Free Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War by Tim Pritchard Page A

meet, but he was an odd one. If you ever needed any money he would give you his last five dollars. He was a different kind of marine. He didn’t have the let’s-kill-everybody mentality that the rest of them had. In fact, he was so nice, so self-sacrificing that he got on Quirk’s nerves. But it was useful when he wanted a pack of Combos—the pretzels with cheese filling that were Quirk’s favorite snack out of all the shit in the MREs. Fribley would never refuse a swap. Fribley walked into the wrong
office. He should have gone to the Air Force instead.
    It reminded him of a joke he liked. He told it to the rest of the guys in the track.
    “Three high school friends meet up for a camping holiday a few months after they have joined up. The one who was in the Air Force says:
    “Boot Camp was horrible. They ran out of Diet Coke in the soda fountain.
    “The one from the Army says:
    “That’s nothing. They made me sleep outside and it rained on me.
    “The one who joined the Marine Corps says nothing. He carries on lighting the fire with nothing but his dick.”
    With his head out of the hatch he saw, for the first time, Cobra attack helicopters flying overhead toward the city. They were shooting stuff up, firing off missile after missile and exploding targets ahead in fountains of flames, smoke, and billowing dust. Quirk was in a state of euphoria. This was the first time he’d seen American marines shooting at real things. He was through the roof with excitement. He turned to his buddy, posting air security next to him.
    “They are shooting the fuck out of things. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Hey, this is the best day of my life.”
    The clattering of the helos, the booms of their missiles, the smoke rising on the horizon sent Quirk into overdrive. He didn’t think the Iraqis would fight back. He didn’t even think he would have to fire his weapon. He certainly didn’t think that within the next hour he would be shooting at and killing human beings or that they would be shooting back and killing his buddies.
This is cool. They’re blowing all this shit up and I’m so glad I’m
seeing it.
    That’s what he liked about the Marines. All his life, growing up in a safe suburb of New York, he’d dreamed of another, more vigorous, more exciting life. And now he was in the thick of it. He was at war. The thrill was intoxicating. He had to pray to stop himself from feeling crazy. He did it a lot when he was a kid to stop himself from getting agitated. It was not an organized prayer, just something to calm him down when things got overwhelming.
    “Dear God, give me a clear mind and a calm heart. Give me strength to get through this day.”
    He looked up again to enjoy the sight, sound, and smell of the American military machine at war.

5
    Looking down from his Huey, Brigadier General Rich Natonski saw the efforts of his planning. A long column of hundreds of AAVs, tanks, and supporting vehicles of Task Force Tarawa were strung out along Highway 8, ready for the move into Nasiriyah. Natonski had wanted to be a marine ever since he was a little kid growing up in a small house in Connecticut, but he had no idea that he would come this far. Very few marines actually got to war and yet here he was, in the thick of one, with some six thousand men and hundreds of tanks, AAVs, helicopters, and jet fighters under his command.
    At over six-foot-three, he was a large and, at first glance, an intimidating bear of a man. He’d had a long and distinguished military career, and to the younger men he exuded the romance of the Marine Corps life: of jungle patrolling the Ho Chi Minh Trail, of assaults into Hue, of nights out in Saigon. In 1975, he’d commanded a platoon that evacuated American and foreign nationals from Phnom Penh just as the Khmer Rouge were moving into the city. Weeks later he was flown into Saigon in a CH-53 helicopter, where he evacuated civilians from the U.S. Military Assistance Command compound