| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Battle of Donkey Island |
| 2007-08-19 |
| WaPo interviews 30+ US soldiers, shows courage and heroism with not too much spin and despair. Starts on front page (A01), but a long article. 2 US KIA (ironically, in the clean-up phase) and 11 wounded, 32 bad guys, including a couple of women and children. Worth the time and registration effort. I missed when this actually happened, but think I read about it here a while back? The bad guys were poised to retake Ramadi. Excerpts: About 200 yards from the canal, Stark's Humvee crested a small dirt berm, and his driver, Spec. Kevin Gilbertson, saw something odd: two large semitrucks parked just to the left of the road ahead. "I wonder what they're doing?" Gilbertson called to Stark. Then they spotted a few men fleeing across the field to the south and accelerated toward the trucks. Stark recalled that he turned and to his disbelief saw clustered behind the trucks -- only a few feet away -- at first 10, then 20, then as many as 70 heavily armed men. "Traverse left, open fire!" he yelled instinctively to his gunner. Startled, Pfc. Sean Groves unleashed a rapid burst from his M240 machine gun. Young's gunner, Sgt. William Fellows, had nearly exhausted the 1,800 rounds he carried for his M240 machine gun. So the 24-year-old from Springfield, Mo., grabbed a Vietnam-era M-14 rifle and fired off five magazines. With only 100 rounds left, he was minutes from running out, he recalled: "We all basically went black on ammo." At a mud-brick outpost a few miles southwest of the battle, a scout platoon set off in seven Humvees loaded with machine gun rounds. They arrived about 11 p.m., just in time to resupply Stark's patrol, and together the soldiers advanced toward the trucks. "Spray it down!" ordered Capt. Jimm Spannagel, the scout platoon's leader. The trucks caught fire, munitions inside shooting off like fireworks, then exploded in gigantic red balls. Meanwhile, the insurgents, who outnumbered the Americans throughout the battle, were repositioning. Some swam across the canal to set up machine gun nests midstream on a small piece of land known as Donkey Island. Others dug in on the canal's beaches or behind its four-foot-high banks. Sorry. I just had to make sure you saw this one: Fighters in white tunics and running shoes moved like ghosts over the battlefield, displaying tactics that the Americans said mirrored their own. They signaled with flashlights, bounded into position and crawled to try to evade the superior U.S. firepower. Yet the clever and adapatable enemy is wearing white in the moonlight. The Humvee lurched forward, and Stark saw an insurgent curled in the fetal position but still moving. Wary after the grenade incident, Gilbertson recalled, he pulled out his 9mm pistol and shot the man, who then detonated his suicide vest. Flesh and ball bearings splattered the right side of Stark's Humvee, which was lifted off its wheels and thrown down, causing its third flat tire. After that, the soldiers said, they decided to kill any wounded insurgents able to move. At 1:35 a.m., as a group of insurgents was evacuating casualties to tents to the north, Young ordered a Bradley Fighting Vehicle that had arrived on the scene to open fire. Eight insurgents and five civilians, three male and two female, were later found dead in two tents, the military said. In the end, the battle of Donkey Island left 11 U.S. troops wounded and two dead, while an estimated 32 insurgents were killed. Not including the eight "civilians"? The heavy fighting between the Americans and the al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents had deep repercussions across Ramadi. Iraqi police officers close to Buchan "lost it" when they heard of his death, Rosa said. "I love Sergeant Buchan. When he died, all of the police cried," Col. Jabbar Hamid Ajaj said in his Ramadi office, plastered with posters he had made featuring Buchan. At his mansion near the main U.S. base in Ramadi, Sattar, the tribal leader, was alarmed to learn that he had been the insurgents' prime target but took comfort in the U.S. tank stationed outside his home. "If al-Qaeda gets away from the Awakening, they won't get away from the American forces," Sattar said. "We are allies," he added as he shared a tiny cup of bitter coffee with Lt. Col. Miciotto Johnson, commander of the 1-77. "I defend Col. Johnson, and Col. Johnson defends me." The end of the article has the obligatory hand-wringing: But U.S. officers in Ramadi say it is only a matter of time before al-Qaeda in Iraq strikes again. "We're still expecting attacks similar to this one," said Maj. Andrew Wortham, the 1st Brigade Combat Team's intelligence officer in Ramadi. Soldiers who fought in the battle say they feel extremely lucky to have happened upon the insurgents -- and to have survived. They're concerned that if U.S. forces leave, the insurgents will return and easily kill local police and officials, who are Spannagel, the scout leader, said the fighting revealed "a false sense of security that we'd won the battle in Ramadi." In fact, he said, "this shows the enemy is patient. This is his land. He's got all the time in the world. . . . They're going to continue to fight in Anbar." It's a quagmire, I tellya! Now if they had lots of pictures, and were there, this'd be almost as good as Yon's reporting! |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #10 After that, the soldiers said, they decided to kill any wounded insurgents able to move. One of the first sentences in the WaPo that I agree with, LOL! |
| Posted by: BA 2007-08-19 22:36 |
| #9 Cloling and Tenille6210; Spot on |
| Posted by: tipper 2007-08-19 20:37 |
| #8 You catch the reference to "the Awakening"? I assume that refers to when the Sunni tribes got hit with the 44" cluebat and realized AQ was waxing their butts more than the infidel's. |
| Posted by: Cloling and Tenille6210 2007-08-19 18:50 |
| #7 Very impressive ! First, 3 inexperienced men against 70, then improved to 9 vs. 55 (allowing for enemy deaths). Very impressive. Hollywood will start filming next week......not. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2007-08-19 18:18 |
| #6 Nice video at link. Title is "Renewed Threat in Ramadi", except that was six weeks ago. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2007-08-19 13:55 |
| #5 except for the dead and captured ones /meme |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-08-19 12:33 |
| #4 The Clever, Adaptable and increasingly sophisticated enemy is again becoming more and more powerful able to inflict heavy casualties in the surging violence. |
| Posted by: Thomas Woof 2007-08-19 12:27 |
| #3 thanks Bobby, no need to register btw just x outthe ads... |
| Posted by: Red Dawg 2007-08-19 10:38 |
| #2 Bummer for the terrs. "months of planning", pre-positioned munitions, snooper&poopers finding out where to attack. Accidentally encounter a small American patrol and...all gone for zilch. For all the munitions they had, the terrs were using homemade grenades, bottles with shot and explosive. Either they didn't have enough grenades, or the grenades they had weren't adequate. Weren't, in other words, as good as the homemade kind in pop bottles. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2007-08-19 10:09 |
| #1 June 30th was the battle. Right there on the front page, when I opened Mrs. Bobby's WaPo to get the comics. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2007-08-19 09:17 |