The Majestic Twelve: The True Story of the Most Feared Combat Escort Unit in Baghdad - Hardcover

Lynch, Jack W.; Lynch, Rick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312561210 ISBN 13: 9780312561215

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2010

Synopsis

As leader of the unit dubbed “The Majestic Twelve,” the author led his team on what some might call the most dangerous duty in the Iraq War—convoy escort. Lynch tells how he formed and commanded his all-volunteer unit, consisting of wildly varying personalities who nevertheless shared an unshakeable com mit - ment to each other and their missions. This action-packed narra tive, taking place between February and August 2004:  · Describes how the Twelve performed 230 missions while never once losing a member of his team or escorts · Provides a poignant look at brave soldiers who pay for gun sights and body armor out of their own pockets · Offers a fascinating look at military life and camaraderie · Reveals how the Twelve were even criticized among their own ranks for doing their jobs—i.e., following the Rules of Engagements and engaging the enemy when called for  This gripping military narrative shows how Lynch and his team fought the war one way: to win.

About this title

About the Author:

JACK W. LYNCH II, MSGT, USMC (Ret.) is a highly decorated former U.S. Marine Master Sergeant. He was awarded the Bronze Star for valor, the Joint Service Commendation Medal for valor, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Commendation Medal and the Achievement Medal. He is currently Senior Tactical Advisor for Strategic Analysis Incorporated. RICK LYNCH served in the Marine Corps and saw action in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983. He is a writer living in Virginia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

CHAPTER 1
Departure and Forty-Seven Dead
The hardest part of any deployment, peacetime or otherwise, is, of course, the leaving. Wartime deployments are harder still because, in addition to dealing with the knowledge that you will not see home, friends, or family for six months or longer, there is the specter of pending combat hov­ering about. Of the numerous and varied emotions one experiences when preparing for such a deployment, fi rst and foremost for a Marine Corps infan­tryman of twenty years is excitement. Saying so in this politically correct age is, of course, verboten. The professional soldier is supposed to view combat with a cool, detached, and grim outlook. Excitement is for boyish amateurs who just don’t know any better and who make cracks about how Saving Private Ryan is their favorite comedy. But if you’ve volunteered for twenty years to be an infantryman, and if you’ve endured the rigorous, punishing training and the misery and hardships that go along with it, well then, when the roll is called and your name is heard, you’re excited. That rush is only slightly tem­pered by the dark side, by the threat of death or mutilation that combat represents. After all, the threat is at first a distant one and the adrenaline coursing through you easily overpowers any thoughts of your fragile body be­ing ripped apart by steel, copper, or brass traveling at three thousand feet per second. Besides, my orders had me assigned to the safe and simple job of
training soldiers of the New Iraqi Army in Kirkush, far from the dangers of places like Baghdad.
Still, safe orders or hazardous duty, combat or boredom, it is always hard to leave, and this deployment was no different. If anything, it was worse, for not only would I be leaving my three children, ages ten, fourteen, and eigh­teen, I would be leaving them without their mother, for in January 2002, my wife of nineteen years, Denise, had died of a blood clot. She had been in treat­ment for the blood clot since December 31, 2001, and according to medical records, her doctors had spent most of January 29, 2002 debating whether they should place a filter in her chest. In the end, they decided that her condi­tion was not life threatening and they opted not to install the filter. By six the next morning, they had been proved wrong. My wife had passed.
Further complicating the situation, I’d remarried two years later and now I would be leaving my new bride after less than two months of marriage.
Those  were the things going through my mind in early February 2004 as I spent my second day in Camp Wolverine, Kuwait. Wolverine was the lay­over before the final leg of my journey to Iraq. Family concerns aside, I could not help but notice that, as wartime deployments went, this one had pretty nice perks. Wolverine had an all-night Burger King, a Pizza Inn, and a coffee­house. There  were phones, Internet access, and a chow hall darn near as good as the one at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. During my earlier trip to the region, in 1990, for the Gulf War, we lived in the holes we dug, there  were no BK Broilers to be had, and my unit went eighty-eight days with neither a shower nor even a change of clothes. The second go-round started off much better. I slept in a tent and generally felt as if I  were at Club Med.
Beyond the Wolverine, Kuwait City appeared immaculate and boomed with prosperity. When I had last seen Kuwait, the place resembled a large, stinking dump, the natural result of six months of Iraqi occupation and the war that had ousted them. Trash and the detritus of the Iraqi defeat were everywhere. Destroyed armored vehicles, spent artillery shells, and shattered cars and trucks of every type, military and civilian, covered the land as far as the eye could see.
Thirteen years ago, I had led a rifle squad in India Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. Our mission had been to charge through the Iraqi defenses along the Kuwait- Saudi Arabia border and destroy the Iraqi army dug in be­tween us and Kuwait City. The nature of the terrain, utterly flat in all direc­tions, provided absolutely zero cover for attacking infantry. That landscape, combined with the large, densely seeded mine fields, which  were covered by excellent Russian, French, and South African– built artillery, as well as the sheer numbers of Iraqi troops we would be facing (thirteen divisions of dug-in soldiers who had had six months to prepare their defenses), made our survival seem somewhat improbable.
“You know how we mark enemy units on maps with red symbols?” my platoon sergeant had asked, holding up a well-used map of the future battle­field. “Well, you might as well just paint this whole motherfucker red,” he’d concluded with a short, bitter laugh. General Walter Boomer, the senior Marine Corps officer in the Gulf, had said the same thing, albeit with less colorful language, describing our “force ratios” as “horrible.” No matter how you phrased it, though, it had all meant the same thing— more defenders than attackers. That is never supposed to happen, of course. Armies that choose the terrain and dig in, in advance of attack, have all the advantages. Theoretically, then, the attackers should at least be numerically superior. General Norman Schwarzkopf assessed that our losses could be as high as 50 percent just get­ting through the breech lanes. And that came before the expected fi ghting in Kuwait City. These things all made us just a little pessimistic about the im­mediate future. I remember looking around me as we got ready to cross the line of departure in our drive against the Iraqi army. I studied the faces of my friends, Crowley, Douglas, McDonald, Gaudet, Davis, Doc Wright, and so many more. How many of them would be dead by this time tomorrow? I also wondered how many of them were looking around and asking themselves the same thing about me.
As our vehicles lurched forward into the attack that day thirteen years ago, one of the new marines in our platoon played a cassette of the Kansas song “Carry On, Wayward Son.” What is it about music I had asked myself that can so lift the spirit when combat is near?
Now many things were different. Chief of which concerned the fact that I did not deploy as part of a unit as I had back in 1990. In the war that would finish Saddam forever, destiny gave me no part; headquarters battalion and the rear lines called. Saddam was captured and his sons  were dead. Except for the downing of U.S. Army troop helicopters, American losses in late 2003 and early 2004 had been very light, and it looked, for all intents and purposes, as if the war  were over. At least that was what most people thought.
The tent in which I sat waiting for my flight into Iraq overfl owed with about eighty people, all of whom were facing three large televisions. A different movie played on each set, and added to that was the background noise of forty conversations that made it pointless to try and watch a movie, so I simply waited to hear my flight, designated CHROME 33, called up. In the timeless way of the military, we’d all been awake since 0530 for a fl ight that might not leave until the next day. “Hurry up and wait” is a phrase that certainly has been known in the Greek phalanx, the Roman cohort, and in every army since.
Our flight received the go signal at 2300. About forty of us stood and shuffled outside to form a single file. An air force tech sergeant called off forty names from a roster and scratched out the names of those who did not answer up. He then counted the names remaining, counted the bodies standing in front of him, and had us follow him to a bus. In less than ten minutes we were on the flight line and being issued earplugs. We would be flying on a C-130. The aircraft, built for hauling troops and cargo, had little in the way of crea­ture comforts, and the volume of noise thundering out of the turboprops could not be deadened by the sound-absorbing material between the passengers and the engines; hence the earplugs. I boarded the aircraft last, and as I did so I noticed some chalk writing on a door panel that told me the plane carried fl ares and chaff.
Flares are designed to decoy incoming heat-seeking missiles, like the Russian-made SA-7, as they are hotter than the deploying aircraft’s engines. The SA-7 is a man-portable, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile. While the design is quite dated and, consequently, poses little threat to high-performance combat jets, it is quite capable of bringing down less advanced aircraft like our pig. In fact, the enemy in Iraq had recently used them against U.S. Army he li cop ters to inflict heavy losses. In November 2003, seventy-three U.S. troops had been killed in action, making it the war’s deadliest month up to that time. Thirty-nine of these soldiers had been killed when their helicopters were shot down. Though successful against helicopters, the SA-7 had failed to bring down any fixed-wing aircraft thus far in the war, and I had no fears that mine would be the fi rst.
Chaff, used to defeat radar-guided missiles by flooding the radar with multiple reflections, is nothing more than tinfoil, released in strips that return radar signals and obscure the presence of the target aircraft. Chaff had been invented by the British during World War II and was first used with devastat­ing effect on the night of 24–25 July 1943, when over seven hundred RAF bombers attacked the city of Hamburg. The fire raid, Operation Gomorrah, killed over 50,000 people. Largely thanks to the chaff, fewer than fi fteen British bombers  were lost.
I hoped, of course, that we would need neither the chaff nor the fl ares, and I really dreaded the air combat maneuvering that would certainly accompany their release.
Chaff and flares aside, the flight to Baghdad lasted only an hour and twenty-two minutes and passed peacefully. From the air, Baghdad looked like most cities at night, and nothing suggested that any great danger waited below—until we began our decent. Because of the threat posed by surface-to- air missiles and small-arms fire, we descended from the sky in a series of tight turns accompanied by stomach-churning drops in altitude. While exhilarat­ing, all went well, and soon we were safely on the ground and taxiing to a stop. The hatch opened and I stepped out into the cool, refreshing night air.
After breaking down the pallet that held our baggage and collecting our gear, we settled down to sleep in the crowded tent that sheltered both new arrivals and departures. There  were no cots, just chairs for watching TV. I found a spot on the fl oor and quickly fell asleep. The morning came suddenly and abruptly as a soldier tripped over me trying to navigate through the sea of sleeping men. After chow, those of us assigned, as I was, to the Co alition Military Assistance Training Team (CMATT)  were told that the Co alition Pro­visional Authority (CPA), which was colocated with CMATT, had sent a bus with an armed escort to carry us to Hussein’s Presidential Palace. None of us had ammo and many did not have the Small Arms Protective Inserts (SAPI) ballistic gear for our flak jackets. The SAPIs  were an absolute Godsend and had saved many lives in Iraq. They will stop an AK-47 round at point-blank range, and they are, contrary to popular opinion, a relatively new thing. The inaccurately nicknamed “bulletproof vests” of old  were effective at stopping shrapnel and handgun fire, but  were absolutely no match for a rifl e. Knowing of the SAPI’s reputation, well earned on the battlefields of Af ghan i stan and Iraq, we were not happy about being without them. Of course, being without ammo produced even worse feelings, but the army ran things, and they were certain that we would need neither the SAPIs nor ammo.
When the bus finally arrived that afternoon it lacked the CPA-promised escort. When questioned about the lack of an escort, the driver of the bus merely shrugged and said one was not available and that since we were only going to the palace anyway one was not really needed. While the war was go­ing well at that time, it seemed extremely foolish to me to send twenty- one unarmed men anywhere in Iraq. Incredibly, the lack of ammo, SAPI plates, and an escort did not bother anyone at the CPA. When Major Manning, the senior man with us raised these concerns, he was assured that the route to the palace was perfectly safe. Because nobody, including the driver sent by the CPA, knew where we were supposed to go, we caught something of a break. We only knew that we were to go to “the” Presidential Palace so the bus driver simply took us to the nearest palace. Once there, it was obvious why our driver had not been worried about the lack of an escort. The palace he took us to was located on Camp Victory, which was colocated with the airport, which meant we never left U.S.- controlled facilities on our short trip to the palace. But his was the wrong palace.
When Major Manning asked the sentry at the gate where the CPA was located, he was told, “You guys are in the wrong place. There is no CPA  here, just CJTF-7.”
Major Manning then went in search of someone who might know where exactly the CPA was located. While things were sorted out, I went looking for some bullets. We got very lucky and found a small building housing both a supply section and an armory. From supply we were able to get SAPI plates, and from the armory we drew a full combat load of 210 rounds of 5.56mm ammo for the M-16s and 45 rounds of 9 mm ammo for those of us armed with M-9s. The specialists and NCOs who hooked us up did so very graciously, in spite of the fact that we were all marines and not in any way attached to their unit.
By contrast, when I had tried to get SAPI plates from Quantico, I was told they were needed in security battalion in case the enemy attempted to open a second front in Virginia. The Marine Security Force at Yorktown had plates but refused to issue them without authority from their higher. In the end, I coughed up $1,500 of my own money and bought a set from a company in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I could not help but contrast the attitude of paper-pushing marines at Quantico and Yorktown with that of the fine soldiers at Camp Victory who gave me twenty sets of SAPI plates and all the ammo I needed with nothing but my signature for authorization. As we got the ammo and the plates, Major Manning found out where we were supposed to go—a little more than five miles away sat the Presidential Palace in Baghdad. I did not know it at the time, but the road linking the airport and Camp Victory to the Presidential Palace was the most important 5.4 miles of road in Iraq, and it would change my life.
The road to the Green Zone, the secured area of Baghdad surrounding the Presidential Palace, consisted of all high-speed blacktop. While the road spoke of modernity, the rest of Baghdad did not. Much of what could be seen from the highway consisted of trash and squalor, and the place reeked of decay when compared to Kuwait. Considering the oil wealth of both nations and comparing clean and modern Kuwait with the filth, poverty, and decay of Baghdad, I had to wonder what Saddam did with his nation’s wealth. As we pulled into a large parking lot across from the gated grounds of the Presiden­tial Palace, I noticed that things were much better i...

About this edition

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0312561210
• ISBN 13: 9780312561215
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336