..When I reached the stricken AAV, the scene was mayhem. The heavy, thick rear ramp had been blown open. There were pools of blood and bits of flesh everywhere. A severed leg, still wearing a desert boot, lay on what was left of the ramp among playing cards, a magazine, cans of Coke and a small bloodstained teddy bear. "They are f****** dead, they are dead. Oh my God. Get in there. Get in there now and pull them out," shouted a gunner in a state verging on hysterical. There was panic and confusion as a group of young marines, shouting and cursing orders at one another, pulled out a maimed body. Two men struggled to lift the body on a stretcher and into the back of a Hummer, but it would not fit inside, so the stretcher remained almost upright, the dead man's leg, partly blown away, dangling in the air. "We shouldn't be here," said Lieutenant Campbell Kane, 25, who was born in Northern Ireland. "We can't hold this. They are trying to suck us into the city and we haven't got enough ass up here to sustain this. We need more tanks, more helicopters." Closer to the destroyed AAV, another young marine was transfixed with fear and kept repeating: "Oh my God, I can't believe this. Did you see his leg? It was blown off. It was blown off." Two CH-46 helicopters, nicknamed Frogs, landed a few hundred yards away in the middle of a firefight to take away the dead and wounded. If at first the marines felt constrained by orders to protect civilians, by now the battle had become so intense that there was little time for niceties. Cobra helicopters were ordered to fire at a row of houses closest to our positions. There were massive explosions but the return fire barely died down. Behind us, as many as four AAVs that had driven down along the banks of the Euphrates were stuck in deep mud and coming under fire. About 1pm, after three hours of intense fighting, the order was given to regroup and try to head out of the city in convoy. Several marines who had lost their vehicles piled into the back of ours. We raced along ambush alley at full speed, close to a line of houses. "My driver got hit," said one of the marines who joined us, his face and uniform caked in mud. "I went to try to help him when he got hit by another RPG or a mortar. I don't even know how many friends I have lost. I don't care if they nuke that bloody city now. From one house they were waving while shooting at us with AKs from the next. It was insane..." I wish I had the power to bring them home; I would. Understand what war is...
Thanks for the link Universal. The horrors of war explicitly described. Hopefully our political leaders are reading such accounts but somehow I doubt it. What is troubling is how our troops are reacting. Where's the so called "best trained military in the world?" I think it's a safe bet the British forces are more disciplined than this. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0330-11.htm# " Though civilians on foot passed by safely, the policy was to shoot anything that moved on wheels. Inevitably, terrified civilians drove at speed to escape: marines took that speed to be a threat and hit out. During the night, our teeth on edge, we listened a dozen times as the AVVs' machineguns opened fire, cutting through cars and trucks like paper. Next morning I saw the result of this order - the dead civilians, the little girl in the orange and gold dress. Suddenly, some of the young men who had crossed into Iraq with me reminded me now of their fathers' generation, the trigger-happy grunts of Vietnam. Covered in the mud from the violent storms, they were drained and dangerously aggressive. In the days afterwards, the marines consolidated their position and put a barrier of trucks across the bridge to stop anyone from driving across, so there were no more civilian deaths. "
Yeah, they said it would be a two-day cakewalk. The ones who said it would NOT be pretty were all out protesting.
War is horrible, and horrifying...all this will continue to spring forth, regardless of the relative santitation of the images Americans see, particularly as opposed to the images the rest of the world sees...
'all' is quite a strog word... i never said it would be a two-day cakewalk and i was not protesting...
Why not move your ass out from behind your computer, sign up, and give us a report on your reactions after seeing 4 of your buddies disintigrate before your very eyes trying to lend a hand to an innocent suicide bomber civilian.
Geez, the protesters said war would not be pretty? That's fecking brilliant. With brains like that it's no wonder they're out in Baghdad presenting themselves as human targets.