An Infantryman's Tale: "The Battle of Darth Vader Road"

I love a good firefight. The adrenaline is second to none. I never felt so alive, and never had so much fun, then the firefights that I've participated in. But never did i have so much fun then the firefight on the intersection of "Porche" and "Darth Vader Road" in Mosul Iraq in May of 2007.

The morning started out like a regular morning. I was put in charge of Bravo Section, since our normal section leader was home on his R&R leave, which basically means I was in charge of the four trucks that were going to be dropping off the dismounts, and then pulling outer cordon for our little company raid. For some reason I can't remember, all of our Staff Sgt's were gone for this mission, with the exception of SSG C, who was playing our Platoon SGT. Which basically put all the leadership decisions into the hands of us buck SGT's. Chuck was in charge of Alpha Section along with Lodo, who was going to be taking charge of the only Bradley we were taking out on this mission from our platoon. Now, everything went pretty normal, we dropped off our dismounts and i started coordinating where my section's trucks would pull security from while chuck did the same for his section and 3rd platoon did for their platoon. About ten minutes into the search, one of 3rd platoon's vehicles got fired upon with an RPG. The RPG explodes next to the truck but no one was hurt. Instead of returning fire, they kind of froze and took about ten minutes to move their truck behind a wall. I called over the radio and told our vehicles in 1st to keep their eyes open. About ten minutes later, my rear truck, receives an RPG from behind us. No one was hurt, thank God, because the RPG exploded right in front of the truck instead of hitting it. My boy Garrett was on the gun and did exactly what he was supposed to do and returned fire with his machine gun at the car that the bad guys were using. He reported that he hit the car with several shots but they drove away.
Being the superhero that i am, I decide to call chuck up and tell him that we're going to leave our position to fan around the perimeter and look for the car that Garrett had described. Lodo and chuck bring their vehicles along as i call to my Platoon SGT and tell him we're going to keep the cordon secure with a roving patrol. He agrees and goes back to whatever he was doing with the dismounts.
We found several cars that matched the description, and even with our lack of man power we dismounted and made the assessments. None of them were the right car. Chuck yells out to me that i'm kind of in an open position with no cover or concealment. That's when the shit hit the fan. We started receiving lots of gun fire and RPG's from a building across the way. It was like something out of a movie. I ran back to my truck, dodging bullets here and there and called in the rest of my trucks for support and told my gunner to start shooting that building. And with no hesitation he did exactly that. He had that 50 Cal. rockin. Lodo's Bradley pulled up next to us and started lighting the building up with 25MM and machine gun fire. The rest of 1st Platoon's trucks came after that and I directed them to get on line and start "talking to each other" (which basically means one truck fires a burst, then the next then the next, then start over again). The bad guys started this fight, but we sure as hell finished it. I had 6 trucks and 1 bradley rockin that building along with all of our dismounts on the rooftops above us launching everything they had into the building. Even the helicopters saw the fight from a few miles away and radioed in to us to ask if they could get a piece of the action. They started firing their hellfire missiles and rockin their guns into the building. It was basically just a huge firing squad on our part and that poor building definitely took it like a champ (it never did fall). After thirty minutes or so of trying to get everyone to stop shooting (cause once we would get them to stop, one shot would go off from God knows where and everyone would just start it up again), we finally maneuvered on the building and went in to see what remained of my would be assassins. All in all we found what remained of 8 terrorist (It was a bloody mess). We found their car out back, the same one Garrett had shot up earlier. I guess they were hoping we would go looking around for their car and shoot us while we were out of our trucks on foot. I guess it's a good thing they can't shoot as well as we can. Anywho, it was a fun day. I wasted all my ammo on my person (about 400 rounds). My gunner used all his rounds (1000 rounds of 50 Cal.). The bradley went black on ammo shooting over 250 High Explosive rounds into the building. And just about all of our dismounts were either empty on ammo or close to it. I believe the final count was somewhere over 50,000 rounds fired at the bad guys. Some may say that's overkill, but I say it was a lot of fun. I remember my hands couldn't stop shaking from the excitement of the fight for several hours. After all the clean up our whole platoon went back to the dining facility and had a huge meal together recalling the whole ordeal, and watching the support people's faces of shock (who never leave the base) when we talked very loudly about our day. It was fun. One of the best days of my life. I got to do what I've always wanted to do: lead men into combat. Not a lot of people in this world can say that, and I'm telling you, there is nothing like it.