| Guest | FALLUJAH, Iraq — A puff of dust caught the eye of Sgt. Cameron Lefler as he hunkered behind a dirt berm in a rusting junkyard in this city’s warehouse district.
Under a darkening sky that day in early April, Lefler and his fellow Marines with Charlie Company’s 3rd Platoon were on guard: They’d taken pot shots all day from insurgents.
Through his optical gun-sight, Lefler saw a second puff, and then another, each closer to the platoon’s position. Lefler strained his eyes to scan the immediate horizon for any movement, any weapon, anything.
“I see him about 800 meters down there, barely poking out of a window,” recalled Lefler, 34, of Seattle. “I’m like, ‘What the hell?’ I could definitely see a rifle.”
A tracer round zinged past, and Lefler’s left arm flew wildly as the bullet grazed his elbow. Lefler fell backward, then looked around and yelled to his lance corporals that he’d been hit.
Meanwhile, the insurgent opened fire on full automatic. Bullets hit “all over the place, it’s ‘tat-tat-tat-tat-tat,’.” Lefler recalled.
Lefler and his men flipped the selector switches on their M16A4 rifles to burst and fired three-round bursts on the run, ducking behind a cement wall. One Marine, a lance corporal, was hit in the chest, but the bullet lodged in the armor plate inside his flak vest. Undeterred, the young Marine got up, pointed his M249 Squad Automatic Weapon and fired back.
“We were shooting people all day long,” Lefler said.
In this firefight, like in many others for the leathernecks of 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, and for other Marine Corps units operating throughout Iraq’s Anbar province, a noncommissioned officer led the way.
In what has become an NCO’s war, Lefler and other corporals and sergeants are testing their mettle.
“Every time there’s a firefight, there’s an NCO carrying the flag,” Lefler said. “The NCOs are the ones who are fighting the fight with their Marines.”
The ‘strategic corporal’
The counter-insurgency fight Marines are waging in towns throughout Anbar province stands in stark contrast to the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom last spring. In the lightning-fast rush to Baghdad, regimental and battalion commanders led their forces in a sweep through southern Iraq and into that nation’s capital, maneuvering their forces in large-scale battles with Republican Guard units and others.
But now, as Marines take on the unusual role of occupation duty, the infantry battalions largely are staying put in specific towns or regions. Now, it’s the NCO and his Marines who are on the streets patrolling, fighting, keeping the peace and aiding Iraqi citizens.
NCOs “are the ones that pretty much win the war,” said Staff Sgt. Keith Halsey, 30, a tobacco-chewing logistics and embarkation chief from Syracuse, N.Y., at the 1/5’s temporary base on the southern outskirts of Fallujah.
“That is what makes us different than the Army,” said Halsey, who oversees daily resupply convoys. “We aren’t afraid to go out and whip it up.”
In the “three-block war” concept developed during Gen. Charles C. Krulak’s tenure as commandant, these junior leaders are the “strategic corporals” whose actions at the small-unit level can have significant effects on the broader war.
“It’s the NCOs that are actually taking charge,” said Sgt. Tiesun Hochlan, a truck operator from Milliken, Colo., who, as Sergeant of the Guard with 1/5, oversees 13 Marines. “It’s the junior Marines making the tactical decisions.”
The three-block war, said Hochlan, 30, requires “an independent thinker, no matter what rank you are, to make the right decision.”
The NCO long has been considered the backbone of the Marine Corps, butmany leathernecks say the NCO’s leadership role was diminished in peacetime. Faster promotions to the NCO ranks, the loss of some tools used to instill discipline and too much time in garrison have eroded the authority of corporals and sergeants, some say.
“It seems that … the staff NCOs are being called on to do more,” said 1st Sgt. Charles Blumenberg, a 42-year-old from Chiefland, Fla., who is the senior enlisted Marine for Alpha Company, 1/5.
But with the high pace of wartime deployments, the winds have changed, and NCOs are reasserting their role as leaders of junior Marines.
“Their word now makes a difference,” said Blumenberg, a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The staff NCO “is dealing with the whole platoon in general, and he’s dependent on the NCOs to step up to the plate.”
Bad scene in Kharma
That’s as true in the rest of Anbar province as it is in Fallujah. For example, in the town of Kharma, north of Fallujah in the Sunni Triangle, NCOs again rose to the challenge.
It was early April, and Marines with the battalion commander’s security detail, led by Sgt. Christian Driotez, rolled into town for a scheduled meeting between Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, 1/5’s commander, and the town’s leaders.
Shortly after the leathernecks arrived, people fled the streets, shops closed and doors shut — and the Marines were on edge.
As Driotez, 30, of Los Angeles, sent two men onto a roof to cover a nearby alley, insurgents opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades. The sergeant shared a Humvee with three comrades — Cpl. Travis Box, 29, from Nacogdoches, Texas; Cpl. Michael Pinckney, 23, of South Hastings, Mich.; and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Sergio Torres, 20, from West Jordan, Utah — and the four were quick to react.
Box yelled at Pinckney to take cover, and Pinckney swung his M16A4 around.
“He sees this guy creeping down the alley with an RPG, and Pinckney goes, ‘Oh, s—t!’.” Torres recalled. “And that’s when the RPG hit the wall again. I hear bullets whizzing by.”
Then, another RPG flew near the Marines on the roof, spraying dust and gravel.
“I thought they were hit. I didn’t hear nothing. I didn’t hear no firing,” Torres said. “I didn’t hear Pinckney. I didn’t hear Sgt. D or anybody fire. All of a sudden I hear Pinckney, ‘You’d better f—-ing kill all these mother———s!’
“I was like, good; you know he’s there. He’s still living. He has his lungs. He didn’t get shot or anything.”
The Marines of the security detail — the “Renegades” — fired back as rounds streamed in from a girls’ school and other buildings nearby in what seemed to be a coordinated attack by the insurgents. Mortars and rockets fell. Gunfire and RPGs crisscrossed the street.
But despite the apparent chaos and yelling, “everybody knew where they needed to be,” Hochlan said. “It was like second nature.”
Oddly, the 90-minute firefight halted for prayers. Throughout, Iraqi police remained in their station and didn’t join the fight. The battalion’s quick-response force, nicknamed Red Cloud, rolled in to reinforce the small Renegade team.
“It felt like the Alamo,” Torres said. “We were clearly in a defensive position, and we didn’t try to push out because the sole purpose was to protect the colonel.”
Role reversals
There’s little doubt that Iraq is where corporals and sergeants can shine — but the pressure is on for them to perform.
In some cases, good performance means looking to junior Marines for guidance.
For example, while on Okinawa, Japan, more Marines added for the battalion’s movement to Iraq brought new NCOs and staff NCOs into the ranks. That made combat-experienced junior Marines such as Lance Cpl. Olivier Bagley the instructors who’d teach the NCOs a trick or two. After all, Bagley said, “we had been to war.”
Last year, “everybody had been looking to the staff NCOs,” said Bagley, a 23-year-old from Brooklyn. “We really looked at those guys for everything we needed.”
This time, he said, to some extent, the roles are reversed.
But the responsibilities still lie with the NCOs, Alpha Company’s Blumenberg said.
And, the first sergeant’s battalion commander, Lt. Col. Byrne, agreed.
“These guys are making decisions which have influences far beyond me and my generals,” Byrne said. “We have come to rely very heavily on the well-developed judgment of junior Marines.” |