges that night. Meanwhile, we continued to push west across the river. Our far-side units started to see pockets of insurgents move to key areas to emplace mines/IEDs. They came out, snipers took them out; their friends came for the bodies; they, joined them on the deck - permanently. . . . Posted by: Mike 2005-05-21 |
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