Chapter 40 – We Watch Mortars Launched At Us

track the mortar team as they flee and see them killed.

 
I was stepping off the mooring platform when the alarm sounded, a series of short horn blasts and an announcement, “INCOMING, INCOMING”. I’d heard it several times and before that day it never sounded more than a couple of seconds before the incoming round landed. Often the first round landed before the announcement.
 
When I chose to go through with my last knee surgery one reason was so I could run from danger or to someone’s aid if I had too. The second I closed the door the first round landed. I didn’t know if it came down on the site but if it had the decision to have my knee repaired was one of the best of my life.
 

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Balloon Wars Home Page
OTHER SELECTED CHAPTERS
Chapters 1 & 2 – PTDS & the ISR Network
Chapter 12 – Battle in Al Atiba’a
Chapter 17 – Muqtada al-Sadr
Chapter 33 – Urged to Jump
Chapter 78 – UTAMS Repair
Chapter 79 – IRAM – A Deadly New Weapon
Chapter 82 – Bagram and Waza Khwa
Chapter 86 – Captain Ellis
Chapter 87 – 9th Inflation and The Karez
Chapter 116 – Just Living
 
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If you’re out in the open when mortars fall nearby the best thing to do is get on the ground, but if you can get behind cover before a barrage begins that’s much better, so I ran, and I covered the space, about 150 feet, between the platform and the TMOS, in a dead sprint. I dug so hard I may have still been accelerating when I cleared the T wall that surrounded the GCS and the TMOS.
 
Don and I joined Mike Camp, who was at the camera, and Ron Laniere in the GCS. The overhead cover was in place by then so it was a well protected space. We always went in the GCS when attacks were going on to see the action and to help. There’s a lot to cover during a battle or attack and when the rounds are falling on the FOB the GCS is a highly charged space. If the operators are willing to accept the help, additional eyes and hands can be very useful.
 
The camera slewed to a spot near the launch point and Ron had given the grid location to the TOC just before Don and I entered the GCS. Mike hadn’t located the mortar team yet so we all studied the monitor as he panned from place to place. The camera target was just a few kilometers out so the look angle was high and therefor good. A lot of places they could have fired from were behind buildings but there were unobstructed views of good launch sites too. Mike jumped from one to another just as he should have. He only had to go to a few vacant lots before seeing two men squatting next to a mortar tube. One of them was holding the round at the top of the tube and he released it just as Mike zoomed in. Twenty-six seconds later the round hit just inside the FOB’s north wall destroying a fuel tank. Before that second round landed the mortarman dropped the third which exploded a little further inside the FOB before he dropped the forth and the fifth.

 
We watched him launch round after round and heard them land. He wasn’t adjusting his fire but every round landed further into the FOB and closer to us. He fired seventeen all together with the last one landing outside the wall and the one before that close enough for us to feel it. One round killed a KBR truck driver. The second KBR employee to die there so far that year. After the last round was fired they picked up the tube and base plate, ran to a van that was parked on the street at the end of the vacant lot and drove off. Our job then was to follow them until attack aviation could get to them.
 
They drove quickly through the morning rush-hour, weaving in and out and occasionally even stopping with the other traffic. They were traveling through a part of town that was fairly open so our view wasn’t blocked by buildings. Unless it’s brief, loss of visual contact means loss of certainty about the target, “no PID”. When that happens the rules of engagement prohibit firing on the vehicle. They went several miles through the city before stopping at an equipment yard that occupied about half a city block. There was a shop in the middle of the yard which was surrounded by vehicles of various kinds, trucks, cars and tractors. About ten people were there engaged in various tasks. Several were teenage boys. The car with the mortar team and two others drove to the center of the yard and parked next to a gasoline tank truck, a big one. Two other tankers were next to it.
 
If the bad guys stayed in the car in that yard we would catch or kill them. Several times during the chase Apaches crossed our field of view so we knew they had them in sight. The men stayed in the car. They may have thought it would be safer to wait awhile before transferring the weapons to another vehicle or leaving. For them, it was the worst thing they could have done. For us, it was the best. All we had to do was keep a stationary target in out sights.
 
When a mission like this one was going on the GCS was an exciting place. We were the eyes of the United States Army in contact with the enemy. Our team that morning was working together, obeying orders, and fired up. Most of the discussion was serious and professional, but not all. Even when we were under attack, people cracked dumb jokes. With the chase over, at least temporarily, what we hoped and expected to be the fate of the men in the car colored our conversation. I had taken over at the mIRC station by the time the mortar team left their firing position because I was the fastest typist. I typed in a message that there were gasoline trucks parked next to the target vehicle and that some of the people working in the yard were teenage boys. They wrote back, ”rgr, sb “,shorthand for “roger, standby”.
 
They asked me if I was sure the trucks were gasoline trucks. I told them yes and we zoomed in on the diamond placards on the back of a truck that indicated they were carrying gasoline, and then on the side of the trucks and the word “Esso”. They responded “rgr”, again. A few seconds passed and I thought they weren’t going to take the shot. Then the car was hit and burst into flame. We zoomed back one step to see if any one had been struck by shrapnel or the blast and it looked like everyone was still on their feet and bugging out. They all went to the other side of the street and watched as the car burned. Hundreds of people came out of their houses and shops to watch.
 
The shot, a Hellfire missile, was dead on, which doesn’t always happen. The smart bombs going through windows and down air shafts are part of the fight but a lot of ordinance misses the target. If this had missed by fifteen feet, the tanker, if there was anything in it, would have gone up. With the car fire still burning it was possible it still would.
 
But the fire department was on the scene almost right away. The Baghdad emergency services were very good at getting to fires and accidents quickly. They didn’t always act well when they got there. Once I saw a man struck by a car while crossing the street lifted by paramedics by his arms and feet and swung into the ambulance. This time they did a great job putting the fire out before it spread. The mortar team and their accomplices were dead instantly or burned to death but no one else at the scene was hurt.

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This program is about my job in the war zones and how the events of September 11, 2001 affected my family. It isn’t the television version of the memoir. The resources to produce that are beyond me, but the video and stills in this more modest production compliment the book.

© Robert A. Crimmins

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Book Chapter and photos © Robert A. Crimmins, Felton, Delaware, USA

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