Nasiriyah, 2003

The battle, stage by stage

1. 23 March 2003, about 6 AM

   A wrong turn

   At the tail of the 3rd Infantry Division's 8,000-vehicle column, the 507th Maintenance Company — 18 vehicles and 33 soldiers, worn out after some 36 hours on the road — misses the turn onto Route Jackson, the planned bypass west of Nasiriyah. With no traffic control point to stop it, the convoy carries straight on up Highway 7/8, across the Euphrates bridge, through the city and over the Saddam Canal bridge, passing Iraqi checkpoints without incident. On the northern outskirts, past the Al Quds headquarters near the Highway 16 junction, Captain Troy King realizes they are lost and turns the convoy round. Task Force Tarawa's 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines is still well south of the city.

2. About 7–7:30 AM

   Ambush of the 507th

   Heading back south, low on fuel, the convoy comes under fire from the Highway 16 intersection onward. Vehicles speed up and the gaps between them widen; trucks break down or get stuck, and the column breaks into three groups. Group 1, with Captain King, gets through and reaches the Marines. Group 2 gets out with badly damaged vehicles and forms a hasty perimeter south of the city. Group 3, at the rear, is caught: weapons jam, a Humvee driven by Pfc. Lori Piestewa crashes into a jackknifed truck, and First Sergeant Robert Dowdy is killed. Of the 33 soldiers, 11 die and 7 are captured, among them Pfc. Jessica Lynch and Spc. Shoshana Johnson; Piestewa dies of her wounds in captivity. Major William Peeples' tanks drive up Highway 8 under fire and rescue the ten soldiers of Group 2.

3. About 8 AM – 12:30 PM

   Toward the Euphrates bridge

   Warned by the 507th's fate, 1/2 resumes the march north on Highway 8, Team Mech and Company C in the lead and AH-1 Cobras overhead. At a railway underpass about 3 km south of the city a tank commander reports seven to nine Iraqi T-55s and 40–50 infantry; Marine tanks, anti-armour teams and aircraft destroy them (by one account some were unmanned). Around 12:30 Team Mech — Company B — crosses the Euphrates bridge under small-arms and rocket fire to bypass the city on the east. Its buttoned-up lead tanks miss the first right turn, and on the second the column drives into a field where a dry crust hides deep silt and sewage: tanks and vehicles sink, and Company B fights from where it is stuck.

4. About 12:30–1 PM

   Ambush Alley

   Company A follows across the bridge and forms a perimeter on the north bank. Company C, ordered on to the Saddam Canal bridge, passes through Company A and races up Highway 7 — the 4 km stretch the Marines will call Ambush Alley — its amphibious tracks spaced 50 to 250 metres apart. Fighters in civilian clothes fire from windows, doorways and rooftops on both sides; a rocket hits a 3rd Platoon track, but Lieutenant Michael Seely orders his driver, Sergeant Michael Bitz, to keep going, and it reaches the bridge. By about 1 PM Captain Daniel Wittnam reports the canal bridge secured.

5. About 1–3 PM

   North of the canal

   Company C forms a long herringbone perimeter more than a kilometre deep north of the bridge, under rocket, machine-gun, mortar and artillery fire from the north, the east and the Martyrs' District to the south. The artillery forward observer, Second Lieutenant Frederick Pokorney Jr., is killed by mortar fire calling for fire. Back at Company B, the forward air controller, unaware Company C is across the canal, clears two A-10s to attack targets north of it; their strafing and missiles hit Company C's position and later tracks carrying wounded south down Ambush Alley, which are also struck by Iraqi rockets. One track, C208, is destroyed by a large explosion that kills all nine Marines in its rear. Company C loses 18 Marines killed this day. The investigation found that eight were definitely killed by enemy fire and could not attribute the other ten; it concluded that two tracks were destroyed by friendly fire and that C208 was hit by both Iraqi rockets and U.S. aircraft. Some Marines on the ground disputed parts of these findings.

6. About 2–6 PM

   Holding both bridges

   The 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines arrives at the south end of the Euphrates bridge from about 2 PM. Not knowing this, and with no relief in sight, Captain Michael Brooks loads Company A into its tracks at about 3:30 and drives up Ambush Alley; it crosses the canal bridge about 4 PM, and Iraqi resistance north of the canal fades. Major Peeples brings two tanks up the Alley, and he and his Marines go in twice to bring out nearly a dozen Marines from the destroyed tracks who have taken shelter in a building west of the road. Company B extracts from the mud and joins the battalion at the canal bridge. By nightfall Task Force Tarawa holds both eastern bridges, but the road between them is not secure.

7. 24 March 2003

   Widening the bridgeheads

   North of the canal, 1/2 takes the T intersection and the Iraqi 23rd Brigade headquarters; Company A attacks west to the 'western T' and the northwestern bridge, where Captain Brooks puts up barriers so that cars — some carrying fighters, some carrying families — can be stopped without shooting. Tanks are placed along the canal facing south. South of the river, 2/8 expands its bridgehead toward the 'Tykar' hospital, which a man posing as a doctor says holds wounded Americans; it proves to be an Iraqi base and fighting position, and about 80 people surrender there at nightfall. Under a 'Code Red' fire plan, 2d LAR escorts a supply convoy up Ambush Alley and by 5 PM becomes the first battalion through the whole city.

8. 25–29 March 2003

   Holding and clearing

   The 1st Marine Division's RCT-1 passes north through Ambush Alley toward Baghdad while Task Force Tarawa holds the corridor: 3/2 west of Highway 8 at the Euphrates bridge, 2/8 east of it. On 25 March two Marine engineers drown trying to cross the canal under fire. On 26 March an attack on 2/8 after dark wounds a number of Marines, and 1/10's guns fire on Iraqi forces gathering at the railroad station. From the 27th the Marines turn to blocking the road from Suq ash Shuyukh and cordon-and-search; the remains of Marines from the destroyed tracks are recovered on the 28th. On the night of 1 April, while Marines attack toward the southwestern bridge, a special operations raid frees Pfc. Jessica Lynch from Saddam Hospital and recovers the remains of other 507th soldiers; on 2 April Nasiriyah is reported secure. The city's civilians, caught in heavy fighting in dense streets, suffered losses that no source counts precisely.