Perspective: What a Post reporter witnessed during the U.S. mission to capture Baghdad and topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein 20 years ago
The M88 was used mainly for towing and repairing tanks and Bradleys. But the 56-ton behemoth sat higher than other vehicles, and I had access to the rear hatch, enabling me to write stories on the move and transmit them by sticking the magnetic antenna of my Iridium satellite phone onto the armor on top.
Two days later, he watched with growing alarm as an old Land Rover sped toward his unit at an intersection with Highway 9 in central Iraq. The force then turned east and crossed the Euphrates River for an expected clash with Iraqi forces guarding the southern approaches to Baghdad: the vaunted Medina Division of the elite Republican Guard.
Col. David Perkins, 45, the 2nd Brigade commander, launched his first thunder run on April 5 — a tank-led foray into the city and west to the airport. It came under fire the whole way but emphatically disproved the regime’s claims that the Americans were incapable of entering the capital and were being obliterated far from it by Iraqi forces.
The two tank-heavy battalions initially encountered little resistance as they followed the thunder run route. But the three interchanges soon came under ferocious attack. At Curly, he was hit again. But he kept firing his M4 rifle as Hornbuckle bandaged a shrapnel wound in his leg. “Here we go again,” he remembered thinking.
Twitty, a 39-year-old Gulf War veteran who was directing his own fierce fight at Objective Larry, worried that Curly would fall, jeopardizing the whole mission. He ordered Johnson, his Bravo Company commander, to rush to the intersection with reinforcements from a position farther south. The M88 I was in pulled up to the forward edge of the overpass. It was commanded by Staff Sgt. David Fields, 38, a burly former hockey player from Missouri who joined the Army out of high school and became a mechanic. Pvt. Luke Tate, the 28-year-old assistant mechanic on the vehicle, used binoculars to scour a building about 400 yards ahead for attackers. He called out targets to Fields, who opened fire with the M88’s .
The Bravo Company reinforcements helped clear trenches, killing or capturing dozens of fighters. Johnson, fearing that some of those surrendering could be suicide bombers wearing explosives, shouted to his men over the radio: “Make ’em strip! I want these guys butt-ass naked!” Most of the captives were allowed to keep their underwear on, but some soldiers took the order literally.
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