Pat Dollard | Young Americans

From an article in USA Today by Tom Vanden Brook:

The Rangers involved in a Dec. 25 raid spoke with USA TODAY by video conference from Mosul and Baghdad. Rules established for special operations units prohibit the use of last names of its elite troops.

A tip prompted the Christmas raid, said Blake, the Rangers’ company commander, a 32-year-old major from Manassas, Va. An Iraqi man had reported seeing al-Qaeda terrorists execute a man in public. The witness told U.S. troops where the extremists had gathered.

A few hours later, at 2:04 a.m., Pete, 26, of Marlboro, N.J., and his fellow Rangers, with M-4 rifles and night-vision goggles, arrived at the suspected insurgents’ doorstep.

“You don’t go into anything thinking the best-case scenario,” Pete said. “Anytime you go through a door, you’re expecting someone there with a gun waiting on you. Or someone with a suicide vest, grenade or whatever their weapon of choice is at that particular time. You’re always thinking for the worst.”

Six minutes later, he had killed the two gunmen, Pete said, and Rangers had found 10 women and children huddled in the back of the house. The Iraqis conflicting accounts of how many men remained in the house made the soldiers suspicious.

Lashaun, 27, a sergeant first class from Chester, Va., searched a bathroom and noticed a nylon strap protruding from the bottom of a shower basin.

“That’s when I called in Pete and told him to help hold security on the shower basin as I pulled the strap out of the floor,” Lashaun said. “That’s when the basin came up and revealed a hidden passageway to a hidden bunker.”

When he rolled back a concrete block that was sitting on rails, gunfire erupted. Pete estimated the entrance at 2-by-2 feet, barely large enough for a Ranger with 45 pounds of gear to pass through. Lashaun and Pete fired into the hole and backed out of the room.

Pete tossed in a grenade.

After the grenade exploded, the Rangers moved back into the shower room, Lashaun said. Suddenly, he said, grenades started flying back at them.

Lashaun said he saw one grenade bounce, so he and another Ranger dove through a door before it exploded. Pete and the Ranger retreated to a different room.

Blake, the company commander, said the soldiers had split into two groups of nine each. Gunfire from the insurgents poured out of the bathroom, while Lashaun’s Rangers fired back.

Pete figured bullets passed within 1 foot of him. “I was really stuck basically in a crossfire,” he said.

Meanwhile, Lashaun hustled the women and children toward safety over a courtyard wall.

“He’s risking his life, taking enemy fire, while he’s literally extending himself and pushing women and children over the wall,” Blake said.

Lashaun then linked up with two Rangers, re-entered the house and fired into the bathroom. One insurgent came around the corner, Lashaun said, and the Rangers killed him “right there on the spot.”

As the Rangers tried to move into the shower room, “another guy came up out of the hole,” Lashaun said. The Rangers shot him dead.

“After that we came to the conclusion that we need to get out of the house,” Lashaun said.

Their commander agreed.

Blake ordered the split-up forces to pull back so they could regroup. Residents in neighboring homes were evacuated.

A call for an airstrike

The Rangers then called for an airstrike.

An AC-130 gunship swooped above the house. The plane, whose two models are known as “Spooky” and “Spectre,” is a workhorse for Air Force Special Operations.

At 3:05 a.m., its crew fired five 105mm rounds from a cannon into the house. Delayed fuses allowed the shells to penetrate the roof and explode near the bunker.

“I called that fire onto the house and watched every single one of those rounds as precision as I’ve ever seen it,” Blake said.

They waited until 9 a.m. before re-entering the house, according to a timeline provided by the military.

The task of re-entering the house fell to J.R., a 26-year-old first lieutenant from Thomaston, Ga. Pete volunteered to join him.

Inside the house, they found two dead insurgents wearing unexploded suicide-bomb belts.

They moved downstairs, where a wall concealed the concrete bunker. J.R. spotted a man there wearing a vest and holding a pin in his hand.

He sensed that there might be others. J.R. began shooting and backing out as the man yanked on the pin.

“His vest detonated, clouding the whole area with dust,” J.R. said.

They dropped a grenade in the basement.

“No noises or sounds were made after that grenade,” J.R. said.

They dropped another grenade inside the bunker and left the house.

“We then moved back inside the house again to see if there were any more enemy (killed) or any movement inside the house,” he said. “We decided to go down inside the basement to ensure there were not any more enemy personnel down there.”

J.R., Pete and another Ranger found two dead insurgents and another crawling away, pulling on a pin. It might have been a suicide vest or another grenade, Pete said.

Their suicide vests look like a cummerbund, the garment men wear with tuxedoes.

The Rangers shot him, Pete said.

They heard more voices, saw more movement.

J.R. ordered the Rangers out of the house and called Blake.

“At this point, we have eight enemy killed in action that we have engaged,” Blake said. “Four of those we have confirmed the wear or use of a suicide belt.”

There still may have been three more insurgents inside.

Blake called in “a little bit more firepower,” he recalled.

They cleared the neighborhood before two Air Force F-16 fighter jets arrived.

At 11:15 a.m., the warplanes dropped two, 500-pound, satellite-guided bombs on the house, destroying it.