Brian Taylor, a Marine reservist, servied in Fox Company, Second Battalion, 23rd Marines during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Wall Street Journal is publishing his diary in serial form. Parts 1 and 2 appeared in previous weeks, and part 3 on Monday. Here’s an excerpt from the latest installment:
9 Apr 03 0354Z
Spent the night on the roof of some house in the Al Mathana neighborhood of Baghdad. We stopped our foot patrol around 1300Z yesterday afternoon and began looking for a building to stay in. My team was on the third floor of a shell of a structure when the fight began. I stood up and looked out the window across an intersection and a dirt field to the northwest.
I monitored radio traffic on the individual squad radio between Sgt. Ewert, First squad’s leader, and Cpl. Houschouer, one of his team leaders. The sergeant was irate because it wasn’t immediately obvious to Houschouer how to control a large five-way intersection with only four Marines. I thought to myself that it wasn’t at all obvious to me either.
I saw a man step out from behind the southwest corner of an Iraqi security compound. He was 180 meters away and looked like an unarmed civilian, although the sun made him just a silhouette. Then he fired a RPG, which streaked into the Marines standing near the intersection. Cpl. Scott Lee and Lance Cpl. Roger Anderson, members of my own squad, were hit and sustained minor head and arm wounds, a miracle since it hit right by them.
I began firing 5.56mm rifle rounds and 203 grenades at the man. The machine guns began. He did the strangest arms-flying-in-air jig when he realized he was being shot at. He ducked behind the wall and machine guns followed. I lobbed 203s over the wall, and they landed with great clapping noise. |