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

hours before the North Vietnamese Army overran it.
    He’d stayed in the Marine Corps during the traumatic years of the 1970s and 1980s when General Louis H. Wilson Jr. cleaned house, tackling the drug abuse and racial problems that had plagued the Marine Corps by kicking out the bums and the slackers. He’d gotten married and had three children. Now, at fifty-one, he had risen to brigadier general and had commanded marines in Somalia, Bosnia, and the Middle East as part of the modern, professional, all-volunteer Marine Corps. The Marines chose Natonski. The other branches of the military just weren’t the same: the dull professionalism of the Army doggies, the showy but boring technology of the Air Force flyboys, the impenetrable, elitist culture of the Navy. To be a marine you had to be physically and mentally tough. You had to excel at the raw and dirty art of combat. It wasn’t a job; it was a calling.
    He had nearly missed the latest adventure. When CENTCOM, the ground forces command base in Florida, was first planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom, it seemed as though there might not be a place for Natonski or his marines from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, based out of Camp Lejeune.
    The Allied commander, Tommy Franks, wanted to take Baghdad as rapidly as possible. Unlike the first gulf war, where General Norman Schwarzkopf had called for a forty-day air war before sending in ground troops, Franks wanted to use the Army, led by the thirty thousand soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division, to make a lightning strike on Baghdad from the southwest across the desert. He wanted the Marines to take the roads and attack Baghdad from the southeast as the supporting effort. He gave the mission to the 1st Marine Division, out of Camp Pendleton.
    That hurt. The East Coast marines thought the Hollywood marines were too soft and pampered. Those on the West Coast thought of the East Coast marines as a poorer cousin. It was friendly rivalry. But it was a real rivalry.
    Then, nearly a year ago, the 1st Marine Division’s commander, General Mattis, had asked Natonski to form a self-sufficient MAGTF, a Marine air-ground task force, from East Coast marines to support the 1st Marine Division. They were originally called Task Force South, and their mission was to follow the 1st Marine Division into Iraq and then block toward Basra. But two days after leaving for Kuwait, the British offered up their 1st Armored Division to the Coalition. The Brits got the Basra mission instead. On ship, they had to plan for a sudden change in task: to open up and secure an eastern route through the city of Nasiriyah so that the 1st Marine Division could pass along two routes to Baghdad. The plan had always been for the 1st Marine Division to bypass Nasiriyah to the west and then take Route 1 to Baghdad. Opening up a second, eastern route through Nasiriyah would allow Marine convoys to transport equipment north on Route 7, a less crowded and less targetable route. It would also confuse Saddam’s forces if the Army and the Marines attacked Baghdad along several axes. The Medina Division of Saddam’s Republican Guard up in Al Kut would have to make a decision whether they were going to block Route 1, or whether they would block Route 7. It would split their forces.
    The new road they were to open up was christened Route Moe, and once Task Force Tarawa had secured it, they were tasked with guarding the 1st Marine Division’s thrust toward the Iraqi capital. It would allow the 1st Marine Division to conserve its ammo for the attack on Baghdad. Natonski was disappointed. It meant that his marines wouldn’t get the glory of marching into Baghdad. That would go to the West Coast marines. He tried not to let it bother him, but each time Natonski traveled from Camp Lejeune to Camp Pendleton in California for planning operations he felt as though he was treated like an outsider. Natonski consoled himself with another thought.
We’re going to kick down the